Rufi Thorpe: Dear Fang, with Love

“It might mean another round of psychosis,” he warned. “Probably not. But it isn’t out of the question.”

I nodded, helpless. What else could we do?

Katya, I thought, as I walked home in the bright, horrifying sunshine. Katya, come quickly.

—

The next morning, on the way to the airport to get Katya, I was as nervous as if I were taking her to the prom. I met Johnny Depp on the corner by our apartment where he was waiting with a cab. I suppose I had imagined us riding to the airport in silence. I really would have preferred to pretend he wasn’t there at all. But it became obvious right away that this was not going to be possible. He was in a chatty mood. He kept rubbing his hands up and down his slacks on the tops of his thighs as we made our way out of the city.

“How is Rūta?” I asked.

“Mad at me,” Johnny Depp said.

“What did you do?” I asked. I wasn’t worried about prying. He clearly wanted me to ask.

He paused for a minute, then said, “My Fulbright was over this spring. So I’m going back to the States at the end of the summer. And it turns out that all this time, she’s been waiting for me to ask her to marry me. To come with me to live in America.” He laughed a little, flashed a nervous smile with those glaringly white teeth.

“And you’re not going to ask her?”

“Not a chance.”

I thought about the beautiful Rūta in her orange knit dress with her familiarity with torture and her sweet laugh like wind chimes sounding. “Why not?” I asked.

“She has a kid,” he said, not looking at me, but out at the city we were slowly leaving behind.

I had not known that Rūta had a child. She seemed too young for children. Too beautiful and fresh. “How old?” I asked.

“A little boy. He’s six. I’m just not ready to be a father, if you know what I mean,” he said, and laughed again. “But he’s a great kid. It’s not that.”

“How long have you been together here?” I asked.

“Two years,” Johnny Depp said.

Of course Rūta had been thinking he would ask her to marry him. Of course it had never occurred to her that he could enter her life, playact Daddy to her child for two years, and then leave as though the whole thing were a lark.

“But, it’s like, she doesn’t get that where I am in my life, I don’t have a steady income — you know? I can’t just, like, get married.”

“Right,” I said.

“It’s not that simple,” he said.

“It is, though,” I said.

“What?”

I don’t think he had been expecting me to contradict him. I hadn’t been expecting myself to contradict him, either. We were out of the city now, on a narrow highway going through pine forest. There were no buildings or human habitation in sight.

“Do you love her?” I asked.

“Of course I love her,” he said.

I shrugged. “So marry her.”

“But I can’t do that,” he said.

“Sure you can. You can do whatever you want. It’s your life.”

He shook his head, perplexed that I was failing to understand his predicament. “But I can’t be responsible for her. I can’t, like, move her to a whole different country with her kid and take care of them. I don’t have any money!”

“You’d figure it out,” I said.

“It’s not that easy,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “It wouldn’t be easy at all. It’s just that it’s that simple. But simple and easy are different.”

Johnny Depp said nothing. I had clearly pissed him off, and I was glad. Glad to have this opportunity to give Johnny Depp the gift of being contradicted. The airport came into view. “Whatever,” he said. “My life, so I guess I get to decide what I want to do with it.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said.

When we got to the airport, he volunteered to wait in the cab while I went inside to collect Katya. I was expecting to wait for a while, loitering outside of baggage claim, but her flight had gotten in early and she was sitting on top of her suitcase just inside the doors, eating an apple. I wondered for a moment where she had gotten it. Was it an apple she had brought with her? Was it an American apple? I don’t know why I found the idea of this so enchanting.

She got up and threw her arms around me. I don’t think she had hugged me since we were eighteen. Her arms, while thin, were surprisingly strong. “Come,” I said, letting her go. “I’ve got a cab.” I rolled her suitcase for her, and she followed me, wordlessly, as though this was something we did all the time. Before getting in the back of the cab, she tossed her apple core out onto the spotless pavement.

“Katya!” I said, aghast. It seemed perverse to me that she would assume she had the right to litter here in this strange country that she had only just arrived in.

“It’s for the birds,” she said, and waved me off. “How is she? Tell me everything.”

Probably it had been unwise to pick a fight with Johnny Depp on the way to the airport, as now it was awkward to talk to Katya freely with him listening, sullen and slumped in the front passenger seat, but the story itself eventually broke down my reserve and in the end I almost forgot he was there. Katya had been in the air for a full twenty-six hours, so I hadn’t gotten to tell her about the hives. “I don’t know what state she’ll be in when we see her,” I said, and relayed the doctor’s warning about the possibility of a return to psychosis.

“My poor baby,” Katya said, and insisted the cab drop us off not at the apartment but at the hospital, bags and all. “You will carry them,” she told me. “Who pays him?” she asked. “This guy?” She jerked her thumb at Johnny Depp.

“How much was the trip?” I asked.

“Forget it,” Johnny Depp said. “The program will cover it.”

“No,” I said, “I insist. This is beyond anything the program should cover.”

Johnny Depp took off his sunglasses and his eyes were soft. “I’m really sorry that this is happening to Vera,” he said. “I don’t think I realized the full extent of things when you told me on the phone. We’ve got the apartment booked for another week for you, but please know, if there is anything that I can do, or that the program can do for you, we are more than happy to. Just call.”

I shook his hand. I wondered if he would ask Rūta to marry him. Probably he wouldn’t. I didn’t think I had the power to single-handedly change his mind, by any means. And yet. He pushed his floppy hair back out of his eyes with his other hand and gave me a weird salute.

And I followed Katya into the mental hospital, dragging her huge rolling suitcase behind me.

“Dear Mother” Word doc Created by User on 7/18 Deleted by User on 7/18

Dear Mother,

I already know that I am not going to send you this letter. Some communications must take place outside of time. Some of the things we have to say to each other would break our voices if we tried to say them, or would make the ears of our listeners leak dark blood. What I have to say to you is something that probably cannot even be contained in words, though if it can be captured at all, it can only be fleetingly embraced by the curves of the letters of an electronic document that will never be sent and will most likely be immediately deleted. Like electrons aware of being observed, the truth will pretend to be something more sensible if it is aware you are looking at it. But when the truth is all by itself, it is chaotic and manifold.

It wounds me deeply that you do not believe I am well. That when Papa called you and told you about the acid, you were so unmoved. Weren’t you even a tiny bit hopeful? Don’t you want me to be well?