From my sister Moira

 Dear Ted,  

From my sister Moira (the dead one) to me.

 

“This Perry Como business,” Roz said. “He didn’t die in 1981. He died in 2001. I looked it up.”

     “I know,” I said.

     “So?”

     “What?” She looked worried. There was a line from her forehead into the bridge of her glasses. She’d put it there, but she couldn’t seem to keep it still. “What?” I said again. She couldn’t keep the line still, but she was still.

     “I don’t know,” I said,” because I didn’t. But then: “I’m taking my medicine.

     “You can check.” She wouldn’t, of course because she trusts me. Because I am trustworthy.

     You can trust me.

* * * * *

Today    

Dear Ted,

     Sometimes when I come to Alma’s diner to write you, I have toast and jam as well as coffee: generic white bread toast and the blobby stuff that’s in those little plastic packets they have in all diners. I did this time. And I got my fingers all sticky, and I said, “Aaarrggh,” and Alma came with a cloth napkin and a finger bowl. I had forgotten such things existed.

     What are you eating for breakfast these days? One piece of toast is usually enough for me.

     You were visiting friends is North Carolina? I was born there, wasn’t I? I ask because I forget why we were there, and I’m not sure where we went next, or even after that. Not that it matters. Except does matter, doesn’t it, in the sense that everything matters because everything works together for the good for those whom God loves? Isn’t that what The Apostle says? And God loves everything, so it all matters. That’s what I say. Which doesn’t mean that it all makes sense. That’s what you keep saying, right?

     But something doesn’t have to make sense to be true. I’ll say that, too. I mean “true” in the sense of “real”; and I mean “real” in the sense of available to taste, touch, and smell — you don’t only see and hear. It isn’t only hearsay or seesay. A wolf howls, and you can smell it; the sound of it enters you at the base of your neck and runs down between your breasts, even behind your navel and into your groin. At the back of your tongue is a coppery taste. Maybe?

This just occurs to me: If the wisdom of men is the foolishness of God — or is it the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men — if that is the case, is Jesus not a philosopher but a philomorer? (And do I get that right? You know that I don’t know any Greek, but I do know sopho-more means “wise fool” and I extrapolate. What would Paul say?)
     And I extricate myself from my booth at Alma’s, taking my letter with me and my pen and another leaf of paper in case I want to add something. I am going to meet your old girlfriend, Trudy Monae. I’ve decided I’m going to like her after all, for your sake. We are going to the shelter to get a cat that will live with her half the week and then a hundred years with me. And vice-versa.
     Write me back soon. Answer all my questions!

                                                                 Love, Moira

08.07.21

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Illustration: “The Apopsicle Paul”