Tribe F: The Letter Bomb
From http://people.tribe.net/rorybowman/blog/555af724-0e63-4da4-bd28-4cfa2a3281b2
A rice bowl, such as the one Carter explicitly asked me to return.
June of 1998 was the last time I spoke with Catherine Lynne Carter. She had moved out in February, we had broken up in April, and she came by in June to pick up a few of her things and see the kittens of a beautiful feral cat named Ginger. She said she needed some space and had to focus on some things, cordially promising to touch base with me sometime before my birthday in October. I told her that I would keep my eyes open for other small things of hers, and she specifically asked me to save a small rice bowl of hers into which she had transplanted for me the gift of a small jade plant.
The rice-pattern bowl, for those unfamiliar, is a Chinese ceramic style wherein grains of rice are supposedly placed onto the bowl before firing, forming small indentations where the bowl is thinner and often translucent after the rice has burned away in the kiln. This bowl was a particular beautiful example, and the first such one I remember seeing. Like the small plant within, it meant a lot to me, and the last two promises I made to Catherine Lynne Kate Cate Invisigoth Carter were to remember her birthday and return this rice bowl. When Carter failed me many months later and added insult to injury through a creeply lawyer friend and her low-rent, drive-by legal threats, I still remembered, and cared for her beloved bowl. Things meant a lot to Cate Carter, as they often do to women of her class. The ownership of things allows one a sense of control and self-delusion that relationships with authentic people does not. Heirlooms often comfort heirs because the original owner is safely dead.
I did not spend a lot of time thinking about Carter after the colossal rudeness of October and my biting, unanswered “dump-o-matic.” I had been diagnosed with a severe, episodic depression and ordered to take a medical leave from work while I stabilized. On a wild roller-coaster over the loss within three years of two beloved jobs, two major relationships and the suicide of my youngest brother just weeks after he had attacked me and I had thrown him out of my house, I was doing the months-long tango of trying to find whatever drug and dosage that would stabilize me after almost two years of talk therapy had not done so. For anyone who has not been depressed, it is difficult to describe. The closest I have come is to say that it is the exact opposite of being in love. Rather than irrational and delirious joy, though, one fantasizes about train tracks, oncoming cars and half-way trips across tall bridges. If one has the energy, that is, to get out of bed, eat once a day, or bathe and brush one’s teeth once a week. It is something that I would almost not wish on anyone, and after over a year of it and mixed results from drugs, I was not sure that even at the height of spring I would be in the majority of those who emerge.
Looking over my journals for May and June of 1999 I see that I was methodical. I cleaned my house thoroughly and boxed up various things. I wrote brief thank-you letters to people I had not seen, and I prepared a small box of miscellaenous household items to send Kate Cate Carter, including one rice bowl.
My memory is not as clear as it might be, but the written evidence suggests that I was preparing to die. Having seen the chaos that such death can cause the survivors, I was methodically trying to be polite. Borrowed books were labeled so they would be returned. Pornography was purged and rooms were put in order. Because I had not spoken with Carter, I did not know her address and so sent the rice-bowl package to her care of her parents in California. A few days later I got an email asking what was in the box. I answered and got a notice from the post office a few days later. Because I was not feeling up to it, a friend took care of the notice and brought the box back to my house. Awaking after dark, I found that my carefully-prepared package, my final promise, had been returned, marked “refused.” I was livid.
To appreciate my feelings it would help to know that Carter had moved into my house almost three years before, and that I had rearranged things to make her feel at home. My bedroom became her study, shelves of almost a thousand books were boxed. A loom took up the front room next to a large white couch of hers which I had often hated. Having spent weeks trying to reassemble this and put my house in order, this small and petty gesture struck me as supremely selfish. With the sort of poetic clarity that often strikes me, I decided that I would take a chance and see if I could complete my promise after all. Among the things of Carter’s I had was a key to a Toyota pick-up that Daddy had purchased for her at college, given to me “in case I ever needed” to borrow the truck. Driving on a warm night to the last place I knew she lived in Portland, I found the truck and drove it ten miles, put three gallons of gas into the tank and her sofa in the bed before returning the truck and leaving the “refused” package on the passenger’s seat. Seeing this as an attack on her through her property, Carter set her crack legal team into motion.
A few days later I received a subpoena, as she and her legal eagle had decided to make good on Dell’s threat from many months ago. Heading down to the courthouse for what I thought would be similar to a traffic-ticket hearing, I found myself as the defendant against not one but two lawyers, who spun a self-centered tale of woe. I had invaded her privacy, she said, and had a temper that placed her in fear for her life. Failing to mention that I had put gas in the truck I borrowed (to return her property) she explained to the judge how use of someone’s valuable property was right next door to a threat on one’s life. When the package arrived at her parents’ house, she explained that they thought it was a bomb and so returned it. The judge established that (a) I had never visited her since she left unless invited, (b) had never hit her, (c) had never threatened her, (d) had jobs that required background checks and (e) no criminal history or motivation to hurt her. He told me to return her truck key through her lawyer and to try not to be a jerk in the future. Why exactly I would have put my return address on a letter bomb is something that I wish I had asked Carter to explain.
Then again, perhaps the rice-pattern is not really a decoration, but to aid the ceramic in fragmentation should the bowl be filled with hot gunpowder tea…
Comment from M on Wed, May 21, 2008 – 10:01 AM
Oh, Rory – wow. What a whack-job she turned out to be! 
( Were there any hints, along the way, that things might turn out the way they did? Just wondering . . .
Two things: I understand depression from having been deep inside it for many years. Zoloft is a maintenance med for me, and may always be. Also, I have a collection of rice bowls and cups – I love them, and am always on the lookout for more when at thrift stores. They’re beautiful as a table centerpiece with some water and a floating candle in them – throws off a lovely pattern. ) Take good care of yourself! ~ Misha
Reply to Comment on Wed, May 21, 2008 – 9:29 PM
I think her problems are more complicated and subtle than the phrase “whack-job” conveys, and emerged from a variety of influences. She lost her mother to cancer when she was about ten, and never really resolved that. Her quest for meaning and acceptance led her into some very odd places where a lack of keen intelligence and useful insight were exacerbated by over-use of psychotropics. Just as the line between a nice Christian boy and a latent homosexual can be hard for some women to discern, I was pretty much oblivious to the differences between being artsy, addicted and mentally ill.
I was not aware of her drug use, its nature or frequency, until well after we broke up. Some people are too fragile to work with psychotropics, and I think that she was one of those. Unfortunately I never brought it up, she did not trust me to disclose and I never even suspected. In retrospect I could see a pattern where she created sympathy by portraying herself as a victim, and I think a lot of what happened with this incident was that she was looking for motherly support and comfort from older, matronly women. They got to be all mother-hen and she got to be doted on: a clear win-win. I was merely a convenient foil, chosen for deep psychic reasons that I can only speculate on.
In a word, no, but then I was distracted (on many, many levels).
No one wants to admit that they misread and over-estimated anyone as much as I apparently did her. Mostly it is just embarrassing, but funny. Mostly. Ten years later.
Comment from M on Fri, May 23, 2008 – 4:31 PM
It’s never just that simple – I know that. ( I hope you didn’t feel belittled by my impertinent-seeming question. I appreciate your insights.
Take good care of yourself! ~ Misha
Reply to Commment on Sat, May 24, 2008 – 8:37 AM
Oh, not at all. I just want to be certain that I am not painting some cartoonish picture of her as vile villain or myself as injured innocent. No offense taken.
