The Secret Letters (10 page)

“That's very true. I never thought of it that way,” he said, looking thoughtful.

“Instead, He goes and makes all these ingredients, and leaves it up to us to put them together.”

“Some people are better at it than others.”

“Exactly. It's a mystery, and there are people spread across the earth, and they spend centuries figuring it out. Like, the Mexicans figure out how to make mole sauce out of spices, nuts, and chocolate. Asian people make sauce out of soybeans. The Greeks and Italians make oil out of olives. The French put cream, eggs, and flour together and make—all sorts of shit. It's like
magic
.” I guzzled my wine. “And the Great Spirit didn't have to do that, did He?”

“He could have had us just eat Big Macs every day.”

“Something like that.”

“So you're saying it's a miracle,” Milo said.

“I guess I am.”

“That's really interesting, Julie.” He really did look interested.

I felt like telling him about my real father and who I really was, but I just poured more wine into our glasses and we toasted with the creeps at the bar.

When everyone was gone, I lit a cigarette and savored the moment. Smoking was illegal in the restaurants of our county, but hey, we were closed. The cigarette made me cough and got in the way of my savoring—I was out of practice, since I never had time any more—so I stubbed it out, then got up and tossed what was left of the pack into the garbage. Then I sat down and savored the moment some more.

I wasn't surprised when Pam phoned and told me she'd gotten a call from Norma, and that her pal Doug had made an offer on the house. What did surprise me was when she said Norma had informed her that Bob wanted a divorce so he could marry Norma's friend Candy, and that he'd been sneaking around with her for months.

“You have to call her,” Pam said. “She needs us.”

I would rather have poked myself in the eye with a sharp stick, but I called. I heard the sound of someone picking up, then nothing. “Norma?” I heard breathing, then a weird noise I realized was crying. “Norma, are you okay?”

“I'm fine.” Her voice was hoarse.

For some reason, her tenth birthday party flashed into my mind, where she had sobbed hysterically after being stung by a wasp, and I felt a gut-punch of pity for her. “Pammy told me what happened. Shit, I'm really sorry.”

“He was waiting for the house to sell before he told me. He says he wanted to make sure we don't have any financial problems when he moves out. I think he just wants to make sure he doesn't have to pay me much alimony. Listen, I'm glad you called.” She sounded like she was pulling herself together. “I need you to fax me your acceptance of the sale. Yours and Ricky's.”

“Ricky doesn't know how to fax.”

“Then do it for him. I'll FedEx you the paperwork—just FedEx or fax it back to me.”

I didn't have time to FedEx or fax anything, but as always, there was no point arguing. I started to say okay, but before I had got to the second syllable, she hung up.

***

Pam was as sad as I was.

“It's the end of our childhood.” She was standing behind the bar holding a rag and staring out the window at the traffic on Main Street.

“You're almost forty.”

She turned to glare at me.

Still, she was right. I had never realized how much a house could be like a magnet, like north to a compass. Even now that I owned my building, I had always thought of my apartment as a way station, like a barracks. I had no intention of ever living in my mother's house again, but it was the place my arrow pointed to. I imagined all of us crowded into those small, dark rooms, bumping into furniture, breaking things, giving each other noogies and wedgies, getting into fights on the staircase while my mother screamed at us to stop, laughing at Frank's jokes at the dinner table and getting sent to our rooms for being hooligans. When my family members were living in that house, making noise, I was someone with a home, and now, I was nobody.

But it cheered me up when I thought about the lands out west that still belonged to my people.
That
was a real home, I thought.

Pam was at the bar talking to Milo when her buddy Doug showed up. I caught sight of him through the diamond-shaped window in the kitchen door, so I hurried into the dining room to watch. I figured sparks were going to fly, but she completely ignored him.

“Pam,” Doug began. He looked over at Milo and me like he wished we would go away. I smiled and nodded at him and pulled up a barstool. “I know you're probably upset with me—”

“Upset? Why should I be upset?” She dried a glass with a towel, not looking at him. “My house was for sale. You are buying it. I am a seller, and you are—”

“I just want you to know I'm sorry. It's just business.”

“I know, nothing personal. I understand.”

“Are you going to give your permission for the sale?”

“Of course. Is that why you came?”

“No.” Doug lowered his voice. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Hey, no hard feelings.” She set the glass down on the bar so hard I thought it would break. “Business is business. Isn't that right, Julie? What is business?”

“Business,” I said.

“Exactly.”

Doug turned and looked at me, then back at Pam. “I'll call you.”

“Operators will be standing by,” she said.

“Poor guy,” Milo said when he had gone.

“He'll get over it,” she said.

She sounded like she didn't give a shit, but I could tell she had really liked him.

“He's a fucking idiot,” I said.

“He really is,” Milo agreed.

“Men suck,” Pam said. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Milo said. He was staring at her with that moony expression men always stared at her with. I looked away, but it was too late, I had already seen it and it made me feel bad. I went back in the kitchen and scraped the grill, hard.

Clearly, some men did not suck, but try telling that to Pam.

***

When I came back into the dining room, Milo was gone, and Pam was wiping the bar and looking miserable. “I guess we'll have to hire movers,” she said. “We'll put everything in storage while we figure out what to do with it.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I mean, about your friend. He's an asshole.”

“Forget it. I'm just sad about the house. I guess I'll have to move back to the
townhouse.”

“What about Ricky?”

“I don't know what they'll do.”

“‘They?'”

“They're a package deal. He's a lot easier to handle when she's around. She cleans up after him, cooks, does the dishes. I think she's really good for him. Did you know he even quit drinking?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yep. He doesn't touch the stuff now. He says it's bad for his pancreas. Six months ago he didn't even know he had a pancreas.”

“Wow. She's a keeper.”

“It's funny, isn't it,” she said.

I knew exactly what she meant: it was funny how the two of us, who had jobs and did our own laundry, were such epic failures in the romance department, but Mr. High Maintenance had a gorgeous girlfriend who was crazy about him. “I think we're just attracted to the wrong people,” I said, thinking about Brandon, which I tried to never do. I had married him because I thought he was cute, but it turned out being cute was not the most important quality in a husband. It would be better to be with someone you could trust, someone nice and thoughtful, reliable and sort of serious, and sure, maybe a little bit geeky—I stopped myself when I realized I was describing Milo. “Yeah,” I said.

All the fortunetellers across the street called themselves Madame Rosa, but as far as I knew, it wasn't anyone's real name. One morning before we were open, one Madame Rosa, a big blonde with dark roots and bright red lipstick, tapped on our front window. It was a dark, fall morning, and I could see her breath. I let her in, and she told me she was desperate for caffeine and the coffee shop on the corner was opening late because of a staff meeting. As I was handing a cup of coffee to her, she tried to pay me, but I told her it was on the house. She looked surprised, thanked me, and started to leave, then turned around. “Come in any time for a free reading,” she said.

“Okay, sure,” I said, though I had no intention of ever doing that. As I went back into the kitchen to work on my special (enchiladas with lemongrass salsa verde), I thought about how boring it must be to look at someone's palm all day and make shit up, and how lucky I was to have such an interesting job. Not to sound cynical, but even if I did believe someone could tell your fortune—and I was pretty sure I didn't—that didn't mean Madame Rosa or whatever her name was could do it. Most likely, it was a scam, and it wouldn't be worth the trouble to go see her, even for free.

But as the days went by, I found myself thinking about it. In the past, I had never believed in anything—religion, magic, God, or anything you might call New Age, though my town was full of crystal shops and herbal healers. But now that I was Native American, I had a different approach to life. What if the Great Spirit had a message for me? How would it get to me if I didn't go looking for it? It wouldn't do any harm to hear what she said, I thought. There were things I wanted to know, like if my father was still alive, and where he lived. Sure, it would be more practical to hire a private detective, and I was planning to do that when I had time, but maybe Madame Rosa
could give me some info.

I happened to mention this to Pam.

“Do it!” she said.

“Are you serious?” Like everyone, she had gone through an astrology phase in high school, but there was no way she was buying into that kind of crap any more.

“Sure. Why not? Check it out. Go over there one morning, before things get busy. We'll cover for you. Ray's getting good at the
huevos
.” We generally got a lot of egg orders before lunch.

“What about your job?”

“I'll be fine. No one notices where I go—they'll just think I'm in court. Have you noticed that you never leave this restaurant?”

“What are you talking about? I leave.”

“You go upstairs to sleep. I wouldn't call that leaving.”

“It's leaving.”

“Have you actually been anywhere besides this building in the past two months?”

I thought about it. Nothing sprang to mind. “So?”

“So I think you can go across the street for half an hour. Don't worry, we'll be fine without you.”

I told her I'd consider it.

The next day when I came out of my apartment, I happened to glance across the street. The blue neon sign that said “Psychic Reader” was on. I went into the kitchen and finished my prep. When Ray came in at 10:30, I asked him if he knew how to make our egg dishes. He said he did. “I make a mean papadzules, too,” he said. I had a feeling maybe Pam had coached him. It was nice of them to try to give me a break, but I decided I wasn't leaving yet. I didn't feel comfortable with it, and besides, I liked it just
fine in my restaurant. Everything I needed was there. People came in, food was delivered every day, Heidi took our cash to the bank so I didn't have to. It was a perfect little world.

***

Not long after that, on a chilly Saturday morning, I discovered a reason to leave: Ray and Ricky were driving me nuts. They were fine during our busy times when Ray was working hard and Ricky was smoking out back, but when we were slow, they entertained themselves by arguing. I would tell them to shut up, and they would, but when I turned my back, they'd crank it up again. Nothing was too trivial or pointless for them to go to the mat about.

“They're the same,” Ricky said. “Reggae's just another word for ska.”

“You haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about.” Ray had a snooty voice when he talked to Ricky, like a butler on PBS.

“I read it in a book on Bob Marley.”

“You read a
book
?” Ray opened his mouth to continue, but I held up my hand.

“Stop,” I said. “Enough.” It wasn't even noon yet, and I wasn't going to be able to stand a whole day of this. I stirred my mole sauce and wondered what to do. I couldn't fire Ray—I needed him. If I fired Ricky, he'd never find another job he could walk to. Everyone on Main Street knew how unreliable he was, though the fact was, he had been coming to work pretty consistently, probably because Pam and Star were there to kick his ass if he didn't. We weren't too concerned about his finances: Pam had put his share of the life insurance in a trust fund so he could only get his hands on a little bit at a time and couldn't blow it all on things that were bad for him. With Star on the scene, he was no longer drinking, but it made sense to keep an eye on him, so I needed to suck it up and keep him. All my life, I had been looking out for him, at least when my mother was at work, and later, after Frank died, when Ricky fell apart and started
drinking and taking drugs. We never actually said it out loud, but we were on kind of a suicide watch for a year or two, and when he settled into a harmless pattern of drinking and driving, losing his license, and occasionally doing shrooms, we were all relieved. We thought of him as our responsibility, even Tim, so having him work for me was just business as usual.

The arguing died down, then started up again. This time it was about the first man to walk on the moon. Ray said in his snooty butler voice that people had been traveling to the moon for centuries and that Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in a movie studio in New Mexico. I was inclined to side with Ricky on this one, for once: I managed to stay neutral in most of these dumb fights, but I usually secretly agreed with Ray.

When they started in about the Skull and Bones global domination conspiracy, whatever the hell that was, I decided I'd had enough. “I'm going out,” I said to Ray. “You can cover for me. I'll be back before lunch.” My two henchmen were so surprised I was going to vacate the premises they actually stopped bickering and stared at me. I turned my back on them and stomped out the kitchen door. “I'm going across the street for a little while,” I told Pam, who was behind the bar, since she always worked Saturdays.

“To the Hare?”

“To Madame Rosa's. I thought I'd take her up on her offer.”

She nodded thoughtfully, then said it was nice I was finally doing something for myself, however small.

***

I'd walked past the blue neon sign that said “Psychic Reader” a zillion times on my way to the Hare but had never been inside. The waiting room looked like a dentist's office, with a TV tuned to Fox News, some scruffy black vinyl couches, a coffee table with a
blue vase full of roses. The roses were dusty, so I guessed they were fake, but they looked real. I stood wondering what to do, but then one of the Madame Rosas came through a door from a back room. This one was younger, though she looked a bit like the Madame Rosa I gave the coffee to. She was wearing a pink T-shirt that said “Believe” in sequins.

“Hi,” I began, “I met someone from here last week, and she said to—”

“Oh, right, right.” She looked like she knew all about me, though maybe this was something they always pretended when people came in. “Hang on.” She went back into the other room and came back with my Madame Rosa.

“You came,” she said. She sounded surprised, though if she was really psychic, I thought, she wouldn't have been.

I wasn't sure what to say. “I've always looked at your sign and wondered what you do. I mean, I know you tell people's fortunes, but—”

“We call it reading.”

“Oh, sorry.” I didn't want to ruin my luck by saying the wrong thing. “Anyway, I've always wondered about it. Do you use a crystal ball, or what?”

“Generally we use cards, but we also do palms. It depends what the customer wants. The palm reading is twenty dollars, and the cards are twenty-five. This one is on me. You can have either one.”

“Oh hey, thanks, that's really nice of you.” I was kind of disappointed to find out she didn't use a crystal ball. I guess I had been picturing her looking into one like the witch uses in
The Wizard of Oz
, and that seemed much more interesting than palms or cards. I wasn't sure what to choose. “Which one is better?”

“They're both good. They both show the same things. Some people like to use the cards because they're fancier.”

“Which do you like best?”

She pondered. “I guess I like the cards best.”

“Let's go with that.”

She led me into the next room and pointed to a tall bookshelf. At first I thought it was full of small books, but as I looked more closely, I saw decks of cards packed closely together with weird names like the “Tarot of Arcus Arcanum,” the “Minchiate Etruria,” and the “Tarot of the Cat People.”

“Which deck do you want?”

“Wow, I don't know. Does it make a difference?”

“Not really. Some people like one more than another. They're all the same to me. You should touch a few of them and see if any of them feel right.”

I scanned the shelf. None of the names made any sense to me, and nothing felt especially “right.” I spotted a deck called the “Epicurean Recipe Cards” and was about to choose that one, if only so I could check out the recipes, when the “Sacred Road” deck caught my eye. I pulled it out and looked at it. On the cover was an Indian guy playing a flute, and next to him, a pathway winding up the side of a mountain. It reminded me of the places I went in my dreams or whatever they were, the little vacations I sometimes took in my mind, though since I'd opened the restaurant I had no time for them. “Is this a good one?”

“They're all good.”

I handed it to her.

“How's business?” she asked, opening the box of cards. They looked shiny and new, like no one had ever used them before.

You tell me, I thought, but said, “Great.”

“I see all those lines out the door. Your food must be good.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I think so.”

She asked me to shuffle. “Just do it until you feel ready.”

I handed them back to her. “Now cut the deck.” I did.

She lay some cards face down in the shape of a triangle, then four more in the shape of a cross. “Is there a specific issue you want information about?”

“Will the Ravens make it to the Super Bowl this year?” I asked, adding a “ha ha” so she'd know I was kidding. She smiled but with a little eye roll, like she was tired of hearing stuff like that. I decided to be serious, though it was hard, since I felt awkward, and I was pretty sure this was a bunch of bullshit. “Well, what I really want to know is about my father. I'm wondering if you can tell me where he is.” I hadn't meant to ask her so directly, but the question just blabbed out of my mouth. It was always weird to realize how much J. Fallingwater was always in the back of my mind like voices I couldn't quite hear.

“Is he missing?”

“Kind of. My sister wrote him a letter, but he hasn't answered. I don't even know if he's still alive.” My eyes surprised me by filling up a little at that, and I blinked hard.

“When did you last see him?”

“Well, here's the thing. I've never actually met him. I didn't even know he was my father until a few months ago.”

She nodded like she already knew everything about the whole situation. Maybe it was the kind of thing she was used to hearing from her clients. I figured people had to be pretty desperate about something to lay down twenty-five bucks for a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, so they must blurt all kinds of shit to her. “Well, maybe we can find out. Let's start with the four directions.” She flipped over a picture of a bunch of colorful feathers that reminded me spookily of my mother's casket. “This is your East, the past. You've recently had some major life changes.” Of course, she could tell this by just looking out her window. “Your life has shifted in the last few months.”

I didn't think it was a good idea to volunteer much information, since I had heard fortunetellers took it and ran with it, but I found myself telling her my mother had died in April.

“Yes, I know that was difficult.” She looked sad, like she really did know. “But sometimes when someone crosses over to the other side, it can have a positive effect on this plane.”

I thought about this. It was true I wouldn't have been able to open the restaurant if I hadn't had the insurance money, and I couldn't have known about my real father unless Pam had found the letters—these were good things, but it wasn't like they made my mother's death into a bonus. I just said, “Hmm.”

“North,” she said, turning over another card to reveal a big bird with mean eyes. “The hawk signifies abundance. Your luck is about to change, and you're going to have everything you've always wanted.”

Sure this was baloney, but I couldn't help feeling excited. “Really?”

“Everything's going your way.”

“You think so?”

“The cards don't lie.”

What a weird job, I thought, trading on people's hopes and fears. All anyone really wanted from her was to hear they were going to be lucky, I thought, but we couldn't all be lucky, could we? I thought about luck, and about my restaurant, and how even on a bad day, it made me feel like I had won the lottery.

She drew another card. “Sun medicine,” she said. “This is your West. It's your protection.”