The Secret Letters (5 page)

“What?”

“Like in high school. I never fit in.”

“Everyone feels that way in high school.”

“No, you don't get it.” She was starting to annoy me. I tried again. “It's like I was really someone else, but no one knew. No one could see who I really was. But now I figured it out. Jeez.” I stopped. I could hardly breathe.

“What did you figure out?”

“I'm an Indian, Pam.”

“You're what?”

“I'm an Indian.”

“You're
what
?”

“I'm an Indian. A Native American.”

“Oh, for fuck's sake, Julie,” she said in the stern voice she used on the dogs.

“Fallingwater. It's an Indian name. My father is an Indian. That makes me an Indian, too.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“He's my father. He's Indian. Fallingwater is an
Indian
name.” I couldn't stop myself: I let out a loud whoop and hopped on one foot, then the other. When I looked back at her, she was getting the pink spots in her cheeks. “Don't worry,” I said, “I'm still your sister.”

“Don't you see that this is just the latest in a series of conclusions you've jumped to?” Her voice was rising.

“You've got to admit it makes sense.”

“You think it makes sense? I'm not getting that.” She looked ready to take a swing at me.

I thought for a minute. “Like, how I walk really quietly.”

“You walk like a drunken moose.”

“Yeah, but I'm sneaky. Mom always used to say how sneaky I was. I could sneak from my room to the kitchen and back without anyone hearing me, and then in the morning she'd find the leftovers were gone.”

“Well, that's just proof positive, isn't it. You can up and take that right to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.” She smiled a mean smile.

“The who?”

“It's a government agency. Unless it was abolished by Congress.” Pam hated Congress. I could care less.

“We have our own agency?”

“That's right. It's to keep you from killing too many buffalos.”

“I'd have trouble with killing a buffalo,” I said, really thinking about it, like I was going to have to do it. “I've always had a connection with them.”

“Oh, you have not!” She was yelling now. “This is ridiculous. Get a grip.”

“I have a grip. This is the first real grip I've ever had.”

“Julie, this is not a grip. This is total insanity.”

“No, really, I can honestly say I have never felt less insane.”

“People don't
feel
insane when they're insane.”

“You can call it what you want, but I know what I know.”

“Okay, fine.” She rubbed her hands together and then flicked her fingers like our mother always did when she was washing her hands of us. “You go ahead and think this if you want to. It's nothing to do with me.”

“Well, I have you to thank for finding the letters in the first place.”

She sat down on the couch and slung her feet onto the coffee table. Our mother would have screamed at her for it. “Just leave me out of it.”

“You'll still write to him for me, though, right?”

“Yeah, sure, I'll write a letter. Why the hell not. But when it all goes south, I don't want to hear, oh Pammy, why the fuck didn't you stop me?”

“I wouldn't do that.”

“Yes, you would.”

“No, really, I wouldn't.” I walked over to the couch and boldly put one foot on the coffee table, though I couldn't help looking around to make sure my mother wasn't watching. “Whatever happens, it's on me.” In my mind, I was climbing a steep, wooded trail, walking proudly in leather moccasins with a headdress of feathers, though I wasn't sure women could wear those. At the top of the mountain I could see a patch of clear blue sky, and I was just about to reach it and maybe fly up in the air when I heard a sound below me. I looked down at the couch and saw Pam sitting there with her face in her hands, crying. My vision of the mountain collapsed.

I sat next to her and patted her shoulder. When she looked up, her face was spotty and her eyelashes were wet. “I'm sorry, Julie. It's not your fault. Really, I'm happy for you. It's nice that you think you've found your—your people.” She managed to say this without sounding too sarcastic. “But I have to go on with real life here.”

“Your real life is great.”

“No, it's not.”

“It's not great?”

“No. It fucking sucks.”

“Come on, what about your job? You like your job.”

“It's a load of bullshit. I'm just filing papers and arguing about a bunch of stupid shit I don't care about.”

“What about your townhouse? You like your townhouse.”

“I hate my townhouse.”

“No, you don't.”

“Yeah, I totally hate it. You know, to tell you the truth,” she said, sniffling, “I really like living here.”

“Here?”

“I don't think I like living alone. Here, I can talk to Ricky and Star about all sorts of dumb shit, and she cooks some weird-ass dinner for us every night. It's nice. I kind of wish we didn't have to sell this place.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

“Don't let Norma hear you say that.”

“I know.” She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. “It turns out I miss her.”

I knew she didn't mean Norma. “Yeah. I do, too.”

“I mean I
really
miss her.”

“Yeah, I know.” I did know.

“I didn't know how I'd feel—I mean, most of the time I wanted to strangle her.”

“Yeah.” I thought about how the two of them used to go at it like pit bulls. It was probably good training for being a lawyer, but it couldn't have been fun.

“She was always so fucking wound up about everything. I mean, I get that she had a hard life with Dad, and then the divorce, and then Frank dying. I get how it can make a person kind of—what's the right word?”

“I don't know. Intense?”

“To say the least. I always tried to cut her some slack, but you know how she was. She drove me fucking nuts. But it turns out,” her voice cracked, “she was the glue that held everything together.”

“I know. And now there's no glue.”

“And I never thought I liked glue, but I miss it. Her. And now you've found this thing that makes you happy. And whether it's true or not, I have no idea, but at least you have something—something gluey. And I'm happy for you. Really.”

“Thanks.” I patted her on the shoulder again. The dogs were sniffing at her knees. She pulled Max up onto her lap, though he was the size of a pony. He smelled like grass and dog sweat, the best smells in the world.

“Just be careful, okay?” She and Max looked at me with big, serious eyes. “I've seen you get all excited about things before, and then they turn to shit.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, I mean it. You do this. It's this thing you do. You get really excited and you don't see the downside.”

“When did I do that?” I made the mistake of saying.

“Do I have to say the B-word?”

“Okay, okay.”

“I just don't want it to happen again.”

“It won't. I promise. I'll be careful. But Pam, this is just so huge, so
awesome
. I can't think of how anything could possibly ruin it.”

“No.” She laughed a little, and wiped her eyes. “You really can't, can you?”

Then suddenly, everything fell into place. I had just worked the day shift for Hector, who was always having to go over to the high school to talk to the principal. Hector Junior was a nice kid, but he was always in trouble. Hector Senior was such a goody-goody that he couldn't understand this, but I understood it. I was perfectly happy to trade shifts, though it was weird getting off work when it was light out. I thought about driving over to help Pam with the house, but she had gone to work for a change and wouldn't be home for a few more hours. There was plenty to do here on Main Street. I could go have my fortune told by Madame Rosa, whose weird little storefront was next door to the Wild Hare. I could go into an antique shop and pay $200 for something an old lady had thrown in a dumpster. I could buy a fairy wand, or stained glass, or glitter, or incense, or a crystal.

I decided on coffee. The coffee shop was crowded and smelled of burnt beans. “I'll have a Kenya blend,” I said to the girl behind the counter, who looked kind of familiar.

“Julie!”

I squinted at her. It was Ricky's girlfriend Star. “Oh, hey,” I said, “I didn't recognize you.” I almost added “without my brother sucking your face,” but decided against it.

“My treat,” she said, handing me my coffee. She fished some money out of her apron pocket and stuck it in the cash register.

“You don't have to do that.”

“I want to.” She smiled. “I'll tell Ricky I ran into you. He'll be so happy.”

“Well, thanks a lot. Great seeing you.” I put two dollars in the tip jar, waved, and walked away wondering what girls saw in my little brother. Granted, he was good-looking,
in his fuzzy, tattooed way, but he was such a loser. Of course, I thought, that's what.

There were no free tables, so I looked around for someone I knew. I noticed a guy named Ray who sometimes washed dishes at the Hare. He was sitting by himself, so I asked if I could join him. He had a bunch of napkins spread over the table and was drawing on them. That was what he did, mostly. He lived in a tent in the state park, so his overhead was low. He moved some napkins covered with weird, colorful doodling out of my way and I sat down. I found myself greeting him with my hand up, palm out, and saying, “How.” I wondered if Indians said that in real life—I had seen it a lot in cartoons.

He held his hand up to me the same way. “How,” he said.

“How—have you been?” I asked.

“The stars are loose.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I didn't know what to say about this. “Well, I hope they don't fall down.”

“They're not going to
fall
.” He looked at me like I was a moron. “They're just loose. It's an astronomical phenomenon.”

“Well, whatever. We'll be safe in our tepees.”

“You got a tepee?”

“Not yet.” I took a sip of my coffee and almost spat it out. “Jeez,” I said, “what do they do to this stuff?”

“They brew it from dead possums.”

I laughed.

“I'm not kidding,” he said, looking very serious. He had long, muddy-blond hair and rotten teeth and could have been cast in
Pirates of the Caribbean
without needing
any makeup. “I used to work here. So what's new with you?”

“I just found out who I really am.” I hadn't meant to blurt this out, but you could say shit like that to Ray.

“Who are you?”

“I'm a proud Native American.” I punched myself on the chest, hard.

“Oh, yeah? I'm a Mughal warrior.”

I had no clue what that meant. “Really?”

“No.” He chewed one end of his drooping moustache. “So, you're an Indian?”

“Yep.”

“Interesting.”

“Yep.” We were both quiet for a moment, since there was nothing more to say about it. Then for some reason, I said, “Yeah, I'm planning to open a casino here in town.”

“Really?” He turned to look at me like he was seeing something he hadn't noticed before. His eyes were like fireflies. “Oh wow, a casino. That'd be cool as hell.”

“Yeah, I figure it's a perfect location.”

“Those things rake in millions. I heard about it on NPR.”

I had no idea how he listened to NPR in his tent, but I didn't pursue it. “Yeah, it's going to be awesome.”

“Where's it going to be?”

“I can't give you that information right now, but I'll keep you posted.”

“Hey, do you need a dishwasher?”

“Yeah, you know, I think we'll probably need one for the evening shift, Tuesday through Sunday.” I said this like I already had the whole schedule mapped out.

“Cool.”

“Yeah, it's going to be great.”

“You're really living the dream.”

“That's exactly what I'm doing, Ray. I'm living the dream.”

He gave me a thumbs-up sign, then turned it into a little pattern, like he was writing something in the air. I could tell he had new respect for me now that I was going to be his boss. He was a pretty good worker, as long as you kept a tight rein on him. Milo's problem was he was too nice to people and let them take advantage.

We sat for a while, not saying much, and then he jumped to his feet, gathered up his napkins, and said he had things to do. I couldn't imagine what those things could be, but it didn't matter. I held my palm up again, and he held his up, too.

It hadn't occurred to me to open a casino until the words popped out of my mouth, but now that I sat and thought about it, I realized it was a great idea, the greatest idea I'd ever had. The one thing I knew about Native Americans was they had opened a bunch of gambling palaces all over the country and were living large. God knows we deserved it after the way we'd been treated by the white man, I thought.

I finished my coffee, took the cup back to Star and thanked her again, then decided to take a stroll downhill toward my apartment. On the first floor of my building, directly across from the Wild Hare, was the Chelsea Grill. I'd heard a rumor they were in some financial trouble and could go belly-up any second. The front window lined their dining room like a picture frame, and inside were five rows of tables with white tablecloths, a little Perrier bottle of flowers on each table. All the tables were empty.

I decided to go in and snoop around. At the sound of the front door opening, a woman rushed out the kitchen door, the manager, Heidi. When she saw it was just me, she wiped the customer-service look off her face and said, “Hey Julie.”

“How's business?” I asked, then was sorry because it made her look so sad.

“Never better.” She added, “And I mean that.”

I decided to give her a job at the casino when I opened it, but I figured it was
best not to mention that yet. I looked around. The dining room was wide and pretty, and the kitchen was in the back, behind a swinging metal door. Everyone knew it was an awkward kitchen because the restaurant backed onto the creek, so there was only the street entrance, and deliveries could only come through the front door. For years their chefs had been coming into the Hare after work and complaining about that until they got too plastered to care. There was a constant revolving door of them because they got bored and quit, and the Grill's few customers tended to complain that the food wasn't very fresh, probably due to the lack of turnover. The chefs found that depressing as hell, but there wasn't much they could do about it. The owner lived in Vermont and didn't care what went on. It was Heidi who put fresh flowers on the tables each morning and threw them out again each night.

“I like this room,” I said. Something about it reminded me of those saloons in old cowboy movies. “It has potential.”

“We always say that,” Heidi said. She was wearing a long, flower-pattern dress that made her look like a couch. “We tell Keith that all the time so he won't close us down.”

“How many people do you seat in here, about sixty?”

“It's seventy if we push it.” She waved at the tables like they were full of people. “In theory.”

“How are the bathrooms?”

“Brand new. No one uses them.”

“This place has a nice vibe.” I wasn't sure I'd ever used the word “vibe” before.

“I'm glad you think so. Now tell all your friends.”

My friends couldn't afford to eat there, and that was part of the problem, but I didn't say this. Instead, I told her things would pick up, though I was sure they wouldn't.

***

About a week later, I came downstairs from my apartment and noticed the Chelsea Grill's handwritten chalk sign was not outside their front door. I pressed my face against their front window. No one was in there. Panic rushed through me—it hadn't occurred to me they would close down suddenly, and so far my plan was still only in the fantasy stage. I had no idea how to go about getting permission to open a casino. I figured you needed a gaming license or something, but I had no idea. I decided to talk to Milo about it, since he always knew a bunch of random stuff. I showed up at the Hare a little early and sat down next to him at the bar.

“So I have this friend—” I started out.

“Oh?” Milo looked at me with interest, like he genuinely wanted to know all about my friend. His total lack of suspicion might make some people think he was a chump, but I appreciated it.

“My friend just found out her father is a—a Native American.” I still wasn't sure this was the term we used.

“Really? Why didn't she know that before?”

“Well, she didn't know who her father was, exactly. But then she found out, and the guy is an Indian.”

“Wow, how interesting!” Milo sounded excited for my friend. “That must really change the way she feels about herself.”

“Yeah? How?” Then I laughed—it was the “how” thing again, but Milo took no notice.

“I don't know.” He looked thoughtful. “I guess we all have a sense of who we are, so it must be strange to find out you aren't who you think you are.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure she finds it strange.”

“But liberating, right?”

“Um, right.” I had no idea what he was talking about. “So she wants to open a casino.”

“A casino?” He laughed, like there was something funny about this. “Really? Where?”

“I guess around here somewhere. And she needs to know how to go about it. Like, does she need a license or whatever.”

“I don't know if they grant them to individuals.”

“No?” I tried to sound casual, like I didn't care if my friend opened a casino or not.

“You'd think the tribe would have to do it.”

“Maybe she could do it for them.”

“What tribe does her father belong to?”

“She doesn't know.”

“Well, maybe she needs to find out. That would probably be a good first step.”

“How?”

He pondered this for a moment. “Maybe she could go down to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and ask them what she needs to do.”

“I guess she could. Where is it?”

“I don't know, somewhere in DC. I think it's part of the Department of the Interior.” He was still smiling at me in wide-eyed innocence, obviously with no idea who we were talking about. “I'm sure she could find it online.”

“Okay, thanks. I'll tell her.”

“Thanks for sharing this with me, Julie. It's really interesting. It must be amazing to suddenly discover something like that about yourself.”

“It must be,” I said.

“And to have gone all those years not knowing, thinking you were someone
else—it's pretty weird for her, I'll bet.”

“I'm sure she finds it weird.”

“Your friend is lucky.”

“I'll tell her,” I said.

***

I had walked around DC before, but had never been inside any of the big, official-looking buildings there except for the Washington Monument, where we always brought relatives from out of town so they could gawk at our nation's capital. The Department of the Interior took up a whole city block, and its carved metal front door was so heavy I almost couldn't open it. It seemed like everyone in the lobby was staring at me as I walked across a giant coin with a buffalo on it. A woman next to an x-ray machine asked me where I was going.

“The Bureau of Indian Affairs,” I said, trying to sound official.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then who are you going to see?”

“I don't know. I just have some questions.”

She eyed me with suspicion and said the BIA wasn't open to the public. “You can have a pass to go to the museum,” she said. “But that's it,” she added in case I was a terrorist. She gave me a visitor's badge and waved me through the metal detector and into a long hallway with black and white checkerboard floors. I kept walking as if I knew where I was going.

The museum's automatic doors flew open, and I found myself in a room filled with props from an old cowboy movie: a crumbling wagon wheel, a barrel, a dirty stuffed owl, a cracked wooden jug. As I kept walking, more doors shot open and led me into a room of old photographs. Men with lined faces surrounded by crowns of feathers,
pretty women with long braids, children with wide eyes.

Suddenly, I understood what Milo was talking about. I had grown up with a family that, as Pam always said, “put the fun in dysfunctional.” Now, I had a new family, not just my father, but his people,
my
people, the beautiful ancestors whose lands had been stolen from them just the way my lands—my backyard, anyway—had been stolen from me. Maybe this was a little overdramatic, I told myself, but I understood how they must have felt when their woods were cut down by pioneers to build log cabins and their plains of roaming buffalo were fenced to make pastures. I had felt the same way myself when an exclusive community (luxury homes starting at 600K) was built where my favorite pond used to be.