The Secret Letters

by Abby Bardi

  “Of course not,” she said, then added, “Not exactly bad.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Well, I told him about the raccoons in the cellar.”

  “He’s scared of raccoons?”

  “I told him they were rabid.”

  “That’s not something bad?”

  “I just told the truth.”

  “Oh come on, they’re not rabid.”

  “All raccoons are rabid.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s common knowledge.”

  “And now this guy—”

  “Doug.”

  “Now this Doug guy doesn’t want to buy our house because he doesn’t want to live with a bunch of rabid rodents?”

  “I think they’re marsupials.”

  “Whatever. You better not let Norma find out you got rid of yet another buyer.”

  “I don’t think I’ve gotten rid of him. He’s still interested.” She looked worried.

  “Pam, someone has got to buy the house sometime. You can’t scare them all away.” I popped a maraschino cherry in my mouth.

  “He wants to tear it down and build an office building.”

  “An office building?” I choked. The cherry shot out of my mouth and landed on the bar. “Our house?”

  “He’s a developer. He thinks it would be a great location for his firm. He wants to be on Main Street.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s a house. Not an office building.”

  “I guess when someone buys it, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. Our house is just outside the designated Historic District, so the conservation regulations don’t apply. And according to Doug, the whole street is zoned commercial. It has been since the 1920s. Who knew?”

  I pictured a tall building with a bunch of fat developers in suits sitting at desks inside it. There were no dogs in the yard, and the garage with Frank’s license plate collection on the walls was a parking lot. “You’ve got to get rid of him,” I said, though I couldn’t believe I was saying it, since I needed the money.

  She said she’d do her best.

  ***

  That night, Pam brought her new friend Doug into the restaurant and introduced us.

  “So you’re interested in our little shack?” I asked.

  “It’s a wonderful spot. Main Street has so much character.” He had a spray tan, gelled hair, and muscles. This was the kind of asshole Pam went for. “Of course, I’ve heard about the tragic raccoon infestation. That must have been hard for all of you.” He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

  “We lived in terror.” In fact, I had always liked the raccoons. “But the snakes were the worst.”

  “Yeah, the snakes,” Pam said.

  “Weren’t they puff adders?” I asked.

  “Puff adders?”

  “You mean copperheads, don’t you?” Pam said quickly.

  “Yeah, copperheads.” I decided to change the subject. “So you and Pam are going out for dinner?”

  “That’s right. I wanted to eat here, but she says she eats here all the time.”

  “Which I never tire of,” she said.

  “Of course not,” I said. I figured she wanted to go somewhere her siblings weren’t watching her. She probably had bad memories of that from high school, when Tim and Donny threatened anyone we dated with grievous bodily harm. “So where are you going?”

  “Chez Michel,” Doug said.

  “Ooh la la,” I said.

  “I love their pâté de campagne,” he said. When he wasn’t looking, I made a duckface at Pam. She shrugged.

  As they were leaving, I said, “Have her home by eleven.” Doug said he would. Pam gave me one of her looks. Just outside the front door, they ran into Milo, and I saw Doug and Milo shake hands. I went back into the kitchen, and a few minutes later, Milo came in. “Pam’s friend seems nice,” was all he said.

  ***

  The next day, Pam came in late again, this time with a dreamy little smile on her face.

  “How was your date?” I asked her.

  “Oh, fine.”

  “How was dinner? What did you have?”

  “Chateaubriand pour deux.”

  “How was it?”

  “Good.” She didn’t elaborate.

  I made the obvious assumption. “So, you’re sleeping with the enemy?”

  “Julie, please.”

  “I hope there was a raccoon next to him when he woke up.”

  “I left a trail of breadcrumbs to the bed.”

  “Did that work?”

  “No. So this morning, I asked him point blank not to buy the house.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I told him we didn’t want it to be torn down.”

  “You told him that? What if it gets back to Norma?”

  “He’s not going to tell Norma. He’s my friend.”

  “We’ll see. You’ve had friends before.”

  “This time is different.”

  I’d heard that before, and sometimes I was the one saying it, and we both knew how things always ended up.

  ***

  After closing time, I sat down at the bar and let Milo pour me a glass of red wine, on him. As the wine’s tasting notes socked me in the jaw, I felt like I was finally beginning to understand what people in other parts of the world had known all their lives. “Do you ever think about food?” I asked him, almost not aware that I was talking out loud. “I mean, really think about it? Like, let’s say there’s a God—or a Great Spirit, or whatever. He could have just made food for us like little pills. Like space food. He could have just made capsules that we took three times a day.”

  “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.

  XIV

  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 sh
e 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.

  Falling Water

  XV

  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 notic
ed 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.