The Secret Letters (14 page)

The dogs pulled me up the path until it ended suddenly at a cul-de-sac of townhouses and there was nowhere else to go but back into the dark cloud of things I didn't want to deal with: calling the insurance agent, talking to Norma about the house sale, trying to get into my building to see if anything was left of my stuff. And way worse than any of that was my terror about Ricky. I felt sick every time I thought about him hooked up to those machines, and I almost wanted to lie down on the path and cry, but the dogs pulled me into a 180 degree turn like they were ready to get home now, since fat drops of icy rain were starting to hit us, and they hated to be wet. Max stopped every few feet to pee on things, but Sally kept jerking me along the path. As we got closer to our house, it started to pour. Sally and I made a run for the front porch, dragging Max with us. We dashed to shelter, all of us panting. I still wasn't feeling that great. I let the dogs into the house, where I could hear them shaking water all over the living room, and sat in a beat-up blue chair on the porch that had always been my favorite. I stared across the street where some yuppies lived now and watched the rain as it streamed onto the road and into the creek. It was the kind of weather that often led to a flood. Bring it on, I thought. My walk, in what was left of the woods, had helped me forget everything for a second, but now I was back to reality. I was scared shitless about Ricky, despite all the perky things Norma and Star said. I was pretty sure Pam
would be all right—the doctors said she would—but we had almost lost her. And then there was Ray—Ray and his wide pirate's smile, his rants about Atlantis.

And my beautiful dream restaurant had poofed away, the way dreams do. Everything was gone. Nothing was the same but this sagging porch with its same crummy old furniture and window boxes of dirty plastic flowers and the sound of water dripping from the roof where the gutters needed to be replaced. From the porch, I could see the neighbors' giant inflatable Santas and sparkling reindeer. Our lawn was naked and dark.

The sound of barking from behind the storm door made me jump, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a woman hurrying up our front walk. She had short, straight salt-and-pepper hair and wore a blue raincoat with long buttons. She ran up our steps and onto the porch, out of the rain, then stood smiling like she knew me. I figured she was a Jehovah's Witness and I was about to tell her I worshipped Satan when she said, “You're Julie Barlow, right?” I said I was. “I hope I'm not bothering you.”

“Are you a reporter?” I was ready to shove her down the stairs if she was.

“A reporter? Oh, no, hon. I saw you sitting there and I thought I'd stop. I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about what happened.”

“How did you know who I was?”

“I saw you on the news.” She stared down at me like she was memorizing my face. “I'm an old friend of your mother's.”

I looked up at her. She was about my mother's age, with a broad, tan face, and no makeup. She didn't look like anyone I'd ever seen before. “Have we met?”

“No, I don't live around here. When I first saw you on the TV, I knew you were related to Cynthia. You look so much like her, I guess you know that. I wasn't planning to drop in or anything, but I was just driving by and I saw you sitting here.” I was staring stupidly at her, not saying anything. “I just thought I'd—” She didn't finish her
sentence. Then she asked, “How is Cynthia? Is she here?”

“She passed away last April.”

She stared at me as if she hadn't quite heard what I said, then turned away and leaned against the porch rail.

“Are you okay?” I asked after a while. She didn't say anything. “Do you want to sit down?”

She moved toward a plastic chair across from me. I was about to warn her that if she sat in it she'd end up covered with stripes of dirt, but she sank, almost fell, into it before I could say anything.

“Are you okay?” I asked again. She really didn't look okay.

“It's just such a shock.”

“I know,” I said. “You were good friends?”

She nodded without looking at me.

“I guess you hadn't seen her in a while?”

She didn't say anything.

“I'm sorry,” I said, though I wasn't sure why I should be sorry. The dogs were pressing their noses against the storm door, watching us. “I didn't get your name.”

“I'm Julia.” She turned toward me and held out her hand, and I shook it. Her hand was small, with fine bones, and it was like holding a bird. Someone once told me birds' bones were hollow so their weight wouldn't drag them down when they flew. “Nice to meet you,” I said. Funny that we had the same first name, I thought. I didn't recall ever hearing about anyone named Julia, my real name. “How did you know my mother?”

“We met a long time ago.” Now her eyes were on me. Her eyes were birdlike, too, small and black. Though, I reflected stupidly, I had also read that birds could only see out of one side of their faces at a time. I wondered why I seemed to know so much
about birds.

“Then you moved away?” I figured they must have gone to high school together.

“No, I didn't live here. I was visiting some relations here when we met.”

“Oh, I see.” I wondered absently about the logistics of this, how you could get to be good friends with someone who didn't live where you lived. “Where are you from?”

“Arizona.” She had a funny way of talking—not an accent, exactly, but like each word was clipped off at the end like a cigar. Behind her, rain continued to pour.

“Oh, Arizona. It's supposed to be nice out there.”

“You've never been there?” She took a tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her nose.

“No. I've always wanted to go, though.” I was about to tell her my father was from there, when something stopped me.

“You should go. It's a beautiful place. Of course, Maryland is beautiful, too.”

“Wait,” I said in a voice that was a little too loud. “Wait, wait.” I must have looked strange, because she gave me a startled look like she was wondering what my problem was. “What did you say your last name was?”

“I didn't say. It's Fallingwater,” she said. “Julia Fallingwater.”

“Are you the sister of Mom's friend?”

“Mom's friend?”

“A guy Mom used to know, a guy named Fallingwater. Are you his sister?”

“No. I don't have a brother.”

“Oh, come on. J. Fallingwater. That was her friend's name.”

“No, that's my name. Julia Fallingwater. That's me.”

“There's no man by that name?” I was starting to feel my lungs closing up, like they already knew something I didn't.

“Not that I know of. It's not a common name.”

“You're J. Fallingwater?”

“That's right.”

“No way,” I said. “No fucking way.”

“Excuse me?”

“This can't be happening.” I could feel my lungs slam shut. I tried to keep them open with the power of positive thinking like my mother had always yelled at me to do, but they definitely had other plans. I started to make a weird noise, a cross between a wheeze and a whoop.

“Are you okay?” she asked. I answered her with a death rattle. “Is something the matter?” She leaned over and was about to touch my arm, but I pulled away before she could reach me. I wrapped both arms around myself like I was trying to roll up in a ball.

“Holy shit,” I wheezed. “Holy, holy shit.”

“Have I said something to upset you?”

Though I could hardly breathe, I could feel myself starting to laugh. It was a scary laugh, like the creaking of an old door hinge, a door to nowhere, the ridiculous fucking nowhere I had dreamed up for myself. I jumped up and lurched past the storm door into the house. The dogs started barking, and I half-noticed Julia right behind me. Apparently, she was not afraid of big dogs. I flung myself onto the couch, put my head in my hands, and leaned over, trying not to pass out while I fought for breath. I could hear her heading into the kitchen and rustling around. The dogs tried to climb onto the couch next to me, and I waved them away.

“Here.”

I looked up. She was standing in front of me with a glass of water. She held it out to me. “Drink this.” I didn't reach for it, so she set the glass down on the coffee table on top of a coaster. The coaster had a picture of Ricky on it, one of a set my mother had made out of photographs of us. Ricky was about two in the picture, with
blond curls. I managed to wheeze out the word “asthma.”

“Do you have an inhaler somewhere?”

I pointed toward the bathroom, where I had left it on the sink. She dashed in there, the dogs right behind her, and came back with my inhaler. I shot a bunch of medicine into my lungs and forced myself to breathe it in, as slowly and calmly as I could make myself. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a mountain pathway, but the air had turned to water that was seeping into my lungs and choking me, and I fought my way to its surface, then went under again. Just as I was beginning to think I might as well drown and be done with it, I could feel my breathing start to become more regular.

When I opened my eyes. Julia was perched on the edge of the coffee table, watching me.

“So,” I said when I could talk, “you're Julia Fallingwater.”

“Did your mother ever mention me?”

“Not exactly.”

“You seemed to recognize my name.”

“Did I?” I managed a little chortle.

“It seemed to upset you.”

“Oh, did I seem upset?”

She looked puzzled, like she just couldn't do the math.

I had only known her for about twenty minutes, but I already wanted to punch her in the face. I was furious at her, and at my mother, and at the man I'd thought was my father, and I wished they could all feel half as bad as I felt. My mother was gone, and that man had never existed, and there was just Julia, sitting across from me, in a flowered shirt—she had taken off the raincoat and laid it on a chair—leaning over like she wanted to hug me, or at least pat my arm the way Mom would have, but was afraid to touch me. What the hell, I thought. I decided to drop the bomb on her.

“We found the letters.”

“The letters?
My
letters? You—she kept all my letters?”

“Well,” I said, with only a hint of a wheeze, “I don't know if it was
all
of them. There sure were a hell of a lot. And all so imaginative. You never said the same thing twice, I'll give you that.”

“You read them?” She gazed at me without the slightest hint of embarrassment.

I nodded. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but I was suddenly flooded with shame for invading her privacy, and my mother's.

“How did you know they were from me?”

“I didn't. I just figured it out a minute ago.” I remembered Pam and me tearing through the house, looking for evidence of who my real father was. It seemed like another lifetime.

“It's been so long,” she said. “I didn't imagine her keeping those letters for all these years.”

“She never threw anything away.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying not to let my lungs go into spasms.

She picked up the glass of water and handed it to me. I held it for a moment. The glass was cool against my hand. Then I drank it.

“So,” I said, “my mother was a lesbian.”

We were drinking herbal tea Julia found in a cabinet. It tasted like tears. She was curled in the big green armchair, the one my mother had always sat in.

“Well, not exactly.” She took a sip of tea.

“You mean you weren't—”

“Oh no, hon, we were. I just mean—”

This had to be one of the most awkward conversations either of us ever needed to have, and for a moment I felt sorry for her, but she seemed in better shape than I was. “I get it,” I said. “You were her only detour from heterosexuality.”

“As far as I know.”

“Wow.” I guzzled tea. “It's hard to wrap my mind around this. I thought I knew her.”

“I guess we don't always know our parents.” Her voice was light, like she was singing.

“I should have guessed from the letters that you were a woman. Men don't write letters like that.”

“Sure they do.”

“Not any of the men I know.”

“Maybe you know the wrong men.”

She had a point.

“I don't get out much,” I said.

She laughed. “You remind me so much of her.”

“That's what people tell me. I can't really see it, myself.”

“You have the same eyes.” Something in her face changed, and I remembered all the romantic things she said in the letters.

“So how did you two ladies meet?”

“Well, funny story. We were standing in line at the A&P. We just got to talking, and that was how it started.”

That didn't seem like a very funny story to me. “I thought you didn't live here.”

“I was visiting my sister, and she asked me to do a little marketing.”

“So you were doing a little marketing.” I couldn't keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“I know this is upsetting for you, hon. Believe me, when I stopped by, I had no intention of ever telling you any of this.”

“What
was
your intention?”

“I don't know.” She looked around the living room, taking in the empty shelves that had once been filled with my mother's collection of collectible figurines. “When I saw you on TV, I thought I'd just drive by the house. For old times' sake.”

“You've been here before?”

“Not exactly.” I remembered the references to the Forest Motel in the letters. “I used to like to drive past her house when I was in town. Sometimes I'd see you kids playing outside with your dogs. Every so often, I'd catch sight of her, but I never stopped in. She was married again by then, and I just didn't want to make any trouble for her.”

“So one minute you're two housewives chatting in the produce aisle, and the next—”

“I wasn't a housewife.” She laughed. “I was in sales.”

“You were a traveling salesperson?”

“You could say that.”

“That's hilarious.” I put my empty cup down on the Ricky-face coaster.

“More tea?”

“Sure.”

She poured some into my cup, then sweetened it up for me. My mother would have said, “Get it yourself, you've got two hands.”

“So were you married, too?” I couldn't help asking. The tea still tasted like someone had cried into it.

“Oh no, hon, I've never married.”

“It's legal now.”

She smiled. “Too late to do me any good.”

“So you just traveled around, marketing. I'm sorry, it's just that—”

“I know. This is a hard thing to find out about your mother.” Her bird's eyes were focused on me, like she was really paying attention. This, too, was nothing like my mother, whose eyes always darted around the room as if something more interesting was going on somewhere else.

“Well, it sure is confusing. Because you know what the funny thing is? Guess who was always yakking about the ‘queers,' and how they were ruining everything for decent people, and the sanctity of marriage, and blah blah blah.”

She nodded. She knew who.

“I guess that was part of the problem,” I said.

“It didn't help.”

“Didn't she know—sorry, stupid question, of course she knew what she was doing. I just don't get how she could have said all those things about gay people without figuring out she was talking about herself.”

“Maybe she never thought about it that way. I don't know that she thought much about things at all, the way you or I would.”

It seemed funny to be accused of thinking, but I knew what she meant. “That was Mom,” I agreed. “She'd just brush everything under the rug, whistle a happy tune. So you had this big love affair, and then what?”

“She broke it off.”

“Why?”

She paused, like she was deciding how to spin this. “She got pregnant. I guess she made her choice. She wanted to try to save her marriage.”

I remembered the dates on the letters. “That must have been Donny and me. We were twins.”

“I wasn't sure. She had all you kids so close together.”

“Yeah. Donny, well, he passed away when we were twenty. That's such a stupid expression, isn't it? I mean, he died. He was killed on his motorcycle.”

“Oh no, I'm so sorry.” She lay her birdlike hand on her chest as if something hurt her there. “That must have been so terrible for all of you. Beyond terrible.”

I closed my eyes and heard the pounding of rain and the sound of Donny's new Harley. His new leather jacket, his big goofy smile that people said looked like mine. Donny telling our mother he would come right back and take her for a ride. My mother laughing and smacking him upside the head, yelling, “You know I won't fit on that there seat.” My mother's screams when the police came to our house and told us there had been an accident.

I opened my eyes and saw Julia Fallingwater sitting there, still curled like a shrimp in my mother's chair. “Beyond terrible, yeah.”

“And you were twins.” She shook her head. “I'm so sorry, hon.”

“Thanks. Yeah, in fact—” I thought about it for a second, about whether or not to tell her. Colors whirled in my mind from the postcard she had sent, the one from Arizona I had taped to the mirror on my dresser, gone now, burned up in the fire. “In
fact, I've got a confession.”

“A confession?”

“Well, here's the thing. When I read those letters, I assumed you were a man.”

“I guess anyone might.”

“And you never signed your full name. You always just signed it J. I thought your name was John or something. In fact, you never signed ‘Fallingwater' either. I found that in Mom's address book and figured it out. What kind of name is that, anyway?”

“It's Indian. My father was Navajo.”

“Really,” I said, as if this had never occurred to me. “So the funny thing is, when I read the letters and put the dates together, I thought you were my father. Donny's and mine. Well, not you—the guy who wrote the letters.”

“Oh, Julie. My goodness. You must be so relieved.”

“Relieved? No, no, I wouldn't say that.” I let out an unpleasant laugh. “See, here's the thing. I don't know if Mom told you much about Bill Barlow, but he was a real asshole.”

“She told me some things,” she said. “That's why I was so surprised when she decided—well, it doesn't pay to dwell on it.”

I knew what she was thinking. It was hard to imagine how Mom would not only pass up true love with her, but then would go and get pregnant by that bastard Bill Barlow. I was so used to thinking of Fallingwater, that imaginary Native American man who lived in my mind, as my real father that I couldn't attach the words “my father” to Bill Barlow any more, and maybe I never would again. “It must have been hard for you when she went back to him,” I said.

She nodded. Her skin was mapped with fine lines around the eyes and mouth, but she had probably been beautiful forty years ago. “It was tough.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Did she write letters like that back to you?”

Julia laughed. “Well, she wrote me some letters. They were a little less colorful, I guess I'd say. I still have them. Would you like to see them?”

“Lord, no,” I said, then, hoping that hadn't sounded too rude, I added, “I mean, hey, it's none of my business.” I took a breath, then asked another nosy question. “Do you think she ever wondered if she made a mistake, staying here, not being with you?”

“I don't know. You kids meant the world to her.”

It was hard to imagine Mom making that kind of sacrifice, in fact, any kind of sacrifice, for anyone. Then again, when you got right down to it, what did I really know about my mother? Not much, it turned out.

***

Julia was in the kitchen, washing out our cups. I slumped on the couch, my feet on the coffee table, staring out the front window. There was a lot of traffic. I watched the cars shoot back and forth too fast around the curve. She came back in, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “I should get going.”

“Back to traveling sales?”

“No, I retired last year. I'm here visiting my sister. She's sick.”

“Oh no, is it serious?”

“It doesn't look good.”

“I'm so sorry.” I thought of my sister in her hyperbaric chamber.

“Well, maybe the doctors are wrong.” She picked up her blue raincoat from the chair and cradled it in her arms.

“You never know.” I got to my feet carefully and walked her over to the door. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I know how you felt about her, but how did she feel about you?”

“I don't know. I guess she must have loved me enough to go against all those prejudices she had.”

“I guess so.”

“Have you ever loved someone that much?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Well, I'm not sure I'd wish it on you. It's no walk in the park, that's for sure.” She held out her hand, and I shook it. “I'm so very sorry about your mother, Julie.”

“Thanks.”

“And I'm sorry I'm not your father.” She smiled.

“Well, you couldn't help that.” I gave her a little hug. She had a comforting smell, like old wood and roses.

In the doorway, she paused and turned to me. “Was she happy with her second husband?”

“Frank? Oh, yeah. He was the best.”

“That's good. I'm glad.”

“He died ten years ago.”

“I'm so sorry. You liked him?”

I nodded. “I loved him.” There was a catch in my throat I wasn't expecting, and I turned it into a cough.

“They say when you love someone, and they love you, their spirit always stays with you.”

“You think so?”

“I don't know. It's the kind of thing people say. Who knows what's true?”

We walked out onto the porch. It had stopped raining, and the trees were dark
and shiny. Star was just coming up the walk. Her eyes were red like she'd cried all the way home on the bus from the hospital. When she reached the porch, I said, “Star, this is Julia Fallingwater, an old friend of my mother's.”

She said, “Oh, like—” but didn't finish her sentence.

“How's Ricky?”

“The same.” Her eyes filled.

“My brother is in the burn unit,” I explained when Star had gone back into the house. “But he's holding his own. My sister is still in intensive care but she's doing great.”

“They can do amazing things nowadays.” She took a business card out of her purse and handed it to me. “Call me if you ever need anything. Or just to say hello.”

“Thanks.” I stuffed the card in my pocket, though I had no intention of ever calling her.

“I'm sure your brother and sister are going to be just fine.”

“I know they are,” I said, though I didn't.

I watched her drive away, then stood looking at the empty space where her car had been.

“She seemed nice,” Star said. We sat in the kitchen eating sandwiches made from fake meat, not saying anything. Tears rained from her eyes into her sandwich. When we were finished, I thanked her for the meal and went up to my old room. As I lay in bed, I could hear her sobbing through the wall. I lay awake trying not to listen until I drifted off into the sadness of everything.

A crazy sound blasted me awake, and it took me a moment to realize it was the landline in the hall. I ran to the phone in the dark, nearly falling over some boxes, and grabbed it. Norma's voice. I went cold with fear before I even heard what she said. “They're taking Ricky into surgery.”

Before she had finished the sentence, I was dressed and pounding on Star's door.