The Motel Life (10 page)

I walked down two flights of stairs and was going to head back downtown when I saw the lights on in the old kitchen and went in there and saw the manager, Claire Martin. She was a friend of my mother’s and the only reason I had moved into the Morris.

When I saw her she was standing over the stove cooking breakfast. Ham and eggs, potatoes and toast. Coffee was brewing. She was wearing a faded, light blue bathrobe, and wore a pair of worn-out white slippers. Her gray and black hair was pulled together in a bun. There was a yellow school pencil keeping it tight and together.

‘Morning, Frank,’ she said quietly when she saw me. ‘If you want breakfast I have more than enough.’

‘Thank you,’ I said and sat down at the table. I wasn’t hungry, but the smell was good, and I knew I didn’t want to be alone. That I’d probably go crazy if I was.

I watched her while she cooked. The radio was on to the old folks’ station and she hummed softly with the music. When the food was ready she dished out two plates and sat down across from me, and we ate together in silence. I didn’t think I could eat, but I got down the whole plate. I had two cups of coffee with it and began to feel better.

When we had both finished she picked up the plates and set them in the sink. She lit a cigarette, filled our coffee cups, and sat back down at the table.

‘You know, Frank, I’ve smoked a lot of brands of cigarettes over the years. When I was in high school I smoked Marlboros because that was what my mom and dad smoked. Then of course I switched, went from Winstons to Old Golds, then to Camels. Now it doesn’t seem to matter. Now I just smoke generics. I can’t even tell the difference. But I do love opening that new pack and taking the first one out knowing I have the rest of the pack waiting. You ever smoke?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I tried it. Both me and Jerry Lee did, but it didn’t work. I used to chew, though.’

‘What brand?’

‘Copenhagen.’

‘Like my own brother. That’s a horrible habit.’

‘It is,’ I said.

‘You quit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good for you. What made you do it?’

‘I was going out with a girl. She didn’t like it.’

Claire laughed and took a drink of coffee.

‘What are you doing up so early? I thought you always slept late.’

‘It’s my anniversary.’

‘You’re married?’

‘I was,’ she said and took a drink from her coffee and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

‘Where is he?’

‘He died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘What was he like?’

‘He wasn’t much of a man, but things with me were different back then. Your mom knew him and knew how I was with him. I could barely make a pot of coffee without thinking that I would ruin it or somehow screw it up. Every job I had was that way. I was always worried. Worried if I cleaned a table right, smiled right to a customer. Then I worked in an office, that’s where I met your mom. But I worried about everything. From how I stapled two pieces of paper together to how my voice projected over the phone. My husband was the type who’d get angry at things like that. At the little mistakes I made, little screw-ups that happened during the course of each day.

‘Luckily for me, I suppose, he died in a car wreck,’ she said and laughed. ‘It’s horrible to say that, but it’s the truth. Even so, I can’t drive near our old house without feeling sick, and I can’t look at a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and not get nervous. They were his brand.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘Like I said, it was a long time ago. How’s Jerry Lee?’

‘I don’t want to talk about that either.’

‘Let’s talk about something nice then,’ Claire said.

‘All right,’ I said.

‘All right,’ she said and laughed. ‘Problem is, I’m not sure what else to talk about. You tell me something, Frank.’

‘I could tell you a story that I always tell Jerry Lee when he gets down.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I like stories. Let’s hear it.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you remember Annie James?’

‘She was your girlfriend?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Kind of, but my memory’s fading. You had her before you moved in here, correct?’

‘Correct,’ I said. ‘Well, anyway, once she and I double dated with Jerry Lee and a girl named Lorraine. That was his girl. It was a picnic. We were all sitting on the grass at this park eating. Lorraine was talking about her cousin Harvey. This poor kid had to live hard for a while, maybe like you did. His life was different, he was just a kid, and he was a boy, but maybe it will make sense to you.

‘See, no one gave him a break. He lived in North Dakota with his mom, Lorraine’s aunt. I remember Lorraine talking to Annie about it. She was sitting there pulling out grass with her fingers as she told it. Me and Jerry Lee were sitting there eating cold barbecue chicken that Annie had made the night before. It was good chicken too. Lorraine started by saying, “If you think that’s bad, well listen about my cousin, my cousin Harvey. He was a big foot
ball player type. Six five, three hundred pounds. Now that’s huge if you ask me. And he was just in high school. He was the ape of the family. He was so big, I can’t even begin to describe it. Like the Hulk. But fatter, not as much muscle showing. When he was a kid, before he had to play football, my Aunt Carol signed poor Harvey up for boxing. He was in a boxing club. But he wasn’t very good. It was terrible to watch.

‘“I once saw him fight when he was maybe thirteen. It’s sick, boxing is, but there we were. My whole family. Eating popcorn and licorice, drinking sodas. Harvey stood there getting mutilated. They try not to let the little guys get so beat up, but he just stood there and finally fell to the floor. I don’t think he got off even one punch. I don’t think he even tried.

‘“And it was like that, I guess, at every match. Then by high school he’s huge, a mountain. So he goes out for football. Aunt Carol’s feeding him steaks and meat every day. He’s practically eating whole cows. She’s sending us pictures. One picture he’s huge and the next he’s even bigger. Really, in six months he’d get bigger. ‘Jesus Christ,’ my mom would say to me, ‘that kid’s a goddamn pig. My sister’s raising a goddamn pig!’

‘“So they stick him on varsity football ’cause he’s so big. He’s the biggest guy on the team. He was only a freshman but still probably one of the biggest guys in the school. That’s how big he was. But the same thing happens. He just gets beat up. He’s not mean. The coach says he’s got the size and strength and speed to make it to the pros, but that he’s just not mean enough. The asshole coach would even make him do these drills trying to beat him up, get him mad. Everybody figured that if he’d get tough he’d be a gold mine. A pile of money. My aunt would yell at him. Call him
names, make him work for his meals and his bed. He’d get home from practice and then have to do chores. Once he had to chop this dead tree down. It was an old big tree on their lot, and by the time he got home it was dark and freezing out. He’d have to go out there with a big light and chop it into sections that they could use. Then he had to dig out the stump. He had to do tons of things like that, and then he’d go in and eat, and she’d yell at him. This went on for three years. But by the start of the football season his senior year, everybody had given up. They’d tried everything. There was no way this kid was going to get mean. Isn’t that just insane? Wanting to make a person mean. So big Harvey quits football by the second game of his senior year. Everybody by this time knows he’s not tough. I hate to say wimp, but that’s what everybody called him. He couldn’t escape it. Aunt Carol was going out with an ex-Marine type by this time. Harvey was getting it from all sides. It’s sad. This is small-town America. The Midwest we’re talking about. Everything. So what happens is that Harvey just sits in his room. Goes to school, comes home, and sits in his room. He has the Marine on his ass all the time, and people calling him a wimp at school. Never ending. Over and over. Anyway, what the whole thing came down to is that poor Harvey shaves his head with his electric razor one morning, puts on a dress of Aunt Carol’s, and walks down to where she’s working. She works at a chain-link fence manufacturing plant with a bunch of hicks, perverts, and ex-Marines. He goes down there. Goes right into where everybody is, goes up to Aunt Carol, and screams, ‘Mama, I don’t think I can have sex with you no more. I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s right at all.’ He’s dead serious too. From what I know she never touched him. But everybody’s there watching,
listening. What a mess. Can you imagine that?

‘“Anyway, from what I hear, she practically died. She should have. Making him do all those horrible things. Trying to make him mean. So then he just walks out of there. Aunt Carol didn’t know what to do. So she runs into the bathroom, and won’t come out. She hides out in there. She was in there all day. Finally, they broke the door down. Took an ax to it. They were worried that she might kill herself. But she was just sitting there on the toilet crying. Anyway, what happens is that Harvey disappears. No one sees him after that day. He had the keys to the Marine’s car, and he took it and disappeared. He went to California, and started his own life. He sends my mom Christmas cards and postcards now and then. Ended up inventing a bunch of stuff for computers, turned out to be a genius. Now he owns three houses and a ranch in the state of Washington. He married this good-looking woman, and has three kids. The whole pie, he’s got it all. But since that day, that day he left, he’s never spoken to his mother. Never even gone back to the state. And she, my Aunt Carol, all she does is drink. She lost her job and ended up waiting tables at the Sizzler.” The End.’

Claire laughed. ‘How’d you remember a story like that? You make it up?’

‘Yeah,’ I said and smiled. ‘Some of it’s true, but most of it’s not. They just come to me.’

‘It put me in a good mood, Frank.’

‘It always does. It’s a sad story, but for some reason it always puts people in a good mood.’

Claire got up and cleared the table. She stacked the dishes in the sink and I helped her wash them.

‘I’m gonna take the day off,’ she stated when we’d finished.

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked her.

‘I thought I’d get dressed and walk down and play the nickel slots at the Holiday and then maybe go see a movie. What about you?’

‘I think I might just go back to bed and try to knock off for a couple more hours,’ I said and headed for the door.

‘We’ll both end up all right, Frank, don’t you think?’ she said softly and tried to smile.

‘I hope so,’ I told her and then went up the two flights of stairs to my room.

17

THAT NEXT DAY I WENT DOWN
to the library and looked through the newspapers for articles about the kid. There were only two small pieces on it that I could find. One said an unidentified male juvenile was left dead across from Saint Mary’s, and the other mentioned his full name as Wes Johnson Denny and said they had found his bent bicycle on Fifth Street and suspected a hit and run. They had a quote from his father, Roger Denny, saying how upset his family was, how horrified they were that someone would hit their son and just leave him. The article finished by saying there was an ongoing investigation but no suspects had been found.

I went upstairs to where the phone books were and found an address for Roger Denny on Seventh Street. I wrote it down on a scrap piece of paper and left.

The day outside was cold. There were gusts of wind and clouds coming in. I put my hat on and zipped up my coat and headed
towards Seventh Street. I didn’t know what I’d do exactly, when I got there I mean, but at least I’d walk by and see where he lived, what kind of house it was.

When I came to the address I stayed on the other side of the road. I stopped for a time and just looked at it. It was small, probably built in the thirties or forties, painted dark green with white trim. There was a swing set in the front yard and a couple cars in the carport on the side of the house. A mini-van and a red work van that read ‘Westside Plumbing’ in white bold letters. I don’t know why I kept standing there, but I did. And after a while I could just about see the kid and his life there. All the things he did on that lawn, how he left the front door every day for school, and how his mom probably yelled out the window for him when it was time for him to come in. Who knows why he was riding his bike home that night? With no coat or hat on. Not stopping for stop signs or lights. A kid in a blind hurry.

I sat down on the curb and waited. I can’t remember how long I sat there, but eventually a man came out with two daughters. He was carrying one and one trailed behind him. He put the one in his arms in the mini-van, in a car seat, and strapped her in. The other was bigger and he sat her in the back seat and buckled her up. He started the car, probably to warm it up, and then went back to the entryway where a woman stood waiting for him. I was pretty far away, but I could tell she was the mother. She was a thin woman with short blonde hair, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. The man went to her, he kissed her on the forehead, then kissed each cheek, and then kissed her on the lips. He got in the minivan and she stood there for a little while before turning back inside.