Hell's Hotel (8 page)

Welcome to the Club

Tara's father was clearly upset about Tara losing her job. He wanted to speak to Mrs. Klein, but Tara talked him out of it. She hadn't told him the real story. If she was lucky, he'd never find out.

Their time together was often very quiet. He rented several DVDs but, no matter how hard he tried, it was clear that they weren't interested in the same sorts of films.

“Whatever happened to Josh?” her father asked one night after a movie, while they were eating ice cream at Dairy Queen.

“He's history,” she said. “We ended our relationship so he could go into politics. He's going to be president of the student council.”

“Josh?”

“Yeah, I know. Surprised me too.”

“How are things going for you in school, anyway?”

“Fine,” she said automatically.

It was the familiar little chant. But it wasn't true anymore. School used to be easy. Now Tara had a hard time concentrating. Her grades were really slipping.

“No, that's not true,” she confessed finally. “I'm not doing very well right now. I don't know what it is.”

“I think you're still upset about your mother and me. I feel very bad about that.”

“I know, I know. You're still on a guilt trip. Well, it's done. I can't change that. So the way I feel is my problem, not yours.”

“Maybe you should see a counsellor. I know some excellent people on staff.”

“No, I don't need that sort of help. Maybe I just need a change, too. Remember I was talking about travelling when I graduated, going to Asia maybe?”

“Your mother and I certainly haven't ruled out the possibility. But it would use up all your savings and then some.”

“What if I wanted to take some time off from school and do it now?”

Her father now looked very serious. “I think it's premature. You're too young.”

“I could handle it.” Her favourite phrase. She always used to say that she could handle anything. Jenn had believed her. So had Emma. Her parents were usually convinced as well. But now, as she said it, the words sounded less than truthful. It was a dream, a fantasy, this travel thing. She knew that her dream of travelling, of going to exotic locations and learning the language, getting to know the people and living independently was still just that, a dream. The more she thought about it, the more she realized she couldn't handle doing it alone.

“I think you should wait.”

“Guess you're right,” Tara conceded.

Her father smiled. He probably figured that for once Tara was actually listening to his advice. But he couldn't see into her head. He couldn't see the whole picture.

Tara wished that she and her father could really talk. He always said they were good friends but it was never like that. There was always a distance between them. She could never really understand what made him tick, why he was so in love with his job. She and her mother had been close until the time her mom took up photography. Even so, Tara had always relied on friends for the heart-to-heart things: Josh, Jenn, Emma. Each of them had slipped out of her life.

***

The next day, Tara was sitting in math, failing a quiz on quadratic equations. The seat alongside her where Jenn should have been sitting was empty. Tara now felt it was her fault that Jenn had gone back to Rob. On days when Jenn came to school, Rob would be there waiting for her at the end of the day. If Tara tried to call, Rob would always answer and refuse to let Jenn get on the phone.

Something about failing a math quiz made her feel like she had nothing to lose. After school she walked downtown to the ferry terminal and got on the boat. It was a bright, breezy day on the harbour. She stood on the top deck with only a handful of other passengers. As she looked down into the dark blue, swirling water, Tara tried to convince herself that she had the courage to face up to Rob. She'd demand to see Jenn. Then she would try to convince Jenn to move out and come back to school. The way things were going these days, though, she wondered if she would botch this up, like she had done with everything else.

Seagulls were gliding along with the ferry like guardian angels. Above them were soft cumulus clouds on a north wind, dancing out towards the sea. She looked way up into the clouds, felt the cool breeze on her face, and then closed her eyes. Emma. There was something about Emma swirling around in her head. Something she couldn't quite place, but she felt that Emma was there with her. She didn't know if she even believed in an afterlife. But there was something about this old woman that was still with her, that wouldn't let go. She opened her eyes.

Suddenly Tara felt a whole lot better about going to see Jenn, one hundred percent more confident that it was the right thing to do.

Craig had told her where Jenn was living with Rob. Craig always seemed to know everything about kids from the street. The apartment was upstairs, over a bar that advertised topless dancers. As she walked by, she was afraid to look in. On the street outside, a swarm of motorcycles were parked. Alongside the bar she found a dingy door, unlocked, and beyond it, a narrow stairway. She went up and knocked on the upstairs door. No answer. She knocked again, louder. Still nothing.

She listened to the rowdy sounds of men laughing down below. Hip hop music was blasting. She had never been a fan of hip hop, and she knew Jenn had always hated it. The music was loud. It was the middle of the afternoon and the noise probably went on like that for twelve hours a day. She knocked again as hard as she could, but still no one came to the door. Something told her that Jenn was in there. Maybe she had been given orders by Rob never to open the door for anybody. That would be just like him. Thinking about him made her mad.

Tara pounded on the door. “Jenn, how can you live here?” she screamed, not caring who would hear her. “You hate hip hop! Open the door and tell me right now how much you hate it!”

It was a stupid thing to say, but it's what came out. Down below, the song stopped, or somebody stopped it. The men guzzling beer had stopped laughing as well. At least she had got somebody's attention.

And then the door opened just as far as the security chain would let it. Jenn put her face up to the opening. She had a devilish grin on her face. “You're right,” she said, whispering. “I do hate it. I can't stand it. But I'm not supposed to say it out loud. I guess you just did it for me.”

The look on her face said it all. She was glad to see Tara.

“Where's Rob?”

“Out.”

“Can I come in?”

“No. I don't know what he'd do if he found you here. You know the rules.”

“I thought you hated rules.”

“You're right. Rules suck. Stay there. I'll unlock the prison here and let myself out. We'll go for a walk.”

As they walked downstairs and outside, a couple of bikers looked at them really hard, but nobody said anything as they went past.

They walked to the waterfront and sat down on the grass by City Hall. They talked about old times. It was like a reunion. Finally Jenn said, “I'm not going to stay with Rob forever. It's only a matter of time.”

“He's not worth screwing up your life for.”

“Spare me the song and dance. I know that and so do you. Right now this is the best I can do.”

“What about school?”

“I don't know. I think I lost it for this year. I might just quit.”

Tara frowned. She didn't have to say anything.

“Or I might just admit that I blew it this year, get left back and try again. What else am I going to do? There are no jobs that I want around here. At least you can sleep through most of school.”

Tara was hearing the same old friend that she knew and loved. Never quite logical, never sensible but never completely lost, always expecting that things would get better.

“The sooner you move out the better. You've got options.”

“Okay. Give me a break. Let's change the subject from me to you. I guess your life is perfect.”

Tara admitted it wasn't. She brought Jenn up to date.

At first Jenn stared. “I don't believe it.”

“Believe it. Life has its surprises, and not all of them happen on birthdays.”

“Well, welcome to the club.”

“Which one?”

“It has lots of names but it's made up of members who start out with great dreams only to watch them die.”

“Yeah. That's me. I'm in. Do I get a membership card or anything?”

“No. You get a tattoo on your butt.”

“What?”

“Just kidding. Boy, are you slow to catch on to a joke.”

They laughed and looked up at the sky. “You know I almost chickened out from coming to see you.”

“I can understand why. Rob is very unfriendly to people that he doesn't like. You're way up on that list.”

“But then, on the ferry, I started thinking about Emma again and it turned it all around. Jenn, what do you think happens when you die?”

“Ooh, that's a heavy one. Sometimes I figure being dead has got to be a whole lot easier than being alive, but at least I know what alive is like. I don't know what dead is like.”

“But what do you believe?”

“I don't know. I don't think I go for that heaven and hell stuff. Heaven sounds too boring and the other place sounds like too much punishment for people who are probably already getting punished in this life.”

“I know what you mean. But this thing with Emma, it's like she's not really gone, you know?”

“Yeah.” Jenn looked down at the ground. “Well, you don't have to worry about me, Tara. I think about leaving every day. I just don't think the time is right. If things get ugly, I'm out of here. Or if I can figure something better, I'll take it.”

“Just be careful.”

“Yeah. You too.”

On the Move

Tara spent a week trying to get her act back together. Much of the time she was alone, studying. When studying was over, she read a travel book about Nepal.

Her father had stopped trying so hard to be her friend, which was okay with Tara. There was this painful hollow spot that remained in her life, though. Her mother phoned at least three times a week. Tara tried to think of it as if her mom was on some kind of long vacation to the West Coast, but it didn't really work. She still couldn't focus on the concept that they were never going to be a complete family again. The pain and the anger had all settled in as a dull ache in her heart, and she decided, ever so maturely, that she would simply have to live with it.

Jenn had stopped coming to school altogether and that worried her. She figured it was Rob working his control routine again. It couldn't last, Tara reasoned. Jenn was too rebellious. She would eventually explode and demand her freedom. Tara wasn't sure if Rob was violent. Jenn claimed he was demanding and pushy but that he never hit her. Sometimes he could keep his control just by saying things. Tara knew that part of the game was to make Jenn think she couldn't get by without him. He'd keep her self-esteem low and control her that way. Tara understood that creepy game; she'd seen other guys control their girlfriends that way, even at school. But it could never happen to her.

So this made Tara feel like a true loner now, the one without a boyfriend. She had watched from the sidelines as Josh became more serious with Carla. Tara also saw that “Becky's Blues” hadn't helped anybody or anything — except Josh's rep. Josh had got himself elected president of the student council and now had a campaign underway to drive Mr. Henley crazy. “Grades are ancient, useless and demeaning,” he explained in his latest issue of
The Rage
. “People should learn for learning's sake, not to achieve some artificial symbol of their ability.” He had written a long, brilliant but crazy argument that actually made a lot of sense to Tara, although she hated admitting it. Josh was proposing a pass/fail system with individual written evaluations of each student. But no more numbers, no more letter grades. He was calling for a school-wide referendum: Grades or no grades? Let the student body decide.

***

Friday, Tara came home late. It was seven o'clock. She had taken the bus to Bedford to check out a part-time job at another nursing home. She had tried everywhere around town, but there was nothing. She had to pretend that she didn't have experience because she knew that, if she gave references, someone might phone Mrs. Klein to check them, and she couldn't have that. So it was like starting from scratch all over again. And she wanted to get the job on her own. She didn't want to get it with her father's connections. Unfortunately, she was learning that, without some kind of an inside edge, it was nearly impossible to get a job. Once, she'd had a job, a good one, and she'd blown it. She was feeling the repercussions of her impulsive mistake.

Tired and hungry, she was looking forward to a good home-cooked microwave dinner, fresh out of the freezer, then a bath and maybe a rented movie on the big-screen TV.

But it wasn't going to be like that. It wasn't going to be like that at all.

When she arrived home, her father's car was in the driveway. As she opened the door and breathed in the feeling of being back home after a difficult and frustrating day, she heard two people talking in the dining room. A man and a woman. She smiled. Her mom had come back!

“Mom!” she called out as she ran into the dining room. Her father looked up as she entered. Tara saw her father sitting down having dinner with a woman she did not recognize.

Her father tried to clear up the confusion quickly and politely. “This is Olivia,” he told her matter-of-factly. “She works with me at the hospital.”

“You must be Tara,” Olivia said, realizing the awkwardness of the moment. She was a tall, attractive woman with a lot of hair.

“I called to tell you I'd have a guest,” her father said. “I left a message on the voice mail, but I guess you've been out. How was your day?”

It wasn't a question she could answer. Her world had just flipped upside down again. She turned and walked away, went up the stairs and into her room, where she stared at herself in the mirror.

A few minutes later her father knocked on her door. “Can I come in?”

Tara opened the door. Her father came in and sat down on the edge of her bed. “Olivia is a friend. We've worked together for a long time. I invited her over for dinner. That's all.”

“I know I shouldn't feel this way. But I know what it means.”

“What does it mean? I don't understand.”

“It means that you are getting on with your life, that you and mom are never going to get back together. You act as if it's no big deal. But it is.” And then she couldn't stop herself. She started to cry. “What about me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You weren't thinking about how I felt.”

“We talked about it. We talked about it a lot. And we both believed you could adjust. You're mature, you're smart. We thought you could handle it.”

Something about the way her father said that made her very angry. What was he doing, accusing her of being selfish? That wasn't fair. Now she felt like a little kid again, and someone had just hurt her feelings. Why couldn't her father understand what she was going through? Maybe she wasn't mature. She wasn't even as smart or together as everybody thought she was.

“Ask her to leave,” Tara suddenly demanded.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to. I don't want her in our house.”

“I won't ask her to leave,” her father said. “And if you can't come down and be civil to her, I want you to stay in your room.”

And that was the end of the conversation.

So Tara stayed in her room and brooded. Olivia stayed for about an hour, and then her father drove her home and came right back. He knocked on Tara's door, but Tara refused to talk to him. Then she got on the phone to her mother in Vancouver.

“I don't want to live at home anymore,” she explained.

“You can't just live on your own.”

“I don't want to stay here with Dad. I just feel like this isn't my home. I need a change. Like you, remember? I need a change, too. That's why I want to move out. You can understand that, can't you?” But change didn't really have anything to do with it. Tara was feeling hurt. She wanted to hurt back. In this case, she wanted to hurt her father.

“Then move out here with me if you want to. I've got room. You'd love it. Vancouver is an incredible city. It's not like Halifax at all. This place is big. It's exciting. You can see mountains from my windows.”

Tara knew that was coming. But she didn't want to leave Halifax. She didn't want to leave her school, the kids she knew, the places where she hung out. It would be too weird in a new place. She would feel as if she didn't know who she was. Tara tried to explain all this to her mother.

“Sleep on it,” her mom said. “I would really love for you to come out here with me, but it has to be your decision. Call me in the morning. No, on second thought, call me around noon. That's eight o'clock on this side. I keep forgetting about the time difference. Good night, Tara.”

“Good night.”

She dug out a magazine about Vancouver that her mother had left her. It looked like a beautiful city, nestled between the ocean and the mountains. The buildings were big, bright, and shiny. There were flowers everywhere in the pictures and she read that spring started in February. It sounded like paradise.

So many things had been going wrong for her lately. Maybe this was the way out. Go somewhere else. Become somebody else, anybody you wanted to be in a new place. New people, new school. Why not? What did she have that was so great here?

In the morning, her father was making one of his famous omelettes as if nothing had happened. He was acting bright and cheerful.

“Sleep okay?”

“I'm moving out to Vancouver with Mom,” she announced.

Her father was holding a hot frying pan above the stove. He turned off the burner, sat down, and faced his daughter. “Did your mother talk you into this?”

“No, I decided on my own.”

“Look, I didn't know that bringing Olivia here would have affected you this way. I guess you just weren't ready yet.”

“Dad, it's not just that. It's not just you. It's me. I need a change.”

“Now you're starting to sound like your mother.”

“I just think I have to try it. You know I was talking about travelling — Europe, Asia. Well, that's a long way off, but this is something I can do now.”

“Please stay here with me, Tara. We can work it out.”

Tara could tell that she had the upper hand now. Part of what she had said was true. It would be an adventure to move out west. But she was still mad at her father. She wanted to hurt him. “No. Sorry. I've decided. But don't worry, you can handle it. I'm sure everything will be fine.” There was an edge of anger to her voice, a thin, sharp note of sarcasm that her father understood perfectly.

He placed half of the omelette onto Tara's plate, the other half onto his own, and together they ate in silence.

Tara's parents got on the phone around noon, with Tara on an extension. They discussed the situation. Tara said she was still serious, dead serious about going. She wanted to book a flight for Monday morning. Then she got off the line and let her parents run up a major phone bill discussing it, arguing about it, raging at each other, then calming down and trying to be civil again. When Tara was invited back on the line, her mother said, “I'll meet you at the airport. Just let me know what flight you're coming in on.”

Suddenly her life was full of loose ends that had to be tied up. Her father would take her school books back. She'd get her transcript sent out as soon as possible. No test in English on Monday, no more boring lectures by Mr. Philips, no more gossip about Josh and his new girlfriend or latest cause, no more grief about trying to find a job, not here anyway. Her mother said there were a lot more jobs in Vancouver. She would try there for part-time work.

The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. A new life in a new city. Forget boring old stodgy, foggy, cold, and unhappy Halifax. She was going west, where everything was bright and new. Why hadn't she just packed up and gone with her mother from the start? What was holding her back?

There was only one loose end that didn't seem so easy to tie up. Jenn. She phoned four times on Saturday. On the fifth try Rob had answered, so she had hung up. The sixth time she got Jenn.

“I can't talk,” she said. “Stop trying to call me.” She could hear Rob in the room, telling her what to say. Then Jenn hung up.

***

Sunday morning Tara caught the ferry to Dartmouth and walked up Portland Street, past the empty bar to the doorway of the apartment. It was unlocked downstairs so she walked up, pounded on the door. Her heart was beating fast and she had no idea how Jenn would react to the news. But then Jenn hadn't exactly been keeping up her end of the friendship this last week. And she had stayed this long with Rob. Maybe she wouldn't move out. It looked like their friendship had come to some kind of dead end anyway.

Rob had on a gangsta-style hooded sweatshirt and a cigarette drooped from his lips as he answered the door. “I thought I asked you to stop bothering Jenn,” he said.

“I'd like to speak with my friend,” she said, simply.

Rob looked at her. “You don't seem to take a hint.”

“Look, I'm going to be moving out west anyway, so you won't have to worry about me, okay? I'd just like to talk to Jenn before I go.”

Ashes from the cigarette dropped onto the floor as Rob stared at her. Then he just shrugged his shoulders, undid the chain latch on the door, and let her in.

Jenn was walking around the living room trying to straighten it up as Tara came in. The place looked like a dump. Rob turned down the TV with a really annoying reality show and walked into the kitchen.

“How are things?” Tara asked.

“Things are okay. Everything is working out.”

“That's cool. I'm glad.” Tara knew that this wouldn't be a real conversation. Rob was there in the kitchen, door open. He was probably listening. Jenn would have to be careful what she said. “I came to tell you I'm going to Vancouver to live with my mother.”

A frantic look came into Jenn's eyes. It was her scared puppy look. Tara had seen it before. “I didn't even know you were thinking about it.”

“Well, we haven't exactly had a chance to talk.”

“Right. So you're just gonna pick up and leave. Just like that?”

“Yeah. Just like that. Tomorrow I'll be on the plane to Vancouver.”

Jenn sat down on the littered chesterfield and let the news sink in. “I'm not going to see you again.”

“Hey, I'll come back to visit.”