Mother's Day (8 page)

Eddie McHugh checked his watch against the clock on the wall. “Those mystery books you read make you jumpy,” he said.

Margo Hofsteder closed her book and looked at her own watch. “Is it eight o’clock already?”

Eddie nodded. “I mopped up around the ice machine again,” he said. “But you better get somebody over here to fix it. I don’t know beans about refrigeration and stuff like that.”

Margo, a heavyset woman in her late fifties, sighed and slid off the stool behind the desk. “I called the appliance repair guy two days ago,” she complained. “He keeps saying he’s coming. I’ll tell you, sometimes I wonder why I keep this place now that Anton’s gone. He always had a way of getting these people to hop to it.”

Eddie grunted impassively. He’d heard it all before. He came around the desk as Margo wedged her way out past her night desk man. Margo and her husband, Anton, had owned the Jefferson Motel for twenty years. In December Anton had keeled over one night at dinner and was gone before the ambulance arrived. Margo was still dickering about whether to sell or stay on. In February she’d hired Eddie as a night clerk and general maintenance man. Ed and his wife were separated, and while Margo didn’t pay a lot, a free room in the motel was an irresistible part of the deal. Between the two of them they managed to keep things running pretty well in the off season, but summer was coming, with its crush of visitors, and Margo had to decide what to do. Ed was okay, but he was no ball of fire about taking care of things. And it just wasn’t any fun without Anton. On the other hand, sitting around with a bunch of other widows in Florida wouldn’t be much fun, either, Margo realized. It gave her a headache to think about it.

“Now you know how to work this credit card thingamajig,” Margo said, pointing to a small console on the counter that looked like a child’s calculator.

“I know,” said Eddie irritably. She asked him that every single time she left him to work the desk.

“Well, okay,” she said. “I’m going home to finish my book. Good night, Ed.”

And eat a pound of candy, Eddie thought as she sailed out the door of the lobby. “G’nite,” he said.

He turned on the ancient black-and-white portable TV
behind the counter and began to watch the Red Sox game. He managed to get through two batters before the door to the lobby opened and he looked up to see his wife, Valerie, come striding in wearing a sweatshirt, cut-off denims, and gold, high-heeled bedroom slippers. She was dangling a lit cigarette in one hand. A cloud of carnation scent and smoke seemed to fill up the room.

“Well, well, I thought you’d be off plunging some toilet,” she said by way of greeting.

Eddie’s gaze returned to the game. “What do you want? Where are the kids?”

“Right out there in the car,” said Valerie.

“Well, take ’em home and put ’em to bed.”

“I have to talk to you,” she said, picking a stray speck of tobacco off her tongue with her silver-polished fingernails and examining it.

“Didn’t you ever hear of a phone?” said Eddie.

“That’s just it,” she cried triumphantly. “They turned the damn phone off today.”

“So, pay the bill.”

“With what, Eddie?” Valerie demanded, taking a deep drag on her cigarette. “I can’t afford to pay it. Not with what you’re giving me.”

“Stop bitching. Nobody tells you to call your mother for an hour every day. That’s what runs it up.”

“Don’t talk against my mother, Eddie. She’s been good to us,” she said, pointing her cigarette at her husband. The long ash trembled, dropped, and disintegrated on the countertop.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Use an ashtray,” he said sullenly, and slid a magenta aluminum ashtray down the counter to her. Valerie squashed out her butt on the gold-leaf printing in the center that read “Jefferson Motel, Parkway Boulevard, Bayland, Mass.” and a phone number.

“You always have enough money for the magazines and those cancer sticks,” Eddie observed.

Valerie shook the last cigarette out of her pack, her stringy blond hair drooping around her pinched face. She crushed the pack wearily and tossed it on the floor. “Look, babe,” she said, “I didn’t come here to fight.”

“Pick that up and put it in the trash, for crying out loud,” said Eddie. “Margo will get all over me for your mess.”

“Margo,” Valerie grumbled, bending down to retrieve the wadded-up, empty pack. “Look,” she said, “why don’t you just ditch this place, come back home, and see if you can get your old job back at the water company.”

“Number one,” said Eddie, “they’re still laying people off at the water company, and number two, if I come home, it’s just going to be more bitching and complaining from you.”

“I won’t,” said Valerie. “I promise. The kids miss you.”

Eddie shook his head. He wasn’t about to discuss number three—that even though it was a shit job, he liked living here, sleeping late in his own room with no one to bug him. And the job had another benefit, too, which he didn’t want anyone to know about.

“Come on, babe,” she pleaded, “We’re still good together.”

Eddie pretended to be thinking it over. Just then the lobby door opened and a good-looking, dark haired woman walked in. Eddie straightened up, composing his sharp features into a friendly expression.

The woman walked up to the desk. She glanced at Valerie, who took a seat on one of the lobby chairs and pretended to leaf through a magazine.

“I’d like a room,” the woman said.

“Okay,” said Eddie. “How many nights?”

The woman frowned and hesitated. “I’m not sure.” She brushed her dark hair off her forehead in a nervous gesture.

“The reason I ask is, we have a weekly rate,” said Eddie helpfully. He turned a Jefferson brochure around to face her. The woman read the information while Eddie’s gaze traveled slowly up and down her frame.

Valerie coughed, and when Eddie looked her way he saw her narrowed eyes were riveted to his face.

The woman pushed the brochure back across the desk. “I probably will be here a week,” she said hesitantly.

“It’s a good deal,” said Eddie. “You’d pay as much for four nights.”

“Okay.”

“How many people?”

“Just myself.” The woman passed her plastic card across the desk.

“Okay, Miss…Emery,” said Eddie, reading off the card. “I’ve got room 173 for you. Ground floor, near the soda machine, but private.”

“It sounds fine,” she said.

“Ever been to Bayland before?”

Linda smiled wryly. “Not for a long time.”

Valerie cleared her throat loudly.

“Well, it’s a nice little town. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you,” said Linda, picking up her bag.

Eddie walked out from behind the counter and scrutinized her. “There’s a lot of places to eat in the area if you’re hungry.”

“I’m not,” said Linda shortly, taking the key he held out to her. “Excuse me.”

As soon as Linda was out the door, Valerie jumped up from her seat, tossing aside the dogeared magazine. “You scumbag,” she cried. “You were coming on to her.”

“I was doing my job,” he said.

“Don’t tell me. I know what you were up to. I know you.” Valerie raised her hand as if to slap him, and Eddie grabbed her wrist and twisted her forearm.

“Let me go!” Valerie yelped.

“I’m sick of you coming in here, Val,” he muttered.

“That woman wouldn’t be bothered with you in a million years,” she shot back. “She wouldn’t spit on your ugly face.”

Eddie gave her arm an extra twist until she whimpered, and then he pushed her away. “Get lost,” he said.

Valerie rubbed her arm ruefully, jammed her cigarette in her mouth, and drew herself up with whatever dignity she could muster. “I’m right,” she said. Slowly she walked over and pushed open the motel door and looked either way, as if expecting to see some sort of performance going on in the parking lot. Eddie knew what she was doing. She was waiting for him to call out to her to come back. It was always the same with them. When he remained silent, Valerie turned and looked at him with a haughty glare. She took the cigarette from between her lips, dropped it on the carpet in the lobby, and crushed it with her shoe. Then she hurried out the door as he yelled out, “You bitch.”

Eddie picked up the still smoldering butt, Valerie’s orange lipstick greasy on the filter, and deposited it in an ashtray. Then he stared at the black patch in the rug where the cigarette had been defiantly ground out. He had some spot remover in the janitor’s closet. He’d better get it and clean the mess up.

Eddie went back behind the desk. The Red Sox were losing, 9-3. Disgusted, he snapped off the set and took out a paper clock with movable hands on it that said “Back in…minutes” around the clock face. Eddie moved the paper hand to five and hung it in the doorway. Then he locked the door and hurried down the outside sidewalk to the janitor’s closet at the end of the first corridor of rooms.

He found the spot remover and closed the closet door. As he emerged from the janitor’s closet his gaze was drawn to the lit room where the ice, soda, and snack machines were. A woman was in there, getting ice. It was room 173.

Eddie walked over and pushed the door open. “Hi there,” he said.

Linda Emery jumped and let out a cry. Ice bounced out of her bucket and cracked on the tile floor. “Don’t sneak up on people,” she said angrily.

“Sorry,” he said, looking down at the puddle of water around the machine, now studded with ice cubes. “This thing is leaking. We’re waiting for the guy to fix it. Here, let me get you some fresh ice.”

“That’s not necessary,” said Linda.

“How’s your room?” Eddie asked, leaning against the door frame.

“Perfectly adequate. Would you mind getting out of my way?”

Her tone was imperious, but Eddie could see fear in her eyes, which sent a pleasant sensation of excitement surging through him. “Pardon me,” he said slyly, backing out the door to let her pass but leaving only enough room so that she had to stiffen up to get by him.

Linda avoided his gaze. She walked across to her room, fumbled with the key in the lock and let herself in, slamming the door behind her.

Eddie grinned, but there was a cold gleam in his eye. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said. Then he started to laugh.

Karen pulled up in front of Memorial Junior High School
, and Jenny, who was waiting on the curb, jiggling from one foot to the other and clutching a stack of photo albums and scrapbooks to her chest, slid into the car and slammed the door. She looked around furtively, like a thief in a getaway car, hoping not to be seen.

“Let’s go,” she urged her mother.

“Nervous?” Karen asked.

Jenny looked at her suspiciously, then shrugged. “Excited, I guess.”

Karen nodded noncommittally and watched the road. Linda had called while they were having breakfast, and the two had made arrangements to meet after school at Miller’s, which was a popular local restaurant. Jenny had reported proudly that Linda used to work there as a waitress when she was in high school. Linda had offered to pick Jenny up at school, but Karen had insisted, over Jenny’s loud objection, on driving her. Karen was trying her level best to be agreeable and ready to compromise, but it was taking every ounce of her self-control.

“How was school today?” she asked.

“Okay,” said Jenny. “I couldn’t concentrate.”

“I’ll bet not,” said Karen. There was a silence between them. Then Karen said, “I see you’ve got all your albums.”

Jenny rested the stack on her lap and looked down at it. “Linda wants to know all about my life. I figured I’d bring some visual aids.”

Karen smiled. “That seems like a good idea.”

“She might like to have a picture to take back to Chicago.”

Karen felt her leaden spirits rise slightly at this remark, a reminder that Linda would soon be gone. That Jenny understood and accepted it, even. “Well, that would be nice,” said Karen.

“Yeah,” said Jenny wistfully. “I wish she didn’t have to go.”

Karen stifled a sigh and tried to concentrate on driving. But she could not keep herself from pursuing something that had been bothering her since Linda called. Karen had been more than a little surprised when Linda gave Jenny her phone number and her room number and told her that she was staying at the Jefferson Motel. Greg had wanted to make an issue of it, but Karen had calmed him down. Still, she could not help wondering. She glanced over at Jenny, who was staring out the car window, absently clasping and unclasping her hands over the stack of albums. Karen tried to make her question sound casual. “Did um…did Linda mention why she wasn’t staying with her family?”

“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “Maybe they didn’t have enough room. What difference does it make?”

“None,” said Karen quickly. But she tried to imagine that it was Jenny, coming back after a long absence. She tried to imagine saying that there was not enough room for her to stay. Never, she thought. I would give her my own bed and sleep on the floor first before I would send her off to some motel. It was something else. Something had happened when Linda went home. “I just thought it was strange,” Karen said, “that she wasn’t staying with her mother. I mean, after all this time, you’d think—”

“Maybe she didn’t want to stay with her mother,” Jenny said testily. “Are you going to make a big deal about this?”

Back off, Karen thought. It’s her problem. It’s her business. “There’s the restaurant,” said Karen.

Jenny’s eyes widened with eager anticipation, as if she were about to enter a foreign land.

Mary Miller Duncan had grown up in the dining rooms and the kitchen of Miller’s restaurant. When she looked back on her childhood she could hardly remember a day when her parents were not working. Sometimes Mary thought it had driven her mother to an early grave. Mary’s husband, Sam, whom she had met in high school, started work in Miller’s as a busboy, and Mary’s father had liked him from the start and taught him the business from the ground up. Two years ago her father had died a happy man, knowing that his daughter was married to a man who loved the business. Mary sighed and looked, from her post at the door, over at her husband, who was behind the bar checking the levels of the liquor bottles. It was the bartender’s job, but Sam liked to do everything himself. Then Mary heard someone walk up behind her and she automatically resumed her hostess smile as she turned around.