Niagara Motel (13 page)

17

We had to walk for about two hours before a car stopped for us. It was a blue Toyota Tercel. The lady inside was middle-aged, maybe twenty-nine, thirty. She had messy black hair and a jean jacket that had things written on it in black permanent marker.

“Want a ride?” she called out her window.

“Yeah!” I said. I got in the front and Meredith got in the back. There was a laundry basket heaped high with clothes in the backseat. The car smelled like a million cigarettes had been smoked in it.

“I'm Stacey,” she said and shook my hand. “That there's Camden.”

I looked back and was surprised to see a little kid sitting in the basket under the pile of laundry. He was probably three or four. He was scrawny and his hair was the colour of sand.

“Where're y'all headed?” Stacey asked as she began to drive.

“Hollywood,” I said.

“Wow, gonna be movie stars, are ya? We like movies, don't we, Camden?”

“Yup,” he said, nodding hard.

“We're going to find my father, actually,” I said.

“Oh wow. That's cool,” she said.

“Where are you going?” Meredith asked.

“Oh, we're just going over to my mama's. She lives in Garden City. It's about an hour from here.”

“Grandma has a TV,” Camden said.

“That's right,” said Stacey. “My ex took everything when he left us. Washer-dryer, television, VCR, stereo, took the frigging dishes and cutlery, too. Imagine leaving your own kid without any plates to eat off of.”

“Sounds like a loser,” Meredith said.

“Oh, he is! He's a big fat loser.”

“Daddy's not fat,” Camden said.

“He will be one day, sweetie,” said Stacey as she changed lanes. “Sorry, I just have to stop for gas here.”

“No problem,” Meredith said.

Stacey pulled into a Mobil and got out to pump the gas. I watched her in my side mirror as she leaned down next to the nozzle and took deep breaths, inhaling the wavy fumes.

“Meredith,” I said through my teeth.

Meredith turned to look out her window at Stacey. “Oh, Jesus,” she said.

“Jesus loves me!” Camden said. “Know how I know?”

“No,” Meredith said.

“Because the
bible
tells me so!”

Meredith nodded and said, “That's good.”

Then Stacey took an empty Gatorade bottle out of her purse. She put a little bit of gas in it, then put the nozzle back on the hook and had a big whiff out of the bottle. She saw that Meredith and I were watching her, and a dark blush spread over her face. She screwed on the lid of the bottle and shoved it in her purse, then ran into the store to pay. When she got back in the car, she threw us each a glass bottle of Coke, Camden too. She looked sheepish. “I'm sorry about that,” she said. “It's just, since Ted left and everything, I've been a real mess.” Stacey's eyes were the colour of peacock's necks. “It's stupid, I know. It just … it helps. You know?”

Meredith nodded and helped Camden open his bottle of Coke.

When we got to Stacey's mom's house, her mom's boyfriend, Hal, was about to leave. He said he'd give us a ride to the highway. Hal drove a green Ford Ranger. He had longish white hair and a white moustache. He was skinny but looked strong. I wondered if my hair would ever turn white like Hal's and I decided that it would be okay if it did.

As we were rolling out of Garden City, a little sparrow flew smack into the windshield and startled us all. Hal shook his head and turned on the wipers, smearing blood across the glass. Meredith put one hand over her belly and closed her eyes. No one said much for the rest of the drive. We listened to the country station. All of the songs were sad. Gina says she doesn't like country for that reason. Most of the songs are so, so sad. But I like it okay, when I'm in the right mood.

Hal let us out where the 81 intersects with the 54. “You'll be all right here,” he said. “Town's just a quarter mile that way if you need anything.”

“Okay, thanks for the ride,” I said.

Meredith waved.

“Adios,” Hal said and drove away.

We stood at the side of the road. Meredith smoked a cigarette. I kicked rocks. No cars passed. There was nothing to see for thousands of miles but fields and sky and a never-ending strip of cracked pavement. Watching white wisps of cirrus clouds move across the Kansas sky makes your heart ache. I don't know why.

Meredith took a hairbrush out of her backpack and started to brush her hair right there on the side of the road. Then she took out a little mirror and her eye makeup and put that on. I watched her pull down her bottom eyelid and it sicked me out. I don't know how girls can jab a pencil practically right into their eyeball to put makeup on. I could never be a girl.

After what seemed like a hundred hours, a little black Geo Metro came by. The driver was around twenty and had spiky black hair. When Meredith leaned in the window to talk to him, I could see that
he
was wearing makeup. Even his nails were painted black.
And
he was wearing black lipstick. His nose was pierced, but not like Meredith's, it was pierced
between
the two nostrils, like a bull. Meredith talked
to him for a minute then stepped back from the car to talk to me. “Do you want to go with him?”

“Not really,” I whispered. “He looks weird.”

“It's just a fashion,” Meredith said, lowering her voice. “It's called goth.”

“It's weird,” I said.

“Sometimes weird looking people are the most normal, and the normal looking people are the weirdest,” Meredith said.

“Then how are you supposed to know who actually
is
weird?”

She shrugged. “You just have to trust your feelings, I guess.”

“I don't have any feelings,” I said.

“You have feelings, Tucker.”

“Yeah, but not about people.”

“Sure you do.”

“I don't know if I do,” I shrugged.

“Well, this is the first car we've seen in over an hour so I think we should go with him.”

“Okay,” I said. “But if he chops us up in little pieces, I'm blaming you.”

Meredith rolled her eyes and opened the passenger door, and I got in the back.

“I'm Chris,” he said, shaking our hands. Meredith smiled at him and I wondered if she had a big crush on him already like she'd had on Lyle. Maybe goth was something beautiful. It was hard to tell. Chris wore a necklace that looked like a dog collar. It was black with big silver spikes. If you leaned in to hug him, you'd get a spike jammed in your throat. So I guess he didn't want anybody to hug him. Or maybe he wished he was a dog instead of a man, which probably a lot of people do. He ate gummy worms out of a plastic bag that he held between his legs. He offered Meredith and me some, and we both took a handful. We didn't say too much for the rest of the trip
because I guess part of being goth is that you don't talk a lot.

He let us out near Santa Rosa, and another woman picked us up right away. She drove a blue Toyota Corolla and had two boys around my age. I sat in the back with the boys, and Meredith sat shotgun. The boys' names were Dylan and Eric and they were both glued to their Game Boys. I tried to talk to them but they both just scowled at me and went back to their games. They were from a town in Colorado with a name that sounds like a piece of farm machinery but is actually a type of flower. The lady talked non-stop to Meredith about her son and his friend and how they were such troublemakers, but really good kids deep down and how she wasn't looking forward to them becoming teenagers in a few years but how she knew that in the end, it would all be worth it. After a while she turned around and said, “Dylan, why don't you let Tucker try your Game Boy. You've been playing for long enough now.”

“No way,” Dylan said. “I'm just about to beat level eight.”

“Dylan? Remember? We talked about this.”

“It's okay,” I said. “I'm not very good at video games anyways.”

“
See
,” Dylan said. “He'll just die.” He elbowed me in the ribs then went back to his game, and he and Eric didn't look up for the rest of the ride. I secretly wished that I
could
play Game Boy, but it was two against one back there, and I didn't want them to gang up on me.

The lady let us out at a shopping plaza in Albuquerque, and the air outside the car smelled fresh and clean. I felt kind of dizzy and sick, probably because there was no fresh air in that car and I'd been breathing everybody else's carbon dioxide for too long.

18

“What a bunch of dweebs,” Meredith said as the lady drove off, tapping the horn. “And the
mom
.
God
. I thought I was going to have to throw myself out of the car. She wouldn't shut up about how great those kids are.”

“I know.”

“And let me tell you, those kids are not great. Those kids are going to be brain dead in a couple of years if they're not already.”

I laughed.

“I'm never letting my kid play video games,” she said. “They turn people into zombies.”

“What about TV?”

“TV's okay,” Meredith said.

I felt strangely relieved, knowing that Meredith's kid would be allowed to watch TV.

“Not the news though,” she said. “That shit's fucked up.”

We walked across the parking lot. The lights of Albuquerque glittered all around us. We came to a McDonald's and went inside. We both got personal pizzas and milk and sat at a booth and ate our pizzas, and they were good and hot. It was late, I'm not sure how late. Not many people came in. A lady and a man came in together, and they both had black eyes. I wondered if they gave them to each other. Most of the people who came in were drunk. I could tell because they couldn't say their words properly and had to hold onto the counter to stand up. I'm not really sure why adults get drunk because it makes them all so stupid. But maybe that's another one of those things that I'll understand when I get older. It takes a lot of years to learn all the things in the world. I watched Meredith as she finished her dinner.

“What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?” I said.

She looked up at me with her straw still in her mouth. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Just tell me,” I said.

She set down her drink. “My parents, I guess.”

“Yeah, that's pretty bad.”

“What about you?”

I shrugged.

“Come on.”

“Not having a dad, I guess. Except that didn't really
happen
to me. More like, it
didn't
happen.”

“Yeah, that sucks. But, hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don't have a dad either,” she said.

“But you
did
have one.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And that's better than never having one at all.”

“Depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On how nice they are.”

“Was your dad nice?”

“He was sometimes nice and sometimes really mean and we just never knew what we were going to get.”

“I'm sorry about what happened to your parents,” I said.

“Thanks,” she said. “Come on, let's get out of here.”

We finished the last bites of our pizzas, and I threw out our stuff and put the trays on top of the garbage bin like you're supposed to. Then we walked toward the lights of the city.

Eventually we came upon a little place called the Motel Blue. It was blue, like you would expect, but it was pure, pure blue, like the best sky on the best day of the best summer ever. They had it all lit up with spotlights so it glowed electric blue out into the night. It cost forty dollars, and we got a room with two beds. I let Meredith have
the first shower. While she was in the bathroom, I checked the drawer of the nightstand for a bible because Gina says that's how you know you're staying in a reputable motel. Although I'm not exactly sure
why
Gina thinks that since we're not religious, and I haven't even been baptized, which means that I'm going straight to hell when I die, if there is a hell. A girl named Jessica Timbermore in Medicine Hat told me that, and then she and a bunch of other kids made fun of me for not being baptized and called me a heathen. When I told Gina about it, I asked her what to do, and she told me to tell them to get stuffed, so I did and after that none of them would pick me for their team or partner up with me for partner activities or anything, but I didn't really care because we moved away not too long afterwards.

When I opened the drawer, the bible was there, and I was relieved to see it. It was blue, like everything else in the room. I picked it up and wondered, not for the first time, who the Gideons were and how they got into every single motel room in the world. I figured they were probably like little elves who snuck around slipping bibles into drawers of rooms that people had left unlocked. I wondered how many Gideons there were and decided that if I ever met one, I would ask him about the bibles. Then Meredith came out of the bathroom, yelling, wearing only a towel.

“Help me, Tucker!” she had another towel attached to her face. “It's caught on my nose ring! It's pulling it out! I can't get it off!”

“Okay, okay.” I stood up and went to her.

“It's ripping out!”

“Let me see.” There was blood around the nose ring. But it wasn't ripped completely out.

“Can you get it?”

I moved the towel-threads a tiny bit off the ring.

“OW!”

I pulled my hand back.

“GET IT OFF!”

I tried again, and this time I got it. Meredith covered her nose with her hands and ran back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Is it bleeding a lot?” I yelled.

She didn't answer. I heard water running and her swearing.

She came out after a while with her clothes on and her nose was red, but she had cleaned off the blood and the ring was still in.

“Let me see,” I said, and examined it up close. “I think it'll heal just fine.”

“How can you tell?”

I shrugged. “That's what bodies are made to do.”

She sighed. “Thanks for helping me get it off.”

“That's what friends are for,” I said.

Then I showered and brushed my teeth and it felt good to be clean and smell like the honey-vanilla motel shampoo. We tried to watch TV for a while but the only things on were televangelists and infomercials for ab-machines, and you can only watch those for so long. I turned off the TV and tried reading the Gideon bible for a bit, Meredith put her Walkman on, and eventually, we both fell asleep.

When I woke up, it felt like I had rocks in my stomach and something was terribly wrong but I didn't know what. Then I looked out the window and saw the bright sky. I knew that it was morning, and then I realized that I had broken my promise to Gina—I hadn't called her the day before. I watched the cars rush by and tried to think of what to say to her. Tried to make up a story that would make sense about why I hadn't called and why I wasn't coming back to Niagara Falls today or the next day or the day after that. The sun glinted off the windshields of cars and pierced my brain. I looked over at Meredith. She was sleeping so hard you'd think she was dead. She was sleeping for two now.

I opened my backpack and took out my shoebox and got Charlie out of it. I lay down again and put him next to me on the pillow and petted him. He looked at me with his puppy dog eyes. But he didn't judge me. That was the best thing about Charlie. That's the best thing about dogs, real dogs. They never judge. In that way, dogs are better than humans. Then I had a terrible thought,
What if Gina died in the hospital and the last thing I'd said to her had been a lie?
I would never be able to forgive myself. Plus, I would definitely be going straight to hell, baptized or not.

I petted Charlie some more and thought about Lyle's dog, Belinda, and then I thought about Lyle in the hospital and his dad dying from drunk-driving. What would Lyle do? He would tell Gina the truth, that's what. She would find out eventually anyways, and I would only be in worse trouble later on if I kept lying. I had to tell her. Today. This morning.

I stared at the ceiling for a minute because you should always reflect on major decisions before taking action. Then I got dressed and put Charlie in my pocket and went to use the payphone in the motel lobby so I wouldn't wake Meredith up by using the phone in our room.

Gina picked up on the first ring. She sounded pissed.

“Hi, Gina,” I said.

“Tucker. Where are you?”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now. Bright Light called. You're missing.”

“Oh.”

“You're a missing person, Tucker.”

“Huh.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of position this puts me in?”

“I'm sorry.”

“And you lied to me.”

“I'm really sorry.”

“Tell me where you are, Tucker.”

“Right now …?”

“Yes, right now.”

“Right now I'm at the Motel Blue.”

“In Toronto?”

“In Albuquerque.”

“
What?
”

“Albuquerque?”

“What the hell are you doing in Albuquerque?”

“I … I'm going to Los Angeles to find Sam Malone.”

Gina said nothing. I could feel her disappointment through the phone. Her silence was like a loudspeaker next to my ear. She was screaming at me with silence.

“Gina?”

Nothing.

“Gina, I'm
sorry
.”

It was like the line had gone dead except I could still hear background noise, her TV was on, she was watching
The Price Is Right
, and I could hear her heart monitor beeping.

“Gina?”

No answer.

“Gina, I'm really sorry, but you would never tell me about my father and so …”

Then I realized what had happened. She had probably fallen into a sleep attack because of her narcolepsy. That had happened once before when she got really, really mad at me for going swimming alone at night and not telling anybody. She was right in the middle of tearing me a new one, and then she just fell asleep. Hit her head on the side of the couch on the way down.

I've figured out over the years that Gina gets her sleep attacks when she's experiencing an intense emotion. I mean, emotions aren't
the only reason she falls asleep; she usually falls asleep if she's doing something passive and sitting down, like watching a movie or going to a baseball game or driving. She'll just conk out. And sometimes, when she gets angry and upset or really sad, she'll conk out too. But when she gets the cataplectic sleep attacks from feeling something too strong, that's when she can still hear and see everything, but not move. I think it must be like being trapped inside your own body.

I slowly put the phone back on its hook and decided to call her back later, after she'd had time to cool off a bit. From the sound of her voice, I could tell I was going to be grounded for at least a year. Maybe two. Maybe for the rest of my life. Maybe even longer than that. Grounded for all eternity, that's what I was going to be. But I knew it would be worth it. When I found my father, I knew it would all be worth it.

After I hung up, I went outside to see what Albuquerque looked like in the day time. The land was red and the sky was blue, and in the sky were dozens of hot-air balloons, just floating casually along as if they belonged there. One balloon was shaped like Bart Simpson. One was a big pink heart. There was a black and white striped balloon, a yellow balloon with red polka dots, a black balloon with green thunderbolts on it, and a blue balloon with yellow stars on it. There was a rainbow balloon, a balloon with a panda bear on it, one with the American flag, and a bunch more. It made my heart lift to see them all floating up, up, and away like that, and I got the feeling that maybe everything would be okay after all. Maybe every little thing would work out just the way it was meant to. Then, I swear to you, the Bart Simpson balloon winked at me. He actually winked. I know how crazy that sounds, but that's how it happened. I was kind of freaked out, so I went back inside and ran up to the room to see if Meredith was awake yet. She was all washed and packed and ready to go.

“Do you think we'll make it to California today?” Meredith said.

“I don't know. Maybe.”

“Well, are you ready?”

“Just about,” I said. I waited for Meredith to turn around before I took Charlie out of my pocket and put him back in my shoebox. Not because I was embarrassed or ashamed of having a little plastic dog that I talked to and sometimes petted, but because some things just hold their specialness better if you keep them to yourself.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth because I didn't know when I would get another chance to do that. I decided not to tell Meredith that Bright Light had reported us and that we were now officially missing persons. I didn't want her to worry and I especially didn't want her to say that we had to go back to Niagara Falls. Besides, how much trouble could she really get in? Both of her parents were dead.

Meredith and I left the Motel Blue and went down the street to a convenience store. We bought muffins and ate in front of the store. Meredith smoked a cigarette as she finished her coffee.

“Oh my God,” Meredith said. She put her coffee down beside her.

“What?”

“It's moving.”

I looked at her belly. She grabbed my hand and put it up under her shirt on her stomach. It felt hard like a watermelon.

“Feel that?”

I didn't feel anything. I shook my head.

“Wait.”

I waited with my hand on her belly. Nothing happened. People came in and out of the store, and I felt weird standing there with my hand up a girl's shirt. I started to pull my hand away, but Meredith held it there.

“Hold on,” she said. “There! Did you feel that?”

It was the tiniest little tap from inside. But I had felt it. There was someone in there. “Yeah,” I said. We smiled at each other, and she let go of my hand.

“Amazing,” Meredith said. She was grinning like she had just won the lottery.

Then a Volkswagen van pulled up in front of the store. It was painted purple with big white flowers and green leaves and a big orange peace sign on the side. Two hippies got out and they smiled big at us and the girl said, “Hey, dudes.” The man-hippie had long hair and wore a billowy white shirt with brown corduroy bellbottoms. The lady-hippie wore a long green skirt and a T-shirt that said
NO NUKES
. Nukes can mean microwaves or nuclear bombs and since I didn't know why anyone wouldn't want a microwave, I figured she must mean no nuclear bombs. Nuclear bombs are the worst kind of bombs in the world because they kill everything for a squillion miles around, but they make an awesome mushroom cloud when they blow up, so presidents sometimes drop them just because they can. I'm not sure if Canada has any nuclear bombs. I think the United States has most of them. I'm not sure which other countries have them.