The Salt God's Daughter (9 page)

Dagmar actually bought the Twin Palms because of the breakwater, a huge rock wall rising out of the ocean. She figured it would protect the coastline from the twenty-foot waves of El Niño.

The motel was originally constructed as a two-story beach house. It is the only structure in Belmont Shore that sits directly on the beach. Surrounded completely by sand but for a public parking lot on one side, it provides a view of Veterans Memorial Pier, as well as other sights. From its upper balcony, you can see far into the ocean, including those colorful, silent apparitions floating on the water at night.

Though the breakwater mitigated the waves, there was still enough activity for the kite surfers, swimmers, and kayakers to keep business thriving, if only the red tides didn't pool up and creep onto the sand, occasionally suffocating the fish and making the sea lions sick.

Long Beach Harbor was one of the busiest container harbors around. Once, a whale found its way in and became lodged between the boats in the marina. From the panoramic view of the Sands Restaurant, which rose three floors above the harbor, you could see it.

 

THE SANDS IS where Sam and his wife took us for dinner the night we met them at the gas station. We didn't know what my mother was planning, but when she said, “Well, time we headed home,” Dolly and I pretended there was nothing strange about that statement—we had no home—and we got up casually from our seats. We hadn't had as good a meal in months, even if my stomach felt queasy from the sea air and the endless expanse of ocean all around me.

Still, when we said goodbye to our new friends, I couldn't wait to get back to our campsite and as far from the ocean as possible. Dolly pointed to a huge dome known as the Spruce Goose, where Howard Hughes kept his plane. I focused on the huge ship docked across the bay. The
Queen Mary
, a 1936 art deco ocean liner, was permanently docked in Long Beach. It had recently opened to the public, as a hotel and restaurant.

“It's haunted,” Sasha said.

“Don't tell the ghosts that,” Sam said. Dolly rolled her eyes when I shot her a look. If he only knew.

“Well, that's what I believe, anyway,” Sasha said, and winked at me.

I stared out at the looming ship, and then at the huge floating skyscrapers, and felt my stomach resisting the buttery lobster that I had just eaten for the first time. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the Breakwater. The huge rock wall made me feel safe, an end point that abutted the waves, the only thing that was solid enough to stop them when nothing else could.

 

MY MOTHER SEEMED anxious to get us into the car. I relaxed in the warm breeze, listening to James Taylor on the radio. I almost didn't notice that she had pulled right up to the Twin Palms Motel parking lot.

“What in God's name are we doing back
here
?” Dolly asked.

“The sea lion,” I said.

“You keep quiet and do as I say,” my mother said. I stumbled along, nauseous and dismayed that I wasn't going to see my beloved campsite. Sleeping under trees on a back road seemed infinitely better to me than any other place. Even sleeping in the parking lot near the pier seemed doable.

We followed my mother into the lobby of the peach stucco building. I hid behind her. Dolly stood, feet apart, hands behind her head. It was dark, and even if the sea lion's blood had stained the oyster-shell floor, it had washed away by now.

Dr. Brownstein eyed us suspiciously from behind the counter and straightened a pile of vacation brochures by the cash register.

“Well, if it isn't the hurricane of 1939,” she said. “What can I do for you ladies?”

My mother smoothed her red patchwork skirt. I knew Dr. Brownstein was right. I felt exactly like that, a natural disaster that had returned after decimating a landscape. “Really, what are you doing here?” she said.

I glanced at the two six-foot plastic palm trees in wooden basket-weave planters filled with fake soil on either side of the room. Though we had spent two days in room 21, I had never seen the motel lobby. I would have remembered this.

“Shall we talk in your office? Best to speak privately,” my mother said. I glanced at the rack of miniature paperback copies of the Gospels by the window.

After hesitating, Dr. Brownstein motioned for my mother to follow her. The sign on the office door read ENTER IF DISTURBED.

The room was dimly lit. Large leather-bound books filled the shelves on the wall, and a cat calendar faced us on the desk. The month of December featured a hairless kitten with wrinkled pink skin and a large wedge-shaped head with bulging eyes. The cat hung from a tree branch, looking terrified, I thought. The caption read, “Just Hangin' Around.” My mother cleared her throat. “I'm here to see about a room.”

“I'm sorry,” said Dr. Brownstein. “See the sign? NO OCCUPANCY.” She pointed out the window to the wooden sign hanging from a chain.

“It's just that I've been thinking about that terrible night. About that poor animal. Worried, I guess is a better way to describe it. Worried about my girls,” said my mother. “I know you wouldn't want me to file a complaint. Or get a lawyer. About my girls being put in danger when that poor animal was killed. And the broken air-conditioning system. This place is a hazard, let's face it.”

Dr. Brownstein's eyes widened. “Suits me fine. But truly, go on. I'm all ears.”

“I had the idea that it might not be safe for children. My girls were somewhat traumatized by the shooting.”

She peered over her glasses. “And yet you want to stay here with your traumatized children. Darling, I've been around the block once or twice. What exactly do you want?”

My mother folded her arms. Her eyes fastened on the room keys dangling from the key rack on the wall. “A key.”

“This is the end of my workday. I am drowning in paperwork.”

“What I want is one of your rooms,” my mother said.

“I told you we don't have any. Listen, Mrs. Gold.”

“Diana.
Miz
. There is no mister. Name belongs to me exclusively.”

“Fine. You should get one of the nice apartments around here. I'll make a phone call for you. I've got a friend over at the Queen's Bay Apartments. How about that? Try to find you a nice place for cheap. Nothing wrong with needing a little help.” She picked up the receiver.

“No, I want to stay here,” my mother said. “And not just for the night.”

“Mrs. Gold, we don't—”

“For a little longer. Maybe three nights. Maybe seven. Maybe longer. I really don't know.”

“We don't take long-term residents at the Twin Palms. We never have, and I'm not about to start now. How about the Long Beach Rescue Mission? They've just opened. Nice folks, they've been out here a few times to collect old bedding. I think they do a good job. Food, shelter, spiritual guidance for the homeless and less fortunate.” She glanced at my mother's necklaces, her silver medallion beside a gold Jewish star.

My cheeks burned. “We don't take charity,” Dolly said, moving her hands so as to cover the hole in the elbow of her striped T-shirt.

My mother shook her head. “We're all set with the spiritual aspect of things.”

“Clearly,” said Dr. Brownstein, looking at my mother's bitten-down fingernails, something she was always embarrassed about.

My mother slid into a vinyl folding chair. Dolly ran her fingers across the kitten calendar. She looked at Dr. Brownstein and held up two dusty fingers. My mother tried not to smile, pulling down Dolly's arm. “We won't be going anywhere. You need a housekeeper, and I can clean. I'm your woman. You need me.”

“I would help you. I can hardly afford to keep up with repairs, let alone lose money on a room that is not being filled by paying customers.”

I watched my mother swallow hard. She was desperate. “I'll register a complaint. I swear I will,” she whispered. Moonlight fanned the half-drawn window shade. “I'll make sure to tell my friend Sam Jackson all about what happened to us here. That my daughters were nearly attacked on your property, and that this place should be shut down because of the disrepair and inhumane treatment of animals. I'm sure he'd be very interested to hear what went on.”

“You know Sam Jackson?”

“Known him for years.”

Dr. Brownstein sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “You want to see the Twin Palms shut down?”

“I really don't want to report anyone. Only if you force me to.”

“So, it's money, is that it?”

“No. I don't want anything for free. I want to work. You don't have to pay me a lot. The girls and I, we'll stay in that same room. Room 21. It's our lucky room. And I'll work hard. God knows, you need someone to help keep this place clean and manage what's all going on here. I'm good with people, and my girls are hard workers, too. They won't bother anyone. They are good girls. Not like some girls.”

Dr. Brownstein offered Dolly and me a dusty bowl of miniature chocolate Easter eggs, each wrapped in tinfoil. Dolly took one, and my mother shot her a warning glance. “No, Dolly. Chocolate makes you crazy hyper. Put it back, please.”

My sister unwrapped it anyway and popped it in her mouth with a smile.

Dolly's act of defiance turned the tide, somehow creating a bond between Dr. Brownstein and my mother. Most women understood what mothers went through with their daughters. No one, it seemed, would have wished herself on anyone else during her teenage years. When a mother was struggling with her daughter, it was an act of universal healing to help out. It somehow absolved one of one's own sins during girlhood.

Dr. Brownstein, taking pity on my mother, leaned forward. “I had one of my own. Raised her alone. Made it through by the skin of my teeth, and it got dicey. I know what's coming around the bend for you. That is why I'm going to help you. Not because of your threat.”

My mother pulled her purse strap tight over her shoulder and got up. “I'd never call Sam about this place. You were very nice to us last time. It's just, the girls and I, sleeping in the back of the car. They're still so young.”

“This is the luckiest day of your life, Diana,” said Dr. Brownstein. The Twin Palms Motel was ours.

B'shert
, meant to be.

“We really have to stay here again?” asked Dolly.

Dr. Brownstein leaned in. “I know you probably don't have the best memories of this place. But that sea lion didn't die. He was rescued and let back out into the ocean.”

My sister smiled at me, and I threw my arms around her.

“What did the police say about the shooting?” said my mother.

“I simply told them that the woman who shot the sea lion got away in a green station wagon.”

The Twin Palms Motel would be our home for a while, one of the happiest times in my young life.

T
HE TWIN PALMS was a fine place to start a new life.

Over the next two years, my mother worked her way up from housekeeper to manager.

By 1977, Dolly and I, at thirteen and eleven, were in middle school, happily accelerating. We loved going to a real school and having a dependable schedule. We walked home from school and kissed our books, just as we had seen our mother do with her almanac. We did our homework without anyone telling us to, and we cooked our own meals. My mother felt buoyed up, too. While she was out, we snuck down to Second Street at night and practiced smoking cigarettes. She never knew. Dr. Brownstein kept a watch over us all. One morning, she put a blue, almost translucent moonstone in my pocket before school, for luck, she said.

In 1979, the first full moon of the year, the Wolf Moon, loomed over the Pacific. My mother said it signaled a time of reaping. This meant that all her hard work would pay off. She bought a new Farmer's Almanac at the garden shop, just as she did every year. She slipped the leather cover off of her old almanac and put it in a cardboard box in the storage room.

The motel had been revived. Dolly and I had helped plant flowers and cacti around the small patch of grass in the front, and we bought new plastic cups, candles, and sachets for the drawers from the Long Beach Drive-in Theater Swap Meet. The motel regained some of its popularity and started bringing in enough money to let Dr. Brownstein think about retiring. As a thank-you gift, she gave my mother the key to the one-bedroom “master” suite, a signal of a fortuitous time to come. My mother now had her own bedroom, and Dolly and I slept on the large pullout couch.

Now that we had a stable home and my mother had become financially and emotionally independent, the next step was to find her a good man for companionship. She had always enjoyed the company of men, she explained.

We deemed it the year of the Dating Moons, a time when all the full moons throughout the year would conspire to help my mother in her quest for love. As if she had scripted it, in no time, she had a fan club of older gentlemen who frequented the motel, engineers and oil executives. At night, before she left the house for a date with a man in town, I'd roll her thick black hair into a bun and then coil a few tendrils, taking special care to wrap them around my pinky just as I had seen my mother do.

“Wish me luck!” she'd call, before leaving.

“Luck,” we'd answer, our words fluttering into the warm night air.

We'd microwave TV dinners and do our homework, spilling our books around us on the gray carpet in front of the television. When our homework was finished, we'd play
General Hospital
and act out scenes starring our new heroine, Genie Francis, who played a teenager named Laura Baldwin. Laura was beautiful and had suffered in her young life. Everyone loved her, including her heartthrob boyfriend Scotty Baldwin, despite the fact that she had already murdered someone, her former lover, who was secretly in love with her mother.