Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC)

by Katarina Bivald

  “Shocked.”

  He smiled again. “I didn’t book a room.”

  “I know.”

  Did he think he could have booked a room without me noticing?

  We had vacant rooms, of course. Nothing changed while he was gone. Both reception and I had been gathering dust ever since he left.

  * * *

  I gave Michael the Redwood Cabin, but if he was thinking about the night we had spent there fifteen years ago, he didn’t show it. I followed him there, using the back trail while he took his car. We got there at the same time. After I opened the door, he took the key and looked around with an entirely unreasonable neutral expression.

  Seeing him as a grown man was like being given the answer to the question you ask when you’re young: What will we be like when we’re older?

  He was a stranger I still thought I knew. There were a few strands of gray around his temples and deep laughter lines around his eyes, but those things just made him even more handsome. His eyelashes were still absurdly long and dark, and his eyes seemed brilliantly blue against his tanned skin. I remembered them being cooler, grayer, though maybe the amusing awkwardness of the situation made them glitter like that.

  The portrait inside the dust jacket of his book didn’t do him justice. That was how I had kept track of him over the years. I already knew that he had become the geologist he always wanted to be, and that he had traveled to all of the exciting places he had dreamed of as a boy. Then he had taken his nerdy love for rocks and written a popular science book: Fantastic Rocks and Where to Find Them. For a few weeks, he had been everywhere. On the New York Times bestseller list, in People magazine, even on a TV couch or two.

  And now he was here. In my cabin. Neither of us had moved from the little hallway by the door. It smelled of wood and old rugs.

  “I read your book,” I said.

  He looked happy, but also a little embarrassed.

  “It was like hearing you speak again, after all these years,” I continued. “I could hear your voice in the anecdotes about rocks. It was almost like being there with you, despite everything.”

  “Henny…”

  I moved deeper inside the cabin. Confusion made me sound briskly efficient. “Kitchen,” I said. “Stovetop, refrigerator, silverware in this drawer, pots and frying pan in this cupboard. There’s some tea and coffee. Bedroom in here.” I quickly skipped over that. “Bathroom.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. It seemed darker than I remembered, though maybe that was just due to the contrast with his new silvery strands. It was messily overgrown, too. I instinctively reached out to smooth it, but I realized I no longer had the right to touch him.

  I cleared my throat in embarrassment. “Hand towels,” I said. “Just let us know if you need any more.”

  “I wondered whether you’d still be here,” he said.

  I looked up at him in surprise. “Where else would I be?”

  “It’s a big world, Henny.”

  “Not for me.”

  As I moved past him, he instinctively reached for my arm. I gasped. My entire body was intensely focused on that patch of skin beneath his fingers.

  “Did you ever think about leaving?” he asked.

  “No.”

  A lie.

  “Did you ever think about coming back?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was telling the truth.

  “I have to get back to the reception desk,” I said.

  He dropped my arm. Without thinking, I touched the place his hand had been resting. My skin felt hot, like a burn mark of longing.

  When I reached the front door, I paused. Turned around. He was still standing in the same place.

  “Do you ever feel like life went…wrong?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  The truth this time.

  Chapter 6

  Tree Terror on Elm Street

  “His car is still gone, but surely he’ll have to come back. His stuff is still here. I could see his bags through the window. And the rocks. He’d never leave without those,” I say.

  I’m sitting in the passenger seat beside MacKenzie. Michael has been gone for over three hours now, and I’ve spent the whole time wandering back and forth between the cabin and reception. When I saw MacKenzie going out to her car, I followed her. I desperately wanted a distraction, anything to avoid having to think about the look on Michael’s face.

  It doesn’t work. As we drive toward town, I can still see that look clearly. It seems much more real than the sunshine and the trees around us.

  “He has to stay,” I say. “He can’t just leave. I’m going to fix this mess. I can, can’t I?” And then: “MacKenzie…has your shirt been ironed?”

  Yes, it has. It’s also white. I didn’t even know she owned a white shirt. Her fingers anxiously drum the wheel.

  She parks outside the grocery store in Pine Creek and grabs a bunch of flowers at random from the bucket outside. It’s a pathetic little bouquet, drowning in cellophane, but she doesn’t seem to have noticed.

  Her face is still expressionless, her eyes blank, and she barely seems to recognize the pastor from Dad’s church, even when she almost walks straight into him.

  I think the pastor means well when he pays his condolences and says that I’m in God’s hands now, but it makes me want to lie down on the ground and kick and scream like a three-year-old. In God’s hands? In God’s hands? I’m right here, damn it! In Pine Creek! I’m not in anyone’s hands, I’ll have you know!

  Then I feel bad. He means well. I like the pastor. He’s always been on our side. But I don’t think he should have said those things to MacKenzie. He knows what she’s been through when it comes to God.

  “It’s easy to doubt God’s existence in moments like this,” the pastor says in his warm, kind voice, “but these are precisely the moments when we need Him…”

  “Oh, I’ve been sure that God exists for years now,” MacKenzie interrupts.

  Something about her tone of voice makes the pastor’s eyes dart nervously.

  “This whole thing with Henny has just reinforced that.”

  “Oh, well…”

  “It’s just that I’m also pretty damn sure he’s a jerk.”

  “Don’t you think…”

  “The same way I’ve never liked Santa. If he exists, he gives more presents to the rich kids.”

  “I don’t really think it’s quite the same…” the pastor begins.

  “Of course it’s not the same. No one abuses or harasses anyone in Santa’s name. That’s one thing we can’t accuse him of.”

  And on that parting shot, MacKenzie storms off toward her car.

  “She didn’t mean it!” I shout over my shoulder, hurrying after her. “I think. Maybe. And I really do hope God exists, because I could do with a miracle right now.”

  MacKenzie pauses, holding the flowers over a trash can, but eventually she opens the car door and tosses them onto the passenger seat. I squeeze in between the bouquet and the door.

  I think MacKenzie could do with a miracle, too, because by the time she turns off onto Water Street, where Dad lives, she has started talking to herself.

  “I’m sorry about…” she says. “Mr. Broek, I’m so sorry…” She even tries out a hesitant: “Robert…?”

  She pulls up outside Dad’s house, slams the car door a little too hard, and winces guiltily. Then she leans in through the open window and grabs the flowers. She keeps them half-hidden behind her back, as though she already regrets both the bouquet and her own presence.

  But she’s come this far. She knocks on the door.

  Nothing happens.

  She knocks again. Louder this time. No one answers, but both MacKenzie and I see the kitchen curtains stir.

  “Mr. Broek?” she sa
ys loudly. “Robert?”

  This time, the only effect is that the neighbors’ curtains start twitching, too. When one of them sticks their head out the window, MacKenzie quickly returns to her car. I barely have time to jump in after her before she tears away in relief.

  I instinctively grab her arm, even though I know she won’t feel it. “The pastor,” I say. “The funeral. Dad. My body. That’s what I should have been focusing on. I won’t be able to fix anything until I find my body.”

  The only problem is that I have no idea where they keep dead bodies around here, and it’s not like I can just Google it. Still, Dad will have to plan my funeral at some point, and my body will have to be transferred to the funeral parlor. If he would just arrange to view the body, I could follow him over there and then…well, then I have no idea what I would do. But it’s a start. It’s something. And who knows, maybe I’ll have some kind of realization or revelation when I see it. Me. When I see myself.

  MacKenzie pulls up outside Hank’s Restaurant, but only long enough to wind down the window and hold out the flowers to one of the old men sitting outside.

  He takes the bouquet out of sheer surprise, but also feels obliged to point out that he’s married.

  “So give them to your wife,” MacKenzie tells him.

  “The shock would kill her,” the old man replies.

  MacKenzie pulls away, but I don’t go with her. I’m still outside Hank’s, frozen to the spot and staring at a four-wheel-drive Hyundai parked a couple of blocks down Main Street.

  Michael’s car.

  He is standing with his back to me, looking down the street.

  It doesn’t matter that he can’t hear me. I have to say something, explain that I’m still here and that nothing has changed and that I’m going to sort all this out. I’ll tell him how much the weekend meant to me, how I don’t want it to end, how he has to stay…

  “We’ve got elms now!” I blurt out.

  Great, Henny, I think.

  But it is true. Nowadays, the elms flank the street from the crossing by Hank’s Restaurant all the way to the pretty, traditional sign on the edge of town: Welcome to Pine Creek. The leaves have just started to turn red and yellow, and proud American flags flutter between each of them, reaching right up to the treetops.

  That is: shoulder height.

  “They never really got any higher,” I say. “No matter what the town tried to do. I guess they just never really…took. But by that time, they’d already changed the name of the street.”

  The elms make everything else look disproportionately big—the neighboring buildings towering toward the sky and the mountains grazing the clouds in the distance. The bike leaning against one of the trees must belong to a giant.

  “The Pine Creek Gazette called it ‘Tree Terror on Elm Street,’” I say. “But I think they’re cute. Like some kind of hybrid tree-bush.”

  I’ve finally managed to find him, and I’m blabbering about trees?

  “A lot has changed since you left. Bittersweet Café closed. The hardware store on Oak Street is an attorney’s office. They specialize in bankruptcy. There are two new secondhand stores on Woodland Street.”

  And then I say: “Michael…” I don’t sound anywhere near as cool and indifferent as I had hoped, but he finally turns around.

  His face is as grief-stricken and gray as MacKenzie’s. His skin seems thinner, almost transparent, as though life has managed to wear him down in just a few hours. His eyes are completely empty. It’s the first time he has ever looked at me without a smile in his eyes.

  “Michael,” I say.

  He walks straight past me into Hank’s and slumps exhaustedly onto a chair by the bar. The old man with MacKenzie’s bouquet is sitting a few seats away. Next to him is a cold cup of coffee.

  Long before our time, Hank’s Restaurant was a café. His wife had thought that was more fitting than anything else, and though it’s a long time since she left both Hank and town, her influence remains: there are worn lace curtains in the windows, and the wooden tables in front of them are small and dainty, made for delicate coffee cups and tiny saucers rather than enormous hamburger plates. Above the counter, there are a couple of signed Ducks T-shirts. A serving hatch connects the main room with the kitchen—there are definitely no plans to let any squeamish guests see how the food is made here. Michael is smart enough to stick to coffee, though even that has its risks.

  “Michael, it’s not as bad as it seems,” I say desperately. “I mean, Hank’s coffee is. That hasn’t changed.”

  My attempt at a joke isn’t particularly successful.

  “But I’m not really gone. I’ll be back. I’m going to fix all this. Somehow.”

  I try placing a hand on his shoulder. It feels surprisingly intimate to be sitting so close to him, touching him so openly.

  His body has changed over the years. I told him that during our weekend together, and he said, “Be nice, Henny. I am fifteen years older.”

  But I hadn’t meant it like that, and he wasn’t really upset. He was still slim and nicely muscular.

  What I meant was that his body was more human now.

  In the past, he was a tense ball of restless, repressed energy. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he always seemed to think that his muscles and soul and brain were meant for more. More speed, more challenges, more movement. His body was never relaxed. Even when he slept, his arms and legs and hands would twitch.

  But not now. Now, he can sit perfectly still, not even drinking from the coffee cup in front of him, not paying the slightest bit of notice to the old man going on and on about the insults he has had to endure as a result of the bouquet.

  Michael lets the man’s words wash over him. When Hank and the old man aren’t looking, he closes his eyes as though he needs to summon all his energy just to sit quietly.

  “You can’t think I would leave you now that you’re finally back,” I say.

  I swallow.

  “I know we never decided anything about, you know, the future. What we were going to do, or anything like that. But what we had last weekend was magical and real. It was right. It should’ve happened a long time ago, and you know that, too.”

  I look down at my hands. Wring them in front of me. Just twenty-four hours ago, I could touch him, but now I can’t.

  I only have three of my senses left: I can see, I can hear, and I can smell. So, I breathe in the scent of him, his deodorant, familiar after three days together. There’s the cold leather of his jacket, too, and when I put my hand on his shoulder, I can almost pretend that it’s an ordinary afternoon, that we’re just grabbing a cup of coffee in town, chatting with a depressed old man at Hank’s.

  For a brief moment, I swear I can feel the warmth of his body. It fills me with a new sense of hope. My heart, my skin, the blood that used to flow through my veins—all that is probably in a morgue somewhere, but if I can still feel this… Surely it can’t be too late?

  Unless it’s a phantom attraction, that is. Like phantom pains in an amputated leg. Maybe I just haven’t realized that my heart has stopped beating.

  No. “I’m still here,” I say.

  “Is it too much to ask to be able to enjoy a cup of coffee and shoot the breeze with a few friends?” the old man asks. “What the hell am I going to do with these flowers? The wife’ll think I’ve been cheating on her.”

  “I’m going to find my body,” I say. “You just need to give me a little time. I need to search for the light and find my body and, well, fix all this. But I can’t do that if I’m constantly worrying about where you are or if you’re going to leave while I’m gone.”

  I study his face intensely, searching for some kind of sign. Something that lets me know he has understood, that some part of him can hear me, or that tells me what he is planning to do. But his face doesn’t reveal a thing.

 
“A couple of days,” I say in desperation. I try to tell myself that he has heard me. That we’re on the same page. He can’t leave until then.

  “Hold on a second,” says Hank. “Aren’t you Michael Callahan? Derek’s little brother?”

  He fills Michael’s coffee, even though he has only taken a couple of sips.

  The old man pulls a sympathetic face. “Take it easy with the coffee, Hank,” he says. “We don’t know how much the boy can handle.”

  “What brings you back to these parts?” Hank asks.

  Michael shrugs. “I was just passing through.”

  “You staying out at the motel? I guess the place is okay for a few days, if you just need a place to crash.” He leans forward. “Did you know the place is run by two dy—”

  “I knew Henny,” Michael interrupts.

  “Right, right. Sad business. But still.”

  The old man studies Michael. “Condolences,” he says. “Don’t suppose you’d want a bunch of flowers as comfort?”

  Chapter 7

  A Tiny Piece of Oregon

  After Michael checked in, I spent the whole afternoon pacing restlessly around the reception desk.

  It was impossible to think about anything else.

  Michael, my Michael, was only a few hundred yards away.

  Don’t be stupid, I said to myself. He left you. Fifteen years ago, he vanished without even saying goodbye! He probably hasn’t missed you or anything else in Pine Creek.

  But I couldn’t stay still, and I couldn’t be sensible. Being holed up in the reception area only made things worse. I was standing behind the check-in counter. Behind me was our small, always chaotic office, and ahead of me were the same things I looked at every day: carpeted floor—reasonably clean, reassuring guests that the sheets may be, too—and an old sofa by one of the walls—seldom used, put there for appearance’s sake, to create the illusion that we might sometimes actually get a line of customers checking in at the same time, and that some of them might want to sit down while waiting. The entire room was familiar and safe and suddenly so very boring.