Over in check-in, Michael, Camila, and MacKenzie have nothing to do.
I’m doing my best to keep their morale up. “It’s not the same as last time,” I say. “These people aren’t even from town. They’ll get bored eventually.”
Camila is sitting primly behind the desk, ready for someone to check in. MacKenzie is stretched out on the couch, staring up at the strip lights on the ceiling.
“The main thing is that we’re here together,” I say. “We were already becoming happier. This is just a temporary disruption. We’ll have to…uh, come up with something.”
Michael walks over to the doors. “How long can we survive?” he asks.
“We’ve had dead periods before,” MacKenzie tells him from the couch.
“We can hold out a while yet,” says Camila. “But I really hope we get some paying guests soon. And that they stay all night.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” MacKenzie announces. “We’ll just have to start drugging them. We can ask Dolores to slip some sleeping pills into their dinner, and then they’ll be out like a light all night.”
“We need to get them to stop here first,” says Michael.
The strip lights hum. The protesters outside start up a chant. Cars drive by.
Suddenly, the phone rings.
Camila jolts and stares at it. I don’t think she can bring herself to have yet another unpleasant conversation.
MacKenzie jumps up from the couch and moves over to her, places a hand on her shoulder, and answers.
“Welcome to Pine Away Motel,” she says, winking at Camila. “For death threats, please press one. For general messages about burning in hell, press two. For prank calls, press three. To make a reservation at the motel that never sleeps, press four.”
Camila shakes her head, but she smiles all the same.
“Weird,” says MacKenzie. “They hung up.”
The phone rings again almost immediately. “Okay, okay,” she says before Camila even has time to speak. This time, she answers normally.
MacKenzie stands up straight, practically to attention. “Yes, ma’am,” she says once the woman on the phone finally stops speaking. “No, ma’am. Of course not. Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry about that. How many people? No, no, that’s no problem at all. When? Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything. It’ll be an honor. I just need to take your name and contact details, and a credit card number to process the reservation.” She types everything into the reservation system with the phone clamped between her shoulder and her ear.
When she eventually hangs up, she says, “Someone called Mrs. Davies just booked nineteen rooms. For twenty-three people. Including dinner. The day after tomorrow.”
“Nineteen rooms!” Camila blurts out. “That should keep us afloat. And Dolores will be happy to get cooking again.”
“Do you think… Could it have been a prank call?” Michael asks.
“If it was, it’s the best one I ever heard. She sounded exactly like a tough, lively old woman. Not someone who would lower herself to joking.” MacKenzie makes a face. “She actually had quite a bit to say about my joke.”
“I don’t want to be the pessimist here,” says Michael. “But what should we do about the protesters?”
“Damn it,” MacKenzie mutters. She peers out through the window as though she’s hoping they will have magically disappeared. They haven’t. “Maybe we can drug them instead? Take them some coffee laced with sleeping pills? Because Mrs. Davies is going to have a perfect stay with us.”
“They won’t have gone by then.”
“You can barely even hear them anymore.”
Unfortunately, just as the words leave her lips, they start chanting “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” in unison, like some kind of Christian cheer squad.
Camila looks resigned. “We’ll have to warn her, at the very least. They can’t turn up here expecting a calm, peaceful stay.”
MacKenzie still looks bullishly stubborn, but she eventually reaches for the phone.
“Mrs. Davies—” She starts so pluckily, but is quickly interrupted. “No, no, there’s no problem with the reservation. Or rather…” She sighs. “I need to be completely honest with you. We’re having some problems with protesters at the moment. Protesters, yes. They’re much quieter now, and the sheriff has told them they need to leave by nine every evening, and… Yes, of course. I understand. Very good. Well, all right, then.”
She hangs up and blinks in confusion. “She already knew about them. She said she’d read the articles.”
“And? What did she say?”
“She said that if you start listening to crazy people, you’ll be in trouble. She never lets anyone dictate what she can or can’t do. She said she stopped listening to people several years ago.”
“So…?”
“She’s coming. Her and twenty or so of her closest relatives.”
* * *
At four in the morning, the motel is completely deserted. The lonely streetlights cast a faint glow over their limited territory, but that makes everything around them seem even more desolate. The protesters are long gone for the night.
Aren’t they…?
I freeze. A faint beam of light suddenly spills out of the restaurant.
At first, I’m not even sure what I’m seeing. The restaurant is still dark and empty, but the darkness inside is different, grayer than the night outside. It’s the kitchen, I think. Someone has turned on one of the lights in the kitchen, but not the restaurant itself.
They’re back!
My first instinct is to try to wake Michael, but once I’ve dismissed that, I feel surprisingly calm. I’ll investigate on my own, and if it’s the protesters, I’ll come up with some way of stopping them or warning the others.
I creep through the walls and down the narrow corridor behind the restaurant. The radiators and pipes are clanking, but I don’t notice any unusual sounds, not until I come closer to the kitchen door.
As I approach, I hear quiet footsteps slowly moving forward. They belong to someone trying not to be heard.
All right, Henny, I think as I press myself against the wall. It’s not like they can do anything to you. You’re dead, remember.
With that, I throw myself through the door.
I stop dead.
“Dad?” I blurt out, like an idiot.
It is actually, unbelievably, him. He is wearing a pair of freshly pressed suit pants and his old apron. One of his favorite recipe books is on the otherwise empty countertop. He’s had it all my life.
“What are you doing?” I ask as he turns and tiptoes back out of the kitchen. He leaves the door unlocked, and looks incredibly guilty as he does so. He glances over his shoulder before sneaking up the stairs toward the rooms.
It’s cold, dark, and damp. The frost on the metal railing glitters in the dim glow of the night lights outside the rooms. But Dad is warm. Before stepping out, he puts on Stacey’s bright-red coat and the crazy knitted mittens. He wraps the scarf she gave him around his neck, before sneaking outside toward the rooms. He glances around again, listening for signs that someone is awake. Then he leans in to Stacey’s door and knocks quietly.
So quietly that Stacey doesn’t even hear. It’s four in the morning. She’s asleep, for God’s sake, I think.
Dad hesitates. Knocks again. Leans in even closer to the door. “Mrs. Callahan?” he says. “Excuse me, Mrs. Callahan?”
He casts panicked glances all around him. We don’t have any other guests right now, so I’m not sure who he thinks is going to hear him.
Dad looks increasingly nervous, but then the door opens.
“What the hell?” Stacey mumbles. She is wearing a huge T-shirt that reaches almost all the way to her knees. And then, sounding drowsy and confused, she says, “You’re wearing my coat.”
“Mrs. Callahan
?”
“Stacey. Mrs. Callahan is my mother-in-law.”
“Come with me.”
She frowns. Pained. “What time is it?” she asks in a flat voice.
“Four. You need to come now.”
Stacey is too tired to protest. She opens the door and takes two disoriented steps out into the night. “Jesus, it’s cold!” she says.
“Uh…” Dad looks away. “Maybe you should get dressed first?”
Stacey looks down at her bare legs, then turns around and reappears five minutes later, wearing jeans and boots and a coat, not that she seems much happier for it. Dad walks ahead of her with quick, silent footsteps, and Stacey mutters to herself.
“This better be really goddamn important,” she says. “To get me up at this ungodly hour. Who wakes someone up at four in the morning?”
“Shh!” Dad whispers desperately. “Just follow me. And be quiet.”
“Why do we have to tiptoe around? What have you done?”
“I haven’t done anything,” Dad snaps.
They take the back route into the kitchen.
“Surely the restaurant’s closed?” Stacey asks.
Dad doesn’t reply. He cautiously opens the door and pushes Stacey inside. He tries to pretend that everything is normal, but it still takes him several seconds to turn on the light, and as the fluorescent bulb hums and clicks into life, he winces guiltily.
“Mr. Broek, did you break in to the kitchen?”
“Of course I didn’t!”
“Did you steal the keys?”
“I borrowed them.”
Stacey laughs, suddenly looking much more alert. “I underestimated you, Mr. Broek.”
“Call me Robert. And keep your voice down.”
On one of the kitchen tables, I can see number of items. Flour, sugar, cinnamon. A glass pie dish. Eight glossy Granny Smith apples. A rolling pin and a knife.
“It’s time for you to learn how to make an apple pie,” Dad tells her. “A traditional American apple pie. All we need to do is follow the instructions in this book. I took the liberty of sneaking ba… of going home to pick up my apron and my old recipe book. We can’t fail with that.”
Stacey seems frozen to the spot in front of the counter. To me, the ingredients look lonely and abandoned, but Stacey is staring at them as if she wants to make sure it isn’t all a mirage.
“It… I…” she stutters.
“No, no, don’t cry!” Dad sounds horrified.
“I never cry,” Stacey says, stubbornly raising her chin. But her eyes do look suspiciously glossy. “It’s just that no one has ever done anything like this for me before. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Coffee?” Dad asks, pointing to a thermos.
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“Planning is important,” he tells her, looking very pleased with himself. Stacey steps forward and wraps both arms around him.
“Thank you, Mr. Broek,” she says.
“Do you want to bake or not?” Dad mutters. His cheeks are flushed.
* * *
Dad provides Stacey with a constant stream of instructions—peel and core the apples, cut them into inch-thick slices; make sure they’re even, otherwise they won’t cook at the same speed—and Stacey follows them all with heart-warming care. She doesn’t even mind him leaning over her shoulder, correcting everything she does.
“Aren’t you going to help?” she jokes at one point, but Dad is deadly serious when he answers:
“How are you ever supposed to learn if you don’t do the job yourself?”
With that, he gives her more instructions. “Turn on the oven. Mix the flour, sugar, and butter. Now we’ll put it in the refrigerator for a while, to rest. At least thirty minutes. We could really have done this in advance, but it doesn’t hurt if it rests a little longer.”
Stacey yawns. Dad pours two cups of coffee and then continues his lecture: “You want firm apples; otherwise, they go mushy. Slightly acidic, too. As you can see, it’s all right here in the recipe book. It’s just a case of following the instructions.”
“How do you know how to bake?”
“I had to learn when Henny’s mother died.”
“I’m sorry,” Stacey says. “About your wife, I mean. And Henny. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner. I never know what you’re supposed to say in situations like that.”
“No one does.”
“It must’ve been hard. Suddenly having to do everything on your own.”
“You deal with the things you have to deal with.”
“And you dealt with them fantastically,” I reassure him.
“Maybe,” Stacey says. “But it can still feel hard.”
“As long as you follow the rules, you survive. It’s just like cooking.” He bends down to see whether the oven is starting to heat up.
Dad might never have been someone who knew how to express his love, I think, but he showed it in other ways. I never wanted for anything while I was growing up. And he taught me how to make apple pie.
“I’ve never noticed that,” Stacey says. She pops a slice of apple into her mouth when Dad isn’t looking.
“What do you mean?”
“That you survive if you follow the rules. It might work with a recipe book, but the rules in life are so vague. And contradictory. No one tells you about them in advance. You just hear about them once you’ve broken them.”
“But then you know for the next time!”
“Maybe. Unless they’ve changed. And it makes no difference whether you do everything right. People won’t forget who you were.”
Talking about his favorite subject seems to have reinvigorated him. “It isn’t about doing everything right! It’s about not doing things wrong!”
“It’s impossible never to do things wrong.”
Dad looks like his entire worldview has just been questioned. “But…” he says. “It must be possible. What do people have to strive for otherwise?”
“I don’t know. I guess maybe you could try to be happy?”
“Happy! How are you supposed to know if you’re happy?”
“I think the idea is that you feel it,” Stacey hesitantly replies. I’m not convinced she believes in happiness, either.
“That seems incredibly naive,” Dad says. “And then what? You’re happy. That just means a new catastrophe is going to hit you soon, and what are you going to cling to then? No. Order. Rules and instructions. Never do anything wrong. Those are the constants in life. Cut the other end of the pastry now. In long strips, roughly two inches wide.”
Stacey leans forward over the bench and slowly but surely cuts the pastry.
“Add the apple. More in the middle, so it’s like a little mound. Add some butter, that’ll make it juicier. And then we cover it with the strips. A cross pattern, a lattice…under, then over.”
As I watch Dad with Stacey, I realize for the first time how lonely it must have been for him when I moved to the motel. I never thought about it at the time. He was so stuck in his ways and focused on everything being done just how he liked it that I occasionally thought he might actually have been relieved when I moved out. It meant he could do the washing up the way he wanted, if nothing else, and there would never be any plates in the wrong place on the dining table.
But the more pedantic he became, the more I should have been there to disrupt him. People can get caught up in their own minds if they aren’t careful. And if there is one thing that death has taught me, it’s that life doesn’t care about how desperately we try to control it. You can do everything perfectly and still collide with a truck.
Though maybe I was much too orderly myself to really shake him up.
I smile. Stacey will probably do the job.
Right now, she is deep in concentration. She carefully lifts
a strip of pastry dough and plaits it with the next one. “You’ve never thought about just…not trying?” she asks. “Ignoring their unwritten rules and regulations?”
“Society needs rules and norms.”
“But they still talk about you, even though you’ve done everything right. Aren’t you tempted to just ignore people’s expectations? I think there’s a sense of freedom in already having disappointed everyone. After that, there’s nothing they can do to you. Be a little crazy. Tell people what you really think of them. Shock them.”
“But I don’t know how to shock someone,” Dad confesses.
Stacey pats him on the arm. “That’s something I can teach you,” she says. “I actually don’t know how to do anything else. When do we get to eat the pie?”
“It needs about an hour in the oven, but we’ll have to lower the temperature after thirty minutes.”
“An hour!”
But Stacey doesn’t seem to have anything against waiting. Her nose is practically pressed against the oven door. “That there’s my pie!” she says. “I made it!”
“Of course you did.”
“Is it almost ready?”
* * *
While the pie bakes, they clear up after themselves. Wash up. Dry off. Put away. Then they sit in the dark restaurant, drinking coffee and eating apple pie in comfortable silence. Outside, dawn breaks—another fantastic sunrise to add to my collection. Light slowly conquers the road and the parking lot, until eventually the restaurant is bathed in sunlight.
Dolores is a little late, I think. She should have started preparing by now, though I suppose she has plenty of time to do it during the day at the moment.
A car pulls up in the parking lot. A weary man climbs out and stretches with a yawn. He looks like he has been driving all night. He must have spotted Dad and Stacey in the restaurant and assumed we were already open. The protesters haven’t even showed up yet.
“Is that…?” Stacey asks.
“What will they think when they see us sitting here with the lights out, ignoring them and eating pie?” Dad asks. “What will Dolores think when she finds out?”
He seems to be wondering whether his dignity can handle hiding beneath the table.
Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC) Page 33