No Vacancy

by Tziporah Cohen

  NO VACANCY

  NO VACANCY

  ———

  Tziporah Cohen

  Groundwood Books

  House of Anansi Press

  Toronto / Berkeley

  Copyright © 2020 by Tziporah Cohen

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2020 by Groundwood Books

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright

  Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license,

  visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  We gratefully acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing

  program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and

  the Government of Canada.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: No vacancy / Tziporah Cohen.

  Names: Cohen, Tziporah, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190229950 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190229969 | ISBN 9781773064109 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781773064116 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781773064123 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS8605.O3788 N62 2020 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  Design by Michael Solomon

  Illustration by Sam Kalda

  For Max, Dalit and Adina

  1

  ——

  Town of Greenvale

  Population 510

  The green road sign goes by so fast I’m not even sure I read it right.

  “Seriously?” I say. “Did that sign say Population 510?” There are practically more people than that on the block where we live.

  Where we used to live.

  “What sign?” says Dad.

  “I need to pee again,” I say. I weaseled a Coke out of Dad at the last rest stop and now I’m paying the price.

  “We’ll be there in two minutes,” Mom says as Dad turns off the highway onto a service road. It’s the first thing she’s said in about a hundred miles.

  Dad turns down a tree-lined street and then another and stops suddenly in front of another sign. Sammy is asleep in his car seat. I tickle his feet through his socks, and his eyelids flutter but he doesn’t wake up.

  This sign is a faded yellow with The Jewel Motor Inn painted in red letters with a black outline. Some of the paint has worn off and the wood underneath shows through. The weeds under the sign are tall enough to tickle the bottom of the J.

  On the top someone has taped a smaller sign made of cardboard: Closed. Reopening Monday, July 6.

  Today is Monday, June 29.

  Dad turns into the entrance and stops halfway into the parking lot next to a little playground that’s really just two busted swings and one of those painted metal horses on a giant spring from the olden days. There’s a sandbox, though even from the car I can see it’s full of weeds and garbage.

  The playground around the corner from our old apartment in the middle of the city is bigger than this one. A lot bigger.

  Dad parks in front of a two-story building the color of dried mustard. Mom sighs and he leans over to give her a kiss.

  “Here’s to new beginnings,” he says. Mom sighs again. I don’t think she likes new beginnings.

  Seeing the Jewel Motor Inn up close, I’m not sure I do either. Though it’s not like I have a choice. After Dad lost his job, we had to give up our apartment and now my two best friends will be five hours away and having a new beginning without me.

  Dad gives me a big smile — the kind adults give you when they’re trying to make you feel something they don’t.

  “Welcome home,” he says.

  Mom and Dad get out of the car and tell me to stay with Sammy, who is still sound asleep, his head tilted to one side and his lips pursed like he’s dreaming about kissing, even though he’s only two and a half years old.

  I open my door and stand next to the car so I can get a better look at my new home. The hot, muggy air outside feels like the air in the city but smells different. Greener, I guess.

  On the first floor, right in front of our parking spot, is a glass door with Reception painted on it in faded letters. There are two big planters on either side of the door filled with dried-out brown plants.

  Mom comes out the door. A bell jingles when it opens. She reaches into the car and grabs her phone.

  “I have to pee,” I tell her.

  “Stay with Sammy, please, Miriam,” Mom says. She shuts the car door too hard and Sammy wakes up.

  “Out,” he says, rubbing his eyes and looking at me. “Out.”

  I reach over and squeeze his chubby little hand three times for “I love you,” like Grandma taught me when I was little. When I unbuckle him he climbs into the front seat and pretends to drive. I scramble into the passenger seat to make sure he doesn’t honk the horn.

  He’s lucky. He’s too young to have real friends to leave behind. He didn’t care about leaving his room or his school or his favorite teacher. His whole world is still with him.

  “Come, Sammy.” He grabs my hand and we head into Reception just as Mom and Dad come out. I peek behind them. The room is empty.

  “Where are the people who are supposed to show us everything?” I ask.

  “No one’s here,” Dad says, frowning. “They left.”

  Mom starts taking things out of the trunk: Sammy’s stroller, a cooler of sandwiches and snacks, two small suitcases for me and Sammy and a big one for her and Dad. The rest of our stuff is coming later in a truck.

  “They left?” I’m confused. The previous owners were supposed to stay here with us for a week and teach us everything about running a motel.

  Mom slams the trunk hard. Sammy lets go of my hand and starts to run out into the parking lot. Dad grabs him and holds him upside down and tickles the part of his belly sticking out over his diaper.

  His giggle is the only sound for what seems like a million years.

  Dad stays in the parking lot, yelling at someone on his cell phone, while Sammy and I follow Mom back into Reception. I can smell chlorine, and it reminds me of the Y back home where Lekha had her birthday party last month. I still haven’t totally forgiven her for having a pool party when she knew how I felt about water. I ended up helping her mom set up for the cake while everyone was splashing around and having fun.

  I follow Mom around the high counter, taking in the computer behind it. There’s a desk against the back wall and next to it a closed door with a sign that says Office. And next to that there’s a bathroom, thank God.

  Back home, my best friends, Dahlia and Lekha, and I have a public bathroom rating system. Most of the bathrooms in the city are a one or two out of ten, usually tiny and dirty and smelly, with toilet paper on the floor and paper towel dispensers that are empty or jammed. Then there are the ones in fancy restaurants, the ones we go to for special occasions, which get an eight or a nine because they’re big, with art on the walls and automatic faucets and blasting hand dryers that actually dry your hands instead of just moving the water around.

  This bathroom? I give it a four because it’s clean, but it’s still tiny, and the toilet seat is chipped. And the soap dispenser is filled with bright pink liquid that looks like diarrhea medicine.

  When I come out, Sammy’s climbing onto one of the two old couches that face each other in the middle of the room, a scratched-up coffee table between them.

  “Mi-wam,” he calls to me.

&
nbsp; The couches are greenish brown with frayed edges and there’s a rip down the back of one of them. I try not to think about the dirt and sit down, and Sammy snuggles against me until he spies the display stand near the front door. It’s filled with colorful pamphlets, the only thing in the room that’s not dull and dreary.

  Sammy toddles right over and starts pulling them out one by one and dropping them on the floor. I pick them up and try to put them back into their slots but he is way faster than I am so I give up and look at them instead. Crystal Caverns, says one, with photos of a huge cave filled with shiny rock icicles that hang from the ceiling. It’s magical.

  I find a booklet called Places to Stay in the Finger Lakes Region. I look inside but the Jewel Motor Inn isn’t listed.

  At the very top of the display, too high for Sammy to reach, there’s an ad for Mabel’s Diner, which is right next door to the Jewel. The ad says that kids ten and under eat breakfast free and that there are unlimited coffee refills.

  Since I just turned eleven and hate even the smell of coffee, I’m not impressed.

  Sammy grabs another pamphlet and hands it to me. There’s a map of upstate New York on one side and a map of Greenvale on the other. He heads for a door on the far side of the room across from the desk, which says Pool. That explains the chlorine smell. I can see the water through the grimy glass. Just the sight of it makes my heart beat faster.

  I scoop Sammy up. He squirms and says, “Dow, dow,” but I hold onto him tight.

  “How are we going to know what to do if the last owners aren’t here to show us?” I ask.

  “Not a good time for questions, Miriam,” says Mom, rubbing the scar on her palm — something she does when she’s stressed. She searches for something behind the counter as the bell jingles and Dad comes in.

  Before they decided to move here, my parents had a big fight right in front of me. Mom said that a week wasn’t nearly enough, that running a motel wasn’t something you picked up overnight. She said it was a whole new skill set, and that some people went to college for four years to learn how to do it.

  “It’s not the Ritz-Carlton,” Dad said to her then. “It’s just answering the phone and cleaning up after people. How hard could that be?”

  That made Mom stomp off talking to herself about marketing and supply inventory and cash flow and about how no one could even clean up after themselves in our apartment in New York City. She didn’t talk to Dad the whole rest of that day.

  But then he did his magic with her, and they made up, and here we are.

  Mom gives Dad the eyes of death. The magic has clearly worn off. She comes out from behind the counter holding up a small plastic card.

  “Let’s get your suitcase and go see your room,” she says to me. “Room 109.”

  Room 109. The room I’ll share with Sammy.

  Because as of today, I — Miriam Brockman, formerly of New York City — live in a motel in Greenvale, New York.

  Population 514.

  2

  ——

  We have to go outside to get to Room 109, which is kind of weird. Apparently that’s what makes this a motel and not a hotel, where you get to the rooms from the inside. Here you can just drive your car right up to the door of your room, like you’re in a rush to get in.

  Which seems unlikely, given what I’ve seen so far.

  Room 109 is almost at the end of the strip. Room 110, which Mom says will be for her and Dad, is at the end.

  Mom shows me how to stick the key card into the slot on the door. When the red light above the slot turns green, she pushes and the door opens with a click.

  “Surprisingly modern,” she says, chuckling. It’s good to hear her laugh.

  The smell hits me before anything else: a mix of wet dog, old sneakers and the stuff Dad uses to get stains out of the rug at home. The room is so dark I can’t see a thing.

  I flip the light switch and the ceiling light goes on, but that hardly makes a difference.

  Mom pulls aside the thick brown curtains. Light pours in.

  “That’s better,” she says. “What do you think?”

  I stayed in a hotel once when I was eight and Grandma took me to Disney World. The room we stayed in was huge, with big tall beds that I practically needed a ladder to climb into. Those beds were clouds, with piles of marshmallow pillows. That room had thick, squishy carpet that made my feet feel like king and queen of the floor. The bathroom was practically as big as my bedroom back home, and next to the sink were little lavender soaps that looked and smelled like flowers.

  And the towels? They were the biggest, softest towels you can imagine.

  That bathroom was a definite ten. Maybe even an eleven.

  In Room 109, the only thing that squishes under my feet is a wadded-up tissue that someone left on the floor. The carpet feels hard and thin under my sandals and there are only two pillows — one on each bed — and they’re as flat as peppermint patties. There are soaps in the bathroom but they’re just boring rectangles covered in white paper and don’t have any smell at all.

  I put a towel to my face. Scratchy.

  I give the bathroom a five since there’s a bathtub, at least.

  “Look,” says Mom, showing me the door that connects this room to theirs. Their room has one big bed in it instead of two. Mom says I can leave the door open, to make it feel like one apartment, or close it when I want some privacy.

  “Privacy,” I say, and close it, even though Mom is in the room with us.

  Sammy wants it open.

  “No pi-cy,” he shouts, running back and forth between the two rooms, crashing from one bed to the other.

  “Ice bucket!” Mom says, holding up an orange plastic container. “There’s an ice machine at the end of the strip.”

  As if that’s supposed to make everything better.

  I sit on the end of the bed by the window — which I’ve already decided will be my bed — and stare at the dust in the sunbeams. The dust doesn’t dance around like normal dust. This dust just hangs there, like it’s stuck.

  The window won’t open for me no matter how hard I try. Mom fights with it until she gets it unstuck.

  I stare through the grimy screen at the parking lot, empty except for our car. It’s not the New York skyline, that’s for sure.

  “I’ll take Sammy for a bit,” says Mom. “You can unpack your things and when you find your mezuzah we’ll put it on the door. Make it feel a little more like home.”

  Like home? Yeah, right.

  Mom takes Sammy through the connecting door into Room 110. The door to the outside is still open, hopefully letting in more fresh air.

  I throw myself down on the bed, which squeaks like some kind of giant mouse, and stare at the walls, which are painted a color that is sort of halfway between macaroni and cheese and rotting bananas. There are darker rectangles on the wall above each bed, where some art must have hung once.

  Then I notice the TV on the dresser. A TV in my room!

  Back in our apartment, we had one TV, in the living room where Mom and Dad could see what I was watching. TVs were one hundred percent not allowed in the bedroom.

  I grab the remote from the bedside table. I flip through what turns out to be three channels: news, a soap opera and baby cartoons. No cable or Netflix.

  I sigh. At least Sammy will have something to watch.

  I pull out the photos that I stuck in the outside pocket of my suitcase. There’s one of me and Dahlia and Lekha at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, wearing pom-pom hats, our arms around each other’s shoulders. The three of us are making faces at the camera. I push it into the corner of the frame of the cracked mirror that sits on the dresser at the front of the room. I want to call them and tell them what a dump the Jewel Motor Inn is, but Lekha’s at sleepaway camp with no phone and Dahlia’s staying with her grandparents in
Israel for most of the summer and I don’t know their number.

  Dahlia and I are practically the only kids in all of Manhattan that don’t have their own cell phones.

  Were. I keep forgetting I don’t live there anymore.

  I rummage through my suitcase looking for the piece of paper where I wrote Lekha’s camp address and find my mezuzah tucked next to it. I turn the pretty metal case over in my hand and lift the flap to see the piece of parchment inside, where there are words written from the Torah that Jews are supposed to put on the doorposts in their homes. I stick it back in the suitcase and take out Lekha’s address.

  When I leave the room to go see if Dad has any paper I can use for a letter, the door closes behind me with a loud click and the red light turns back on. I try the handle but the door is locked shut and the key card is inside.

  A mezuzah won’t be nearly enough to make this place feel like home.

  Dad gives me a pad of paper that says The Jewel Motor Inn at the top, then hands me my own key card for Room 109. He punches a hole in the corner and loops a rubber band into it so I can wear it around my wrist.

  Instead of unpacking or writing to Lekha, I lie down on the hard bed and study the stains and cracks on the ceiling, hoping to find one that’s in the shape of a rabbit, like in Madeline, my favorite book when I was little.

  There isn’t.

  I give up and get up to inspect the dresser. It has six drawers. I’m supposed to save two for Sammy’s stuff. That leaves four for me, which isn’t nearly enough. To make things worse, the top drawer on the left is stuck closed.

  I’m pulling on it when there’s a knock on the open door.

  “Hola!”

  The woman in the doorway is wearing jeans and a T-shirt. A ring of keys and a couple of key cards dangle from one hand. There’s a cross on a chain around her neck, made of a white stone that sparkles when the sun hits it from the window. It’s beautiful, like her.

  “Sorry,” I say, giving the drawer one last yank and turning toward her. “The motel doesn’t open until next week. We just got here.”