No Vacancy

by Tziporah Cohen

  But I am now officially halfway into the pool.

  Mom’s in Reception when we come out of the pool room and I tell her my news.

  She claps her hands and gives me a big hug even though I’m still in my wet bathing suit. “That’s amazing! You should do something fun to celebrate.”

  Which is perfect, because after I eat lunch, Anton finds me to say that he and his mother are going to Crystal Caverns at three o’clock. He invites me to come along. When I tell him that Kate is coming over he invites her too. When she gets here, Kate says she’s been to the caverns a hundred times but she’ll come anyway and I know it’s because she wants to hang out with Anton.

  I watch, curious, as Anton gets into the car.

  With the car door full open, he rolls his chair right up to the passenger seat and locks his brakes. He flips up the armrest and puts a board from one end on the car’s seat to the edge of the wheelchair seat, like a bridge. Then he grabs onto something inside the car that I can’t see and pulls himself across the board and into the car. Once he’s inside, he uses his hands to lift his legs into the car one at a time. He leans out and pops his chair’s brake handles, pushes the wheelchair out of the way, and closes the door.

  It’s like a dance.

  Kate and I sit in the back. Anton’s mother doesn’t say much. Anton told me earlier that they’ve gone to the drive-in two more times.

  What if there really was a miracle? I wonder what it would look like. Would it start with Anton moving his toes, and then his feet? Or would it happen all at once?

  Anton’s telling us about a book about spelunking — exploring caves — that he read for school last year, but I’m not really paying attention. I’m imagining him just standing up and walking across the room. What would he do first? Run and jump? Go grab a basketball? Dance?

  The parking lot at Crystal Caverns is almost full, but we get to park right near the entrance because Anton’s car has a special license plate. I start to tell him how lucky he is to always get a good parking spot, but then I realize how that sounds.

  Once Anton’s out of the car, we go into the gift shop where they sell the tour tickets. There are posters of the inside of the cave along the walls of the shop. Rock hangs like icicles from the ceilings and glistening pillars grow up from the floor.

  Anton’s mother buys the tickets while Anton, Kate and I look around. There are T-shirts and snow globes, and there’s a crate of smooth stones of every color that you can buy by the bag.

  But my favorite things are the geodes: big brown rocks that look ugly and boring from the outside but inside have beautiful purple, pink and white crystals.

  Some of the aisles are too narrow for Anton’s wheelchair, so I bring stuff over for him to see.

  When they call our tour, we head over to the back of the store where the guide, who looks like a high-school kid, is waiting. He looks at Anton and shakes his head.

  “No strollers or wheelchairs. There’s, like, two hundred stairs to get to the bottom.”

  “What?” says Anton’s mother, waving the Crystal Caverns pamphlet in her hand. “It says right here that the cave is wheelchair accessible.”

  The kid shrugs. “Elevator’s broken. The only way down right now is the stairs.”

  “Well, when will it be fixed?” Anton’s mother demands.

  “I don’t know. The boss says it’s too expensive and —”

  “Too expensive?” Anton’s mother’s voice is loud now and people turn to look at us. The kid squirms.

  Anton blows out a slow breath. “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “It’s not okay,” she says.

  They lock eyes for a few seconds and then she looks at me and Kate, then at the guide, and back to Anton, like she’s doing some kind of calculation in her head. Her eyes are flashing. It’s like someone put a new set of batteries in her.

  Anton turns to me and Kate. “You guys go see the cave. I’ll hang out up here. I need to pick out a present for my dad and sister anyway.”

  I didn’t even know he had a sister. Is his dad hoping for a miracle too?

  I search Anton’s face but either he’s not disappointed or he’s really good at hiding it. I do a calculation of my own and realize I want to see the cave with Anton more than I want to see the cave.

  “Nah,” I say. “Let’s just go back to the Jewel. Mrs. Whitley can always use help making pies these days. I bet you could help if you wanted.”

  “I have a better idea,” Anton says. “Let’s go swimming.”

  My stomach does flips. “Kate doesn’t have a bathing suit with her,” I say, giving her a look.

  “Can’t you lend her one?” Anton asks.

  “I don’t have an extra,” I say, but Kate’s shaking her head no anyway.

  “I promised I’d be home for dinner. Some cousin is visiting from somewhere.”

  “I’m not really in the mood for swimming,” I say. “And anyway, I was in the pool this morning.”

  “Aw, come on.” Anton says. “I haven’t been in the pool even once since we got here. And yes,” he says, seeing my expression, “I can swim.”

  I spend the drive back to the motel trying to figure out how not to go swimming, but in the end, I agree. There’s no way I’m going to tell him I’m afraid, when I have two good legs.

  Back in my room, I put on my bathing suit and pull my shorts and T-shirt back over it because it’s not like I’m going in, and head over to the pool.

  I’m not even sure Anton was serious about the swimming. Can he really? I guess I’m curious.

  Anton’s already in the water when I get there. I have no idea how he got in, but his wheelchair is parked by the side of the pool and he’s swimming laps, just like Susan does. His arms are doing the breast stroke but his legs don’t kick. They just trail behind him as he moves through the water.

  When he sees me, he swims over to the edge of the pool and hangs on the side, catching his breath.

  “How did you get in?” I ask. “Where’s your mom?”

  “She went back to the room. Trust me, though, she’ll be back to check on me every five seconds. Hey, do you have one of those pool noodles? Or water wings or something?”

  There’s a storage box in the corner with life jackets and stuff for the little kids. No water wings, but I pull out a green noodle.

  “Perfect. Come in and help me get it under my legs. It’s easier to swim if my legs can float.”

  “Um … I’m not wearing a suit.”

  “Sure you are. I can see the straps poking out of your shirt.”

  I pull at my T-shirt. “Can we do it from the shallow end?”

  Anton swims over to the steps and grabs the metal railing that goes right down the middle. He floats on his stomach. “Come in and get the noodle right under my knees.”

  I pull off my shorts and go down three steps into the pool, which brings the water up to my thighs. I take deep breaths like Uncle Mordy taught me and remind myself that I went in even deeper than this before.

  I can’t quite reach Anton, so I take another deep breath and go down one more step, to the one I made it to last time. The water is up to my waist but I do my best not to think about that. I push the noodle under the water to get it under Anton’s knees but before I get it into position it shoots up out of the water and into the air and lands back in the pool.

  Anton cracks up. “At home I have a float that straps around my legs for when I go swimming. But this should work if we get it in the right place.”

  The noodle is floating right in the middle of the pool, where the deep end starts. Too far for me to reach from the steps or the side. Anton is still holding on to the railing and doesn’t look like he’s about to go get it. Any second he’s going to notice that I’m not either.

  I go back to the storage box and come back with an armful of noodles of different
colors and lengths.

  “Well, we have four more tries,” I say.

  It takes all four. But on the last one — yellow — the noodle stays put. Anton makes it to the other end of the pool and back without it popping out. He swims much faster with the noodle. I wonder if he’d beat Susan in a race. Assuming he didn’t cheat.

  “You coming in?” he asks.

  I shrug. “I guess I’m not in a swimming mood.”

  I sit down on the edge of the pool and dangle my movable legs over the side. I feel like crying. Why do I always feel like this around him?

  He swims over to me, puts his hands on the side of the pool and uses his arms to pull himself out of the water, then twists himself around so he’s sitting next to me on the ledge. The yellow noodle floats out to meet the other four in the middle of the pool.

  My feet make figure eights in the water. Anton’s just hang there.

  “It’s okay if you’re scared, you know. There’s lots of things I’ve been scared of until I tried them. Even wheelchair basketball, in the beginning.”

  I start to tell him I’m not scared, but all of a sudden I don’t want to lie to him anymore. I tell him about the swimming lessons, if you could call them that, and the panic that takes over my body when I try to go all the way in. My muscles relax just talking to him about it.

  “You’ll do it when you’re ready,” he says, just like Uncle Mordy.

  The door opens. It’s Anton’s mother.

  “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to help you out,” she says. “There’s a special mass at the drive-in at four and then we need to start packing up. We go home tomorrow.”

  The air in the room is heavy when she leaves, like she’s left some of her sadness behind.

  Anton watches her leave.

  “Maybe one day,” he says quietly, “she’ll realize that I don’t need a miracle.”

  He smiles at me. “Things are pretty okay the way they are.”

  14

  ——

  The next morning, when I pull open my curtain, I see Anton in the front seat of his car while his mom puts a suitcase in the trunk. I throw on some clothes, grab a pad of paper from the desk in the room and go outside.

  His mother slams the trunk closed and heads into Reception with her key card.

  I stick my head through the open car window.

  “You’re leaving,” I say.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I looked for you in the dining room. My mom decided to leave earlier than we planned.”

  “Here’s the address of the motel.” I hand him a sheet from the pad, which has the Jewel’s address and phone number at the top. “If you want to write, that is. My mom won’t let me have my own email account until I’m twelve.” I feel like I’m in kindergarten. “Maybe you can send me a picture of you playing basketball.”

  He smiles and takes the paper. When his mother gets back to the car she folds up the wheelchair and puts it in the back seat. Her eyes are dull again, like the batteries are already drained.

  “Say goodbye, Anton. We have a long drive.”

  Anton holds up his hand, palm facing me. I touch my palm to it. My fingers are small and skinny against his but they feel warm and tingly where we touch. His mother gets in, puts his window up and backs out of the space.

  I watch until the car disappears around the corner.

  Básquetbol en silla de ruedas.

  That’s how you say wheelchair basketball in Spanish.

  I’m not sure what to do now that Anton’s gone, so I go over to the diner. It’s packed and smells like fresh muffins, which Mr. Whitley makes every morning. It’s gotten so busy that he had to hire someone to help in the kitchen even though he didn’t want to. He still cooks all the food himself but now he has someone to wash and cut vegetables and do stuff like grate cheese, boil macaroni, scrub the pots and run the giant dishwasher, which seems to be going all the time.

  But I’m still the only one who gets to help with the pies.

  Mrs. Whitley sets me up on a table in the corner with a huge pile of washed grapes and a big empty pot. I wash my hands and start popping. Pick up grape, squeeze, plop into pot. Pick up grape, squeeze, plop into pot.

  It gives me time to think.

  Pareidolia. Miracles. Jewish. Catholic.

  I tried to ask Uncle Mordy why Mom has this thing about Catholics but he said I should talk to her about it. Which I haven’t, given how well our discussion about Maria’s necklace went.

  Susan sits down across from me, startling me, and I send a zombie eyeball straight into her chin.

  I can’t even say sorry, I’m laughing so hard.

  She reaches for the napkin holder, laughing too.

  “I guess I deserve that for sneaking up on you again.” It seems like the first time was a million years ago, but it’s just been a few days.

  “Did you get to interview a lot of people?” I ask.

  “Three so far. And Father Donovan has been really helpful.”

  Mrs. Whitley delivers an armful of plates to the table across from us and then comes over.

  “Wow, Miriam, you’ve gotten a ton done.” To my surprise, my pot is almost half full. I think I could do this in my sleep.

  “Go rest your fingers at a clean table and Mr. Whitley will make you some lunch.” Mrs. Whitley turns to Susan. “How about you, Susan?”

  Susan looks at a menu as we move to the next table over. “How about a Reuben? Haven’t had one of those since I was a kid.”

  “One Reuben it is. And you, Miriam? Miriam Special or VBLT?”

  “A VBLT sounds good, thanks, Mrs. Whitley.” Even I can get tired of grilled cheese after a while.

  In the booth on the other side of us are some people I don’t recognize. I don’t think they’re staying at the Jewel. Some people come up just for the day if they don’t live too far away, but it seems like everyone’s heard about Mrs. Whitley’s grape pie.

  Susan’s hair is wet. I’m not sure if it’s from the shower or the pool.

  “How do you do it?” I ask her.

  “Do what?”

  “Swim like you do.”

  She shrugs. “I grew up near the ocean, in California. We went to the beach all the time. The water is like a second home.”

  I can’t imagine ever being that comfortable in it. I don’t want to be afraid of water. I just can’t help it. Maybe that’s Mom’s problem with Catholics. She doesn’t feel comfortable around them. I just wish I understood why.

  Mrs. Whitley arrives with a plate in each hand.

  “One Reuben.” She puts a steaming sandwich down in front of Susan. It looks like corn beef with cheese oozing out. Definitely not kosher.

  “And one VBLT,” she says, putting the second plate down in front of me.

  “Thanks.”

  “VBLT?” asks Susan.

  “Veggie bacon, lettuce and tomato,” I tell her. Mrs. Whitley still thinks I’m a vegetarian, which I kind of feel bad about. The veggie bacon doesn’t smell as good as the real thing, but it’s still yummy.

  As we eat, I decide I’ll take a chance and talk to Mom. But this afternoon Kate is coming over. She says she wants to do something but wouldn’t say what over the phone.

  I just hope it doesn’t involve water or heights.

  “Let’s go see it,” says Kate.

  “See what?”

  “The apparition, obviously. What else is there to see in this town?”

  “That’s what you want to do today that you couldn’t tell me on the phone?”

  “Why not?”

  “We know what it looks like. And besides, what if they catch us? Lekha’s brother says police watch the crowds at fires because people who set fires like to stay and watch them burn.”

  “No one’s going to catch us. And besides, we really didn’t do
anything wrong. You even said that, that the face was already there. We just got people to notice it.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “And besides, look at all the good that’s come from it. The motel is full and making money. Grandma can’t make pies fast enough. Maria is working overtime and making even more money for school so she can go back and help all those people in Mexico. And you get to still live here.”

  “Yeah, and people are spending time and money to come from all over to see a Virgin Mary apparition that isn’t real,” I say. “Like Anton.”

  “Well, according to that para-whatever stuff you told me about, none of them are real.”

  Kate should be a lawyer.

  “Let’s go.” She gets up and starts toward the diner where we keep the bikes.

  I look for Mom to tell her I’m going biking with Kate but I can’t find her. Maria’s at the front desk and tells me that she and Dad are out at the hardware store.

  It’s just as well Mom’s not here to ask me questions. She’s already told me to stay away from the drive-in, which is pretty funny, considering.

  “We don’t believe in that stuff,” she said.

  I don’t know what she’s afraid of. But I know what I’m afraid of.

  If she found out what Kate and I did, I think she’d explode.

  The drive-in is no longer deserted. In fact, it’s crammed. There are posts and rope set up like at an amusement park, with people waiting in a zigzagging line. You don’t have to pay, but there are stands selling sandwiches, chips, water and even souvenirs. There are statues of the Virgin Mary, paintings of the Virgin Mary and scarves with a Virgin Mary print. Even water bottles with the Virgin Mary on them.

  And there are crosses. Lots of crosses. Big and small. Made of wood and plastic and metal. Chunky ones on strings of colorful beads. Delicate ones on silver chains.

  Mom would have a heart attack.

  I see families with little kids, old people, couples, people standing by themselves. People are smiling and talking to each other. It’s like a big family reunion.

  We drop our bikes and helmets under the tree at the edge of the lot. I follow Kate to the back of the line. An elderly couple gets in line behind us. The man is using a cane. The sun beats down on my head and I wish I’d brought some water.