Niagara Motel

by Ashley Little

  We pulled up to the border crossing and Paul talked to the guard. The guard was a freckle-faced guy with big teeth. Paul told him they were returning from a trip to see their friends in Buffalo.

  “This your son?” the guard said, nodding at me.

  “My nephew.”

  I nodded at the guard.

  He nodded to me again.

  I thought that it was kind of strange at first that Paul lied to him about me being his nephew, but then I remembered the signs that I had seen in some places that said, It is illegal to pick up hitchhikers, so I figured that’s why he lied. So he wouldn’t get in trouble.

  Paul talked to the guard a bit longer and then the guard said, “Have a nice day,” and waved us through.

  I stared at the falls and rolled down my window so I could hear them thunder as we drove past.

  “Where should I drop you off, kid?” Paul asked.

  “At the hospital, please.”

  “Sure thing,” he said.

  “Ew,” Karla said. “I hate hospitals.”

  “Better than morgues,” Paul said. Then they laughed.

  As we pulled in front of Niagara General I thanked them and got out of the car carefully so I wouldn’t hit the baby-backpack against anything.

  “Maybe see you around, then,” Karla said.

  “Yeah,” I said. But even though they were nice enough and gave me a ride and everything, I hoped that I would never see them again for as long as I lived. I felt a feeling when I was in the car with them, and it was not good. It was not good at all.

  PART THREE

  HOME IS WHERE YOUR MOM IS

  31

  I made sure Angel was all right in her backpack and she was sound asleep, so I strapped the backpack to my chest and went inside the hospital and took the elevator up to Gina’s floor. Heather stood behind the desk eating a muffin as I came down the hall. I zipped the backpack all the way up so that Heather wouldn’t get upset about Angel being in there and try to take her away from me. She looked at me and smiled and set down her muffin. When I got up to the desk she said, “She’s been discharged.”

  “What?”

  “Sent home. Two or three days ago now.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So … she’s all better?”

  “She’s in recovery.”

  “Oh.”

  “Wait,” Heather said. “I’ve got something for you, hold on a sec.” She went into the little room behind the nurse’s counter and came back with a honey-dip donut and handed it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Did she leave a message for me or anything?”

  “Nope, not that I know of.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Heather.” I walked as fast as I could back to the elevator without jostling Angel around too much.

  “Good to see you, Tucker!” Heather called down the hallway.

  I waved to her as the elevator doors closed and she waved back. I ate the donut on the way down to the main floor and wondered what the world would be like if everyone was as nice as Heather.

  I didn’t know exactly where to find Gina but I started walking toward the Niagara Motel. The rain made the smoky smell of the fires come out of my hair; it smelled like something else too, something hard and mean. Angel was zonked out and I zipped the backpack almost all the way up, leaving only a tiny air-hole so she wouldn’t get wet.

  When I got to the Niagara Motel, Chad was behind the desk. I watched him as he cracked an egg into a glass of beer and drank it. Then he burped and lit a cigarette. “Holy shit,” he said when he finally looked up and saw me. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Where’s my fucking car?” he said.

  “It’s on the side of the highway near Albany, New York. Or, at least, that’s where it was last Friday.” I took off my backpack and fished around in it for a minute.

  “It broke down?”

  “Yep.”

  “Son of a slut!” he banged the edge of his fist into the counter.

  “Here,” I said. “I rescued this for you.” I handed him the baby-blue lace garter belt.

  He looked at it and blinked.

  “It was on your sun visor,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said.

  “I thought you might want it.”

  “What I want is my car,” he said, stuffing the garter belt into his pocket. “Where’s Meredith?”

  “Meredith died yesterday in Los Angeles, California,” I said.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” he said.

  “But … I don’t know where else to go.”

  “She’s dead?”

  I nodded.

  “How?”

  I unzipped the baby-backpack and showed him the contents.

  “Holy shit,” he said, pressing his palm to his forehead.

  “Is Gina here?”

  “Huh?”

  “Gina? Gina Malone? My mom?”

  “Room one-oh-eight,” he said and handed me the key as he stared at Angel.

  “Thanks,” I said. I started to walk down the hallway but turned around halfway. “Chad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about your car,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I can get another one.”

  I nodded and turned around and kept walking until I got to room one-oh-eight.

  I tried the knob and it wasn’t locked so I went in. Gina sat on the bed reading a magazine and eating Doritos. “Tucker!” She opened her arms and I ran to her. I let her hold me and kiss me all over and cry and cry and I cried too and then the baby woke up and she started to cry too.

  I told Gina everything, well, all of the important parts. I left out some stuff that she didn’t need to know about, like me shooting the gun with Timothy and smoking pot with Poppy and River, but mostly I told her everything, and Gina just sat on the bed shaking her head and holding Angel like she was a precious, miraculous thing, which, I guess, she was.

  The whole time I was telling Gina about what had happened, the phone beside the bed kept ringing. It rang probably two or three times, but she never answered it. Finally, when I was finished, I asked her, “How come the phone keeps ringing?”

  “Well, I can’t dance anymore,” she said. “Or at least not for a long time.” She nodded to a silver cane that leaned against the wall.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “Yeah, so I decided I would try being an independent escort for a while,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “The classy date.”

  “That’s right,” she smiled. “It’s only been a few days, but the phone has been ringing non-stop. I’m not booking anyone until late next week though, because I just need a little bit more time, but I think I’ll be working a lot.”

  I nodded. “That’s good, I guess.”

  She settled Angel in between two pillows and then gave me a super-hug which is a hug that crushes your spleen and almost squishes all your guts out. “I love you so much,” she said. “I missed you like crazy.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  “I’m so sorry about your friend,” she said, brushing some hair away from my face.

  I looked over at Angel.

  “We’re going to get this all sorted out. Don’t worry. We’ll go see Meredith’s brother tomorrow. First thing.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I have to let the group home know you’re back. They’ve been calling every day since you guys took off. There were people out there looking for you, Tucker, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  She sighed and ruffled my hair. “I’m going to run you a bubble bath,” she said. “You stink.”

  While I was in the tub, Gina called Bright Light and fed Angel and ordered pizza for us. We ate on Gina’s bed and watched a movie on TV about a goth man who had scissors for hands. After it was over, Gina fed Angel again and gave her a bath in the sink. Then she made a little nest for Angel on her bed out of pillows and blankets and told me it was time for me to get some sleep
. I got into the bed across from hers, and she came over and pulled the covers up to my chin and tucked me in all tight and gave me a kiss on both cheeks and the forehead. And even though I’m eleven and way too old to be tucked in, I think that probably no matter how old you get, it is still one of the best feelings in the world to be tucked in by your mom.

  The next day we got some baby clothes and diapers for Angel and then took the bus to the Don Jail in Toronto. It took forever to get there, but Angel slept the whole time. On the bus, Gina told me about the dream she’d had while I was away. “It was awful, Tucker. One of the worst dreams I’ve ever had. One of those crazy ones where it’s all so real that I think it’s really happening. And it went on and on; it seemed to last a decade.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Well, you were on this trip, and you kept taking rides from all these monsters.”

  “Monsters?”

  “Horrible people. Like mass murderers and serial killers and rapists and psychopaths. And I was so worried for you. I was so, so worried because I knew they would hurt you. But the worst part was that there was nothing I could do about it. I wasn’t there with you, I was just watching it all happen, you know, that kind of dream.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But they didn’t hurt you. Every time, you just barely got away. I don’t know how. It’s like you had a force-field of protection around you.”

  “Huh,” I said. I looked down at the bracelet that Poppy had given me and twisted it around my wrist.

  “And Elvis was there. He wasn’t a bad guy, he was just singing and playing guitar, but he was in the dream too. It was so weird.”

  I smiled, thinking of Relvis.

  “Anyways, you’re home safe with me now,” she said. She squeezed my shoulder and gave me a little kiss on the head.

  We didn’t talk too much for the rest of the way there but I thought a lot about everything.

  When we got to the prison, we had to be searched before we could see Steve, and the guard took Gina’s nail file and my Swiss Army knife away and said we could have them back when we left. We were shown to a little cubicle with a plate of glass, two chairs, and a phone. I sat in the chair next to the phone and Gina sat in the other one and held Angel on her lap. On the other side of the glass, a guard brought Steve in. Steve wore an orange jumpsuit and his hair was black and shaggy and fell to his chin. He sat down in the chair across from me and looked into my eyes. They were the same green beach-glass eyes as Meredith’s, and it hurt me to look at them because I knew that I would never look in her eyes again. Steve’s hands were handcuffed together, but he picked up the phone.

  I picked up the phone.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” he said. “Do I know you?”

  “My name is Tucker Malone. Meredith was my best friend. She died giving birth the day before yesterday in Los Angeles, California. This is her baby.”

  Steve looked over at Angel and his green eyes got soft and watery. He blinked hard a few times and sniffed and rubbed his face. “What’s her name?”

  “Angel,” I said.

  He smiled at the baby. I could tell by the way his face crumpled up that he already loved her. “She’s so small,” he said.

  “She’s premature,” I said.

  He nodded and wiped his eyes again.

  “Meredith said to bring her to you. She said you would know what to do.”

  He looked up to the ceiling and half-laughed. Then he stared at the baby for a while. She made gurbally sounds and Steve smiled big at her. “Don’t tell me you’re the father,” he said, turning to me.

  “No,” I said. “Uh-uh.” I could feel my face get hot.

  Gina shook her head.

  “Who is?”

  “I … I don’t know,” I said.

  “Did Meredith know?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “She never said anything about him.”

  What good would it do for Steve to know that Angel’s father was a rapist? It wouldn’t help Angel. It wouldn’t help anything. It was the kind of lie I felt okay about telling. Maybe Angel would never have to find out.

  Steve was getting out of prison in twenty-eight days. He had a girlfriend named Kim who lived in Niagara Falls and he told us to take the baby to Kim tomorrow after he’d had a chance to talk to her. Kim would look after the baby until he got out and then they would raise her together.

  “She’s been wanting a baby for a while now anyways,” he said. “Guess she got her wish.” He gave us Kim’s address and phone number and Gina wrote it all down on the back of an old receipt. “She works nights so she’ll be home all day,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Steve?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think it would be okay if I came to visit Angel sometimes. Just to see how she’s doing?”

  “Sure, kid. You can babysit for us every weekend if you want.” He smiled at Gina and winked at her.

  “And Kim won’t mind?”

  “She’ll be ecstatic,” he said.

  “Steve?”

  “Yeah, Tucker?”

  “Do you think it would be okay if I kept Meredith’s Walkman? And some of her tapes?”

  Steve bit his bottom lip and nodded. “I think she would want you to have them,” he said.

  Then I passed the phone to Gina because my throat closed up with sadness and I couldn’t talk anymore. Gina told Steve she would leave our phone number at the front desk for him in case he needed to get a hold of us. She asked him if there was anything else we could do, anyone else we should call.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Steve said. He thanked us for coming and for looking after Angel.

  I took the phone back from Gina. “She was saving up money for you,” I said. “To bail you out. She had a lot saved. I’m not sure how much. I don’t know where it is. Probably at Bright Light. The group home. I don’t think she put it in the bank.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Steve said.

  “So, I guess I’ll see you next month then,” I said.

  “See ya on the outside, kid.” He nodded once, then Steve hung up his phone and I hung up mine and the guard came and led him away.

  32

  On the bus ride home, I said to Gina, “So now you have to tell me about my father. Once and for all.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “You don’t want to wait until we get home?”

  “No.”

  She took a big sigh. She looked out the window for a second, then looked back at me. “Your father’s name was Mark Baxter,” she said. “He was a bartender at the pub I worked at in Paris when I was a teenager.”

  “Was he your boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Did you want him to be your boyfriend?”

  “No. He was thirty-six years old.”

  “He was almost twenty years older than you?”

  “And he was married.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So …”

  “So one night, he had been drinking during his shift, and he came up behind me while I was stocking the beer cooler and he … he raped me.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at my hands. A giant had just punched me in the stomach.

  “I’m sorry, Tucker. That’s why I never wanted to tell you. I didn’t want you to have to live with that.”

  “Did you tell anybody?”

  “I told my mom. She didn’t believe me. She said I must have seduced him, gotten him drunk and seduced him, she said. She thought my skirts were too short and my tops were too tight. She didn’t believe me. Or she was ashamed of me. I don’t know.” She shrugged.

  “Did he know about me?”

  Gina nodded.

  “But, he …”

  She shook her head. “He denied that you were his. He said that I’d slept with half of Paris and there was no way. But it was
n’t true. He begged me not to tell his wife.”

  “Did you?”

  “No. I made him pay me five thousand dollars not to tell her. And I used the money to move away, right after I had you.”

  “In the laundromat?”

  “In the laundromat,” she smiled, nodding.

  “Do you have a picture of him?”

  “No.”

  “Did he ever ask about me? Does he know who I am?”

  “I never saw him again after I left.”

  “You never talked to him either?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “He’s a bad person, Tucker. I don’t want him around you. Ever.”

  “So, that means that … half of me is a bad person too.”

  “No, honey. Don’t say that. That’s not true. You’re a good person. You’re the best person I know.” Gina wiped away a tear that had sneaked out the corner of her eye.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be sorry, Tucker. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay? This was not your fault.”

  “I know, but I’m sorry that it happened to you.”

  “Well, I got you out of it,” she said. “So I guess it was the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  I leaned into her and closed my eyes. She put her arm around me and kissed me on top of the head. We were quiet for the rest of the way back to Niagara Falls and I thought about how the world is full of terrible things, and really great stuff too, and you just never know what you’re going to get, but it will be some combination of both. Every donut has its hole.

  As we got off the bus in front of the Niagara Motel, I held Angel against my chest and watched as Gina gripped her cane and struggled to get down the steps. She was not the same woman she had been when we first got off the bus in Niagara Falls, and, I guess, I wasn’t the same boy either.

  TUCKER’S MIX-TAPE

  (to remember my trip to Los Angeles, California, April 25 to May 1, 1992)

  1. “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” Jimmy Buffet

  2. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana