Once Upon a Summertime

by Melody Carlson

  “You could do it, Anna. I know you could.”

  Anna allowed herself to consider this. “Well, I wouldn’t expect a top management job. I’d be happy to be an assistant manager or night manager or whatever. Do you think I’d really have a chance?”

  Marley shrugged as she reached for her drink. “You never know unless you try.”

  “I know,” Anna murmured.

  “And you can’t just give up.”

  “No,” Anna agreed with more enthusiasm. “You’re absolutely right. I can’t just give up.”

  As Anna walked back to work, she considered the picture Marley had just painted for her. A gorgeous boutique hotel in SoHo, with a restaurant and a courtyard, not to mention a delightful bakery and a Starbucks on its way. It all sounded so perfect—so wonderful. Like a dream come true. Was it really possible that she would be considered for a position? Perhaps even a lower management position? And then she remembered her grandma’s warning: when something looks too good to be true, watch out!

  3

  Despite a nagging little voice inside of her, reminding her of all the reasons this plan would never pan out, Anna’s feet felt light as she walked back to work. Yes, she knew the chances of this New York real estate mogul and hotel developer being impressed by her sparse résumé were slim; even so, she felt hopeful. Sure, it was probably irrational, but somehow that whole conversation with Marley had given Anna real hope. Like she could almost see the light at the end of her long gloomy tunnel. And even if she didn’t land a job in New York, like Marley had pointed out, there were other hotel management jobs out there. Why couldn’t Anna land one of them? After all, she had put in her time—she’d paid her dues. Two years was long enough to waste away here.

  After the registration “rush” passed and guests were settling into their rooms, making the usual calls to the desk, mostly requests that were passed on to housekeeping, the motel grew relatively quiet. Capitalizing on this calm, Anna pulled her own résumé out of the motel’s computer system and, after giving it a few quick tweaks, emailed it to Marley just like she’d promised. As she hit Send, Anna sent up a little prayer too. Or maybe it was a plea—somehow she had to get out of this place.

  With that done, she decided to make sure that Mickey had cleaned up around the swimming pool like she had asked him. Since it was a hot day, it wouldn’t be long before some of the guests meandered on down there. The last time she’d passed by the pool, earlier this morning, it had looked like a wreck. Probably the remnants from last night’s teenagers. She wished she could rely on the fact that she’d asked Mickey to handle it—but she knew that was no guarantee.

  “Loretta,” she called back to the office where the bookkeeper was working. “Mind keeping an eye on the reception desk for a few minutes? I need to check on something.”

  Loretta looked over the top of her glasses and waved. “No problem.”

  “I’ve got my phone if you need me,” Anna called as she headed toward the west wing. While she walked down the hallway, she called Mickey’s number, asking him to meet her in the pool area. But when she arrived, not only was Mickey noticeably absent, but the back end of the pool deck was still trashed with bottles, cans, dirty towels, and fast-food packaging. Feeling exasperated at the reckless teens and her MIA janitor, Anna pulled out a pair of vinyl gloves—she always kept some handy because you never knew what you might find in a motel like this—and started to clean up.

  As she picked up disgusting pieces of trash, she felt seriously irked at Mickey. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d neglected janitorial duties that were his responsibility. Nor was it the first time she’d stepped in and covered for him. Grabbing a nearby trash can, she proceeded to collect the debris, tossing it in. Thankfully, no guests had come to the pool yet. She tried not to imagine how disappointed the young couple with their two little ones would’ve been to find this garbage dump.

  Before long she had removed all the rubbish, and since the pool was currently unoccupied, she decided to give the cement decks a quick hose-down. While she did this, she decided to arrange the white plastic lounge chairs all facing toward the pool in a nice line, as if this were a four-star resort. Spraying the decks and arranging the chairs, she imagined the ways this pool area could be spruced up. Just a few simple elements could make such an improvement, starting with some neutral-colored paint on the privacy fence over there, a few potted shrubs by the main entrance here, maybe some flowerpots with hardy petunias to add color.

  “Hey, Anna.” Mickey sauntered across the wet deck toward her with his usual cocky expression—like he thought he was still the football jock he’d been in high school a few years ago. “What’s up? What’re you doing?”

  “Your job,” she said tersely.

  “Thanks.” He made a sassy grin. “Wanna do a job swap? Then I can have your job.”

  “I told you to clean this pool area this morning, Mickey.”

  “I did.”

  She narrowed her eyes slightly. “No, you did not. I just did it myself.”

  “Hey, I cleaned it this morning.” Averting his gaze, he squinted into the sunshine. “Can I help it if someone else trashed it since then? People can be such slobs.”

  Controlling the urge to spray him down, she simply handed him the hose nozzle. “Go wash down the other side of the pool.” She pointed at the lounge chairs. “And I want the chairs arranged just like this, three times a day. Once in the morning. Then again just before check-in time at 3:00. And again at the end of your shift.”

  His brows arched. “Getting all high and mighty, are we?”

  She gave him a warning look. “By the way, did you clean the parking lot like I asked you to do?” She actually knew the answer to this already. She’d seen it on her way back from lunch.

  “Yeah, sure. I did that this morning too.”

  “Right . . .” She was about to call him on this as well as his other lie, but she noticed the young family coming toward the pool gate. This wasn’t the place for a showdown. Suddenly she remembered something else that had been bothering her since her conversation with Jacob.

  Walking with Mickey as he went to the other end of the pool, she spoke quietly. “Jacob mentioned that you were still on duty when those teenagers were out here last night, Mickey. Is that right?”

  “Yeah, I was here. The kids weren’t acting too crazy then. Nothing worth calling the cops over.”

  She pointed to the trash can she’d set by the back fence. “Those bottles and cans I just picked up were not all soft drinks, Mickey.”

  He just shrugged as he sprayed the deck.

  “You didn’t notice any booze last night?” She pointed to the sign on the wall. “See the third rule? No alcoholic beverages.”

  He shrugged again, adjusting the hose nozzle to a firmer flow so that the overspray splashed onto her shoes.

  She stepped back. “And you didn’t notice that the kids were underage?”

  “What is this—the Spanish Inquisition?”

  She just shook her head, then, seeing the family was inside the pool area and within hearing distance, she simply turned and walked away. If she were truly the manager of this fleabag motel, Mickey would’ve received his walking papers long before this. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She’d already complained about him to the owners once, shortly after she started work here, nearly two years ago. That was when she discovered Mickey was the owners’ nephew—and that his job as “head janitor” was probably more secure than her own.

  “He’s my brother’s son and he’s had a rough go,” Sharon Morgan had confided to Anna after the meeting. “Cut him some slack, okay? He just needs to know we believe in him. He’ll straighten out in time.”

  Anna had cut him slack. It seemed like she cut him slack almost every single day. And unless she was imagining things, Mickey’s slack was rubbing off on the other employees. It was like a disease of slacking had plagued this motel. Oh, certainly not everyone was affected. A few employees s
till took their jobs seriously. The Gonzales sisters, for instance—if Anna wanted something done right she would ask Rita or Consuelo to do it. She knew she couldn’t depend on Shawna; although she was head of housekeeping, she was also Mickey’s on-again, off-again girlfriend. Anna could never keep up with the couple. Since Shawna had been even less motivated lately, Anna would wager they were “off-again.” Not that Shawna was ever particularly motivated anyway. Anna couldn’t begin to count how many times she’d spotted Shawna and another maid lounging in a room with the TV on and just visiting as if they thought they were on vacation. Shawna’s favorite response was, “Oh, it’ll get done. It always gets done.” Maybe so, but it was the way it got done that really made Anna want to pull her hair out.

  Despite the training meetings Anna had held with housekeeping—trying to teach them time-saving tricks, build up their morale, encourage them toward excellence, and explain that cutting corners could lead to lost jobs—other than the Gonzales sisters and a couple others, the rest just returned to their old bad habits. And some of their bad habits were truly disgusting.

  Anna had learned several things while working at Value Lodge—things she would never do if she were forced to be a guest in this motel. First of all, she would never drink out of a bathroom water glass. She would never walk barefoot over the floors. She would never assume the bathroom was sanitized. Beyond that, she would definitely remove all but the sheets from the bed before sleeping. And that would be only after she’d checked the mattress for bedbugs.

  Did she feel like a failure because the motel she managed couldn’t maintain even the most basic standards of cleanliness? Of course! But she also knew that there was little use trying to change things as long as the owners didn’t back her. One could only beat one’s head against the wall for so long before one looked up and saw the writing on the wall. Maybe it was time to go.

  As Anna walked back to the reception area, she made a managerial decision. Maybe it was partially prompted by the visions of the New York boutique hotel that were dancing in her head, or maybe she had simply had enough of the Value Lodge. But back at her desk, she knew it was time to do something drastic. Even if her efforts aggravated the owners and led to her dismissal, she was going to do it. At least she’d know she went down for a good reason.

  She typed out various warning letters—several that sounded familiar—letting the recipients know this would be their final warning. She made it clear that failure to comply with her corrections would result in joblessness (possibly her own too, although she didn’t mention that). She also informed the staff involved that these letters would be followed up by a meeting tomorrow morning. She would come to work an hour early, so that Jacob would be here. She might even bring doughnuts just to reassure everyone that she wasn’t trying to be mean.

  Hopefully they would go home and read their letters carefully and perhaps truly grasp the gravity of their situation. She wanted their full attention. Tomorrow morning, she would spell out to them, in no uncertain terms, that her only goal was to make this Value Lodge a better place for everyone—but particularly for the guests, since that was her job. She would be positive at the meeting, and she would tell them that she hoped they were fully on board with her, but if they were not, she would tell them to start looking for new jobs.

  Thinking of new jobs made her check her iPhone to see if Marley had gotten back to her yet. Other than confirming that she’d received the résumé, she had no other news. Really, was it realistic to think that a busy New York real estate mogul, property developer, and hotel owner would drop everything in order to respond to the manager of the Value Lodge in a town the size of Springville? Probably not. Chances were he hadn’t even gotten her résumé yet. As Anna set the employees’ letters in their message boxes, she wondered just how close Marley’s brother Max really was with the Newmans. Just because Max and Elsie rented shop space did not mean they were chummy. It was possible that Marley had overblown this whole thing.

  In fact, as Anna walked home, she began to think that was probably what had happened. Marley had always been a somewhat dramatic person. Certainly she had enjoyed telling Anna all about the building restoration and the boutique hotel. What if she’d simply been telling this story for its pure entertainment value? As Anna approached Lou’s Café, she considered popping in to ask Marley about this, but remembering it was the dinner hour and seeing that all their tables were filled and customers were waiting at the counter, Anna decided to wait.

  Her grandmother’s apartment building came into view. It was really a rather inviting complex with its butter-colored stucco walls, ornate iron railings up the staircases and around the balconies, and nicely landscaped grounds that were maintained by the management.

  Anna had been alarmed when she’d first learned that her grandma had sold her home—largely to help cover Anna’s college expenses. By now, though, she knew that her grandma had gotten quite comfortable in her new lifestyle. If only she could be comfortable with the idea of letting Anna go.

  As Anna walked toward the entrance of the first-floor apartment, she was already rehearsing the speech she planned to give her grandma. She would simply be honest. She would confess how unhappy she’d been at the Value Lodge—something Anna had never felt free to do before because her grandmother was such good friends with the owners, Sharon and Rich. Grandma often acted as if Anna were lucky to have employment at all and owed the Morgans a boatload of gratitude for giving her such an important job. Her grandmother had no idea what it was truly like to work at the Value Lodge. But somehow Anna had to tell her the truth, and she had to do it in a way that wouldn’t make her grandmother think less of her good friends. That would not be easy.

  4

  “How about if I take us out to dinner?” Anna asked as she came into the house.

  Her grandma frowned from the rocking recliner. “But I’ve already made us a tamale casserole. It’s in the oven right now.”

  “You could save it for another night.”

  “But it’s nearly done.” Grandma looked at her watch, then leaned forward and pushed herself to her feet. “In fact, I should check on it before it gets scorched.”

  “You could just put it aside to cool,” Anna suggested. “Then we could go out. That way you’d have dinner all ready for tomorrow night.”

  Grandma peered curiously at Anna. “But why do we need to go out for dinner? It’s so expensive. It’s not a special occasion, is it?”

  Anna made a stiff smile. Of course, she was well aware that her grandmother had grown up on a midwest farm where cooking had been secondary to breathing and going out for a meal had been considered wastefully decadent. Apparently old habits really did die hard. “No, it’s not a special occasion,” Anna conceded. “I just hoped that we could talk.”

  Grandma brightened. “What better place to talk than right here? That way we don’t have a bunch of people interrupting us every five minutes.”

  Anna nodded. “Yes, you’re probably right.”

  “You go get yourself into some comfy clothes,” Grandma said. “I’ll set the table.”

  Instead of protesting like she wanted to, Anna went to the coat closet by the front door. This narrow space served as her clothes closet, and since the front drapes were closed to keep the afternoon sun out, she proceeded to do a quick change right there by the front door. Originally, when they’d set up this “temporary” arrangement—with Anna sleeping on the sofa, keeping her clothes in the narrow closet, and using the tiny powder room for her personal bathroom—Grandma had been on a waiting list for a larger two-bedroom apartment. But because most of the two-bedroom units were on the second level and Grandma had a bad hip, she was still down here. Maybe that was a good thing. It would make it easier for Anna to leave.

  Comfortable in some lightweight capri pants and a sleeveless shirt, Anna rejoined Grandma in the stuffy kitchen. The smell of the tamales combined with the overly warm kitchen made Anna feel less than hungry. She glanced longingly out at
the tiny patio with the bistro table and chair set that Anna had gotten Grandma for her last birthday. She considered suggesting they eat out there since it was probably about the same temperature in the shade, plus the air was fresher. But she knew her grandma would think that was “too much trouble,” especially since she’d already set the table. Plus, those “stiff metal chairs” were hard on her hip. Anna knew the drill.

  “So what is it you want to talk to me about?” Grandma asked after she’d said the blessing. “You’ve aroused my curiosity, Anna.”

  “Well . . .” Anna took in a deep breath as she laid her paper napkin in her lap. “I ran into my old friend Marley Ferris today. She’s back in town to help out with her mom’s café for a few days. Did you know that Louise Ferris had back surgery?”

  “I hadn’t heard that.” Grandma handed Anna the salad bowl. “But I haven’t been to Lou’s Café in a year or two, maybe more.”

  Anna filled her in on Marley’s career change. “I was so surprised. I thought all she ever wanted to do was teach school, but she sounds like she couldn’t be happier.”

  “She gave up her teaching job?” Grandma looked shocked. “What about all of her education? Seems a waste to go to school all those years to become a teacher and then just toss it aside. To quit teaching after such a short time—and to become a stewardess? What about her retirement? And surely she knows that teachers get their whole summers off. They can travel and—”

  “Oh, she travels all the time now. Because she’s fluent in so many languages, she gets to be on the international flights. She’s been all over the world.”

  “Sounds pretty risky to me.” Grandma dismally shook her head as she shook the salad dressing bottle. “With all the nutcases in the world nowadays . . . terrorist kooks with bombs in their underwear . . . well, you couldn’t pay me enough to fly to a foreign country on an airplane. And just imagine—what if you got stuck in some ghastly place with no way out?”