An Unexpected Guest

by Anne Korkeakivi

After another twenty minutes had passed, a long ugly building came into view, the worst-looking motel of all.

  “Here,” he said.

  “Here?” she asked.

  He pointed to the motel’s vacancy sign, swinging in the Atlantic wind. “We’ll be sleeping the night here.”

  She swerved into the parking lot. There were ten doors, not including the door of the reception. Only two had cars parked before them.

  He was mixed up with things back home, his home, far beyond her experience, and she felt sure his unexplained absences from her aunt and uncle’s weren’t to shack up with other girls. When she’d descended the bus in New Jersey to pick up the vehicle he’d reserved and seen it was a camper, she’d felt a whisper of relief—he’d rented them a mobile hotel room. They climbed onto the thin mattress in the back of the camper, shedding all their clothes, that first night, and she’d decided: it’s just a vacation as he’d said, and she’d twirled the gold-plated ring he’d told her to wear around her finger. Each day, as they’d zigzagged the coastline, she’d permitted herself to fall further into this fantasy.

  Now, though, when he told her to go into the reception and get them a room, she felt no surprise. She tucked her long blond hair up into the scarf he handed her, and put on the tinted glasses he pulled out of the bag at his feet. They smelled of his cigarettes.

  “They won’t ask for your ID,” he told her.

  The wind had died down. The outer door to the office was open to the warm night, but a locked inner metal guard door kept her from entering. A man with a heavy face and wearing a turban sat behind an old desk, his feet up on a crate, watching a portable TV. The only other light in the room came from a desk lamp. The turbaned man narrowed his eyes and laid one hand on a half-open drawer when she knocked on the door. His eyes squinted into the night at her.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have any rooms?” The question was ridiculous, but she felt no temptation to laugh. Laughter didn’t exist here.

  He showed no sign of getting up to let her in. “How many?”

  “Just one.”

  He dropped his feet to the ground. She saw there was a second man sitting behind him in the corner. His eyes were riveted to the television.

  The first man fumbled in a box on top of the desk and lumbered towards the door. He did not unlock it. “That your car?” he asked and pointed to the camper.

  She nodded.

  He nodded back. “I see. Number ten.” He held a key up. Its silver face slipped and dangled in the fluorescent lighting over the entrance. She put her hand forward to take it, but he kept it out of reach. “Twenty-five,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah.” She felt her face go warm. “Hang on.” She fished around in her little sack for her wallet, and extracted two tens and a five-dollar bill. He accepted them through the metal bars and slipped the room key back through them to her.

  “Thank you.”

  The man waited until she was behind the steering wheel before turning his back on her. She handed the room key over to Niall. In the obscurity of the parking lot, she could hardly make his face out, just the light of his eyes. He lit a cigarette.

  “He gave me the very farthest room,” she said. “I don’t know why. They’re not busy.”

  Niall didn’t reply, but she felt his hand slide onto her thigh. Warmth slipped through the skirt she was wearing. He squeezed.

  She turned the ignition back on and drove to the bottom of the lot. Their room was almost barren: a large bed covered with a cheap, worn orange bedspread, a bedside table with a clock on it, a linoleum chest of drawers with a television on top. The tiled floor was rugless. She didn’t like to take her shoes off; she didn’t want the feel of the floor on the soles of her feet. When she went to flip on the light in the bathroom, the bulb burned out in a pop and a fizz.

  “I’ll walk over to the office and get a new one,” she said.

  “Leave it,” he said. He came up behind her, his body so similar in height and size that it felt like a shadow, and ran his hands under her T-shirt and over her chest. She turned to him, forgetting about the burned-out lightbulb in the bathroom.

  She woke in the night to the sound of cars pulling up, farther down the parking lot. She could hear what sounded like a black man’s voice and then another’s, car doors opening and closing. Drug dealers, she thought, then chided herself for being racist. She crept to the window.

  “Come away,” he told her.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” she said, climbing back into bed beside him.

  He didn’t answer and she fell back to sleep.

  She awoke again what must have been a couple hours later. A sense of emptiness had penetrated her dreams, disturbing her. She lay quietly and listened. The men’s voices were gone. Niall also was gone. The room was so dark that she could only feel his absence. She could see nothing. She sat up, waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, and when they didn’t, realized that the shutters on the room’s window must have been closed from the outside. She felt her way to the door, banging one of her knees against the foot of the bed. The door was locked, and the key was missing. She couldn’t leave if she’d wanted to.

  She made her way back to the bed, because there was nothing else for her to do. She lay there awake, reminding herself over and over that Niall would never let anything bad happen to her, until, overwhelmed by heat and exhaustion, she fell into a sweaty stupor. Then it was morning and Niall was back in bed beside her.

  “Mommy?” A voice broke in through her memory.

  She almost jumped out of her skin. She swiftly slid her rings back on her fingers and turned around. Jamie was sitting on the end of her bed.

  “James.”

  “Don’t get all mad. Dad didn’t see me.”

  “You’ve been here this whole time?”

  Jamie shrugged. “I got back around five. When I heard Dad come in, I hid.”

  The drapes were open, and the last moments of sunlight illuminated her son’s pale face. He looked so much like her as a teenager for a second there that she was startled. There it was: the same taciturn but curious hazel eyes, same hesitant upper lip. She could almost see how others must have looked on her as a fifteen-year-old.

  “You don’t need to hide,” she said.

  Jamie shrugged. “Whatever. You’re the one who said Dad had some big dinner tonight, and I shouldn’t mess it up for him. I was just trying to be helpful.”

  “Helpful?” Clare stared at her son, trying to figure out whether he was being sincere. “Well, Jamie, I wouldn’t say that ‘helpful’ is the first word that came to mind regarding your recent behavior.” She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. 6:48 p.m.

  “You’re busy,” Jamie said.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I saw you look at the clock.”

  “I’ll dress while we talk. You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “What about this girl?”

  Jamie flopped backwards onto her bed. “Hmph.” He had been a wakeful baby, and many were the times Clare had profited from one of Edward’s work trips to bring him into their bed. He would giggle in his sleep, even before he was old enough to say “Mama,” and she’d hear the sound as part of her dreams. Sometimes, she still heard it in her sleep.

  She sat down on the bed beside him. “You didn’t mention her.”

  “Whatever,” Jamie said.

  “‘Whatever’? Are you kidding? What’s going on, Jamie?” When he pulled away from her, she added, “The school called your father.”

  Jamie flipped up beside her, so violently his face almost hit hers. She had to restrain herself from recoiling. “It’s a whole class thing! It’s because she’s Irish.”

  She bit her lip. A “whole class thing” could only mean a Catholic from Northern Ireland. She’d never engaged in any discussion with her sons about the Troubles or any part of Irish history. On the contrary, she’d spent two decades avoiding all discussion of Ireland, except as pertained to leprechauns, four-le
af clovers, and claddaghs. But she knew how a Catholic from Northern Ireland would be viewed at Barrow, and she knew Jamie would refer to a Catholic girl from Northern Ireland not as British but as Irish. Despite how it might gall his father. Perhaps because of how it would gall his father.

  “You’re Irish,” she said.

  “No, I’m not. I’m half American and half English. Superpowers! Colonizers! What could be less Irish?”

  “I see.” She took a deep breath. There’d been no other boy. It was the girl he felt was being mistreated. Not himself. “What was because she’s Irish?”

  “The way they treated her. The way they…” His voice trailed off and he looked away.

  “Right.” She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Were you…? Did they find you…?”

  “Mom!” Jamie protested, his cheeks flooding with red. He folded his arms over his chest.

  “I need to know, Jamie. At least what Barrow knows.”

  He dropped back down flat on the bed, turned away, buried his face in the pillows.

  “No, Mom,” his muffled voice. “Nothing like that. You don’t understand what happened.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “You’re right, I don’t. Tell me.”

  He didn’t answer.

  In the silence between them, she felt as though she could hear the ticking of his heart, hidden and subdued but just waiting to go off, ready to explode his young life into a million ragged pieces. All the passions her son experienced, and yet he managed to hold them so close, so much the same as she’d been when she was younger. She stood up.

  She just hoped Jamie’s girl was a nice girl. And that being in love for the first time, if that’s what they were talking about, wouldn’t compel him to pull any more stunts like faking his mother’s signature and hopping on planes without permission. And all the rest. Barrow strictly forbade bringing girls on campus, outside of the specific events to which they might be invited.

  “Well,” she said, “let’s start from the beginning. I gather this was the Ryan you mentioned?”

  Jamie didn’t say anything.

  “I guess Ryan can be a girl’s name, too?”

  “Mom!”

  “Okay, okay.” She sighed. “Do you like her?”

  He rolled his eyes and pointed to the clock on the bedside table. “Hadn’t you better get ready? Won’t Dad’s dinner be soon?”

  “You’re going to have to tell me everything eventually. It’s not like you’re just going to stay home from school a week and then go back without any discussion.”

  She got up and opened the door to her wardrobe. Her outfit for the evening hung inside, the top part still wrapped in paper, as the dry cleaners did it in France.

  “Rian,” he said softly, pronouncing it with just a hint of a lilt. “R-i-a-n.”

  R-i-a-n, she thought to herself. R-i-a-n.

  She stopped, her hand on the suit. Edward had said Barrow had sent the girl away. Not that they’d “sent her home” or “sent her back to her own school” or even “sent her packing.” If she wasn’t a Barrow student, how could they have sent her away? Unless he meant fired.

  “Jamie,” she said carefully, “was Rian a student? I mean, what was she doing at Barrow? Was she just visiting?”

  “What’s the difference?” he mumbled and said nothing more.

  She turned to face him, putting her hands on her hips. “Listen, James, you are going to have to talk about it whether you want to or not. You are just making things worse for yourself with the way you are behaving.”

  He shook his head again.

  “Jamie.”

  Jamie rolled his eyes. “No, she isn’t a student. I mean, she is, but obviously not at Barrow. It’s all boys, Mom.”

  “You don’t need to take that sarcastic tone with me,” she said. “I’m not the one who’s been acting the fool here.” She heard herself and thought: If that’s not the biggest lie on earth.

  “Right, whatever. Sorry.” Jamie crossed his arms over his chest and pressed his lips shut.

  “Rian.” She swung her dry cleaning off the rack, selected a fresh package of pantyhose from a shelf within the armoire, and carried them into the bathroom. She left the door ajar, just enough so she could still hear him. “Okay. Where was she a student, then?” she said. Her sweater and pants fell away from her body. Underneath, her skin felt cool. His knee next to hers. She turned on the tap, dampened a washcloth, and turned the water back off so Jamie could hear her. “At another boarding school? At a school in London? One of the Catholic schools?”

  When Jamie didn’t answer, she widened the opening of the door and looked out. He was kneeling on the floor, whispering into his cell phone. She hadn’t heard a ring, but maybe a call had come while the tap was on. “Whom are you talking to?”

  Jamie frowned and cupped his hand over the phone. “Not her, if that’s what you mean.” He looked away, from her, from the phone. “I don’t even have a number to reach her now.”

  She pulled her head back into the bathroom. She knew as much as she needed for the moment. If the girl was staff, there would be all hell to pay at Barrow. No wonder they weren’t expelling Jamie. They were the ones responsible. But the main thing was, she had him here now, safe, away from any immediate trouble. Like all kids should be.

  She closed the door and peeled off the rest of her clothing. She drew the washcloth across her cheekbones, and around her neck, careful not to touch her hair, then gently smoothed in cleanser. How warm the sun had felt on her and Niall’s heads as they sat beside the statue of Andrieu. The sun was gone by now. She dipped the washcloth under the tap and slid it across her face. Then she dabbed at her skin with a clean dry towel.

  “Don’t,” he said the morning after they’d stayed in that seedy motel, when she’d gone to open the back of the camper.

  She felt as though the horrible night still hung to her. “I’d like to change my clothes. My bag’s back there.”

  “We’re going to the beach today. You don’t need to wash.” He pointed to the cab of the camper. “I’ve put your suit and a towel in front already.”

  Towel, he’d said. Singular. She climbed into the driver’s seat. There was, indeed, only one towel bunched up against the dashboard.

  She decided not to ask any questions about it. Niall never swam. Maybe he didn’t plan to get wet at the beach.

  “Can we stop for breakfast?”

  He nodded. “I’ll tell you.”

  They drove north until the motel was well behind them. After about forty minutes on the road, he indicated a diner with big glass windows.

  “Leave the car right in front of the window, by the door,” he said.

  They sat down by the window that gave out over their rental camper. He kept his sunglasses on, and instead of slipping into the side of the booth facing her, pushed into her side after her. He threw an arm over her shoulder and drew her into him.

  “Coffee, black,” he told the waitress. “My wife will take hers with cream. You fancy pancakes? With a wee bit of sugar on them?”

  Once, while sitting around her aunt and uncle’s kitchen on a Saturday morning, her aunt cooking up breakfast for all of them, her cousin had started teasing her for eating her pancakes with sugar on them instead of maple syrup. Niall remembered how she liked her pancakes.

  He’d never touched her, not even her arm, in front of another human being before. Now he was calling her “my wife” to this waitress.

  “What are you having?” she asked.

  If he had next announced that they were going to visit a justice of the peace, she would have said yes without hesitation. She didn’t even care what had happened at the motel. She didn’t want to know what he’d been doing.

  Niall laughed and nodded to the waitress. “She’ll have the pancakes, no syrup. I’ll have the eggs and bacon super, the toast.” He smiled. “Honeymooning makes you hungry.”

  The waitress smiled back at him and tucked a bleached lock behind one ear. She was just
a girl, about the same age as Clare but with an already tired-looking face and a creamy bosom and round bottom. While Niall watched it sway back behind the counter, Clare made a boat out of her napkin. She reminded herself he didn’t like heifers.

  “You planning to sail away on that?” he asked her.

  “Never,” she told him. And she meant it.

  When she came out of her bathroom fully dressed, her hair combed and lip gloss applied, Jamie was asleep on the bed, his phone clutched in his hand. She checked her watch. His flight over from London this morning would have left very early, and who knew when all this had happened? In his room, in the dark, he’d have opened his computer to write the fake e-mail from Clare granting him permission to leave, packed up some things—the novel by Philip Roth, his passport—and slipped out before his roommate was even awake. Maybe he’d even slept in the airport. She checked her watch again. Edward wasn’t scheduled to be back with the P.U.S. for another twenty-four minutes. She’d give Jamie fifteen minutes to nap then shepherd him back to his own room, where Edward would be unlikely to venture during the course of the evening. Jamie could eat later, after all the guests were gone. He could go back to sleep in between times, and even if he woke before the dinner party ended, he’d know better than to wander out into his father’s evening.

  She racked her brain. She’d get the ring out of the safe now and put the place cards into their proper spots on the table. That was all there was left to do before Edward’s dinner. All the rest would have to wait.

  She knelt down before the safe, careful not to snag her stockings or wrinkle her skirt. “It’s a question of fire,” Edward had said about the safe when he’d brought it home, “not security.” They were living in Cairo at the time, and Edward had had the safe built behind what looked like the lower two drawers of a three-drawer side table inlaid with mother-of-pearl. They’d moved it from residence to residence ever since, along with the Turner, Sam Gilliam, and Farouk Hosni paintings, the silver from his family and crystal from hers, and the handful of other personal mementos they used as homing devices as they traded residences every few years. Placing the safe in whatever was to be Peter’s room had become part of their moving ritual. He stored his stamp collection in its top drawer.