Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (11 page)

Aurora was actually afraid of him.
In
November
, w
hen we moved from the LAX Motel 6 (not the titular one of this
work
) to a studio in Encino, she begged me not to
let him know our
address.
Sti
ll, as a degreed librarian and
Aspie
, he
found it with ease.

“I did it!” his voice rose
in triumph
.
“
Pico Pico
gave
it to me
, and I looked it up on Google Earth.
There’s
a black Mercedes
sedan
i
n the driveway in front of your door.”

I felt a chill. Maybe Aurora was right.
Maybe
we
were
being
tracked
by
a modern-day Sweeney Todd.
I loved
the
Sondheim
musical
, but didn’t w
ant my Cause o
f Death to read:
Baked
In
to
Meat
Pie.
Even so, there wa
sn’t much he could do from two
states away.

For Aurora and I, t
here followed a period of abandon.
Previously c
onfined by Nigel into a straightjacket of ridiculous rules (because
he
hated horror films, no one
else
could
watch
them
), Aurora
and I
ripped off our ties
:  she
went through
adolescence and
so did I – my second.
We
were like Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane,
scouting
the Valley landscape in search of
fun
and
trouble.

Our favorite trick was to pay for two tickets at a multiplex theatre, then sneak into four films in a row.
I figured, hell, I gave my life to this business, they owe me!
Aurora
would
retrieve empty large bags of popcorn
and plastic cups of Coke
(
which
were refillable
)
,
so we even had free snacks.
Of course I knew it was wrong –
corrupting a female minor
– but,
freed
from
Daddy’s censorious
scowl
,
we
went wild!

I stopped making payments on the truck.
The truth was
,
I could no longer afford the $
387
.00 a
month.
My consulting had
died with Vectron
, and I’d been
out of work for
two
month
s
.
The severance money was
long
gone,
spent to pay m
otels, meals
out
, and Nigel.
The day came when I
could no longer afford car insurance, and could
barely
afford gas.
I would cruise, on fum
es, down Hayvenhurst
, recycling
cans and bottles so I could put
$9.00
in the tank.
At
WaMu
, I had made
$88,000
a year, plus a
$10,000
bonus.
How low the mighty had fallen!
But at this time,
my Mixed Anxiety was higher than my
Depressed Mood
, and I still felt that I could find something.
Money worries
consumed me
, but
I never
filed for Unemployment.
I would make it work, somehow.
I always had before.
After I drove
Aurora to school – me, a carpool Mom!
– I would use the studio’s free wireless
to search
for jobs
all day.

The studio was bleak,
inhabited
by two inflatable beds (courtesy of
Rachel
); a floor heater, since it was freezing (
we were
adjacent to the garage); and a new bunny, Cotton,
happily flinging his poop
from a
cage
.
There was no TV – Nigel had it.
There was no other furniture – ditto
, a
nd he’d
sold most of it for cash.
The majority of my
earthly goods
was
in storage down in Gardena:
my books, my pictures, even
my
good
clothes.
Have you ever tried living
as a twosome
in
400
square feet
?
(Manhattani
tes:
disqualify yourselves!)
Recent immigrants do it
all the time
:
twelve people to an apartment, or stuffed illegally into a garage.
But I wasn’t a
recent immigrant.
Unlike most
Jews
my age, my grandpar
ents had been born in the
states
.
I think you could say I spoke fairly good English.
What had happened to me?
Why was I living this way?
I tried not to
dwell
on everything that had been lost,
but I knew there would
come
a reckoning, and
when it did, it would be
bleak
.
In the meantime, I had fun with my partner-in-crime, giving her
all
the
freedom
s
which
Nigel had taken away
.
Unlike Newtonian physics, my reaction was opposite but not equal:
I swung so far into orbit I threatened to hit the moon.

The first – and biggest – mistake I made was
in
letting Aurora have a boyfriend
.
Big deal, you
say
, what’s wrong with that?
Well, she was fourteen and he was nineteen, and in the state of California, that means one thing:
statutory rape
.
He was a nice Jewish boy –
from Israel, no less!
– so of course I took to him
instantly
.
My friend Larry
was so upset he almost disowned me, but I couldn't understand his
pique
.
I saw a young couple in love, and, Romantic that I am, thought
it would last
forever.
So you see, at my core, I am no
more
emotionally
mature than the average
Twilight
tween
.
I let David
move in –
wrong, I know!
–
and that made
three
people and a bunny in a studio
.
All that was missing
was
Groucho
and a stateroom full of people.
David
told me
that hi
s mother was
really upset, more than
aware
of the trouble he could get into.
Jail, anyone?
So much for college and a future.

One
night
,
when
Aurora and
David
were
at the movies
, I heard a
muffled
sound outside my door.
I opened it, and on the
brick
steps
was a woman
–
crying
hysterically
.
She was opaque as a silhouette, since the porch light had long burned out.
She
shrieked
something to me, but I couldn't understand her thick accent.
Troubled
, I went back inside
, locking the door behind me
.
An hour later, I heard her again, wailing
bitterly.
I glanced out my miniscule peephole.
What was this?
Some kind
of
spectral
visitation
,
like the nun who haunts Lucy in
Villette?
Didn’t I have enough problems? Now a ghost was out to get me!
I kept the sighting to myself, not wanting to alarm the
kids.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave.”
My landlord, a young guy who worked as a DJ, was not comfortable with the trifecta of Jews in his studio.
“I can’t…I just can’t stomach a nineteen-year old guy who dates a fourteen-year-old.”
I felt disgust, but I should have felt it for myself.
He was right.

We set out to find a new place, this unlikely collection of misfits.
David had just
dropped out of Berkeley, and didn’t have a penny to his name.
Who would be paying for
his
feathered
love nest?
The
permissive parent, of course
.
But as long as it made Aurora happy, as long as it kept her focus off me, I was glad.
David used me as a financier
, but I used
him
as
a
diplomat,
suing for peace in a
n area as
volatile
as
The West Bank: my house.

Aurora’s moods were
capricious
as a faerie’s
,
and
not in a
Disneyish
way
.
She stopped taking her medication.
She refused to see a therapist, since Nigel had scared off the last
one
.
As a result, she was like
a
UID
on two legs
.
She went off, without warning, during our apartment
hunt
in Burbank.
I will never forget that day
.
Aurora got into a fight with Dav
id.  T
hey ran back to my truck
–
parked on
a
corner
–
and she
proceeded to pummel him
.
A gentleman, he would not hit back.

I approached, breathless.
“What is going on here?”

Aurora’s eyes narrowed – her expression one of pure malevolence.
“Fuck off!” she yelled.

“I will not—”
The world would never know what I would or would not do.
Before I could grasp what was happening, Aurora was slugging me
like Iron Mike.

“Hey!”
Two high-school girls, just off the bus, ran into the fray.
One was tall and bl
onde; the other short and Latina
.

“What are you doing?
You don’t hit your Mom – you have respect for your Mom!”
The blonde girl voiced a sentiment that had no part in my reality.

“
G
et
away
, you bitches!”
In her
mania
, Aurora
was fearless.

The Latina
girl approached.
She was wearing a
black
leather jacket and had a lot of
piercings.
You could
envision
a blade
beneath
that coat.

“
Hey
.
If your Mom wasn’t here, I’d kick your ass.”
She could do it too.

I looked over the two girls’ heads
.
There,
on various
landings
,
stood
residents
,
drawn
by the sight of
a
pretty blonde girl beating
up
an
angry
fat woman
.
I felt something
snap
inside me,
decanting
a
tear-filled humiliation.
How much lower could I go?
I
was fifty years old, and
had just been rescued by
high
schoolers!