Fitting Ends (5 page)

Susan honestly hated Rhonda. “She's beneath contempt,” she'd always say. “How could a mother leave her child like that, for any reason?” In a way, I suppose, I was surprised at the hard edge in her voice, just as I was surprised at how easily she'd settled into being a mother. She had once been pretty wild herself, and I thought she'd have more sympathy.

When we first met, Susan had seemed so dangerous to me: she hung around with older men, who gave her rides on their motorcycles and jacked-up cars, and she was a drinker. I guess it was what I needed at the time. My mother had just died, and my father had just had the first in the series of strokes that would eventually kill him. He once told me that the best thing he'd ever done was to be there for his parents when they were old—his brothers were never around—and that stuck with me. I'd come home from college to help with the motel, and Susan would come over late and talk me into turning on the NO VACANCY light before we'd filled. She'd get me to do things I would never have done without her. I still thought fondly of how we'd stayed up all night, how she and her tough girlfriends taught me how to bounce a quarter into a glass of beer, and of the time she'd tricked me into trying marijuana by feeding it to me in a cake. We used to drive a hundred miles just to check into small-town motels, pretending we were having an illicit affair. Once, an old woman had refused to give us a room because we didn't have the same last name. “I don't believe in it,” she told us darkly.

When I walked into the office of the motel, Kent was asleep, slumped in the swivel chair behind the desk. He worked the night shift, from ten until seven, and usually the motel was as full as it was going to get by the time he started. He didn't have to deal much with customers, and I figured he would be good at taking care of the type of problems that sometimes arise late at night. He was a big man, with thick dark eyebrows and a kind of steely, mean-looking face. He was a nice enough person, actually, though I remember being afraid of him when we first met.

Of course, my father wouldn't have liked to see him there, unshaved, a full ashtray on the desk, his heavy head tucked against his shoulder. My parents had always run the place themselves. We'd lived in the little three-bedroom apartment connected to the office, and my mother or father had registered every guest. There was a buzzer at the front that brought them, no matter what the hour, out of bed.

I'd hired out. The little apartment behind the office had been converted into storage. Still, I was there six days a week, ten hours a day. I hadn't abandoned the place.

I rang the bell, and Kent stirred a little, his brow furrowing. “Fuck,” he murmured. Then he opened his eyes, glowering up at whoever had disturbed him.

I frowned. “Rise and shine,” I said. “Shift's over.”

“Oh,” he said, and his look softened. “Robert. Hey, happy birthday, man.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You know . . . you really have to be careful about your language around the guests.”

“Yeah,” he said, and looked down. “I know it. Sorry about that.” He glanced around sheepishly, as if there might be someone else in the room, and his look reminded me that he'd had a rough time of it lately. I didn't want to be another problem in his life.

“It's no big deal,” I said. “Any major disasters last night?”

“Nada,”
he said. “All quiet. Did you and Sue go out?”

I shrugged. “In a few weeks, maybe. Joan came over and fixed us a nice dinner.” I shrugged again, as if I had to make excuses, to apologize. “It was all right,” I said.

Kent nodded, and his voice dropped a little, the way men's voices do when they exchange something that passes for personal. I'd never been exactly sure what it meant. “Yeah, well, I know how it is, man.” He smiled, pursing his lips. “I guess maybe I'm lucky to be a bachelor again.”

“Yes, well,” I said. I wished that I could ask him what was going on between him and Rhonda. He surely must have known she was in town. Had he seen her? Talked to her? “So how are things going with you?” I said. “You're getting along okay?”

“Oh, fine.” Now it was Kent's turn to shrug. “Brittany's running Mom ragged. You know how Mom can get to complaining. But she loves it, you can tell.” He sighed and stood up. His hair was flattened on one side, stiff as paper. I watched as he tried to neaten the clutter on the desk, piling the scattered papers together. “I guess you heard that Rhonda's back in town,” he said at last.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Fucking everybody's heard.” He stared into my eyes, and I tried to keep my face noncommittal, but I could feel my expression wavering, the muscles moving beneath the skin. Finally he looked away and picked up his ashtray, dumping it into the wastebasket. “I don't know, man,” he said. “I just don't know.”

The motel, the Bonaventure Motor Lodge, was not the most profitable business around. The town was in a valley, and couldn't be seen by cars passing on the interstate. All they could see were the mesas and treeless hills, the empty pastureland that surrounded us, and despite the cheerful signs that promised food, gas, and lodging, most drivers just kept on going. Still, there were always a few forced to straggle in come nightfall, enough to keep us in business.

I liked to watch them in the mornings as they loaded up their vehicles and went on their various ways. This time of year, there weren't too many vacationers. They were mostly, I imagined, off on more desperate pursuits: nomadic men and women; fugitives; lovers; addled old folks; young families on their way to new jobs; working men fleeing their dying cities; or parts of families, single mothers and fathers, escaping some domestic situation. There was something heroic about these people, I thought. I would walk down the row, glancing at the license plates, peeking in the windows of the cars. You could tell a lot about people from what they left in the backseat of their cars: toys, books, empty beer cans, little barking dogs with their toenails painted bright red. Once I saw a semiautomatic, tossed casually on a blanket in the back; another time, a limbless mannequin gazed blankly at me when I peered into a hatchback. For a minute, I thought it was a body. Sometimes, when I was sure no one was looking, I would trace my name or my initials in the dusty film on the back of a car. Sometimes, I would be out there when a guest would come out the door, and I'd talk to them for a bit—ask them if they slept comfortably, inquire casually as to where they were headed. Mostly, people didn't have much to say. To them, I was just another provincial busy-body, another obstacle in their path.

In the afternoon, after all the keys had been turned in, and while the maids were cleaning out the rooms, my sister stopped by for lunch. She was working at the courthouse, in the county attorney's office, and she hadn't been getting along with her coworkers—she didn't want to spend her lunch period with them. They were all secretary types, dumb as dirt, she said. Besides, she suspected they had been gossiping about her and Mr. Trencher, her boss.

She'd brought a bucket of chicken from a local fast-food place, and we ate in the apartment in back of the office, in the old kitchen. The table we'd had when we were kids was still there, though the kitchen itself was cluttered with fresh towels and boxes of toilet paper and complimentary soap. “Don't you find it a little creepy, eating back here,” Joan said as she spread out the plastic silverware and plates, and opened the Styrofoam containers of mashed potatoes and gravy. “I think of all the hours Mother spent in this kitchen, and now look at it. It would kill her to see.”

“I think it's sort of comforting, actually,” I said. “Nostalgic.”

“You would,” she said. She peeled the crisp skin off her chicken and set it on my plate. “Trencher's been moon-eyed all morning,” she said. “It's really driving me crazy.”

“Tell him to cut it out,” I said. “Give him a karate chop.”

She grimaced. “Well,” she said. “It's not like he's chasing me around the desk or something. That's the trouble. It's this very subtle thing—little looks—and this weird tension in the air. So if I tell him to cut it out, he can act like I'm just paranoid. He'll say I'm reading things into it.”

I nodded slowly, scoping my mind for good advice. I didn't know what she expected me to say. I didn't understand this Mr. Trencher, any more than I understood Rhonda, or Joan herself, whose unfaithful ex-husband used to call late at night, used to drive hundreds of miles to camp out on her door. Why did she seem to draw this type of man? I had never been a person who could follow that kind of love, with its hidden agendas and uncertainty, its mazes of fear and desire. I hadn't been in love very many times. As far as I knew, my wife was the only woman who'd ever been in love with me. What did I know about any of it? “You could quit,” I suggested hesitantly.

“Why should I have to quit?” she said sharply. I shrugged. She was right—I hadn't been thinking. “I didn't do anything wrong. If anything, I should file harassment charges,” she said.

I nodded. “You could.” But then she just pursed her lips. It seemed a distant possibility; and as we looked at one another, I had the feeling that she wasn't completely unhappy with the situation. We ate for a moment in silence.

I was trying to think of some other subject to bring up when the front desk buzzer rang. I scooted my chair back, and Joan stood up as I did.

“I've got to get going anyway,” Joan said. “I've got some errands to run.”

But when we walked out to the office, both of us stopped cold. Rhonda was standing at the desk, and when she saw Joan, her eyes narrowed. She glanced from Joan to me, holding herself stiffly, formally, like a messenger. She was wearing one of those coats that looked like it was made of red vinyl, the kind a rock singer might wear. But her face looked tired and drawn. She stared at me, and I felt myself blushing, for a moment imagining she had come to accuse me of spying on her.

“I wanted to leave this for Kent,” she said, and held out an envelope. She set it on the desk, on top of the guest register. “I heard he was working here.”

“He's not here now,” I said, and she brushed her eyes over me, a quick once-over. She kept her face expressionless.

“I know,” she said. “Could you just see that Kent gets it?”

“Sure,” I said, and she turned, without looking at me again, and went out the door. I was almost as surprised by the abruptness of her exit as I had been to see her standing there. I guess I had imagined some little conversation between us, some slight acknowledgment. I watched her car pull through the motel's cul-de-sac and back onto the street.

“Well, well,” Joan said. She breathed, a sigh that seemed somewhere between puzzled and gratified. “This should be interesting. I can hardly wait for Susan to hear about this.” She looked at me sidelong, and I watched her gently lift the envelope. For a moment, I thought she was going to open it, and it sent an odd, possessive jolt through me. I wanted to snatch it from her. But she just examined it, front and back: blank. Then she put it down. “I'll drop by the house after work,” she said.

Susan didn't say much at first. Miraculously, both babies were asleep, and she was stretched out on the couch, watching music videos. I sat down, and she slid her feet onto my lap. “So you didn't open this letter, I suppose,” she said at last.

“Of course not,” I said.

“Hmmmm,” she said. I ran my thumb along the sole of her bare foot, reproachfully, and she shifted, stretching her leg muscles. “I'd like to know what that bitch is telling him.” She leaned her head back, looking at me thoughtfully.

“You could ask Kent,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “If my mom hasn't gotten it out of him, then no one will.” She eyed me for a minute, and when my finger grazed the underside of her foot again, she moved her feet from my lap and tucked them beneath her. “He still loves her, I guess,” she said. “Thinks he loves her.”

“Could be,” I agreed. But I wasn't sure what the difference was, between loving someone and thinking you do. It made me uncomfortable, puzzling over it, because it suggested layers of reality—what you thought was solid suddenly gave way, like a secret panel in a haunted house. “Maybe she thinks she loves him, too,” I said.

“Oh, I'm sure,” Susan said. She squinted, as if trying to see something far in the distance. “I'm sure that's the line she's feeding him, among others. ‘Kent I made a little mistake,' ” she mimicked, in a soft breathy voice—nothing like Rhonda's, I thought. Susan pouted her lips. “ ‘I'm so-o sorry,' ” she purred.

“Well . . . ,” I said hesitantly. “Maybe she did make a mistake.” I shrugged, and she peered at me, the corners of her mouth moving vaguely, a Mona Lisa smile.

“That's not a mistake,” she said at last. “A mistake is when your account is overdrawn a few bucks at the bank. It isn't a mistake when you leave your husband and baby daughter to run off with some pimp.” Her expression shifted again, but I couldn't guess what she was thinking. “If I were to do something like that, is that what you'd call it? A mistake?”

“I'd take you back,” I said.

“No, you wouldn't,” she said. “You may think you would, but I know you. You wouldn't.” I couldn't help but flinch a little, pinned by that look. What did she see in me, or think she saw? She shook her head. “Besides,” she said. “I wouldn't go back if you'd have me. I couldn't respect you.” We stared at each other, and I couldn't think of what to say next. The baby monitor crackled in the silence, humming with transistor noise. We waited. I saw her straighten, tensing like an animal seen briefly in a clearing before it bolts. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and Molly's voice, that high, strange mechanical cry that infants have, began to unravel—soft at first, but gaining force.