Greetings from Nowhere (15 page)

Read Greetings from Nowhere Online

Authors: Barbara O'Connor

Loretta dumped the things out of the box and spread them
on the bed. She refolded the blue handkerchief embroidered with a
P
. She opened the silver pocket watch engraved with
WKL
. She smoothed out the creases on the hummingbird picture.
“Mama?” she said.
Her mother looked up from her magazine. “Hmmm?”
“Do you think my other mother would be mad at me for losing her poodle dog pin?”
Her mother put down the magazine and gathered Loretta in her arms. Loretta pressed her face against her mother's warm, soft body and breathed in her talcum powder smell.
“Lulu,” her mother said, “I think she'd know you're the best little girl in the whole world. That's what I think.”
“But what about the pin?”
Her mother took her by the shoulders. “I think she'd know that people make mistakes and that accidents happen,” she said. “Don't you?”
Loretta shrugged. “I guess.”
Her mother put her arm around her and led her over to the window. “Look at those mountains, Lulu,” she said.
Loretta looked out at the gray-green mountains. A layer of smoky clouds hovered over the tops of them.
“Your other mother looked out at those very same mountains,” her mother said.
Loretta took in every inch of the scene outside the window, imagining her other mother seeing the very same thing.
The same pine trees.
The same puffy clouds.
The same winding roads.
And somewhere out there along the mountaintop, Loretta found a piece of herself. Like that last missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, snapped into place with a sigh of satisfaction, making the picture whole.
Loretta hugged her mother and said, “I love you.”
Then she wiggled her hand, making her charm bracelet
jingle up and down her arm, and said, “I'm gonna go take Willow one of my rubies.”
 
 
Loretta skipped up the sidewalk toward the office. She peered through the screen door. Willow sat on a stool at the counter, watching the little television her father had put there that morning.
“I brought you a ruby,” Loretta called through the screen door.
Willow jumped off the stool and came outside. They ran and sat on the picnic table. Loretta gave Willow the ruby and Willow gave Loretta the little china horses. The mama horse and the baby horse.
When the lightning bugs came out, Loretta and Willow took turns catching one, making a wish, and then letting it go again.
Then they sat on the steps of the swimming pool and looked around them at the little motel.
The lawn chairs, clean and tidy around the pool.
The parking lot without the weeds.
Room 3 with the freshly painted door.
Room 2 with the broken window fixed.
“Your motel looks nice,” Loretta said.
Willow smiled. “Thank you,” she said.
They sat there on the steps, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the sun disappear completely behind the mountains.
The MOUNTAINVIEW INN sign glowed.
VACANCY flashed on and off.
On and off.
Aggie put Harold's plaid slippers on top of the other things
in the box.
“There,” she said to Ugly.
Then she put on her old canvas sneakers and grabbed a hat (the big straw one she got in Florida) and went around back to the garden.
Ugly trotted along behind her.
Grasshoppers sprang up out of the weeds as she made her way to the tomato garden.
“Well, Harold,” she said, “I'll be heading over to Evelyn's this week and …”
Aggie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Then she continued. “I hope you don't mind if I gave that boy, Kirby,
your patch from the war, but he seems kinda needy. You know? Seems like his kin are so busy waiting for him to do something bad that they miss out on him doing something good.”
She picked a fat, green tomato worm off one of the plants and tossed it into the weeds.
“And Loretta. Lawd, that little thing is just a bundle of sunshine, skipping around here with that bracelet of hers jangling away.”
Aggie chuckled. “You know, I think she came here to these mountains looking for a little piece of herself, and I have a feeling she found it.”
Ugly rubbed against Aggie's legs, purring.
“And then there's Willow.” Aggie smiled up at the sky. “Pining away for her mother and missing that love so much. Seems like most of what she needs is just a good hug once in a while.” Aggie looked down at her dirty sneakers. “But then, never having children of my own, what do I know, right?”
She looked skyward again. “Oh, and thanks again for getting them letters to Willow. I knew I could count on you.”
Then she went over and sat in the lawn chair at the edge of the garden and told Harold all about the tour group. How they'd be here any minute now. How they were coming on a bus from down in Atlanta.
Then she told him about all the things they had done to
spruce up the motel. The painting and hammering and washing and all.
“You should see it,” she said. “But then”—she chuckled—“I reckon you can.”
She pushed herself out of the chair and headed down the path out of the garden. But before she rounded the corner of the motel, she looked up at the mountain sky and said, “This has been one heck of a parade, ain't it, Harold?”
Willow made sure the guest book was on the counter and
the coffee mugs were lined up and the little silver bell was ready in case one of their guests needed something. Then she looked out the office door for about the millionth time to see if the tour bus was there yet.
But it wasn't.
So she went outside to look for Aggie. She looked in the laundry room and out by the flagpole. Then she ran up the sidewalk past the rooms with the freshly painted doors and went along the path toward the garden. But before she rounded the corner, she heard someone talking.
Aggie.
Aggie talking to Harold.
Aggie saying, “This has been one heck of a parade, ain't it, Harold?”
And then Willow had a moment.
A lightbulb moment.
One of those moments when the light goes on with a
click
and everything is suddenly clearer than it had been the minute before.
Kirby stuffed his dirty T-shirts into the duffel bag and
zipped it up.
“ … better not be getting no calls from that school …” his mother was saying.
“ … if you were more like Ace …”
“ … I've tried and I've tried, but you …”
On and on and on.
His mother telling him all those things he already knew because he'd heard them so many times before.
“ … ain't gonna tolerate your lying and …”
Kirby went outside and put his duffel bag in the backseat of their car.
And then a bus pulled into the parking lot, sending up
clouds of red dust as it came to a stop in front of the office.
The bus doors opened with a
hiss
and folks ambled down the steps and out into the parking lot, carrying backpacks and tote bags and cameras.
Mr. Dover rushed out of the office, grinning. He shook their hands and helped them with their bags and pointed out the ice machine and the soda machine and the laundry room.
Aggie came out and gave them each a map and introduced them to Ugly.
Willow stood just inside the office door with the guest book in her hand.
Kirby ran over to help.
Loretta put the two little china horses into her box with all
her other mother's earthly possessions.
“I'm going to go say goodbye to everyone,” she said.
Her mother smiled and nodded as she folded clothes and put them into the opened suitcases on the bed.
Outside, a bus was pulling into the parking lot. A big bus with
Holiday Tours
on the side.
“The tour group!” Loretta squealed.
Everyone was scurrying around like ants. Mr. Dover and Aggie were showing folks to their rooms, unlocking the doors, opening the blinds, handing out extra soaps. Willow was making sure everyone had a pen to sign the guest book. Kirby was helping folks with their bags.
So Loretta ran over to help, too. She told the ladies in the tour group all about the spelunkers at Tuckaleechee Caverns. She told the men about the cowboy town over in Maggie Valley. And she showed everyone her rubies.

Other books

Mind Games (Mindjack Origins) by Susan Kaye Quinn
To Stand Beside Her by B. Kristin McMichael
Moonwitch by Nicole Jordan
Defend and Betray by Anne Perry
Shotgun Bride by Lauri Robinson
A Murder is Arranged by Basil Thomson