Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon (10 page)

I opened our sack lunch and split the sandwich with her on napkins. Joyce had included a cup of cold coffee and a cup of warm milk, with a lid and straw. Now we get the lid.

We sat in the shade and ate. Meggie carefully pulled the crust off her bread then poked at the cold cheese. We shared the chips. I ate the pickle. A non-food feast. Joyce didn’t include a fork for the fruit salad. It didn’t matter. Every time I took the lid off, yellow jackets swarmed us. The sun coming through the leaves overhead mesmerized Chance. I brushed away the flies and yellow jackets that tried to land on his soft skin. Karin called.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

I filled her in on our picnic in the country.

“Yeah. I so miss those days,” she said. “You see Stroud?”

“Why would I?”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“No idea,” I said. “I know he still lives around here.”

“You should call him.”

“Wow. Now that’s one of your worst ideas ever.”

“What can it hurt? You’re married with kids. I’m dying to know what happened to him.”

“You never even met him.”

“I feel like I did. What time you getting here?”

“Next year.”

“Yeah. So so miss those days. Gotta run. Can’t wait to see you.”

Talking to Karin always reminded me of a time when I wasn’t covered in breast milk and eating cold Velveeta. I was already seeing myself working in L.A. with the kids. We could go to the Farmer’s Market for pecan waffles on Saturday morning. Visit the La Brea tar pits. Go to Chinatown for dim sum. Jon called. He must have felt me brainstorming a new vision board.

“Hey. How’s it going with my family? I miss you guys. It’s too quiet around here. No one is choking me in my sleep.”

“We’re having a picnic. You want to talk to Meggie?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

We were quiet.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” I asked.

“Where’re you having a picnic?”

“I stopped at a place for a sandwich. We’re eating at a farm stand that’s been here for ages.”

“How’s Chance doing on the road?”

“He’s a good traveler. He’s watching leaves in a tree.”

“I talked to Chana this morning. You’d already left.”

“Sounds like they had a fun time. I didn’t stay long.”

We sat quiet again.

“I should pack them up and get on the road again,” I said.

“What time will you get to Karin’s?”

“No idea.”

“I’ll be on the Big Island for a few days.”

“Have fun. Celeste there yet?”

“No. I’m going for work.”

“Celeste won’t be work?”

“Knock it off, Hannah. Where’d you stop for a sandwich?” he asked.

“Place called Grub ‘n Scrub. It’s a truck stop with showers, but they make good food.”

“Don’t involve our children. Hannah. Do not involve our children.”

“Children adjust. That’s life. Look how great Chana turned out and she knew all those women on your refrigerator door. I’ll never have that many men. Eric told me your theory. I’m not depressed. I’m sad. I love you so much. I thought you were my husband. That we were safe.”

“Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed.”

“You act like I had an affair.”

“No. I don’t think you ever really married me is all. I feel like a fool to just realize that now.”

“I don’t know what to do here,” he said.

“Me either. I’m going to stay over here for a while.”

“You can’t stay there. If you want to go back later, after we’ve had a chance to talk about it, okay. You need to come home first. Bring the kids home. I’m not going to send you any money, Hannah.”

I hung up. Meggie held up a corner of her cold sandwich.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Me either.”

I packed up and bought snacks. We sat in the shade, Meggie with an apple, me with Kettle corn, Chance with a breast.

My phone rang.

“Mrs. Moon?”

“Ms. Spring,” I said.

It was the credit card company. In all the confusion of spilled milk and crying baby, I’d left my credit card at the Grub ‘n Scrub. I told them to let them know I’d be back for it, and then called Jon.

“Did you already cancel my credit cards?”

“What are you talking about? Doesn’t it work?”

“I left it at the truck stop. Meggie spilled a glass of milk all over us. We were soaking wet. Chance was crying nonstop. She got all freaked out. You know how she gets. You’d think she was dying. I had to wash her off with a hose in a dog bowl at the farm stand. She loved that. It’s hot out here. I left in a hurry and forgot it.”

“Don’t worry about it. They can overnight one to Karin’s. Use your other card. Do you have cash? You never take enough cash.”

“I have cash. I’ll just go back for it. I didn’t want to bother if you’d already canceled it.”

I hung up and loaded the kids in the car. I’d been kidding when I told Karin I’d get there next year, now I wasn’t so sure.

I pulled into the G&S, as Stroud called it, for the fourth time in my life. Every time I thought I’d left it behind, I ended up back there. I eyeballed the place, no John Deere or blue Volvo. I did a time travel check. I was in a rental car, not a lurching Prius. I had kids in car seats and creeping crows feet from the Hawaiian sun. I didn’t like that part, but at least it meant time had passed.

I had to park all the way over by the motel and haul the kids out for a thirty-second trip. I opened the glass door covered with greasy fingerprints to a waiting Joyce. My phone rang. Jon.

“You don’t need to go back there,” he said. “They’ll FedEx one tonight. You’ll have it tomorrow at Karin’s”

“I’m here now.”

I hung up and looked at Joyce.

“I figured you’d be back,” she said.

“They called while we were still close.”

She handed me the credit card, then a plastic bag with layers that included a milk soaked diaper, coffee grounds and unidentifiable offal, topped with the half roll of sopping toilet paper off the floor. She’d worked at it.            

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “They just fell apart.”

She twisted her mouth. It wasn’t nice. I folded the card in half, opened the bag, tossed it on top, tied a knot in the top, and set it on the counter by the cash register.

“You’re still one nasty bitch, Joyce,” I said.

I walked out. Okay. Now that felt good.

“Bits, Mama. Bits, Mama,” sang Meggie as she hopped along next to me. “I need to go potty.”

“You’re going in the bushes,” I said.

“Mama,” she started to protest.

“Zip it,” I said.

She didn’t know what it meant, but she zipped it. Chance closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. I could sure use a nap. The view from the Grub was blocked by a line of trucks, so I took her around the back of the motel and kicked away empty beer cans and cigarette butts to clear a spot in the dead foundation plantings. I’d peed in worse places out on location. It wasn’t until my toe hit a small snakes nest of stiff, thought-provoking, used condoms that I had an image of my baby squatting in that place. She was hopping.

“Don’t hop, Meggie. It just makes it worse.”

She stopped and jiggled instead. I fast marched her down the row of empty motel rooms, trying door handles as I went. I hoped to find an empty shower room between truckers. Quick pit stop. The next to last door was unlocked. I knocked. No answer. The dry hollow door flew open to the pendulum sound of the scratchy chain lock. The carpet was stomped flat by greasy boots.           

“Wait here,” I said. “Do not move.”

I stepped into the dark room and flipped the light switch. Fluorescent light stuttered over orange and brown, old and musty. A wood and brass space-age lamp sat on a chipped brown Formica nightstand. The paper-thin quilted bedspread was shiny and stiff. I thought about those condoms. The matching curtains with boomerang motif and cracked liners were missing hooks. The whole scene was standard issue 1950s. It was dry down to the subatomic particle level. The bedbugs had starved.

“Mama.”

“Stay right there, Meggie. Do not move.”

The bathroom had a deafening light-fan combo, and a rust pitted wall heater filled with dust from a half century of cheap towel rubbings. It was chilly in the heat of the day.

“Come here, Meggie. Quick like a bunny. Go potty.”

She stood silhouetted in the door with bright sun haloing her hair.

“Come on, Meggie. If you need to go potty you need to chop chop.”

“Chop?”

“Meggie, come on.”

She moved at a glacial pace for someone who needed to pee so badly she’d been hopping and jiggling. I broke the paper seal on the toilet. The strip had been there so long, the edges were gray and curling. I stuffed it in the snugli to hide the evidence. The water looked clean, despite the rust stains. I lifted the seat to look for spiders. The bolts were loose and the seat slid side-to-side. Meggie managed to get on without snapping a bolt. She held on for dear life, like she was balancing on her floatie. She settled in and peed with the contented smile that only a good pee can deliver after hopping through the ice age.

The tub was dusty. Rust stains from spots missing enamel streaked to the drain like an aerial shot of a river delta. A rubber stopper, split around the edges, was wrapped around the spigot on a chain. A thin bar of Ivory soap was next to a single-use bottle of partly used Prell shampoo. It would take a chisel to get it out. A rusty double-edged razor blade like my father used had missed the trash can. A plastic glass, wrapped in yellowing cellophane, was the only modern upgrade since the 50s.

Like me, Meggie had spaced out and was looking around now that the emergency had passed. I tore off crisp single-layer toilet paper and handed it to her. Then noticed a smudge of red lipstick on her thigh and tried to get that off with the bottom of my tee shirt. It stuck.

“Hop off, we need to go.”

She got off gingerly but managed to pinch her finger between the seat and the bowl. She started to cry again. Good lord, we were having a crying epidemic.

“It’s all right, Angel.”

She stuck her finger at me.

“Kiss it, Mama.”

Her finger was going pink with pain. My mind revisited all the places it had been in the last half hour. And I hadn’t used the soap. Soft tears pooled in her blue eyes and ran down her cheeks. What the hell. I kissed it. I’d kissed worse things in my early twenties, and I didn’t love the people.

I wiped her tears with the bottom of my shirt and then used the damp shirt to wipe off the toilet seat, folded the toilet paper roll end into a point, and even took a swipe at the lid. It was cleaner than the way I found it. I flipped off the noise machine light, the silence a tender mercy. Chance started crying from the shock of quiet while Meggie hopped ahead of me out of the bathroom. I bounced him as I hustled Meggie across the room, surveyed the room one last time, flipped off the light, closed the door, and turned around into Joyce. Jesus. It was like a horror movie.

“Rooms are eighty dollars,” she said.

“We’re not staying. She had to go potty. We left it perfect.”

“Eighty dollars.”

“That’s crazy. You only charge thirty for the shower rooms,” I said.

“The beds aren’t made up in those rooms.”

“We didn’t use the bed. We were only in there five minutes. Three minutes. How about thirty?”

“I have to pay the girl to clean now.”

“How much does she charge?”

“The rooms with sheets are eighty dollars.”

“She charges eighty dollars to change the sheets? I’ll change them.”

“You owe me eighty dollars for the use of the room.”

“Or what?”

“Or, I’ll call the police.”

“You really are a bitch, Joyce.”

“I heard you the first time. I’ll be in the office.”

She walked away.

“Is it under the flashing sign with the missing bulbs?” I yelled after her.

She ignored me. I hoped she got electrocuted. I headed to the car for my purse. The now empty Meggie did her happy hop next to me. She kept saying, “Bits, Mama. Bits, Mama.”

“Yes,” I said. “Bits, Mama.”

Why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut?

I hauled everyone over to the psycho office with the carney sign. I imagined light bulbs exploding and raining shards of glass down on us while loose wires whipped around our heads and evil clowns laughed.

I presented my American Express card. Joyce tapped the plastic tent sign:
We Accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Diners Club
. Under it was a handwritten sign that said, “OR CASH - ONLY! DON’T ASK!!!”

“You take Diners Club?”

She tried to wither me with her look but, Diners Club?

“Come on, Joyce. I only have eighty dollars. If I give it to you, I’ll be traveling with children and no cash. How about sixty? At least leave me twenty dollars.”

“It’s eighty dollars. I’m giving you a break at that. I should charge you room tax.”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Because I can. The same way you could hurt Leeann.”

“Leeann? I didn’t hurt Leeann.”

Leeann was Stroud’s pregnant girlfriend. I was surprised Joyce even knew about us. I was sure she didn’t know the details or the police would already be there.

“I didn’t know anything about Leeann. And when I found out, I never saw your brother again. I wouldn’t take his calls either.”

“Like he called,” she said. “Come on, Hannah. I need to get back.”

I handed her seventy-eight dollars in bills and made up the rest with change. That left me with less than a dollar.

“Have a nice day,” she said.

She stuffed the money in her apron pocket and walked out the back door of the office, across the cracked and weedy asphalt to the back door of the diner, and disappeared. I thought about calling the authorities and turning her in for not paying the room tax. Those local guys can be a nightmare to deal with. Maybe they’d string her up and flog her. Pull her hair out one hair at a time. Or, best of all, audit her. But I didn’t have a receipt.

Chance was really vocalizing while Meggie hummed under the snapping sign and made a flower design with old cigarette butts in a rusty restaurant-size coffee can filled with sand, and what looked like a cat turd. Cat must have had great balance to pull that off.