Niagara Motel (3 page)

I opened the curtains and saw an old man in a green rain hat in front of the motel. He stooped down to collect the cigarette butts people had thrown away. He deposited them into a little soup can that was attached to his belt. When he straightened up again, he looked right at me. I didn't know what to do so I gave him a little wave. His face got bright for a moment, and I could almost imagine what he had been like when he was young. Now he looked older than a mummy, and the wrinkles in his face were full of grime. He raised his arm and waved back at me. I could tell by how slowly he did it that he hadn't waved at anyone in a long, long time, almost as if he had forgotten how. A woman wearing pink trackpants was walking a pit bull, and when she passed him, he turned to look at the back of her pants, which said
B.U.M. EQUIPMENT
across the butt. He kept watching her so I closed the curtains. I got dressed and went out to talk to the front-desk guy to ask if he'd seen Gina. He was flipping through the Yellow Pages. He had a pock-marked face and a tattoo of a scorpion on his neck. He hadn't seen her.

“Did she leave a message for me?”

“Nope.”

“Do you guys have a continental breakfast here?”

“Sure don't.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else?”

“Do you have a waterslide?”

“Nope.”

“Well, what kind of amenities
do
you have?”

“Sweet fuck-all,” he said.

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

I was really hungry so I drank a bunch of water and ate two packets of sugar that were in our room with the coffee stuff. Then I walked around for a while to see if Gina was asleep on the sidewalk
or a bench, but she wasn't anywhere. It had rained the night before and there were worms all over the road. The air stank of worm. I tried not to step on any of them, but most of them had already been squished. You could hear the robins chirping their little heads off, but you couldn't see them anywhere. They must have been hiding, protecting their babies. A Lincoln Town Car drove by and splashed a huge puddle over me. I got soaked from the knees down. I walked toward the falls. I was tired and wanted to sit down but everything was wet. Then I realized I was already drenched so it didn't really matter anyways. I found a place to sit that was so close to the falls it made my heart stutter. I stared at all that green water rushing over and the silver mist shooting up and wondered what would happen if I jumped in.

People did it.

Some of them died and some of them got famous. Sixteen people have gone over the falls in a barrel or something else. Two of them did it twice. Eleven out of the sixteen survived. That's pretty good odds. But when you look into the river you get dizzy, and you can tell that if you step into it, it will kill you.

I could feel the wetness of the bench seeping through my underwear. My stomach growled and I wished I hadn't spent twenty bucks at the stupid arcade. I wished I knew where Gina was and I wished I knew what to do. It was early and no one was around. As I stared into the white oblivion of the falls, I felt like I was the last human being on earth. I watched the Horseshoe Falls for a long, long time. One million bathtubs of water went over every second. That's probably more baths than I'll have in my whole entire life. In one second. I never knew there was so much water in the world. The sound of it blocked out all the other sounds. The never-ending roar of the falls was so loud that it was overwhelming and I started to get scared that something bad had happened to Gina. She had never not come
home before without calling. I stared at the falls that I couldn't turn off and would never ever stop, and I felt like crying or hurling myself at them or both. But then I remembered my horoscope, and I whispered,
I'm in control, I'm in control. I am in control.
Instead of crying or dying, I went back to the motel and asked scorpion guy to borrow the phonebook. Then I went to our room and called the Greater Niagara General Hospital.

3

A lady doctor named Dr Chopra came to get me in the waiting room. She had dark hair stuck up in a tight bun and gave me a little smile with no teeth. We took the elevator to the third floor, and she led me through the fluorescent hallways to a blue room where I saw Gina lying in a bed. She had two black eyes and her nose was all swollen, her head was wrapped in a white bandage, and she had tubes and wires going in and out of her arms and a tube coming out of her chest. I started to cry.

“Is this your mother?” Dr Chopra asked.

I nodded.

“Can you tell me her name?”

“Gina. Gina Malone.”

She nodded. “Good.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Tucker, your mom was hit by a mini-van last night. The driver said she was lying in the road and he didn't see her until it was too late.”

I moved away so her hand wasn't on my shoulder anymore.

“She's in serious but stable condition. Her right leg was crushed, and she has a fractured pelvis. She has three broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Her nose is broken too.”

“But, she's … is she …?”

“She's going to live, yes. But it will take a long time for her to make a full recovery.”

“How long?”

“Well, because she has bruising on her heart, I'll need to keep her here for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe three, depending on how her lung is healing.” Dr Chopra opened the closet and took Gina's purse off a hook. “This was found with her, in case you need anything out of it.”

“Okay.” I hugged the purse against my chest.

“Do you have any family you can call? Anyone you can stay with?”

“Gina's my family.”

Dr Chopra nodded.

“She has narcolepsy,” I said.

“I see,” Dr Chopra said.

“That's probably why she was in the road. She probably had a sleep attack. She's supposed to take her roofies but she forgets to get the prescription filled and runs out all the time. I keep telling her she needs to always take them but …” I wiped my nose on my sleeve.

Dr Chopra wrote something on Gina's chart then turned back to me. “Well, you're welcome to stay here tonight and I'll make sure someone from Child and Family Services comes and sees you first thing tomorrow. Oh, and I'll give you these meal tickets for the cafeteria downstairs.” She handed me a roll of coupons.

“Thanks.”

“There are blankets in the closet here and just let the nurses know if you need anything.”

“Okay.”

“Right. Well, I'll be back later on to check on her. Push that buzzer if she wakes up, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dr Chopra left, and I stood in the corner and stared at Gina. She looked small and pale. I thought of the albino pigeon that used to nest on our motel balcony in Nanaimo. I went over to stand next to Gina's bed and watched the mint-green sheet rise and fall with her breathing machine. The breathing machine was loud and sounded like whooshing water. I got dizzy after a while and had to sit down. My stomach hurt so I went to the cafeteria to eat.

When I came back, I got some blankets out of the closet and set up the chairs so I could stretch out on them and rest my head on the
edge of the bed. I fell asleep thinking about the guy in the mini-van who ran over Gina. I wondered where he was now and what he was doing. I wondered if he had ever heard of narcolepsy. I wondered if he had a mom.

In the middle of the night, I woke up to Gina's fingers running through my hair. I sat up.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.”

She smiled at me and my heart burst. She was alive. She was alive and she could talk and she knew who I was and she was broken but she would be okay. I told her everything Dr Chopra had told me; that she was fractured and crushed and collapsed. I told her that her heart was bruised. She put her hand on her chest and looked down to where her heart was, as if she'd be able to see it through her body.

“Should I push the button now to tell them you woke up?”

“No.”

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Because you're here now.” She reached for my hand then, and we stayed like that, holding hands, until we both fell asleep.

4

It was decided that I would stay at a group home for kids called Bright Light while Gina was recovering. Really, the house was meant for teenagers, but Collette, the social worker, said it would be okay because I would only be staying there temporarily while Gina recovered. Collette had short brown hair that curled up against her forehead like fiddlehead ferns. We sat across from each other in the hospital cafeteria. Collette drank peppermint tea out of a paper cup. I drank chocolate milk out of a carton.

“I'm only eleven, you know.”

“I know that, Tucker. But I think you're very mature for your age.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I still make fart noises with my armpit.”

“Well,” she smiled. “You know when it's not appropriate to do that too.”

“I still watch cartoons.”

“That's fine.”

“Are you sure I can live with fifteen-to-eighteen-year-olds?”

“It's only for a few weeks, and unfortunately there are no spots available in foster care right now, so this is really the best option for you. I'm sure you'll get along just fine at Bright Light.”

“But I want to stay here, with Gina.”

“I'm sorry, Tucker, but you can't do that.”

“Then let me stay at the motel. Chad can keep an eye on me.”

“Who's Chad?”

“Chad's the front-desk guy at the Niagara Motel. He has a scorpion tattoo on his neck.”

Collette pressed her lips together.

When I'd called the hospital and found out that Gina was there, Chad had taped a sign on the front door of the motel that said
BACK IN 15 MINITS!
I didn't think it was important that he had spelled minutes wrong, so I didn't mention it. Chad drove me to the hospital in his black Chevrolet Caprice. He lit a cigarette and rolled his window down an inch. I said thanks for the ride and he said no problem. He had told me he was trying to be a good person now, and that driving a kid to the hospital to see his mom who had just been in an accident was something a good person would do.

Despite all this, Collette would not agree to me staying on at the motel. She also told me that she had registered me for school and that I would start at Niagara Elementary on Monday.

“Do you even know what grade I'm in?”

“Grade six,” she said.

“Okay.”

I didn't completely hate school, but I didn't love it either. School is just one of those things you have to do until you get old enough not to.

I went back upstairs to say goodbye to Gina. She was sleeping and I wanted to wake her up so she would know what was going on, but I also knew that she should rest because resting helps you heal. I left her a note explaining about Bright Light and put it on the bedside table. In the note, I promised that I would be back tomorrow to visit her. I drew a heart on it, but then I thought that might make her think of her own heart being bruised and that would make her sad. So I erased it and drew a little cartoon of a farmer riding a donkey with a broken foreleg and the farmer saying,
I broke my ass
, because laughter is the best medicine. I watched Gina for a minute, all pale and broken like a crushed moth. A machine breathing for her. A machine feeding her. I hated to see her like that. It made my insides feel like they could drop right out my butt at any moment. I gave her a kiss
on the forehead and told her I loved her, which I never usually said, but since she was asleep it didn't really matter anyways.

5

Collette was totally wrong about me fitting in at Bright Light. I looked
so
much younger than all the other kids that nobody talked to me, nobody even wanted to be
seen
talking to me, except to say things like, “Watch it, ass-maggot,” after they trampled over me in the hallway, or, “Are you even potty-trained yet?” if they saw me in line for the bathroom. It wasn't my fault I was born five or six or seven years after they were, I just wasn't conceived yet. No one gets to choose when they're born. The fact that none of the kids spoke to me based on my birth date was completely unfair. But no one considers justice in a place like that.

On my second day there I stood in front of the fridge, looking inside it. I'm not sure what for. A blond, pimply guy named Josh came up behind me and shut the fridge.

“Are your parents married?” Josh asked me.

“No,” I said.

“Ha, you're a bastard.” He laughed and punched me in the arm, hard.

“So?”

“You gonna cry? Little bastard gonna cry?”

“No.”

He slapped me across the face. “Can you fight?”

“No.”

He slapped me again. “Can you run?”

“No.”

He slapped me again. “Well, what
can
you do?”

“Nothing,” I said, my eyes hot with tears.

“I knew it! You're a little bastard who can't do nothing!”

I ran out of the kitchen before he could hit me again.

I knew I was a bastard a long time ago because this smart girl named Claire Christakos in Winnipeg had told me about it in grade two. But it didn't matter. Lots of people were bastards. There are actually two different kinds of bastards, and the other kind has nothing to do with your parents.

Because it was a warm spring, I spent most of my time outside, cruising the strip and watching people, watching the falls, and watching people watch the falls. I probably saw people take a bajillion pictures of the falls, and I was even in a few of them too. But it was good that people were taking pictures, because every day Niagara Falls looked a little bit different, and who would remember exactly what they had looked like the day before or the week before or the month before if there were no pictures out there for photo evidence?

I visited Gina in the hospital every day after school from three to five p.m., which were the visiting hours. On Saturdays and Sundays I could stay from one to five p.m., and then Gina and I would watch a movie or play Boggle or I would read to her or give her a
Cosmo
quiz, and then I wouldn't feel so lonely. Gina had a roommate named Mrs Jorgenson who was old and shriveled and coughed up phlegm all the time and spit it into a glass jar that she kept beside her bed. Mrs Jorgenson didn't speak very much English. She sometimes hollered at Gina to turn the TV off or turn the volume down or change the channel, and she always yelled for the nurse instead of pushing the white button on the wall above the bed like you were supposed to. Gina said that even though Mrs Jorgenson was crabby and yelled at us, we should always be extra nice to her because she might not be leaving the hospital. I was lying next to Gina on her bed and we were watching
The Golden Girls
, which we thought was Mrs Jorgenson's favourite show because she always hacked up a lung and a half while laughing when we watched it.

“You mean she has to stay here for the rest of her life?” I whispered.

“I mean, she might not have many days left in her life,” Gina whispered.

“Oh.”

Gina nodded and smoothed my hair. She gave me a little kiss on the head, and I curled in to her as close as I could without touching her ribs.

Gina had given me all the money in her purse, $226.38, so that I could buy lunch and go to the arcade, and get some of those shiny bouncy balls with the little creatures inside them that she knew I liked.

“Maybe if you bought something you could share with your house-mates, that would help break the ice,” she suggested.

“Like what?”

“I don't know, candy?”

“
Candy?
”

“What?”

“Gina, they're
teenagers!
They don't like
candy!
”

“Everyone likes candy.”

“You don't get it.”

“Look, I'm sorry it's so sucky in there. I wish it didn't have to be this way. I'd change it if I could, Tucker.”

“I know.”

“You're just going to have to make the best of it. It's not going to be forever. Just a couple more weeks.”

“A couple
more
weeks?”

She nodded. “Dr Chopra says she needs to keep an eye on me for a little bit longer.”

“Well, just tell her that you're ready to go.”

“I did. She said that's fine but my heart's not ready yet.”

“That's dumb.”

She turned to look at me. “Did they tell you that I died?”

“No.”

“Well, I did.”

“What the frig are you talking about? You're right here, you jerk.” I poked her in the arm.

“I went into cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for almost two minutes.”

“No way.”

“Way. They had to restart my heart with the heart-charger thingy.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Well, I didn't.”

“Do you know what they call it when your heart stops like that?”

“What?”

“A Code Blue.”

“Code Blue?”

“Yep.”

“Blue's my favourite colour,” I said.

“I know.”

“So … what was it like?”

“Being dead?”

“Yeah, I mean … did you see anything?”

“You mean like God sitting on a cloud or angels playing harps?”

“I don't know! You're the one who died!”

“No. I didn't see anything. But I felt something.”

“What?”

“I felt … nothing.”

“
What?
”

“Emptiness.”

“Emptiness?”

“Yep. Just this clear and total emptiness. Like, there was no me, there was no world, there was no nothing, just blank.”

“No me?”

“Not even you.”

I thought about that for a minute. “Kind of like a chalkboard after it's been erased?”

“Like no chalkboard being there at all.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

We stared up at the ceiling. I wondered what it would be like to feel empty. It sounded kind of nice. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my head, but stupid thoughts kept bonking around, and I could feel that my body was there, and I could feel that Gina was there breathing beside me, her arm against my arm, and I liked her being there, and if I were empty, I wouldn't be able to do this, to feel this, because I would be nothing. Then I remembered that Gina had died. And I didn't ever want that to happen ever, ever again. A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye, but I brushed it away before she could see.

“Gina?”

“Yeah?”

“You can't die again.”

“Okay.” She curled a piece of my hair around her finger.

“Promise.”

“Not for a long, long time.”

“Not ever.”

“Well, I can't promise that.”