No Vacancy

by Tziporah Cohen

  “Three miles south of center Greenvale off Highway 30. Exit 33,” Uncle Mordy says into the phone. “Check-in is at 3:00 p.m. We’ll see you tomorrow, then. Have a safe drive.” He hangs up the phone and sticks out his tongue. “Whew! It’s barely eight and I’m exhausted.”

  The phone rings again.

  “Sorry,” Uncle Mordy says into it after a minute. “We’re full tonight and tomorrow … Sure, I can book you for Monday.” He makes a few notes on the calendar.

  “What do you mean, full?” I say when he hangs up.

  “Full. Booked. No vacancy.” He shakes his head just as Dad walks in. “Unbelievable.”

  I can’t believe my ears. “No vacancy? Really?”

  “Yep. And all thanks to the Virgin Mary,” Uncle Mordy says.

  Dad laughs. “That proves it.”

  “Proves what?” I say.

  “There is a God.”

  “There certainly is,” a voice says behind us.

  I turn around. It’s Father Donovan, smiling. I almost didn’t recognize him without his suit. Today he’s wearing jeans and a Yankees cap and holding a to-go cup of coffee from the diner.

  “Just the person I’ve been looking for,” he says, pointing at me.

  Can priests tell when they’re looking at someone guilty, like X-ray vision?

  “I …”

  “Mrs. Whitley sent me. Says your phone line has been busy all morning and she can’t leave the diner to come over. She wants to know if you have time this morning to help with a batch of grape pies.” He rubs his stomach. “I’m hoping you do.”

  I breathe out again and look at Dad. “I’ll take Sammy. Please?”

  “Sure,” he says. “Looks like we’re going to get busy pretty soon but I think we can spare you for an hour or two.”

  I go back to Room 109 to grab some toys for Sammy and we head to the diner.

  I can’t wait until after camp so I can tell Kate it worked!

  And wait until Mrs. Whitley hears that the motel is going to be full. We’re going to need way more grape pies.

  10

  ——

  “Miri,” says Maria. “Como estás? I’ve hardly seen you since the place got so busy.”

  It’s been two weeks since the article about the Virgin Mary was in the Greenvale Herald. After that the story got picked up by the big paper out in Spartanburg and then the even bigger papers and since then the Jewel has been full every night.

  Dad was actually singing in the shower this morning. I could hear him through the wall, he was so loud.

  I’ve filled Maria’s cart with clean towels and restocked the soaps and shampoos and now I’m in Room 104, waiting for her to tell me what she wants me to do next. Mom finally hired a babysitter for Sammy, so now I help Maria in the morning, and then I’m free in the afternoon to work at the diner or bike or read and then hang out with Kate after she comes back from camp. Mrs. Whitley makes grape pies every day and still runs out by dinner time. She gives me five dollars every time I help, saying she’d never be able to keep up without me. I stick them in the back of my dresser and the pile is really growing.

  “Todo está bien?” says Maria, looking at me. “Everything okay?”

  “Muy bien,” I tell her, and it’s true.

  As she starts pulling the sheets off the bed, Maria chatters on about how busy we are and how exciting the apparition is and how now she won’t have to find another job. I grab the pillows and shake them hard to get them out of their cases. She grabs a fresh bottom sheet from the cart and I help tuck the corners over the mattress on my side.

  As we work, I start to worry. What will happen to all this new business if we get found out? If people find out the apparition isn’t real, will they stop coming to see it?

  It sounds weird even to me, since I don’t believe in the Virgin Mary or in apparitions to begin with.

  “Maria,” I say, “what do you think about the drive-in?”

  Maria grabs a top sheet. She flicks her wrists and the sheet floats up over the bed like a parachute and then settles down perfectly over the mattress.

  “It would be wonderful if there were un milagro in Greenvale,” Maria says. I help put new cases on the pillows as she tucks the blanket and sheets in tightly.

  “Un milagro,” I repeat. A miracle. The word rolls off my tongue. “But do you think it’s a miracle?”

  She shrugs. “It’s a miracle that the Jewel is full, no?”

  She whistles as she checks the room for anything she’s forgotten, closes the door behind us, and then pushes the cart toward the next room.

  “Let’s go. So much work to do!”

  Maria is so happy. I can’t help but be happy too.

  Mom hangs up the phone and holds her head in her hands.

  “Who was that?” I ask. I’m in Reception, making Sammy laugh by hanging upside down on one of the brand new couches that got delivered yesterday to replace the gross ones.

  Mom shakes her head. “That,” she says, “was a woman who wanted to know if we have any wheelchair-accessible rooms. She’s bringing her husband or someone to be healed.”

  “Healed? Wouldn’t they stay at the hospital?”

  “They’re not coming to be healed at the hospital.”

  “Then where?”

  “At the drive-in.”

  I sit up, the blood whooshing in my head. The drive-in?

  “I need a Tylenol,” Mom says, rubbing her palm and then her temples. “This place is giving me a headache.”

  I remember reading in one of Kate’s articles that some people believe the Virgin Mary appears to help heal sick people.

  I didn’t even imagine that people would come to the drive-in to be healed. I wonder what’s wrong with the woman’s husband that the doctors can’t fix.

  My stomach twinges and I’m not sure if it’s because Uncle Mordy has scheduled another swim lesson at noon or because, well, because some woman is bringing her husband to be healed by a fake Virgin Mary apparition.

  I hope they’re not coming from too far away.

  I head to the pool just before noon, wishing I had turned down Mr. Whitley’s late-morning grilled cheese sandwich with extra cheese and tomato after I peeled three huge bowls of grapes. Maria’s in Reception, wiping the hand prints off the glass door.

  “Hola, Miri,” she says. Her face is shiny from sweat and the pieces of hair that have fallen out of her ponytail are stuck to her skin. She points to my bathing suit. “Swim lesson today?”

  I make a face. “What’s bathing suit in Spanish?”

  “Traje de baño.”

  I try the words out. The way Maria pronounces the middle of traje sounds like the letter chet in Hebrew. I bet Maria could say challah the right way.

  “What about drown?” I say.

  “Por favor!” she says. “You are being ridícula.” Which clearly means ridiculous, which I am clearly not being because my legs are already starting to feel heavy and heavy legs don’t lead to swimming, they lead to drowning.

  Uncle Mordy comes out of the pool room.

  “Es hora de aprender a nadar!” he says. He has a terrible accent but it’s definitely Spanish.

  “Dios mio!” says Maria. “You speak Spanish?” She laughs. “Another miracle!”

  “Yep,” says Uncle Mordy. “But it is 12:10 and my niece is still dry and I will not be distracted.” He points his finger at me. “A la piscina, rápido!”

  He pretends to whip me with the towel he is holding and I scoot past him into the pool room. I turn as he follows me in and see Maria staring at him. She looks impressed.

  “To your thighs this time,” Uncle Mordy says as I take my time folding my towel and lining up my flip-flops under one of the plastic chairs lining the sides of the room.

  I take one step at a time into the water,
getting up to my knees without a problem. Maybe I can do this.

  But before I can go down one more step, my legs turn to trees and grow roots into the tiles.

  “Come on, just one more.”

  The roots turn into cement blocks and there’s no way I can even lift my foot up, let alone step down to the next step.

  Uncle Mordy stands at the bottom of the steps, holding his arms out. “You can do it, Miriam.”

  I stay where I am.

  “You learned all that Spanish in high school?” I ask him.

  “Well, a few years of it in high school and then in college, and then I spent a summer in Spain doing research on conversos for grad school.”

  “What’s conversos?”

  “Conversos were Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain, over five hundred years ago. But some of them still practiced Judaism secretly.”

  “Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism?”

  Maybe that’s why Mom acts so weird around Maria and Father Donovan. And why she freaked out when I was wearing Maria’s necklace. But five hundred years is a long time ago, way before she was born. You’d think she’d be over it by now.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Uncle Mordy says.

  “What?”

  “Distracting me from the matter at hand. Come on, one more step.”

  “Maria is really smart, don’t you think?” I get my toes to wiggle, but that’s about all.

  “She certainly is.”

  “And pretty,” I add, ignoring Uncle Mordy’s outstretched hands.

  “Yes, that too.”

  “You know,” I say, forcing one foot up off the bottom and then putting it back down, “she’s going to be a doctor.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that. That’s awesome.” He tugs gently on my hands. “One more step. You’ve got this.”

  Something is squeezing my chest and making it hard to breathe. I shake my head hard.

  “Okay, let’s just hang out on this step for a little bit longer. Deep breaths, remember?”

  I take a couple of really deep breaths and feel my heart slow down a little.

  “You’re doing great, Miriam. Just one more step.”

  Uncle Mordy says it like he’s telling Sammy to take one more bite of broccoli.

  Fine.

  I close my eyes and step down to the next step, and before I can even feel the water on my thighs, I’m out of the pool, grabbing a towel and drying off.

  Uncle Mordy laughs and shakes his head. “I guess that counts.”

  He does a shallow dive from the steps into the water and waves his hand at me even though his face is in the water.

  Swim lesson over. I may not have learned to swim today, but I did learn that Uncle Mordy speaks Spanish for real and that Maria looked very impressed.

  If Maria and Uncle Mordy started dating, then she won’t leave the Jewel, even if people stop coming to see the Virgin Mary at the drive-in.

  That would be another miracle.

  11

  ——

  It’s Friday night. All the guests we are expecting at the motel today have already arrived and gotten their keys. I set the table for dinner earlier with the fancy dishes that Mom finally unpacked. I let Sammy help by putting a napkin on everyone’s chair.

  Uncle Mordy’s been ordering kosher chicken from a store in Spartanburg and today we made challah together, which we had to start in the morning because it had to rise twice — once before we braided it into loaves and then again after. We made an extra one to give to Mr. Whitley.

  Wait until he tastes how much better it is compared to the bakery ones. I’m going to convince him to make his French toast with challah next.

  Mom closes the dining-room door. The dining room is only open to guests for breakfast, but Mom still hangs a Do Not Disturb sign on it so no one will wander in. Because sundown is so late in the summer, Sammy’s already gone to bed, which I’m kind of glad about. Mom puts the baby monitor in the middle of the table, so we’ll hear him if he wakes up.

  It will be nice to have Mom and Dad to myself for a little bit. At home, we used to play board games or watch a movie together in the evening after Sammy fell asleep. I miss that.

  We light the candles and we’re just about to say kiddush — the blessing over the wine and grape juice — when the bell downstairs tinkles.

  “Yoo-hoo!” I hear through the closed door.

  “It’s Mrs. Whitley!” I say. “Can we invite her to dinner? Please?” I look back and forth from Mom to Dad. I would have asked to invite Kate but she’s sleeping over at a friend’s in Brookdale.

  Mom shakes her head. “I don’t think so, Miriam.”

  I look at Dad. “Please?”

  Dad looks at Mom. “Why not, Deborah? It would be good to get to know our neighbors better.”

  “No,” Mom says, rubbing her scar. “Shabbat dinner is family time.”

  “But at home —”

  “Yoo-hoo!” Mrs. Whitley calls again. “Anyone home?”

  I open the dining-room door as Mrs. Whitley reaches the top of the stairs. She’s wearing a light blue dress that I haven’t seen before and she’s washed the flour out of her hair. Mr. Whitley’s behind her. I almost don’t recognize him in a button-down shirt, without his apron.

  “Sorry to bother on your Sabbath,” she says. “We’re on our way to church for a meeting but I wanted to drop this by first.”

  She holds out a bottle of wine. “One of our friends had a wine store a few years ago. He brought us some bottles when he closed it, but neither of us are big wine drinkers. This one is from Israel.”

  Dad takes the bottle from behind me. “That’s very thoughtful, thank you. We’ll enjoy it tonight, in fact.”

  Mom joins us at the door, looking relieved. “Thank you, Myrna. That’s kind of you.”

  “Shabbat shalom,” I say. “That’s what we say on Shabbat. Shalom means peace. And hello and goodbye.”

  “Very versatile,” Mr. Whitley says. “Shabbat shalom.”

  “Shabbat shalom,” says Mrs. Whitley, as they head back down the stairs.

  Uncle Mordy waits until he hears the bell and then says, “I heard about this meeting. Did you know that there’s a bishop coming to help determine if the Virgin Mary apparition is to be considered real or not?”

  I let out a gasp.

  “You okay, Miriam?” asks Dad as he uncorks the bottle of wine.

  “Just hungry,” I say quickly. “Can we make kiddush now?”

  “What mishegas,” says Mom, using the Yiddish word for nonsense.

  “This mishegas is filling our motel,” says Dad. “Don’t forget that.”

  Mom shakes her head, but she’s smiling. Dad puts his arm around her and squeezes and she giggles. They look relaxed for the first time since we got here.

  I stare at the challah cover in the middle of the table, covering the two challahs, waiting their turn.

  “What happens if the bishop thinks the apparition isn’t real?” I ask.

  Dad shrugs. “I don’t know. But either way, I think we’ll be okay. I was reading about apparitions in other places, and even if the Church thinks they aren’t real, people still come to see them.”

  I’m trying to figure out how they can tell if it’s real or not. And what happens if they figure out that someone faked it?

  I need to talk to Kate, who is in Brookdale at her friend’s until sometime tomorrow afternoon.

  We all stand up to say kiddush, finally. Uncle Mordy holds up the cup, filled almost to overflowing with the wine that the Whitleys brought, and says the blessing. We all take a sip and then Mom takes the challahs in her hands and says hamotzi, the blessing over bread.

  As she cuts the challah and passes it around, I watch the Shabbat candles flicker
on the counter.

  At home, this is my favorite time of the week. But here, the candles feel like two eyes watching me, like they can tell what I did.

  Kate told me about confession. She says some Catholics go every week, but her family goes only once a year, around Easter. You go into a special booth, like a closet, which is connected to another booth where Father Donovan sits, so they can hear each other but not see each other. It’s supposed to be private and you don’t have to say your name, but Kate says it’s a small town and for sure he recognizes everyone’s voice.

  I explained to her about Yom Kippur, when Jews fast and pray in synagogue all day, thinking about the bad things they did the past year and what they need to do to be a better person. We’re supposed to ask forgiveness from the person we hurt. We don’t confess to the rabbi though.

  I asked Kate if faking a Virgin Mary apparition is a sin you’d have to confess at confession.

  “Yep,” she said. “But luckily, Easter is nine months away.”

  The next morning, Mom wakes me all chirpy and tells me we’re going to synagogue and I should put on something nice. I find a yellow sundress and get Sammy into a pair of navy shorts and a striped shirt.

  I have a quick breakfast and then we head off in the car to Spartanburg. Uncle Mordy can’t come because he doesn’t drive on Shabbat. He spends the day relaxing. No screens, no phone, no using money. Uncle Mordy says Shabbat is how he recharges his batteries. And everyone’s batteries are running pretty low since we got so busy.

  Maria slept at a friend’s last night but came back to watch Reception while we’re gone, since Uncle Mordy can’t answer the phone on Shabbat. All the rooms are full, so we’re not expecting anyone new, but the phone keeps ringing with people calling to see if there’s a vacancy. We’re booked for the next three weeks, with a whole bunch of people on a wait list.

  I’m not too excited about synagogue, but it’s probably the only way I’m getting out of Greenvale anytime soon. No one has time to do anything but work. Except for a trip to the supermarket in town and biking with Kate, I haven’t even left the motel, unless you count going next door to the diner and down the street to the gas station.