Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  “Smoking.” I wondered if I should say non. Maybe smoking wouldn’t sound tough to him, maybe it would sound slutty. Maybe he was giving me a deal because he thought he was going to get some. “Actually, did I say smoking? I meant non. I just quit.”

  He took the card back. “There’s only a smoking left. Lotta times people don’t smoke in them. Why don’t I show you the room and you can decide for yourself.”

  He came out from behind the desk and gave me the onceover, boots to boobs, as he walked out the door, leading me past the tiny fenced-in swimming pool to the deepest darkest end of the motel.

  The light above the room was burnt out. He muttered that he’d have to get that fixed as he fumbled with his key. Stepping back, I inched closer to the light from an adjacent door.

  As the vacant room opened, a swampful of stale smoke wallowed over us. “Hang on, now, where’s the light?” He worked at the switch but nothing happened. “What the hell…” and he moved inside. I stayed put. He poked the upper half of his body back out.

  “I think that’s a bit too smoky for me. Thanks, though.”

  “Well, hang on, ah, y’know, there’s a king-size room. It’s on the other side above the office. That’s nonsmoking. But it’s more expensive too.”

  “Oh. Well, no, I’d better not.” I backed up another step.

  “I’ll show you. It’s right above the office. Just gotta check a fuse, I’ll meet you there.”

  Wandering over on my own, I wondered if I should bolt. I felt out of my element. It occurred to me that I’d never stayed in a motel without a guy before.

  Oh don’t be such a pussy, I thought. Just don’t go inside the room with him. Besides, the motel was almost full and if I screamed, someone would hear me. I tried to feel my inner swagger, the kind that Frank claimed made me look like a biker chick. Frank said it was scary. He said it turned him on too. I cursed Frank as I stumbled on the first step up to the room.

  The manager was outside when I reached the top. Opening the door, he stepped in and it struck me to play this all very Erin. My friend Erin, the money shark, would have charmed him at a cool arm’s length, the way she did mechanics, stockbrokers and, apparently, commercial directors. “Always play the elegant virgin,” she used to say. “Until you get them into bed, then fuck their brains out.”

  Walking around the room, he pointed out the king-size bed and reminded me that they all had television and air conditioning. “Costs a little more though.”

  I stayed in the doorway and cooked up a polite look of graciousness. “Oh yes, it feels much safer than the other room too.” The safer bit came from an old boyfriend who once told me that the most depressing thing a girl said to him in high school was, I feel safe with you.

  “The king-size ones are $59.99,” the manager said.

  That’s like, eighty bucks Canadian. For this flea bag? “Oh dear,” I said. “Well, thank you so much for showing it to me but I’m on a bit of a budget this trip.”

  “What about a coupon? They got them in those tourist magazines—I probably have one downstairs.”

  “Oh! I would really appreciate that.” I was almost starting to enjoy myself.

  “I don’t do it for everyone, you know.”

  “Well, thank you. So much.”

  He nodded back, a bit bashfully.

  As we came through the glass door, into the office, he commented, “Smells in here too.”

  “Does it?” I sniffed the air.

  “It’s those people,” he shrugged over his shoulder. I looked past him to a door leading into an apartment. The muffled sounds of a television came through. “The people who own the place are East Indians.”

  I filled out the rest of my reservation card. He glared at the apartment door then rifled through some reservation cards and surreptitiously ripped a coupon off.

  “Is that going to be okay?” I asked. “Taking their coupon?”

  “S’an old one,” he growled and stapled Econo-Lodge $38.99 to my card, mentioning again what the room was supposed to cost.

  I gave him the winsome grin Erin always used when a bartender slid her a free drink, and he handed me a key. I headed out to the car, grabbed my suitcase and clomped upstairs as he watched through the window. I went back down for the trunk. He watched.

  In the room I locked the door. My hands shook a little. I sat down and ripped open the last protein bar and took a slug of bottled water.

  What if he figured he should get something extra for a twenty-one dollar discount? “That’s almost thirty Canadian,” I observed out loud. I put the protein bar between my teeth, got up and shoved a table against the door. Dragging a second table over too, I arranged them for maximum weight and blockability.

  I sat on the bed and turned on the TV, flicked from channel to channel until I heard a laugh track. I had a sudden longing for Frank and hauled the phone onto the bed.

  No answer at my place. I called his. No answer. I called his cell and left a message telling him where I was and that I missed him, that I was sorry I’d left without saying goodbye but I just … and I ran out of words. I wasn’t sorry really, not for leaving, more for being alone.

  Standing at the window, I peered down toward the office. It was almost eleven. The fish-eyed manager was gone and a plump brown woman in a sari had taken his place. My shoulders loosened. I went back into my food bag, pulled the lighter fluid from the bottom and set it in on the nightstand. Then I rifled in my mother’s trunk until I found her lighter with the sapphire stones. Pulling the lighter apart, I opened the fluid and filled it up. I jerked my thumb across the striking wheel a couple times until the flame billowed.

  Checking the office again, I saw that the Indian woman was still stationed there so I pulled the tables back, went out on the step and lit a cigarette with The Flames of Celia Dare. Turning it over in my hand, I pictured her out on a fire escape somewhere, her blonde hair swept back, her long dancer’s legs slipping out of a white chenille housecoat, her feet bare—my mother all mixed up with an old photograph I once saw of Monroe smoking on a balcony.

  Back inside, I shoved the tables against the door again, pulled off my jeans and sat on the bed in my thong and T-shirt. I looked down at the crop of stubbly black hairs coming in on either side of my bikini line. Somebody needs a shave. I pulled the top of my underpants out and looked down: a swath of regrowth. Normally it would be clean-shaven but for a tiny landing strip down the middle. Frank liked it like that. Or for a change, a Hitler moustache. When it came to his own pubes, he didn’t even bother trimming.

  I would’ve killed for a bottle of something forty proof right then. I pulled off my T-shirt and underwear, climbed under the covers. Cracking open Extravagance: Too Many Rats in the Pack, I sank into a biography that read more like a true-crime novel. Deep into the night, I wandered around Vegas, saw suitcases of cash at the Sands, listened to Sinatra and his pack and their smart-ass repartee echo from Vegas to Miami, watched Marilyn swill back pills with bottles of vodka, sat with Judy Campbell on the side of a hotel bathtub in New York as John Kennedy and Giancana talked business in the main room, gossiped about their all-night parties and fixed elections, and spied on Rosselli and the CIA as they schemed to fix Fidel.

  It was the sound of the door crashing open that woke me: my platinum-blonde mother and my boyfriend, drunk, entwined, falling down on the tables in a crack of laughter. Josie’s hair flipped to black as her head lolled off the table’s edge; her giddy eyes met mine. Her leg slipped bare from the slit of her red satin gown. From between her thighs, Frank said, “I thought you said it was a secret.” My mother howled like a maniac, lifted her head to him, turning her hair platinum once more as she showed him her penis.

  “Bullshit!” I hollered and bolted up to see them fade into coloured sprinkles.

  The door was closed, still blocked by tables. I stared around the room. 8:33 a.m.

  I held out my hands and watched them tremble in the grey light. My Frank, Frank Sinatra. Reaching for the n
ightstand, I turned on my cell. No calls. I tried Erin’s number again and got voice mail.

  “Hello, you guys. It’s Vivian calling with a progress update—I’m already in Redding and I’ll probably be in your neck of the woods by tonight. Call my cell when you get a chance. I’d love to get together.” I left the number once more.

  I turned on the shower and stared in the mirror at the brassy glare of my hair straggling down over my nipples. In the tub I pulled the curtain across and let piping water pummel my face as though it might sculpt me a new one.

  It was around three in the afternoon when I reached San Anselmo, which looked like an average American small town: trees, a few hills, fast food and strip malls. The air was dry and warmer by another seven or eight degrees. With Annie West’s address in hand, I stopped at a gas station for directions.

  Coming into a cul-de-sac at the end of Hampton Avenue a few minutes later, I pulled up in front of number twenty-three. In the vanity mirror I took out my lipstick and slid burgundy across my mouth. A shudder took me. I could see my mother in this car checking her own face. I threw the lipstick back in my bag.

  Opening the door, my hair caught in my armpit and I yanked it free. It felt scraggly. I felt scraggly. I went back into my purse and rooted for a scrunchy. As I flipped my mop into a topknot, two small blonde children tore along the side of 23 Hampton Avenue out to the front lawn. They looked four or five years old.

  A woman’s playful voice called after them as I walked toward the house. “You little rats should come back here!” Her arms swung like a young girl’s but she was likely forty-something. She saw me then and said hello as she scooped up one tow-headed kid, and squeezed him while the other hugged her thigh.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m looking for a woman who used to live here. Annie West?”

  “Is she a cowgirl?” the girl on the ground inquired.

  “Sort of,” I told her. “Cute kids,” I said to the woman. “Are they yours?”

  “Nope. Not my rats, are you?” The screen door opened and another woman stepped out. “Hello?”

  “That’s my sister,” the woman near me announced. “My sister, Dodi.”

  “That’s my mummy-Dodi,” the girl said and pogo-hopped over to the steps as Dodi paused. “We were being rats, Mummy,” she said and wriggled her nose.

  “Can I help you?” Dodi called, pulling off brown-greased rubber gloves and sticking them in her apron pocket as she came closer.

  “Maybe,” I said. I took the address out of my back pocket and held it out to her. “I’m trying to find a friend who used to live here. Annie West?”

  She turned the paper over and handed it back as she glanced at my licence plate. “You from Canada? That’s pretty country up there.”

  “Annie West’s a cowgirl!” the little girl shrieked.

  “Ahh, lemme think. Sorry, I’ve been cleaning the oven and I’ve got a headful of fumes. I’ve got a few old addresses from people who wanted their mail forwarded…”

  The girl made rat faces into her stomach, scratching her belly until her mother blurted, “Stop!” Dodi turned to her sister. “Lucy, take them to play out back.”

  Lucy told the kids it was time for another rat jamboree and they all squeaked their way alongside the house.

  “You wanna come inside and I’ll see what I can dig up?”

  We walked up the steps past a tricycle whose front wheel was lodged between the teeth of Dodi’s railing, its back wheels hanging. In the hall I tripped over toys strewn around as she nimbly missed the kids’ stuff only to be caught by a pair of men’s shoes.

  “Jesus crap,” she muttered, kicking them out of her way. “If he wasn’t paying rent …”

  In the kitchen, the oven door splayed open and there were dishes piled in the sink. The tap dripped one solemn drop at a time. “Lemme think.” She closed her eyes. The kids and their aunt Lucy squawked from the yard. Dodi whispered for them to shut their traps. “I hope you use good birth control,” she said then—“I know where it is.” She hauled a chair over, reached above the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bag of papers before she jumped down.

  She dumped the bag, mumbling, “No … no … not that,” as she flipped through scraps. “They get passed on from tenant to—here’s another bugger that’s got all kinds of bill collectors after him. Doesn’t even live there anymore.” She crumpled and tossed him toward the garbage. She flipped the pile and started from the bottom. “Oh, what’s this, West? S’at what you said? Marianne West?”

  “Yeah, that’s it, I think.”

  “Marianne West, 222 Beresford Street, Vallejo. Not far.” She handed me the yellowed scrap. “May as well take that with you. First one who’s ever come looking for her.”

  “Thank you. I really appreciate your trouble.” Same words but this time I meant it.

  Kids screamed out back again. “Oh Jesus crap,” Dodi said. “I’d like to chat with you some more but those idiot kids take after their father and Lucy’s not much brighter.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll just see myself out.”

  Back in the car, I shivered, imagining my hands in greasy gloves, dishes to the ceiling, tripping over Frank’s shoes while the fruit of my loins wailed their gullets raw. I threw the car in drive.

  Next door to 222 Beresford Street, a woman worked a spade into the earth under her front window, weeding. I pushed the buzzer and tried to breathe away butterflies.

  “They’re not home.” It was the gardener. About the age I imagined Annie would be, she wore what looked like a thick auburn wig under her straw hat.

  I came back down the steps. “You know them?”

  She stood. “The Laytons—is that who you’re looking for?”

  “Annie West doesn’t live here anymore?”

  “Oh! You’re looking for Annie? You’re not her daughter, are you?” She came toward me. She wore moulded rubber gardening shoes. I’d seen them displayed outside hardware stores but I’d never seen them on actual feet before.

  “No. Just a family friend.”

  “What am I saying? You would know she wasn’t here anymore if you were her daughter. I never did meet her daughter. I guess I was meaning a friend of her daughter’s. Last I heard she was living in New York somewhere with a nice fancy job.”

  “Annie?”

  “Her daughter. My name is Eva. I’m a friend of Annie’s. Or Marianne. Some people call her Marianne. I’ve got a forwarding address for her if you’d like. She’s in Danaville, half hour or so south—oh goodness, I shouldn’t be offering out her address to strangers. Not with the IRS, are you?” she chortled.

  “Annie was friends with my mother a few years back.”

  “I miss Annie. We used to have coffee now and then but we haven’t done that in some time. She doesn’t like to talk on the phone.”

  We looked at one another a moment with awkward smiles until she finally said, “Why don’t I get my address book.”

  I didn’t actually get going for another twenty minutes. Eva liked to talk. She seemed all alone out here but, after a while, I discovered her husband was inside watching golf on television.

  Frank doesn’t watch sports, I reminded myself. Not at home.

  Eventually I pried myself off her stoop and headed south.

  By the time I’d turned up Annie’s road, the butterflies were back with a vengeance.

  As the road wound into another cul-de-sac, there, in the round, sat an ambulance, emergency lights blazing in the sunlight. Neighbours stood on the sidewalk and lawns, all seniors. I came toward them as paramedics eased a stretcher into the back.

  The ambulance doors shut. It was her. I stared as it rolled away.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Was that Annie West? In that ambulance?”

  A woman shook her head then looked down at the road.

  “Marianne West?” I repeated, pointing weakly in the direction of the ambulance.

  “Yes?” a second woman said.

  “Yes?” I looked at her.r />
  “What?”

  “That—are you Annie West?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh! I was just—” Grasshoppers jumped in my throat. “You’re Annie West!”

  She smiled at me as though I were simple. Or she was. Her shoulder-length curls were almost completely white, the front pulled back in a barrette. I guessed her to be in her mid-seventies, one of the youngest on the block from the looks of her neighbours.

  “Were you at one time acquainted with a woman named Celia Dare?”

  West’s face dropped. “Nope. Sorry.” She turned and walked away and had made it to the steps of a small pink house before I started after her. “Ann—Mrs. West. Wait!”

  The screen door thwacked behind her. Her front door slammed, followed by the sound of locks snapping into place.

  Behind me the seniors stared. What the fuck? I grumbled. Did she owe you money or what? I opened the screen and trotted my knuckles against the door, politely as possible. No response. I peered into the lace curtain, hoping to catch some movement. All was quiet. I rang the doorbell. Nothing. Christ, maybe she’s senile, I thought, let the screen clack shut and made my way around back.

  A rock garden with small bursts of colour coming through here and there, a patch of grass with a set of patio furniture and a chain-link fence.

  It was nearly five o’clock.

  Maybe it was that ambulance that did it. Smelled like death to her or something. Maybe she just needs some time to absorb. I checked my cell for calls. Nothing. I’d have to shell out for another motel. Closing my eyes against the sun, I breathed warm dry air. This town was too hot for jeans.

  Seven

  MAYBE I SHOULD HUNT FOR A TOURIST CENTRE, I THOUGHT, GET my own coupon so I won’t have to pile tables against my door.

  I parked on the town’s main strip. There had been nothing in my stomach since breakfast. Looking across the street at the Avalon Bistro, it struck me that I had never gone to dinner by myself. My cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, hi. Is that Vivian? This is George MacIntyre. You called here looking for Marcella? Excuse me: Erin. She goes by Marcella now. And she doesn’t live here anymore.”