Kirby swatted at a fly and waited.
“I got a charm for my bracelet,” Loretta said. “A little heart that opens up and has Dollywood on the inside.”
Kirby swatted the fly again. “So?”
Loretta nodded toward the shoebox in Kirby’s lap. “What’s that?” she said.
“Stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Kirby put his arm over the top of the box. This crazy girl was liable to snatch it away from him or something.
“Just stuff,” he said.
“I have a box of stuff, too,” Loretta said. “From my other mother who died.”
Kirby sat up straight.
Other mother who died?
And then Loretta went skipping off across the parking lot, calling over her shoulder, “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Loretta
“And look at these.” Loretta held out the silver scissors shaped like a bird so Kirby could see.
“And that.” Loretta pointed to the Japanese fan.
Kirby picked the fan up and opened and closed it until Loretta took it away from him.
He examined the pocket watch. He thumbed through the white leather Bible. He picked up the sparkly poodle dog pin. He turned it over and studied the back. He ran his finger over the shiny green stones that were the poodle eyes.
“Emeralds,” Loretta said, pointing at the shiny little eyes.
“These ain’t real emeralds,” he said.
Loretta snatched the pin from him.
“How come you have two mothers?” Kirby said. “And what happened to the other one?”
So Loretta told him how she had been adopted by Irene and Marvin Murphy when she was a tiny baby. Then she told him about the box of earthly possessions that came in the mail and the note about her other mother passing on to the other side.
She jingled the charm bracelet in his face and pointed out each of the charms.
“We’re going to visit all the places my other mother visited,” she said. “And look at this.” She smoothed the blue handkerchief out on the bed and pointed to the letter P embroidered in the corner with shiny pink thread. “I was thinking the P probably stands for Pamela. Or maybe just Pam.”
“You don’t even know her name?” Kirby said.
“No, but I bet it was Pam.”
Loretta jammed everything back in the box, clamped the lid on, and said, “Let’s go find Willow.”
“But why would she sell the motel if she doesn’t want to?” Loretta asked Willow.
“Because she can’t take care of it by herself,” Willow said. “Without Harold,” she added.
Loretta sat next to Willow in the damp grass surrounding the flagpole. Kirby hopped around them, counting.
Twenty hops on the right foot.
Twenty hops on the left foot.
The sun had begun to sink below the mountains and stars twinkled dimly in the clear sky.
“So why doesn’t she hire somebody to help?” Loretta said. “Like a handyman or something.”
“Because she doesn’t have any money.” Willow picked at blades of grass. “Because nobody comes here anymore. Everybody wants to stay at those fancy places down on the interstate.”
Loretta tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Then why does your dad want to buy this motel anyways?”
Willow’s face crumpled up in a heap of wailing tears and she ran off to her room in her tippy-toe way, her plastic sandals making squeaky noises on the sidewalk.
Loretta looked at Kirby.
Kirby shrugged.
Loretta glanced over at the swimming pool. Her mother was sitting in a lounge chair talking to Mr. Dover. Her father was fiddling with wires hanging out of the floodlight beside the Sleepy Time Motel sign, his tools spread out in the weeds beside his toolbox.
There was a buzzing sound and then a popping sound and then another buzzing sound and suddenly the Sleepy Time Motel sign was shining bright as anything in the glow of the floodlight.
Loretta’s mother clapped and Mr. Dover whooped.
Loretta looked over at the office. Aggie was peering out from behind the curtain.
“Let’s go talk to Aggie,” Loretta said to Kirby.
But before they got to the office door, Kirby’s mother came storming across the parking lot from the road.
“Get on inside,” she hollered at Kirby.
Kirby’s shoulders slumped and he mumbled, “Bye.”
Loretta watched him follow his mother up the sidewalk to their room and disappear inside.
Then she ran on over to the office to talk to Aggie.
Aggie
Aggie put a red X through the day on the calendar. A bad day, she thought.
Everything had happened so fast. Clyde Dover had only arrived yesterday. Why was he in such an all-fired hurry—making lists and yakking with that inspector and driving her down to the bank to sign more papers? Why couldn’t they just slow down a little bit?
Signing her name on all those papers over at the bank had made her head hurt and her stomach queasy.
Agnes Duncan.
Agnes Duncan.
Agnes Duncan.
Over and over again.
Each time feeling worse than the time before.
And then Agnes Duncan on the very last page and the Sleepy Time Motel wasn’t hers anymore.
Aggie shuffled around the office in her bedroom slippers. She tidied up the postcards and straightened the stack of maps and then she noticed something. Down at one end of the counter. A pair of sunglasses. Some pens. A yellow folder with Motel scrawled on the front with a black marker.
Clyde Dover’s folder.
Aggie switched on the lamp with a shaky hand. A jacket hung on a peg behind the counter. A denim jacket that wasn’t hers and wasn’t Harold’s.
Clyde Dover’s denim jacket.
“Well, now …” she said.
She pulled back the dusty curtains and peered outside. The Sleepy Time Motel sign glowed in the darkening sky.
“Well, now …” she said again.
She went outside to sweep the sidewalk in front of the office.
“Hey, Aggie.”
Aggie looked up to see Loretta running toward her.
“Willow said you sold the motel,” Loretta said. “How come?”
Aggie dropped into the lawn chair by the door. “It’s a long story and a short day,” she said.
“Oh.” Loretta sat beside her, swinging her legs, slapping her bare feet against the sidewalk.
Aggie took a deep breath of the cool night air. She watched the lights flick on down in Kirby’s room. She admired the glow of the Sleepy Time Motel sign. Then she sat back and listened while Loretta told her all about Dollywood. About the rides and the wigs and all. Every now and then, she reached into her pocket to feel the little china horse that Willow had given her.
“And I bet my other mother tried on a wig, too, don’t you?” Loretta said.
Aggie nodded. “Most definitely,” she said.
“Her name was Pam.”
“Really?”
“Well, maybe …” Loretta clapped her hands at a mosquito that flitted around in front of them. “Or Patsy,” she said. “Maybe Patsy.”
Aggie was glad to have Loretta sitting there next to her, swinging her legs and jangling her bracelet and chattering on and on about her other mother in that happy way of hers.
And so it seemed like that bad day was going to end as a good one.
Or at least a not-so-bad one.
But then Clyde Dover came over and asked Aggie for a key to the office.
A key for him.
A key so he could lock up, since, you know, his stuff was in there now.
And the whole time Aggie was looking for that spare key that she knew was in the junk drawer somewhere, he was rambling on and on about all the things he was going to change. Paint the office. Move the soda machine. Maybe even pave the parking lot.
“And there’s something else I’
ve got in mind,” he said, “but it’s a surprise.”
Aggie’s not-so-bad day was turning back into a bad day.
That night, she slept sitting up in Harold’s old lounge chair again, clutching the little china horse and dreaming about Dolly Parton.
Willow
Willow’s life wasn’t almost perfect anymore.
It wasn’t even close to perfect.
In fact, it was far, far from perfect.
Her worries were piling up, one on top of the other, like bricks on a wall.
First, her father had bought a new life and their old life was history. They weren’t going back to their little brick house in Hailey ever again.
Willow’s next worry was Dorothy.
Dorothy was with her sister down in Savannah, Georgia.
Savannah, Georgia, was a long way from Shawnee Gap, North Carolina.
And then there was Aggie.
The Sleepy Time Motel had belonged to Aggie and Harold. The ten little rooms. The sign and the swimming pool. The bird feeders, the flagpole, the garden.
All of those things had been theirs.
But now Harold was gone and Willow’s father had “closed the deal,” so all that stuff belonged to him. Willow could see happiness all over her father and sadness all over Aggie.
Something about that seemed just plain wrong to Willow.
And now here she was, sitting on a stool behind the counter in the motel office, waiting for guests to come and check in. That would be her job, checking the guests in. At least until school started in a few weeks, her father had said. She would ask the guests to sign the big leather guest book. Give them a map. Sell them some postcards. Give them a room key.
The screen door squeaked open and Kirby stepped in. He looked surprised when he saw Willow.
“Oh, hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
“My mom told me to see if we got any mail.” Kirby shifted from one foot to the other. He cracked his knuckles. He popped his bubble gum. He pushed his greasy red hair out of his eyes.
“I’ll check,” Willow said.
She pulled a cardboard box out from under the counter and looked through the pile of mail.
Kirby paced around the room, touching things, moving things. He gave the postcard rack a spin.
Willow pushed the cardboard box back up under the counter. “No mail,” she said.
“Okay.” Kirby darted out the door, letting it bang shut behind him.
Willow went out on the sidewalk and watched Kirby running in a zigzag path back to his room. A few minutes later, he came out again, with that shoebox of his tucked under his arm. He ran over to the swimming pool and sat on the diving board. Then he took a pen and paper out of the box and began to write.
Willow went back inside and sat on the stool behind the counter again. She wished Aggie would come out of her room and talk to her. She wished Loretta weren’t packing for a picnic over in Maggie Valley. She wished Dorothy would leave Savannah and come be with her. She wished she could go back to one of those days on the kitchen calendar that had Dorothy’s loopy handwriting on it.
Willow’s school play.
That would be a good day to go back to. Willow would be on the stage dressed like Betsy Ross, sewing a flag, and Dorothy would be sitting out there in the auditorium smiling up at her.
But none of those wishes came true.
Instead, Willow’s father came into the office and said, “Those sign guys are coming tomorrow afternoon.”
“What sign guys?”
“The guys who are bringing the new sign.”
“What new sign?”
Willow’s father ran his hand over his hair. “Well, the new motel sign.”
“What’s wrong with the old sign?” Willow said.
Her father fiddled with papers on the counter. “Well, actually,” he said, “I was thinking we’d spruce things up a bit, you know?”
Her father moved the stack of maps from one end of the counter to the other. “This place looks, too, well, you know, old-fashioned,” he said. “If we’re going to attract tourists we’ve got to—”
“I think the sign looks nice,” Willow said. She glanced back at the curtain over the doorway to Aggie’s room.
Her father went on and on about all the plans he had for the motel.
The new sign.
The color of the paint in Room 3.
The king-sized bed in Room 8.
The ad in the newspaper.
The billboard down by the main highway.
But Willow wasn’t really paying attention. She was thinking maybe she’d give Aggie another china horse.
Kirby
“No, Virgil, the money did not get here.”
Kirby watched the back of his mother’s head as she talked on the phone. Ringlets of damp hair stuck to her neck.
“I’ve been living on bread and peanut butter for three days, Virgil!” she hollered. “I feel like just taking the bus home and leaving that junk heap by the side of the road.”
“What about me?” Kirby whispered.
His mother slammed the receiver down. She rubbed her temples in little circles.
Kirby traced a tepee on the bedspread with his finger. He glanced over at his duffel bag by the door.
“So, I guess we ain’t leaving for a while, right?” he said.
His mother flopped back on the bed and put her arm over her face.
“I got no money. I got no car,” she said.
Kirby smiled.
“Good,” he whispered.
His mother shot up and glared at him.
“What’d you say?” she snapped.
“Nothing.” Kirby traced a galloping horse on the bedspread.
His mother flopped back down on the bed and Kirby went outside. A soft, misty rain had begun falling, already leaving little puddles scattered over the muddy gravel parking lot. Kirby jumped from puddle to puddle, swinging the purple yo-yo Burla had given him over his head like a lasso.
“That’s dangerous.”
Kirby looked over at Loretta, sitting in her bathing suit at the picnic table out by the flagpole. She was putting the box of things from her other mother into a plastic grocery bag on her lap.
Kirby swung the yo-yo harder. It made a buzzing sound as it whipped through the air.
“We can’t go to Maggie Valley ’cause of the rain,” Loretta said.
Kirby swung the yo-yo harder, sending drops of rain flying in every direction.
“O-say at-whay,” he said.
“What?” Loretta said, jiggling that bracelet of hers on her skinny arm.
“Othing-nay.”
“Did your car get fixed?” Loretta said.
“Ope-nay.”
Kirby did a few of those yo-yo tricks his Uncle Lester had taught him.
Around the Corner.
The Creeper.
Dizzy Baby.
“Show me how to do that,” Loretta said.
“Naw.”
Loretta put her hands together like she was praying. “Please,” she said.
Kirby put the yo-yo in the pocket of his shorts.
“Maybe later,” he said.
Loretta squeezed her lips together and glared at him. Then she jumped off the picnic table and stormed off with her box tucked under her arm.
Kirby hopped over a puddle, landing in the mud with a splat. He picked up a stick and hurled it clear across the parking lot and into the ditch on the other side of the road. He practiced a few more yo-yo tricks.
Runaway Dog.
Drop in the Bucket.
He put the yo-yo back in his pocket and jumped over puddles in big, giant leaps, counting out loud.
One. Two. Three.
When he got to the swimming pool, he hopped down the cement steps on one foot and back up them on the other. He bounced on the diving board.
And then he stopped.
What was that?
Something shiny out there in the grass by the flagpole.
> He ran over to see what it was.
A sparkly poodle dog pin with shiny green eyes.
Loretta’s pin.
Kirby wiped the mud off it with his shirttail and put it in his pocket with the yo-yo.
Loretta
Loretta studied the silver pocket watch.
“W, K, L,” she whispered, tracing the letters engraved on the back.
Her father had said the watch probably once belonged to a man. Loretta had thought and thought about who the man could have been. Her other mother’s father? Her uncle? Maybe her grandfather?
“Mama?” Loretta said.
Her mother looked up from her crossword puzzle and said, “Hmmm?”
“I bet this watch belonged to her father,” Loretta said.
Her mother nodded. “You could be right, Lulu,” she said.
“And so that means her last name started with an L.” Loretta pointed to the L on the back of the pocket watch.
Her mother adjusted her glasses and studied the watch. “Could be,” she said.
“Pam Lawrence,” Loretta said. “Maybe that was her name.”
Her mother smiled. “Maybe,” she said.
Loretta put the watch back in the box. She looked at the hummingbird picture. She rubbed the soft leather cover of the Bible.
Suddenly she jumped up and dumped everything out of the box onto the bed. Frantically, she searched through the things.
“Mama!” she hollered. “Something’s missing!”
Her mother set her crossword puzzle aside. “What’s missing?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Loretta said. “Something …”
Loretta tapped each thing on the bed. The fan. The scissors. The heart-shaped box.
“The dog!” she said. “The poodle dog pin.”
Loretta dropped to her knees and searched the floor, patting the thick green carpet. Under the bed. Under the dresser. Beside the desk.
Her mother looked in drawers. She emptied their suitcases. She searched the bathroom, all the while saying, “We’ll find it, Lulu … Don’t cry, Lulu.”
But Loretta did cry. She ran around the little motel room, searching for the poodle dog pin and sobbing.
Greetings from Nowhere Page 6
