Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel

by Kimberly Willis Holt

  Just seeing her with that nightgown makes me feel a little sad. I don’t know why. If it had been a cool top, I might have done the same thing.

  She notices me standing there, staring at her, but she doesn’t seem embarrassed. She just shrugs and says, “I would have picked pink.”

  I dump the coffee grounds from the filter holder and start to leave two packages of coffee instead of one, just to be a little rebellious.

  Violet stops me. “Another Winston rule.”

  Seems the only things I know about my grandfather are his rules.

  After Violet and I finish, she heads straight for her car. She forgot and took the nightgown with her. Back at the office, Winston surprises me when he says, “Thank you for helping Violet clean the rooms this morning.”

  “Did my mother ever clean the motel rooms?”

  Winston clears his throat. “It was her weekend job when she was a teenager.”

  I wait, hoping he’ll say more about Mom, but he pulls the pages of his newspaper together and folds them. That ticks me off. Why can’t he say anything about her? Why hasn’t he even said he was sorry the accident happened? Or how he wishes she was still alive. I think about asking Winston all those questions, but instead I say, “I didn’t know we had a Lost and Found Department.” I’m a big chicken.

  Winston’s eyebrows knit together. Then he bends over and disappears behind the desk. When he straightens, he plops a Stetson hatbox in front of me. A handmade label is taped across the lid: LOST AND FOUND DEPARTMENT.

  Back in the room, I pull the record player out of the box, but I can’t bring myself to plug it in.

  Chapter Eleven

  A WEEK HAS PASSED since I cleaned the rooms with Violet. Mercedes is back to work. Most mornings now, I’m up early enough to see her arrive. I glance at my watch often and subtract an hour, wondering what my friends are doing at that very minute. It’s six in the morning. That means five a.m. in Taos. No doubt where they are. In bed.

  The sun is still low in the sky here. Even Roy is awake. From my window, I see him loading tackle boxes into a truck bed. I dress quickly, putting on yesterday’s T-shirt and jeans from the pile on the floor.

  Outside, Roy tells me, “We’re going fishing at the lake.”

  “There’s a lake nearby?”

  “You need to get out more. It’s Lake Little Esther. We go most Saturdays this time of year, but we usually leave before dawn. Last night, we stayed up late watching horror movies.”

  “Better you than me.” I hate scary movies.

  “Fishing?”

  “I couldn’t kill a fish.”

  Roy smirks. “So I’m a fish murderer?”

  “That’s another name for it.” I manage to sound serious.

  “Sorry,” he says, and he really seems like he is. “I just like spending time with my dad.”

  I feel like he punched me in the gut, and I guess it shows.

  He quickly says, “Sorry. I mean—”

  “I was just kidding. There’s nothing wrong with fishing.”

  He looks so relieved. “You got me. I guess I thought you were one of those hippy vegetarians. We don’t have many of those in Texas.”

  “There are a few carnivores outside cowboy country. I love hamburgers.”

  Roy slowly grins, and for the first time I notice he has a dimple on the right cheek. “Did you get dressed in a hurry?”

  One dimple. Could he be any cuter?

  “Well?” He’s waiting. Did he ask me something?

  “What?”

  He points to my T-shirt. “Is that the new style?”

  I look down. ROLLING STONES is spelled backward. My T-shirt is inside out. I feel my face heat up like a furnace.

  Roy rubs his chin and tilts his head, sizing me up. “I like it. I’m going to start wearing mine that way.”

  His teasing makes me feel a little better, but I’m still thinking about what he said earlier, how he likes to spend time with his dad. Once, I went fishing with Dad at Red River. He’d been bugging me about going with him for the last couple of years. One day I gave in. I hated it—the wiggly worms, the stink on my hands, the poor fish flopping with the hook attached to its guts. I never went back.

  If Dad were alive, I’d fish every day of my life with him.

  Arlo comes out with the ice chest. “Morning, Stevie.”

  “Morning.”

  “Ready, buddy?” Arlo asks Roy.

  I head back to the apartment. Mercedes is pushing the cart to her first room. She waves at me and I wave back. Another long Saturday at the Texas Sunrise Motel.

  * * *

  ON MONDAY, Mrs. Crump suggests we write poems. Her earrings have orange balls hanging from thin chains that swing when she moves her head. Frida told her they were awesome. I couldn’t tell if she really liked them or not.

  I used to think I hated poetry, until Mr. Connor read “Aimless Love” by Billy Collins to our class. And then, just like the poet’s love for the wren and the mouse and the bar of soap, I fell hard for poetry. I filled an entire notebook with poems I wrote and read. But I didn’t pack it. I gave it to the trash can instead.

  Frida is chewing on her pencil. She looks bored, glancing around the room like she’s planning her next escape. But a moment later, she works up her pen into a mad speed. I’m impressed, until I notice she’s writing This Stinks over and over again.

  Five minutes later, Mrs. Crump asks, “Do you want a few prompts?”

  I nod.

  Mrs. Crump tears a sheet of paper from a notebook and writes. Her hand trembles a little. I wonder how long it took her to put in those earrings. Then she turns the page to face me. “Here are three prompts to get your creative juices going.”

  The Highway

  Last Night’s Dinner

  Mother

  When I read the last prompt, I forget how to breathe. I focus on the other two. The highway. Since I’ve already written about the trip to my grandfather’s home, I reject that one right off. Last night’s dinner. After a long think, I can only come up with Campbell’s Cheddar Cheese soup, Ritz crackers, and my grandfather’s quiet demeanor. It’s off to a dull start.

  Frida is on her second page. Mrs. Crump is asleep. I stare at the remaining prompt—Mother. The letters blur in front of me. My head is full of images. Mom teaching me to dance the twist, singing her favorite songs, teasing my dad. Something snaps in me and I can’t hold it back. I rest my head on the table and try to hide behind my arm, but it’s no use. I break down like a river rushing over a dam.

  Frida nudges me with a tissue box.

  I take one.

  She pulls two more out and hands them to me. Then she goes back to her list as if nothing happened.

  Poetry.

  Chapter Twelve

  HORACE WANTS TO KNOW when the pool will open.

  “Memorial Day weekend,” Winston says. “Always Memorial Day weekend.” He doesn’t even look at Horace, just keeps stapling papers.

  “I know, but do you consider that Friday or Saturday?” Horace asks.

  “The weekend is Saturday and Sunday.” Winston’s voice is matter-of-fact.

  Horace moves his wheelchair back and forth an inch or two, reminding me of someone shifting their weight on their feet. “Well, some folks think of Friday, at least Friday night, as the weekend.”

  Now Winston looks up. “Some folks want to celebrate too much.”

  I’m wondering if Winston is talking about Mercedes. It’s another saint’s birthday and she took off to celebrate with her family. Since it’s Saturday, that means I’m cleaning rooms with Violet. I don’t mind, because now when I dust, I think of my mother dusting the same spots. When I vacuum, I remember her vacuuming and singing like she did at home. She’d belt out her favorite part to that Elton John song, Hold me closer, tiny dancer, her voice rising over the loud hum of the vacuum. Mom’s face showed such emotion, I could almost see the spotlight on her, and an audience watching her every move. As soon as she turned the
vacuum off, she’d go back to being Mom.

  When we finish cleaning the first room, I ask Violet, “Does Horace swim?”

  “What?” Violet is wearing her Triple P outfit—purple, posies, and polka dots. The gold-fringe scarf left behind in one of the rooms last week is tied around her neck. I wonder if she ever took it to the Lost and Found Department. And how about the nightgown we found the first time I helped her clean?

  “Horace asked when the pool would open,” I tell her. “Does he swim?”

  “He and Ida like to sit by the pool. They enjoy watching people swim.” She says this like it makes sense to her. And it kind of does to me too, now.

  Maybe they’re pretending they’re in Pensacola, on the honeymoon they’ve never taken. It’s like when I daydream about my mother being young, doing the same things I’m doing now.

  Cleaning the rooms doesn’t take long, because there are never more than six or seven booked each night. Winston would have more if he fixed up the place. He could even make it hip, turn it retro. But one glance around proves it’s already retro—the pale bookcase headboard and matching dresser, the metal armchair, the avocado drapes. Still, he could paint walls and furniture and replace the balding carpet. I’m wasting my time, planning. Winston would probably take to that suggestion as easily as he warmed up to Horace’s hint to open the pool on the Friday before Memorial Day. It doesn’t matter that it’s hot enough now. The pool won’t open early. And it doesn’t matter that the motel could use a renovation. Winston thinks it’s good enough.

  That reminds me of the room with boxes piled in front of the window. I ask Violet about it. “Why don’t you rent out Room Twelve?”

  Violet peers sideways at me, then adds, “There wouldn’t be enough space in there.” She heads to the bathroom to clean. Subject closed. She has a funny way of avoiding certain topics about Winston. Have to admit, though, we’re a pretty good team—Violet scrubbing toilets and me chasing away dust balls.

  I run my cloth around the frame of a paint-by-numbers picture of a deer. I’ve dusted it before, but today I see the initials D.H. in the lower right-hand corner. My heart skips a beat. I holler, “My mom must have painted this!”

  Violet comes out of the bathroom and looks at what I’m talking about. “No, Winston’s wife did that.”

  “My grandmother?”

  She lifts her eyebrows. “Well, yes, I guess that’s right. She was your grandmother. She did a lot of those, but Winston got rid of them when she died. I think he forgot about this one.”

  “You knew my grandmother?”

  “No, my folks and I moved here a few years after she passed away, but we met people who knew her. She sang in our church choir. They said she had the prettiest voice. She could sing alto and soprano on ‘We’re Marching to Zion.’ There’s a painting she did of the Last Supper in our fellowship hall. It must have taken her a long time to paint all those numbers. You know each number represents a color. Wonder how many numbers were in Jesus’s beard?”

  Violet is standing close to me now, examining my grandmother’s deer picture.

  “What does the D stand for?” I ask, even though my question reveals that Mom never told me anything about my grandmother.

  “Her name was Dovie,” Violet says. She turns around and heads back to her task. When she turns the fan on, it makes a loud, uneven racket, but I hear her when she calls out, “Grace! Dovie Grace!”

  Grace. My mom gave me her mother’s middle name, but she never told me about her. Not one thing except that time I caught her crying over that hymn on the radio. I think back to Grandparents Day at school. The teacher gave us a flyer about it to take home. I was only six, but because of what Dad had told me about how mentioning my grandparents would make Mom sad, I threw the flyer away in the garbage outside. If only I’d brought the flyer home. If only I’d given it to her and asked about my grandparents. Then I wouldn’t have been a part of Mom and Dad’s big pretend.

  When we finish cleaning, I return the cart to the laundry room. After it’s snug in place, I glance around the grounds and head over to Room 12. Once there, I peek through the window, trying to find a crack between the stacks of boxes.

  Maybe my grandmother’s paintings are inside one of them. Maybe my mother’s things too.

  “You won’t find anything in there.”

  I nearly jump out of my skin.

  “Caught you!” It’s Roy and he’s grinning. His nose and cheeks are sunburned, probably from his day at the lake. “Yep, there’s nothing there but a bunch of old stuff.”

  “Why doesn’t Winston get rid of it?”

  Roy shrugs. “You know people and their junk. The reason I was looking for you was to ask if you want to go to the movies with my dad and me.” His voice cracks at the “and me” part, and he stares down at his boots. This is the first time he’s ever seemed shy. He always acts so confident.

  I haven’t seen a movie in a theater since my parents and I went to one last Christmas.

  “That sounds fun,” I tell him. “I’d better ask Winston first.”

  Winston is standing behind the register desk, reading a book about lobster fishermen in Maine. When I ask his permission to go to the movies, he looks up from the book. “Arlo is staying for the show?”

  “Yes, that’s what Roy said.”

  As if on cue, Arlo sticks his head in the office. “Okay if I take Stevie to the movies with Roy and me?”

  Winston nods. “That will be okay. Don’t know what you’d find interesting playing these days, though.”

  I rush to clean up, washing away the dirt but trying not to get my hair wet. After I change, Winston gives me some money.

  “I don’t need any,” I tell him. I still have more than five hundred dollars.

  “I owe you for cleaning the rooms.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I do.” He keeps holding out the money. It’s an order.

  I accept the cash and thank him. As I head out the door, Winston stops me.

  “Stevie?”

  I turn toward him. “Yes?”

  “You’re doing a good job cleaning the rooms.”

  “Thank you,” I say. After I leave the office, I glance back. Winston is still watching me. But when he realizes I notice, he quickly looks down.

  * * *

  THE MOVIE IS PRETTY DUMB, mostly a guy flick with bathroom jokes, but I laugh at some of the stupid stuff anyway. I laugh until I look over at Roy and his dad laughing together. And I’m reminded I can never have that again.

  Cultivate

  Prepare the soil for planting

  Chapter Thirteen

  FRIDA MISSES A LOT OF CLASS, and today is one of those days. Even when she’s here, she always leaves when Mrs. Crump falls asleep, somehow managing to return before she wakes up. I know what she does when she’s gone because she always reeks of cigarette smoke. But where does she go?

  “Stevie, I think it’s important that you be familiar with the great American authors of the twentieth century. A good place to start would be with John—” Mrs. Crump is asleep. Just like every day after lunch, twelve thirty sharp. Little Esther’s clocks could be set by her naps.

  The window is open and a breeze flaps the lacy curtain. I sit there wondering, John who? What author was she going to mention? Then I realize how stupid I am, sitting here waiting for an old woman to wake up and teach me. I ease out of my chair. I tiptoe to the first floor, each step squeaking as my feet land on it. Eek-kee! Eek-kee! I listen for Mrs. Crump, but I can’t hear her snoring. Each lock clicks as I twist it, but the door opens without a sound. I grab her umbrella in the corner and use it to prop open the door. That way, I can get back inside. Two o’clock is almost an hour and a half away from now. I feel giddy and rebellious. I feel like … Carmen. She’d be proud of me right now. She begged me to ditch P.E. class with her a few times. Believe me, I wanted to whenever we had to run laps. But for the most part I liked school, so I never said yes. Carmen called me Miss
Goody Two-shoes. She teased me about it, but now I wish I’d skipped with her. I wonder where Carmen went when she walked off campus. She never told me and I never asked. Probably because I didn’t want to know what I was missing.

  Outside, the weather is perfect, the kind of day that reminds me of a New Mexico spring—the sun beating down on my back, the cool breeze blowing through my hair. But I just stand and stare at my reflection in the window. What the heck am I doing? Then I hear Carmen saying, “Don’t be so perfect.”

  Before I chicken out, I dash down the porch steps and take off. I pass huge Victorian houses with towering magnolias and oaks in the front yards. Seeing all this green makes me realize how hungry I’ve been for it. If the motel were located in town, I’d walk these streets every day.

  Door to door, pansies and red geraniums are popular picks. One house has a side kitchen garden with neatly planted salad greens of all sorts—radicchio, arugula, buttercrunch. Rosemary borders the raised beds. My thoughts head west. Mom called our kitchen garden a potager. That’s what the French call theirs. Dad teased her about trying to make a hodgepodge garden sound fancy.

  I imagine knocking on the door and my mother opening it, motioning me to her.

  A woman pops out of the camellia bush in front of me.

  I jump back.

  “Hi,” she says. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t.… I mean, I guess you did … a little.” My breathing eases back into its regular pace. “Your yard is beautiful.” I look down at the pots of pansies she’s planting.

  She smiles, and her crow’s-feet deepen in her tanned skin. “Thank you, but it’s not mine. I just do the landscaping.”

  “You’re good.”

  “Thanks.” She shades her eyes with her hand. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  Maybe this is why I didn’t skip before.

  “I have a private teacher.”