Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel

by Kimberly Willis Holt

  “Do you know what it is?” I ask him.

  Roy lifts the castings to his nose and takes a big, long whiff. “Mmm. I have a feeling I’m going to know.”

  “Worm poop.”

  He drops the castings on the grass.

  “Hey!” I say. “That’s like gold to a gardener.”

  “I’ll take my gold in coins.”

  I wish I had an apple. Whenever we planted a new tree or shrub at the farm, we sliced an apple at the site. Then we ate every bit of it except for one slice. We’d throw it into the hole before putting in the shrub or the tree. When I was little, I thought I’d see an apple tree emerge from a cedar or mesquite. But it was just a good-luck ritual my dad had thought up.

  “Where do you want these?” Violet asks. She’s holding the Shasta daisies.

  I’m the conductor, they’re the musicians, and by dusk the garden has become a symphony—or at least the start of one. Ida and Horace watch, but when it’s time to water, Horace says, “We can help there.”

  Arlo makes a trail with heavy cardboard from the parking lot to the garden. He surrounds the perimeter with it too. That way, Horace and Ida can roll their chairs more easily.

  We rest on the grass nearby while Ida holds up part of the hose and Horace waters the plants. On the left side of the garden, we rake the ground and dig up enough soil to throw down sunflower seeds. Hopefully, they will take root and bloom late in the summer.

  We’re quiet as we admire our work. The needlepoint hollies in the back, the knockout roses in the middle, and the dwarf mock orange in the front. Shasta daisies, phlox, agapanthus, and fountain grass surround the birdbath. It’s not filled in and it doesn’t yet match what I’ve dreamed of. But it will.

  Finally, the Texas Sunrise Motel has a garden.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ON OUR DRIVE BACK to Violet’s house, I share my big plan. “I want to cook dinner for everyone tomorrow. We could eat outside near the pool to celebrate our garden.”

  “A garden party? Oh, like the scene with Sophia Loren and Cary Grant in Houseboat? I love parties. We could get dressed up. Can I make my strawberry lemonade cake? Everyone loves my pink lemonade cake.”

  I swear, it’s like I’ve asked Alice in Wonderland to the Mad Hatter’s tea.

  “Thank you, Violet. I’d forgotten all about dessert.”

  We stop at the grocery store and I buy the ingredients for Mom’s chicken enchiladas with black beans and corn.

  Later I decide to make invitations. “I wish I’d bought colored pencils,” I tell Violet.

  “Would crayons work?”

  “Sure.”

  She opens the butler’s pantry. Inside is a big fat box of crayons and a stack of coloring books.

  “I like to color sometimes,” Violet says. “It relaxes me.”

  * * *

  THE MOON IS BIG and round like a grapefruit. From bed, I watch it float between the branches of the silver maple tree. I fall asleep thinking about how pleased Winston will be when he sees the garden and how happy my parents would have been if they’d known what I did. I like to think that somehow they do.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, we head to the motel at dawn. Violet needs to start her shift and I need to water. I drag the long hose over to the garden.

  There is something beautiful about seeing the sunrise even if it’s a highway horizon. The cars are fewer, and they don’t seem to zoom by like they do in the afternoon and early evening. Maybe because it’s Sunday or maybe because there’s a garden in the foreground. When I get to the garden, a flock of birds fly out from the holly. They scatter away so quickly, I can’t tell what breed they are, only that they’re gray. I remember Dad’s voice. “Birds love holly because the berries provide them food and the dense branches give them shelter.”

  “Right again,” I say aloud. Then I look back at the motel, making sure no one heard me.

  No one’s there.

  “Right again, Dad,” I whisper.

  After returning the hose, I check for any weeds or grass roots we missed. Most weekends are slow at the motel. And this weekend proves that. There’s only one guest car parked in the lot. I’m thinking about how a wind chime would distract from the highway roar when I hear a loud, rattling muffler.

  It’s Mercedes. She’s not going to like that she showed up early and that the one guest hasn’t vacated yet. Maybe my invitation will keep her mind off it.

  She sits in the car, stretching her neck in my direction. It’s as if she’s sizing me up, or maybe the garden. For some reason, that makes me think about how our garden needs a bench. That way, guests could rest and enjoy the flowers. Maybe Mercedes could take a break here. A minute later, she gets out and moves slowly toward me, holding her purse straps low like the purse is heavy. She stops a few feet away from the edge of the garden and digs an orange out of her purse before dropping the bag on the grass.

  I pull the invitation from my tote bag and hold it out to her. “Good morning, Mercedes! I have something for you.”

  She doesn’t take the invitation. Instead she digs her fingernail into the orange and begins to peel. “What’s that?”

  “Here, open it.”

  “I’m eating. You open it.”

  I pull the invitation out and hold it up to her.

  She raises her eyebrows and nods. “So?”

  “It’s a garden party invitation for dinner tonight.”

  “A garden party?”

  “Nothing fancy, just dinner for everyone who lives or works at the Texas Sunrise. I hope you’ll come.”

  “When?” She pulls at a slice of orange and pops it into her mouth.

  “Around five thirty.”

  She chews slowly. After she swallows, she says, “I eat with my family Sunday nights.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Oh, great. I’m so glad you’re coming.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I hope maybe you can come.”

  She eats her orange and watches me pull a long grass runner from the ground.

  “You need to add some good stuff to your dirt,” she says.

  “Compost?” I ask. I’d bought sacks of it and mixed it into the soil before we planted.

  “Good stuff,” she explains, “Eggshells, fruit peelings, orange peelings. It will make the dirt rich. Like you’re in love with it.”

  “I did. It’s called com-post.” The way I say it sounds degrading, but I feel defensive. If there’s anything I know, it’s about enriching the soil.

  Mercedes squats and grabs a handful of dirt. “No, this isn’t so good.”

  Maybe she’s right. Mom and Dad never bought a bag of compost. They had their own little hill at the back of the gardens by the greenhouse. They called it black gold.

  When I was a little kid, I’d beg Dad to let me turn the compost pile. Then when I was eleven, it became one of my chores. Weird how being assigned to do something can take all the fun out of it. Mercedes is just trying to help.

  “Would you like to plant something? There’s space.”

  “No, no,” she says, shaking her head and tearing the peelings into small pieces before tossing them into the garden. “No more gardening for me.”

  “Did you grow up on a farm?” I ask.

  “Lots of farms. My family, we picked and picked. First we picked strawberries. Then we moved and we picked tomatoes. After that we picked beans. No, I don’t pick anymore.” She shakes her head. “Never.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, I’d be happy to include something. It doesn’t have to be a fruit or a vegetable. It could be a flower.”

  “Or morning glories?” she asks.

  “I’m going to plant some when it gets warmer. You like morning glories?”

  She shrugs. “My abuela—my grandmother—did. She lived in the city. Mexico City. When she was a girl, she grew them in a pot. They grew so long over the balcony, they got her in trouble.” />
  “How’s that?”

  “She attached notes to the vines for a boy who lived on the first floor. She was forbidden to see this boy, but love doesn’t listen to mothers and fathers. The boy would attach poems to the vine and she would pull it up to her balcony. Then she would write a letter back to him.

  “My grandmother was no poet, but she could write a love letter that would cause the trees to whisper and the birds to sing all day. Because of this, everyone knew two people very close by must be in love. Her mother and father knew it wasn’t them. They had never loved each other. The boy had only a mother, so they knew it was not her. The old man and woman who lived on the third floor always held hands, so people around thought, ‘Ah, it must be them.’

  “Then one day my abuela’s mother caught one of the letters as it was being lowered. She showed her husband. He locked his daughter inside her room and dropped the pot of morning glories to the street. My abuela was so sad about the loss of the boy, the poems, the plant. All her happiness seemed to leave her with one big ka-boom.

  “Then, later in the summer, morning glories sprouted everywhere—in the cracks in the street, up the plum tree by the curb, on the park fence across the boulevard. The wind knew the boy was her true love.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Her father decided to give the boy a chance. He unlocked my abuela’s bedroom and let the boy visit in the living room. But only if her sister with the big nose could be in the same room. She had the gift of knowing what couldn’t be seen.

  “‘The boy is boring,’ she’d tell her father.

  “This pleased him, and he said, ‘He will make a good husband.’ Her father let them marry.”

  “That’s a wonderful story,” I said.

  Mercedes put up her palm. “I’m not finished. He was a good husband, but he was a poet. He was poor. When my father was born, my abuela told her husband he would have to get a job. Words could not feed a baby. They went on the circuit. Farm to farm to farm. That was their life. That was my parents’ life. That was my life too. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to plant morning glories. Just make sure to put in some good stuff for the dirt.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  WHEN A LIGHT GOES ON in Horace and Ida’s window, I start for their apartment. The door slowly opens a sliver. Horace is struggling on the other side. My hand goes to push, but I’m stopped, “Wait! Wait a second. I can get the door.”

  Horace manages to open it. Then he focuses on me and his face softens. “Stevie, good to see you. Come on in.” The back of his wheelchair keeps the door open for me.

  I step inside but stay near the door. I still have another invitation to deliver.

  Ida is watching TV. She turns her head a little and lifts her hand in a wave.

  Horace clears his throat. “I thought you might be the insurance salesman. He’s supposed to be here within the hour.” Boxes are stacked everywhere, mostly with things sold door-to-door or from the Home Shopping Network—Avon cosmetics and colognes, Wolfgang Puck cookware, Suzanne Somers’s candy, a Kirby vacuum cleaner, and loads more. Most of the boxes haven’t been opened. I wonder how they move their wheelchairs around their city of cardboard towers. Then I realize that they’re stacked neatly and that wide trails run from the living room to the kitchen, bedrooms, and Horace’s exercise area. Beside the parallel bars is a box marked PENSACOLA with a closed beach umbrella pointing to the ceiling.

  “Sorry for the mess,” Horace says.

  I hand him the invitation. He reads it, looks up, and smiles. “We’re invited to a dinner, lady love.” Then he says to me, “We’ll have to check our social calendar. Ida, how does our schedule look? If you have to, cancel that shindig with the president.”

  Ida giggles and pats her armrest.

  Then Horace says, “We’ll be there with bells on.”

  “Great! I’m so glad you can make it.”

  Ida smiles and says, “T … tank … tank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” I tell her. “It’ll be fun. See you later!” I turn the doorknob, open the door, and leave. When the door clicks shut, I think about how it will be a long while before I take opening a door for granted.

  Arlo says yes to the invitation too. “Roy isn’t here, but I know he’ll want to go. Hope you have plenty of food. That boy has an appetite that won’t quit. I’m going broke trying to keep him fed.”

  As I leave, Arlo says, “Stevie, I think you’re just what this old place needed.”

  I practically skip away. It feels like Christmas. Then a pang hits my gut so hard, I have to slow my pace. Because planning this dinner may be fun, but it’s nothing like Christmas. Nothing like it at all.

  * * *

  THE FIRST MEAL Mom ate in Santa Fe was at Maria’s. Dad ordered the tamales because Maria’s was known for that (and the strong margaritas), but Mom said she was no fan of lard mixed with cornmeal. She ordered the chicken enchiladas instead. Every time she cooked them at home, she tried to make them just like the ones she’d had at Maria’s, but she claimed hers never came close. I don’t agree. We ate at Maria’s every time we were in Santa Fe, and I thought Mom’s enchiladas tasted the same. But Mom said something that made sense: “The enchiladas at Maria’s are mixed with awe.” She explained that the day she arrived in New Mexico, she fell quickly under its spell. “They don’t call it the Land of Enchantment for nothing,” she said. Now I hope that my chicken enchiladas taste as good as hers.

  I’m glad Violet suggested buying two rotisserie chickens, because the enchiladas will cook a lot quicker. And I hate to admit it, but Winston’s music is kind of growing on me. A Louis Armstrong album gives just the right tempo for pulling chicken off the bone. “When the Saints Go Marching In” helps me shred the meat with a perfect rhythm. By the time Ella Fitzgerald joins him in “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm,” I’m ready to add the cheese and put the mixture onto the flour tortillas. Rolling them is the easy part. It takes concentration to make the sour cream sauce, but I manage to do it without lumps. Mom taught me how to gradually add the flour to the butter, whisking the whole time.

  After I slip the enchiladas into the oven, Violet and I push five tables, borrowed from hotel rooms, together by the garden. I’m wishing we had a couple of white tablecloths to cover them. An hour later, Violet comes to the rescue with a bolt of pink satin. “I was saving it for my future bridesmaids’ dresses.”

  “Are you sure you want to use it? We might spill something.”

  “I’ve changed my mind about the fabric. The color seems a bit childish for a wedding.”

  “What will you choose instead?”

  “Purple.”

  We unroll the yards and yards of fabric. There’s more than enough to cover the long makeshift table. At Violet’s urging, I let the ends flow onto the grass. The satin shimmers in the sunlight, and the forks and spoons sparkle like jewels. It’s beautiful, but then I see the full picture—the murky swimming pool, the patchy land, and the highway roaring by. At the farm, sunflowers will be breaking ground right now. Soon, rosebuds will burst open. The lilacs will be showing their last blooms. Our garden is seasons away from being that lush, but it would be nice if we could hold the party in a garden like the one at home.

  One day I’ll return to the farm. It’s what I want, and I believe it’s what my parents would want too. I know that’s why the farm hasn’t sold. Even so, I think about calling Paco to tell him to take the sign down. The sight of Violet adding paper napkins to the place settings snaps me back. This is my today.

  * * *

  AT DUSK, Ida and Horace are the first to arrive. Ida wears a white eyelet dress that almost covers her Birkenstock sandals. “You look beautiful, Ida,” I say.

  “I told Ida she’d get another wear of that wedding gown.” Horace’s crisp blue shirt is buttoned up to his neck, and his hair is slicked back with a little too much gel. For the first time since meeting him, I notice his strong jawline and brown eyes. Horace is handsome. I can’t
believe I never realized it before.

  Arlo and Roy walk up. Roy carries a bouquet of mixed flowers in a vase. He holds them out to me and says, “For your table.” It’s one of the sweetest bouquets I’ve ever seen. And the first one I’ve ever personally received from a guy.

  “Thank you.” As I take hold of the gift, my fingers brush his and a tingle runs up my arm.

  “Yep, the flowers were Dad’s idea.” Roy stretches his arms overhead and locks his fingers together like he’s relieved to be free of the task. His neck turns rosy above his white collar.

  Violet had gone home earlier to change. On her return, it takes me a moment to recognize her. While she’s getting out of her car, a breeze sweeps in and causes the skirt of her gauzy yellow dress to flutter like buttercup petals. She’s even taken time to twist her hair into a loose bun.

  For a while, we just stare at her. I glance over at Arlo, but he doesn’t seem to take much notice. Then I figure maybe it’s best he doesn’t. When I try to picture them together, I imagine Violet pinching her nostrils at Arlo’s Saturday-morning fish catch.

  “You’re gorgeous, Violet,” I say.

  Violet twirls, and the skirt lifts to her knees in the spin. “I love this dress. My aunt Mildred died in it.”

  We’re all seated when Mercedes drives up in her gold rat-a-tat-tat car. She’s changed out of her uniform and into a pair of snug pink capris and a crisp white shirt. Arlo is definitely noticing Mercedes as she joins us at the table.

  “Sorry I was late. My mother didn’t want me to leave. She said, ‘You broke a commandment.’ I asked her, ‘What commandment says I must go to every Sunday dinner?’ She said, ‘The one that says you must iron me.’”

  “Iron?” Horace asks, almost choking on the word.

  Mercedes is trying to explain through her laughter. “Yes, you know the commandment. Iron your mother and father?”

  We all laugh. She squeezes between Horace and Roy so that she’s directly across from Arlo.

  I’m hoping the enchiladas aren’t too spicy. My first bite proves they’re not, but they’re a little lukewarm. I shouldn’t have brought them outside so soon. A fly buzzes around the table, and we take turns swatting it away.