Niagara Motel Read online

  I jerked my hand back and shoved it in my pocket and looked around to make sure no one had seen me holding hands with my mom. Gina laughed at me but I didn’t care. I had to start school here soon and she didn’t. I stopped to re-tie my shoe. Gina put her hair back in a ponytail so it wouldn’t obstruct her view of the falls.

  We walked along the boardwalk and gawked at the falls with everybody else. A family of Japanese tourists asked Gina to take their picture and she made them do all these crazy poses and had everyone cracking up. Then she turned the camera on herself and gave it the thumbs-up while she took a photo. This put them into hysterics.

  I liked Niagara Falls right away because the people we saw kind of looked like us, like they didn’t quite know what they were doing, but they were going to try to have a good time anyways.

  The next day, we had breakfast at the Horton’s across the street. Gina read the paper and I dug a hole through my muffin so that it became a duffin. Or a mo-nut. It was my own invention and one day I would sell the idea to Mr Horton for a gazillion dollars. Gina circled an ad in the classifieds and I leaned over to read what it said.

  “Orchid Industries Escort Services. That sounds kind of nice.”

  Gina looked up from the paper. “Do you know what an escort is, Tucker?”

  “Sure. It’s like a Taurus but boxier.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, that’s a Ford Escort. This is a different kind of escort.”

  “What kind?”

  She popped a Timbit into her mouth. “It’s like a date.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full—jeez, you know that grosses me out.”

  “Sorry,” she said, and covered her mouth. She swallowed, took a sip of her tea. “It’s like a date.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s very classy. Only really classy ladies can do it.”

  “Guess you’re S.O.L. then, hey?”

  She rolled up the paper and swatted me on the arm with it while I laughed and choked a little bit on my duffin.

  She unrolled the paper. “Want your horoscope?”

  “Sure.”

  “Virgo, Virgo. There you are. All right.” She cleared her throat. “Even if you don’t have the faintest idea what is going on around you at the moment, act as if you have seen it all before. Create the illusion that you are in control. It’s remarkable how easily most people are fooled.”

  “Lame. What’s yours?”

  “You may be in the minority as far as certain viewpoints are concerned but according to the planets you are on the side of the angels, so stop worrying about what others might think and do what you know to be right.”

  “So what are we doing today?”

  “Well, I need to find a job, for one.”

  “I think what you meant to say was, we’re going to Marineland.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “I’m serious. We need to see the whales. Do what you know to be right, Gina.”

  “Do you like to eat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you like to wear clothes?”

  “Uh … I guess.”

  “Then I need to work.”

  “Work schmerk.”

  “Tucker—”

  “But you promised.”

  She shook her head and started reading the paper again.

  “Killer whales, Gina. Baby belugas. Sea lions!” I clapped my palms together, “Arf! Arf! Arf!”

  “Shh! You’re gonna get us kicked out of here.”

  “ARF! ARF! ARF!”

  “Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll look for work today and we’ll go to Marineland tomorrow.”

  “No deal.”

  “Hey. Who’s the boss?”

  “Bruce Springsteen.”

  “You little sh—”

  “Fifty bucks.”

  “Fifty bucks what?”

  “Give me fifty bucks and you’ve got a deal.”

  Her mouth twisted up but her eyes were shining. “Twenty.”

  “Forty-five. That’s as low as I’ll go.”

  She took two twenties out of her wallet and shoved them at me. “Don’t spend it all on candy.”

  We went back to our motel so Gina could get ready. I watched The Simpsons and thought about what I would do with my forty bucks. I could take a cab out to Marineland and see the whales myself, but it wouldn’t be as much fun without Gina there. I could go on the Maid of the Mist and get soaking wet, but what’s the point of getting soaking wet when there’s no one around to laugh with? She came out of the bathroom then, big hair, short skirt, makeup, the shoes.

  “How do I look?”

  I shrugged.

  She pushed her boobs up and checked herself out in the mirror above the desk. “This is big, Tucker. This is Niagara-fuckin-Falls.”

  “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you.”

  “What if I’m not here?”

  “Then I’ll leave a message on the motel phone.”

  “Okay. Well, break a leg.”

  “Thanks, lamb chop.” She kissed me on the forehead and grabbed her purse. “Don’t forget to eat lunch.”

  “Don’t forget to eat dinner.”

  “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

  “Don’t forget to wipe your butt.”

  “Don’t forget I love you.”

  “Don’t forget to close the door behind you.”

  She blew me a kiss and left.

  I wandered up and down Clifton Hill for most of the day. I saw some guys smoking out of a glass tube in an alley behind the 7-Eleven. I saw a fat man yelling into a payphone about losing everything he owned. I watched a black-haired girl in a too-tight dress pose on the corner and lean into car windows. I thought about going back to Brick City to build more stuff with LEGO, but I like to try new things so I went to the arcade instead. I saw some kids I thought maybe I could be friends with but then I saw them snickering when I was playing Ms. Pac-Man, even though I’m pretty good at Ms. Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man is actually better than Pac-Man. I spent twenty bucks at the arcade and then went to a restaurant called Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. It had gigantic parrots on the outside of it and a real live one inside a golden cage near the bar. Her name was Scarlet and she said, “Make it a double, Pete. BaCAW!” I laughed and told her I thought she was beautiful. I wanted to sit near her but they wouldn’t let me sit at the bar because I’m a minor. So I sat at a booth where I could still see Scarlet and ordered a Cheeseburger in Paradise with fries on the side and a chocolate milk. Then my money was gone and it was almost dark, so I said goodbye to Scarlet and went back to the Niagara Motel and checked the phone for a message from Gina. She hadn’t called. There was an old message from two days before. A guy named Lester left it for a woman named Chloe. Lester wanted Chloe to meet him in the lobby of the Ramada Inn at ten o’clock and she would know him because he would be wearing jeans and a beige dinner jacket. I erased it and then wished I hadn’t. Lester’s voice sounded worn-out and fed-up, like he had just watched his whole life go by and realized that he had never really enjoyed any of it. I hoped Chloe had shown up at the Ramada to meet him. I hoped she had been kind to him. I inspected the room for awhile looking for traces of Chloe. Here is what I found:

  1.The alarm was set to buzz for seven a.m.

  2.Four long black hairs in the bathtub

  3.A pink rhinestone earring sparkling behind the toilet

  I also found the complimentary pad of paper that said Niagara Motel at the top in blue cursive writing, and I did the old detective’s trick where you shade a pencil over the page to see what the last person wrote. My heart beat faster as Chloe’s writing appeared. 555-7957. The numbers were small and bubbly. There was a double line underneath the phone number and I knew that meant it was important. I wanted to call it and see who would answer. Maybe it would be Lester. Maybe it would be Chloe’s friend or her boss. I picked up the phone and let my finger hover above the 5. I ghost-dialed the number to see what shape it would ma
ke on the phone. It was a triangle. That was a good sign because the triangle is my favourite shape. It was probably Lester’s phone number. I put the receiver back in its cradle. Then I listened to the radio to see which station Chloe had left it on. It was the Classic Rock station. Classic Rock is music that is pretty old, but everyone agrees that it is still good.

  While I listened, I unpacked my stuff. I took out my clothes, shook out the wrinkles, folded them again, and put them all into the first two drawers of the brown dresser that the TV sat on. I had two pairs of jeans, a pair of black Adidas trackpants with white stripes up the side, a pair of cut-off jean shorts, five T-shirts, two sweatshirts, and seven pairs of underwear and socks. I didn’t have pyjamas because Gina thought pyjamas were a waste of money when you could just wear underwear and a T-shirt to bed. I had two Choose Your Own Adventure books: The Abominable Snowman and Trouble on Planet Earth, the discarded copy of Where the Red Fern Grows, and three Archie comics. I had a little shoebox that I kept my beach-glass and special rocks in, my Swiss Army knife that Gina gave me for my tenth birthday, and a brown plastic dog named Charlie. Charlie was the size of my pinky finger and the way his mouth hung open made him look like he was always smiling. I got Charlie out of a gumball machine in Winnipeg, and I’d had him for a long, long time. Except for my birth certificate and my health card, which Gina kept with her stuff, that was everything I had in the world. Gina didn’t think we should have too many things since we moved around all the time. She said too much stuff would weigh us down, and I guess she was right. When I finished reading my books, I traded them in at a used bookstore or got more out of a library. When I grew out of my clothes or they got too worn out, Gina bought me more. There were lots of things I wanted, sure, like a skateboard, a Nintendo, a never-ending supply of Bubble Tape, a dog. But Gina said that one day I would have everything I’d ever wanted and then I’d still want more. I’m not really sure what she meant by that, but I think it was her way of telling me that she wasn’t going to buy all that stuff for me. Gina had a lot more crap than I did, obviously. She had to have a lot of gear for dancing, a trillion pairs of shoes, a briefcase full of makeup, outfits, wigs, cassette tapes with her special songs on them, a bunch of other junk. I looked at the bags on her bed and thought about unpacking her stuff and putting it away for her, but I turned on the TV instead.

  I watched four episodes of Cheers back to back. I had seen them all a billion times before but I still laughed along with the live studio audience. Cheers is my all-time favourite show. I don’t normally tell people this, but there’s actually a real possibility that Sam Malone is my father. Gina will never talk about my father so I’ve pretty much given up asking her about him, but over the years I have been able to find out a few things about him when Gina was half-dreaming or too tired to tell me to leave her alone. These are the reasons I think that Sam Malone might be my real father:

  1.My father was a bartender. Sam Malone is a bartender.

  2.My father had brown hair. Sam Malone has brown hair.

  3.My father was a womanizer. Sam Malone is a womanizer.

  4.My father was a recovering alcoholic. Sam Malone is a recovering alcoholic.

  5.Our last name is Malone. His last name is Malone.

  I know last names don’t usually work that way, and I know they weren’t married or anything, but still, it’s a pretty big coincidence. Also, just because something’s on TV doesn’t mean it’s not real. When I’m old enough to get a job and I can save up enough money, I’m going to take the bus to Boston and go to Sam’s bar. I’ll walk in and Norm and Woody and Coach will grin their droopy barfly grins at me and Coach will say, “Aren’t you a little young to be in here, kid?” And Sam will turn around and he’ll be polishing a wine glass with his white bar towel, and when he sees me and realizes who I am, the glass will drop right out of his hand and shatter into a million pieces, but he won’t even care, he’ll just keep staring at me and his mouth will fall open a little bit. His eyes will start to water, and he’ll come out from behind the bar—he’ll be trying to talk but he won’t be able to say anything because he’ll be too emotional—and then he’ll kneel down in front of me to look into my eyes and he’ll see that they’re the very same eyes as his. Then I’ll throw my arms around his neck and hug him, real tight, and he’ll hug me back. Then we’ll slide into a booth and Carla will bring Sam a coffee and me a glass of chocolate milk and she’ll be crying too because everyone will be able to see that I’m Sam’s son. Norm will drop a little tear in his beer and Coach will get all snuffled up and wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. Woody will ask, “What’s everyone so upset about all of a sudden?” And they’ll have to explain it to Woody. They’ll have to tell him that I’m Sam’s kid and that he’s never met me until right now. It might not go exactly like that but it will be some variation of that. They say you never know what’s going to happen, but sometimes you have a pretty good idea.

  It took a long, long time to fall asleep at the motel because there were fireworks and then the people in the next room kept moaning and banging against the wall, but finally I did fall asleep and when I woke up in the morning the room was cold and Gina still wasn’t there.

  I opened the curtains and saw an old man in a green rain hat in front of the motel. He stooped down to collect the cigarette butts people had thrown away. He deposited them into a little soup can that was attached to his belt. When he straightened up again, he looked right at me. I didn’t know what to do so I gave him a little wave. His face got bright for a moment, and I could almost imagine what he had been like when he was young. Now he looked older than a mummy, and the wrinkles in his face were full of grime. He raised his arm and waved back at me. I could tell by how slowly he did it that he hadn’t waved at anyone in a long, long time, almost as if he had forgotten how. A woman wearing pink trackpants was walking a pit bull, and when she passed him, he turned to look at the back of her pants, which said B.U.M. EQUIPMENT across the butt. He kept watching her so I closed the curtains. I got dressed and went out to talk to the front-desk guy to ask if he’d seen Gina. He was flipping through the Yellow Pages. He had a pock-marked face and a tattoo of a scorpion on his neck. He hadn’t seen her.

  “Did she leave a message for me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you guys have a continental breakfast here?”

  “Sure don’t.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Do you have a waterslide?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, what kind of amenities do you have?”

  “Sweet fuck-all,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  I was really hungry so I drank a bunch of water and ate two packets of sugar that were in our room with the coffee stuff. Then I walked around for a while to see if Gina was asleep on the sidewalk or a bench, but she wasn’t anywhere. It had rained the night before and there were worms all over the road. The air stank of worm. I tried not to step on any of them, but most of them had already been squished. You could hear the robins chirping their little heads off, but you couldn’t see them anywhere. They must have been hiding, protecting their babies. A Lincoln Town Car drove by and splashed a huge puddle over me. I got soaked from the knees down. I walked toward the falls. I was tired and wanted to sit down but everything was wet. Then I realized I was already drenched so it didn’t really matter anyways. I found a place to sit that was so close to the falls it made my heart stutter. I stared at all that green water rushing over and the silver mist shooting up and wondered what would happen if I jumped in.

  People did it.

  Some of them died and some of them got famous. Sixteen people have gone over the falls in a barrel or something else. Two of them did it twice. Eleven out of the sixteen survived. That’s pretty good odds. But when you look into the river you get dizzy, and you can tell that if you step into it, it will kill you.

  I could feel the wetness of the bench seeping through my underwear. My
stomach growled and I wished I hadn’t spent twenty bucks at the stupid arcade. I wished I knew where Gina was and I wished I knew what to do. It was early and no one was around. As I stared into the white oblivion of the falls, I felt like I was the last human being on earth. I watched the Horseshoe Falls for a long, long time. One million bathtubs of water went over every second. That’s probably more baths than I’ll have in my whole entire life. In one second. I never knew there was so much water in the world. The sound of it blocked out all the other sounds. The never-ending roar of the falls was so loud that it was overwhelming and I started to get scared that something bad had happened to Gina. She had never not come home before without calling. I stared at the falls that I couldn’t turn off and would never ever stop, and I felt like crying or hurling myself at them or both. But then I remembered my horoscope, and I whispered, I’m in control, I’m in control. I am in control. Instead of crying or dying, I went back to the motel and asked scorpion guy to borrow the phonebook. Then I went to our room and called the Greater Niagara General Hospital.

  3

  A lady doctor named Dr Chopra came to get me in the waiting room. She had dark hair stuck up in a tight bun and gave me a little smile with no teeth. We took the elevator to the third floor, and she led me through the fluorescent hallways to a blue room where I saw Gina lying in a bed. She had two black eyes and her nose was all swollen, her head was wrapped in a white bandage, and she had tubes and wires going in and out of her arms and a tube coming out of her chest. I started to cry.

  “Is this your mother?” Dr Chopra asked.

  I nodded.

  “Can you tell me her name?”

  “Gina. Gina Malone.”

  She nodded. “Good.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Tucker, your mom was hit by a mini-van last night. The driver said she was lying in the road and he didn’t see her until it was too late.”