Niagara Motel Read online

  “Do you have a job?”

  “Yeah, the hardest job there is.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being a kid.”

  “Ha! You think that’s hard, you should try being a woman!” She popped the whole handful of Skittles into her mouth and smiled big at me to show me her rainbow teeth as she chewed them up. I laughed and showed her a mouth-rainbow too.

  That night the dinner at Bright Light was pork chops, boiled potatoes, and broccoli. But the pork chops were overdone and rubber-chewy and Dirtbag Daryl kept going on about how everyone was masticating so hard and how the pork chops were really difficult to masticate. He kept saying masticate this and masticate that, and at first it was really obnoxious and people told him to shut the hell up. Meredith threw a piece of broccoli at him but he kept on doing it and eventually everyone started cracking up, even Brian, who was the SOD, which stands for Staff On Duty. The word masticate means chew and it sounds like the word masturbate which means jerking-off for boys and humping a pillow for girls. I pictured a girl humping a pork chop which is totally ridiculous, so then I started cracking up too. I looked around the table at everyone laughing. Kyle’s face was turning red, Jayleen was choking on her milk from laughing so hard, and Josh was snorting like a pig, which made everyone laugh even harder, and for a minute, you could almost believe that we were a regular family, just sitting around the table, masticating our pork chops, laughing at our idiot brother. The laugh session seemed to go on and on, and I was glad Gina wasn’t there because she always gets a sleep attack when she laughs hard like that. Finally, it faded out. Shawn moaned. Tiffany wiped tears from her eyes. Then everyone got really quiet, even Dirtbag Daryl. There was a strange heaviness upon us, like someone had just made us all a promise that we knew they couldn’t keep. Kids started to get up and put their plates in the dishwasher. Chairs scraped against the tile floor as people shoved themselves away from the table. I sat at the table staring down at my plate until everyone had left the dining room. I pushed my broccoli stumps around in a circle and waited for the heavy feeling to go away. After awhile, Brian, the SOD, came back in. He tucked in all the chairs but one and then sat in it, across the table from me.

  “How are you doing, kid?”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah?”

  I shrugged.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “Not good. Her heart’s bruised. Bad.”

  “She’s going to get better though, right?”

  “She could die if things don’t heal properly.” Saying it made my legs feel watery, but I knew it was true. I made a pillow with my elbows and put my head down. I kept looking at Brian with one eye.

  Brian scratched his beard. It was brown and thick and made him look like a wannabe lumberjack. Or maybe he was a lumberjack when he wasn’t supervising juveniles. It’s hard to tell what people do in their spare time just by looking at them. But I was pretty sure that Brian wasn’t a lumberjack. He wore a Nirvana T-shirt. The one with a yellow smiley face on it and x’s for eyes. “I know it must be hard in here for you sometimes,” he said.

  “Most of the time.”

  “But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You’re one of the lucky ones.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, man. You’re going to be leaving soon, to live with your mom.”

  “So?”

  “So some of these kids don’t ever get to leave.”

  “You mean they have to stay here for their whole life?”

  “Well, until they’re nineteen, then they have to move out and look after themselves for the rest of their life.”

  “Get jobs?”

  “Yep, get jobs, find a place to live, buy groceries, make food, pay bills, all that.”

  “Can kids have jobs?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?” I thought of Meredith, working her corner. She probably made more money than some adults did.

  “Well, it depends on what you want to do. See, kids under fourteen aren’t supposed to work for a company or a store or a restaurant, but it’s okay for kids your age to do other work, like mow lawns, babysit, deliver newspapers, stuff like that.”

  “Brian?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think that I could get a job?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “But not some crap job. I need to make a lot of money.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I need to go find my father.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he’s my father.”

  Brian squinted at me, waiting.

  “And because, if something happens to Gina, I mean, if she doesn’t get better, or if she has another accident, then …”

  “Okay.” Brian nodded. He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bounced in his throat like a super-bouncy ball. “Do you know where he lives?”

  “I think maybe Boston. I think he might own a bar there.”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to track him down then,” Brian said.

  8

  I made up signs to cut people’s lawns and posted them all over town, but nobody ever called. Or else maybe someone did call, but no one at the group home gave me the message. I phoned the Niagara Gazette about doing a paper route, but they told me they already had enough carriers in my area. I thought about collecting bottles and cans and cashing them in, but then I remembered that guys here do that for a living and that’s how they buy their food and pay for their clothes and stuff and if I collected bottles, wouldn’t that kind of be like stealing from them? Plus, it took all day to make a few bucks, anyways. I kind of gave up looking for a job, but I didn’t give up on the idea of one day going to Boston to find Sam Malone.

  Sometimes, when I was hanging around downtown, I’d lean up against a building and watch people walk by. I used to imagine that I’d see Sam coming toward me and I’d wait for him to recognize me, his own flesh and blood. But then, it wouldn’t be him, it would just be some regular schmo, and then I’d wait for the next man who looked like my father to walk toward me.

  I bugged Gina about it for the zillionth time. We lay on her bed watching Wheel of Fortune. One of the contestants was a tall man with light brown hair.

  “Is that what my father looks like?”

  “Who?”

  “That guy in the middle. Gary.”

  “No.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since before you were born.”

  “Well, what did he look like then?”

  “Tucker,” she rubbed my head. “I’m trying to watch, okay?”

  Gary spun the wheel and it landed on BANKRUPT. The crowd ooohed as he pouted.

  “I just want to know what he looked like! You could at least tell me that. Do I even look like him?”

  “No,” she said. “You’re fair. He was dark.”

  “What else?”

  “Tucker, he’s out of the picture, all right? Just don’t worry about him.”

  “How can I not worry about him?”

  “You don’t really need a father, you know,” she whispered. Vanna turned a letter, grinning like a maniac.

  “All the other kids have one.”

  “If all the other kids had scurvy would you want that, too?”

  “I don’t know. What is it?”

  “Scurvy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Scurvy is when you don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables and your skin turns yellow and your teeth fall out and eventually you die.”

  “That can happen?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yeah, right. You’re just telling me that so I’ll eat my vegetables. And besides, it’s different. It’s not the same thing. It’s apples and oranges.”

  Gina laughed. “It’s the truth,” she said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “I have to get going.” I climbed off the bed and started to look for
my shoes.

  “Aw, really? You just got here. Can’t you stay a little longer?”

  “No, I have homework.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said. She smiled. “I’m glad you’re doing your homework.”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s it in?”

  “Math,” I said. “Long division.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s pretty easy.”

  “Okay. Good. Well, you go do it then.”

  I put on my shoes. “See ya later, Gina.”

  I started going to Meredith’s corner every day at lunchtime to see if she wanted to eat with me. Sometimes she wasn’t there, so I’d sit and wait or walk around the block a few times until she came back. She always came back. She never told me to get lost again, but we always left her spot in front of the cigar shop straight away. This was how Meredith and I started having lunch together every day. We were a strange match as far as friends go, but magnets don’t need to understand how magnetism works; they just repel each other or stick together.

  Meredith didn’t talk to me too much when we were at the group home, but she wasn’t mean to me either. When she was there, she mostly just read and watched TV and so did I. For lunch we’d go to Burger King or KFC or McDonald’s or the hot dog stand. Sometimes she’d buy lunch for both of us and sometimes she wouldn’t. It depended on what kind of morning she’d had and how flush she was. Once, I offered to buy her lunch and she said, “Your money’s no good here, sir,” and slid the five bucks back in my pocket.

  Meredith told me that she was trying to raise money to pay her brother’s bail. Her brother’s name was Steve and he was twenty-one. Steve was in the Don Jail in Toronto for selling cocaine. His bail was set at $100,000, and none of his scumbag friends would pay it for him so Meredith had to come up with a way to raise the money on her own. She didn’t tell me how much she had already saved and I didn’t ask. People get weird when you talk about money, as if how much money they have is equal to how much they’re worth inside. But everyone knows that kids are poor. Kids never have money, except for maybe a little bit of pocket money. So kids don’t feel crappy about not having money, because they’ve never had any to begin with. It doesn’t affect us like it does adults—or teenagers, who are just starting to feel crappy about money.

  Meredith said that getting guys off was the best way she knew how to make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. That’s what Gina had said too, except that she’d said it about dancing. Plus Gina really liked dancing. She was always dancing around the apartment, when we lived in apartments, or in the motel room, when we lived in motel rooms. Sometimes she’d even dance in line at the Tim Horton’s if a song came on that she liked. I hated when she did that and one time I left without even getting anything because I was so mad at her for embarrassing me and so mad at the skeezy construction workers behind us who ogled her up and down and whistled and clucked their tongues and said, “Ooh, Mama!” and then I got mad at Gina all over again for letting them do it. Gina had laughed at me and told me I was too serious and that I needed to lighten up. There are times to be serious and there are other times, too. But not everyone agrees on which times are which.

  So far, Meredith had been working almost half a year, but she still didn’t have enough money to get Steve out of jail.

  “What about stealing?” I asked her one day while we ate our Big Macs.

  “Like wallets and shit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Too risky.” She picked some polish off her finger nail. “What if they caught me? I don’t want to get beaten up. Or get sent to juvie.”

  “Have you ever?”

  “What? Got beaten up?”

  “Yeah.”

  She put down her Big Mac. A little bit of secret sauce oozed out the side of her lip. I pointed to my lip and she wiped hers with the back of her hand. “Tucker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to tell you something.”

  “Okay.” I chose an extra-long fry from my fry-packet and stuck it in the side of my mouth like a cigarette. I watched Meredith as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and wrapped a purple elastic around it.

  “You’re the only person who knows what I do and doesn’t make me feel like a piece of shit for doing it. You’re the only person who doesn’t judge me,” she said.

  “Why would I judge you? It’s just a job.”

  “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Are you going to eat the rest of your fries?”

  She handed me her carton of fries.

  “Thanks.”

  “And I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I feel like I can trust you.”

  “Me too. About you.” I smiled at her. The sunlight coming through the window bounced off her eyes, making them look like green beach-glass. If I had pieces in my beach-glass collection that were the colour of Meredith’s eyes, they would be my favourite pieces, and I would keep them in my pocket so I could take them out and look at them anytime I wanted. I kept chewing, and stared into her eyes as she spoke.

  “A few months ago, before I met you, while I was working, I … um, I was raped.”

  I let the fries in my mouth fall out onto the tray in a maggoty-white clump.

  “So …” she looked out the window.

  “Did you call the cops?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What?”

  “What was I going to say, ‘Hi, I’m a prostitute and I was just raped while I was working, will you come help me out please, officer?’ They would’ve laughed and hung up on me.”

  “But it’s illegal.”

  “It’s a workplace hazard, my friend.”

  “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Well, there’s more.”

  I stared at her.

  “The guy who raped me also made me pregnant.”

  I stared at her.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I stared at her.

  “I’m going to get an abortion tomorrow, and I want to you to come with me.”

  I stared at her.

  “Tucker?”

  I stared at her.

  “Will you?”

  “Okay.”

  Abortion is when a doctor vacuums an unborn baby out of its mom. Some people think abortion is murdering babies but how can you murder someone who isn’t even technically born yet? When we lived in Red Deer, I passed the hospital on my way to school every day and there were always people marching out front with huge signs around their necks. They reminded me of the Playing Cards in Alice in Wonderland who try to paint all the white roses red before the Queen of Hearts notices. But instead of spades or diamonds, their cards said things like “Abortion Is Murder!” “God Hates Abortionists!” and “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart.” And I never saw any of them painting roses or anything else. I was eight and didn’t know what abortion meant at the time, so Gina explained it to me.

  “So is it right or wrong?” I asked her.

  “Abortion?”

  “Yeah.”

  She sighed, puffing out her lips. “I don’t think there’s really an answer to that one, cupcake,” she said. “It’s probably one of those things that people are never really going to agree on.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t understand that. Was abortion like an impossible math question that mathematicians could work on solving for their whole lives and still never get the solution to? Like finding all the digits of pi? “Was I an abortion?”

  “No, honey, you were born.”

  “Oh. Because Scott Wilcox called me an abortion once.”

  “Well, that was a really mean thing for him to say to you, and he’s not a good friend.”

  “I know that.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s not even my friend.”

  “That’s good. He sounds mean.”

  “He is!”

  “Did you call him a name back?”

  “Y
es,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Butt-munchkin.”

  Gina tried not to laugh, but she wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “Tucker—”

  “Well, he’s really short!”

  Then Gina cracked up and so did I.

  When I got back to the group home after school that afternoon, I went upstairs to use the bathroom. Someone had tried to flush a paper towel and then laid a gigantic poop-log on top of it, and the toilet was overflowing and was about to flood the bathroom floor. I had to get out of there fast or else I’d puke. I ran past the staffroom on my way outside and yelled, “Brian! The upstairs toilet exploded!” Then I went and peed behind a bush in the backyard.

  After that I went to visit Gina. I had to tell her that I wouldn’t be able to come during visiting hours tomorrow. But I hadn’t told her about Meredith, and I couldn’t tell her about Meredith’s abortion appointment because Meredith had made me swear on Gina’s grave and my own grave that I would never tell another living soul about it for as long as I lived, cross my heart and hope to die. I don’t know why I hadn’t told Gina about Meredith yet, I just hadn’t. If I didn’t tell Gina about her, then Meredith was all mine. She was my secret friend that no one could say anything bad about and no one could take away. Maybe a part of me was scared that Gina wouldn’t like me hanging around with a sixteen-year-old, maybe she would think Meredith was too old for me and that I should be hanging around with kids my own age, like the idiot kids in my class who still ate paste and the dope-monkeys who spent all day in the arcade and didn’t ever play Ms. Pac-Man and never even came close to getting a top score on anything they did play. Anyways, I went to see Gina.

  Mrs Jorgenson was yelling about her bowels when I walked in, and I almost spun around on my heel and left. But I didn’t. Gina’s face lit up like a thousand-watt bulb when she saw me, and she waved me over to her bed. Mrs Jorgenson yelled something at me that wasn’t English and then started hacking into her phlegm jar.

  “Tucker, I need to get out of this room.”

  “I know.”

  “I need to breathe fresh air.”

  “Okay.”

  “Go get Heather and tell her I need to go outside. Now.”

  I ran out of the room.