Niagara Motel Read online

  Fifteen minutes later, I was wheeling Gina down the hall and into the elevator. The elevator stopped on the floor below us, and a janitor got on. He had a yellow bucket on wheels with a stringy grey mop in it. He held onto the mop and pressed the button marked B. I stared at the bucket while we went down. I realized that the things he had to mop up weren’t normal things like spilled milk and muddy boot-tracks. The things he had to mop up in the hospital were, like, pee and poo and blood, and people’s worst messes of their lives. I looked at the janitor. He didn’t seem too upset by all the messes. He gave me a quick smile and Gina a nod. Gina smiled up at him like he was some kind of movie star. Maybe she was just happy to be looking at someone other than Mrs Jorgenson for a change.

  I took Gina to the cafeteria. We both got soft-serve ice cream in paper cups. Swirl. That’s half-chocolate, half-vanilla. Gina says, why have just one flavour when you can have both? After we got our ice cream, I wheeled her outside and she sucked in great big gulps of air like she was trying not to drown.

  “This is wonderful! It smells so good out here!”

  Actually it smelled like diesel fumes and antiseptic, but I didn’t mention it. It smelled delicious compared to Prince George. We ate our ice cream and watched the cars and people and birds. We watched a guy attached to an IV roll out for a smoke.

  Gina held up her wooden spoon. “This is one of the best things I’ve ever eaten!”

  “It’s pretty good,” I said.

  “Pretty good? Tucker, it’s fantastic!”

  I laughed.

  “I’m getting another one.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  “All right, can you get me one then?” she gazed up at me, squinting in the sun. “Please?”

  “Um, sure.” I looked around. Some nurses were smoking, some patients were smoking. The guy attached to his IV clattered back inside. Some old people were putting money in the parking machine. I don’t know why, but I felt nervous about leaving Gina alone outside in her wheelchair. What if she rolled into a car? What if someone stole her?

  “Tucker?”

  Did people steal moms? I knew they stole kids. They probably stole moms, too. Moms would be more useful actually, come to think of it. If you were going to steal a person, you might as well steal a mom. Then she could make you dinner and do your laundry and help you fix your sweaters. A kid would just want to watch TV and eat chips all day.

  “Honey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Swirl?”

  “Okay. Right. Yeah. Stay here. Don’t move, okay?”

  “Okay …”

  When I came back out, Gina shoved her arm in front of my face, “Look!” An orange lady bug rested below her elbow and above her hospital bracelet. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  I smiled. Most people don’t like beetles, but everyone loves ladybugs. But ladybugs are really just small beetles. It’s not fair.

  “Good luck for me,” Gina said. Then the ladybug clacked its tiny wings and flew away. We watched it float off in the breeze.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news,” I said. “What do you want first?”

  “Oh, man. Give me the bad. No, the good. No, wait. The bad. Definitely the bad first.”

  “Okay. The bad news is, I’m not going to be able to come see you tomorrow during visiting hours.”

  “Oh.” Her eyes shot icicles through my heart. “How come?”

  “Now you’re ready for the good news?”

  “Yes.”

  “The good news is I’m going to Marineland.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, it’s like a field trip thing for kids at the group home.”

  I couldn’t remember ever lying to Gina before, and it felt like a thousand punches in the stomach all at once. But I figured lying was one of those things that gets easier the more you do it. That explains why adults can lie all the time without even feeling bad about it, because they’ve had lots of practice.

  “Because I thought we were going to go to Marineland together,” Gina said.

  “We still can!”

  “All right, you’re right. We’ll go another time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know I wanted to take you though, right?”

  “I know.” You should have taken me when you had the chance instead of going out to look for a stupid job and getting hit by a stupid mini-van, I thought. But I didn’t say it because I knew it was mean. And the one person you should never be mean to is your mom. Sometimes I screw that up, but I try hard to remember.

  “But, yeah, you go. Have fun. It’ll be fun. Do you need some money?”

  “I have some left from what you gave me before.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Gina tapped her nails against the arm of her wheelchair. Then she had a coughing fit that was so bad that a nurse who was on her smoke break asked Gina if she was all right. Gina said yes, but the nurse went and got her a little cup of water anyways and eventually Gina quit coughing.

  “Sorry,” Gina said.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I think maybe the ice cream was too cold.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  We didn’t say anything for some time. An airplane flew over and left a white scar across the face of the sky. But after a while, the sky healed itself, and the white streak dissolved into the blue.

  9

  In the morning, Meredith and I walked to the clinic and stopped for Coke Slurpees on the way. As I watched her fill her cup, all I could think was: She’s pregnant. There’s a baby inside her. Right now. Some bad man’s baby that’s going to get vacuumed out and then … and then … I don’t know what happens after that. Meredith wore cut-off jean shorts and a Hypercolor T-shirt that all the colour had drained out of. She knew that we should go around the back of the clinic to avoid the Alice in Wonderland people, and I was glad for it. The woman at the front desk raised her eyebrows when we came in together. She gave Meredith a form to fill out and a pen with yellow holographic happy faces on it. We sat beside each other on the hard white chairs. Meredith chewed her nails as she filled out the form. I swung my legs from the chair and looked around at the other women in the waiting room. One wore huge white sunglasses that made her look like an alien. One blew her face off into a Kleenex. One had her face mashed against the chest of a man with the biggest ears I’d ever seen. Were all the women in the waiting room having an abortion? Had they all been raped? The only way to ever know would be to ask each one of them. And that is what Ms Snyder, my grade-three teacher in Vancouver, would have called an inappropriate question. I tried not to think about the other people in the waiting room and made up a joke instead.

  “Knock knock.”

  “Who’s there?” Meredith spit a piece of her fingernail onto the floor.

  “Nana.”

  “Nana who?”

  “Nana your business.”

  She smiled for a millisecond then turned back to the form.

  “Meredith?” the nurse called.

  Meredith looked at me and bit her bottom lip.

  “Break a leg,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and followed the nurse down the white hallway.

  She came out about twenty minutes later and we went out into the street. She walked fast, too fast, and I had to jog along beside her to keep up. She didn’t say anything so I didn’t either. We sat down on a concrete barrier beside the Horseshoe Falls. It was louder than a hundred million jackhammers all going at once. A watery rainbow shimmered in the mist below.

  “So?” I said.

  “They didn’t do it.”

  “Oh.”

  “She said it was too late for her to do it.” Meredith put her face in her hands.

  “Oh.”

  “I waited too long.”

  “So, what are you—”

  “She gave me the number of a doctor in Toronto who would maybe still do it. But it costs a shitload. And, it would … it wou
ld feel it, I guess,” Meredith shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Like staring into the sun.”

  “Wow.”

  I stole a look at her belly. There was a bulge there, but you couldn’t really tell if it was a baby or fat. We watched two seagulls swoop and dive beside the waterfall, playing in the mist. A guy rode by us on a BMX. Two old ladies hobbled past us, both of them with silver canes. A man and lady walked past us, and the man had a kangaroo pouch strapped to him with a baby inside. I looked at Meredith. Her bottom lip was bleeding from biting it so hard. She rubbed her eyes. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  “Well, if this were a Choose Your Own Adventure book, which it isn’t, obviously, because it’s your life, but if it were, you would have three options. One, have the baby and keep it. Two, have the baby and give it up for adoption. Or three, have an abortion. But whichever one you pick, you’ll have to go to that next page no matter what. You can’t cheat and turn back and choose a different one.”

  “There’s a fourth option.”

  “There is? What?”

  “Take a flying leap off the falls.”

  “That’s not a good option,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “At least stuff yourself into a barrel first.”

  She looked at me for a second, then burst out laughing.

  “And if you wait until you’re really pregnant then you can have, like, a built-in airbag in there with you.”

  We laughed until she began to cry. She made tiny, chipmunk sounds as she cried. I put my arm around her shoulder and she let me. Then I rubbed little circles into her back like Gina did for me whenever I cried. It didn’t help. She cried even harder. I stared at her hair. Mist clung to it like tiny diamonds. I wished I could help her, but I couldn’t do anything. I was only a kid, like her.

  “I saw this sign in front of St. Ann’s church the other day,” I said. “It was a good one. I wanted to remember it.”

  “What did it say?” She looked up. Her tears had streaked her makeup and left black ribbons around her eyes.

  “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

  She nodded and reached into her bag for her cigarettes.

  The next day, Brian, Meredith, and I sat out on the front porch. We were outside because Shawn, Josh, and Kyle were having a farting contest in the kitchen and the whole house reeked. They refused to open any windows or turn on the fan because they said it would skew the results of the contest. Besides, it was one of our first real spring days with sunshine and robins and everything, and it felt good to be outside. Brian tuned his guitar, Meredith read Watership Down, and I looked at a ladybug under a magnifying glass. It was orange, not red, and had six spots. I’m not sure if it was a girl or a boy. Not all ladybugs are girls. Some people say the number of spots they have is how old they are, but that could be a myth. People make up stuff that’s not true all the time just to sound smart, and then other people who want to sound smart repeat what they said. That’s how false information gets spread around. And myths. And urban legends. The people who know they’re making stuff up are worse than the people who say it and think it’s actually true. We call the people who make stuff up bullshitters. Gina says the world is full of bullshitters, and our job is to see through them. That doesn’t mean using X-ray vision; it means being able to tell when people are making stuff up that’s not true. I figured the ladybug was probably only a few months old, maybe a year, tops, but definitely not six. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the same one that had landed on Gina’s arm.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Meredith yelled at me.

  “I’m just looking at it.”

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll kill it! The sun will zap it through the glass.”

  I looked at Brian.

  “It could,” he shrugged.

  “It will! It’ll incinerate her!”

  “How do you know it’s a her?”

  “JUST—”

  “Okay, okay.” I put the magnifying glass in my pocket.

  Meredith whipped her book across the lawn.

  “Careful,” Brian said.

  “That book is stupid. Most of it isn’t even in English.”

  “So the rabbits have their own language, what’s wrong with that?” Brian said.

  “I can’t understand it is what’s wrong with that!” Meredith shouted.

  Brian scratched his beard. “How about I play a song for you guys?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Meredith grumbled and adjusted herself until she sat cross-legged in the green plastic lawn chair. She picked at her elbow and said, “Whatever.”

  “Okay.” Brian cleared his throat and began to play his guitar and sing. It was Nirvana.

  Meredith closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. I watched the wind ripple through the grass and felt an invisible chicken bone stuck in my throat. I didn’t want to be at Bright Light Youth Residence anymore. I wanted to go home. That’s not a house that I grew up in in a town that I can always go back to. That’s not the Niagara Motel with Chad the front-desk guy with the scorpion tattoo on his neck and Chloe’s earring behind the sink in our room. That’s Gina.

  I don’t usually get all sentimental like that, but then I realized why I was. It was like a Jedi Mind Trick that Brian was doing with his song. I knew that song from before. Gina had played it at our apartment in Medicine Hat, in her room late at night when she smoked cigarettes out her window and thought she was getting away with it. She had played it in the kitchenette of our room in Prince George on our yellow ghettoblaster while she made me grilled cheese and pickles for lunch. The song was why I’d thought of her, the song was what was making my throat lump up. I guess because:

  1.I wasn’t with her, and

  2.Because I didn’t know when or if she would be okay again.

  It seemed to me that Gina would either get better or die, and I wasn’t sure which one was going to happen. But I did know there was no way I could live at Bright Light for the next eight years of my life.

  Brian finished the song with a little flourish of his fingers. He put the pick in his mouth while he twisted the white knobs on the end of the guitar. Brian’s pick was sky blue. The real name for a pick is plectrum, pick is just a short form. Brian taught me that. Brian was actually a really nice guy. He’d let us watch TV past nine p.m., which none of the other SODs did. He shared his wine gums with me and he always saved me the black ones because he knew they were my favourite. Brian was in a band called Wax Wings. I’d never seen them live because they played at bars and clubs that only adults can get into, but their demo tape was at the house and I’d heard Meredith playing it a katrillion times. They weren’t the worst band I’d ever heard, but they weren’t the best either. Meredith stared at Brian.

  “Do you really think you’re going to make it?” she said. Her face was all shiny and pink.

  “What do you mean?” He took the pick out of his mouth.

  “I mean as a musician. You think you’re going to get famous? Get played on the radio?”

  “Well, I don’t know for sure, but I have to try, right?”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you have to try?”

  He played a few chords. “Because then I’ll know that I did everything I could, and I won’t have to wonder.”

  “But won’t you be so disappointed if it doesn’t work out?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he nodded. “But there are worse things than being disappointed.”

  Meredith wore a little half-smile. I stared past her and watched a crow hop around on the telephone wire in front of the house. It was okay for people to talk about the future being full of possibility and the future holding good things for them, because the truth is, the future never comes.


  I went inside to make a peanut butter and pickle sandwich. While I was making it, I heard yelling coming from the TV room. Kyle and Shawn were playing foosball and wouldn’t let Dirtbag Daryl play.

  “Don’t touch it, shitbucket,” Kyle said.

  “I can play if I want,” Daryl said.

  “No,” Shawn said. “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m going to bash your face in with my boot if you come within three feet of this table while we’re playing. Now, fuck off, Dirtbag.”

  I got a glass of milk because milk makes a body good and went into the TV room and sat on the couch to eat my sandwich and watch The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

  “Hey, I’ve got something for you guys,” Daryl said, pulling a crumpled pack of Export A’s out of his pocket.

  “Where’d you get those?” Kyle grabbed for the pack.

  “Ah-ah! Not so fast. Only if you let me play.”

  “Sure, you can play,” Shawn said, nodding to Kyle.

  “Really?”

  In one quick movement, Kyle had Dirtbag Daryl’s arms pinned behind his back. Kyle tossed the cigarettes to Shawn and Shawn laughed as he took one out and tucked it behind his ear. “Yeah, play with yourself, wanker.”

  “You fuck-off! Those are mine! Give them back!” Daryl screamed. “They’re not yours!”

  “They are now, you dumb shit.” Shawn put the pack in his pocket.

  Brian and Meredith came into the room then, probably to see what all the noise was about. I looked at Dirtbag Daryl. His back was to me and he was hunched over a little, and he seemed to be vibrating, which was not unusual for Dirtbag Daryl. What happened next was in slow motion. Daryl soared toward Shawn with the blade of his Swiss Army knife open. “I’ll cut you! I’ll cut you, you asshole!” Shawn put his palms up as Daryl held the knife to Shawn’s eye. Brian put his hand on Daryl’s shoulder and Daryl spun around and plunged the knife into Brian’s neck. I let my sandwich fall to the floor. Kyle, Shawn, Daryl, Meredith, and I stared at Brian as his hands flew to his neck, his blood spraying the walls. The colour drained from his face and he opened his mouth. No words came out, only a red bubble. Then he collapsed.