Ocean 7 Motel
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Bolivar, Pennsylvania
I was sitting on the hood of my car. I had just pulled up to the motel office to find a pay phone and call my sister. She was the only person who’d called me since Mom died, but she hadn’t been able to help with any of this. Her husband had a business trip that day—they could be at her apartment in ten minutes if there were an emergency.
I didn’t want it to be anything serious because then I couldn’t tell her that Mom’s ashes looked like they came from the bottom of an oil slick after a spill. I thought I saw one of those little black plastic containers floating near the surface.
“This is going to make me sound crazy,” I said into the receiver, “but you’ve got to check the oil tank on the stove when your husband comes home. He’ll think you’re paranoid.”
She laughed and told me she would. “But don’t go sticking your hand inside anything that looks like it might have oil or other chemicals in it.”
“It won’t be anything like that. Just take a look at the burner underneath it and see if you can tell what kind of container he used for her ashes. You know how he gets when I ask him something. If I can get some idea of where Mom is, maybe I can convince him to stop worrying about things that aren’t really happening.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll do it tonight. But promise you won’t freak out, okay?”
“I’ll try not to.” I hung up the phone and walked around to the driver’s side of the car. My purse was lying open on the seat beside me, and I found myself staring down into it. The bag was so light that I wasn’t sure that I’d even put the phone back into my pocket before I left.
Maybe I’d just sat it down on the dash of the car without even noticing. I picked it up anyway and went back inside the office. There were no customers, and a man was standing by the coffee pot, talking on his cell phone.
“Hi,” I said. “Do you know if there’s a pay phone outside? I need to call someone.”
He gave me a long, hard look from behind his dark glasses. “What are you calling for?” he asked.
“Just a family emergency, that’s all. I’m sorry I have to use your phone.”
His face softened, and he smiled politely. “Well, it’s good to see you’re taking care of your mother. She was such a lovely lady. So nice to everyone, she was.” He looked past me toward the office door. “Didn’t she die here, like twenty years ago now? Is that right? You must be in your twenties then, huh?”
I nodded, unable to answer. I could see the little black box in my purse, but I wasn’t sure what to say about it. The man was still looking at me expectantly, so I reached into my purse again and took out the baggie filled with ash, and handed it over.
The guy looked down at the bag in his hand. He didn’t seem surprised, or upset. He turned the baggie in both hands like it was a piece of jewelry, as though he knew exactly what was supposed to happen next. Then he closed his eyes for a minute and pressed his thumbs against them until he began crying.
He dropped the ashes back into my purse and wiped his face. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You did well by her. God bless you, child.”
And then he left, leaving me there alone.
I drove home and called my sister from a pay phone in front of our parents’ house. When she answered she sounded excited.
“Hey! What’s wrong?” she asked. “What happened?”
I didn’t tell her anything. All I could manage to say was “Mom.”
After I hung up I stood in front of the house and tried to breathe slowly and deeply like we were taught in yoga class, but it just made me feel worse. The air smelled like the ocean, only instead of salty spray, it reeked like a dead fish washed up on shore. A few minutes later I got into my car and headed to work.
My job at the Ocean 7 Motel had started six weeks earlier, and although it was the first time I’d worked anywhere besides Mom’s store, it wasn’t my first real job.
We lived in an area of town where lots of people were either working in factories or traveling through and needed temporary housing, which is why Mom and Dad had always had a rooming house on the top floor of the building they owned.
They charged cheap rates—usually a dollar or two less than any of the hotels in town, plus free breakfasts—and it paid off: there was never a shortage of travelers needing rooms.
When Mom died last year, I decided I wanted to help out with the motel more. And Dad was happy to give me whatever hours I wanted, as long as I helped out around the house too. That meant doing everything from cleaning to laundry to answering phones and checking guests in and out. It also included being at the front desk during peak hours.
At eight in the morning on Wednesday morning, I was sitting behind the counter of the hotel’s front desk, which consisted of three metal folding chairs bolted to the floor in front of a battered card table that served as my desk.
In one chair sat our manager, a thin older man named Mr. Bowers. Across the room, Mr. Bowers’s son, Mr. Hensley, was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. I’d never met him because he usually worked nights. He didn’t look up when I came in, just kept blowing smoke rings into the air above his head.
I glanced down at my phone. It was almost nine-thirty, and Mr. Hensley hadn’t shown up yet. At least I didn’t have to worry about him taking my shift today; Mr. Bowers had already said he was giving me today off because it was my birthday (and since I wouldn’t be here anyway, why not?). But I’d still have to stay late tonight to make up for it.
Mr. Bowers was still sitting at his folding chair, and I wondered how many cigarettes he’d been through before it was finally time for me to come in. Probably too many to count. He’d been at this place longer than anyone else.
Before my parents moved here from Chicago twenty years ago, actually. He had curly gray hair, which he wore cut short, and the skin of his face was creased with lines like those in old books.
He waved me over to his side. “Come on over here and sit down,” he said. “Let’s hear all about your big night!”
It felt weird hearing someone refer to last night’s party as if it weren’t mine. Like maybe that would mean less work for me. As soon as I got to his side, however, I found myself smiling. I loved the way Mr. Bowers laughed and smiled all the time. Even when he was angry—like now—he had this way of looking at the world like it was funny.
I told him the story—how I was walking back from the beach after a swim and ran into a homeless guy who gave me his mother’s ashes. When I asked him what he was going to do with them, he said he was going to spread them on her grave.
I asked why and he just stared at me like I was an idiot. So I asked why and he said because that was what she’d want. And so I thought to myself, Well, what does my father think? And so I went over and asked him.
The rest of it was easy enough. Once I’d decided, I took a taxi all the way out to the cemetery and sprinkled the ashes on the top of her tombstone. Then I walked away without saying another word. I was feeling good about doing something nice for my mom, and I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but at least I could get a sense of peace that she was somewhere better now, like she wanted to be.
As far as I could see, everyone was enjoying their birthdays the same way they did every day: by working really hard to pay off their bills so they could afford to have fun again tomorrow. I wondered if that would ever change. Maybe one day I wouldn’t feel like there was only a limited amount of happiness I could have each year.
But then I heard Mr. Bowers chuckle and saw he was holding a lighter under his cigarette. “So you’re gonna do what?”
“What?”
“You’re going to give the ashes to your dad on his birthday?”
I frowned. “Yeah.”
Mr. Bowers blew a huge cloud of smoke in the air and looked at me from across the desk. “That’s not what your friend told you to do at all,” he said.
“My friend didn’t tell me anything! She just said the lady gave her some ashes, and I should do whatever I think is right.”
He nodded slowly. “Of course. You’ve got that fire in your gut, don’t ya?”
I shook my head. “Fire? No, just . . .” I thought for a moment. “Maybe determination. Is that a bad thing?”
Mr. Bowers snorted but smiled anyway. “No. Not bad, kid. Just different.”
I leaned forward and looked him straight in the eye. “What are you talking about, ‘different’?”
He reached out his hand, touched my forearm with his fingertip, and traced the shape of a lightning bolt. “Your father, he’s a little bit more stubborn than you, huh?”
I blinked. “Stubborn? What makes you say that?”
He patted me on the arm again. “Well, look where you got your name from.”
I sat back in my chair, surprised to realize I hadn’t known that for a fact—not until now. “So you think that’s good or bad?”
He let out a low laugh, which sounded like it came from deep inside his stomach. “I think that’s a question for the ages, sonny boy. But I know one thing for certain: when you’re ready to ask it yourself, there’ll be plenty of people in the world willing to give you their opinion, even if you don’t want it.”
He stood up, grabbed his coffee mug, and poured himself another cup of black liquid that looked as bitter as it tasted. “But hey, I gotta go take a leak,” he said, waving toward the door. “You wanna come with me?”
I jumped out of the chair and followed him down the hall to his bathroom. The bathroom smelled like stale urine like it always did, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the other toilets we used. That probably made sense; if you were peeing into an incinerator toilet, I guess you’d want it to taste pretty bad.
Once we finished, I washed my hands in Mr. Bowers’s sink and noticed he was looking at me in the mirror, like he was trying to figure me out.
“So how old are you, kid?”
“Eighteen.”
His expression softened and he turned away from the sink to face me. “And how long have you been here?”
“About three years.”
He nodded once. “How many times have you tried to kill yourself since you got here?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.” I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, wondering where he was going with this, and then remembered the question from last night: How many people can you trust? “Probably a hundred times. I mean, I haven’t counted them. Probably two dozen.”
He smiled. “I don’t believe you.”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
He chuckled to himself. “You know what, kid? It matters.”
“Why?”
He pointed at me. “Because you’re still alive.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because I’ve seen hundreds of kids come through here in three years, and most of them don’t make it very long. A lot of ’em try to kill themselves before they reach my doorstep. But none of them do it more than ten times. Why is that, do ya think?”
“Most people get better over time,” I answered immediately.
“Yeah, but how fast?” He raised his eyebrows. “And why is that? Do you think the reason why some kids die early is that they’re just stupid? Or weak? Because maybe they aren’t trying hard enough?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Not a chance. Most people who kill themselves are already dead, sonny boy. And when the rest of us get sent to this place, that means we’re the ones who are supposed to help ’em find life again, don’t we?”
I paused to think for a minute. “I guess so.”
He nodded and walked to the sink across from mine. We both stared into the mirror for a second and he took out a toothbrush, opened a tube of Colgate, and pulled his upper lip down. He put the brush between his teeth and spit into the sink.
Then he began brushing his teeth with his free hand. I watched him closely, curious about what he was doing. When he had finished, he rinsed his mouth out with water, put away the toothpaste, and dried his hands off.
Then he looked up at me in the mirror. “When you see something that looks hopeless, what do you do?”
I hesitated and shrugged. “Do I have a choice?”
Mr. Bowers shook his head, smiling at me. “No, kid—you don’t. But you should choose to fight anyway.”
“What’s fighting?”
“Fight for it,” he said quietly. “That’s all it takes: one decision, and then everything changes. You’re still alive and that’s what counts.” He turned around to face me, wiping his lips dry with his fingers. “Now I gotta go,” he said, walking toward the door.
“Wait.” I held out my hand, but he didn’t look at me. “Can I ask you something else?”
He stopped at the door and looked back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“How did you know I wasn’t going to kill myself?”
He frowned at me and scratched his beard. “Kid, you’re the third person today that’s asked me the same question. What is it, do you think I got an ear or something? Maybe I can tell by how loud someone laughs?” His eyebrows shot up in surprise and he laughed once more, slapping his knees. “No, kid. The way I know you won’t kill yourself is because you have hope.”
“Hope?”
He nodded slowly. “That’s right. Hope.”
The End