No Vacancy
Excerpt from: “No Vacancy”
My mother forgave easily—all she needed was a little affection. His hand on the slope of her neck. A new window. One long look from those black eyes and she didn’t think he’d leave again. A year would pass, and then he’d have another turn. Anything could set him off: the wrong song on the stereo, a dinner gone cold, one of the motel guests leaving behind a flooded sink. That year, it was the simple sight of a motorcycle. It was my fault. I should have noticed the Harley parked there like a tease on the boy’s front lawn.
The truth is, I was preoccupied. There was a broken-down car propped up on cinderblocks, the backseat green vinyl. The windows had no glass in them and through the empty spaces I saw trees—pines mostly, and one white birch. I focused my eyes on the birch.
After, back at the boy’s house, I had to wait for Lester to pick me up. The waiting involved trying to sit still on a chair in the living room while the mother of the boy looked on. I was sure she noticed how my hair, once sprayed into a small pouf over my forehead, had gone flat. She was in the kitchen, cooking. She kept peeking out the doorway at me, but she didn’t speak to me or offer me a thing to drink and I didn’t get up off the chair to ask if she needed help.
When Lester arrived forty-five minutes late, he went directly for Mike. They stood together out on the lawn smoking cigarettes. Lester had given him a Winston.
The mother called from the kitchen, “There’s your father.”
“That man is not my father,” I said.
“Whoever he is, he’s here to take you home,” she said and waved a dish towel at me as if shooing me out of the house.
In the yard, Lester talked loud. His voice made the ground shake. I could feel it in my legs. I was having some small trouble walking.
Lester kept talking until Mike’s father came out with some various siblings, and they all stood around on their own front lawn and listened because there was nothing else to do while Lester was talking. He was raving about the motorcycle. This was the first time I noticed it there—an old, rusted piece of machinery in the weeds. But Lester saw something more. He loved motorcycles. Although he’d never owned one, he talked often of the fact that he could have bought one had he not married my mother and got stuck with the motel and me. He said he’d trade in the whole place for a bike. When we were looking over the road at a swarm of Harleys, he’d yell out that someday that would be him. I think this may have been one of the first things he told me other than don’t touch his truck or play his stereo. I must have been about eight years old, around the time they were married, when he took me out for a chat in the motel parking lot. My mother made me think he’d say he was my new daddy, that he’d be the one to watch out for me from then on, but what he said when it was just the two of us was, “Let’s not bother starting up some big thing between us. I’ll let you in on a secret: Show me a motorcycle, and I’m out of here . . . so far away, you won’t know where to find me.” His voice boomed. He held me up so I could get a good, clear view of the parade of bikes on the thruway below. It was a far fall. I thought he might drop me.
In Mike’s yard, Lester was still talking. He had a hand on a gash in the motorcycle’s seat. He said, “Let me take it for a spin.” And Mike’s father said, “I’d rather you didn’t.” And Lester said, “C’mon, just a quickie.” And Mike’s father said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” And Lester begged—just a few miles, just down the road and back—and finally Mike’s father gathered the siblings and led them into the house and it was just me and Mike and Lester, the motorcycle poised between us.
“It’s broken,” Mike admitted. “The engine won’t start.” He stood apart from me and wouldn’t look at me. He ground out his cigarette in the dirt. He hadn’t even offered me a drag. I couldn’t dwell on what I’d done, on what he’d think of me tomorrow. There was a sharp, shooting pain in my leg. I was dying of thirst. And yet there was Lester on his knees, feeling beneath the body of the motorcycle, saying he was sure he could fix it. Mike said, “Maybe another time.” Lester said, “Just get me a good wrench.” Mike said they didn’t have one. Lester said he had an extra set of tools in the truck. It could have gone on for hours—who knows how long it takes to fix a bike—and so I had to put a stop to it. I blurted out, “Lester, I don’t feel so good. Could we go home?”
They both looked over at me. Immediately, Lester noticed that I was favoring my left side. “What happened to your leg?” he said.
“I think I pulled a muscle.”
Mike pulled a grin.
“We were hiking,” I said. I pointed into the pine trees. “Up the hill.”
Lester nodded, stood up. “Take it easy,” he said to Mike. I limped to the truck without saying good-bye. Mike didn’t follow. Lester took one last look at the bike and then got in.
He drove the whole way back talking of the motorcycle. When we paused at a red light, he became upset. “She’s just sitting there in the grass, waiting for someone to notice her, and no one cares. Half her transmission’s gone; she’s full of rust! What’s wrong with those people?” The light turned green and he hit the gas. He didn’t speak again until we came near the thruway. “They don’t deserve her,” he said. . . .
(excerpt modified from the original / 2005, LIT)