Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (21 page)

At last
, we are
here
– the eponymous cha
p
ter!
The rest of the trip with Nigel and dogs was grim, c
onsidering we had no place to land
.
Nigel
spoke to
the DCFS:
Aurora had been moved
to
a group home in the Valley, one called Albert Hall.
So hanging out with girls on probation was preferable to being at home.
Fine.
Fuck her.
The pressures she’d put me under,
compounded by
the
stress
of
unemployment, had
probably contributed 7
0% to this cancer.
I decided to turn my thoughts to myself,
since
, for once, I deserved it.

We landed at
the Simi Valley
Motel 6
®
, since that was close to my doctor, or, in insurance parlance, my P
C
P (Primary
Care
Physician).
He was a nice enough guy, but didn’t know beans about cancer. His job was to
act as ringmaster for the lions and t
igers
of specialists soon to join my train.

My family knew of my diagnosis.
My Mom had reacted hysterically, running upstairs at Rachel’s and announcing, “Amy has to have a
double
mastectomy!”
Actually, I
was getting
lumpectomies on both breasts, since the right one (she of 2007) had developed scar tissue now
condensed in
a walnut-sized lump.
This would have to come out.

Rachel knew of my predicament:
an evicted cancer patient living in a Motel 6
®
.
W
as
there
an offer
to stay at her house,
that of the
7,200
square feet?
No.
The Motel 6
®
would be my base for
pre-surgical
tests
, sometimes as many as three a day:
MRIs, CAT scans, bloo
d tests, EKGs, U
ltrasounds, 2D Heart Echoes, not to mention
endless doctor’s appointments.
There was
one-point-five
cent
imeters of
tumor
in my breast
–
and a
million meters of bitterness.

The first specialist I saw was the surgeon
, Dr. Candle.
He seemed competent
enough
, unlike his front office
staff
.
They
functioned like
The
Keystone Cops
,
incapable of sending a fax or retrieving
my
films from Overlake.
I
had to arrange it all, including the Fed Ex.
I
had to
hand-walk the
computer
disk
to the hospital.
Thus began
my
days of
D
o
I
t
Y
ourself
H
ealthcare
,
a hallmark of this great century. Too bad I wasn’t getting paid.
I wrangled dai
ly with the surgeon’s assistant.
After two weeks of waiting for a referral (was there something questionable about
cancer surgery?
Was this considered “elective” and therefore
unnecessary
?)
I finally got a date:
July 19, 2010.
My birthday.

In the meantime, Nigel and
I
drove
to Canoga
Park
to collect the rest of my
things
.
We opened the door to a scene
straight out of
Poseidon Adventure.
Aurora had
turned the place upside down
:
she’d taken my personal files – the on
es
that held my passport, birth certificate, et al – and strewn them
over
the floor.
My CDs and DVDs
were jumbled in a plastic heap.
Cotton the bunny still lived – thank God! – but there was a
hissing
cat in the closet, another
of her abandoned “rescues.”
My clothes had been ripped
from
the closet
, and were now carpeting my room.
Everything
I owned had been thrown to the virtual wolves, or in this case,
a
feral cat
.

“Goddamnit! That little bitch!”

Nigel still defended her.
“Well, she was clearly upset.”

“Shut up.”
I wanted to purge Aurora from
memory
– from my life.
Let her rot in Albert Hall.
For eleven months, I had tried to make a home for her; a place where she could feel safe.
In return, she’d kicked me in the teeth
(
almost
literally).
One of her recent stu
nts had destroyed a
three-decade
friendship.
She’d become friends
with
my
friend Seamus’
kids, and frequently cruised the mall with them, David in tow.
But Aurora told a dark tale:
that the son, Raymond,
nineteen,
had molested her, forcing her to have sex
as he tra
p
ped her in his room.
There were details – coarse as a
Penthouse
fantasy
–
spanning a
n alleged
period
of
months.
Why hadn’t she told me?
Because
these were her only pals in L.A.

Sicker than
I’d b
een at hearing of the Issaquah “rape,” I
sent
an email to
Seamus and his wife
.
I recounted the sordid events, telling them I wouldn't go to the
LAPD
– but that Raymond needed to straighten out before this happened again.

I received an immediate call, conferenced in to that
entir
e family.

“She’s a liar – SHE LIED!”
Raymond could barely
speak through
his
hot
spitting
rage.

“Didn’t you tell me that she accused Nigel, and it turned out to be
false
?”
That was
Seamus, my old pal from Fox.
We’d met when I was eighteen
.

“Yes.”
This was my rule of thumb: wh
en in doubt, tell the truth.

“How do you know she’s not making
this
up?”

“Well, the details – and that picture of Raymond in the mall, with his hand by that young girl’
s—
”

“HE WAS JUST FOOLING AROUND!”
Seamus’ voice rose to a pitch I hadn’t heard since he’d
fought with his producer
.
Then, he’d put his fist through a wall.
Why did all the men I kno
w attack inanimate objects?
And why didn’t any of the women?

“I’m sorry, Seamus, I really am.
I never would have mentioned this if I didn’t think it was real.”
Aurora huddled pathetically in a corner.
For some reason, I still trusted her.
Go
ahead, say it: 
S
chmuck.

“I don’t want this
to
ruin
our friendship.”
I knew
that
these accusations had the
power
, like shock waves after a
n exploded
bomb, to
knock everyone off their feet.

“Don’t worry.”
Seamus’ voice sounded strained.
“We love you!”
CLICK
.
That was the last I heard from him
for
years
.
I, who had sat by his bedside weekly as he recovered from a terrible car accident; who had
been his collaborator on
scripts
and stories; who had accompanied him to
myriad
book
shows
was now gone – erased. 
And that was Aurora in a
nutshell:
Destroyer of Lives
,
Friendships, and
Worlds.
She wielded her blade like Conan, cutting flesh as casually as steak, laughing as her enemy’s blood spurted across her face.
She should have been a warrior.
Deploy her to Afghanistan, and Omar’s head would
be on a stake
faster than you
could say “Taliban.”

I
looked over
her most recent work. The violence and the mess upset me.
Not to mention the
overt
malevolence
.
Nigel and I
hauled as much as we could back to the Motel 6
®
, which now served as home
to
:
1.
a cancer patient,
2.
a lunatic
,
3
-4.
two do
gs,
5.
a bunny
and 6.
an insane cat.

I
parted the see-through
room
curtains. I
was afraid that I would die there, in that
square
room with its Motel 6
®
bedspread, depicting a pink flamingo,
t
he Space N
eedle
,
a red truck on
a
red-ribbon highway,
all in
Soviet realist style.
I would expire among
the
one-ply toilet paper
; the wireless service that
was not complimentary
;
a
bathroom devoid of little bottles of shampoo.

What
was it all about
?
I
was not seeking treatment in a
strange town
,
across continents
.
I was not outsourcing my breast to India.
I was in my own city – the
one that I was born in
–
one of three natives
among
10 million
.
To make
things
worse, my sister lived just
20
minutes away.
I must have been a very bad person. Why else had I reached
this nadir:
D
eath in a Motel 6
®
?
Even Greg, penniless, had died in his own be
d,
his last sight not
that
of an ugly
bedspread
.
I sighed.
I sat down on
top of
that
Space Needle, feeling very sorry for myself.

We stayed there, in
the
Motel 6
®
, for over five weeks.
Now d
on’t get me wrong:
a
Motel 6
®
is great for a short stay – outside a national park, perhaps; or a weekend getaway to Fresno.
But
long-term, it weighs on you,
that lack of free shampoo almost inspiring rage
.
We had no kitchen, not even a hot plate, so that meant money spent on every meal out.
There wasn’t even a laundry room.

Fortunately, I discovered something by accident:
I was
still
eligible
for
Washington
Unemployment!
Three cheers for the Great Northwest
.
This meant, that by combining two states’
benefits
(a victory
achieved by
making
15
phone calls and
being hung up on
–
repeatedly
–
by a recording
)
,
I was
entitled to
$585
per week!
I could remove myself from
Rachel’s
dole and actually pay rent (or in this case, daily rates).
You can’t imagine what a boon
this was in the days and months ahead.
If I’d had to worry about money
along with
having cancer, I
don’t think I could have made it
.
As it was, I was a woman of some means, able to support myself and Nigel (
on the verge of Ninety-Niner
-dom
) in
the fabulous Motel 6
®
!