Niagara Motel (20 page)

“Sure, kid. You can babysit for us every weekend if you want.” He smiled at Gina and winked at her.

“And Kim won't mind?”

“She'll be ecstatic,” he said.

“Steve?”

“Yeah, Tucker?”

“Do you think it would be okay if I kept Meredith's Walkman? And some of her tapes?”

Steve bit his bottom lip and nodded. “I think she would want you to have them,” he said.

Then I passed the phone to Gina because my throat closed up with sadness and I couldn't talk anymore. Gina told Steve she would leave our phone number at the front desk for him in case he needed to get a hold of us. She asked him if there was anything else we could do, anyone else we should call.

“I'll take care of it,” Steve said. He thanked us for coming and for looking after Angel.

I took the phone back from Gina. “She was saving up money for you,” I said. “To bail you out. She had a lot saved. I'm not sure how much. I don't know where it is. Probably at Bright Light. The group home. I don't think she put it in the bank.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Steve said.

“So, I guess I'll see you next month then,” I said.

“See ya on the outside, kid.” He nodded once, then Steve hung up his phone and I hung up mine and the guard came and led him away.

32

On the bus ride home, I said to Gina, “So now you have to tell me about my father. Once and for all.”

“Now?”

“Right now,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“You don't want to wait until we get home?”

“No.”

She took a big sigh. She looked out the window for a second, then looked back at me. “Your father's name was Mark Baxter,” she said. “He was a bartender at the pub I worked at in Paris when I was a teenager.”

“Was he your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Did you want him to be your boyfriend?”

“No. He was thirty-six years old.”

“He was almost twenty years older than you?”

“And he was married.”

“Oh,” I said. “So …”

“So one night, he had been drinking during his shift, and he came up behind me while I was stocking the beer cooler and he … he raped me.”

“Oh.” I looked down at my hands. A giant had just punched me in the stomach.

“I'm sorry, Tucker. That's why I never wanted to tell you. I didn't want you to have to live with that.”

“Did you tell anybody?”

“I told my mom. She didn't believe me. She said I must have
seduced him, gotten him drunk and seduced him, she said. She thought my skirts were too short and my tops were too tight. She didn't believe me. Or she was ashamed of me. I don't know.” She shrugged.

“Did he know about me?”

Gina nodded.

“But, he …”

She shook her head. “He denied that you were his. He said that I'd slept with half of Paris and there was no way. But it wasn't true. He begged me not to tell his wife.”

“Did you?”

“No. I made him pay me five thousand dollars not to tell her. And I used the money to move away, right after I had you.”

“In the laundromat?”

“In the laundromat,” she smiled, nodding.

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“No.”

“Did he ever ask about me? Does he know who I am?”

“I never saw him again after I left.”

“You never talked to him either?”

“No.”

“But—”

“He's a bad person, Tucker. I don't want him around you. Ever.”

“So, that means that … half of me is a bad person too.”

“No, honey. Don't say that. That's not true. You're a good person. You're the best person I know.” Gina wiped away a tear that had sneaked out the corner of her eye.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“You don't have to be sorry, Tucker. You didn't do anything wrong, okay? This was
not
your fault.”

“I know, but I'm sorry that it happened to you.”

“Well, I got you out of it,” she said. “So I guess it was the worst
thing
and
the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I leaned into her and closed my eyes. She put her arm around me and kissed me on top of the head. We were quiet for the rest of the way back to Niagara Falls and I thought about how the world is full of terrible things, and really great stuff too, and you just never know what you're going to get, but it will be some combination of both. Every donut has its hole.

As we got off the bus in front of the Niagara Motel, I held Angel against my chest and watched as Gina gripped her cane and struggled to get down the steps. She was not the same woman she had been when we first got off the bus in Niagara Falls, and, I guess, I wasn't the same boy either.

TUCKER'S MIX-TAPE

(to remember my trip to Los Angeles, California, April 25 to May 1, 1992)

              
1. “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” Jimmy Buffet

              
2. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana

              
3. Cheers Theme Song (“Where Everybody Knows Your Name”), Gary Portnoy

              
4. “Hit the Road Jack,” Ray Charles

              
5. “California Dreamin',” The Mamas & The Papas

              
6. “Stand by Me,” Ben E. King

              
7. “People Are Strange,” The Doors

              
8. “Heart of Gold,” Neil Young

              
9. “Come as You Are,” Nirvana

              
10. “Mustang Sally,” Muddy Waters

              
11. “In the Ghetto,” Elvis

              
12. “Folsom Prison Blues,” Johnny Cash

              
13. “I've Been Everywhere,” Johnny Cash

              
14. “Six Days on the Road,” Dave Dudley

              
15. “Black or White,” Michael Jackson

              
16. “It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine),” R.E.M.

              
17. “Been Caught Stealing,” Jane's Addiction

              
18. “Whiter Shade of Pale,” Procol Harum

              
19. “Boys Don't Cry,” The Cure

              
20. “Ain't No Sunshine,” Bill Withers

              
21. “Bird on a Wire,” Kate Wolf

              
22. “I'll Fly Away,” Hank Williams

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THANK YOU:

John Little for being my favourite dad; Jennifer Little for medical and preemie baby info, sending Niagara Falls postcards and tourist info, and being my mom; Ben Burgis for tips on what eleven-year-old boys would/would not say/do; Trevor Hagerman for trucking info; Mary Little for sending Niagara Falls photos; Ron Twigg for help with fact checking; Tamsin Pukonen; Timothy Goldman for sending his video footage of the L.A. Riots; Alfred Lomas and L.A. Gang Tours for showing me Compton, Watts, and South Central L.A.; Jane Doe for graciously agreeing to let me interview her about escorting; Kevin Chong and
Joyland
for publishing “Niagara Motel” (the story); the University of British Columbia Okanagan and the BC Arts Council for financial support during the research and creation of this novel; Anne Fleming, my first reader and a true believer in Tucker's world; Nancy Holmes, Matt Rader, for feedback and guidance; Alexandra Writers' Centre Society and Loft 112 for hosting me in Calgary as 2014 Writer in Residence; Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch, and Valerie Scott for fighting the good fight; Willy Vlautin; my agent, Hilary McMahon; my publisher, Brian Lam; my editor, Susan Safyan, and the whole team at Arsenal; special thank you to Warren Sookocheff, without whom there would be no Gina.

Photo credit: Vancouver Public Library

ASHLEY LITTLE's
Anatomy of a Girl Gang
won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes), was shortlisted for the Vancouver Book Award and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and has been translated into Croatian and Italian. Her young adult novel
The New Normal
(Orca Book Publishers) won the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize. Ashley's first novel,
Prick: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist
(Tightrope Books) was a finalist for a ReLit award and has been optioned for film. She has an MFA from the University of British Columbia. She lives in the Okanagan Valley.

ashleylittle.com