Three Good Things (2 page)

When I get back to the car, Mom is still fast asleep. She has moved into the back,
so I climb into the driver’s seat and slam the door closed. I punch the buttons on
the radio.

“Shut up,” Mom mumbles.

“Did I wake you?”

“I’ve been waiting for you.” She pulls herself up. A red crease runs down one cheek.

“There’s a washroom in the park,” I tell her. “But I think it’s locked.”

“There’s a park?” Her eyes light up. “Where have you been?”

“At the library.”

“A bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Did you know that?”

“I have to get an education somehow.” I pretend to resent the fact that it’s been
years since I’ve really been in school. In truth, the thought of going to school
scares the crap out of me.

Her gaze slides away from me, then back again. “So what did you learn today?” She’s
switched to her This-is-the-kind-of-mother-I-wish-I-was voice. Bright and expectant.
But she can’t keep it up. “No chance you found us somewhere to stay for the night,
I suppose. Somewhere we can at least get a shower.”

“Actually, there’s a motel a few blocks away.” I read the scribble on
my arm. “The
Lion Inn. Sixty-seven dollars a night.”

“We could probably get a discount for a long stay. I’m behind on my shows.”

“How long are you thinking?” I ask. Jake may not be cute exactly. But he did invite
me to his place. Not that we ever stay in one place long enough to get to know anyone.

Mom untangles herself from the comforter and slips her purse over her shoulder. She
gets out and adjusts her jacket so it’s now really crooked. “As long as we need.
Your Grand wouldn’t want us out in the cold.”

I sometimes wonder if she has any idea how much things cost. All she has to do is
put a card in a hole in the wall, and money pops out. Grand makes sure there’s always
enough in the account, tops up our welfare check when the account gets low.

I don’t know where I learned about remittance men. They were disgraced family members
sent from England to the colonies, financed by the families who were glad to see
the back of them. Is that how Grand thinks of her? Us?

“Come on,” says Mom. “I need more coffee. Then we’ll check out the motel.”

Of course, nothing is that straightforward. First she makes a scene at Timmy’s.
She wants a Roll Up the Rim cup—that deal has been over for weeks. Then she can’t
find the scrap from a winning cup that entitles her to a free coffee. She empties
her pockets right there on the counter. When a tampon rolls across the floor, I pretend
I’m not with her. Something I’ve gotten good at.

Mom pushes past three people in the line to chase the thing across the floor.

“Just two coffees. Mediums. Double double,” I tell the server. I grab the
coffees
and throw a handful of change at him.

“Aha!” Mom twirls the tampon between her fingers. The cotton bulges out of the plastic
wrapping.

“Mom!” I grab it from her and shove it in my pocket. I hold out the cardboard tray
with the coffee. “Here.”

She takes a cup and sniffs the lid. “I wanted hot chocolate.”

I stare at her.

“You know too much caffeine makes me hyper.”

Instead of walking, Mom insists we go back and get the car. Then drives at about
ten kilometers an hour. Going slow saves gas, she says. She tells me to shut up when
I try to tell her it’s also illegal and unsafe.

A misspelled
Vacancys
sign is propped up in the grimy motel-office window. Half of
the asphalt in the parking lot has buckled. A broken metal
chair sits next to a garbage
bin. “This looks promising.”

Mom ignores my sarcasm. “Go see if they have a room.”

I leave her peering through the windshield at me as I head inside. The office is
dark and musty-smelling. The rattle of tv laughter drifts in from a back room. “Hello!”
I call.

A huge jade plant takes up most of the counter. Next to it sits a plaid ashtray overflowing
with butts. I yell louder. “Hello!”

The man who pushes through the bead curtain is wearing a sleeveless T-shirt that
may have been white once. His suspenders part over his big belly. “Looking for a
room?”

I roll my eyes. No. I’m the photographer from
Architectural Digest
. “For two.”

He looks me up and down. “Better be an adult. I don’t rent to kids.”

I back away from his smell of cigarette smoke and what could be pork and beans.
“It’s me and my mom. She will want to look at the room first.”

“Sure.” He grabs a bunch of keys from under the counter, lifts a flap and shuffles
through. His plastic slips-ons remind me of Grand’s slippers.

Mom gets out of the car, and I get back in. It always makes me cringe to hear the
stories she pulls out in these situations. Anything to save a buck or two. Or earn
sympathy. Although she may really believe that we’re on the run from an abusive husband
who canceled her bank account. Or that we lost everything we own in a house fire.

It could be that she just watches too many daytime tv shows.

“He says he could shave off a hundred bucks if we stay the week,” she tells me when
she gets back. As if we’ve stayed that long in one place for years.
Weeks go by when
we sleep more nights in the car than in a bed.

She slides back behind the wheel. “He offered to give me a break if I help out by
doing some cleaning.”

I laugh.

“I am quite capable, you know. Come on. Let’s go check it out.”

By the time I’ve cleaned out the wrappers and cans from the car floor and shoved
my stuff in my bag, Mom is already sprawled on the bed, holding the tv remote. “Looks
like they’ve got a decent cable package.” On the Shopping Channel, a woman with makeup
as thick as icing is pitching a huge purse. “Wonder if it comes in other colors,”
says Mom.

The furnishings include twin beds with mismatched covers, a white patio table between
them, and a recliner with a worn-out seat. The tv’s on a long arm attached to the
wall. Inside the closet I
find a rail with three metal hangers and a grubby bar fridge.
The icebox flap is broken off. In the door is a strawberry yogurt.

Mom shrieks when it hits the metal garbage can. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning out the fridge.”

“Do it quietly.” Mom lines up a row of vitamin bottles on the table. I have given
up telling her that if she takes too many, she will only pee the extra vitamins
away. She’ll just show me where it says
All Natural
on the bottle. As if that explains
everything.

“You need to take your meds,” I tell her.

“At bedtime. This is just a nap. See if there’s a glass or something in the bathroom.”

She could start her housekeeping gig in there. A layer of scum lines the sink. A
sliver of soap is stuck to the counter. The shower curtain has lost half of its rings.

At least the water runs hot. But there’s no glass. “You’ll have to drink from the
tap,” I call.

But she has already dozed off again. I grab my backpack and start to creep through
the room. Then I stop and ease her purse from the foot of her bed.

Not quietly enough.

“What are you doing?” She squints at me.

“Checking to see if your other pills are here.”
And looking for a lottery ticket
I don’t believe exists
, I don’t say out loud.

“Quit nagging. You’re not my mother.” Mom grabs her purse, shoves it under the pillow
and pulls the bedspread higher over her legs.

“I’m going out,” I tell her.

“Don’t be late,” she mumbles.

Late for what?

After a half hour of wandering, I find myself on a busy street. The traffic pulses
past, fumes gusting into the air as cars slow down at the lights.

I duck into a corner store. Rusting bars on the doors and windows make the place
look like a prison. Inside, one wall is plastered with cell-phone ads, all in Chinese.
A tall kid with his baseball
cap on backward leans on the counter. His jeans hang
so low that his underwear balloons over the waistband. It’s like looking at an accident.
Gross. But hard to keep my eyes off.

“What are you staring at?” A girl—whoops, his girlfriend, I guess—glares at me. Her
eyes are rimmed with black liner. Her dyed gray-blond hair stands up in all directions.

“Nothing. ”

The guy turns on me. “Do we know you?” He looks at the girl. “Do we know her?”

“I dunno. Do you go to Henry Blackwell?” she asks me.

I guess that’s her school. “No.”

“I don’t know you. So quit eyeing my boyfriend.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Can I help you?” the woman behind the counter interrupts. “You go now, Dylan. See
you tomorrow, Mara.”

The girl and her boyfriend glance at the woman and then push past me to head out
the door.

“They no trouble,” the woman tells me. “I know them, so they no trouble for me.”

“Okay.” At least Mom isn’t here. She would have started a fight right here between
the canned spaghetti and toilet paper.

“Can I help you?” the woman asks me.

“How much are they?” I point at the box of individually wrapped cookies on the counter.
Oatmeal with chocolate chips. Or maybe they’re raisins. Though, by the state of
this place, they could be flies.

“Forty-five cents. Three for one dollar.”

I dig some change from my pocket. “Would you take seventy-five cents for two?” It’s
a habit. Bargaining for
almost everything. One that makes me squirm a lot of the
time. But also gives me a buzz when I pull it off.

She nods without giving it a second thought. “You take three. And I got milk day
old.” She looks toward the grimy cooler. “Milk and cookies very nice. Even better
if milk free.” She grins at me.

I grab one of the two cartons with an orange twenty-five-cent sticker, close the
cooler door and thank her on my way out.

I check that Mara and Dylan aren’t still around. It’s easier to be anonymous in big
cities. In smaller places, strangers stick out. I’ve been heckled, pushed around
and beaten on by neighborhood bullies more times than my mother has missed doctor’s
appointments.

But there are only a teen mom pushing a stroller and a woman hauling a huge red-and-blue-striped
bag. She could
just be shopping, or maybe she’s virtually homeless too.

I stay out as long as I can, wandering the streets, keeping my head down. It’s almost
dark by the time I get back to the motel. The neon sign flickers on and off, sending
weird shadows across the parking lot.

Inside our room, I grope for the lamp switch. Mom is fast asleep. She mutters something
and turns away from the light. She’s still fully dressed, with her jacket around
her shoulders and the covers slipping off her legs. She rarely gets right under the
covers. Wary of bed bugs, she says.

One shoe is upside down on the floor, the other still on her foot.

I straighten her covers and put a cookie on the table next to her. I kick off my
runners and prop up the pillows on my bed. I stretch out and lean against the headboard.

I watch Mom’s chest rise and fall. I’ve spent hours doing this, in one badly lit
room after another. It amazes me that her heart and lungs ignore the mess in her
head. Her chest rises. Her chest falls. Over and over, one breath follows the other.
Sometimes I count her breaths until I fall sleep. And when I wake up, I check again
to make sure she’s still breathing.

Most of the time I live in fear of her dying on me. The rest of the time I wish she
would disappear.

Thinking like this always rattles me. And once I get stuck on thinking about all
this stuff, I feel like a gerbil on a hamster wheel, going round and round and round
with no way off.

I head into the bathroom. Hot water gasps and sputters out when I turn on the bathtub
taps. I strip and lay my clothes on the toilet-seat lid. I make sure there is a towel
on the rail, flick the knob to turn on the shower and step in.

Only a trickle comes out of the showerhead. The rest spurts from the tap and out
of the tub. “Crap!” I bundle myself in the towel, leap out of the tub and drag my
clothes back on without bothering to look for clean underwear.

It’s been ages since we’ve been anywhere long enough to do laundry. I may have grown
up with thrift-store clothes, but I draw the line at wearing cast-off underwear.

In big department stores, I wander through the fashion departments, trying to imagine
myself with new clothes. Grand will foot the bill for lots of things, but clothes
are hardly on his radar. While I’m there, it’s not hard to stuff a couple of pairs
of undies into my jacket sleeve or down my jeans.

When I come out of the bathroom, Mom’s purse is still wedged under her pillow.

Maybe the lottery ticket is in her jacket. She’s too out of it to notice me taking
it off the bed. I’ll be very careful and slow—

“What?” Her flailing hand catches the side of my chin. The impact wakes her. She
hauls herself up.

“Shh, Mom. Go back to sleep.”

“What you doing?” Her voice is thick.

“I tried to have a shower. It doesn’t work.”

“I’d like a bath.” She struggles off the bed, mumbling, “It’s cold in here.”

While she is in the bathroom, I find enough tissues in her pockets to carry the bubonic
plague. I dump them in the garbage. Her duffel bag holds a sweater, three stained
T-shirts and a pair of pants that are too long.

Poor people give themselves away without even opening their wallets. Ill-fitting
clothes that aren’t washed often do it every time.

I’m trying to figure out where that ticket might be—if it really exists—when I almost
trip on her shoe. I peer inside it. I notice the crease in the sole. I peel it back.

Would you look at this? The ticket! Not that finding it makes Mom any less crazy.

I’m trying to make some sense of the numbers—7-11-23-29-37-49—when she comes back
into the room. “Give me that!”

I hold the ticket out of reach. “We should get it checked out.”

“I did already.”

“Worth millions?” I study the numbers again.

“Maybe not millions. But a lot.”

“How much of a lot? By the way, you might want to do up your pants.”

As she checks her fly, I jam the ticket in my pocket. When she looks up again, I
pretend to be straightening the sole of
the shoe. I hand it to her. “Put this on.
The carpet’s probably not been cleaned in years. I see you changed your mind about
the bath.”

“I’m hungry. Let’s go find a sub or something.” She slips on her shoe, then frowns
at her other bare foot.

“In the bathroom maybe?” I say.

As soon as she leaves the room, I tuck the lottery ticket deeper into my pocket.
It’s probably worth nothing. But just in case.