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Authors: Barbara O'Connor

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Kirby

Kirby explored every inch of the room while his mother
took a nap.

The lamps with little black bears on the shades. The bedspread printed with cowboys and Indians, covered wagons and tepees. The tiny bathroom that smelled like mildew. The Bible on the bedside table.

He opened and closed all the drawers in the dresser. There was a book of matches way in the back of one. Kirby examined it.
Mountaintop Steakhouse
was printed on the front. Kirby put the matches in his pocket and went outside.

A red pickup truck was parked out front. That old lady, Aggie, was talking to a tall man with buzz-cut hair. Part of a tattoo peeked out from under the sleeve of his shirt. Beside
him was a blond-haired girl, shuffling around in the gravel with the toe of her pink sandal.

Kirby went out to the swimming pool and bounced on the diving board. Then he walked around the edge. Heel to toe. Heel to toe. He kicked gravel into the empty pool.

He glanced over at the girl and the man talking to Aggie. The girl was still tracing circles in the dirt with her shoe.

Kirby picked up a piece of gravel and hurled it at the motel sign. It hit dead center with an echoey
thwack
, then ricocheted clear across the parking lot, landing right at the girl's feet.

The girl jumped.

The old lady said, “Oh, my!”

The man glared over at him.

Kirby grinned.

He spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the motel. He looked in the windows of all the rooms. He checked the coin return on the soda machine. He went around back and explored the weed-filled vegetable garden, the toolshed, the woods.

When he finally went back to Room 1, his mother was sitting on the side of the bed yelling into the telephone.

“I
need
that money, Virgil.”

She slammed the receiver down.

Bam!

“There's tomatoes and cantaloupes and stuff in a garden out there,” Kirby said, motioning toward the back of the motel.

His mother looked up at him. There were black smudges of mascara under her eyes. Her hair stood out from her head in tangled, frizzy puffs.

She got up and padded to the bathroom in her bare feet and shut the door. Kirby took her purse from the top of the dresser and peered inside. Way at the bottom was a crumpled dollar bill. He put it in his shirt pocket, tossed the purse back on the dresser, and went outside again.

Loretta

“There's one!” Loretta hollered, pointing out the window
of the van.

Her father turned into the gravel parking lot. The tiny motel looked old and run-down, but Loretta liked the name of it.

Sleepy Time.

A black cat slept in a chair by the office door. A red pickup truck was parked in front of one of the rooms.

“Perfect,” her mother said. “I like the feel of this place.” She climbed out of the van with a grunt. “I'll go find out if we can get a room,” she said.

Loretta watched her mother disappear inside the motel
office. A redheaded boy walked barefoot from the empty swimming pool. Loretta waved at him, but he kept his head down, his thick hair falling over his eyes. He went into one of the rooms and closed the door behind him. Loretta saw him pull the curtain aside and peek out the window at them.

Loretta's mother came out of the office and called, “Park over there, Marvin.”

Her father parked the van in front of Room 6 and Loretta jumped out. An old lady unlocked the door and motioned for them to follow her inside. Her thin cotton pants were rolled up at the bottom and held with safety pins.

“I hope y'all like this room,” she said.

“
Like
it?” Loretta's mother said. “Why, it's just adorable. Look at that, Lulu.” She pointed to a clear plastic bird feeder stuck on the outside of one of the windows. A tiny bird scratched around at a few seeds in the bottom.

“I keep forgetting to fill that one,” the lady said. “But then, I reckon I shouldn't tempt Ugly too much, anyway, you know?” She winked at Loretta.

“Who's Ugly?” Loretta said.

“My cat.”

“That black one out yonder?”

The lady nodded. “That ugly one.”

“I think he's cute,” Loretta said.

The lady chuckled. “Well, he's been around the block a few times, I can tell you that.”

Loretta's father came in carrying their suitcases.

“My name's Aggie,” the lady said.

Loretta's father tipped his hat and said, “Marvin.”

He put his arm around his wife and said, “This is Irene.”

Then he put his big, warm hand on top of Loretta's head and said, “And this here is Loretta.”

Aggie showed them how to pull the sofa out to make a bed for Loretta. She took some little packs of soap out of her pocket and put them in the bathroom. Then she nodded toward the wall behind the bed.

“The office is right next door,” she said. “Y'all holler if you need anything.” She pointed to one ear with a crooked finger. “And I do mean holler,” she added. “These old ears of mine ain't what they used to be.”

Loretta loved the little motel room.

She loved the flowered bedspread.

She loved the pine-paneled walls.

She loved the map of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park taped on the closet door.

She even loved the musty smell and the window with the
screen falling out and the light fixture that made a little buzzing sound.

She wondered if her other mother had stayed here and if she had loved it, too.

While her mother unpacked their things and her father cleaned out the cooler, Loretta put the box with all her other mother's earthly possessions on the little table beside the bed.

Then she went outside to look for Ugly.

Willow

Willow hated the little motel room. It smelled bad.
The carpet was stained and dirty. The faucet in the bathroom dripped.

Plunk. Plunk. Plunk.

Her father said he would sleep on the lumpy pullout couch, but the bed didn't look much better.

Willow stared glumly out the window while her father studied all those papers from the bank.

Those papers he needed to buy the motel from Aggie.

“Daddy,” Willow said.

Her father looked up from his paperwork.

“How will Mama know where we are?” Willow said.

“She'll know.”

“But how?”

“I'll tell her.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Can she come stay here, too?” Willow said.

“Willow â¦” Her father took his glasses off. “Your mother has chosen to leave us.”

“But where is she?”

“I've told you before. She's with her sister in Savannah.” He put his glasses on and went back to his paperwork. “If she wants to contact us,” he added, “she knows where your grandmother is.”

Willow felt a blanket of sadness settle over her, weighing her down.

She went outside and sat in a rocking chair made out of tree branches. She buried her face in her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. Tight.

Then she whispered, “Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy,” over and over again.

Loretta

That night, Loretta sat in the lawn chair outside the door
to Room 6. Lightning bugs were beginning to flicker out across the parking lot.

She had finally coaxed Ugly to sleep on her lap. The redheaded boy came out and ambled around the motel, kicking rocks and glancing over at her every now and then. Down at the other end of the motel, a girl sat in a rocking chair, pushing against the pavement with her bare foot, making the chair rock.

Back and forth.

Loretta called out “Hey,” but the girl didn't look up.

“Come see this cat,” Loretta called.

The girl looked up.

“Come see this cat,” Loretta called again.

The girl stopped rocking. She got up and walked toward Loretta, her bare feet making soft, slapping noises on the pavement.

“Isn't he cute?” Loretta said, stroking Ugly's patchy fur.

The girl nodded.

“His name is Ugly,” Loretta said.

She wiggled her arm, making the charm bracelet jingle. “My name's Loretta,” she said. “What's yours?”

The girl looked down at her feet and said, “Willow.”

Loretta jiggled her bracelet again. “I'm going into fifth grade,” she said. “What grade are you going into?”

“Fourth.”

Loretta scratched Ugly behind his chewed-up ear. “Fourth grade's easy,” she said.

Ugly jumped off her lap and strolled up the walk toward the office.

Loretta asked Willow a lot of questions. Before long, she knew all about Willow.

She knew that Willow had a collection of china horses.

She knew that Willow used to live in a brick house with a screened porch and a swing set.

She knew that Willow's father was buying the Sleepy Time Motel.

And she knew that Willow's mother's name was Dorothy,
but Dorothy wasn't here. When Loretta asked where she was, Willow just shrugged.

Willow didn't ask Loretta any questions, so Loretta volunteered stuff. That she lived in Calhoun, Tennessee, and had bunk beds that had once belonged to her cousin Audrey, who had run away to get married. That she was going to take karate lessons in the fall. That she stepped on a rusty nail when she was eight and had to get a tetanus shot.

Then she told Willow about the day she got the box of things that had belonged to her other mother.

She showed Willow all the charms on the bracelet and promised to show her the other things tomorrow.

Willow looked so sad, Loretta wondered if maybe Dorothy was dead.

“Is Dorothy dead?” she asked.

Willow shook her head.

Loretta could take a hint. She didn't ask any more questions about Dorothy.