Page 30 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“No,” I say quickly. We don’t need to scheme together about anything—and certainly not about anything related to Henry. “We’re focusing onyou. Where were we?”
“I don’t remember,” Rashad says, then shoots me a wink as he stands. “I do think I’m ready for a nap, though. Show me where my room is?”
Though I have three moreguests arriving over the weekend, tonight it’s just Rashad. So when I show him to his room and hand him the check-in questionnaire, I also ask him to pick what’s for breakfast in the morning. I’m in the kitchen thirty minutes later, chopping dried cherries for Mei’s foolproof (“not saying you’re a fool, Lou, just—well, you know”) overnight oats, when my phone rings. I expect it to be Goldie—who’s taken to twice-daily proof-of-life check-ins—but it isn’t. It’s my mother.
You can always send her to voicemail, I hear Goldie say. I pick up on the final ring.
“Mom, hi.”
“Lou!” She’s outside—wind batters through the line. “It’s been too long, honey.”
I blink across the kitchen. I resent the bitterness that seeps through me, the jadedness—that right away, I know she wants something. My mother tends to call when she needs money, and hardly ever else.
“It has,” I say carefully.
“How’s the west? The trees are changing colors, yes? And the cold, I’m sure—you’re wearing a coat?”
I turn the paring knife in my hand, watching light from the window glint across its blade. “Not too cold, just yet.”
“Well, good, good. It’s already chilly here so I’m going to Miami, can you believe it!” She laughs, a trill I’d recognize anywhere. “Your mother! On vacation!”
I know better than to take an interest, but I can’t help it. “With who?”
“Oh, Mark, honey! I told you about Mark.” Of course. Mark, her supervisor at McNeely’s, the hardware store where she’s worked for the last four months. “He’s taking me on a little trip.”
I wonder if she’s told Goldie yet. If she’s calling me because my sister didn’t pick up the phone.
Growing up, we were not a family that vacationed. When I was in eighth grade and living with Goldie, Mom took us to a cabin in Hocking Hills—the first time we’d ever stayed anywhere overnight that qualified as a “trip.” She paid for it with holiday tips from work; it was January and freezing, awful Ohio weather.
Goldie was at the start of a new semester and buried under homework. When she declined a hike through the frigid slush so she could study for a political science quiz, Mom told her she was ruining the entire vacation. Then Mom dragged me, cold and wet, through the woods as she complained about my ungrateful sister. The sister who’d taken me in, raised me when Mom wouldn’t.
By the time we got back to the cabin, Goldie had figured out a ride back to campus for the two of us. We didn’t take a trip together again.
On the other end of the line, finally, my mother gets to the point. “Nate still has a place in Miami,” she says. “Doesn’t he, honey?”
I turn the knife blade into the pad of my thumb—not quite hard enough to break the skin. “He does.”
“He’d let us stay, don’t you think? Just for a few nights? I’d have called him myself, but I seem to have lost his phone number! Such a sweet boy. And if he’s in town, maybe we can have dinner!”
My fingertip turns white, red splotches blooming under the skin. I think about hanging up—I think about how much better it would have been if I hadn’t answered in the first place. I thank every star in the infinite universe that she couldn’t find Nate’s phone number. And then I make myself tell her the truth.
“I don’t think that’ll be possible. Nate and I broke up.”
There’s silence, punctuated only by wind on her end of the line. “Oh, Lou,” she says finally.
I hear footsteps on the old wooden stairs—the familiar creak as Henry descends into the kitchen. His shirtsleeves are pushed up, his hair rumpled in a way that makes him look young. He has the grocery bag fisted in one hand. He meets my eyes over the long hallway, and I gesture to the espresso machine with my free hand, raising my eyebrows. Henry shakes his head, just once, and raises a hand—like he’s saying goodbye.
In my ear, my mother says, “What did youdo?”
In the foyer, Henry opens the front door.
In my chest, a quiet impulse whispers,Please don’t go.
Fourteen
“So, where’s the hike?”
I blink at Mei, who’s standing in front of me in a nano puff jacket and short, braided pigtails. It’s Sunday afternoon, and I have a nearly full house: Rashad, on the third night of his weeklong stay; Nan, a widow who arrived from Colorado Springs in a vintage Cadillac; and Bea and Kim, twenty-two-year-old sorority sisters who graduated in the spring and loathe—loathe—the Denver dating scene.
