Checking in, with Mom

It’s not every day you find a dead body.

But when you run a small motel, with people from all walks of life coming and going like relatives at a free buffet, some just passing through, others circling the drain—well, sooner or later, someone’s bound to check in and never check out.

Some folks carried more baggage than the queen on a world tour; but their baggage didn’t have handles.

In this case, it was suicide.

A woman. Quiet. Unremarkable. Ma found her in bed with a plastic bag cinched around her head.

She was the chambermaid that day, as all days.

And as a registered nurse, she knew a dead body the moment she saw one. Didn’t need to check for vitals. She had that sixth sense.

She’d seen her fair share: the woman mentioned above, her own parents, my father, my brother, and God knows how many hospital patients.

She was a veritable angel of death—a cadaver concierge. If you saw Ma coming down the hall with fresh linens, you might’ve instinctively checked your pulse.

I say this with love.

This is the same woman who, after discovering I’d used her prized Tupperware to store tadpoles or had gone Picasso with a pack of permanent markers on the hallway walls, would declare—only half-joking—“I’m going to kill you!”

And the scary part? As a nurse, she knew exactly how to do it.

I grew up in that motel.

Not in the motel—let’s be clear.

We weren’t some tragic roadside family where the kids ate Pop-Tarts behind the ice machine while Ma and Dad chain-smoked Pall Malls over a breakfast of Pepsi and Eggos.

Nope. We had a house attached to the office.

Respectable. Mostly.

The parade of guests was endless and fascinating: traveling salesmen with their pressed clothes hanging in the back seat of their cars, blue-collar types with soot on their jeans and stories under their hats, long-haul truckers with calloused hands and dashboard bobbleheads. I loved the truckers. Big machines, big noise, big stories. One time, one wanted to take me, the little boy in awe of such a machine, for a ride. Ma said no repeatedly, even through my pleas. I know now why.

And then there were the ordinary family folk. And the pretend family folk. Ma had a radar for those.

She didn’t allow unmarried couples. Not back then. Not under her roof. She wanted the joint known as Ashley’s Motel…not the no-tell motel. You know it today as The Stonefence.

She closed the office at 11 p.m., but was often roused at all hours by road-weary travelers knocking on her bedroom window, more desperate for a bed than a pair of hormone-laden teens.

Her room sat right next to the office, and when she heard the tap-tap-tap, she’d throw open the sash and call out, “Can I help you?”

And she always would try.

On would go the robe, on went the light, and off she’d shuffle to the desk to get them a room—$15 a night, back then. By the time we left, it had doubled to a whopping $30, which nowadays won’t even get you a bottle of water and a dirty look at the Sheraton.

When she couldn’t, if she was full, with the “NO” sign lit up, she’d do them a favor and call down to the Anchor Down motel, or the Tanglewood, up just a block from us, or even up to Louie, owner of the Gran-View. They did that kinda thing back then, helping each other out.

Looking back on it now, the whole deal with meeting a stranger fresh off the road late at night all alone seemed about as safe as playing hopscotch in a minefield. But she never flinched.

We offered what passed for a continental breakfast: a few of Ted’s Donuts, some orange juice, and percolated coffee so strong it could resurface a driveway.

This was long before drive-thrus became America’s kitchen. Back then, the only “drive-thru” most folks knew was at the bank or the toll booth.

After checkout, Ma and whoever she hired—or guilted into helping—would tackle their chambermaid duties. Often it was Eleanor Jock, a local hired hand, who vacuumed like the carpet owed her money, or a cousin who showed up expecting coffee and got handed a toilet brush.

They'd make beds, wipe counters, clean toilets, all while catching glimpses of General Hospital in every room, and wrap the toilet seats with those little paper bands that said “ Sanitized for Your Protection.” Protection from what, exactly? Radiation? Regret?

Ma found all kinds of things in those rooms: suspicious objects, creative undergarments, a few questionable novelties that made her shake her head and mutter, “I knew there was something off about that couple.”

And then, of course, the guests would call later, asking for what they left behind: a watch, a purse, a half-finished crossword puzzle.

She’d box it up and send it back. No judgment. No questions.

Meanwhile, my brother and I did our best to drive her slowly insane.

He was six years older, tall, good-looking, with wavy brown hair, brown eyes and a natural charisma that made him very popular with the girls.

Having a motel full of empty rooms during the day was, to him, the equivalent of owning a timeshare at the Playboy Mansion.

I, his dopey kid brother,  was his receptionist.

The phone would ring.

“Who is it?” he’d whisper.

“Jeannie,” I’d whisper back.

He’d either nod or shake his head.

If it was the latter, I’d dutifully relay the message:

“He said he’s not here.”

I’m sure it sounded completely convincing.

Trying to keep up my end of being a pain in the butt kid, I had my way of adding vinegar to Ma’s Corn Flakes.

If I wasn’t dismantling something I couldn’t reassemble (I was as curious as a raccoon on a garbage truck), I was climbing trees, hiding in the motel laundry pile, or in one case, being found buck naked behind the house—a story I had detailed in another column.

Once, I set the living room carpet on fire—just a corner—and Ma solved the problem by moving the console TV over it.

Crisis managed.

Thank God this was before the internet. If anyone had uploaded videos of my antics back then, the world would’ve thought Margaret was raising a human warning label to others thinking of becoming a parent.

She wasn’t supposed to do it alone.

The motel was Dad’s dream. He’d been a machinist at Diamond International and wanted more, so he built our house and added twelve units onto it.

One day, while lying under the building, using his father’s old corded drill, he’d touch a short somewhere in or on the drill.

He was electrocuted instantly.

My sister and Ma found him when he didn’t come in for dinner.

He was 38.

Ma cried on the patio.

I was four.

I didn’t understand much, but I remember falling on my bed, crying too, because I knew whatever “normal” we’d had was over.

The devil got on his bulldozer and drove it straight through our little garden that day, and some flowers never bloomed again.

Years later, I asked Ma how she did it—how she raised two boys and a teenage daughter, kept a business running, paid the bills, and never gave up.

She shrugged.

“I don’t know. You just did it.”

Indeed.

Between the True Blue cigarettes and the Vodka Tonics, worrying about kids, cleaning up their messes, putting meals together, and taking a yardstick to measure out discipline, she kept us all afloat.

Our lives are kinda like that motel; People come and go. Some check in for a night. Others stay a while.

Some leave behind messes you have to clean up. Some barely touch the place.

They bring their stories, their baggage, their damage. Some leave you better. Some leave you worse.

But every now and then, you get one of those rare guests—someone who reminds you that even though the towels aren’t fluffy and the view might be a little bleak, it was still worth opening the door.

And like those rooms, once they’re gone, all that’s left is the faintest echo—of laughter, of love, or of pain.

And you get ready for the next person looking to stay with you a while.

Happy Mother’s Day, mom; thanks for all you did for us.