By Krista Mitchell
Winner of The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction (3rd Place)
The First Motel Off the Highway
Bethlehem, NH. August 1956.
She held a hand to her forehead to shield her bloodshot eyes as she turned off the highway, the windshield glittering with flecks of late-afternoon sunlight as it descended between the peaks of the mountains. The exit ramp curved tightly, but its pull had no effect on her; she sat upright in the seat, navigating the pavement before her with an acquired numbness, a blank precision. After four hours of driving, an insistent headache whined between her furrowed eyebrows. She had the radio turned to a jazz show with a grainy reception that, save for a coherent word here and there, was nothing more than white noise.
She made a right turn off the thoroughfare and was greeted by a wooden sign that read: “Bethlehem Welcomes You.” This was accompanied by a small garden of shrubs and geraniums. A few hundred yards away, on the left side of the road, was a diner, and across the street from that was the motel where she would be staying.
The motel was shaped like a half-moon. It had been built the year before, with all the newest appliances: an air conditioning unit and a mini-fridge in every room. Its exterior was painted white, with only the word MOTEL written in red neon letters on the central face of the building. There was a small cabin to the left of the half-moon, where the owner checked in his guests. He lived alone behind the motel.
As she pulled into the gravel drive, she felt the eyes of a group of elderly people in their early seventies turn to her. They were sitting on plastic lawn chairs by their room. Ignoring them, she parked the car, turned off the ignition, and slammed the door behind her. She knew they were still watching her. The reverberating echo of the car door was suddenly embarrassing to her, and soundlessly she removed her suitcase from the trunk. It was an old suitcase that she had dug out from the back of her closet at home; its corners were worn, and the leather was scratched and faded. She carried it effortlessly, for there was only one outfit, a swimsuit, and some underwear inside, and she walked to the side building without glancing at the suspicious huddle behind her.
The middle-aged man was sitting behind his desk reading a Sports Illustrated when she entered. His face was virile and red; his eyes flickered; he looked like a man who is perpetually at odds with everyone he had encountered throughout his life. He rose slowly, staring at this new guest, and pushed the sign-in sheet toward her as she drew closer.
“Here for the night?”
“Yes. I spoke to you on the phone last evening.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
He watched her register and count out her bills. She walked out, leaving the door swinging on its hinges behind her. Then he sat back down and took another glance at the lot, where he saw her unlocking the door to the room located farthest from his building, #12. Catching himself staring, he grabbed his magazine, flipped to the article he was reading, and coughed.
She flung her suitcase onto the floor and lay stretched out like a starfish on the bed. It must have been an hour that she laid there, listening to the cars fly past on the highway. At least the breeze from the air conditioner in the window felt refreshing. She occupied herself with predicting the intervals when it would click on and off and on and off.
Eventually she got up and picked her swimsuit out of her trunk. It was a teal-colored one piece. She wished it were more revealing.
When she went onto the porch, the group of elderly people was still there. They were silent as she hopped across the gravel driveway, without flip-flops, opened the gate to the pool, and sat with her back turned to them. As soon as she disappeared behind the back of the chair, the whispering started up again.
From a distance, the manager of the motel lowered his magazine to watch her.
She lay there in the beach chair observing the White Mountains. They seemed almost blue, the distant wooded peaks rising like monoliths into the deepening sunset sky. They had been there, in the same place, for an eternity, and they would be there for another eternity again. In the mountains, she knew, there would be silence, and an unbreakable solitude in this quiet corner of the earth.
She closed her eyes, aware that above her eyelids clouds were drifting south to the cities and cars and highways and nightclubs and men. The scent of lilacs from the bushes planted around the pool drifted her off into a nameless, voiceless unconsciousness, not sleeping, but not awake either…
When she opened her eyes, she had turned on her side toward the highway. A turquoise Cadillac just like his whizzed past, reminding her of home. She turned on her back again and stared at the darkening sky.
Maybe if I just disappeared, they would forget about me.
Across the parking lot, the motel manager was strolling toward her with a broad stride and a confident grin.