IT WAS A long, hot, uncomfortable ride. The children, who ordinarily
ride in the back seat, had to ride in front because the back seat was
piled to the ceiling with clothes, pans, boxes and suitcases.
Grant had fastened an old blanket over the trailer to protect its
contents from dirt and wind. It wouldn't stay fastened, though, and
when we were on the highway headed toward Banning he had to stop the
car and get out about every ten minutes to adjust it and to see how the
things in the trailer were riding. The ironing board was slowly working
its way loose from the ropes with which he had tied it to David's bed.
Several books had slid forward from the crevice where I had tucked
them, and their pages were fluttering and waving as though, I thought
sentimentally, in farewell to the life we had known.
"Those mmm things," Grant mumbled.
I had put a lot of the odds and ends we hadn't been able to sell, and
that Grant wouldn't let me throw away, into some small cardboard boxes.
I had packed these onto the rear of the trailer with my own little
lily-white hands, giving Grant another occasion for disgust at my
inefficiency. For now, one by one, they were freeing themselves and
plopping onto the road. After a few stops, to pick up the boxes and try
to repack them in a trailer that was so loaded there was no room for
them, Grant gave up the time-wasting game. When one of the cardboard
boxes dropped off, slapping itself against the highway, he'd just let
it go, and keep on driving.
I was very happy over the situation. I hadn't wanted to take all those
unnecessary articles along with us to our new tiny living quarters
anyway. Every time a box fell off, I looked back to be sure it wasn't
something else--something we'd have to stop for. "This is just like
Hansel and Gretel," I told Grant cheerfully.
The baby got tired of being so crowded, and she began to cry. David was
restless, and Grant was getting more and more provoked with the way the
things on the trailer were unpacking themselves. We were driving
through beautiful scenery--orange groves and tall palm trees with their
dead branches drooping like old-fashioned pantalettes, and mountains in
the background--but none of us paid much attention to it. We were too
anxious to get the trip over with.
When we got to the Moonrise Motel, after a three-hour drive, the
manager and his wife were ready to leave. They gave us the keys, and
showed us briefly how they registered guests and how they kept track of
the laundry; and, assuring us that people wouldn't start coming for
cabins until evening, they got into their car and left. A lost, scared
feeling spread from my chest to my stomach as I realized that from now
on, what ever might happen, we ourselves would have to handle it.
A hot, hot wind was blowing from the east, across the desert.
Perspiration dribbled down our faces and necks as we got to work.
When we had unpacked the trailer and had lunch, Grant set up the baby's
crib and I put her to bed for her nap. Then I went outside to see if
the place looked any different, now that it was actually ours.
The motel is built in three sections, which are arranged in the shape
of a square-cornered U, with the open end toward the highway. The
angles of the U are disconnected; the three sections are separate
buildings. The back section, parallel to the highway, consists of four
single, externally joined cabins without garages.
The other two sections of the motel, facing each other across the wide
driveways and the islands of cool-looking grass between them, are
identical. Each consists of five double cabins with garages between.
There is no cabin number 13, and for some strange reason, no number 5;
so our fourteen cabins are numbered up to 16. Cabin 16 is the one
directly opposite the one we live in, which is number 1. Cabins 16 and
1 are the closest to the highway, only sixty feet from that roaring,
screaming wide ribbon that is flung across the burning desert and
stretches clear through to the coast.
The three islands of grass are surrounded by white cement curbs, and
the graveled driveways curve around and between the islands as well as
in a direct path in front of every cabin. Each island of lawn has three
small Chinese elm trees, and the nine trees form a prim, straight row.
In front of the motel is a big green and red neon sign which says
"Moonrise Motel." Directly beneath that is a smaller sign saying "no
vacancy," or, if the metal cover is over the "no," saying "vacancy."
The sign is double; each "no" has a cover.
Behind the four rear cabins which face the highway is half an acre of
rocky, desert ground, with a bumpy private road on one side leading
from our driveways back through one of the open angles of the U to the
dirt road, Williams street, at the end of our property line, which runs
parallel with the highway and leads into town.
I wandered out behind the rear cabins and looked at our big back yard.
After six years of living in the crowded outskirts of a big city, that
barren half-acre looked like a little chunk of heaven. It was a safety
valve as far as the busy highway was concerned. We would fix it up so
that the children could play out here happily and safely. We could
plant an orchard. We could even build a little house out here for
Grandma. The opportunities presented by that half acre of ground were
limitless. But that would all come in the future. Right now, there was
the present to consider.
I stood at the edge of the highway and looked in each direction. We are
nearly a mile from the business district of Banning, and that mile is
thick with motels. Directly west of us is a new restaurant, and east,
toward the desert, there are only a few motels between us and the
Mojave. Across the highway are a cocktail lounge, several small motels
and two service-station markets. Beyond those, I saw the beautiful
ranges of mountains, with the afternoon sun forming little cups of
shadow, like dark dimples, on their steep sides--Mt. San Gorgonio
towering on the north, and Mt. San Jacinto rearing its lovely head on
the south.
I breathed deeply. Banning had a scent all its own, one I had noticed
before--a scent compounded of freshness and clear skies and blossoms,
and the essence of the mountains. My tour of inspection completed, I
went back into our cabin. It was small, but so attractive and so new
that living in it, I thought, should be more pleasant than in our old
home in Los Angeles. There was a large living room, which contained,
besides the usual amount of living room furniture, the bed we would
sleep on; a small kitchen, and a bathroom and closet; and the adjoining
garage at the time was half converted into a bedroom--that is, two
windows and a cement floor had been put in it, and a door connected it
with the living room. Unfinished as that bedroom was, the children
would have to sleep in it.
The office was actually the partitioned-off front part of the
children's bedroom. It was completed, and plastered to match the rest
of the interior, with dull red broadfelt carpeting like that in all the
cabins. There was a large built-in desk in the office--chest high, to
be stood at rather than sat at--with registration cards and a desk set
on top of it.
We finished unpacking and storing our belongings in the few inadequate
drawers and shelves. Donna was still asleep in her crib, and David was
out exploring.
Grant and I sat down and looked at each other.
Grant has blue eyes and coarse brown hair, just as I do. Our children
never had a chance to have different coloring; they, too, have brown
hair and blue eyes. David has long black curly lashes, and thick hair,
while Donna's hair is so fine it won't even hold a bobby pin or a
ribbon. It grows straight forward on her head, and usually hangs down
over her face. We call her "Little Chief Hair-in-the-Face." I have
consistently refused to have her hair cut into bangs, in spite of the
arguments of Grant and Grandma. "It'll grow long enough to curl or
braid one of these days," I always tell them.
"Well," Grant said, "it's five o'clock--about time we were getting our
first customer."
He is tall and slenderly built, and so wonderfully competent--even if
he isn't very systematic--that I always feel awkward by contrast. But I
never in my life felt so helpless as when, just as he finished
speaking, we heard the scrunch of tires on the graveled driveway
outside.
"Oh, someone's coming," I said nervously. "You go see who it is. You
go."
I sat in a corner of the living room where I could hear and not be seen
from the office. I alternately twisted my hands and bit my nails as
Grant opened the office door and stepped out to meet the driver of the
car. This was a momentous occasion. I strained to hear as the men began
to speak.
"This motel's just changed hands, hasn't it?"
"Yep, that's right."
"Well, I've got something here that I know will interest you, as the
new owner. A revolutionary kind of vacuum cleaner ... cuts your work
and your cleaning bill in half ... no motel owner should be without
one."