"You mean they're all rented?" I cried.
"Every one. It's three o'clock; we rented them all in a little over
three hours."
"How much did we take in?" I asked.
"Over sixty-five dollars," he said smugly. "I guess it's a good omen,
the cabins being full the first night."
He got into bed and, with his customary annoying suddenness, fell
asleep.
I was too excited to sleep. I padded happily around the room in my bare
feet. I went into the children's bedroom to see if they were covered.
The light from the highway, and the glow from neon signs, made the room
so light that I could see them clearly.
David, as sound a sleeper as his daddy, was asleep and covered with a
thin blanket. Donna was wide awake, motionless, her big blue eyes
watching me fixedly behind the screen of hair that hung over her
forehead, as I approached her crib. The traffic, the lack of her
accustomed bedtime darkness, and the voices of people in the office,
had apparently kept her awake ever since I put her to bed.
I patted her head, pulled the thin blanket snugly around her plump
neck, and went back to bed. At five, awakened by the rumble of an
unusually noisy truck, I went in again and looked at her. She was still
gravely awake. I'm sure she didn't sleep at all that first night.
That ended her tendency to be a light sleeper, though. Since that first
night she has slept as well as David.
Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, but the next day was one Sunday
when rest was the most remote possibility in the world for us. The
people in our cabins were checking out one after the other, leaving
their keys in the doors of the cabins or coming into the office and
tossing them on the desk. (One man, leaving early, had got Grant out of
bed at five-thirty just to hand him a key!)
Now, after a happy, exciting night of renting cabins, we were faced
with the result--thirteen dirty cabins to be cleaned.
We had contacted Mrs. Clark, the strongly-built, dark-haired cleaning
woman who did the work for the former owners, but she wasn't coming
until Monday. She would work for us only every other day, because we
were too low on funds to dare spend any on having work done that we
could do ourselves.
I put the baby in her playpen, reminded David again not to play near
the highway, and Grant and I set to work on the cabins. We were tired
anyway after a day of moving and a night of very little sleep, and
whenever I happened to catch a glimpse of myself in one of the little
round mirrors that hung on the wall of each cabin as I worked, I was
shocked. My thick, long hair was tangled and untidy, because of
Banning's cooling but too incessant wind. My eyes looked sunken, and my
face pale. (With so much work before me, I hadn't taken time to put on
any makeup.) I tried to avoid looking in mirrors, because it made me
feel twice as bad to realize how tired and bedraggled I looked.
Grant cleaned the bathrooms, scouring until every fixture shone, while
I stripped the cabins of their dirty towels and sheets, brought clean
ones, and made the beds. I emptied ash trays and wastebaskets and
dusted while Grant vacuumed the floors. That may sound simple, but,
multiplied by thirteen, it becomes drudgery. We plodded along, almost
without hope that we would ever finish. Emptying and polishing the
twentieth ashtray, I cursed the day that cigarettes had been invented.
My hands grew rough and sore from tucking in so many sheets and
blankets, slipping so many pillows into clean cases, and adjusting and
smoothing so many spreads. My back ached. I began to wish I was in Los
Angeles again. I wondered dully how I could ever have considered it
work to clean up just one five-room house, with only two beds in it to
be made.
Every once in a while I had to stop and see that the baby was all
right. David helped by playing in our cabin near her playpen, so that
she wouldn't get lonesome and begin to cry.
At lunchtime there was just one cabin left to clean. Grant said he'd
clean that one, while I fixed lunch. I carried in clean sheets and
pillowslips, hand towels, bath towels, wash cloths, and a bath mat, and
went in to prepare lunch.
I was too tired to do anything but open a can of soup; we were both too
tired to appreciate anything more elaborate, anyway.
Just one task remained for Grant before his return to Los Angeles--to
put up David's tent, in the back yard. I hated to insist on his putting
up the tent when he was so tired, but I knew that having the tent up
back there would be the only thing that would keep David away from the
front of the motel, occupied, and out of mischief. We had agreed to
keep the children as invisible from the front of the motel as possible;
the sight of children is too likely to suggest to travelers that here
is a place where their cars and belongings might be tampered with, and
where there will be so much noise that sleeping will be difficult.
About nine o'clock that night Grant went back to Los Angeles. He rented
three of the cabins before he left, and we agreed on a method of
keeping books.
Grant would come back each weekend and possibly once during each week,
although to drive ninety miles each way just to be here for a few hours
would hardly be worthwhile. He wouldn't quit his job until our income
from the motel was consistently so good that we knew we'd be able to
make our payments and repay Grandma.
I'd have all the renting to do, I'd have to supervise and help the
cleaning woman, on alternate days I'd have to do all the cleaning; I'd
have the two children to take care of, I'd be completely responsible
for anything that might go wrong with the motel. The lights might all
go off again, or the plumbing might get stopped up. I had visions of
careless customers tossing towels and hairbrushes blithely down the
toilets.
Many authors mention, when they want to portray intense feeling, that
their heroine views a certain happening with "mixed emotions." Well, my
emotions as I watched Grant drive off the gravel onto the highway
weren't mixed in the least. They were all the same. I was scared to
death.