Even then Ava had known that her own father was a little scandalous, too taken with his power with women. Don had probably been to the Rowen more than once himself. But her mother hated Don’s guts at home, behind closed doors like a good mother is supposed to. You don’t take your child to a motel to witness all that impotent emotion. That story had been one of Ava’s clear proofs that white people do at best the same kind of dirt as anybody else.
The motel was surrounded on three sides by tall pine trees that made the place look more like Vermont than North Carolina. Behind the trees on one side just a couple of streets over was the Plant 4 where her father worked for forty years. No other building was visible from the parking lot, but the Simmy’s sign glowed. For about fifteen years, maybe more, the new sign was the brightest light in the evening sky in town. An outsider might imagine a new restaurant, but the sign was where the renovations to Simmy’s ended. Inside the place was still segregation-era chic, all browns and fake wood, linoleum tables and chairs one step up from the folding ones. But that depressed neglect matched the dull wash on the town. Pinewood was not a tourist mecca, since visitors are not usually interested in a downtown full of closed factories and businesses. At least the Simmy’s sign had the virtue of looking prosperous and alive.
Ava had been to Simmy’s, not often, maybe as much as once a month with some of her coworkers, but she always felt guilty about eating there. All the stories the older people told couldn’t be erased with a fancy new sign or repaved parking lot. Ava knew that none of the stories involved her directly and the restaurant could never be for her what it had been for her mother and what it might have been for her baby. Her father had gone inside with a couple of his friends right after the place integrated. The young men had sat at a table, ordered coffee from a waitress who had not and did not say a word to them. Once they got the coffee they stirred in sugar and milk, took a couple of sips and left the restaurant. All they’d wanted was to go inside, show everybody in the room that they could come in. The men had not wanted it this way. They didn’t want to take things, force the hand, pry the fingers open one by one. They wanted to be invited like friends, like men. But no invitation ever came. Though Don had not said, she knew he must have felt like a conqueror that day. A feeling that can sustain a body, keep it light and agile, ready to bob and weave for years to come.
If the baby was hungry she was not saying. Of course the baby was about the size of the head of a pin. Ava decided to wait it out. She could find food in the morning. Who knew who might wait for her in the terrible little room? This uncertainty kept her fixed to the spot. Other than her car and an old Saturn there were no other cars in the lot. Where was everybody? Fornication doesn’t go out of style, Ava thought. The silliness made her laugh. People had higher standards these days or maybe just a few dollars of open credit on the Visa. That’s all it was. Or could it be possible that grown people were reverting to their teenage pasts and making out in cars? Whatever the reason for their absence, Ava wished a few more cars would show up. She would have liked to see more people unpacking or milling around. It had been a long time since she’d been afraid, at least that kind of afraid of who might be watching her. There was a movie about a young woman alone at a deserted old motel, and though Ava was afraid to watch it all the way through she knew it did not end well for the woman. Nobody had ever been killed at Rowen’s, at least not that Ava had ever heard, but it was just the kind of place where you’d expect passionate crime, murderful and ugly, poor in every aspect, from the pimply pebbles instead of grass in front of the windows, to the garish purple doors. Every little thing about it screamed cheap, cheap, cheap and worse than that—desperate. And what’s more desperate than killing some other warm body?
The calmness of the night, the vomit taste at the back of her throat that meant fear, reminded her of the evening she and her friend Kim walked through the woods. They were chatting like friends do about nothing and everything. In her memory, they are young, younger than Ava can remembering being. What started it, Ava cannot say, but the realization that they might die became real. Not someday, but that day. A boy or a man with thick fingers might grab one of them while the other held fast or ran to find another man (anyone to care, anyone strong) while the other is dragged through the delicateness of ferns at the edge of the trail. Though it is a worn path for walkers and hikers, there was no one around. They couldn’t see the car they drove, the pebble-sided water fountain was a mile back, maybe more. Even the imaginary safety of the cinder block bathroom was in the distance. “Let’s run,” Ava said. The last one to the gleaming car, too hot from the high sun, the last one there is the dead girl. Last one to the car can’t tell the story. Last one to the car is the story.
The neon light for the Rowen sign was not yet on. The days were already long and balmy. Ava got in her car, locked the door, and turned on the radio so quietly it almost seemed like music from another time or from her dreams. She could sleep there until discomfort forced her back inside.
But she wouldn’t. Ava drove the few miles from the center of town to her Aunt Lana’s. Lana’s house was a small brick ranch with a long driveway. Her place was always neat and clean-looking with two impressive pots of some flower—now impatiens already in riotous bloom—flanking the door. Lana had the brick on the home painted a creamy white to help her forget that Gus’s ex-wife had once lived there. Even after thirty-odd years of marriage Lana still remembered.
Lana came to the driveway as Ava closed the car door. “What are you doing here?” Lana put her hands on her hips but seemed to think better of the attitude, “Syl okay?”
“She’s okay.”
“I can see, Ava. It’s something. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on in. I guess you’ll say when you get ready. I’ve got eleven Judge Judy shows taped if you want to join me.”
“Okay,” Ava said and followed Lana into the house.
“Oh lord, I know something’s wrong now. Come in here.”
Lana had painted her oak cabinets white and the walls were a pale yellow, her kitchen a cheerful little room with copper pots hanging like moose heads on the soffit above the sink. Ava sat at the small table in the center of the room.
“What do you have to drink, Lana?”
“I take it you don’t mean Kool-Aid,” Lana said as she reached into the upper cabinet and poured two fingers worth of liquor for Ava and a splash for herself. “Don’t tell your mama.”
“I’m not twelve, Lana.”
“She doesn’t know that. And it won’t do any good to remind her.”
Ava sloshed the liquor around but did not drink. Lana watched her play with the whiskey. “Give me that,” she said and drank the liquor herself in one large gulp. “Tell me what happened.”
“Henry has a child.”
Lana nodded her head like she’d just heard the most obvious news in the world. “That skinny-ass weasel. Is he leaving you?”