Four and Twenty Beds

CHAPTER TWO

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."

I sighed and relaxed.

If the rule is true that women are the worst gossips, Grant must be the exception that proves that rule. He can outtalk any woman; he has more endurance, more lung power, and far more enthusiasm, when it comes to a prolonged conversation on any subject, than any avid old lady, or any young girl draped about a telephone. This habit of his annoys me, partly because he usually indulges it just when I have some work for him to do, and partly because I am jealous of his ability to get along well with everyone. I have such a shy nature that I am seldom able to get past the polite amenities with anyone whom I have known less than three years … a great disadvantage for anyone as extremely inquisitive and curious as I.

Being so talkative, and so unable to end a conversation, Grant is easy prey for salesmen. That is, although he seldom buys what they are trying to sell, he lets them waste hours of his time.

When Grant finally got rid of the vacuum cleaner salesman, I went in to get the baby. The conversation about vacuum cleaners had awakened her. It wasn't, I realized, the last time that noises from the office, so close to her bed, would awaken her.

I fixed dinner, clumsy in a new, differently arranged kitchen. While I washed dishes, Grant dried them, and there followed an uneasy evening during which we both pretended to read, but actually sat straining to hear above the children's voices the sound of a car driving into our driveway.

The sun was sinking, and the mountains were clothed in soft shadows. I stood looking out the kitchen window, which faced the darkened east, and I saw the neon sign of the second motel from us turned on. It was a big, impressive sign, with the name of the motel–the Peacock–in bright red letters, and a green "vacancy" sign above it. There was the likeness of a huge, stately, graceful peacock above the name of the motel, blazoned in bright blue and red neon.

"Our sign!" I exclaimed suddenly. "It's time to turn it on!"

Grant had thought of it the same instant I had, and, like greedy children with a new toy, we rushed to the dark office. The light switches–five of them–were side by side in a neat and very confusing little row on the wall behind the desk.

I yanked Grant's outstretched hand aside. "I want to do it!"

He offered a compromise. "We'll take turns once."

"All right. Me first!"

I hovered over the switches with loving indecision. Finally I pushed up the one on the extreme right.

The office light beamed suddenly on us from the ceiling. "Oh, that isn't fair!" I cried. "I didn't know that was the office light–I didn't–"

"You had your turn," Grant said firmly. He reached out one thin brown finger and flipped up the switch that was second from the left. I looked out the window woefully. Sure enough, he had lit up the "Moonrise Motel" part of the sign.

"You've been experimenting," I accused him. "You knew that was the right switch."

I should have realized he'd know all about the switches. He always investigates everything, and if there is something he doesn't know how to do, he learns how. He's a jack of all trades–and a master of all of them, too! Usually that makes me very proud of him, but right now I was just exasperated. "Now I'm going to turn on the 'vacancy' sign," I said, jabbing grimly at another switch.

Grant laughed. "You turned on the porch light outside the office door." He put his finger on a switch. "Now look out the window."

I looked out, and saw the green "vacancy" spring into brilliant being.

Furiously I flipped up the other switch. That, it developed, lit up the red "office" sign outside and above the office door.

It was a beautiful evening. After the hot day the breeze was cooling and refreshing. The branches of the slender little Chinese elms waved gently.

When I had put the children to bed Grant said, "It's too nice to be inside. Let's go outside once." We sat on the curb of the front island of grass and watched our sign proudly. The island in which the sign stood was planted in myrtle and bright Martha Washington geraniums, and now, with the reflection of the soft neon light on them, they were a mass of color.

Cars were thick in front of the cocktail lounge across the street. Every once in a while a car, leaving, would make a turn in the highway preparatory to going back to the business district, and we'd catch our breaths.

"I thought sure that one was coming in," Grant remarked, at intervals, about five times while we sat there. And then suddenly the neon lights flickered and went out, leaving a complete and utter blackness.

We sat there, horrified. Without a neon sign, there wasn't the slightest possibility that any of the cars on the highway would stop at our motel . . . indeed, their drivers couldn't possibly realize that there was a motel here at all.

By the light of a match. Grant called up the electricity company. No doubt twenty other people were calling them, too, but he wanted to be sure they'd have the lines repaired at once. I happened to remember that I had put some candles on one of the shelves under the kitchen sink. We lighted two candles, setting one in a saucer on the desk in the office, and the other in the living room.

The electricity was off until after eleven-thirty. It wasn't the whole city of Banning that was affected; just an area of about two blocks, starting with us and extending west, toward the business district. The Peacock's sign was blazing twice as brightly beside all that darkness, and every once in a while a car left the surge of traffic and slipped into the Peacock's driveway.

And then, at nearly midnight, our sign flashed on again. Of course all the other signs did too, but ours was the only one we saw, even though its modest, steady colors were put to shame by the flashing red, white and blue eye of the Winking Eye, the second motel to the west of us. The lights hadn't been on ten minutes when a sleek black sedan nosed into our driveway.

"A customer!" Grant exclaimed.

"You go, you go," I chattered, wondering how on earth I'd manage when he went back to Los Angeles and I'd have to overcome my shyness and talk to our customers myself.

But Grant was already approaching the driver.

I was sitting on the curb of the island, and I couldn't quite hear their voices. But after a few seconds of conversation the man got out of the car and followed Grant into one of the cabins. Then he went back with Grant into the office. "He's registering!" I thought with awe.

Presently the man came out of the office, got back into his car and drove into the garage adjoining the cabin he had looked at. I could see now that there were two people in the back seat.

I hurried into the office, where Grant, with a dazed expression, stood looking at a five dollar bill and a fifty-cent piece.

"Our first money from the motel," he said. "Shall we frame it?"

There was no door between the office and our living room. The whole interior of the cabin was lighted up by our neon sign. When we lay in bed we could see the desk in the office; and, conversely, people standing in the office would be able to see us.

Grant hung a filmy curtain over the doorway, fastening it at the top with thumb tacks. When the office light was on and the living room light was off, we discovered by experimentaion, it was possible to see from the living room into the office, but not the reverse.

That, I reflected as I lay in bed, would be very cozy. I'd be able to lie in bed and watch while people filled out registration cards (which would be a soothing agent to my rather abnormal curiosity)–but they wouldn't be able to see me. This seemed like the ultimate in privacy. And to have a real bed, a soft comfortable bed again, seemed the ultimate in luxury.

After we went to bed people began driving in, thick and fast. Grant had to hop out of bed so many times that finally he decided to stay up. He put on his robe and slippers and sat in a chair in the office doorway. I watched avidly as he rented cabins, admiring again the ease and sureness with which he did something he had never done before.

I had dozed off, in spite of the lumbering of trucks and the zipping of traffic along the highway. I felt someone shaking me. "Come and look once," Grant said.

I followed him sleepily and looked out the window where he pointed.

Our sign proclaimed, "No vacancy!"

"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.