Chapter 6: Room Twelve

The Sunrise Motel sat behind a tire shop off Route 23, and it smelled of cigarettes and carpet cleaner.

Room Twelve had a dented door and a red wool coat hanging on the knob.

I knew the coat before I knew anything else.

I stood on the walkway for a full minute with my fist raised.

As a child I had knocked on doors like this one and waited to be told what mood was inside.

Then I knocked, and I did not wait to be told.

"Frannie!"

My mother opened the door with her arms already spread.

Her hair was a brighter copper than I remembered, and the gold earrings swung.

She smelled of menthol and perfume, and she pulled me into a hug I did not return.

"Look at you," she said into my hair. "Look at my girl, in a real office, with a real coat."

"It's a sale coat from last winter, Mom."

"Is it? It looks richer."

She stepped back and held me at arm's length, and her eyes were wet in the shining, practiced way I remembered.

"Six years," she said. "Six years of nothing, and I never stopped praying you'd come home."

"You threw me out."

"I was frightened, Frannie. You were pregnant by some stranger. A mother says things."

"You said I should go to the rich man and ask him for more money."

"He had paid what I asked for one night. You wanted a price on my baby."

"Did I say that?" She laughed lightly. "I don't remember saying that."

I walked past her into the room, because I had decided in the car that I would not stand in a doorway.

It was a single bed, a lamp with a paper shade, and a table with a dying plant on it.

A black handbag sat open on the bedspread, with a lipstick, a lighter, and an orange pill bottle spilling out.

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