The Courtesy Rate

On the last night they owned the motel, Philip gave a guest two hours of somebody else’s building.

“Two o’clock will be fine,” he said. “No extra charge.”

The woman wrote her car registration on the slip. Philip had already carried her four broad boxes into the office. She wore a brown hat with a feather that had been packed badly and had not recovered.

“I’ve been driving since breakfast. I sell at the costume fair. They won’t let us set up until three.”

“Then have a proper rest.”

From the doorway behind the desk, his sister said, “Philip.”

He knew the voice. At sixteen, Susanna had used it when he backed their father’s car into the ice machine. Now her glasses hung from a cord against her shirt. He had been looking for an opportunity to tell her they suited her.

She pointed to the handover checklist beside his elbow. VACANT AT NOON was printed across the top.

The woman put down the pen.

“We’re changing owners tomorrow,” Philip said. “A little complication.”

“We’re closing altogether,” Susanna said. “The new owners are converting the place.”

“I saw that on your website.” The woman tapped the booking slip. “I asked about the late checkout when I called.”

“And I said I couldn’t offer it.”

She looked at Philip. He had thought, as she came through the door, that a reasonable request deserved a reasonable answer.

“I thought I’d try the other one,” she said.

Susanna put on her glasses.

“We can refund the booking, Mrs. Ames.”

“Beryl. I’ve stayed here before. Your mother let me leave the boxes in her sitting room.”

Behind Susanna, through the open door, Philip could see the pale rectangles where their mother’s pictures had hung. She had died in February. The two of them had inherited the motor court, spent months paying bills that exceeded the bookings, and signed the sale papers in different offices.

“We still have the sitting room,” he said.

“Until noon.”

“I could—”

“Philip. Find her somewhere she can stay until two.”

Beryl folded her receipt and waited. She had a way of waiting that made him feel there ought to be a bell he could ring for someone more qualified.

He called the hotel by the bypass. They had a room and could extend the checkout. It cost thirty-six dollars more. Philip offered to pay the difference; Beryl asked whether they had an elevator.

“Two,” he told her.

“Both working?”

He asked. Susanna looked down at her checklist.

By the time Beryl had her refund, thirty-six dollars from his wallet, and directions, Philip was carrying the boxes back out. One opened on the corner of the desk. Inside lay a dozen red noses, each with its own small plastic bag.

“Don’t squash those,” Beryl said. “They’re the good ones.”

He followed her outside with the last box. In the driver’s seat she took off her hat and laid it on a head made of white foam.

“You were nice to offer,” she said.

He thanked her. He heard himself accepting it.

When he returned, Susanna was eating a banana beside the open cash drawer.

“I meant to ask you first.”

“No, you didn’t.”

They worked without speaking for half an hour. Susanna packed the last office supplies while Philip flattened cartons. From room four came a laugh, then a television turned down. The motor court formed three sides of a gravel square. As a boy he had known every car by the sound its tires made entering. Tonight he knew only his own.

He had offered to work this last night with her. The other staff had finished on Friday; Susanna had kept the last few bookings, and he had said she should not have to manage them alone. He had arrived with coffee, sandwiches, and a new cordless drill. The coffee was cold now. There was nothing left she wanted him to fix.

“I could have put some money in,” he said.

She pressed a strip of tape over a box seam.

“For the place. If I’d known how bad it was.”

“You got the accounts.”

“I mean before that.”

“Mum got tired. People stopped coming. I don’t think you could have stopped either thing.”

He put the drill back in its case. He had imagined keeping one wing open, making something of the courtyard. He and Susanna had worked well together once. He remembered washing cars for tips while she kept a list of who owed them. Perhaps he remembered it so clearly because he had done it for only one summer.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“The flat on Wren Street. I told you.”

“After that.”

“I thought I’d live in it.”

She pulled too much tape from the roll. The loose end stuck to her wrist. He reached to help, and she held it out for him to cut.

“I start at the garden center Monday. Three days a week. On Friday I’m going to the sea with Denise.”

He knew Denise had been her friend at school. He knew almost nothing about the twenty-seven years since.

“That sounds good.”

“It does.”

At ten they ate the sandwiches. Philip bowed his head. Susanna had already opened hers; she set it down and waited while he gave thanks. He included their mother, the years she had spent here, the kindness of strangers. When he reached “this chance to begin again,” Susanna picked up her sandwich.

He finished quietly.

“I didn’t ask you here for that,” she said.

“I know.”

“You said you’d do the desk.”

“I will.”

“You can do it without making a thing of us.”

He had not known how much he wanted her to bow her head with him. On Sundays he helped stack chairs after the service. Twice a month he drove the church van. People called when they needed him, and he answered. These were facts he had brought to the motel as carefully as the drill, hoping she would notice them without his having to set them out.

Susanna finished eating. She washed her hands in the little basin behind the desk, shook them, and dried them on a paper towel.

“I used to hate that phone,” she said.

The desk phone was black now. The one he remembered had been cream, with a long cord their mother could take into the sitting room.

“After Dad?”

“You told me you would ring on the Sunday.”

He could see it: the rented flat, a Sunday film on television, a plate balanced on his knees. He had been nineteen. His father had been dead eleven days. Going back after the funeral had felt like reaching air.

“I forgot.”

“So I rang you.”

He looked at the sandwich he had not finished.

“I heard it.”

“I thought you might have.”

There had been six people in the flat. Somebody was telling a story over the film. He had known that if he answered, the small room behind the motel office would come through the receiver: his mother’s breathing, Susanna trying to sound older, the terrible need for him to say something. He had let it ring.

“I couldn’t bear going back into it,” he said.

“Neither could I.”

He put both hands beneath the desk, where she could not see him pressing them together.

“What was it you needed?”

“Mum wanted to go to church. I couldn’t get the car out. You’d parked it against the shed, remember? I was frightened I’d scratch it.”

He had expected something worse. He was ashamed of his relief before she spoke again.

“We got a taxi. That wasn’t the terrible part.”

“No.”

“Then you said you’d come at Easter. And at Christmas you said work wouldn’t let you. I stopped telling her until I knew you were actually on the road.”

He wanted to say he had sent money. She had never claimed he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry, Suze.”

She leaned against the basin. At home his wife knew he and his sister were not close. He had used those words for years; they described a distance without showing anyone how it had been made.

“I had to stop waiting for you,” Susanna said. “I don’t know how to start doing that again.”

He tried to find an answer that did not contain a promise.

“You don’t have to tonight.”

Susanna looked at the phone. She did not answer.

The man from room four came in carrying two paper cups.

“Machine’s off,” he said.

Susanna turned to the coffee maker. “I can make some.”

“There’s a kettle in my room. I just need milk.”

She gave him two small cartons from the fridge. He asked for another, for the morning. Then he went back across the gravel in his socks.

Philip watched him until the door closed. He had never been so grateful for a man who wanted milk.

“I’ll do the desk,” he said. “You can go to bed.”

“I won’t sleep yet.”

“Neither will I.”

They cleared a space for her at the far end of the counter. She sat with a box of old brochures and photographs, separating the pictures she wanted from things she could throw away. He checked the three occupied rooms against the list for morning. At half past eleven he stepped outside to carry the rubbish to the bin. In the square of darkness behind the office he began a prayer with Susanna’s name, then stopped. He was about to ask God to soften her heart.

“Lord Jesus, help me stay,” he said, and went back inside.

Near midnight a car pulled in. Philip reached for a registration slip before remembering there were no more bookings. The driver asked whether they had a room. There were nine empty ones. Philip explained the closing time.

“I’ll be out by seven,” the man said.

He looked toward Susanna. She nodded.

“Sixty-eight,” Philip said, reading the rate beside the phone.

The driver took out his wallet. Philip gave him the key to room six and showed him where to park.

Susanna had found a photograph of their mother in the courtyard, beside a potted palm. She was laughing, one hand held up to stop the person taking the picture. Philip remembered that hand, the broad wedding ring and the flour caught beneath it when she baked.

“I haven’t seen that one.”

“Denise took it.”

He waited.

“Mum had just come back from a date.”

He looked again at the photograph.

“When?”

“About eight years ago. Man from the choir. She said his house smelled of boiled cabbage and she couldn’t face growing old in it.”

He laughed, surprised into a sound he could not quite control. Susanna laughed too, looking down at the picture. It ended quickly.

“Did she go out with him again?”

“Twice.”

“Was the cabbage better?”

“No. She liked his dog.”

For a moment he wanted the photograph. He wanted to take it home and show his wife. But Susanna put it in the pile she was keeping, and he asked what the dog had been called.