Visiting My Mother at the Sunrise Inn

I wrote this piece years ago, when my mother was still alive, and when I used to document our time together, to try and make sense of things.


My mother manages a motel down here on the gulf coast of Florida. It’s one of those 50s looking motels where the rooms go round in a horseshoe, and the big florescent sign out front blinks on and off, and the little in-ground pool has all the shit at the bottom with all the lawn chairs neatly arranged around the edge.

My mother runs the whole place. Does all the cleaning, the laundry, keeps up the grounds, and she lives here, too. She’s been here almost four years, the longest she’s kept a job since I’ve known her.

The Sunrise Inn is not your typical motel, though. It’s more of a halfway house. Most people are here long term. They’ve either just gotten out of prison or they’re on their way in. And my mother runs the place like a warden.

Just this morning, some kids were beating each other up in the parking lot and my mother stormed out in her Battenberg lace nightgown and told them all to get the fuck off this property. “Now!” she said. “Move it!”


My mother works hard bringing order to the place. She scrapes buggars and gum off the headboard with a butter knife and posts signs in all her rooms that say, “If you must smoke crack, please do so out the window.”


“Never stay in motels,” she says to me. “Better to sleep in your car.”


At the Sunrise Inn, there aren't too many days without sirens and warrants.


But this seems to work out. Because my mother gets bored rather easily. Needs a lot of drama. Loathes the mundane. “I dial 911 like I order a god damn pizza,” she says.


My mother’s only friend here is a blue heron. The heron’s name is Zelda. “Zelda’s the best girlfriend I’ve had in years,” she says.


Zelda visits my mother every day. She waits by her door and if my mother doesn’t come out right away, Zelda will jump up and down on all the cars in the parking lot until one of my mother’s tenants gets her.


My mother feeds Zelda chicken gizzards, which I find a little corrupt. But my mother says Zelda enjoys eating her relatives.


Right now, Zelda is dipping gizzards into the swimming pool. My mother says this makes them easier to swallow.


There’s also a guest in the swimming pool. Apparently he doesn’t mind floating in gizzard residue. He’s Czech. My mother says he has a crush on her, that there was a note on her door the other day that said, 'I vant you.'


My mother doesn’t have a car, which means she’s stranded at the Sunrise Inn. She hasn’t taken a vacation since she started. Well, not counting the times she’s had too much to drink. Luckily though, she’s surrounded by thrift shops.


My mother loves second-hand merchandise. Her favorite is the Good Will down the road that’s run by this lady named Kathy, who used to live at the Sunrise Inn until she went to jail for making copies of movies and selling them from her motel room. But it’s all worked out wonderfully because now Kathy does her community service at Good Will and gives my mother enormous discounts.


To get to Kathy’s, my mother and I have to walk along this horrible stretch of highway called Tamiami Trail. There’s absolutely no shade on this road. And by the time you pass all the unattractive stores that sell carpet and pancakes and adult videos and mufflers and you finally get to the Good Will, your brain is halfway to being poached.


We’ve taken the walk every day since I’ve been here. Today was the worst, though, because my feet were killing me on account of these absolutely horrible sandals with artificial grapes attached that my mother insists I wear.


And my mother doesn’t know how to walk casually, her pace is more conducive for fleeing the police. Which means I practically had to jog just to keep up with her, and every time I got pissed and lagged behind, she’d yell, “Come on Jessica, let’s pick up that pace!”


Really, I’m not used to all this action. I’m used to living up North in the woods, where the only people I see, besides my husband, are the pretend Mary and Jesus they’ve got sitting in the manger next to the post office.


By the time we got to the Good Will, my feet were blistered and I was so dizzy I thought I would throw up.


Kathy was busy stocking shelves with new merchandise and my mother started right away sliding garments along racks looking for treasures.


“Go on, honey,” she said. “Go look for something special.”


Really, I’m not as into thrift stores as she is. A huge hunk of my childhood consisted of me waiting on milk crates for her to try things on.


But I perused the aisles anyhow, because sometimes you really can find treasures, if you look hard enough.


And eventually, I did find a nice sweater skirt I liked on the orange rack, but of course my mother wouldn’t let me buy it because she believes orange invokes negative energy.


Then I found this neat looking jacket on the green rack, but my mother insisted it made me look like an Appalachian Armpit Baby.


Basically, everything I liked my mother thought was an abomination. And after 20 minutes or so, I got fed up and sat down by a book shelf, thumbed through an old tattered copy of the Celestine Prophesy, like all the other frazzled people who did before me. And I was beginning to feel a sense of calm when my mother passed by with a bunch of camo shirts in her arms. Ever since her life has turned into a battle, she’s been wearing fatigues.


“You’re not happy here,” she said. “I can tell.”


“I am so happy, mother.”


“You can’t wait to go back to New York.”


“That’s not true,” I said. “I’m just dizzy.”


“You don’t like any of the things I picked out for you and you probably throw away everything I send you.”


I begged and pleaded for her to believe me that I don’t. (Even though I do throw some stuff out, most recently a bustier that someone attacked with a bedazzler.)


“Well, you look bored,” she said.


“I’m not bored, Mother. I’m reading.”


She glared at the Celestine Prophecy. “Someone got me that book once and I threw it away.”


“And why’s that, mother?”


“What do I need to find myself for,” she said. “I’m already here!”


By the time we left the thrift shop, both our feelings were hurt. And we walked in silence back to the Sunrise Inn, and the whole time I was filled with that same anxiety I had for the majority of my childhood. The kind that tells me that my mother is going to be in a bad mood, for God knows how long, and that it’s all my fault.


It’s strange. We talk every day on the phone. But somehow, in person, things are different. There’s too much space. And you can’t hang up.


By the time we arrived back to the motel, my eye was twitching. So much so, I could actually see the lid moving up and down in the mirror. I started getting worried that I was going to keel over with an aneurism. And I told my mother, even though she still wasn’t entirely speaking to me.


“It’s just stress,” she said. “And I highly recommend that you stop goddamn thinking about it.”


But I couldn’t stop thinking of it. So, I took one of my anxiety pills to calm me down. I really didn’t want to tell my mother about them. I didn’t want to get into all the details about the panic attack that sent me like a raving lunatic to the emergency room last year. But she caught me putting the bottle back in my suitcase, so I had no choice.


“What the hell are you taking,” she asked.


I was hoping she and I might have one of those hallmark moments that ends with deeper understanding and hugs, but when I told her my story, all she cared about was looking at the bottle.


“But what do you want to look at it for?” I asked.


“Because I need a pill, that’s why. You’re eye-twitching has given me high blood pressure!”


Well, I wasn’t about to give her one, because I don’t have many left and I need to double up for the plane ride home.


“Come on, Jessica.” she said. “Let me have one stinking pill!”


Then she started chasing me around her apartment, trying to grab the bottle right out of my hands!


“I just want one,” she said.


“No!” I said. “And I'm hiding them, so don't even try to find them!”


“Oh, Jessica! That is so low!! You don’t trust me???”


“I just have never seen you like this... And I need my damn pills!”


That’s when the doorbell rang. It was Kelly from Unit 6, who likes to come over to chain smoke and bitch about her husband.


Luckily, my mother invited her in and the conversation changed to something more suitable for company-headline news.


My mother made coffee and Kelly, who works at the local newspaper, told us about how some celebrity had been convicted of shoplifting.


She was going on and on about why on earth someone with all the money in the world would even bother steeling.


And that’s when my mother launched into her diatribe about once having been a clepto herself. (Once meaning a year ago.)


“When I was a child,” she began, a ciggie in one hand, and a bottle of non-dairy creamer in the other, “nobody spoke to me. The only words I ever heard were in French, and only if my mother or father needed the salt or the pepper.”


I held my tongue. My mother isn't really French. But she’s become French. Over the years. (I now even have an Uncle Jacque!)


My mother has quite a talent for inventing realities.


I remember when I was a little girl, when she sat me down and said, “Jessica, I want you to understand something very important. In this life, you never have to settle for what people tell you you are. YOU, get to be anyone you want to be. It’s your birthright.”


Well I already know all the stories about my mother’s clepto problem, but I listened anyhow, cause she’s always adding new embellishments, as a way of entertaining herself. She has a very short attention span. As do I.


“We may have had all the money in the world, Kelly,” my mother continued. “But nobody paid attention to me. I tried faking sick. But my mother was fucking the family physician, so as soon as he arrived for the house-call, they’d spend the afternoon in bed and forget all about me.”


"Oh you poor thing,” Kelly said, sending an avalanche of sugar into her coffee.


"But I came up with a better idea. I stole my mother’s wallet and bought myself a wonderful little purse, where I put all my favorite things! And this made me so very happy, until it disappeared. I asked my mother for weeks where it was, and she said, ‘I don’t know, dear. Someone must have stolen it.’ It took her years to fess up.”


“Oh Eliza,” Kelly said. “She sounds just horrible!


“That’s because she was. But at least I had her attention. And though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, I think that’s why I continued swiping things. But when I was about 10, I stole a lipstick from the pharmacy where my father worked, and he called the police. Made the cop put handcuffs on me and take me to the station and everything.”


"Oh, Eliza! That’s awful! How could he do that to his own daughter??"


"I’m sure in his own psychotic way, he was trying to teach me a lesson, but to be honest, I rather enjoyed it. I’d never been in the back of a squad car before. It was very exciting. In fact, after that, I helped myself to whatever I wanted in the neighborhood, hoping I might get arrested again.”


“And did you," Kelly asked.


"Not until after high school,” she continued, pausing to light another ciggie. “I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to be a stewardess. The plan was to get off a plane on the other side of the planet and never return. But my parents forced me to go, so they didn’t have to be embarrassed at their dinner parties. Well I hated it, so I stole my roommate’s checkbook, and went on a shopping spree.”


Kelly laughed heartily.


“Oh, yes. I had a grand old time. Bought a Christian Dior gown, and took myself to the most expensive restaurant in town for filet mignon."


Kelly gasped. "And did they arrest you?"


"Nope. But they kicked me out. And agreed not to press charges under the condition that I see a psychiatrist. Which I did. A wonderful man named Dr. Tator, who said to me, after he met my parents, “Eliza, I want you to stay away from both of them. They are sick! Dangerously insane!!’”


Kelly was truly amazed. “Oh Eliza, you poor, poor thing. Well, I don’t come from money, like you do, but we always talked to each other. Or yelled at each other’s more like it.


My mother returned to her ciggie and coffee, smiling at some unseen horizon. And Kelly picked at her cuticles, seeming envious of mother’s background. My mother does come off as quite demure. Always holds her head up high. Even when she’s been homeless, she still enunciated as if she were the Queen of England.


“Do you and your mother speak now?” Kelly asked, chain lighting another cigarette.


“No, she did the world a favor and deceased.”


I looked at the ground. My mother knows damn well that her mother is still alive. But over the years, my mother has become an orphan. In fact, every single person she’s ever known, except for myself and Uncle Jacque, has been killed by one frightening event or another.


Really, her father is the only one who actually died. Years ago when I was nine. Colon cancer. But her mother and sister are still very much alive. But not to my mother. And I tried to keep a straight face when she told Kelly all about the gruesome airplane crash that she only hopes killed them all immediately, rather than the long, drawn-out and tortuous head-hanging-by-the-string scenario.


“Oh Eliza, I am so sorry… Do you remember your grandmother?” she asked me. I looked down at my artificial grapes and shook my head no, and then looked up and said, “Not really.”


My mother gave me a covert wink of approval. I'm a good liar. Too good. I can even lie to myself sometimes without knowing it.


"What about your father," she asked me.


"Very dead," my mother chimed in. "Terrible cancer. Ate the skin off his bones while he was still alive.”


I hung my head as far down as I could to keep a straight face, but I think Kelly thought I was crying.


"I’m so sorry," she said to me.


"Thank you," I said.


"Did you ever remarry, Eliza?"


“Yes,” my mother said. “I did re-marry!”


At this, I picked up my head and tried to keep from staring with disbelief. I hadn't ever heard of another marriage before. Usually she calls with any major fabrications that need to be memorized. So I knew this had to have been improvised. And my mother is good. Definitely a woman who deserves an Oscar.


In fact If I were more of an organized person, I would create a new kind of award for the best, most believable fiction in a real-life scenario.


But, after I gave it a second thought, I could see my mother’s motive. Of course she had to have been married again! What would people think of her in the privacy of their brains if she hadn’t been? They would certainly imagine something was wrong with her! They might even think she was a lesbian!! Good god!


“Yes,” my mother said, her eyes half-closed. “He was a wonderful man… Only he, too, died a few years back.”


“Jesus, Eliza! You have had so many people die around you!


“Yes, I know. I try not to take it personally.


As my mother revealed the impressive details about my stepfather, my eyes returned to the ground. Truth is, my mother hasn't had a relationship since she was sleeping with that married lawnmower man back when she lived in Fort Meyers five years ago.


Other than that, as far as she's told me, there's been no one. Just a trusty vibrator that I haven’t heard much about, thank god, though it’s been made reference to enough times. Well, in a manner of speaking.


Whenever I'm miserable, she starts yelling about how I need to get my endorphins pumping. “You need to Masturbate!” she yells, “MASTURBATE!! MASTURBATE!!!!”


“Jesus, Mother,” is my usual response.


“I'm not kidding, either.”


“I know you’re not.”


And I did have one, too. A blue waterproof polyurethane number called ‘The Mermaid’, but I threw it away because the damn thing smelled like cancer.


“Well, one day you'll all meet up again!” Kelly said to my mother after searching her mind for the most touching/appropriate thing to say.


“I don’t think so,” she said with her hand on her hip, “I plan on going to heaven!”


Kelly liked that one. She burst out into a growl of a laugh and saliva splat right across the table and got on the rim of my empty water glass. But I didn’t mind. I preferred it to her previous attempt at being kind. I personally love when people feel comfortable enough to be themselves. Even if it’s ugly to others. To me, that's beauty.


But really, I was too busy trying to hold my eye steady to appreciate it fully. It was twitching like a banshee. (Though I’m sure being in a conversation with my mother is enough to make anyone's eye bobble around.


Damn. Now the left one started twitching. Maybe it’s from these damn vitamins she has me taking. What are they called? From A to Zinc... Centrum. That's it. Centrum with lutein. I thought lutein was supposed to be good for the eyes.


My mother must be reading my mind. “Would you please stop god damn thinking about your mother fucking eye already!”


My mother and I are presently sitting across from one another in her garden area, on lawn chairs upholstered with floral fabric that Kathy gave my mother for free.


My mother spends a lot of time in her garden area. It’s a perfect place for smoking True Blues, doing crosswords and making sure none of her idiots, as she calls them, are stepping out of line.


We’re shaded by a family of citrus trees--huge yellow and orange balls hanging like Christmas decorations. And all over the place, potted aloe plants stretch their limbs toward the sun, and then shudder every time my mother passes by, because she's always ripping huge chunks of them off and slathering them on herself, and me.


My mother’s presently polishing her nails. Even with all the grunt work she does, her nails are always impeccable. Unlike mine, which are raw and scalloped at the cuticles.


And I’m presently writing in my journal, downloading all these moments of the day, hoping I’ll make sense of them one day.


Tonight, my mother and I are going out to an all-you-can-eat catfish buffet, which would be great if I liked catfish, but I’m sure it’ll be fun. We’ve decided to dress up for the occasion. Which means I’m wearing this hideous pink floral number she insisted I wear.


I tried to argue about it but she wouldn’t budge.


"You need to dress for Florida, Jess. Not New York."


“But it’s absolutely hideous.”


"It happens to be very French."


“But Mother, I am a grown woman!”


“I don’t care what you are. I am your mother. Now you go and put it on… THIS INSTANT!”


Somehow, it actually looks ok on me. I mean, it’s God awful, but it works with this long pony tail that she braided into my hair. Which must weigh about five pounds. But at least we won’t be walking to dinner.


We’re getting a ride from the guy who lives in Unit 2, who has a red convertible. And who also had rogue pubies all over his motel room today, pubies that my mother shoved behind his headboard ‘cause we were too tired to the haul in the vacuum.


It’s hard to believe that by this time tomorrow, I’ll back in the snowy Adirondacks. But I’m looking forward to wearing my own clothes again, and not having to watch tv before bed, which drives me mad.


Last night, I had to watch Frank Sinatra sing his heart out with lady after lady while my mother kept hitting me in my side for emphasis, “Now that's real talent. Now that’s a real man. Now that’s cool.”


But really, I’m going to miss my mother. As soon as I unpack my suitcase, the smell of ciggies and clorox is gonna waft me in the face, and I’m going to get the coziest feeling inside and wish I was right back here where I am now.


-JLK