GEORGIA’S MOTHER STOPS ONCE FORcoffee, hardly notices that it’s too hot to drink until after she’s finished it, when the skin peels away from the roof of her mouth and clumps on her tongue. She gets pulled over just outside Philadelphia for speeding, going eighty in a sixty-five. She accepts the ticket without a word and continues on her way. She loops around the statue in honor of Benjamin Franklin. Georgia always liked that one—history and science broken down into their core elements: the violent zigzag of the lightning, the kite, the key.
Finally she smells the ocean’s cool brackishness through the dark as she crosses through the toll plaza on the way into town. Above her, billboards show women in black lingerie, holding fans of cards with long, red nails. That’s the problem—men are always promised this, no matter who they are. Her daughter lost her virginity at fourteen, bragged about it during one of their fights. But what Gee didn’t realize was that Deborah understood, that she could be objective. What’s a woman to do other than give away what the world will snatch at, always try to take.
The city looks meager and skimpy, like the backdrop of a play that’s only painted part of the way.Why here, Gee?she wonders. Was there nowhere else you wanted to go? She shudders. Themorning is mild, but she can’t seem to get warm. Georgia’s instructions:Ask for Peaches. That’s not the name of a real person, of a whole person. Not the name of her girl.
Deborah feels it now: anger, boiling up from her gut. When she finds out the whole story, finds that no-good piece of shit, Josh, she’ll cut him open, split him in two. She wants to make him pay. Some men are squanderers. Some men know exactly what a woman is giving them—her future, her faith—and will use it like a lift in their shoes. She remembers his expression when she came home early one afternoon, him pressing by her to squeeze out the door as she came in, knowing she would recognize the smell on him. That smile on his face. Her jaw seizes up from the way she grits her teeth.
Deborah didn’t look up the Sunset Motel online—didn’t need to. She’s pictured it, or places like it, on thousands of sleepless, daughterless nights. When she pulls up, she isn’t surprised by the squalor: Not the filthy Astro Turf that lines the walkways outside of the rooms. Or the cluster of teenagers who watch her as she sits in her car, reaches for the photo of Georgia from her tenth grade yearbook. How they fought over that purple dye in her hair. She feels their eyes on her as she makes her way to the office but she doesn’t look back—she wants to make it clear she has no plans to interfere with whatever it is they are here to do.
A bell rings when she pushes through the office door. A man stares at her, aPlayboyopen on the counter in front of him, a portable TV playingI Love Lucyon mute. The mold in the air makes her eyes itch. She puts the photo of Georgia on top of the magazine. The man looks at it, looks to the TV. His hair is matted to his head with grease and his white T-shirt is yellowed. She wonders how long it’s been since he’s showered. Days? Weeks?
Her voice is small when she speaks. “I’m looking for this girl. This woman. She goes by Peaches?”
The man runs his tongue over his teeth. The spitty sound makes her stomach churn. “Peaches ain’t been here for a few days.”
“How many days?”
“Don’t know.”
“Could you guess?”
“Two. Three.”
“How’d she look? Do you remember what she was wearing?”
The man uncrosses and recrosses his arms. “Same kinda thing she always wore. Dress that barely covered that skinny ass of hers. What you want with her, anyway? She fuck your man?”
“I’m her mother. She told me she came here sometimes.”
“Sure,” he says. “Now and then, for a job.” He seems to relish the chance to say it, leveling his gaze at her to make sure she knows what he means. His only power, his only real pleasure: to be cruel.“You want a room?”
“No,” she says, as automatic as a flinch. She hitches her bag higher up her arm and steps back out of the door. She wants to show Georgia’s photo to the boys who’d been gathered in the parking lot, but by this time they’ve scattered. She is about to get in her car when she notices a man sitting alone at the base of the motel sign. He seems agitated, is rocking back and forth on his haunches and rubbing his eyes—drugs, she assumes—but she grips the key tight in her hand, reaches for the photo with the other.
He doesn’t look up at her, even when she thinks he should feel her standing there.
“Excuse me,” she says, trying to bolster her voice with any semblance of steadiness, strength, she can muster. He doesn’t turn. “Excuse me.” Nothing. She taps him on the shoulder and he flinches, then turns to her with watering eyes.
“I’m looking for my daughter. Have you seen her? Her name is Georgia. Georgia Willis. Sometimes she goes by Peaches.”
The man doesn’t say anything. He acts as though he hasn’t heard her. “Please,” she says, her voice wavering. For the firsttime since Georgia called, she thinks she might start to cry. She had steeled herself against losing her daughter, but this was a feeling she had not been prepared for: hope.
The man looks at her again, then at the picture, and his face changes.
“You know her,” she says. “Please, tell me anything you can. When did you see her last?”
He raises his hand and points, back in the direction of the motel.
“I know she stays there sometimes.” The man can’t hear, she realizes. She wonders if he can talk at all. He stands and points again, his arms trembling, his eyes wide.
“I don’t understand,” she says. She fishes through her purse for a piece of paper and a pen, but the man has started to walk away. She calls after him to wait, but even if he can’t hear her, he knows she is following him. He reaches the shoulder of the expressway and picks up his pace, starts to run. She toes out onto the shoulder and a truck thunders past, blares its horn. Her ears ringing, she steps back into the parking lot and watches the man shrink into the distance, feeling like he has just given her something and taken something at the same time, but she couldn’t say what.
SHE LEAVESthe motel and drives through the city, hoping to catch sight of Georgia by chance. She thinks she sees her outside of the Knife and Fork Inn—a glimpse of yellow-blonde hair tossed over a narrow shoulder. She nearly causes an accident when she jerks the car to a halt, but as the driver behind her passes, swearing at her through his window, her stomach sinks—not Gee at all.
She parks at Caesars and wanders through the lobby with its hollow Corinthian columns and statues of helmeted men on horseback. She walks the boardwalk, the old wooden rollercoaster rattling along its tracks, in the distance the shrill shouts of lifeguards’ whistles directing swimmers down on the beach. But all day long she pictures the man pointing. Wondering what he could have meant.
Deborah drinks more coffee from a kiosk at the Tropicana; it tastes like it was made from dishwater, but the warmth in her gut keeps her going. She hasn’t eaten since she left Eagles Mere. She sits for a second at a little wrought iron table made to look like it was imported from New Orleans. She wonders if that’s why Gee chose this place: everything here was encouraged to look like something it was not. Here, Gee could be someone other than the girl Deborah raised: a girl who lives on the streets, someone without a mother worrying over her every move. Deborah’s feet throb and her ankles are swelling from all the walking. She knows there will be angry red marks where her socks cut into her legs. But every second that she sits is a second that she could be looking. What if, she thinks, her daughter has changed so much in the past five years that Deborah might not recognize her anymore?No. A mother would always know her child. Behind all the disappointment, the anger between them, whatever these past years have wrought, Georgia would never be a stranger to her.
She waits until close to midnight to go back to the Sunset Motel, spending the evening drifting between banks of slot machines and poker tables, the occasional whoop rising from one of the players, but most gambling with grim determination, as though they are listening to an unfavorable medical diagnosis. She thinks of how strange it is, that so many things we expect to bring us pleasure end up causing pain.
