Sinister: Places I Love (#2)

[MyMomSays at xxx.com]

I haven't been to Phoenix, Arizona since I was probably seventeen or so.  That trip was not the usual Arizona excursion.  My parents were going to attend some sort of business conference and dragged myself and my younger sister along with them.  It was my first plane trip.  We stayed at a hotel that overlooked a landfill.  The hotel itself was beautiful, but I stayed inside the entire time and ate brownies from the mini-bar and watched "The People vs. Larry Flynt" on pay-per-view television.  

That trip was only a few days, but it was just long enough to feel like an Arizona I didn't remember.  Since I was very young I'd gone with my family to Phoenix every spring break.  We'd load up into the station wagon--me and my younger sister slipping around on the hot vinyl seats, my older sister in the very back of the car (she acted like she wanted to snooze, but in fact, later, she admitted she just wanted to eat the food that was also back there).  

On day one of our trip, we never seemed to get very far, but the drive seemed endless.  We'd usually drive from Greeley (which is up in the northern part of Colorado) down to Pueblo (which is down in the South).  The drive itself is probably only three and some hours.  When we arrived in Pueblo the arguments about who-slept-with-who began.  My parents were always too cheap to get two hotel rooms, so instead we all packed together into one room--parents in one bed, two kids in another, another on the floor.  Older sister, Leslee, always claimed the floor.  Kelly and I would stay up late into the night fighting over the covers, or who was hogging the bed.  If I felt Kelly was sprawling out too much, I'd wish I'd fall off the bed, wake up the whole family, who'd then feel sorry for me--just to piss her off.  I don't think it ever happened.

Day two was the long one.  All the way from Pueblo down into southern New Mexico.  This was the part of the trip where my dad would insist on playing a Michael Murphy tape--usually, appropriately, "The Land of Enchantment."  Sometimes we'd all sing along.  Further into New Mexico, the landscape always looked erased--whited-out--too bright.  Like someone had drawn in some trees, or some houses, then decided it needed to be rubbed out and done over again, but forgot.  

Day three was when we ventured near Phoenix.  I always knew we were close when we started spotting Saguaros.  They looked like happy, friendly neighbors saying "howdy" from a distance.  My dad would promise "a carton of Rolo's" for whoever spotted the first cactus.  At this point my older sister would pretend like she was too old to get excited over such stupid things, and fall asleep, her mouth open.  I'd throw bits of paper into her opened mouth until she woke up.  

Places I love: after I wrote about the Breakfast King, I tried very hard to think of other places I presently love--yes, there are places I like, certainly, but places I love?  Being in love with a place is like brushing up against a fence that got up and walked away with you. 

I love the Inn Suites in Phoenix, Arizona.  There are a lot of fancy resorts in Phoenix, since it's on the escape route for retirees.  The Inn Suites sat near a square of subsidized housing, in a not-so-nice area of town.  From our kitchen, I could stare out the window and watch migrant workers play baseball in the abandoned field across the road.   Every morning the housekeeping service brought us little tins of pineapple juice along with a handful of peppermints. At night my parents would take us to some different chain-restaurant.  I'd roll down the window and stick my head outside to smell the Phoenix smell--dirty oranges, orange blossoms tainted with the smell of smog.  

There was also a very nice courtyard, the sky framed with palm trees and squawking birds.   My parents never made my sisters and I follow the 45 minute swimming rule.   We ate pink-frosted donuts inbetween games of Marco Polo.  

I'd always have a boyfriend at the Inn Suites; maybe some older boy who resembled Jonathan Brandis, or another boy just thought I was pretty (despite my tattered swimsuit and bad perm).  Me and the boys would play hide-and-seek with the other hotel children, and sneak off to sit beside a few bushes pretend to be in love, or just pretend that we were playing hide-in-seek.  In the mornings they'd save their packaged danishes for me; when it came time for my family to go back to Colorado, me and my boys never exchanged information, never kept in contact.  It was like we knew it had to end, like a good movie you're sad can't last forever.  

During the last trip to Phoenix, the one where I was sort of too teenagey and angsty to thoroughly enjoy it, my parents took me to the Inn Suites.  I wanted to see it again.  I had complained throughout the entire trip that I'd wished we'd stayed there instead.  As I entered the courtyard, it didn't look as glamorous as I'd remembered.  The management had put a huge wrought-iron fence around the pool, making it look forced and too safe.  College students lounged in front of the pool, smoking cigarettes and drunk at 1 p.m.  It seemed dirty. Spring-breaky.   Someone's shoe floated around in the deep end of the pool.

One thing hadn't changed, though--the sky was still framed with those palm trees, even bigger than I had remembered.  It felt like a life I should have belonged to.  


Mandee May
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