"I told him I wouldn't marry him, though, and Thunderation, how he took on. I thought sure he was going to cry. When he finally got over it and left I hopped on the streetcar and went to see Hellwig. I told him what had happened, and you were right, you little stinkpot. All he was waiting for was for me to say something. So I said it, and, well, plague take it anyway, that's all there is to tell you. Except he was madder'n a wet hen to think Wagonseller'd been after me. The wedding's going to be two weeks from today, and in the meantime he's going to find us a little place in the country and we'll have a garden and raise a few chickens. He's going to retire at last."
Grandma was a long time getting her man, but she finally got him.
In the same mail with Grandma's joyous airmail letter was a large box with no return address. It bore a Burbank postmark, and I opened it warily.
When I had torn off all the wrappings and lifted the cover from the box, several anemic-looking cockroaches struggled out. And in the box was a solid mass of their relatives, who had been less hardy, and were quite dead.
A note reposed in the midst of the unsavory mess. It was face up, fortunately, and could be read without being touched. "I thought you might be interested," it said, "to know that Ermintrude had a blessed event. I know that you will give her children a good home. She had quite a litter, didn't she?"
The note wasn't signed, but there was no need for it to be.
I resolved that I'd never again try to compete with an expert at his own game.
Grandma's plans for her future as a bride started us planning for the future again. We had decided against putting in a trailer court in back, or kitchens in any of the cabins, on the ground that they would cheapen the place. But Grant was beginning to draw plans for ten small complete houses, to be set on the back part of the land, each with its own pleasant little yard, to be rented at weekly rates to vacationists during the winter. During the summer they could be rented by the month to more permanent tenants.
There would still be room for a small swimming pool. These things were, as yet, more or less in a dream stage; but the air conditioning units were a present reality at last, actually being installed. And the second story two-bedroom addition to our living quarters would be next.
I know that if in years to come we ever leave the motel, as I look back one act will stand out in my mind as representative of everything we did here, one act will somehow be the symbol of our life here: the removing of the covers from the "no." I'll remember how it felt to stand carefully among the brittle, waxy-looking geraniums and the myrtle, the wind whipping through my dress and through my hair as I stretched to reach the covers, silhouetted against the neighboring neon lights and feeling curiously exposed, as though each occupant of all the cars that streamed past with brilliant headlights were staring at me ... the cold feel of the metal in my hands as I slid the covers off the "no" so that the sign proclaimed in glowing neon "No Vacancy." I'll remember the smug feeling if we were the first of the nearby motels to fill up, or the relieved feeling if we were among the last. I'll remember the contented knowledge that the day's work was done, and that a night of uninterrupted sleep lay ahead. I'll never forget, either, how good it was to see lights in all the cabins and a car in each garage, and to know that the family or couple in each cabin was cozy and warm in its little haven-for-the-night.