The Haunting Memory of the Beautiful Boy Who Lived at the Motel

I still look for him every day.

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The boy is panting, his jacket flung wide open. He does not wear a hat or gloves, but I wear both. He'd burst free from an in-progress Cops and Robbers game in the park. This park is across from the old motel, a tired white building perched on a prime real estate block near the beach. It looks like a long rectangular box, identical in shape to the plastic hotels we used to buy with Monopoly money.

"Can I pet your dog?" The boy's breath punctuates each word. His eagerness makes it impossible for me to say no. He coos as he strokes Polly's brindle brown fur. Two of the boy's friends hang back, reluctant to come close. The littlest boy with a baby man-bun waggles his palm at me, "I'm allergic," he says.

The dog lover's name is Aidan. His words effervesce into questions: "What's your name, girl? Are you going for a walk, girl? Huh, girl? Yeah, you're going for a walk!"

"That's Polly," I offer.

"Polllyyyyyyy," he echoes.

Every afternoon at about the same time, my fur baby and I stroll past the old motel, with its black-and-white letterboard telegraphing its current beef with the town council.

"Stop eminent domain!" and "End the lawsuit. Save taxpayers $$!"

The town's plan to take the motel property and convert it into a parking lot was met with the owner's legal furor, causing the local government to eventually back down. The motel is one of a handful of budget lodgings where the police make frequent service calls in the summer. In the winter, the bleak building boasts a "No Vacancy" sign, astonishing my husband and me every time we drive by.

No matter the season, it's rare to see children playing in the park across from the motel. The neighborhood kids prefer the playground and basketball courts a few blocks inland from the beach.

Aidan and his pals weren't from here.

"Can I hold the leash?" Aidan puts on half of a beggar's face. It's just the right amount because I hand Polly's leash over with a request to hold on tight. I keep close, which turns out to be wise because Aidan starts to run, sending Polly into a cataclysmic case of the zoomies.

"Stop!" I'm sprinting, too, trying to catch an exuberant boy-dog tornado. With the leash still in his hand, Aidan stops. Polly takes a few more spins before her final surrender.

I take the leash back, relieved that the experiment with this little stranger is over. Saying goodbye, we head off to finish our walk. I berate myself for letting him hold Polly. Aidan looked around 7 or 8. I imagine my husband reprimanding my foolishness and how thoughtlessly I handed over command of our prized pooch.

I am a bit of a sucker. One evening, I let an older gentleman who looked like he might explode into our house to use the bathroom when my husband wasn't home. The town was packed with music lovers for a jazz concert in the park's amphitheater near where I met Aidan. As the small, bespectacled man exited his car, he spotted Polly and me just as we left the house.

"Could I please use your bathroom, ma'am?"

His desperate face was all I needed to say yes, go right ahead. I'm sure I have his eternal gratitude, but my husband was upset when he discovered I had let a strange man into our house. Perhaps I should have kept that to myself.

By the time Polly and I loop back, the boys' game is over, and they're gone. My focus has shifted to the treads of my shoes and my failed attempts at hopscotching over goose droppings that carpet the park. I strategize how to remember to take my shoes off before I step into the house. Despite the brief walk from the park to my front door, I walk in with my dirty shoes still on.

We run into Aidan and his friends again the next day; this time, he is with his dad. It's the week between Christmas and New Year's, and my mind manufactures a story of a group of dads organizing a father-son getaway. Or perhaps they're single fathers, and it's their week with the children.

A dad sporting a mohawk and a red tracksuit lifts a hand and waves at me from across the motel parking lot. With a cigarette in hand, Aidan's dad leans over to pet Polly. Afraid of the smoking ember, Polly backs away. Aidan reaches for the leash, promising he won't run this time. I hesitate but say okay anyway.

We head toward the giant American flag rising above carved memorial plaques dedicated to local veterans. Polly is obsessed with the Christmas wreaths resting on the plaques, the red bows bright against the evergreens. Polly has decided this is the best place to sort each wildlife signature in her olfactory brain. She plants her paws to sniff. I'm happy to stay put for once, even though I'm cold. The second walk with Aidan has been a success.

I see Aidan every day of the holiday break, but after New Year's, the group is gone. I continue my dusk walks with Polly and make more mental notes to take my shoes off at the front door. I'm tired of cleaning goose poop from the floor, carefully retracing my path through the house to the point where I remember to take them off.

Three weeks have passed since meeting Aidan. The January sun is low now, but I spot some children darting between the trunks. Aidan is playing with a friend in the park. As soon as he sees me, his face illuminates with his thousand-watt smile.

"You're back!" I say, sensing he is happy to see me, too. I almost hug him but hold back. In a flash, I imagine my reaction to a stranger hugging one of my kids in a public park.

Aidan and I are now old friends. I ask him how he's been and about school. I realize I didn't know how old he was, and he tells me he's eight. I'm curious how far his family has traveled to come to this old motel in the middle of winter and ask him where he's from.

"I live at the hotel," he says, but the words don't make sense.

He must have misunderstood what I meant. I still believe the story I've told myself: he's here for a fun weekend with his dad, who will walk him up to the boardwalk, buy him a big swirl of cotton candy, and change his dollars for tokens in the arcade.

A niggling question wants to emerge, but my lips know to keep it in: Where is Aidan's mother? I'd only seen his father one time.

The long MLK weekend is over, but I keep seeing Aidan in the park. On the days I don't, I feel relieved. Our relationship is changing from one of joy to something else. On the days we've missed each other, a stricken Aidan with shoulders slumped asks, no, demands where we were. I assured him we walked our usual route and that he just missed us.

He looks off in the distance, unsure how he could not spot us from his window.

He has a window.

The next day, he and his friend are playing a game of make-believe. Aidan announces they are Pet Patrol Rangers looking to rescue injured animals. Have I seen any?

I have. A seagull carcass lay a few yards away at the lake's edge, its wings open and fluttering in the wrong direction, the way dead feathers do. I warn him not to touch it. He is ecstatic at the find. When Polly and I return, the boys are still there piling broken reeds and sticks on the lake beach.

I wave goodbye and head home. Within minutes, there is a knock on the door.

"You live here?" Aidan and his sidekick stare up at me.

"I do."

"Wow!" his eyes fan our living space, drinking in the one-room wonder of the kitchen, dining, and living room. He stiffens his legs, considering how to stay longer.

"Can I pet Polly?" I gesture them in, but half of the Pet Patrol wants no part of this new juncture, where we're traversing from outdoor acquaintances to inside friends. The patrol ranger takes off. Alone, Aidan looks at the empty spot beside him and considers leaving, too. He gathers his resolve and steps inside.

"Woah," he whispers as if he's in church.

His reaction to my home undoes me. My internal house of cards topples, and I can't fool myself anymore. I admit that Aidan and his father aren't visiting but living in a double-occupancy room at the motel. An invisible shield begins to harden around me. I want to protect myself, but I don't know from what.

"Hey, does your dad know where you are?"

Aidan reaches into his coat pocket and produces the latest iPhone.

"I have this!" he says. Seeing the phone doesn't make me feel better. I'd never seen his father looking for him, let alone calling him.

"It's getting dark out, you should get home."

He smiles as he races through the door to catch up with his friend. Does his father mind him playing outside when it's almost dark? From now on, I know I will worry about Aidan and whether he's safe. I want to uncover where his father and mother are and why no one watches him.

Aidan comes by every day after school now. His go-to ask is to pet Polly, even though he's already seen her on our walk. On one visit, he meets my husband, who performs a disappearing coin trick. Like all boys his age, magic captivates him. He begins asking for my husband instead of the dog when he knocks.

I fill our time with easy conversation so he feels safe at our house. I don't probe about his parents, even though I still want to know where they are.

I want him to remember me as the kind lady who let him play with Polly and would help him if asked.

Willingly, he shares that he has an older brother who lives with them but never comes outside. He says he's never been to the arcades on the boardwalk because his father's always too tired. When I complain about the goose problem at the park, he tells me his father washes the goose poop from his shoes when he comes home.

He's by so often now that I can only open the door sometimes, especially during the workday. Answering or ignoring the knock--both seem wrong.

Aidan arrives earlier and more frequently on the weekends. One Sunday, he still wears his pajamas in the afternoon. The momma bear in me awakens when he stands at my door in the same pajamas the following morning.

"Don't you have school today?" I ask. He shakes his head and looks away. He doesn't offer anything more. I consider the number of times I let my kids stay home from school sick and how they had felt better by lunchtime. I dispel thoughts that his father forgot to wake him up for school or something worse.

I confide in my friend, who urges me to go to the police, tell them what's happening, and ask for advice. "You can't let a kid slip through the cracks," she admonishes. I agree and mull over what I should do.

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Was I jumping to the wrong conclusions? He is a beautiful, shiny boy who appears clean, fed, and, despite his circumstances, happy while living in temporary housing.

When I see Aidan, I tell him I'm tired of cleaning the goose poop from my shoes and will take a new path with Polly in the afternoons. He nods, seemingly disinterested. For once, he's too busy to talk and keeps playing.

That was the last time I saw him.

Unfamiliar people cycle in and out of the motel. Beat-up cars line the street outside. A mother covers her infant with a blanket as she heads into the wind towards the shelter of the motel. No kids are playing in the park.

It's spring now, and the beachgoers come earlier every year, booking the motel to capacity, eager to spend their hard-earned money on the boardwalk and the bars.

The unhoused will move somewhere else until the fall. I dread the thought of seeing Aidan again while also wishing that I could.

Until we meet again, sweet boy, stay safe.