A motel review, an old cat and a meeting with a beloved friend in Bath, Steuben County, New York State.
Pass the Arby’s, KFC, McDonald’s and Taco Bell—the town’s “restaurant row”—and you’ll find the highest-rated motel in Bath, New York: the Microtel Inns & Suites by Wyndham. According to Tripadvisor, it’s the #1 motel in town.
The other four motels are just down the interstate, but my best friend Michael—a Bath native—he tells me those are used to house sex offenders. He works for the county, so he knows these things. I’m here to see him and his mother. And my cat, Gunther, whom she adopted from me when I lost my home in 2018 in the fire that wiped out my life—divorce.
Michael’s younger sister died a few weeks ago. Unexpectedly. A suspected pulmonary embolism caused by chemotherapy. One evening, she was putting her one-year-old baby to sleep. At 3am, she had a seizure-like episode that stopped her heart. Dying of natural causes can be phenom-enally violent.
A young woman who worked hard and did everything right was brushed off for months by doctors when she complained of symptoms. She was too young to have colorectal cancer. It’s probably just post-natal haemorrhoids. Alas, it wasn’t the cancer that killed her, it was the curative treatment. Dying of natural causes can be senseless and unfair.
Michael is stoic. The less emotional, more medicated one. His mother is in a daze. She doesn’t recognize me when she picks us up from the airport. Michael lost his licence a few months ago after totalling his car, driving home from an afternoon of drinking at an Applebee’s a few towns over. His mother chauffeurs us like we’re kids going to the mall. But there is no mall in Bath.
She takes us to Top’s Friendly Market instead, where I buy snacks for the room. I’m shocked by how expensive everything is. I put back the sliced cheese and nuts after seeing the prices.
“How do people afford to eat anymore?” I ask Michael.
“That’s what the McDonald’s is for, Carré!”
We pass by the sex offender motels and pull into the parking lot of the Microtel, which is conveniently twenty feet away from the Taco Bell.
Check-in is seamless. Michael comes with me to the front desk, where we meet Dominick.
If it weren’t for the heavy-handed, blurred tattoos, I’d assume he was sixteen. His young face is greasy and covered in inflamed acne. He’s wearing a winter coat with the polyester stuffing poking out of multiple holes up and down the sleeves. He’s either shameless or oblivious. I assume the latter, given how professionally he greets us:
“Welcome to the Microtel Inn and Suites! Do you have a preference for a room on the first or third floor, ma’am?”
Michael and I exchange a look. Am I a ma’am now?
“Whichever is nicer.”
“Oh, the rooms on the first floor are the nicest. I’ll give you the only one we have left. It’s a good one”.
He asks for a credit card for “extra charges” and apologizes immediately for the ten-dollar hold.
“It’s for things like if you damage the TV or something. I promise, it’s just a hold. You’ll get the money back.”
“Ten dollars covers a broken TV?”
Dominick is stumped. I laugh and tell him it’s fine. He laughs too, relieved, his big gummy smile revealing tiny yellow teeth going every which way.
“Continental breakfast is included, too. Six to ten.”
As we walk away, Michael whispers: “Dominick is hot.”
The room has a fluorescent pink overhead light, a view of the parking lot, and a tub that doesn’t drain. It also has a giant flat-screen TV and a spotless mini-fridge. Win some, lose some.
I’m only in town for two days. I reunite with Gunther, who has aged into an old man with shaky legs too small for his body. He’s clearly happy and well-cared for. But seeing him breaks my heart. It’s bittersweet. I hand-reared him as a kitten, when he was small enough to fit into my purse. He moved around the country with me from New York to LA to Detroit. He was displaced several times when I was going through my divorce. Now, he’s fourteen and this is likely the last time I will see him. He’s a reminder that I never managed to build a stable life. He suffered for it, but landed somewhere safe. He’s loved. I’m glad he doesn’t remember me.
We visit Michael’s sister’s house so I can meet her baby. Michael changes the baby’s diaper without being asked. Keeps a hand on her back while she plays. Without any hesitation, he’s risen to fill a maternal role that seems to come naturally to him. He’s not the punk rock gay boy “dabbling” in heroin and living in a band rehearsal space in downtown LA. Not the guy getting kicked out of every dive bar for starting fights. Not the drunk kid chasing attention at any and every cost. Michael is a grown-up now. I’m proud of him.
On the drive back from his sister’s house, Michael’s mum takes the scenic route to show me more of the town. The elementary school her kids went to. The high school. The church where she volunteers. The main street, which resembles a ghost town.
I look around and try to understand the trajectory here. Half-abandoned houses, half-filled by meth and court-mandated housing. It’s a historic town named after Bath, England, though it couldn’t be more different. The population has been dwindling for years. The median annual income is around $30k for men and $25k for women. The only ‘fun fact’ I know about Bath, New York, is that the Golden State Killer was born here. But even he didn’t stay for long.
Bath consists of poor Trumpers. And I say that with no judgement. They’re the working class who can’t find work. The demographic that has always had to fend for themselves. Of course, they worry for their jobs over the rights of immigrants. Of course, they don’t trust the academics who pretend like a higher education is an option for everyone. Of course, they don’t trust us liberals who claim to know what’s best for them from afar.
In liberal coastal cities, we believe we care about the working class, but the working class and immigrants are often one and the same. In LA, we’ve never seen a busboy who wasn’t a person of colour. In Bath, the dishwasher is white. The janitor is white. All of the employees at the fast food joints are white. This is an America I’m not familiar with.
But what about Michael? He’s smart and capable. He’s a critical thinker. I’ve known him for nearly twenty years and, though of course I’m biased, he is truly one of a kind. He could have a much fuller, more interesting life. He doesn’t fit in here. I have to bite my tongue when I feel the urge to tell him he should flee. Which only says something about me. I don’t understand his loyalty to his family. But watching him now, I realize I wish I did. Maybe what he has is bigger than whatever I think is “more.”
We have supper at Taco Bell two nights in a row. Cheese quesadillas feel safer than whatever the KFC is peddling. Michael is sober now, so he drinks a neon blue diet Baja Freeze. We sit in the Microtel and watch TV. Every commercial is for a medication. Families barbecuing. Kids jumping in pools. Old couples looking at each other, longingly. Big smiles, big teeth, big dreams in glossy utopias.
The morning I check out, the lobby reeks of an inescapable, cloying sweet odor. I almost gag as I walk through. The scent mixes with stale cigarette smoke drifting from Dominick’s direction. He’s in the same ill- fitting, dirty uniform he’s been wearing all weekend. He’s pumping fake maple syrup from a sticky plastic jug onto a stiff toaster waffle.
“Good morning, ma’am! Can I help you with anything?”
No wonder this place gets such good reviews.