No Vacancy
No Vacancy
“So, what’s our color scheme?” Kate asks, looking down from the stepladder.
At my feet are a bunch of open paint cans and a stack of brushes that Mr. Whitley gave us. I stir the white paint around, lift out the mixing stick and watch it drip down like maple syrup onto a pancake. There are also a couple of smaller cans in different colors. One is called Sapphire Blue.
We’ve sanded off the flaking yellowy paint like Mr. Whitley showed us. Sammy’s already sticky and purple from eating cut-up grapes at the diner but I strip off his T-shirt and shorts and let him toddle around in his diaper.
“Sapphire is a kind of jewel, right?” I ask. “How about we do the post and the background white, and then do the lettering in blue, with a black outline?” I say.
Sammy wants to help, of course, so I give him a paintbrush and a cup of water and let him “paint” the bottom of the post, the only part he can reach. I hope he doesn’t stomp on the pink and white petunias Mom planted around the base. He’s so happy it makes me laugh.
It takes two coats of white before the old letters no longer show through. We swing on the swings and wait for it to dry, while Sammy digs in the sandbox.
A car pulls up next to us in the parking lot, with Georgia license plates. Woo-hoo!
A woman sticks her head out the window.
“I’m looking for the Daisy Inn in Spartanburg?”
Kate shakes her head. “This is Greenvale. Spartanburg is the next exit.”
The woman drives off.
“What’s in Spartanburg?”
“The university. The motels there get tons of business at the end of the summer, with all the parents coming to drop off their kids for the school year.”
She jumps off the swing and turns around to face me.
“The problem with Greenvale is that we don’t have anything people come to see. Not even a museum or a racetrack. It’s just some place people come through on their way to somewhere else.”
When Miriam’s family moves from the city of New York to a rural motel in need of some serious elbow grease, Miriam is not a happy camper. Her days are spent babysitting her little brother, doing various odd jobs around the motel, and helping out at the diner next door. Her parents are stressed because the motel is practically empty and losing money; meanwhile, Miriam’s uncle has come to help out and is determined to help Miriam overcome her debilitating fear of swimming. Add in the tension Miriam feels at being Jewish in what appears to be a strictly Catholic town, and it all adds up to a pretty miserable summer. When Miriam learns that the motel’s only employee—whom she adores – is looking for a new job, she and her new friend Kate come up with a plan to drum up some business and fill the motel. However, when the plan is wildly successful, Miriam finds herself struggling with a new problem – her conscience. Is tricking people wrong, even when the “trick” seems to make people happy?
No Vacancy is interesting because it’s not just the story of Miriam’s terrible summer vacation. It’s about religion and belief, love and hate, gratitude and not taking things for granted, hard work and the fact that sometimes hard work just isn’t enough, and about doing the right thing even when the right thing is hard – or seemingly impossible. It’s also one of those lovely stories that manages to teach about and connect with a particular religious belief without ever feeling preachy. I appreciated how much information it provided about Jewish celebrations and traditions without needing footnotes or a glossary. The Jewish words and phrases that some readers may not know are seamlessly incorporated into the story, and any readers without a Jewish background will leave this book knowing more about the faith.
The main thing that will stick with me long after putting this book down is how it illustrates that people can worship how they choose but also celebrate and connect with those who hold different beliefs. Miriam seeks advice from her extremely religious Jewish uncle but also from the Catholic priest she meets at the diner. She hears her mother’s childhood story of being taunted for her beliefs, but she also sees a group of people of varying faiths join together in prayer when it seems someone’s life is in danger. She sees people from all over the country flock to her family’s motel because they think they’ll witness a true miracle, and she decides to invite all of those people to come together and celebrate Shabbat with her family. It’s the connections between the characters that really made this story come alive for me.
No Vacancy introduces readers to a lot of big ideas, and I’m excited to add it to my school library collection.
Allison Giggey is an intermediate school teacher-librarian in Prince Edward Island.