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Stevie spent a great deal of her childhood at the Motel unaware of the life long effect it would bestow upon her. Stevie’s mother was a single parent who had to work two jobs to make ends meet. It wasn’t ideal, and her mother tried as best she could to spend time with her, but Stevie understood the circumstances. Still, her mother worried about Stevie not having proper supervision and not getting enough attention. She asked her aunt, Maureen, if Stevie could hang out at the Motel after school. Maureen agreed to a trial run as long as Stevie didn’t interfere with her working the front desk or become a nuisance to the Motel guests. The trial run was short lived as Stevie proved to be a loner who kept to herself. Day after day she beamed up at the Motel’s looming stature as soon as she stepped off the school bus. She didn’t know her great aunt very well so Stevie had been nervous about what to expect.
Stevie soon found that Maureen and she were very similar. They didn’t like talking unless they had something to say. Maureen shared her preference for a quiet environment, which Stevie had realized when the customer service bell had been glued together. It added to the aesthetic that a front desk should have without the functionality. Maureen loved to read so when time permitted she would settle next to Stevie on the office’s couch where they would read together. Stevie initially read whatever books the guests left behind but the slight variations in romance plot lines did nothing to pique her interest in reading. She finally took Maureen’s suggestions and started checking out books from the library every week.
Stevie enjoyed playing in the yard behind the Motel because it was a private area reserved for staff. She liked throwing stones into the creek that ran along the Motel’s property line. She’d peek into the room windows resulting in her seeing a lot of things she was definitely too young for. When the weather was dreary she’d camp out in the manager’s quarters with a book. There was a fireplace that kept her toasty warm even on the coldest of days. Maureen stocked Stevie’s favorite snacks and kept a perfunctory eye on her but she didn’t have a lot of downtime to provide Stevie with more than that. Stevie liked hanging out in her favorite pockets of the Motel by herself anyway. As Stevie got a little older, Maureen would offer her a few bucks for doing small jobs around the Motel. Stevie never accepted it, though, because she didn't do it for the money. In the end, the Motel had served as the babysitter her mother had been hoping for.
As Stevie aged into adolescence she stopped going to the Motel every day. She had more freedom once she got a car, but she hadn’t stopped going to the Motel completely. The area out back that was once a childhood wonder had transformed into a place where she could smoke weed. She’d listen to the faint trickling of the creek while staring into the void that was being a teenager stuck in a small town. When room availability allowed she’d use them to have her body celebrated in a safe place, on her own terms.
Stevie and the Motel had a lot of similarities, too despite the Motel being a building. They were both simple in appearance. Stevie with jeans and flannel and the motel with a red sign that said, well, Motel. As such, the beauty that danced along their edges often went unnoticed. They weren’t aiming to impress anyone with bells and whistles. The Motel’s amenities were basic and it was three stars, at best, but it was comfortable and inviting. If people didn’t like it they could travel the extra 45 minutes to Elmdale. They were both low maintenance entities, despite being broken in their own ways. They held each other’s shards in place with muscle and mortar and it grounded them beyond compare. Stevie never assigned the Motel to a gender nor gave it a name because those weren’t her decisions to make. Until the Motel declared it for itself she left it well enough alone. If the day did, in fact, come where the Motel started speaking to her she was jumping ship because, fuck that.
Stevie started working the front desk part-time when she was sixteen. It gave Maureen a break and Stevie had shown her competence ten times over. Spending all of her time at the motel made it easier for Stevie to ignore what her heart yearned for. A relationship, legitimate friendships, future goals, anything that would allow her to embrace joy. Then again, she wasn’t sure if these were things she wanted or if they were things she was supposed to want. They all came with the risk of being rejected or judged and it was all too much. She withdrew from others and prioritized the Motel instead. The Motel was happy to oblige Stevie’s need for solitude. She never felt alone within its walls and the Motel never felt her presence as an intrusion. The give and take, the nurturer and the nurtured dynamic gave them everything they needed.
Stevie should have majored in hospitality or business management when she went to college, but she hadn’t. The Motel already gave her the confidence she needed to run a business if she wanted to. And she didn’t think of the Motel as a business, anyway. Instead, she pursued a degree in literature because she didn't know what else to choose. She had worked at the Motel for most of her life and she didn’t see that changing any time soon so why not study something she enjoyed? She commuted to college in order to save money which allowed her to complete her coursework while she ran the front desk. The motel was where she fell in love with reading, so what better place?
Stevie was playing solitaire on The Motel’s computer to kill time until the afternoon check ins just like any other morning. Her game was interrupted when she received a phone call alerting her that her great aunt Maureen had passed away. Stevie couldn’t even remember the last time she saw her, thus her age hadn’t been in the forefront of Stevie’s mind. The next day a woman named Elaine from West, Read, and Healey came to The Motel with Maureen’s personal effects and paperwork that required Stevie’s signature. It was then that she learned her aunt had willed the Motel to her. She was asked to sign paperwork and in her state of shock she did, without even knowing what it was. When she thought about it she never actually knew who owned the motel. She knew it was in the family but she hadn’t known that Maureen owned it outright. Stevie first questioned whether Maureen was of sound mind. Then, she remembered that everyone on that side of the family was either dead or in prison so she supposed it made sense. Stevie wasn’t sure whether Maureen truly wanted her to have the Motel or if it was just a process of elimination. It was too late to ask and the result would still be the same so it wouldn’t have mattered either way.
Stevie was thirty-years-old and by anyone else’s standards she was considered to be an adult. Stevie, on the other hand, would argue that she was anything but. She could barely keep food in her refrigerator let alone run an entire motel by herself. Stevie started going through Maureen’s personal effects to distract her from the Earth shattering bomb that had just been dropped on her. She wasn’t shocked when the box was only half full because Maureen had been a minimalist. If the sad representation of everything in the box was anything to go by it didn’t seem like that had changed. She wondered why these things had been sent to her at all because as far as Stevie could tell none of it had any value. She kept sifting through the box and paused when she found an old picture of Maureen.
She was sitting on a rock in front of a still lake. She looked happy, carefree even. It was dated shortly after Maureen had pulled back from managing the day to day responsibilities at the Motel. She tossed the photo aside and started rummaging through the contents again. She was surprised to find another photo, this time of herself when she was ten-years-old. Maureen wasn’t a sentimental person so Stevie wondered why she’d keep this photo of her after all this time. Maybe she sent it to Stevie as a message that she’d enjoyed having her at the Motel more than she let on. Neither of them excelled at sincerity so it’d make more sense for Maureen to send her an ambiguous photo amongst a pile of junk than give her a heartfelt deathbed confession.
In the photo, she was kneeling along the Motel’s walkway planting flowers of all different colors. The knees of her jeans were stained with dirt signaling that this was not the first time they’d been soiled. The flowers were placed in straight, meticulous rows. There was a bag of mulch on her right and a watering can on her left. Stevie scanned the rest of the photo and she barely recognized what she saw. The parking lot was full of cars, people busying themselves with collecting their luggage and children chasing after one another. The paint on The Motel was yellow and vibrant as opposed to the pale almost sickly color of the present. The paint wasn’t chipping off and the shutters on the windows weren’t hanging on for dear life. It was summer and Stevie was flooded by memories that had long been forgotten. She realized that she had always taken care of the motel in one way or another.
It was then that her doubts abated and she knew she could do this not only for herself, but for the Motel, too. She could step up to any challenge and take care of the Motel just as she always had. She could be brave for them even though she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing. It would be a moment of growth for Stevie, though, and the Motel by extension. The upkeep and daily responsibilities she’d done flawlessly for most of her life suddenly became overwhelming. Stevie's relationship with the Motel shouldn’t have felt different just because her name was on the deed, but it did. Prior to inheriting the Motel, Stevie viewed her role as a reciprocated babysitter. Now, that she owned the Motel, she had a newfound surge to protect it. They weren’t on an equal playing field anymore and Stevie didn’t know what that meant for them. She alone would have to make decisions that were in the best interest of their survival.
The pressure she felt wasn’t unlike that of a new mother. Except in this instance, the baby was a 4,300 square ft building with ten bedrooms and eight bathrooms to clean. It needed heat and electricity not only for itself, but to continue providing a stay that felt like home to every guest. It was much more expensive than diapers and formula and required time that she wasn't always able to give. At times, it made her think of her mother who worked tirelessly and sacrificed so much for her. Stevie could now relate to the heartbreak and guilt her mother felt about coming up short despite her best efforts. Stevie regretted not telling her how much she appreciated her back then but she hoped her mother knew anyway. A building isn’t the same as a living person, but the inability to meet its needs seemed close enough.
Stevie’s confidence had started to wane because her decisions would determine whether she could keep them afloat or lead them into bankruptcy. She could watch the Motel die a long, slow death where its tears flooded the pipelines, and its foundation cracked from the heaviness it felt. They could hang on hoping for a savior who wouldn’t come or until the Motel’s windows were boarded up because she wouldn’t give up on them. She’d have to jump a fence with a no trespass sign in order to visit it. The only way she could still show her affection would be by leaving flowers at its doorstep that would be long dead by the time she returned. Maybe, as much as it would kill her, she should leave The Motel’s fate in the hands of another owner. Could she watch from afar as someone else brought it back to the greatness it once was? Or, even worse, could she handle the pain of their bond being broken by one swing of a wrecking ball? Either way, would it really matter in the end? Stevie and the Motel had always been in this together. They’d faced repairs, rude guests, and the hurt that followed Stevie’s opened wounds. If they could get through that then maybe they really could get through anything.
The Motel had held its own after all this time by mirroring Stevie’s scrappy nature. It was likewise stubborn against wear and tear such as not letting the wind blow the shingles off of its roof. Stevie left every night knowing that the Motel would still be standing tall when she returned in the morning. The Motel’s message of I got you not only kept their relationship strong but it became Stevie’s silent business partner. She wished the Motel knew how to make spreadsheets or file paperwork, but she’d take what she could get. The Motel was outdated by more than a decade but Stevie made the most out of the very, very little they had. When a room needed repainting she did it herself. She taped every corner of the ceiling, she moved the furniture away from the walls, and she put tarps down to catch dripping paint. She mowed the lawn, kind of, because there was no one who would do it for free. She tried watching youtube tutorials to save money on repairs but the Motel had made it clear that it did not appreciate the electrical shocks that ensued. She learned an assortment of handyperson skills that usually ended in an apologetic at least I tried.
She found that she was better at coming up with life hacks that made things look and work better than they actually did. They could be fiddled with in between guests and she hoped no one would be the wiser. Everything she did was minuscule compared to the renovations it desperately needed but Stevie couldn’t afford much else. It was better than nothing and it allowed her to give back to the Motel when it had already given so much to her. The Motel could only reciprocate its affection in small gestures as well. It soaked up the sun and used it to envelope her in positive energy. It reflected the sunlight off of the office windows making it brighter than it was anywhere else.
The Motel never felt like an obligation because as much as she loved being there it had never defined her. She could still separate herself to partake in other things without feeling neglectful. Although the Motel and she had never fused their identities she still considered the role they played in the community as a team effort. she did consider it to be an important part of the community. Everyone had a part to play such as a waitress, a mechanic, or a general store. Stevie provided lodging for wayward teenagers and truck drivers because they were people, too and their money was just as good as anyone else’s.
Stevie thought about changing the Motel’s name now that she owned it. It was technically called the Schitt’s Creek Motel, but everyone referred to it as the Motel because that’s what was written on the front. Stevie figured that having a stand out name might draw more business but ultimately she decided to keep it the same. Stevie cringed when her formal first name was used so it didn’t seem fair to give the Motel’s facade a facelift and expect it be something it wasn’t. The Motel already stuck out because it was the only one in town unless people wanted to drive an additional 45 minutes to Elmdale. The Motel’s proximity still didn’t keep the no vacancy sign on, but it was enough to break even each month.
It had been a long three years following Stevie’s inheritance of the Motel. It had taken a lot of time and energy on both of their parts, but they were still hanging on. Then, one day, everything changed when a greyhound bus pulled into the Motel’s parking lot. In the few years that followed the Motel could breathe fresh air again when it had been accustomed to gasping for the stagnant fumes that sat heavy in its unused rooms. Stevie could finally take steady breaths too, because their savior had finally come.