Road to Paradise Read online

  “Do you want to tell her to get out?” I almost wished Gina would insist.

  “I feel bad,” Gina whispered. “She’s sort of cute. Like a baby.”

  I felt less inclined to think of her this way after she, ignorant on all subjects, opened her mouth, and in twenty seconds spoke the kind of truth to power I had spent eighteen cold years avoiding. I had just pretended to assume Lorna Moor would be overjoyed I had forgiven her, had come looking for her. That she would be guilt-ridden, receptive, apologetic. So I was contemplating letting off the tattooed hitchhiker with a belly ring before we got a room. Waking her up by repeatedly calling her name louder and louder, I said, when she finally lifted herself into a sitting position, “Hey, listen, we kinda have to stop for the night. You mind if we let you off at the next rest stop?”

  She said nothing. Not yes, not no, just sat there, and let my words hang in the stale air.

  “Oh, what the hell,” I said. “Fine. But we’ll drop you off tomorrow in St. Louis.”

  She said nothing.

  If she was trouble, I figured we’d be dead already. “Tomorrow. In St. Louis,” I repeated.

  We found a Comfort Inn for $37 (well below budget!), and were given a room on the first floor with two double beds. I parked my car right outside the door, and Gina quipped that if I could, I’d sleep with it. Candy used the bathroom first, showered, washed her underwear and hung it out to dry on the shower rod.

  “What?” Gina said to me quietly. “She couldn’t buy an extra pair at the place she bought that slutty skirt?”

  “Maybe they don’t sell underwear in places like that.”

  She put on a bra and new underwear, then knelt down in front of the bed. I thought she was looking for something, but she closed her eyes and then crawled under the covers, and with a little sigh was asleep, with all the lights on, the water from the bathroom running, the front door still open, us bringing things in and out, dogs barking, the radio going. Just asleep. I wanted to check inside her hobo, but she was clutching it like a stuffed animal.

  Gina and I took the dogs for a walk to talk about her. The night was stifling hot in Normal, Illinois. No cool salty breezes from the Long Island Sound like in Larchmont. “She is so weird!” Gina exclaimed.

  “I know. Did you see her kneeling?”

  “What was that all about? What do you propose we do with her?”

  I tapped on the car. “Wanna hop in, take our stuff, and take off? We’ll leave her a couple of bucks by the bedside.” I giggled.

  “Seriously, though,” said Gina.

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?”

  “This was your great idea. Are you really going to let her off in St. Louis?”

  “I guess.”

  Gina was quiet. “I don’t want her going with us to California.”

  “God, no, never! St. Louis, I said.”

  “Promise? I really don’t want to spend another night with her. She creeps me out.”

  I hemmed and hawed. I didn’t want to promise, just in case Gina accused me again of my word not being good. “We have to go back up to I-80 anyway.”

  “Why would she come with us all the way south to St. Louis,” Gina wondered, “if she needs to stay on I-80 herself?”

  I agreed it was weird.

  “You see what I mean? You gotta talk to her. You gotta set her straight.”

  “Why should I talk to her? What can I do?”

  “This was your bright idea.”

  Back in the room, Candy was curled up on her side, hands under her cheek, blankets pulled to her neck, sweetly sleeping. I sighed. Gina sighed.

  I, terrified of the unknown, had invited the unknown into my car! But she was just a kid, like Molly, except sweet, and slept like a baby who’d found her crib, peaceful, not stirring, not making a sound. We crated the dogs, and together got into the other bed. I was impressed by how peaceful this chick looked as she slept. I couldn’t stop staring. Gina turned off the lights and we lay in the dark, just the air conditioner humming, dripping water onto the stained carpet. No noise from our hitchhiker. Well, sure. She’d taken off her baubles and beads and laid them on the bedside. “How do you figure she can sleep like this?” I whispered to Gina. “She doesn’t have a car, doesn’t have a penny, has almost no clothes, is wholly dependent on the kindness of strangers, and has no idea how she’s going to get ten miles from here, yet sleeps like that.”

  “Ignorance is bliss,” said Gina. “Did you see? She knows nothing.”

  “I know! Amazing, isn’t it?”

  We stopped talking. We were tired. But I was thinking—perhaps Candy was ignorant, and didn’t go to high school and hadn’t read Huck Finn, but how come in thirty seconds of hearing about my mother, she asked the question I, with all my high school diplomas and Scholastic Aptitude Tests never even thought of? How come they didn’t ask me this on the SAT analogies: Mother is to Shelby as Candy is to wealth. Really far away.

  3

  Comfort

  I couldn’t sleep. The unfaded imprint of Candy’s hands on my life’s quest was causing havoc inside me. I crawled out of bed, opened the door, and in my T-shirt and sleeping shorts, tip-toed barefoot on the paved walkway down the row of motel doors and called Emma collect from the public phone outside the ice machine. We had crossed one time zone. I thought it was only midnight in Larchmont. But when Emma picked up the phone and accepted the charges, she said, “My God, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s two in the morning, Shelby,” said Emma. “I figured you wouldn’t be calling unless you were dead.” I had calculated the time zone one hour in the wrong direction. “Shelby,” said Emma, “I hope you’re better with directions than you are with time. Because driving west and not east might cause a slight delay.”

  Emma was joking! If she only knew.

  “I just . . . ​wanted to say hi,” I said. We chatted for a few minutes. She asked me how the money was holding out, how the car handled, if I was eating enough, because sometimes I forgot to eat, how Gina and I were getting along, if we were in any trouble. And then I said, “Emma, please tell me, why did my mother leave my father?”

  “Oh, child. I don’t know,” she said. “You called all the way from Illinois to ask me this?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking about in Normal.”

  “I don’t know why she left,” she said sincerely. “I didn’t know your mom very well. She was closed up. Perhaps she was disappointed.”

  “With what?”

  “With your dad, maybe. With her life.”

  “But she must have loved him to marry him, right?”

  Emma was quiet. “They never actually had a wedding.”

  “They eloped?”

  A prolonged cough.

  “They went to Vegas?”

  A weigh-your-words silence followed. “Shel, hon, don’t be upset. They were never married.”

  When I hung up the phone, I was so sorry I called. Why did it make a difference to me? So he never gave Lorna Moor a ring. So what. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. Like Eddie and Gina. Eddie hangs around, has a little fun, goes to clubs, has a few drinks. Gina gets knocked up, and suddenly she’s home with a squaller and he’s still in bars. And then Gina runs off, and now Eddie’s home with a squaller. And he still goes to bars—and look what happened.

  Candy’s words sprang once more to my ears, rasping in the chirping night. I realized that I had called Emma wanting one answer, got another, one I emphatically did not want, and now was stuck with it, but I had never asked myself the Candy question, and I should have. What answer did I want, truth or comfort?

  I wanted comfort.

  FIVE

  THE ROAD TO ST. LOUIS

  1

  A Little Buddha

  In the morning, I couldn’t wake up; bricks were on my head. When I finally craned my head from the pillow, I saw that the dogs were gone, the girls were gone. For one br
ief moment, through the haze of sleep, it felt as if they had never been on this trip with me. I was alone, and fleetingly, I was not afraid.

  I found them outside near the ’Stang. Gina was unwrapping a cherry Blow Pop, her breakfast, I assumed, and perching on the hood of my car, legs crossed, hair in long braids to keep the heat from her head, smiling like a school girl, chatting to—

  Well, chatting to Candy. She, too, was sitting cross-legged on top of the car, sucking a lollipop in the sunshine. Hair spiked, eyes caked with black makeup and adorned with cheap jewelry, she wore a barely there jean skirt and a backless thin yellow halter, which displayed her flower-power tattoos to good effect. More Alice Cooper than schoolgirl. A Sex Pistols Lolita, part of the punk movement, and a symbol of rebellion, except, of course, that this schoolgirl had never heard of the Sex Pistols or the punk rebellion. This was the kind of girl your mother, if you had one, would pull you away from on the street, whispering vehemently, “Stay away from the likes of her, do you hear me?”

  It took me an hour to shower and clear out. I bought some aspirin, chewed it like one of Truman Capote’s crippled killers, and began driving again. It was lunchtime. What was happening to me? I, who always went to bed at ten and got up at six, was now sleeping till noon. I had been replaced by a pod zombie.

  “I kind of like her,” Gina whispered to me before we got in the car. “I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I do. She’s so sweet and dumb. It’s endearing. We had a fun time talking while you slept.”

  Ignorance of physics was preoccupying bliss. Trying to figure out how many hours went into 220 miles if we kept a speed of 70 miles an hour took us nearly 70 miles. But what if we stopped? What if we had to gas up? What if we went 68 miles an hour for 47 minutes and 75 miles an hour for 54 minutes?

  Candy took my mind off physics for a stretch of the interstate between Normal and Lincoln. She was so sunny. Her lipstick wasn’t as heavy, and she smiled all the time, even tried to bounce along to “Hot Child in the City.” Sitting up and looking pretty.

  “Candy, come on, tell us, where are you headed?”

  “Paradise.” She was still bopping.

  Ah. She responded to direct questions.

  “Paradise, where is that?”

  “Somewhere in California. North of I-80, though.”

  “Oh, California, really, what do you know?” said Gina, widening her eyes at me. “So you’re going to California.”

  “Yes. To a place called Paradise. But I’m pretty sure there’s a place called Paradise everywhere. Don’t you think, Gina?”

  She was uncanny, this Candy. It was as if she had already figured out that Gina was a triviaphile. Appealing to Gina’s trivially investigative nature, Candy sent my braided friend into a flurry of atlas activity that occupied her from Normal to Lincoln.

  “So, what’s in Paradise?” I asked Candy in the meantime.

  “Nothin’. Just some loose ends.”

  “Are you staying there?”

  “Yuck,” she replied. “Not for a second longer than necessary.”

  “Are you in a hurry to get there?”

  “Well,” she said carefully, “let’s say I’m not not in a hurry.”

  “Illinois has a Paradise!” Gina exclaimed.

  “Of course it does,” said Candy.

  The ratio of trucks to cars on the interstate was ten to one; they were flanking and passing us. Candy was lowered on the backseat, Gina stuck in the atlas looking for Paradise in Missouri and Montana.

  “Gina,” Candy said, after some time had passed, “you can stop looking now. Trust me when I tell you there’s a Paradise in every state.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because man names things.”

  “What?”

  Candy shrugged. “Gina, a version of Jane, female of John, Christ’s apostle.”

  “Whose apostle?” Gina was stunned. I was stunned. Did she just say Christ? She seemed to be the kind of girl who wouldn’t know who Christ was, much less use a word like apostle.

  “What about Shelby?” I almost held my breath: like maybe my name was a version of one of Christ’s apostles also.

  “Shall Be. Not formed yet.”

  “Who’s not formed? Shelby?” Gina laughed.

  But I said nothing, constantly feeling my own hunger for things I had not found and didn’t know how to look for. My mouth opened a little bit, then closed again. Interestingly Candy said nothing. Then, quietly she added, “A name is much more than a way to set you apart from me.”

  “Candy, forgive me for saying,” said Gina, “but I think more than my name sets you apart from me.”

  “That’s true. And you’re forgiven,” said Candy, continuing. “A name reveals the very essence of the thing. To name a thing is to show the value God gave it. It’s the capacity to bless God. Hence . . . Paradise in every state.”

  Dumbfounded we did not speak again until Candy said, “Maryland. Mary’s Land.”

  We waited. She said nothing. Then: “Virginia. The Holy Virgin.”

  We said nothing. She said, “Florida.”

  “I also can recite the names of states,” said Gina. “Indiana. Ohio. Tennessee.”

  “Florida comes from a Spanish phrase meaning Pascua de Florida,” said Candy. “Paskha is the Orthodox word for Easter. Florida is flowers. Feast of the Flowers, meaning Easter.”

  How did a girl who knew nothing and read nothing know this? Candy was scooted down on the seat again. “Gina, come on, look away from South Dakota for a sec, talk to me instead,” she drawled. “Eddie and Gina. Gina and Eddie.” She shook her head. “So why did he go to California and leave you in New York?”

  Gina, looking away from South Dakota for a moment and forgetting that it was dangerous to tell Candy things, said, “He didn’t leave me in New York. I was in school.”

  “And he?”

  “He dropped out. Like you.”

  “At thirteen?”

  “No, he just didn’t graduate high school. Eddie,” Gina said proudly, “is a genius, and school bores him.” She began tracing the list of names again.

  “Hmm.” Candy leaned forward between the seats. “How does he know he’s a genius?”

  “He took an IQ test and was tested at 169. Aha, yes! Paradise in South Dakota.”

  “Hey!” Candy said happily, “maybe I’m a genius, too. School bores the shit out of me.”

  “He was tested,” Gina declared loftily, flipping the atlas page to Tennessee.

  “But that’s not why he’s a genius, is it? He didn’t become a genius because he was tested, right? That’s what I’m saying. Maybe I’m a genius, and just don’t know it.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Gina. “Highly likely, in fact.”

  “Well, why’d he go to California and leave you behind if he’s so smart?” Candy wanted to know. “You’re pretty, guys must be beating down doors to get to you. Why would he leave you?”

  Don’t do it, Gina, I mouthed, but Gina, smiling happily after being told she was pretty, opened her entire heart and told Candy that he left to go visit his mother, that he was going to follow Gina to the teaching college in upstate New York where she was going in the fall, but while visiting his mother, he had hooked up with an old girlfriend. Gina said Eddie had become confused and was thinking of marrying this girl.

  “He was confused so he thought he’d marry her?” Candy repeated dumbly. “Is confusion grounds for marriage?”

  Now Gina was confused.

  “I thought you called him your fiancé?”

  “I did. He is. We’re going to get married. Not yet; after I graduate college, but that’s our plan.”

  “But if he’s going to marry this other chick, why are you going to California?”

  “To stop him from making a foolish mistake, obviously,” Gina said. “He doesn’t love her. He loves me. He just gets confused sometimes. Doesn’t he, Sloane?”

  I didn’t even glance at Gina, but Candy stared at both of us from the back
, from one head to the other, and slowly said, “Why would Shelby know if your boyfriend Eddie sometimes gets confused about who he wants to marry?”

  “No, not marry, just . . . Eddie likes the girls, doesn’t he, Sloane?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, staring straight ahead. Soon I’d need directional help. From who, though? They were both hopeless. I’d have to pull over. I was deliberately avoiding Candy’s eyes staring narrowly at me in the rearview mirror. “Gina, open to Illinois,” I said, “and tell me where we are.”

  We were near Sherman.

  “The thick is plottening,” Candy drawled. “I find you both fascinating. You been friends a long time?”

  “We were good friends once,” Gina said.

  “I just bet.” Candy sat back against the black vinyl, smiling. “Oh, yes.” She closed her eyes, but not before giving me a glance through the looking glass.

  “Candy, can I ask you,” I said, desperately trying to change the subject, “why do you drop low like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, like now. You’re practically lying on the dog crate. Why?”

  “Just trying to get comfortable.”

  “On the dog crate?” But she wasn’t getting comfortable. She dropped down like a helmeted head in a trench. Last night when it was dark, after fine dining at Burger King, she sat up between the seats and never lowered herself. Perhaps she didn’t need to get comfortable then.

  Being in a small car on the interstate, driving to St. Louis surrounded by trucks keeping to a steady fifty-five, knowing you’re not headed in the right direction, trapped and hot, hungry and frustrated—there’s nothing like it. We chattered idly, whiling away the miles. I kept checking the clock, the mileage. How much farther could this St. Louis be? We stopped a couple of times to eat, gas up, and walk the dogs, but it was a seemingly endless, stifling afternoon confined in a car with the AC failing.

  “It’s broiling,” complained Gina.

  “Well, it is summer,” said Candy.

  “Oh, doesn’t she sound like a little Buddha,” snapped Gina, irritable like a rusted crank.