Road to Paradise Read online

  “I didn’t know you were going to take my advice so much to heart, Sloane,” Gina said bitterly. “Didn’t you know I was full of shit?”

  I did know. I just didn’t want to think about it. I wanted what I wanted. “You had John, Gina.”

  “But you knew I loved Eddie!” she cried.

  “Yes, but you said you loved John, too!” I cried back.

  “We were best friends,” she said. “You don’t do that to your best friend.”

  “We weren’t best friends. You were best friends with Agnes. You replaced me. I was a stand-in friend, a substitute. You knew I didn’t like her, yet you dragged her into our friendship and didn’t care how I felt about it.”

  “I thought we could all be friends.”

  “I hated her guts! How could I be friends with someone I hate?” I got scared and lowered my voice. I didn’t want Estevan Rio to come knocking on the door asking why we were shouting in the abbey and why Gina was so upset.

  “So you betrayed me because you didn’t think we were friends anymore?”

  “That’s right,” I said in a tiny voice.

  “But, Shelby,” she said intensely, “you know that I still thought we were best friends.”

  My head so low, I said, “I’m sorry, Gina.”

  She turned away. “Too late for sorrys,” she said, lying down on a bed that was hard as a tombstone.

  And I didn’t say what was a hot brick in my throat, in my heart. Gina! I didn’t say, I know you’re upset with me. But for a second, think about me, and how I feel, knowing that the boy I thought was the love of my life, chose you, not me, to be with, to love. He had a choice. Stay with me, or go with you. And he did not stay with me. I know you might say it’s my just punishment, but think how this makes me feel—about you, about him, about myself.

  I lay down on my own bed. We didn’t speak after that. There was nothing to say. Elton John was wrong. Sorry wasn’t the hardest word. I said it aplenty. I sang it from the rooftops. Love was the hardest word. What could I do, Gina? was what was hardest to say. Forgive me. I loved the bum. I don’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to ask me the follow-up: do you still love him? On top of all my other sins I don’t want to lie to you in an abbey.

  A restless night passed and a silent, restless morning. We had slept turned to the wall in all our clothes. Possibly I cried. Or dreamt about crying. A monk brought us our Spartan breakfast—a piece of bread and some black tea. I asked him when the next service was, and he looked at me like I was asking when his next breath was. “Terce at 9:15,” he said brusquely and vanished. We ate, I took a shower, and while Gina was taking hers, I sneaked out and meandered my way out of the maze through the cloisters back to the front of the abbey, where I tip-toed into the tabernacle. The men in white and black were chanting. I sat and closed my eyes to the morning. Open my eyes that I may see . . . they chanted. I am a stranger in the earth . . . My soul breaks with longing . . .

  Lauds, Mass, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline, Opus Dei . . .

  Gina and Candy pulled me out. The monks were still chanting. “Terce is long,” Candy said.

  “Ironic, that.”

  “Did you want to get going?” she asked. “We’ve been here two days.”

  “Have we? Oh, what’s the rush? You haven’t seen your father in years. I don’t want to cut short your visit. I know how hard it must be. I understand. Take all the time you need.” I glared at Gina’s glaring. “All the time you need. Never mind us. We’ll be fine. Right, Gina?” I turned to go back inside, to listen to them finish.

  “No,” Gina hissed. “Not right. We won’t be fine. We’ve got two thousand miles to go!”

  “Oooh.” I waved my dismissing hand at her. “Look at you, always rush, rush. A couple of days isn’t going to kill us.”

  Candy took me by the arms. “Sloane, you are too funny. But here, I have to agree with Gina. We have to go.” She shook me lightly. “Come on, snap out of it. You’ve sat through all the hours. Twice. Besides,” she added, her voice teasing, “Gina will have no hair left soon.”

  “Oh, nuts,” said Gina, not teasing. “So she is coming with us? I thought we might leave her.” She waved her hand with irritation. “You know what? Get me to Bakersfield, then do what you like. I won’t care then. I’ll be with Eddie. But let’s go.”

  Slowly I shuffled back to the guest room to get my things. “Still don’t know what the rush is,” I kept grumbling. “After the dogs and the aunts, and two days at the casinos, everybody’s acting like their dog’s on fire.”

  “I’ll sing the Psalms for you in the car,” Candy said. “Any one you want. You see they repeat them so that they sing all 150 every two weeks. Every two weeks, for eleven years. I know them all by heart.”

  Gina was skeptical but apathetic in the muggy morning, which, she pointed out, was hardly morning as it was nearly noon. “Sloane, how far do you plan to drive today?” she asked sourly. “More than sixty miles, I hope. Because that’s about what we drove three centuries ago when we first got to this godforsaken place.”

  Estevan was at the car with Candy. I sat behind the wheel, while Gina stood impatiently, tapping her foot, waiting for them to say goodbye so that Candy could get in the back.

  “You know, you could get in the back,” I suggested pleasantly. “That way you don’t have to wait.”

  “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” snapped Gina. “No way. She’s not even supposed to be here. She gets in the back.”

  I strained to listen to Candy and her father, but they were saying things to each other I didn’t understand.

  “Remember the Publican first, child,” said Estevan.

  “I never forget,” said Candy. “I don’t raise as much as my eyes.”

  “Remember Cassia. Remember what she wrote, what she sang about in Luke 10. No one is deprived of absolution, no one. He is forgiven much who loves much.”

  “And I love much,” Candy whispered. “Which is good, since I have to be forgiven for much also.”

  “Out of my heart for you flow rivers of living water,” said Estevan. “I never condemn thee. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do, Dad. Don’t speak about me to anyone. Please. And keep safe what I gave you.”

  “All right.”

  “Unless something happens to me. And then . . .”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you. All things that are impossible are made possible. Now go with God. Be a lamb among wolves.”

  “Can I be a wolf among lambs?” She smiled and took his hand.

  “Be of good cheer, Gracie.”

  “Always, Dad. You too.”

  He kissed her head and blessed it. I watched them in the sideview mirror. She stood in front of him for a little while longer, buried in his cowl and tunic, then got in the car. Estevan looked in. “May you be filled with joy,” he said to Gina, blessing her. “It is a privilege of your age.” She rolled her eyes. To me he said, “Go ahead, Shelby. Make it as secure as you can.” In mass confusion I drove out of the parking lot, and before the curve in the road, Candy turned and waved to him through the rear window. I watched him. He waved back.

  “How does it end?” I asked. “You dragged me away, and I couldn’t understand all the words, but how does that unending Psalm 119 end?”

  “Much the same way it began,” said Candy. “I have gone astray, like a lost sheep. I long for salvation. Let my soul live.”

  EIGHT

  LOOKING FOR THE MISSOURI

  1

  Gina’s Boredom

  For a while we drove in near silence, with Candy directing us out of the rambling roads of the monastery. We were trying to find U.S. 20.

  Between Gina’s boredom, Candy’s compline, and my barely felt apologies, it was implicit that Candy would come with us; we would drive her out of state and across the country. Nothing was spoken, it was just understood that was how it was going to be.

  I’m pretty sure Gina wanted it to be a
nother way, because the first thing she said was a combative, “You know your father’s logical error in that story about the Pharisees and the tomb? I mean, he’s your dad and all, Candy, and I respect that, but you know his error? It’s that you have to make anything secure at all. I’ll give you an example. Say I don’t believe there’s a Loch Ness monster in a Scottish lake. And the reason I don’t believe there is one, is because there isn’t one. Would I really need to make my boat secure against it?”

  “I don’t understand your comparison,” said Candy with a puzzled stare into the rearview mirror at me. She scooted to sit toward the middle between us.

  I said, “That’s because you haven’t taken the SATs, Candycane, and don’t know about analogies.” I glanced at Gina. “Don’t make trouble. And in any case, your analogy sucks.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It does,” I said. “The Loch Ness monster is something horrible that eats people.”

  Gina was quiet with meaning. “I rest my case,” she said. “How can you have faith in something like that?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “You come on.” We hadn’t been on the road five minutes. Maybe this was Gina’s payback for Buddha. I sped up. Maybe if I drove eighty, she’d stop talking.

  “I’ll give you another comparison,” Gina said. “Witches. Warlocks. Ghosts. Ghouls. The Cyclops. Zeus. If you don’t believe in them, why would you need to secure that rock?”

  Candy’s expression was too serene for a fight. She wasn’t in it. She was still trying to guide me onto U.S. 20, to scratch the soles of her feet. She casually said, “Honestly, I don’t get your comparisons. Are you mocking God with metaphor? The Pharisees and high priests, who didn’t believe he was God, like you, still asked for the stone to be guarded. Why would they need to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they suspected foul play.”

  “That’s what they said, yes,” said Candy.

  “Maybe they suspected the disciples would steal him away and pretend he had risen.”

  “Are these the same disciples that abandoned him and hid away in fear of their own lives, fully believing that all they had been taught was gone and God was dead?”

  Gina said testily, yes, those same disciples. “Clearly the Pharisees thought they might kidnap him.”

  “Imagine their surprise, then, when Pilate, instead of saying, don’t be silly, you lumpfish, said to them dryly, ‘Go ahead. Make it as secure as you can.’ What do you think they made of that?”

  Gina tutted impatiently.

  “Why would he say that?” continued Candy. “Was he laughing at them? And why would they need to make it secure? To use your Loch Ness analogy, would you need to make anything secure against something that had no probability of being true? If someone told you, you needed to close your windows because locusts the size of cats would fly through your curtains, you’d laugh, wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t go to the mayor and say, perhaps we need to cement our windows in case cats with wings come calling in the next day or two? Dear Mayor, we’re afraid the Joneses down the road might fake people out by rigging some flying cats. What can we do?” Candy chuckled in good humor. “Clearly the Pharisees were afraid Jesus rising from the dead might come true, could come true, and Pilate, calmly, and without himself questioning anything, said the worst thing, from their point of view, he could say. He didn’t say they were silly to worry. He wasn’t skeptical. He didn’t roll his eyes. He didn’t even tell them to make a superfluous effort. He said: Go ahead. Keep watch. But by all means, do your best. Make it as secure as you can. That doesn’t sound to me like Loch Ness, is my point.”

  “It’s all nonsense, is my point,” Gina said. “You can live out your whole life, and never think about any of this, never sing the Psalms and die unrepentant and completely happy.”

  “You’re so right,” said Candy with a hearty nod. “You can live out your whole life and never think about any of this.”

  Up and down the hills I drove, between fields and trees, corn husks littering the road, beneath a relentless gray sky filled with swift-flying swallows. The morning was overcast and thick and all I could hear was the echo of the monks singing.

  “What does that mean?” Gina said after an hour had passed. “Why do I have a feeling you were trying to insult me and I missed it?”

  “Candy, can you sing Psalm 150?” I asked.

  “Don’t change the subject, Sloane,” said Gina.

  “I didn’t know there was a subject.”

  Turning up Supertramp on the radio, Gina turned to the window. “Well, I don’t want to hear the Psalms,” she said. “I’m all psalmed out.”

  “I think someone is afraid of the spiritual pressure of the monastery,” said Candy lightly.

  When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful . . .

  When that song was over, Gina turned down the radio. “You want to know what your problem is?”

  “No,” replied the amiable Candy.

  “You refuse to accept that you could be wrong, that other people might have a different opinion.”

  “What opinion?”

  “About your little abbey, and your little Psalms and your little God.”

  “My little God?” Candy repeated.

  “Yes. My aunt believed in God. Look where that got her. Dead.”

  “Do you think she got dead because she believed in God?”

  “Clearly it didn’t help!”

  “Clearly.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “Um—can I ask what god was this?”

  “No. ’Cause it’s a stupid question. A god that couldn’t help my poor aunt, that’s what god. In other words, a useless god.”

  “But that’s what I’m asking. When Moses went to Mount Sinai to meet God, his people prayed to the golden calf. He was pretty mad when he came down that mountain. Smashed the stone tablets to pieces.”

  “My aunt didn’t pray to the fucking golden calf, Candy,” Gina said slowly, turning around. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re right, nothing. Let’s drop it.”

  “Yes, let’s,” I said. “Candy, sing me Psalm 100.”

  “No Psalms, I said!” said Gina, cranking the radio volume.

  Just as quickly, she twisted it down. “I have a goal,” she said to Candy. “I’m going to get married to a young man I love. He’s the only one I want to be with.”

  (What about Todd from South Bend? I wanted to say, but of course, of course, didn’t.)

  “We’re going to make a family,” she continued. “That’s what I want to do. I’m going to go to school, then teach elementary school. Get a little house. Have kids. Does that sound so wrong to you? What do you want to do?”

  “Gina, that’s good,” said Candy. “It’s good to know what you want at a young age. I’m glad you have your ducks all in a row. My father said he thought you did.”

  “I don’t think I do—I do!”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  Were my ducks all in a row? I had thought so, but I couldn’t say. I didn’t want to invite Gina’s scorn.

  “So, Cand,” I said, “look at those well-planted trees, those silos. Is Iowa a rich state or what?”

  “And I’d know this how?”

  Gina didn’t let me change the subject. “I like spiritual people. That’s why I followed the Swami for a while.”

  “The Swami,” Candy said slowly. “Is that who you not three seconds ago called a useless god?”

  “No! He was very spiritual for the living, and taught wonderful and helpful life lessons. He was kind and forgiving. Nothing could have helped my aunt.”

  “Okay, Gina.” I tried to diffuse her.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Candy. “Then again, perhaps you’re not.”

  “Candy, come on, let it go,” I said quietly.

  “You don’t think I’m right!” Gina exclaimed.

  “Gina, I’m allowing for the possibility you may not be r
ight, yes,” said Candy. “There is at least that possibility, no? That another God, one of comfort and love, might have helped your poor aunt?”

  “I hate religious people,” Gina declared. “They’re so judgmental and dogmatic.”

  “What’s the difference between spiritual and religious?”

  “Spiritual people are good,” said Gina. “Religious people are always telling you how to live. They’re zealots. They have this holier-than-thou attitude I can’t stand. Spiritual people just believe what they believe and don’t bother anyone else. That’s what I like. Not to be bothered.”

  “Well, sure,” said Candy. “Who wouldn’t? But am I telling you how to live?”

  “Yes! You and your father. You think I’d be better off being like you.”

  “Not at all,” said Candy. “Not in the slightest. I’d never wish that on anyone.”

  “Who are you to judge?” Gina went on. “Who are they to tell me I’m living wrong, just ’cause they wear a robe and have a cross around their necks?”

  “Is there a right way to live?” Candy asked.

  “I don’t know. No one knows! They’re guessing, just like me. We all have to figure it out for ourselves.”

  “Do we need a little help now and again?”

  “Not from them.”

  “Who is this them? And if not from them, from who, then?”

  “From other people. People you respect.”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Other people. Teachers. Politicians. Your friends. The voice inside your head. Listen to that, Cand.”