Road to Paradise Read online

  “Do you remember when you and I climbed out of my aunt’s window and went to the Library Bar in Indiana?” Gina said.

  “No,” I said, turning away from her, feeling un-young and miserly. Here I was, sitting in a smoky, loud bar where “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” was blaring and young people were hooking up, while judging Candy and counting in my head what was left of my money.

  “Why does she always need to flirt with guys?” I asked. “Why can’t she just sit with us, have a drink, go back to the hotel room, get a good night’s sleep?”

  “Tell me about it,” said Gina. We huddled together like allies. “You know yesterday in Riverton, she went off with some guy, too. I was alone for forty-five minutes, in a bar in that town! I didn’t want to tell you, didn’t want you to say I told you so. But how ridiculous is that?”

  I nodded vehemently. “It’s ridiculous. Yeah.” We clucked and tutted. Then I frowned. “But what about us in South Bend?” Was Candy right? Her flirtations were wrong, but ours, now ours were delightful!

  “I guess,” said Gina and smiled. “But that was so devastatingly fun, baby.”

  “The next day when we ran into them and they didn’t even acknowledge us,” I said, “was that fun?”

  “Who cares?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You shrugged it off then, too, but I couldn’t. Still can’t. I didn’t feel liberated. I felt diminished. Like I gave that guy something he wanted, but after I gave it to him, he held me in contempt. Why? I don’t hold him in contempt for taking it. Why does he hold me in contempt for giving it?”

  “Ask Candy. She’s got a silver spoon in her mouth, according to you. Ask her why she doesn’t care. Actually, it’s the one thing I really like about her.”

  Candy didn’t return for us to ask her. Why did it upset me so much, her going with him? He seemed nice, seemed to like her, why did it prick my heart? Tired of waiting and not wanting to pay for another beer, we left and walked back to the motel, a few blocks away. Jackson is laid out below one of the tallest mountains in the United States and the effect of the Grand Teton at night on a tiny town lying at its feet is staggering. A massive black monolith hulked threateningly over every street and alley, the thin crescent moon and the distant stars lighting up just enough of the gargantuan ebony outline to drive more foreboding into my heart. “I don’t want her to live here,” I said to Gina, hurrying along, looking at the pavement. “This place isn’t for her.”

  “How do you know? Maybe the copper fell in love with her.”

  Candy came back after midnight. We were already in bed. Gina was asleep. I had nothing to read, so I was reading Gideon’s Bible. When she returned I was leafing through “What to read when you’re feeling sorrow” and “What to read when you’re feeling lost.”

  “Where’ve you been?” I closed the book.

  “You know where I’ve been,” she said. “With Ralph.”

  I waited for her to say more.

  Candy shook her head. “He’s a nice man. I told him I was looking for a place to live. He said if I stayed in Jackson, he’d make sure I was safe.”

  “Did you tell him you have a baby in California?”

  “Not yet,” she said, smiling tiredly, taking off her little skirt.

  I examined her resigned face. “Did you tell him about Erv?” I swallowed.

  “No. Did you want me to?”

  I waited until she came back from the bathroom, her face and hands damp.

  “So are you staying?” I asked haltingly.

  “No,” said Candy. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  She got into bed.

  I chewed my lip. I was happy she was back, to have her next to me. “Gina and I were talking,” I began.

  “About me?”

  “Well . . . about the whole thing.”

  “The whole thing? Really? Because that’s a lot.”

  “Well, just the boy thing.”

  “Ralph is not a boy. He’s thirty-three.”

  I took a breath, and told her about the two Todds in South Bend.

  “Okay,” Candy said. “But what does it have to do with me?”

  “Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable that boys might feel the same way about you?”

  “Nope,” she said. “What surprises me when I think about it, and I don’t much think about it, is how often they want something so bad they’re willing to do anything to get it. To pay money for something I don’t often want for free. I make it easy, and they like it easy. But that has nothing to do with me. It’s got everything to do with them.”

  Turning slightly away, I stared at the ceiling. I’d seen a lot of ceilings on this journey with her. “Don’t you want some love, Candy?” I whispered.

  “I have love,” she said. “You don’t know yet. But someday you’ll know.”

  I thought I might already know, but I didn’t tell her that.

  The next day we got up early at seven. We didn’t want to hang around, Candy said, because Ralph was going to come looking for her.

  “Why would he come looking for you?” an exhausted Gina asked, moody like Miami weather.

  “He was pretty smitten,” said Candy. And sure enough, his patrol car was parked in the front and he was sleeping in it! Making sure he didn’t miss her. We tip-toed past him.

  “Candy, if he was that smitten,” Gina whispered, “why didn’t you stay?”

  “Gotta get my girl.”

  “So get your girl and come back.”

  “He was too nice for a girl like me,” she said. “This place’s too nice for a girl like me.”

  Not protesting I was relieved. Did you see the ominous Tetons, I wanted to ask. They were like a black premonition. It increased my speed.

  We missed the Snake River Canyon, drove right above the river, didn’t even notice it. We swept through the little towns, Alpine Junction and Freedom, Afton and Smoot, around the lee side of the Wind River Range, and then headed into Idaho, around the ragged cliffs of enormous Bear Lake that looked artificial and artificially green.

  We made a wrong turn by a tumbling river and got lost in the woods. There was construction up ahead, we took a detour and by the time we realized we were heading north, not west, we’d gone fifty miles through woodlands in the wrong direction on a winding road. Candy stared out the window the whole time.

  We were so scared, we stayed in Pocatello, Idaho, though it was nowhere we needed to be. Pocatello would have looked like Wyoming if not for the millions of birch trees lining the rocky grasslands.

  Through it all, Candy stared open-eyed at the little towns on the banks of the Idaho rivers, and I stared, too, trying to see what she might see, to imagine what she might imagine. Could I live here? I wondered when we had driven through Smoot, a tiny western town on the northern edge of the Wind River Range. Car lots and industry, smokestacks and run-ons, a banner advertising a pig race and a county fair. No department stores, shoe stores, Baskin-Robbins or pizza parlors, no McDonald’s even. Just bars and windows.

  I couldn’t live here.

  But could I, if I had to?

  Other people did. Other people maybe not like me, but like Candy? And who was like her?

  “Candy,” I asked in blisteringly sunny Logan, Utah, when Salt Lake City was within a hundred miles. “Could you take the baby and live with your dad?” He is sanctuary, I thought, in the full sense of that word.

  “You know I can’t. Tara’s five. What happens in six years when she turns eleven? They gonna boot her out, too?”

  “So don’t live in New Melleray. Live in Dubuque nearby.”

  “In Iowa?”

  “As opposed to Idaho?”

  She didn’t answer. “I can’t live that close to him,” she said at last. “You know that I’m no good. And I don’t want him to know it, to think of me like he thought of my mother.”

  “Your God knows it,” said Gina, piping into the conversation.

  “God has inexplicable and undeserved grace,” Candy replied.
“And infinite patience. I don’t want to put such an undue burden on my poor dad. Besides,” she added, “I think the earthly things weigh him down, bring him to a place he wants to get away from. He didn’t join the Trappists, that divine refuge, to be dragged down into ice-cream parties, pig tails, and time-outs.”

  “How do you know that’s what your kid is up to?”

  “Because Mike told me. He said she was a handful. He said I should feel lucky I wasn’t dealing with her every day,” Candy said, turning away from the bright green beautiful Logan so I wouldn’t hear her groan in despair.

  ELEVEN

  BEYOND THE GREAT DIVIDE

  1

  Good Samaritans

  Salt Lake was at least a city. It had gas stations and McDonald’s, it had department stores, restaurants, and coffee houses. There were mountains in the distance for beauty and the blood-orange sun melting into the mountains for awe. It was pristine, swept clean, in-ground-sprinkled, impeccable, tailored, and green. We found the address of the hotel manager Candy knew, on Seventh, at the Omni. He remembered her from his business trip to Huntington; he was mortified but happy to see her. He gave us a fantastic, ridiculously expensive room for free with a view of the Mormon Temple, and two queen beds with down quilts and pillows. He let us have room service “on the house”—which ended up costing twice the room by the time we were done ordering champagne and filet mignon. “Well, it’s not on the house,” said Candy. “But I know what you mean, Sloane.” That night Gina and I went for a walk through town to look for life in Salt Lake while Candy stayed behind at the hotel. I didn’t ask, didn’t want to, didn’t even want to think about what it was costing someone to get us down quilts, champagne, and steak for one night.

  There was no life in Salt Lake. But the thousands of flower beds in Temple Square were illuminated and impressive. “Let me tell you what I like about Salt Lake for Candy,” said Gina. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. No one would think to look for her here. It’s counterintuitive. It’s a big city—easy to hide. It’s got stuff for her to do. It’ll have schools for her baby, friends for them both. I think this may be just the ticket.”

  “You’re not thinking it through, Gina,” I said, and while strolling thus we argued about the merits and demerits of Candy’s possible move to Salt Lake.

  When we were done discussing her future life, we went back to the hotel and found her in the room getting ready to go for a drink with the off-duty bellboy. “He’s my little Mormon friend,” she said, grinning.

  “I thought Mormons don’t drink?” said Gina.

  “They don’t. I do.” She was getting dolled up. She had only two skirts, one bright blue, one denim, but every time she put one on, it looked like a different outfit. She had cheap jewelry that she alternated for effect with her pink and yellow halter tops, she varied her lipgloss and eye shadow, and managed to seem like a different girl, especially now with her cheap blonde hair. We watched as the mascara went on layer after layer.

  When Gina told her about our plan for her future, Candy listened, looking at us both like she knew something we didn’t. “You girls are cute,” she said, her eyelashes black and fake looking, her blonde hair short and fake looking. “You’re adorable. But I can’t move here. The eagle at the gates to the city stands atop an upside-down star. That may be all right for some, but not for me.” Then she left.

  “What did that mean?” I asked blankly.

  “Damned if I know,” replied Gina, turning on the TV. I tried to read, but the volume was too loud, Mary Tyler Moore reruns followed by The Odd Couple. I fell asleep with Felix Unger still on. Gina and I could’ve talked about things, but we didn’t. I didn’t want to, and I suspect she didn’t either. She just wanted this to be over, I think, like me. I don’t know what time Candy came in, but near dawn I woke briefly to find her lying next to me under the covers.

  The next morning, Candy wouldn’t wake up, no matter how much noise we made. “Check-out’s at noon,” I said into her ear. She turned her head away and pulled the blanket over her head. “In Reno by sundown,” I tried with an upward inflection, thinking the reminder of Reno would be enough to get her going. Not so. Gina and I went downstairs to get a bagel and a coffee. It was a blue-sky morning, so hot and sunny that, coffee and bagel in hand, we decided to walk to Temple Square. I didn’t like my new hairdo. I attracted entirely the wrong kind of attention to myself.

  The marble-like towers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints soared against the perfect sky like statues. But there was no cross anywhere—not on the doors, not on the cupola. The Temple also had no windows. No windows and no cross. Hmm. “Should we go in?” I asked, standing amid the glorious impatiens.

  “Why would we want to?”

  “I dunno. Just to see. We went in at New Melleray.”

  “Yes.” Gina threw out her coffee. “Okay. But then I really want to get going. We’re so close to Bakersfield.”

  If by close she meant eight or nine hundred miles through Reno, then yes. We walked up to the doors. But the church was closed, the door was locked. A man said into our back, “They won’t let you in if you’re not a member.”

  Swinging around we faced him. He was a businessman in a suit, on his way to lunch perhaps, standing at the foot of the stairs.

  “How do you know we’re not members?” I asked.

  “Members don’t try to break down the doors of the Temple when they know the Temple is closed.”

  “When does it open?”

  “Sunday. Still can’t go in. They’ll card you.”

  He walked off. There was a wedding in the square; we watched for a while, the bride in white standing next to her black-suited groom smiling for the photographer. She was dazzling, as were the blue and yellow roses behind them. I wondered if Candy had woken up. We walked out of the square and down the street past the John Smith House and Museum. “Should we stop in at the museum?” Gina asked. “Learn a little about John Smith?”

  “You want to?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m kidding. We have to get going.” At the corner of Temple and State, we stood a polite distance away from Eagle Gate, a metal arch with an eagle perched on it. This must be what Candy was talking about. “I think it’s hard to tell about the star, though,” Gina said. “Don’t you think?”

  I squinted. “Star has five points?”

  “Yes.”

  “It stands on two legs, with two arms outstretched?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the fifth and remaining tip points up?”

  “I guess.”

  We squinted some more. The star, heck, the whole gate started swimming in our eyes. We couldn’t tell anything. Except this. The eagle’s two clawed feet clearly stood on two upwardly pointing tips of the star. “Why is this significant?” I asked. “What does it mean to have the star upside down? Is that symbology or something?”

  “Why don’t you ask our resident theologian? She must be awake by now.”

  Not only was she awake, she wasn’t in the room. Her stuff was gone. The room key still worked, and the maid had not been in, though it was nearly two. Where was she? And whom to ask? I wondered if she left a note. Gina said, “Maybe she’s split.”

  My legs turned liquid. Just at the suggestion of it. “Stop it. She probably went looking for us. We didn’t tell her where we were going, why should she?”

  Where to look for her?

  We went downstairs; the bellman and the valet were standing outside in the sun near the double doors, chatting. While the valet retrieved my car, I asked the bellman if he’d seen our friend.

  “Who’s your friend?” He was not friendly.

  I looked Justin up and down. Was he pretending to be dense? Yesterday he sure noticed her. “You know, the one in the blue miniskirt, the one you had a drink with?”

  He turned red. “She went out earlier.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Before noon.”

  Gina and I studied
each other dumbly.

  My car was brought, and before I got in, I asked Justin if there was another way to get to Reno.

  “Another way than what?”

  “Than the interstate.”

  “Uh—no. Why would you? It’s a straight line in. And it’s not an easy trip anyway. Five hundred and seventy miles of nothing. Don’t fall asleep.”

  “There must be another road, no?”

  “In—Nevada?” He said Nevada the way someone might say the seventh circle of hell.

  “Maybe a scenic route?”

  He stared at me like he had never heard the words Nevada and scenic in the same sentence. “South Utah,” he finally said. “That’s one of the most beautiful places in all the world. I’m from there. From St. George. But Nevada, I know nothing about it. I go through Nevada only when I have to get to Reno.”

  “Oh yeah?” I sized him up. I took a chance. “I didn’t know Mormons gambled.”

  Boy could he turn red. “I just go there with my buddies,” he said quietly, backing away from me into the revolving doors. “Have a good day.”

  We got into our car. “We can’t go anywhere,” I said. “We can’t do anything.”

  Gina’s face soon changed, got harsh suddenly. She pointed down the street. “While we’re busy not doing anything, look what your little Candy’s doing.”

  And sure enough, there was Candy walking down the street. Next to her was a young blonde woman and a little boy. As they got closer, I saw that the woman wasn’t that young, and the boy not little, but almost the size of the woman, who seemed smaller because she was pulling a suitcase. “Candy, where’ve you been?” Gina asked sharply, rolling down her window.

  “Sloane, can you pop the trunk?” Candy cut in.

  “Who’s this?” That was me, leaning out, my casual elbow resting on the door. “We got no room in the trunk.” I popped the trunk anyway. Gina cast me the dirtiest of looks while Candy and her companions struggled outside.