Road to Paradise

“He was innocent! They’re just accusations. He was living with his mother, for God’s sake. The girl should’ve just told his mother on him, if she didn’t want to stay. He probably thought he was being hospitable. It was all a big misunderstanding. He makes Betty happy.”

“Was he arrested?”

“Arrested, tried, convicted, but the charges were dismissed on appeal. Why the sudden interest in Ned, Sloane? You’ve seen him before at the house.”

I didn’t remember him. I barely remembered Betty, I’d seen her only a couple of times. She’d always been silent and watchful.

“You really think Aunt Betty shepherding us out with such exquisite haste was because of the dogs?” I asked skeptically.

“Why else?”

“Oh, Gina.”

“Oh, Gina what?”

Clearly she didn’t want to talk about it. In front of us rose an enormous concrete structure that looked like the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island. Instead of talking about why she would agree to stay in the secluded home of a convicted child assailant, we had a nice long discussion on whether Three Mile Island was in Pennsylvania or Michigan—like right in front of us. Gina kept saying, “Can’t you see this isn’t an island?”

“People who live on an island don’t know it’s an island!”

“Oh, Jesus. It’s in Pennsylvania!”

I retreated. “Tell me this doesn’t look exactly like Three Mile Island.” The near-nuclear-reactor-meltdown accident happened just a year or two ago. It was still fresh in my paranoid mind. We’d never seen a nuclear power plant before; we gawked, we rubbernecked at a stone tank. Adjacent to it was Lighthouse Place, an outlet mall. That made us laugh.

Ladies will shop even under the volcano, we said. Girls must shop. Were we two of those girls? Should we stop? Shop? I’d taken an aspirin for my head, was tired and didn’t feel like driving. I wished Gina could drive so I could close my eyes. “If we stop,” I said, “we’ll be forced to buy things. Do we need things?”

“We might. We won’t know till we stop.”

“But do we really need things?” I wanted to look into my notebook at the list of my expenses.

“I think we do.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said cheerily. “We’ll know when we shop.”

“I’m tired.”

“I’m hungry.”

“We just ate.”

“Toast doesn’t count. I’m hungry for something else.”

“Like a pair of jeans?”

Gina beamed.

“I didn’t budget for a nuclear shopping spree.” I allowed twenty dollars for a gift for Emma, that was all. Aside from some flat tire money. Was I really willing to spend it now on a bathing suit I didn’t need?

“We just made some extra,” said Gina, “but the question is, do we want to be girls who shop under a nuclear cloud?”

We giggled; we thought we would like to be those girls. Okay, I said, pulling into the mall parking lot, we’ll shop, but let’s look at a map first.

Gina groaned.

We spread the map out onto the steaming hood, too hot to touch. “Go ahead, tell me. How far is St. Louis?”

She looked, not too close. “About six inches.”

“How many miles is that?”

“I don’t—”

“Look at the legend!” I was too hot to stand in the parking lot.

“Hard to tell. Maybe seventy miles. Eighty?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t stop.”

“Of course we should. Besides, we’re already stopped.”

I started to protest; she raised her eyebrows and gave me a look that said I wasn’t being adventurous enough.

“Come on, we made some extra. Let’s go spend it.”

“What, all 300 dollars? Get out!”

She pulled on me. The reactor noisily emitted a plume of white smoke. She pulled me again, by the wrist, toward the walking mall. “We’ll be in St. Louis in about three hours. It’s fine. First we’ll swim, though.”

“You mean, first we’ll shop?”

“Yes, then cool off in the water. Let’s go.”

It was three in the afternoon, the worst time for me to drive, I was so low-energy. The alcohol had sucked the oxygen out of my veins. “Okay, let’s go,” I said, allowing myself to be pulled. To the left of us was a road with four churches in a row, like last night’s bars. Another religious experience, Gina said, wondering out loud if church was a good place to meet guys. “Nice choir-singing boys. Maybe we should stay till Sunday.”

“As a Buddhist are you even allowed to go to church?” I said, glancing at the white sign outside the Prince of Peace Lutheran church. “TWO GREAT TRUTHS: 1. THERE IS A GOD. 2. YOU ARE NOT HIM.”

“You’re a fool,” said Gina. “The Christians allow everyone in.”

“Even Buddhists?”

“You think they discriminate? They don’t care. We were Jehovah’s Witnesses for five minutes, and we still went to a Catholic church once on Christmas. It was the Jehovahs that got mad.”

“Huh.” I was dull like bouillon.

“That’s when my mom stopped being a Jehovah. She liked Christmas too much.”

“Are they mutually exclusive, those two things?”

“Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate Christmas. Don’t you know anything?”

“Nothing,” I said. “But the French Jewish family who lived in our house celebrated Christmas.”

“Are Jews and Christmas mutually exclusive?” asked Gina and we laughed. We turned to each other, and she took my hand for a moment. “Three Jewish families on our block have a tree and exchange presents,” she said. “They tell my mother, why should Christians have all the fun?”

Lazily we moseyed through the deserted outlet mall, bought a horrific hot dog, looked inside Ralph Lauren, BCBG, where we asked the shopkeeper how many miles it was to Indiana. She looked confused, said, you are in Indiana. I shook my head, said, no, no, you’re mistaken, we’re in Michigan City, and she said, “Yes. Michigan City, Indiana.”

“Oh.”

Then she told us our ready-to-emit radioactive fumes nuclear reactor was nothing more than a cooling tower for a regular Indiana power company generator. We lost interest in shopping after that. It was only fun when we thought we were being risk-takers, living life on the edge. “How long do you think to St. Louis from here?” I asked the BCBG cashier, as I was giving her money for my new white shorts. “A few hours, right?”

“St. Louis, Missouri? Try eight hours. It’s about 400 miles from here. Probably longer, what with the rush-hour traffic near Chicago.”

Eight hours! It couldn’t be! Mealy-mouthed, I said, “You said, St. Louis, Missouri. Is there perhaps another St. Louis? Somewhere in Michigan, maybe?”

Dejected we walked back to the car. “Some map reader you are,” Gina criticized.

“Yes, and your help was invaluable,” I snapped. “Now what are we going to do? We’re never going to find that house in the dark. Aunt Betty said.”

“Let’s try.”

“Try what? We couldn’t figure out the mileage on a map in broad daylight!” I wanted to get on the highway and drive until I hit the ocean on the other side. Just stay on one straight road. Gas? Right there. Food? Right there. Lodging? There, too. Everything, anything right at my fingertips. I wouldn’t even need a map.

We let the dogs out on a patch of grass. They were panting, rat-like, sniffing dandelions. Did rats pant? It was hot, it was four p.m. There was no way we could arrive at a stranger’s doorstep at midnight. Resigned to a night on the road, we decided to take the dogs and ourselves swimming. We would take the gateway to the west from St. Louis to get to California. Aunt Betty said. We each picked up a mutt and headed toward the car.

In the parking lot, with Chihuahuas in our hands, we passed a group of guys getting out of a pick-up truck. I instantly recognized one of them as the “Todd” I’d been with last night. “Todd!” I called, to get his attention. Hey! Look in my direction. Nudging Gina, I motioned toward them, about ten yards away. “Todd!” Gina said to her own “Todd”, but louder. No one looked up. They were laughing, talking among themselves. They glanced peripherally at us, as in, we’re five guys, none of us is named Todd, and there are two chicks with dogs in our path. I waved, and they waved back, said something to each other, laughed heartily, passed us and walked on. Gina and I stopped walking. I looked at her, stupefied.

“What?” she said. “They were with their friends.”

“They were.” And last night was dark, and we were dressed differently, and so were they. It was loud; there was Sloe gin. But still. The following day, in broad daylight, a young, well-groomed, smart young man, who not twelve hours earlier had Biblical parts of him inside Biblical parts of me, passed me in a parking lot and didn’t recognize me. He didn’t know who I was. We could’ve shaken hands last night. I could have served him a drink. I could’ve sold him gum at the local gas station, and he would’ve walked by me slower today, he would’ve paused for the briefest moment to say, gee, you look familiar. Don’t I know you from somewhere? Oh, yeah. Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit. Todd didn’t do any of that. No young man and young woman could have been more intimate, and yet, he passed me in an outlet mall and didn’t know me. I wasn’t even a stain on his memory like he was on mine.

“Unbelievable.”

“I know,” said Gina. “But look, we agreed to take the dogs. We took her money. Spent some of it. We can’t go back now.”

After a moment’s silence at the gasping realization of how far Gina’s thoughts had been from mine, I said, “No, of course. We have no choice. Let’s go.”

I cared less about the dogs now, about St. Louis. My heart began to hurt a little bit.

Slowly I started up the car, and we rolled on.

“I’ll give you my share of the $300,” Gina said, “if that’ll make you feel better.”

That wasn’t what was making me feel bad.

“Gina, doesn’t it bother you that they didn’t recognize us?”

“Couldn’t care less. Hey, turn here. We’ll go swimming.”

Reluctantly, I turned into a deserted National Dunes Park; in the car, like ferrets in a sack, we changed into our bathing suits and set off for the beach. The only thing that saved the dogs from immersion was the 126-foot, 80-degree incline sand dune that neither Gina nor I could climb while holding them. And what saved us from swimming after we struggled up Mount Baldy like Edmund Hillary and his Tonto was that the lake was another half a mile of sand away. We stood asthmatically at the crest of the dune. Lake Michigan didn’t look like any lake I’d ever seen—it was like an ocean with white sand.

“Did you know that Lake Michigan is our largest lake?” said Gina. “It’s the only Great Lake entirely within U.S. borders. It’s got 1100 cubic miles of water in it.”

“What I would give for a pint of that water right now.” I was so hot.

“You and the Chihuahuas. Imagine how thirsty they are.”

“Maybe it’s best we didn’t bring them. What if they couldn’t swim?”

“All animals can swim,” said Gina. “Even cows can swim.”

That made me laugh. She always somehow managed that, to say something supremely silly.

We slid down 130 feet on our butts back to the parking lot. Sandy, hot and exhausted, though we’d done nothing all day, we got back to the car, and while the crazy dogs were running around the pine needles chased by Gina, I examined the map, trying to get my bearings, control things. I had been looking just at the road to St. Louis, but when I traced the road from St. Louis to California, I quickly realized we had a bigger problem than driving a few extra hundred miles south. The Interstate out of St. Louis west to California was I-70, but when I-70 got to the middle of Utah, it just sort of dissipated. Broke into a dozen little pieces that became other roads that headed north and south, but not west to the Pacific coast, not west to Mendocino.

“I knew it,” I said to Gina when she returned, panting. “I may know nothing, but I knew we had to stay on I-80. From the beginning I said so. George Washington Bridge to San Francisco, that was my planned route. But no. We had to go all the way to Maryland, and come all the way back, and now we have to go all the way to St. Louis and come all the way back. We have to make an 800-mile detour. Eight hundred miles!” I shook my head. “This is crazy. Why, oh why, did I agree to something this stupid? Plus two days’ time driving to De Soto!” My voice was so high, I sounded like somebody’s exasperated parent, trying to explain why mumsie couldn’t just drop everything and buy her darling a pony. We can’t. We can’t. We can’t. “It’ll cost us more than 300 bucks and we’ll lose two days. That’s if we find this little De Soto. It’s in St. Louis, the way New Jersey is near New York.”

But it was impotent rage. I couldn’t go back to Aunt Betty’s, and I knew it.

Gina looked composed and unconcerned; she rubbed my arm, said shh, tried to use a soothing voice, as if she were now the mumsie, and I was the unreasonable tot demanding a pony. “It’s fine,” she said. “We’ll be okay. So we’ll go to St. Louis? What’s a couple of days in the scheme of things? I’ve never been to St. Louis. Don’t you want to see the Arch? We can go all the way to the top. Did you know it’s the world’s tallest man-made monument, at 630 feet?”

I was so tired. I wished Gina, all perky and bubbly, could drive so I could sleep. If horses were wishes.

FOUR

1

Candy

We got back on the road around five. It was time to start thinking about dinner, and we hadn’t gone but ten miles from Aunt Betty’s house, our sum total for the day. I couldn’t believe I told Emma I’d be back in two and a half weeks. I must’ve been delusional.

“Hey, you want a Blue Jay pumpkin? Look, they’re only a quarter.”

“No.”

“Look at the name of the town.” Gina laughed. “Valparaiso. Isn’t that funny?”

I didn’t know what was so funny.

“We’re in Indiana. You’ve got Joe’s Bar and Grill, and you’ve got Tony’s Car Repair next to Pump’s On Restaurant, next to Tasty Taco, in Valparaiso?”

“So?”

“You don’t think Tasty Taco is a little too hoi-polloi for Valparaiso?”

“No. I just think the people who named the town came from Chile.”

“I think, Miss Literal,” Gina said, “somebody’s lost her funny bone.”

“Completely,” I agreed. “I’m cranky like a child.”

I glanced over at Gina sitting there, whistling a tune, a smile on her face. And then he’ll settle down … Eddie was planning to marry someone else and she was whistling. In some quiet little town … If my boyfriend were planning to marry someone else, I sure wouldn’t be whistling. Perhaps she didn’t care. But then why was she riding shotgun across the continent and the Great Divide to stop him? Either you care or you don’t, but what’s with the whistling? I pulled her hair. “You’re not worried?” I asked.

“’Bout what?”

“Anything.”

“I’m not worried ’bout nothin’,” said Gina, wiping her head and humming. You know he’ll always keep moving …

We passed a little brown sign that said “Picnic Area at Great Marsh State Park.” That made me laugh.

“Oh, now she’s amused.” You know he’s never gonna stop moving …

“Because it’s funny. First of all, why in the world would anyone have a state park in a marsh? That’s first. And second, why would you want to have a picnic there?”

“Not as funny as Valparaiso.”

“Funnier.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Suddenly we fell mute as if the power had just gone out. Up ahead on Dunes Highway near Fremont, at the traffic light, on the right-hand side of the road across from the Great Marsh Picnic Grounds, with her thumb in the air was the girl from the black truck in Maryland. She must’ve recognized our car because she smiled at us and waved happily.

Gina and I blinked, not believing our eyes.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Is that the same—”

“Holy shit. Shh. Think so.”

“Why are you saying shh? It can’t be.”

“Well, look!”

“It can’t be!” I exclaimed.

“It most certainly is.”

“God, what do we do?”

“I don’t know. Holy shit. Can you turn somewhere?”

“Turn where!” We were on U.S. 12, with the lake on the right and the marsh picnic grounds on the left, and nowhere to turn. The railroad yards and the steel mills were up ahead. The headquarters of U.S. Steel were up ahead. And so was she. I don’t know what loomed larger. The light was turning red; I was forced to slow down and come to a stop. Right next to her. Her thumb still out, she came closer, staring expectantly into our passenger window.

“What do we do!” That was me, in a deathly whisper. I was flabbergasted, blinking furiously, as if hoping that she, like the haunting by Ned, would evaporate. I mean, it couldn’t be her. Not here, it just couldn’t be. We weren’t meant to be here; why was she? We had passed her in another life, days ago on a local road four states away; what wind blew her here? What wind blew us here? “What do we do, Gina …”

“Nothing.” Gina turned to me. “What are you talking about? Nothing. Look straight ahead, like when the homeless in the city come to wash our windshield. Look away. Ignore her. The light’s gonna change soon.”

“Gina …” I couldn’t look away. I was staring at the girl outside the window. Her smile was broad, like me she was chewing gum, smiling like Gina (who was no longer even faintly smiling). She looked so young, and she opened her hands at us, as if to say, “Well?” standing in her little blue skirt, skinny, her hair all weird. In her hands she held a shopping bag. What I was seeing was a cataclysmic coincidence, against all probabilities, impossible in a rational world, in a statistical world, in a world ruled by my plan.

“It’s fate, Gina Reed,” I said.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.” I looked at the girl again. “It’s a supernatural event.”

“You know what we do when the gods show us what they have in store for us?” Gina said. “We snub our noses at them, and do something else, just to shake things up, to make it less boring.”

“You’re not curious?”

“No! I’m non-curious. I’m the anti-curious. I’m negatively curious.”

“Come on. We’re giving the stupid rats a ride. Why do the dogs rate a Shelby, but not the girl? Open your door.”

“No! Are you out of your mind?”

“You know she isn’t headed to St. Louis.”

“How do you know where she’s headed?” Gina exclaimed. “We’re not supposed to be headed to St. Louis.”

“True. Look, we’ll give her a ride to I-80, drop her off at the first rest stop, no harm, no foul. It’s just a few miles. I’m dying to find out how she got here. Look at her. She’s a kid. She could be your sister. That’s Molly out there.”

“No.”

I got some energy back. The light was still red, and she was outside our car with her hands open. “Gina, it’s a miracle.”

“No, it isn’t. A miracle is a good thing.”

“It’s like magic!”

“Yes, black magic.”

“We forgot all about her, and yet here she is, hitching on Route 12 on the Great Lake. At our red traffic light. She is the extraordinary. She is the unexpected. Let’s give her a ride.” The light finally turned green. The sedan behind honked to speed us on.

“Please, no,” said Gina. “Sloane, keep going. We’re doing well, we’re friends again, don’t ruin it, don’t spoil it.”

My heart squeezed. I almost sped up, if only the pull of the unknown weren’t so great, the pull of something I didn’t understand, but wanted to. This wasn’t in my spiral notebook. It could never be. This was no random event. And if this wasn’t, then the black truck wasn’t. And if the black truck wasn’t random, then nothing in the world was random. I had felt so bad back then for being such a chicken, for not letting her in. How often did you get a second chance? “I’m not going to spoil it. Come on. I traipsed around the country for your aunts and your dogs. What’s the big deal? You said so yourself. It’s just for a few miles. To the Interstate. Let’s help her out. Or some horrible guy in a black truck is going to pick her up. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t care!” Gina shook her head. “It’s a terrible mistake. We made a pact. We promised each other. No pick-ups.”

“Where’s the harm?”

“We made a pact,” she repeated doggedly. The cars kept honking.

“Well, I know, but I was talking about sweaty men with tattoos. This is to help a girl like us. What do you think she’s going to do? Come on.”

“I’m asking you, please no.”

But I wasn’t listening anymore. I crossed through the light and pulled onto the shoulder, rolling down my window, sticking my arm out, waving her on, honking twice. I saw her in the rearview mirror, running toward the car. Not quite running, but skipping, like skipping from happiness. A big smile split her face, her shopping bag, her hobo bag flapping.

“Open your door, Gina,” I said quietly.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this. I can’t believe you are picking up a hitchhiker. But then again, what’s a pact to you, right?” She huffed out and flipped forward her seat. The hot summer air swooshed in, and the girl fell in, hips first, then bags, then legs, all teeth, beaming, and said, “Thanks, you’re a Godsend.” Gina slammed the door shout.

I turned to the girl and didn’t know what to say.

She was one peculiar duck up close. She had short spiky hair bleached in punk strands of hot pink and jet black, some standing up, some falling to her neck. She wore thick, black eye-makeup and red glossy lipstick. The makeup was so heavy, I thought it was perhaps to disguise how young she was. Rings perforated her ears from the lobe to the top cartilage. Her body was weighted down with costume jewelry: red, white, and blue stars and stripes, copper bangles, silver hearts. Around her neck hung chains of all lengths, rings adorned fingers and wrists, three bracelets circled each bare ankle, and her tongue was spiked by a small silver ball. Under her short halter, even the bellybutton of her flat stomach was pierced. I’d never seen that before, except in pictures of African girls in National Geographic. She clanged as she sat and breathed; one part or another of her jangled like wind chimes. She had tattoos of flowers on her bare shoulders, and just the top of a red heart showed saucily at the edge of her pink top. Her skin was white as if her body had never been touched by the sun. Her voice was throaty. I rubbernecked her the way I had rubbernecked the nuclear power reactor. More. I couldn’t look away.

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