“Do I?” What can I do never to look like that again? Is it my Levi’s shorts? Or my plain white blouse? Is it the Dr. Scholl’s on my feet? Or the two-dollar Great Lash mascara that was caking from last night? I didn’t carry a purse, but did my eight-cylinder, 350 horsepower stock car that cost someone a second mortgage give my financial status away? What was it about me that made me look impoverished to a pale woman with slow speech and a mute man that almost never looked up from his newspaper?
Money in hand, sugar from the donut sticking to my fingers, I opened up the piece of paper like it was a fortune cookie: “YOU WILL BE RICH.” “YOU HAVE MANY GIFTS.” “1809 Chariot Way, De Soto, MO.”
“MO?” I muttered. “Gina, what state is MO?”
“Dunno. Montana?”
“Not Montana!” That was Aunt Betty. “Where would I get a customer from Montana?”
“Is it here? Is it Michigan?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Betty, collecting the toast plates. “This isn’t Michigan. Flo always gets it wrong. It’s Indiana. We’re right on the border. Listen, don’t get yourself in a twist. You have the money. Go.” And then she added, “Need directions?”
Puzzled I stared at her; clear-eyed and judgmental she stared back. Where had I heard that before, seen that before? Need Directions? I saw it like a billboard in front of my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “Where’s De Soto?”
“St. Louis,” Aunt Betty exclaimed. “Just a few miles south on I-55. Why don’t you go and get ready. It’s getting late.”
Near St. Louis. A few miles south. On I-55. Carefully, folding my map, I said, “Is that on the way to California?”
“Of course!” replied Aunt Betty. “Don’t you know what St. Louis is called? ‘The Gateway to the West.’ What do you think the St. Louis Arch was built for?”
I straightened up and shook my head. “Aunt Betty, I don’t think St. Louis is that close. We were planning to stay on I-80.”
“What, two hundred isn’t enough?” she said. “Shaking me down for more money, Shel?”
“What?” I exclaimed. “No, of course not, like I would, no, but . . . now that you mention it . . .”
“Sloane!” That was Gina.
“No, no, niece, she’s right.” Aunt Betty smiled ruefully. “That’s fine. I’ll give you a hundred more. Will that cover it?” She stared at me meaningfully. “And here’s some water for the road.”
We’re leaving? But I hadn’t planned my route yet, hadn’t written things down in order—
Within thirty minutes we were flasked, packed, dogged-up, and shown the door. Betty did not allow us to shower.
“Goodbye!” She waved, disappearing into her broken-down trailer with the cow and the goat. “Was so good to see you, girls. Gina, I’ll tell your mother we had a nice visit. Be careful, you two!”
“Wow,” I said as we drove out onto the main road. “Wow.”
“Wow what?”
“Huh. Nothing. Strange is all.” I turned around to glance at the Chihuahuas in the crate taking up most of the backseat. What odd-looking dogs.
“What’s strange?” Gina opened the map.
“Don’t even pretend. Put that map away,” I said. “You didn’t get the feeling she was trying to get rid of us?”
Gina looked up. “No. She’s just efficient. Doesn’t like nonsense.”
“Yeah, that must be it.”
“Do you know where you’re going?” Gina put the map away.
“Haven’t you heard? St. Louis.”
We left that moment, not a few days later, like I planned, like Gina wanted. We were hurried out in the middle of an afternoon. I could’ve said no to the dogs, to the money, and didn’t. I could’ve said no to many things, and didn’t. Like I keep saying, sometimes, life alters by increments and sometimes by insurrection.
3
Two Todds
Route 12 was rural. Stretching through the strip of trees that flanked Lake Michigan, the countryside stopped being pretty, became utilitarian. But to me, where Aunt Betty lived looked like not a bad place for kids to grow up. There was nothing to do, but there were fields and forests. The kids could have adventures. In Larchmont you always had to be careful. Look both ways, don’t jaywalk. Not much adventure. Here, the kids just ran with the dogs. And the goats.
“Is Ned your aunt’s husband?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Gina. “I think they met up in a rest home Betty had been living in, recuperating.”
“Recuperating from what?”
“I don’t know. Life’s little stresses. She gets stressed out easily.” Gina chuckled. “You saw Ned.”
“You could say I saw Ned.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What was he recuperating from?”
“Well, I don’t know. He’s had some problems.”
“You don’t say. What kind of problems?”
Gina raised her eyebrows. “Mental problems.”
“Oh.”
“But I don’t really know.”
“Why don’t you ask Agnes? She’ll tell you.”
“How would Agnes know about Ned?”
“Agnes often speaks of things she knows absolutely nothing about.”
“You think?” said Gina, with a breath, then another. “But sometimes Agnes speaks of things she knows something about. No?”
After the briefest of pauses, I said, “No. Tell me about Ned.” See, this is when we needed Molly! No wonder Gina had brought her. If it wasn’t for crazy Ned, she’d still be with us.
“Once I overheard my mom say he was out on parole.”
“Parole?” My head jerked. “For what?”
Gina hesitated. “Look, he was falsely accused. He didn’t mean any harm. But some young girl, about fourteen, who’d run away, claimed Ned took her into his home where he was living with his mother and wouldn’t let her go. Kept her there like a slave or something. I mean, that’s preposterous, isn’t it?”
My heart was in my stomach. “Gina,” I said, because I couldn’t keep quiet, “why would you go visit your aunt when the man she’s with has accusations like that hanging over him?”
“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 h
ead, 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 three hundred 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 lives in our house celebrates 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 pickup 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 r
olled 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 1,100 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 three hundred 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.”
Road to Paradise Page 11