Road to Paradise

by Paullina Simons

  “You sure do. Because you’re heading in the wrong direction. Salt Lake is at least 400 miles away, and you’ve got to go around the lee side of the Wind River Range. If you’re in such a hurry to see your uncle, why are you taking the slow local roads away from Utah and north to Jackson? Why didn’t you take I-80? You’d be in Salt Lake already.”

  “But then we wouldn’t see the Grand Tetons. Or Jackson.” I smiled sweetly. My hands were sweating.

  “So do you have to be in Salt Lake by nightfall or are you taking in the mountainside? Can’t have it both ways, girls.”

  He let us go. Candy said she almost wished he hadn’t. “He was so cute and protective.”

  “Stop it,” said Gina. “He’s not your type.”

  “No?” Candy smiled. “You did real well back there, Shel,” she said, her voice low. “You’re a good liar.”

  “You really are,” said Gina. “Scary good.”

  I didn’t look at her, she didn’t look at me. Enough already, I wanted to say. I wished Candy were sitting in front and Gina in the back. We drove on, the snowy sharp peaks of the Grand Teton to our perpetual peripheral right, peripheral in every way, for central to us now was the hole in our life: what in the world do we do?

  Jackson was a log cabin town, all western motif and dark wood, all the awnings, store fronts, benches, and brown signs. We sat across the booth at a mobbed-for-lunch log cabin Mountain High Pizza Pie and stared listlessly at each other across the wooden table, our feet on the wooden floor.

  “If you had gone to the police,” Gina speculated, “and gave them the reel of film, instead of your father the monk, you’d be protected and Erv would be arrested.”

  “Yes,” said Candy. “And my mother, too. That’s what you recommend? Me turning in my own mother? Plus, I’d be remanded until I turned eighteen, maybe even face some legal trouble of my own, who knows, some JD convictions for soliciting, for conspiracy to commit a felony, and I’d never get my little girl.”

  “Yes, Gina, don’t be stupid,” I said.

  “And Erv in a day or two would be out on bail anyway,” continued Candy. “I’d be in even worse danger.”

  “Frankly, I don’t see how that’s possible,” I said. The pizza wasn’t coming. They were crazy busy.

  “Candy is right, I guess,” said Gina. “The penalties for multiple counts of a federal felony are grave. Twenty to life. Unlikely chance of parole, because the defendant would be considered too much of a hazard to the community, preying on children and all. He’d never get out.”

  “Right,” said Candy, “so a man with his whole life to lose, you think he’s going to be more desperate or less desperate?”

  “He seems pretty desperate now, Candycane,” I said.

  “He has his whole life to lose.”

  The iced tea came, the pizza eventually.

  Afterward, without a plan, we walked a few blocks to a school playground and sat on the swings. Jackson was a skiing town. It was summer now, and dead (except for the rhyming pizza place), but you could tell by the fearsome quantity of ski shops what the town would be like in the wintertime.

  “The car is such a menace,” Candy said.

  “Tell me about it.” Gina came to sit on the swing next to her, as if they were commiserating with each other over the peril I had put them in with my bright yellow Shelby!

  “The car is not the menace,” I said, feeling tendentious. “Erv is the menace. The car is lovely.” Exasperated, I sat on the seesaw nearby where I could still hear their bitching and moaning.

  “What do we do?” Gina was saying. “We can’t continue traveling in that thing.”

  “I don’t see we have much choice,” said Candy, swinging back and forth, kicking her legs underneath herself like a little girl. Except this little girl was wearing a skirt so short a man standing in front of her would be able to see straight up into her throat. And just like a little girl she wore no bra under her thin satin halter.

  “We could take a train,” suggested Gina.

  “A train to where?”

  “You to Paradise. Me to Bakersfield. Oh, that reminds me. I have to call Eddie.”

  “That reminds you? You need to be reminded of that?”

  “What about a bus? Yeah, maybe a bus,” said Gina. They swung as I watched them, my mouth falling open.

  “You go to Bakersfield, I go to Paradise?” said Candy. “By bus?”

  “We have to do something. At least I’m thinking. Coming up with ideas.”

  Candy glanced at me, not ten feet away, at my open mouth, my wide eyes. She winked at me, and then made a serious face for Gina. “Your plan is bold,” she conceded. “Daring. But Gina, what about Shelby over there on the seesaw by herself?”

  “Yeah, Gina,” I said, getting up and walking over to them. “What about Shelby over here?”

  Gina shrugged. “She can do what she likes. Right, Sloane? You like to do as you please.”

  “Knock it off. What are you proposing?”

  “We have to do something, Shelby!”

  “Why don’t we get going to do something?”

  “Get going to where?”

  That stumped me. “Well, to Salt Lake, like we planned.”

  Candy shook her head. “Not yet. I need to think.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Shelby’s right,” said Gina.

  “Yes, I am,” I said, “but I don’t mean, get going without me.”

  “No, no, I know.” Candy wouldn’t look at me. “Gina,” she said. “We can’t really leave Shelby alone in Jackson. You run off, I run off, and we leave her? That doesn’t seem right, does it?”

  Gina didn’t reply!

  “I could stay here, Shel,” Candy suggested. “Get out of your way.”

  “And do what? Don’t tell me make caskets.”

  “Why not? People can’t die in skiing resorts?” She kicked up dirt under the swing. “I kind of like this town. I could get a job as a waitress. I bet the tips are fantastic in winter.”

  “Well, you’d know about tips better than me,” said Gina, quickly adding, “I’ve never worked as a waitress. But why would you want to live here? People coming in, out, transients all the time. No community.”

  “It is beautiful, though,” I said. Did I want to leave Candy here?

  “Is that enough?” Gina said. “Beautiful?”

  “What else is there?” asked Candy.

  “And how would you get from Paradise to here?” I wanted to know.

  “How would I get from Paradise to anywhere? I’d have to somehow, wouldn’t I?”

  Disgusted with myself, with them, and helpless, I hopped off the swings.

  Is that what they were both thinking? Gina take the bus, Candy stay in Jackson, and leave me by myself in my yellow pony while they roller-skated away, leaving me to the talons of Erv’s rage?

  Is that what they were both thinking? That I wouldn’t just carry Candy’s bathwater, I’d drink it, too?

  “Candy, how far are we from Bakersfield?” Gina asked after we left the playground and were ambling back to Broadway Avenue.

  “Geographically?” Candy said. “Philosophically? Metaphorically? Symbolically?”

  “Timewisecally.”

  “That’s a metaphysical question,” replied Candy. “I don’t know.”

  “God! Sloane, how long?”

  “Gina, how would I know? I don’t know when we’ll get out of Wyoming! Ask Candy.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Does anyone have any quarters? I have to call Eddie.”

  We had no quarters. “Why don’t you call him collect?” asked Candy. “He is your future husband. What, you don’t think he’d accept the charges?”

  “Oh, enough from the two of you!” We got quarters from a hot-dog vendor.

  We huddled around Gina while she called Eddie. She was nervous, twirling her hair like spaghetti around her fingers. What if he’s not happy to hear from me? she asked. What if, when he finds out how soon I’m
coming, he’ll tell me not to come?

  “What if?” said Candy.

  “You know what?” Gina pushed Candy slightly away. “You don’t know him, don’t stand so close. You don’t know anything about us.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Candy, putting her hand on Gina, pinching the back of her arm. “I’m teasing. Call him. It’ll be fine.”

  “But what if it isn’t fine?”

  “Then you come with me to Mendocino,” I said. “Help me look for my mom.”

  “Come with you?” Gina repeated dully.

  “Or you can come with me,” said Candy. “To Paradise. Help me get my little girl.”

  Groaning, Gina dropped quarters into the phone and dialed Eddie’s number. She had tried to call him several times since Isle of Capri, but each time she called, his mother said he was out. Was he out—and if so, why so frequently, and with whom? And if he wasn’t out . . . well, Gina wasn’t prepared to face that level of lies. Being out with Casey was bad enough. Pretending to be out so he wouldn’t have to talk to Gina was worse. So even this time, at the dusty Jackson phone booth near a sign for the National Elk Refuge, it took her several minutes to get up her nerve to dial the tenth digit.

  I didn’t want to stand too close. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I hoped he’d be out. I was upset with her for entertaining even for a second the thought of ditching me, but even if I weren’t mad, how could I be a proper friend to Gina when my self-interest was involved to this degree? I couldn’t counsel her, because I couldn’t trust myself with my own advice. Not liking myself one little bit, I moved away, then forced my legs to step closer, and liked myself even less for that—forcing myself, like a sociopath, to do the right thing.

  He must have been home this time. “Hey, baby,” Gina said into the phone, smiling. “Whatchya doin’?” She turned her back to us, and lowered her head.

  Now of course I struggled to hear his voice! I had always liked his voice, and wanted to hear it now—it had been so long since I had. My internal commotion must have been plain on my face, because I caught Candy staring at me with sympathy and compassion. Pulling me away from the phone booth, she whispered, “I cannot belieeeve that after all you know about him, you can have that face on. You should be saying to yourself there but for the grace of God go I, not wishing you were in her Dr. Scholl’s clogs. You should be praying for him not to be home.”

  “You don’t know anything.” I pulled my arm away. But I feared she did.

  “What a silly sad creature you are,” Candy said, gazing at me with strange softness. “Even when you know you’re barely saved from a life of misery, you still stand here and wish you weren’t.”

  “And your point?”

  Gina ran out of quarters in seven minutes. She asked Eddie to call her back. I don’t know what he said, but I know what Gina said. “No, no, I understand. Of course. Don’t worry. I’ll call you again in a couple of days, okay?”

  They said goodbye; she turned to us reluctantly.

  “So is he coming or not?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, I didn’t even mention it,” she replied breezily, her thin lips stretched into a smile. She got out her red gloss, smoothed it on. “He’s very excited we’re close. He can’t wait to see me.”

  Candy elbowed me, and I pinched her.

  “He was happy to hear from me,” said Gina defiantly. “He said he really missed me; wanted to know how soon I was coming.”

  “Is that what he said?” asked Candy. “Gina, babe, how soon you gettin’ here?”

  “Yes, about.”

  “Ah.”

  Gina stared at us. We stared back.

  “So do you want me to take you to the bus station?” I said, trying to keep the challenge out of my voice. “You can take the bus from here to Bakersfield. We’ll have to get your things out of my car.”

  Rolling her eyes, she said nothing at first. “I wasn’t serious before,” she said at last. “I was joking.” She stared at me coldly.

  That’s where our alienation became visible, like the sign for the divide. She started rushing us. Let’s go. We have to go. Now. I had promised her Bakersfield, and she was going to hold me to it. But she had promised me that she would stick with me to the end, and I was going to hold her to that.

  Though Gina was hurrying us, it was such a long way from Jackson to Salt Lake, and Candy was daunted by the prospect of driving on the windy roads through glens, abuts, ravines and waterfalls and Citizens’ Band radios announcing her every turn, that she wanted to stay in the canyon. We got a room at the Painted Buffalo Inn. “Candy, don’t you want to go? Don’t you want to?” I kept whispering. “How are you going to get to Paradise if you’re going to let every state trooper and every white truck chasing us distract you?”

  “I’m not distracted,” said Candy, walking aimlessly around the room. “I’m despairing.”

  “You want to get your girl, don’t you? How many miles to Paradise from here?”

  “Eternity away,” she said, sounding an eternity away herself, though she was only at the open window.

  “It’s not far. One mile at a time, Candy. We’d be halfway to Salt Lake already if we didn’t stop here.”

  But she was looking for different things than us. Gina’s future goal was rooted in the past—to reach her wayward Eddie. Mine too was rooted in the past—to find my wayward mother. But Candy was searching for her future. She was going to change herself from something she was and try to become something she wasn’t, and she intended to do this with another small human being for whom she would become solely responsible. She was searching for a place she’d never been to, and didn’t know for sure existed, where she and her girl could build a small life brick by heavy brick. I left her alone to stare out the window. If she needed to stay in Jackson an extra day, who was I to argue? Our car was in the municipal lot, under cover, safe for now, out of sight, like us.

  Gina wanted to know what Candy planned to do with her hair. “Are you ever going to bleach it?” she said, combatively. “We’re just sitting around doing nothing. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Candy. “Our problems would certainly be over. Three young women traveling in a yellow Mustang, but now instead of three brunettes, you’ve got two brunettes and one blonde—that couldn’t possibly be them.”

  Gina swiped a magazine off the table onto the floor. “What does your Jesus say about sarcasm?” she asked, plonking herself into a chair. “Anything in the New Testament about that?”

  “Not a word. And the day I’m perfect like Jesus, I’ll let you know.”

  She went out for a walk. We stayed in—for five minutes, and then, because I couldn’t be in a room alone with Gina feeling as bad as I did about her wanting to ditch me, we went out too, trudging along after her. “Shelby, you got us into an unbelievable mess and now you’re upset because you think I’m looking out too much for myself?” Gina said to me. “Why would that upset you? You always looked out only for yourself.”

  I lowered my head. I had no defense against my anger, my feeling of distance from her. It was true. This was payback. “I said I’d put you on the bus, Gina,” I said. “You want to go? Let’s go.”

  She fell quiet.

  Candy found a drugstore, and bought a bottle of Clairol peroxide. I thought about it for two seconds and bought one for myself. I bought scissors. We went back to the room, cut each other’s hair, and bleached it. It didn’t come out great, our hair was too dark, and the double process of leaching the black out and then coloring the hair with peroxide went awry somewhere. A professional was sorely needed, but this was cheap, only ten bucks each, and we did it in the room. After three hours of fuss and muss and mess, we were both spiky short-haired and the fakest blondes you ever saw, my blonde tinged with orange, while Candy’s pink strands had now acquired a disturbing shade of lime green. We stared at our faces in the bathroom mirror, hair still wet and moussed, appraising ourselves critically. “Well,” Candy said at last. “That
was a success.”

  We walked out of the bathroom. “Gina, what do you think?”

  Gina looked up. She was on the bed reading People magazine.

  “That’s great,” she said. “Can we go eat? I’m starved.” She had miserable bare spots near the crown of her forehead.

  We found El Abuelito Mexican restaurant but it was closed. Candy thought perhaps she could get a job there. Walking down the street, we found a Laundromat. “To work or do laundry?” I asked.

  Candy didn’t reply. We meandered our way back to the elementary school, to the playground. It would be cold here in the winter, she said. Would it be too cold?

  “Too cold for what?” I asked.

  “Can we go?” repeated Gina. “I’m starved.”

  “It would be dead in the summer,” I added, as if Gina hadn’t spoken. “Like now. Dead, but hot.”

  We agreed Jackson had everything Candy needed. A nightlife, restaurants, shops, a Laundromat, an elementary school.

  That it was better than Wright, Wyoming.

  “That isn’t fair,” said Gina. “Hell is better than Wright, Wyoming.”

  “Maybe we should leave now,” Candy said. “Drive at night when no one can see us. Truck drivers don’t stop much by here. It’s quiet. Let’s go. Let’s get me to Reno. My friend Jessica has a car. And my thousand bucks.”

  “I’m not driving through the woodlands of Idaho at night, Candy,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “Besides we already paid for the room,” added Gina. Candy glared at her as if that were not even a consideration.

  But it was a small consideration. I had already tapped into the money I needed to get back home, rationalizing it away by saying the return trip couldn’t possibly take as long. I was deceiving myself, of course. I wasn’t anywhere close to Mendocino, which was my halfway point.

  On Candy’s dime we went to the Million Dollar Cowboy bar and grill, because Candy liked the name. She said it sounded promising. Indeed it was popular and there we ran into our friend the police officer, who was now off duty and didn’t recognize us with the blonde tresses. Once Candy reacquainted herself with him, his solemn face lit up like a Christmas tree. They struck up a brief flirtatious dance, and disappeared into the darkness. Gina and I sat, nursing our pathetic beers, paid for by Candy.