“Don’t say that. If this is doomed, then I’m doomed.”
I swallowed. “Let’s go in my car.”
“We can’t.”
I turned to her. In the dark room, I felt all alone, overwhelmed by both fear and longing.
“Ours is a God who does wonders,” Candy whispered. “All you have to do is ask Him in faith.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes,” she said. “He does not always give you what you want, but He always hears your prayer.”
“Does he?”
“Yes. Did I ever tell you the story of the miracle at the fourteenth station?”
“No.”
“No prayer asked at the fourteenth station ever goes unanswered,” she said.
“What is this fourteenth station? I’ve never heard of it.”
“You’ve never heard of Christ’s fourteen stations?”
“No.”
“And you make fun of me for not having watched The Brady Bunch.” She smiled disbelievingly. “You’ll have to learn the first thirteen, otherwise what’s the point?”
“I don’t know. What is the point?”
Reaching out she touched the strands of blighted hair in front of my blighted eyes. “Help me,” she whispered.
“Help me,” I whispered.
“He’s not here,” she said, “the man to give you a thousand dollars for touching me. There’s no one watching this time.”
“I know,” I said, drawing her near, drawing myself nearer to her. My hands intertwined on her back. Her soft skin pressed in the night against my skin. She was so warm. We lay on our sides, face to face, breasts to breasts.
In the deep of night, the lights out, her smell on me, her hands on me, her bleached hair rubbing against my arm, I thought she was asleep. I was staring at her intensely, trying to catch the contours of her shoulder, her elbow, her mouth, and then I saw her doe eyes blink at me.
I didn’t know what to say. She spoke first.
“So,” she said, “do you know any lullabies?”
“What? Oh. I don’t know. Maybe one or two.”
“Can you sing me one? Any one.”
I thought of what I knew. Admittedly, not many but I knew one for sure. “Hush Little Baby,” I said.
“How does it go?”
“Hush little baby don’t you cry . . .”
When I finished, she said it was pretty. “How do you know it?”
“I think,” I whispered, “Emma sang it to me . . .”
We lay in the bed, a breath apart. Everything was dark and quiet. The air conditioner creaked and hummed.
“Shelby,” she whispered, “you’re a lovely girl.”
“Candy,” I whispered back, “you’re a lovely girl.”
“You know,” she said, “my whole life, when I’ve been with another person, I’ve thought of other things. I count, or knit in my head. Mostly I sing Psalm 69; want to hear it?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul . . .” she began to sing, and broke off. “But I don’t feel much like it tonight. When I was with Mike, I was so young. We were just fumbling through it, and then I got knocked up, and was sent away for a while till I had my baby. Being with someone, it’s never been that good. Has it been for you?”
“Well, I haven’t had your wealth of experience,” I said. “But Eddie was good.”
“Really?”
“Really.” So sad and sick to think now how the waters of him had flooded my soul.
“Maybe that’s what it is, then,” Candy said. “Maybe that’s why you can’t let him go.”
“I can let him go,” I lied, I denied. “Don’t have much choice, do I?”
She ran her hand along my stomach. “You’re sweet,” she whispered. “Soft.”
“You too.” I closed my eyes.
“Oh, Shel,” I heard her say. “What are we going to do?”
When I turned to her she was staring profoundly at me in the dark. “Nothing. What can we do?” I paused. “What are you talking about?”
“Ahh.” She waved her hand away and fell quiet. “Talking ’bout everything, I guess.”
I waited. I couldn’t get my breath back to reply, this close, sealed up, locked like this into another human being. I was on my back, she on her side next to me.
“I’ll do anything to help you,” I said. Finally. One true thing.
“You know,” she said, “when I first came to Huntington, I used to hang out by the river with my friends, but sometimes I’d go there alone, sit in the sand and look across. The Ohio is so wide in Huntington, it’s like a sea, and beyond the river is another state, another life. I used to sit and dream of what that other life might be like, would be like. If I crossed the river, and went far away, where would I go? I dreamed of Australia, because it was across the banks of the Ohio.”
“Most things are across the Ohio,” I pointed out. “But why Australia?”
“It was the farthest in the world I could go and still be on this earth,” she replied. “It had an ocean, sun, exotic fish.”
“Yeah, sharks.”
“I dreamed of nothing else, because it was so impossible, yet so desperately desired. In pity for myself, I’d sit and sing . . . I asked my love, to take a walk, to take a walk, a little walk, down by the sides, where waters flow, down by the banks of the Ohio . . .” Her lips kissed my arm, my shoulder. “Except for my dad, no one ever cared for me like you,” she whispered.
“I told you, I’ll do what you want,” I said, my voice breaking. “What do you want me to do?”
“Go get my girl,” she pleaded. “And then the three of us will find a place. We’ll find a place to live. You know I need you to take care of things. And you need me to make money. We’ll get jobs, a little apartment. And my baby will be with us. We’ll go someplace where the houses have flowers in every yard and a church on every corner. We’ll take her away from her horrible life, and me from my horrible life. We’ll putter, and work, go to the bookstores, out to eat, and to church on Sunday. And I won’t be alone. Nor Tara. Nor you.”
For a long time I didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. Her fingers continued to caress my stomach.
“Candy, are you . . . serious?”
“Guess not,” she replied, her voice fallen. Her hand fell too, lay flat on me.
But there was a moment between her dream and my question, in that silence of space, in the dark of night, before thought or reason, where I caught a fleeting glimpse of the flowers and the spires and the white-washed houses, maybe a little blue water in the distance, where far away across the banks of the Ohio there was a hill, live oaks, and tall pines, where perhaps wine was served in small cafés, and in the school playground, on the swings, sat a small girl in braids and a floral dress, swinging, singing. It was like a scent of a coral rose, a canticle of bliss.
In the morning—at least I hoped it was morning—Gina was still not in the room, and my head felt thirty pounds full of fermented grapes. Candy laughed at me, stretched, jumped up, got into her old clothes. It was eleven in the morning.
“I can’t believe Gina’s not here,” I said, putting on my shorts, my tank top.
“I told you—she’s not coming. You want her, you’ll have to go and get her.”
“Don’t tell me you think she’s still at that table. With Raul.”
“Oh, yes.” Candy grinned. “When you ask her, she’ll say, Eddie? Eddie who?”
“Funny.”
I was self-conscious; she without reservations. I was ashamed of myself, that I could only look at her surreptitiously while she was bouncing around smiling openly at me.
“What am I going to do, Candy?” I said. “I can’t leave her in Reno, can I? Just lose her in the casino. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Reed, is she not in the car? Oops. Must have left her at the blackjack table. So silly of me.”
“Sloane, you’ve got more important fish to fry right now. Don’t worry, when you come back with Tara, I
guarantee, Gina will not have yet left the casino.” She laughed at her own humor. “Me, I’m going to wait right here. Me and your car will be waiting for you and the baby girl.”
Why did she mention my car like that? “How am I supposed to get there?”
“Take a bus.”
“By myself? I’m going to take the bus by myself?”
“It’s a bus, not the wheel of an airplane! But fine, let’s go to Circus, Circus, see if we can pry Gina’s hot hands off the chips. Maybe she’ll come with you.”
“I wonder why she didn’t come back,” I mused. “Perhaps she won last night.”
Candy nodded. “Don’t you see? She’s never going to leave either way. You’re right, who’d ever leave a winning table? And if she’s losing, she’s just riding out the wave until she gets hot again. No one leaves, Shel. The trapdoor of Reno is above her head.”
We couldn’t find Gina. Raul had long ended his shift, and she was nowhere to be found. Candy told me not to worry. “She knows where we’re staying. If she needs us, she’ll call. Or she’ll come. She’ll be fine.”
Back at the room, we moussed down my hair to make me look subdued and ordinary. We bought me a dress, and I never wear a dress. Especially one like this: long in the knees, with large purple flowers, ruffles at the hem and neckline. I looked ridiculous. “No, you don’t, you look forty,” Candy said, adjusting my buttons. “You look motherly and warm, like you’re about to bake cookies.”
“Splendid.”
I left her my money, for safekeeping, taking with me a hundred dollars for a motel and a burger.
There were no buses going to Paradise from Reno, but there was one bus a day leaving for Chico at 3:25 P.M., the cashier told us, getting in at 11:15 P.M. I had questions for the cashier. Where was Chico, and how would I get from Chico to Paradise?
“What am I, an information booth?” she squawked. “I sell tickets. You want one or not?”
How in the world would I get a room that late, and where? I couldn’t get a map of Chico in Reno, I couldn’t . . . “Let me just take my car,” I pleaded to Candy. “I’ll take my car, I’ll park in Chico.”
“No,” she said. “You can see that damn car for miles. It’s like a beacon.”
“Paradise is not Nevada. It’s not flat desert.”
“How do you know? You’ve never been there. California has desert. Isn’t Death Valley in California?”
“Is Paradise in Death Valley?”
“Could be. Might be. I don’t know. Do you know? I’m not ruling anything out, the way Mike described it. No car.”
Time was ticking. Just ninety minutes till the only bus of the day. “I’ll come with you,” Candy said.
“You can’t. One glimpse of you, and—you’re worse than my yellow car.”
“I’ll wear a wig.”
“Forget it. You’re already like Twiggy.”
“Who?”
“Forget it. Wait here. Besides you have to wait for Gina. I don’t want her to get frantic when she comes back to the room and finds us both gone.”
Candy sighed. “Babysit the car, babysit Gina.”
I fixed her hair, pulled it away from her face, wiped yesterday’s mascara from under her eyes, touched her cheek briefly. “You think you have it tough?” I said. “I’m going to be in Chico at 11:30 at night without a room.”
“Hang on,” she said. “If there’s only one bus to Chico, maybe we should find out how many buses there are from Chico.”
Apparently there was also one. Leaving Chico at 11:25 in the morning, when Tara would still be in school.
“You’ll have to stay one extra day,” said Candy, giving me another fifty dollars out of the depleted stash of money. “You’ll have to stay with her in your hotel, then take the bus back the next morning.” She shook her head. “I don’t like this at all. Tara’s going to get scared. Instead of just driving, or riding, she’ll have to spend a night in a motel. I don’t think she’s ever been in a motel.”
“I could just take my car,” I offered again.
“Cut it out,” she said. “We could sell the car. Buy another one. Heck, with the money we’d get from it, we could buy three.”
“No! I told you already. I’m not selling the car. I can’t talk about this again.” Why couldn’t she understand?
“Okay, okay. What are we going to do?”
“What can we do? Tara is going to have to spend a night in a motel.”
Tears came to Candy’s eyes. “She’ll get scared without me.”
“I’ll call you on the phone. Stay in the room. As soon as school is out, I’ll take her to the motel and we’ll call you. You’ll talk to her, she knows your voice, she won’t be scared then. She knows your voice, right? You spoke to her a lot?”
Candy hung her head. “When Mike was alive, I should have called more often,” she said. “But my life was so yucky. And the time difference . . . every time I thought of calling it was too late in California.”
“But it’s three hours earlier.”
“I guess. But I was always busy in the evenings.”
“What about Sundays?”
“She was with his parents.”
One more hour till the bus. I left most of my things in the room, just took one change of underwear and a toothbrush in a little bag with Tara’s things in it. We sat in the Greyhound station on a long wooden bench. The inside of the terminal smelled of people who had come into town with luggage and jewelry, perfume and money, and having lost it all, having sold it all, having pawned it all, were now sitting twenty-four hours in a depot waiting for the next bus to nowhere, because they had nothing.
Candy and I sat close, looking down at the floor. She took my hand. “Remember the two men in the Andes?”
“God, please no. Not that again.”
“They did what they had to do. And they made it.”
“The worst thing I ever heard. Don’t remind me. So did Lena and Yuri, you know. They did what they had to.”
“They were not those two men.”
“I can’t help thinking that perhaps I’m one of the twenty-nine unlucky ones. Whose flesh is about to be ripped off.”
Candy smiled. “I’m going to tell you something about Judas,” she said. “To make you feel better.”
“I’ve never heard that sentence before today. But please, God, not that, either. How about a joke? A joke would be good right about now.”
“Judas is not the worst story. It’s the best story.”
“Judas in the pit of remorse for eternity is the best story?”
“Yes. When Jesus was dead on the cross and in the tomb, his disciples scattered, because they thought all was lost, all was hopeless, and around them was nothing but black despair. They thought they were defeated, that the world was right and they had been wrong. They thought they were doomed. But the truth was, God would not abandon his creation. The story wasn’t over, Sloane. It was just beginning.”
“Ah,” I said, staring at her. Perhaps she was right. Some things required more contemplation, not less. You needed to think harder about the things that were the most difficult to figure out. You could not abandon the Question, though when you were eighteen, how desperately you wanted to. It was the prerogative of youth, to think of nothing as you blared the music with the windows wide open. The spiritual pressures didn’t go hand in hand with Blondie and the Bee Gees. To hear your inner voice, to search for the Answer, you had to turn down the music. And who wanted to?
I brought with me a bag full of things for Tara: her ball, her dolly, and her markers. I brought her a dress, some underpants, a brush, a mirror, a picture of her mother, a letter from her mother. “Don’t open the letter,” she said. “Just give it to her.”
“Of course.”
“Tell her I’m waiting.”
“That’s the point.”
“Tell her you’re going to have an adventure. Tell her you’re my best friend.”
I blinked.
She gave
me Mike’s parents’ address. “But don’t go to the house. Just in case that’s where Erv might be. Go to her school.” Her school’s name was written on a piece of paper. All the Pomeranians, Chihuahuas, and Taras, from Glen Burnie to Three Oaks to De Soto to Paradise, on scraps of paper in my hand.
“You have to stay put,” I said. “Gina will be back.”
“Of course she will.” Candy smiled. “And you come right back, okay?”
“Of course I will. Paradise sounds worse than the well of eternal sorrows.”
“Exactly.” She shuddered. “That’s what Mike said. Just go get my baby. Tell her Mama’s waiting for her.”
I had seen the girl’s small scribblings. “Hapy Valentin, Mama, wen u com, I giv u chokolats and roses. From Tara.”
“I don’t want to do this alone,” I said.
“I know.”
“I can’t do it alone.”
“You can. You will.”
I shook my head. “Even in your stupid story, two men schlepped together up the Andes. Who’s going to watch my back?”
“God will watch over you, Shall Be.”
Twenty-five minutes till the bus. We got in line. Tara’s bag was in my hand. Did I bring even a spot of lipstick for myself? What if I had to stay an extra night? Did I bring my running trophy T-shirt, my spiral notebook, the things of my other life? “I don’t want to do this,” I repeated in a whisper.
“Then, I’ll go,” Candy said. “Let me go. I’ll be fine. You’ll see. You’ve always been a worrier. You wait for Gina here, wait for me. Give me your dress.”
This is where I rolled my eyes.
Twenty minutes.
Ten.
My turn. Before I climbed the steps, she kissed me. Around her neck my arm went. “He shall give the angels charge over you,” she said. “And keep you in all your ways.”
At my seat, I opened the window, and she stood underneath. “Be good, Grace,” I said. “Do as we discussed. Please. Promise? Your Jesus commands you to be good.”
She smiled back and waved. “Christ didn’t come to earth to make bad men good,” she said. “He came to earth to make dead men live.” She blew me a kiss. The Greyhound hissed a shot of steam into the atrium well.
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