Road to Paradise (40 page)

“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.”

“Oh, I think we can, officer,” I said. “I think we can.”

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 he’d 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 a $100,000 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 nothing to lose, you think he’s going to be more desperate or less desperate?”

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

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

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. It’s a danger magnet.”

“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 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? I keep saying and saying that.”

“Go where?”

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

Candy shook her head. “No. 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.” She wouldn’t look at me.

“Gina,” said Candy. “We can’t really leave Shelby alone in Jackson, can we? 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 don’t die in skiing resorts?” She kicked up dirt under the swing. “I kind of like this town. I could even 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 fear and anger?

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 when we had left the playground and started ambling back to Broadway Avenue.

“Geographically?” Candy wanted to know. “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, the two of you!” We got some 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, so 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 just teasing. You’re right. Call him. It’ll be fine.”

“But what if it isn’t fine?”

“Then you come with me to Mendocino,” I said, glaring at her. “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 at the bat 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. “After you leave Candy, you and I still have to make our way back home.”

“Yes, we do, don’t we?” I returned her stare, just as coldly.

Gina said nothing. That’s where our alienation became visible, like the sign for the divide. She started rushing us, then. Let’s go. We have to go. Now. I 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
.