Road to Paradise (41 page)

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, than me. 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 let 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, we went out, too, trudging along after her.
“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. “But 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 now.”

She fell quiet then.

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. Then we went back to the room, cut each other’s hair, then 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 blonde you ever saw, blonde tinged with orange, and inexplicably, 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 had lain on the bed reading
People
magazine she bought at the drugstore and then the Jackson Hole skiing brochures.

“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 that 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 wanted to know.

Candy didn’t reply. We meandered our way back to the elementary school, and briefly sat in the swings. 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 dolefully 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 go now,” Candy ventured. “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 just can’t.”

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

I had to agree with Gina. 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 she 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.

“Do you remember when you and I climbed out of my aunt’s window and went to the Library Bar in Indiana?” Gina said.

“No,” I said, turning away from her, feeling un-young and miserly. Here I was, sitting in a smoky, loud bar where “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” was blaring and young people were hooking up,
while judging Candy and counting in my head what was left over of my money. To throw stones at her seemed petulant in light of Gina’s remark. Still, though.

“Why does she always need to flirt with guys?” I asked. “Why can’t she just sit with us, have a drink, go back to the hotel room, get a good night’s sleep?”

“Tell me about it,” said Gina. We huddled together like allies. “You know yesterday in Riverton, she went off with some guy, too. I was alone for forty-five minutes, in a bar in that town! I didn’t want to tell you, didn’t want you to say I told you so. But how ridiculous is that?”

I nodded vehemently. “It’s ridiculous. Yeah.” We clucked and tutted. Then I frowned. “But what about us in South Bend?” Was Candy right? Her flirtations were wrong, but ours, now ours were delightful!

“I guess,” said Gina and smiled. “But that was so devastatingly fun, baby.”

“The next day when we ran into them and they didn’t even acknowledge us,” I said, “was
that
fun?”

“Who cares?”

“That’s right,” I said. “You shrugged it off then, too, but I couldn’t. Still can’t. I didn’t feel liberated. I felt diminished. Like I gave that guy something he wanted, but after I gave it to him, he held me in contempt. Why would he? I don’t hold him in contempt for taking it. Why does he hold me in contempt for giving it?”

“Ask Candy. She’s got a silver spoon in her mouth, according to you. Ask her why she doesn’t care. Actually, it’s the one thing I really like about her.”

Candy didn’t return in time for us to ask her. Why did it upset me so much, her going with him? He seemed nice, seemed to like her, why did it prick my heart? Tired of waiting and not wanting to pay for another beer, we left and walked back to the motel, a few blocks away. Jackson is laid out below one of the tallest mountains in the United States and the effect of the Grand Teton at night on a tiny town lying at its feet is staggering. A massive black
monolith hulked threateningly over every street and alley, the thin crescent moon and the distant stars lighting up just enough of the gargantuan ebony outline to drive more foreboding into my heart. “I don’t want her to live here,” I said to Gina, hurrying along, looking at the pavement. “This place isn’t for her.”

“How do you know? Maybe the copper fell in love with her.”

Candy came back after midnight. We were already in bed. Gina was asleep. I had nothing to read, so I was reading Gideon’s Bible. When she returned I was leafing through “
What to read when you’re
feeling sorrow” and “What to read when you’re feeling lost
.”

“Where’ve you been?” I closed the book.

“You know where I’ve been,” she said. “With Ralph.”

I waited for her to say more.

Candy shook her head. “He’s a nice man. I told him I was looking for a place to live. He said if I stayed in Jackson, he’d make sure I was safe.”

“Did you tell him you have a baby in California?”

“Not yet,” she said, smiling tiredly, taking off her little skirt.

I examined her resigned face. “Did you tell him about Erv?” I swallowed.

“No. Did you want me to?”

I waited until she came back from the bathroom, her face and hands damp.

“So are you staying?” I asked haltingly.

“No,” said Candy. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

She took off her makeup and got into bed. Rather, she got into bed and then took off her makeup, her crumpled balls of baby-oiled tissue falling soundlessly to the floor.

I chewed my lip. I was happy she was back, to have her next to me. “Gina and I were talking,” I began.

“About me?”

“Well … about the whole thing.”

“The
whole
thing? Really? Because that’s a lot.”

“Well, just the boy thing.”

“Ralph is not a boy. He’s thirty-three.”

I took a breath, and told her about the two Todds in South Bend. Finally, I said, “The way he looked at me made me feel so bad. That was the only time I had done something like that.” That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. It was the only time I had done something like that outside of Larchmont. But there everyone knew everyone else, the boys saw the girls again, and after all, it was the melodrama, the false tears and the even more false promises that kept us all busy in our junior and senior years. If it weren’t for the relentless and meaningless hook-ups in high school, what would any of us have to talk about?

“Okay,” Candy said. “But what does it have to do with me?”

“Doesn’t it make you uncomfortable that boys might feel the same way about you?”

“Nope,” she said. “What surprises me when I think about it, and I don’t much think about it, is how often they want something so bad they’re willing to do anything to get it. To pay money for something I don’t often want for free. I make it easy, and they like it easy. But that has nothing to do with me. It’s got everything to do with them.”

Turning slightly away, I stared at the ceiling. I’d seen a lot of ceilings on this journey with her. “Don’t you want some love, Candy?” I whispered.

“I have love,” she said. “You don’t know yet. But someday you’ll know.”

I thought I might already know, but I didn’t tell her that.

The next day we got up extra early at seven. We didn’t want to hang around, Candy said, because Ralph was going to come looking for her.

“Why would he come looking for you?” an exhausted Gina asked, moody like Miami weather.

“He was pretty smitten,” said Candy. And sure enough, his patrol car was parked in the front and he was sleeping in it! Making sure he didn’t miss her. We tip-toed past him.

“Candy, if he was that smitten,” Gina whispered, “why didn’t you stay?”

“Gotta get my girl.”

“So get your girl and come back.”

“He was too nice for a girl like me,” she said. “This place’s too nice for a girl like me.”

Not protesting I was relieved. Did you see the ominous Tetons, I wanted to ask. They were like a black premonition. It increased my speed.

We missed the Snake River Canyon, drove right above the river, didn’t even notice it. We swept through the little towns, Alpine Junction and Freedom, Afton and Smoot, around the lee side of the Wind River Range, and then headed into Idaho, around the ragged cliffs of enormous Bear Lake that looked artificial and artificially green.

Then we made a wrong turn by a tumbling river and got lost in the woods. There was construction up ahead, we took a detour and by the time we realized we were heading north, not west, we’d gone fifty miles through woodlands in the wrong direction on a winding road. Candy stared out the window the whole time.

We were so scared, we stayed in Pocatello, Idaho, though it was nowhere we needed to be. Pocatello would have looked like Wyoming if not for the millions of birch trees lining the rocky grasslands.