Road to Paradise

“Absolutely. Me, too. Well, actually, she’s ten months older, but I know what you mean. And you know sisters, they take care of each other.”

“She’s in good hands. I know you’ll watch out for her. I’ve always liked you. You really don’t mind taking the dogs to Baltimore, do you?” She offered me fifty dollars for my trouble. I have a hard time saying no when people offer me money (it happens so rarely) and I didn’t say no then.

“And Molly promises she’ll be no trouble.”

Dumbly I said, Molly? The time was nearing eleven. I was too afraid to look at my watch. I ripped it off my wrist and threw it in the backseat, as if removing the time counter from my person allowed me the illusion of control, as in, if I don’t know what time it is, then it’s not really that late, is it?

Gina returned. Behind her trailed a grumpy, barely awoken, unbrushed young girl. Molly, Gina’s sister! I hadn’t seen her in two years, and since then, she’d sprung things on her body, like boobs and hips. Back when I knew Gina’s sister, she was a kid. Now she was twelve and unrecognizable. Cheerfully, to balance her sister’s sulky pre-teen face, Gina said, “My mom wanted my sister to come along, too.”

“Gina, don’t lie,” said Molly. “You invited me.”

Flushed, Gina glared at her sister and to me said, “I thought it’d be fun, don’t you think?”

“Is she coming with you all the way to Bakersfield?” I asked, not so carefully.

“Shh! Don’t be silly. No, no,” Gina quickly said, not looking at me.

Molly, as it turned out, was even less prepared than Gina. She had gone to get her toothbrush, a book to read (though she didn’t look like the type that read books; that read period), her rather large cassette player, and her makeup. What else did a twelve-year-old bring to her aunt’s? What else was there? Miniature golf clubs? She said she had to sit in the front. “I get dizzy in the back.”

Gina agreed! Gina was going to sit in the back?

I shook my head. “Molly, do you know how to read a map?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly.

“Oh, good. Because I don’t know where your aunt lives, so you’ll have to direct me out of New York, all right?”

“I can’t read in the car. It makes me dizzy,” said Molly.

“I see.” I nodded. “Perhaps best to sit in the back, then.”

“I can’t sit in the back. It makes me dizzy. Besides, backseat’s too small.”

“Well, that’s perfect, because you’re small, too.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Moll, give Sloane a break, will you?” said Gina with hostility. I suddenly remembered that Gina hated Molly. They never got along. Gina said Molly was spoiled and selfish. Why in the world would she invite her with us to Baltimore? Like children, we stared at Molly, and then pleadingly at Molly’s mother, who pointed a finger at her daughter. “You’ve got one second to get in the back or march right upstairs, young lady.”

Mrs. Reed’s words made no impression on Molly other than to cause a hysterical fit, during which she stormed off upstairs screaming she wasn’t going “Anywhere!” Mrs. Reed soothingly followed. I, for lack of anything to do, other than feel like a dumb ass, brushed my hair. My hair is thin and easy-care, and takes no time at all to brush out. I keep it fairly short for running. I brushed for fifteen minutes. Everyone by this time had left the lawn: the cane-carrying grandmother had gone inside, and Gina had forgotten “one more lipgloss.” Only me and the Pomeranians remained. They had stopped barking and were whimpering now. I knew how they felt.

It was noon. Taking out my spiral notebook, I adjusted my schedule, wrote down the mileage from Larchmont to Glen Burnie (about 250 miles, measured by my pin-point scientific thumb), noted the time, the starting mileage …

By about twelve-thirty, when I had pulled out all of my thin, light, straight as a pin, easy-care-for hair and was debating picking up Gina’s eyelash-tearing habit, a wet-faced Molly reappeared on the grass, mollified. She would sit in the back, “like a good girl,” and would get a hundred dollars for her trouble.

“Ready?” I said to Gina, through my teeth. Molly and the mutts were squeezed in the back. “How about if I drive this leg, and you take the next?”

“What do you mean, take the next?” said Mrs. Reed, leaning in to kiss her daughter goodbye. “Gina doesn’t know how to drive.”

We were on the New England Thruway, and I was yelling. Me, yelling. “You don’t know how to drive? Gina, you told me you had your license! You told me you’d share the driving!”

“I know, I know,” Gina said guiltily. “I’m sorry. I did have my permit, just like you.”

“So what happened? You still have it?”

“Well, no. You know how we’re not supposed to drive at night. In April, I had a little mishap. Drove at night, very slightly teeny bit buzzed. Got stopped. Hence, no license.”

“Oh.” I brightened. “But you do know how to drive, then?”

“No. This wasn’t this past April, but a year ago April. I hadn’t even started my driver’s ed. Sorry, Sloane.”

“Unbelievable. But I kept saying how we would share the driving!”

“I know. I thought you meant that metaphorically.”

“Metaphorically? How do you mean something like that metaphorically?”

From the back the twelve-year-old pulled off one of the headphones on the recently released and all the rage Sony Walkman. “Oh, shut up, already. I can’t hear Journey.”

I lowered my voice. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“I thought you wouldn’t let me come if I told you,” said Gina.

She was right. I wouldn’t have. I had been hoping she’d drive in the afternoons so I could nap, and now that was out the window; I’d have to readjust my schedule that I’d so carefully written up. But she had disarmed me with her honesty, because I wasn’t used to it. I let it go. What choice did I have? Turn around and bring her back home? After all, I had calculated my expenses for two.

Besides, who was I to lecture Gina on honesty and forthrightness?

We drove a little while in silence.

Well, silence if by silence I mean two squabbling orange furballs and a snoring adolescent with earphones that blasted “Don’t Stop Believin”’ to everyone in the car (how in the world could she sleep to that?).

“So we’re off,” Gina said. “Are you excited?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m so excited! I like your car,” she added, as we approached New York City.

“Goes fast, don’t it?” We were moving at a clip of about twelve miles per hour.

It was two in the afternoon.

By five, we were still in New York City, having gone four miles in three hours (construction and two accidents), but on the plus side, it looked as if by sundown we might get to the Battery Tunnel (about forty miles from my house). Still more than 200 miles from our destination of Glen Burnie. And 3200 miles from Mendocino. Gina suddenly seemed a little less excited. We had long eaten all the cannolis.

Molly woke up and asked if we were there yet. I told her I didn’t know what she meant by there, but if she meant downtown New York, then yes, we were. After whining in disbelief for twenty minutes, she announced she was thirsty. Then she was hungry. She had to make a stop. “And the dogs certainly do. Gina, you’re supposed to be responsible for them.”

“They’re fine.” She hadn’t even looked back at the dogs to check. She was wearing tight jean shorts and a blue-striped sleeveless tunic, and was humming along to the radio.

The gas tank was half empty. But we were in the tunnel now. And in Brooklyn, I wasn’t about to get off anywhere. I’d never find my way back to the BQE. And now look. The Verrazano Bridge was rising up out of the water in front of me, and it was five-thirty at night! “I hope Aunt Flo isn’t going to get upset about our late arrival.”

“She’s expecting us for dinner,” Molly said from the back. “And I’m thirsty.”

“It’ll have to be a late dinner,” I shot right back. “Because it’s dinnertime now, and we’re 200 miles from her house.”

Was this how I’d been planning my first day of freedom? My frustration tasted like metal in my mouth.

“I know this is a little slower than we’d hoped, Sloane,” said Gina, “but it’s okay, it’s all part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“Did you girls know,” said Gina, “that there is one letter of the alphabet that does not appear in any of the states’ names. Which—”

“Z!” yelled Molly from the back.

“No, and don’t shout,” said Gina. “Sloane?”

“I’m not playing,” I said. “Q?”

“Yes, very good. Q is correct.”

“Where does Z appear?”

“The Ozarks,” said Molly.

“The Ozarks are not a state, Molly.”

“Missouri, then.”

“Missouri has no Z.” Gina rolled her eyes.

Molly mouthed it to herself a few times and then exclaimed, “Arizona!”

“Very good. It wasn’t a question, but very good.”

I glanced at Gina as we were pulling off on Victory Boulevard in Staten Island. “How do you know this?”

She shrugged. “I know a few things.”

“What letter doesn’t appear in any of the states? That’s knowing a few things?”

She was philosophical. “And a few things more.”

“When did you learn all this?”

“Dad loves trivia. And he’s so competitive and critical, I had to read up on things.”

“He’s supposed to be critical,” said Molly. “He’s Dad.”

“No, he’s right,” said Gina. “I’m going to be a teacher. I have to be smart.” She adjusted the straps of her black bra.

We got gas at a gunky rest-stop; I pumped while Gina walked the dogs; we were back on the road by six-thirty. As we were getting on the expressway, I noticed a young, barely clad lad with a guitar on his back standing by the side of the road with his thumb out. Gina rolled down the window, stuck her head out, and yelled, “Need a ride, cowboy?”

“Gina!” I pulled her back in.

She waved, blew him a kiss. “Maybe next time, huh?” she shouted.

“What are you doing? We agreed!”

“I’m just joking, Sloane,” she said pretend-solemnly. “Just having fun.” She smiled. “He was cute, though.”

“He could be Robert Redford, we’re not picking anyone up, okay?”

“Oh, come on, you wouldn’t pick up Robert Redford?”

She was right, so I shut up until we got to Goethals Bridge forty-five minutes later and crossed into New Jersey when it was nearing seven o’clock. The sun was hazy in the sky, the noxious industry around us.

One of the passing trucks beeped his jolting loud horn and gave me the thumbs up, which I didn’t understand. We turned up the radio. BBBBBennie and the Jets were plugging us kids into the faithless.

“Are we almost there?” asked Molly again.

“No.”

“Are we almost there?”

“No.”

“Are we almost there?”

“No.”

We drove like this for two interminable New Jersey exits.

“Gina, Molly wears a lot of makeup for a twelve-year-old.”

“I’m gonna be thirteen soon,” said Molly, “and what’s it to you?”

“I’m just saying,” I continued to Gina.

Gina shrugged. “Who does it hurt?”

“She is twelve.”

“Thirteen soon!”

“How soon?”

“May.”

“Thirteen in eleven months?” I shook my head. “Like I was saying.”

“I’m thirsty.”

“I’m really getting hungry.”

“I think I need to make another stop.”

“No way am I stopping again. No stopping till Aunt Flo’s.”

“Are we there yet?”

“Stop it!”

“I think the dogs have to go again.”

I glanced at Gina. “You sure you don’t want to take your sister and the dogs to California with us? Come on. It’ll be fun.”

Gina snorted.

“I’ll go with you guys to California,” Molly said brightly. “This is fun.”

Now it was my turn to snort.

“You should feed her, Sloane,” Gina said. “Did you know that if the stomach doesn’t produce a new layer of mucus every fourteen days, its digestive juices will cause it to digest itself?”

From the back came Molly’s revolted screeching. “Hmm,” I said, stepping on the gas. “So the good news is, only thirteen days to go.”

I watched Molly’s warpainted face in the rearview mirror when she wasn’t bent over the crate playing with the dogs. She was such a kid, yet the makeup made her look seven, eight years older. She wasn’t my sister, and I couldn’t quite articulate what I felt, but what I felt was this. Why did a twelve-year-old need to look older? Why did a twelve-year-old need cherry-red lipstick, the brightness of which Debbie from Dallas would shy away from? Come on, Sloane, I chided myself. Stop being so old.

“The New Jersey Turnpike is arguably the dullest stretch of land in all of America,” I said.

“Do you know that studies have shown,” Gina said, “that more accidents with people falling asleep at the wheel happen on the Jersey Turnpike than anywhere else in the country?”

“Really?”

Gina shrugged. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if it isn’t true, it should be.”

Molly piped up once more. “Hey, Shelby, we haven’t seen you in a long time. Where you been?”

“I’ve been around.”

“Not around our house.”

“No.” I trailed off. I didn’t really know what to say. And Gina interestingly didn’t say anything. What do you say? What did Gina say to her mother when her “sister” Shelby had disappeared as if vaporized? I didn’t like Gina’s silence on the subject. She was usually so chirpy. But both her mouth and hands had tensed. She seemed to be almost actively not responding to her sister’s question. We just stopped being friends, that’s all, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Things change, you know? You’ll find out soon enough, Molly. Don’t forget your extra layer of black eyeliner.

Finally! Two hours later, Delaware Memorial Bridge and a wide rushing river; it was the first pretty we’d seen.

“Did you know that the Hudson becomes the Delaware?” asked Gina. “It flows from St. Lawrence in Canada, and then turns into this river.”

“Really?” She was so geographical, this Gina.

“Are we there yet?”

We were there an hour and a half later, at almost eleven.

Aunt Flo, hectored by Gina’s mother, had called the police, alerting them of a mysterious disappearance of a bright yellow Mustang, three “children” inside it (this is how a frantic Mrs. Reed described us to the police officer who came to retrieve us from the Maryland phone booth from which we called for directions) and two small, “very expensive” dogs. While Gina was on the phone with her mother (telling her to calm down or “the trip will be ruined for sure, Mom!”), Aunt Flo could not understand why it took me so long to go two hundred miles. The Maryland state trooper who helped us find the house was nonchalant. “Hit some traffic, did you?” he said.

“Yes, and it hit back.” I poked Gina’s arm, still holding on to maternal telecommunication. “I hope it’s not a harbinger of things to come, going 200 miles in fourteen hours on the road.”

Barely listening, she poked me back. “We weren’t on the road fourteen hours, and you know it damn well is a harbinger of things to come. Mom, I have to go.” Pause. “Yes, of course, we’ll be careful. No, of course, I haven’t pumped any gas. No, of course we haven’t picked up any hitchhikers.” She winked at me.

Aunt Flo, who looked like a carbon copy of Gina’s grandmother Scottie, to whom she was not remotely related, kept berating before salutations. “There was nothing we could do,” Gina endlessly repeated. “We. Were. Stuck. In. Traffic. Remember Shelby, Aunt Flo? Say hello, Shelby.”

“Hello, Shelby,” I said.

Aunt Flo barely nodded my way. “Where are my cannolis, Shelby?” and then without a breath, “But why would you go through New York City? That’s your number one mistake right there.”

So after eleven hours of driving, before being fed or shown our rooms, or given a drink, we parried another fifteen minutes of post-mortem critique about all the wrong roads we took to get to Glen Burnie, Maryland.

I lay in bed that night, my hands under my head, staring at the ceiling. If Marc were here, he wouldn’t stop taunting until Wyoming. He’d say it was definitely my fault. What was I doing in a car with a girl who made my hands anxious and my brain malfunction, a girl who brought her odd sister to be a buffer between us, a girl who could not drive? I hoped Gina could read a map. I missed my comfy pink-roses bed.

Lorna Moor.

My mother’s name filled my insides with an ache like freezing, but all around that aching was a peculiar sort of heat. Emma was related to me. Emma was my aunt. By blood. I was her niece by blood. I had a connection to her. She had a connection to my father. That’s why she didn’t leave, and in Glen Burnie, Maryland, with the planes sounding like they were landing on the roof of our house, that knowledge made me feel better.

Still, my first day of travel had turned out to have in it nothing I wanted, or had prepared for, or planned. I took out my spiral notebook from my duffel and looked over my schedule. We weren’t in Ohio. We weren’t west. We hadn’t gone 500 miles. On the plus side, the lodging was free. Recalling Gina’s little trivia diversions made me smile a bit, but otherwise, I couldn’t relax, or even look forward to tomorrow. But I knew what would make me relax: checking off the items on the agenda for today. Didn’t forget anything. Left on time. Headed in the right direction. Did not get lost. Oh well …

I made a list for tomorrow. That did make me feel better. Number one: Leave no later than nine. I couldn’t make any more plans as I’d left my maps and atlas in the car, and also because I had fallen asleep.

2

The Vedantists

Number one in my plan was out the window at nine-thirty because no one had woken up, not Gina, not Molly, and almost not me.

“How long are we planning to stay?” I asked Gina, when she finally tumbled out of her room around eleven.

“At least a week,” said Aunt Flo, who overheard. “Haven’t seen my darlings in years.”

“Yes, yes, of course. And I hope we have a nice visit.” A week! “It’s just that …” I became tongue-tied. What was there to do in Baltimore for a week? And I had a mission! I had to get to Mendocino. I’d rather spend a week looking for my mother than be here in Glen Burnie. Not wanting to be impolite, I stared at Gina until she said something, about ten minutes later.

“Shelby has to get to California, Aunt Flo. Mom told you. We’ll leave Molly here, but Shel can’t stay that long. She has to be back to get ready for college. And me, too.”

“Yes, so true!” I piped up. “I told Emma I’d be getting back in a few weeks. Plus Gina has to get to—”

“Shh!” Gina interrupted, glaring.

“What’s the hurry?” said Aunt Flo. “It’s supposed to be a fun trip. An adventure. Stay a few days, relax. Then you can drive your sister back, so she doesn’t have to take a bus home.”

“Aunt Flo!” That was Gina. “We’re not driving Molly back. Mom and I agreed. We’re going cross country. We’re not commuting back and forth along the Eastern seaboard.” Way to go, Gina. But to me she said, “She’s right. What’s the rush?”

No, no rush. In one day I was going to chew off my own skin, piece by piece, beginning with my hands.

“You’re right to go,” Marc had said. “This is the only time in your life to take a trip like this, Shelby. Once you start college, you’ll have to work during the summer. You’ll be an intern. And then you’ll have a job in the city. When you have a real job, you’ll have an apartment, bills, a dog. And then even you might find a husband—and then forget everything. Once the kids come, you’ll never willingly get in the car again.” Marc talked of these things as if he knew. “I do know,” he said indignantly. “My older sister has four kids. You should see her. You won’t believe she’s a member of our species.” He drew her bent over the corn bread; the corn bread a happy yellow, and she all in gray. Later, when he showed me the picture, I said, don’t show it to your sister, but he told me she had had it enlarged and framed.

Gina and I went downtown to Harborplace Mall, looked around, flirted with some boys, bought nothing. The following day we went to the town pools. That was okay, even though we took Molly with us. We also took Molly to Burger King and to see “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” That night I lay fretting, and when I woke up, it was another day. In Glen Burnie. Close to the factories and the Camden Yards and the airport; just another drab neighborhood, familiar enough and bland, but how was staying in a small house with a large yard helping me get to California on my road to self-discovery? I took my Folgers instant coffee outside.

The backyard was home to dozens of Flo’s dogs, small and smaller, running around, yapping. It was the yapping that got to me. I wasn’t used to the cacophony. My inner life was quiet, so too my life with Emma. Sometimes my friends were loud, but they were loud temporarily, and then I went home, retreating into quiet again. I liked to listen to music, but quietly, even rock. When Emma and I cleaned or cooked, the house was quiet. Sometimes Emma would put something classical on. I enjoyed that; but this? A constant high-pitched, grating yelping? My point isn’t that it was unpleasant. Undeniably it was. My point is this: someone had chosen this voluntarily; a green backyard with trees and ungroomed flowers, filled with a running mass of barking fecal matter. I then realized. Flo couldn’t hear them. After an hour outside, I couldn’t hear them either. The house was under the path of planes landing at BWI airport four blocks away. Every five to seven minutes a deafening roar in the clouds muted any dog mewling which seemed like Bach’s cello concertos by comparison.

“Girls, why don’t you do something? Why are you sitting around? It’s a beautiful day. Drive down to Annapolis, see the harbor. There’s so much to do around here.”

“We were thinking of leaving to do something,” I said.

Gina kicked me under the table. Aunt Flo said, “Yes, yes, good. There’s an afternoon game today, why don’t you go? The Orioles are playing the Yankees.”

My interest in baseball was only slightly below that of cleaning a yard full of dog poop. And that, at least, would take less time. Besides, we didn’t budget for ballgame tickets. But Gina wanted to go, though she also had no interest in baseball. “Come on, we’ll get some bleacher tickets, they’re cheap.”

Aunt Flo picked up the shovel scooper. “I have to keep at it, otherwise they overrun me.”

“Really?” I said, neutrally.

“Oh, yes, yes. I have to clean the yard four to six times a day. Well, just imagine—twenty-four dogs, pooping at least three times each. Some as many as six.”

“I can’t imagine.”

Gina kicked me again.

“Twenty-four dogs, really? That’s a lot.” Nodding, muttering, I turned my head away so I wouldn’t have to watch a heavy-set, middle-aged woman spending her brilliant summer morning cleaning dog poo. If man is the dog’s master, then why was she picking up their poo and not the other way around? I got up to say we really had to be going. But how do you say this to someone who is fecally engaged? I waited. She was at it a long time. I went into the house, got my things together, my toothbrush, my shoes.

“Come on, let’s go,” Gina said, coming into my bedroom. “She’ll give us money for the ballgame.”

“Why do you want to go to a stupid ballgame?”

“You don’t understand anything. Bleachers are full of single guys. Jocks. Sports lovers.” She grinned. “Nothing they like better than two goils interested in baseball.” She threw back her hair.

“Are you kidding?”

“Not at all.”

“But we’re not interested in baseball!”