Road to Paradise

“Yes, but I’m not driving.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Look, I’m hopeless at maps. It’s just how it is.”

“I’m not very good either,” I retorted, “but I still have to look, still have to figure things out.”

“So figure it out.”

I crumpled up the map like a soiled tissue. I didn’t finish my sandwich. “Ready?” I jumped up and left the table without even glancing back to see if she was coming.

Was it ridiculous for me to be this ticked off? We were not yet in Pennsylvania, the state next to New York! My original plan had been to cross the George Washington Bridge at ten a.m., drive on I-80 for two hours and be in Pennsylvania for lunch by noon. So how was it more than a week later and we still weren’t there?

I had lots of reasons to be simmering. It wasn’t the geographical ignorance that was irking me; after all, I was no Henry Stanley myself. What was getting to me was the supreme geographical indifference. Not just, I don’t know where I’m going, but I don’t care.

In the parking lot, the sunshine beating down, stomach half-full, the Interstate up ahead, things bubbled up and spilled over. Molly, Aunt Flo, too long in Glen Burnie, the prickly sadness about lost closeness.

“Look,” I said, whirling to Gina on the sidewalk. “This was a really bad idea. You clearly don’t want to be here, don’t want to do this. I don’t blame you. Why don’t I drop you off at the nearest Greyhound station and you can take the bus back home. You’ll be there by tonight. Or go to Bakersfield. Do whatever you want. Just …”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Sloane, come on …”

“Gina, I am not your chauffeur, while you sit in my car with your eyes closed and act like Molly.”

“I’m not that bad, am I?”

“Almost! You see me struggling and yet you refuse to help me out by looking at the map.”

“You wouldn’t stop the car! How is that fair?”

“You’ve got absolutely no shame for deceiving me. We’re going to see your stupid aunt in Toledo and you won’t even help me figure out where we’re going!”

“We’re going to see my stupid aunt, as you put it, because we stay with her for free. Your little spiral notebook likes that, don’t it?”

“I’m not your hired driver, Gina. You want to get to Eddie? Take a bus. Or fly. Call him from Bakersfield airport, ask him to come pick you up. But I can’t do this anymore.”

“Shelby, we’ve been on the road five minutes …”

“Yes, and doesn’t it feel like five centuries?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” She waved her hand dismissively, not remotely sorry. “I’ll look at the map, if you want. Jeez, I didn’t realize it meant that much to you.”

“You know what means that much to me? You pulling your weight. You helping me out. You sharing in this. I’m not your mother.”

“Okay,” she said, quietly now. “I thought you had things under control, you and your written-down plans.”

“Leave my plans out of it,” I snapped, looking around for a phone booth. “Yellow Pages will tell us where a bus station is.”

“Sloane, come on. I said I’d try to do better.”

“What is this try? Yeah, and I’ll try to put the gas into the tank, and I’ll try to put the car into first, and I’ll try not to turn the map upside down when I look for your aunt’s house. What’s with the try?”

We went on like this for a few more minutes. But the bubble had burst; deflated I knew I could not take her to the bus. I also knew three other things.

One, I did not have enough money to get to California without her.

Two, I was hoping a little bit she would talk me into driving her to Bakersfield.

And three—I couldn’t do this by myself. When I got out to pump gas, I made Gina get out with me, her mother’s imprecations notwithstanding. Not so much for company, but because I couldn’t get out of the car without some man, young, old, white, black, Hispanic, hassling me. Saying hello from his car. Smiling, coming over to see if I needed help. Now I’m no beauty. I’m either somebody’s type or I’m not. That’s not the point. And maybe they were coming over for Gina. Cute little Geeeeena, her shorts and blouses always tighter than mine, her breasts bigger. All these things, true. But that’s not why they sauntered over. I started bringing Gina out of the car only after I realized that every time I went to get a can of Coke, male strangers were giving me the eye. I knew, if I put Gina on that bus, my own trip would be over. For a number of good and not very good reasons, I wouldn’t be able to continue. Fear—but justified or unjustified? Real or imagined paranoia? My bravado was big, but some of my vexation was at myself, a thin thread of self-hatred for not being braver, the kind of girl who could pull into a gas station and get out of her car without worrying that some man was going to be casing her from ten yards away, hiding in the camouflage of Pepsi bottles and potato chips. But it was hardwired; I didn’t feel safe, and Gina made me feel only marginally safer. Still, even a few degrees of confidence was better than not being able to pump my own gas for 3000 miles. This is one of the reasons the bus felt unsafe to me, to Gina, to Gina’s mother, to Emma. This is one of the reasons a car was better. It allowed a measure of control, no matter how illusory, and I thrived on control. You could lock the car. You could hide in it. You could speed away. They’d have to catch me first on my canary Pegasus.

I sighed. She sighed. She apologized. I apologized. We hugged, awkwardly. Hugged for the first time in almost two years, and drove out to the Interstate. She asked if I wanted a piece of gum and even unwrapped it for me. “Are we going to put it behind us?” she asked, and I wanted to say with a falling heart, put what behind us, but instead said yes, hoping she was talking about the argument we just had. She opened the atlas, and asked where we were, and when we saw we were near Emmaville (Emmaville!) she found it in the atlas.

The scenery had changed dramatically from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Where Maryland was rustic and rolling, Pennsylvania was all about the green-covered Alleghenys. Every five minutes on the Interstate there was a warning sign for falling rock. WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ROCK. What were we supposed to do about that? Swerve out of the way down the rocky ravine? The highway curved and angled, and every once in a while ascended so high it seemed like I could see half of southwestern Pennsylvania and a little bit further. I kept saying the mountains were pretty, and, in response, Gina regaled me with Pennsylvania trivia.

“Did you know the Pennsylvania state insect is the firefly?”

“Gina, do you remember how you couldn’t pronounce firefly when you were a kid?”

“No.”

“You called it flierfly.”

“Did I? I don’t remember.”

“You did.” I trailed off. “It was so cute.”

“Well, fine,” she said. “The state insect is the flierfly. And did you know that George Washington’s only surrender was in Pennsylvania, in Fort Necessity?”

“George Washington surrendered? Aren’t the mountains pretty?”

“On July 4, 1754, to the French.”

“I don’t understand. How can you know so much about Pennsylvania, but not know where Pennsylvania is?”

“I’m going to be a teacher. And what does one have to do with the other?”

I was tired. It was my usual afternoon exhaustion. This Penn Turnpike wasn’t dull like Jersey, flat and straight, but it didn’t matter; even the high vistas through the Alleghenys couldn’t keep me from drifting off to sleep. The next rest area wasn’t for twenty-seven miles, and there is nothing more debilitating than trying to drive when your eyes are gluing shut. It’s worse than falling asleep in math class. Worse than falling asleep during final exams, or oral exams, or at the movies on a first date (more accurate to say one and only date) with someone you really like, worse even than falling asleep on the couch after having too much to drink with your friends. There is a different component that enters into falling asleep on a gently curving road through the mountains doing seventy. You’re going to die, my brain kept yelling at me. You’re going to die. Wake up. You will never get anywhere. You will not go to college, see your mother, get married, have a life. You will have nothing. You will be dead. Wake up!

It didn’t work. I opened the window, gulped the hot air, banged the wheel, turned up the music, tried talking except I couldn’t string two words together.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Gina.

I couldn’t explain. I tried chewing gum, one stick after the other; I had a wad of gum twenty sticks big in my mouth. That helped as long as I was chewing; trouble was, I wanted to be sleeping. An excruciating twenty-three more miles passed before I finally pulled into the rest area.

“What are we doing?”

“Sorry, I have to close my eyes for a sec.” I parked in the large lot away from other cars. I rolled down the window and tilted back my head.

“But it’s the middle of the day!”

“Yes. I can’t explain. It’s just—” I fell asleep nearly instantly, couldn’t even finish the sentence. Not even fear of death could snap me awake.

“Sloane!” Gina’s voice sounded alarmed.

I opened my eyes. Rolling up her window, Gina was shaking me awake, pointing to the black tar-truck in the parking lot, not twenty feet away. The driver, a fat man with tattoos on his neck and shoulders, was yelling something, gesturing to the backseat, and giving us, or something behind us, the finger. I almost wanted to turn around to make sure his girl wasn’t in the backseat.

“You got the witch in the back with you?” he yelled. At least I hope he yelled witch. “Tell her I’m not done with her! Not by a long shot!” He screeched away, rough-looking and sweaty, erratic on the exit; he nearly hit a sedan pulling into the lot as he was pulling out. After we’d watched him weaving through the service road onto the Interstate, Gina rolled down her window and yelled, “Screw you, mister! Go to hell where you belong!”

“Oh, very good, Gina. And brave.”

Gina turned to me. “Awake now?”

“You betcha,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Jeez, what was his problem?”

“Dunno. I guess he thought that girl was with us.”

I didn’t want to tell Gina I was glad I wasn’t alone. The man, big, angry, with a red bandana on his head, looked like the poster boy for public service announcements exhorting you never, but never to talk to strangers. I slowly got on the road, not wanting to catch up with him. But sure enough, in seven miles, doing eighty to his sixty, his “I DO ME, YOU DO YOU” coal contraption loomed ahead, and when he saw us smoking him on the left, he gave us the finger once more. Gina gave him two fingers of her own, and gesticulated wildly, pretending to be furious, silently mouthing things through the glass. She rolled down her window, and with the eighty mph wind whipping through her hair yelled for real: “Good luck trying to catch us, buddy!”

“You’re crazy; stop it! You’re going to get us into serious trouble.”

“What’s he gonna do? Race?” Gina rolled up her window. “I can’t believe that chick got into the truck with him.”

“She must be brave to hitchhike.” I said it wistfully, as in, I wish I were brave, not, I wish I could hitchhike.

“Brave? You mean stupid, dontcha?”

“Maybe.” I thought. “But she doesn’t have a car like us.” I patted my wheel as if she were a silky kitty.

“She could have taken a bus,” said Gina.

What, to be safe? I said nothing, but I was thinking that perhaps the girl who could get into a truck with a man who looked like that would probably not be the kind of girl who’d be afraid of taking a little bus.

Gina settled into her seat and closed her eyes. “I think that’s why you were upset before. At Subway.”

“Why?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you think we should’ve helped her out. Given her a ride.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I hope you know by that crazy guy, just how many kinds of wrong that would’ve been.”

I didn’t say anything.

After another 200 miles of turnpike speeding, I gave up any hope of getting to Toledo by nightfall. Scratch the last item on my list. It was ten at night and we were just nearing Cleveland. “Have you got anything to say about Cleveland?” I was exhausted.

“Yes!” said Gina, all sparkly. “Cleveland was the first city in the world to be lit by electricity. Back in 1879.”

“Hmm. Looks like they’re all out today.” It was dark in the distance and unlit. “How far to Toledo?” I asked the tollbooth operator.

“A hundred and twenty miles,” she replied.

Too many miles. We’d already traveled 454. Ten minutes later, we had ourselves a spare room in Motel 6, right off the Interstate. It was on the second floor, had two double beds, an old TV, and a broken air conditioner. It smelled only vaguely of other people. The sheets were white and starchy, not soft and pink like those Emma had bought me for my thirteenth birthday. It was our first motel room, well below budget at forty-five dollars, which pleased me. Gina was in the shower singing “By the Banks of the Ohio” and “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal” as I was laying out my clothes for tomorrow and brushing my teeth. I had intended to turn on the TV, but I liked the sound of Gina’s happy soprano voice, I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal, and the din of the shower through the open door, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal … I lay down on the bed, the lights on, git up here, mule, here comes a lock. I was going to write a list for tomorrow and think about my mother … we’ll make Rome ’bout six o’clock … but all I could think about was that girl and why didn’t we stop. Oh, we couldn’t, no, we couldn’t, but if that were so, why did I have her young face, her short skirt and hitching hands in front of my eyes, her lilting voice in my head as the last things I saw and heard before I fell asleep? One more trip and back we’ll go, right back home to Buffalo …

Come on, help out a sister in need …

THREE

1

Ned

The next bright morning I drove like the tail winds were in my hair. At a hundred miles an hour I was the fastest horse on the road. I had trucks honking at me the entire way. There was no one faster on the road than me and my sweet yellow Mustang. We passed two cop cars, but I blew by so fast, they didn’t see me.

The music was loud, and Gina and I were singing. O Mary don’t you weep, don’t you mourn, O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn … We opened the windows for a sec, but I was going too fast, we couldn’t catch our breath. We had slept well, eaten McDonald’s for breakfast, the sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky, and all was good, better than yesterday, and the days before that. My heart was light.

We punctuated the 120 miles by screaming every song on the radio at the top of our lungs. Our rendition of REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Lovin’ You” would’ve brought down the house had there been a house to be brought down.

The Interstate through the northern part of Ohio is just a straight wide road amid a flat lot of nothing. Ohio didn’t impress. But going faster than a single engine plane did. Gina cheerfully compared and contrasted the Jersey Pike, the Penn Pike, and the Ohio Pike. We concluded that Penn Pike was best but only because of the unfair advantage of Pennsylvania’s mountains. Pennsylvania’s beauty was more dramatic than Maryland’s but it wasn’t more beautiful. For some reason I had really liked the sloping, cozy back roads of Maryland. Gina wasn’t crazy about either.

We got to Toledo around noon and hungry. I asked Gina for her aunt’s address. It took her a while to find it; she said we might have to stop for directions. I didn’t disagree. I’m not a guy, I have no problem asking, but stopping on an Interstate was a little problematic. It’s not like the information founts are working by the side of the road in little booths. When I asked to see the address, Gina demurred.

Turns out it was a good thing we didn’t push on straight till morning the night before, because Toledo’s being farther north and west than we had expected was the least of my concerns.

“Three Oaks, Michigan?” I gasped when I looked at the address Aunt Flo had written down. “Three Oaks, Michigan? Are you kidding me?”

“Well, that’s what it says.”

I ripped the piece of paper away from her and stared at the words again. “What does Michigan have to do with Toledo? Does Michigan even border Ohio? Isn’t Indiana the next state over?”

“I don’t know,” she said, wrinkling her little nose in a guilt squint. “I think so.” She blinked her blue eyes at me and grinned. “Want to check the map?”

“Someone is going to have to. Why would your Glen Burnie aunt tell you your Toledo aunt lived in Toledo if she doesn’t live in Toledo?”

“She didn’t say she lived in Toledo. She said she lived near Toledo.”

“Is Michigan, two states away, really near Toledo?” I flipped open my notebook.

Gina snatched it away. “Look, Miss Spiral, let’s get Burger King and get on with it. You know we’re going to have to go see Aunt Betty no matter what. She’s waiting for us. No use bitching and moaning. And it’ll save us at least fifty bucks in hotels.” She smiled. “Depending on how long we stay.”

When we had food in our hands, Gina called the number on the scrap of paper. “Aunt Betty is so happy we’re coming!” she said when she got off the phone.

“Oh, yeah? Did you tell her she lives in Michigan, not Ohio? That’ll wipe the smile off her face.”

Gina laughed. “Sloane, you’re so funny. So what? It’s nothing. Michigan, Ohio, what’s the difference? We take the road we’re on …”

“I-80?”

“I think so. We take it to Route 12, just a few miles west from here, and then take 12 a few miles north, and then we make a left, and it’s right there. Can’t miss it. She said from here it shouldn’t take us more than an hour.”

“Famous last words.” I unfolded my big map so I could find this Route 12. Oh, yes. So close. Just half a jump to the left, half a step to the right. Let’s do the time warp again … “Tell me, explain to me, how near Toledo means near Lake Michigan,” I grumbled, biting into my burger and fishing out a handful of fries. We were leaning over the hood of the ’Stang. “Tell me. Toledo is on Lake Erie. Tell me how Lake Michigan is near Lake Erie.”

“Aren’t they adjacent lakes?” Gina said helpfully.

“They’re Great Lakes! One lake is bigger than the Black Sea. The other is bigger than the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Come on, that’s not really true,” said Gina, helping me fold the map, her mouth full of fries and fish. “The Gulf of Mexico is the largest gulf in the world. And the Black Sea—”

“Gina, I don’t want to hear it.” I was getting tetchy again. “One giant lake, another giant lake, a rinky-dink town that doesn’t even rate atlas mention, that’s not next to Toledo, Ohio!”

“All right, all right. Can we go? She’s waiting.”

“Not next to it. You have to tell your Aunt Flo that, Gina, when you see her.”

“I will. It’ll be the first thing I tell her. Now come on.”

After we found Route 12 and got off, and drove twenty miles, we were told we were going the wrong way. “You’re going south,” the tollbooth guy said when we finally capitulated and asked. “You have to head north. Just head on up for ten or fifteen miles. Three Oaks is right before the bend. Watch for it. If the road turns, you’ve already missed it. You’ll be in New Buffalo.”

“So we won’t know until we’ve missed it?” I said accusingly, pulling away. “Gee, I wonder why it’s called Three Oaks?” I revved the car into second. “I’m sure it’s ironically named. It’s probably a booming town.”

Of course we missed it; missing it was built into the directions. When the road turned, a sign genially informed us that we were now leaving Three Oaks township (no less!) and counseling us to drive safely. We turned around. A little elementary school on the corner, a gas station, a bar. No sidewalks.

Michigan wasn’t what I expected. Perhaps my mind was poisoned by my perception of Detroit. I imagined all Michigan, like Flint—built up, industrial, a sort of bleaker Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is as bleak as apocalypse, all smokestacks and black electric-wire factories. It wasn’t anything like that where we were. This was all driving country, no towns, no strip malls. Silos, fields, curving country roads with little ramshackle delis built into the shoulder like bushes.

The aunt’s house wasn’t actually in Three Oaks, but on the outskirts, off a dirt road, marked not by a number but by a stone dog on the rusted mailbox. Next to it was a broken-down limp trailer with one end inside a small rotted-out barn where there was a cow and a goat.

Aunt Betty was waiting for us out on the dirt driveway. She was tall and thin, with watchful, perpetually moist brown platters for eyes. Her mouth was slightly ajar, as if she was about to say something, yet didn’t. She did quietly lament our tardy arrival as she and Ned had already eaten lunch and weren’t making another meal until sundown; was that all right with us?

“I don’t know,” said Gina. “What time does sun set around here, Aunt Betty?”

She showed us to our room, hurrying past the kitchen. The house was not as neatly kept as Aunt Flo’s—it was dusty, piled with years of layers of stuff. Ned was sitting at the kitchen table so immersed in a newspaper, he barely looked up.

“Hi, Ned,” said Gina.

He said nothing, just raised his hand in a wave.

“Come on,” said Aunt Betty. “I only have the one guest room. You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you? You used to all the time when you were small.”

Gina and I said nothing. Perhaps she did mind. If only we could put Molly between us, maybe that would be better.

Adolescent Molly may’ve been right about Ned. He gave me the willies, sitting there lumpen, his great blubber-belly hanging over his belt. Each time he turned a page of his newspaper, a frightening shower of dandruff snowed from his sparse, greasy comb-over onto his light blue T-shirt.

Later when he left the table and the paper open, I glanced over to see what had happened in the world that was so fascinating. A 500-pound woman had died and was two months in the deep freeze while waiting to be cremated. There was some issue about who was going to pay for the “highly involved” process of cremating a body 200 pounds over the allowable weight of 300. The son was indigent, and the coroner’s office, the hospital, and the morgue remained in bitter disagreement about who had to pay for it. I saw the date of the story: April, 1974. Ned couldn’t tear himself away from a news story seven years old.

After “Wheel of Fortune,” when I was faint with hunger, Betty gave us food, but not before she showed us the backyard with pens for her dogs. She cooed over them, fussed, fed them (fed them!). Then us, then Ned. He was last, after the dogs and the guests.

“Sloane,” Gina said to me quietly, “honestly, don’t let it slip how you feel about small furry pooches. Even Hitler liked dogs.”

“Yes,” I barked. “Preferred dogs to children. Quite the paragon of canine-loving virtue, that Adolf.”

Gina tutted and turned to Aunt Betty. “Aunt Betty, is there somewhere fun to go around here?”

“Fun like where?”