Road to Paradise

  “Oh, Shelby,” said Gina. “Oh. Shelby.”

  Oh Shelby was right.

  I drove so slowly that I finally had to pull off on the shoulder.

  “Don’t stop,” Candy said. “Just keep going.”

  “I begged you!” Gina cried, glaring at me. “I said don’t stop the car!”

  “All right,” I snapped. “You were right, okay? It’s too late for I told yous. Now we have to figure out what to do.”

  “Don’t ask her any more questions, that’s one. You keep asking and asking. You’re just finding out things you don’t want to know. Stop asking. And you”—Gina turned to Candy, sticking her finger out—“don’t tell us anymore! We don’t want to know. Understand?”

  “Whether or not we know,” I said, “we still have to deal with it.”

  “No, we don’t. We don’t have to deal with anything.”

  “He’s going to find you,” Candy said to Gina. “Confront you again. He’s following you as we speak. He followed you to Illinois, he is following you now. He’s convinced you lied about hiding me. You didn’t fool him; he’s got a sense about these things. He was right, you were lying, and he knows it. By the time you get to Iowa-80, which is the busiest rest stop in the country, he’ll have every truck alerted to your yellow canary. You won’t be able to move one mile down that highway.”

  Gina lost it. For a few aggrieved minutes, she flailed her arms and cried unquietly. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home! I want my mother.”

  “Me too,” I said, quieter, grimmer.

  “Not me,” said Candy.

  “Maybe Eddie has a car,” I said, almost musing.

  “Eddie? What does Eddie have to do with this?” Gina shrieked.

  I was taken aback. “Well, nothing,” I said. I began to tremble. “But maybe he can drive out, meet you.”

  “We might need to get closer than Ohio, don’t you think?” Gina said acidly.

  “We are closer than Ohio. We’re nearly in Iowa.”

  “Closer than that.”

  “How close do we have to be, Gina,” asked Candy, “before your future husband drives out and helps you?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Gina stared at me pointedly, and Candy caught it.

  “What are you giving her dirty looks for? She’s the only one driving.”

  Like this we drove through the corn fields of Missouri, winding our way on local roads, dreading the interstate, which I instinctively felt would be our undoing, even if I didn’t quite have a plan of how to avoid it. Neither did I know what to do with the tattooed chick in our backseat, or about the fact that we needed gas and food, or that I hadn’t slept, and in Candy’s words, “was the only one driving.” We needed a plan. I had to get to Mendocino. Gina had to get to Bakersfield. Candy had to get to Paradise. Gina was upset, I was upset, but Gina was upset and helpless, while I was upset and without a plan. That was different. I wasn’t thinking about the past, what I could do to undo it. I didn’t think I could have done anything differently, that was the sober truth. It was only the first time, when I drove by her in Maryland, that I could, and did, look away.

  I was becoming so bitter at my lack of plan, not the most attractive quality for an eighteen-year-old who patted herself on the back for her level-headedness and spiral notebook abilities. Fear was breeding square unthinking resentment in my heart.

  We had to stop. No, let’s keep going. Yes, she’s right. If we stop, we’ll be like flies, suddenly we’ll run out of life. We go, go, go . . .

  “Yes, and then flies die.”

  Pause. By everyone.

  “Bad analogy. Let’s keep going.”

  “We should stop. We have to figure out where to let her off.” That was Gina.

  “I’m not stopping,” I said. “Remember what happened last time we stopped?”

  “We’ll need gas.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Shelby.”

  “Gina.”

  At a light, we both turned to face the girl in the backseat. “Candy,” I said, “do you have a plan?”

  She nodded.

  “Does your plan include me making it to California to find my mother?”

  “Hope so.”

  “Oh, she hopes so!”

  But yelling at Candy was like yelling at a child. She became overwhelmed and saddened, slunk into the seat, shutting her eyes. But there was no denying it—we had a situation on our hands, a situation intensified by the hissing whisper to my right. Gina was whispering, thinking Candy, whose eyes were closed, couldn’t hear.

  “What?” I said, full of irritated exhaustion. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Shelby, you’re acting like a building fell on your head. You’re not even blinking. Wake up. It’s not our problem.”

  “Did you see his face?” I said. “Did you see his eyes?”

  “Not our problem.”

  “He is going to kill her.”

  “So she says.”

  “Does she strike you as the melodramatic type?”

  “She strikes me as a type who needs to get the fuck out of our car.”

  “And then what?”

  “Not our problem.”

  I steadied my gaze on the road, hands on the wheel.

  We were hungry. We had to use the restroom. What did Candy know about Bruggeman that was so bad he was willing to kill her for it? He said she took something of his he wanted back. My Larchmont self, who’d barely been out of the driveway and led a safe downtown life, couldn’t comprehend it. Did Bruggeman cheat on indifferent Mom? Did he have a child by his mistress? Was he abusive? Certainly—certainly, Candy looked like the kind of girl who’d seen one of everything, and two of some things. But what could she have seen that would make a terrible man like Erv Bruggeman chase her from Maryland to St. Louis, and farther perhaps?

  What would make Bruggeman summon the support of a fleet of 6,000 truck drivers? My daughter has run away. She’s only seventeen. She’s been troubled her whole life. Help me find her. Please. Who wouldn’t help a concerned father find his little girl? And if that wasn’t the truth, what was?

  Before I was out of my nightmare, Candy woke up. She said she was thirsty. We all were. How could I let her stay in my car? I didn’t know her. She could well be lying. She was a kid, and Bruggeman was a grown-up. A scary grown-up, but a grown-up. I wasn’t sure I could trust him, but I knew I couldn’t trust her. The only thing I knew of her was that she was the kind of girl who would go into a room late at night and give a blowjob to the husband of a woman who had fed her and given her shelter. Was that kind of girl capable of anything? I didn’t know. I had never met that kind of girl.

  After looking at the map, Gina said I-80 was coming up. Candy counted out the miles on her fingers. This was ridiculous. We had to stop. But stopping meant I’d have to make a decision on what to do with her.

  It was me, I was at fault. This whole thing was my fault. And now, to hide from myself and to avoid confronting Gina, I was driving on local roads through Missouri.

  Finally, after the gas light was on for longer than imaginable, I made a series of turns to get away even from the two-lane road we were on, and stopped at a tiny joint, almost on a dirt road, a Ma and Pa wooden shack travel stop, which served coffee, as well as gas. After refueling, we got a burnt coffee and sat at a picnic table in the back where the local boys must go to smoke because the butts on the ground were like wood chips. We sat across from each other and at cross purposes.

  “We have to figure it out,” I said at last.

  “There’s nothing to figure out,” said Gina.

  “No?” said Candy. “What are you going to do when Bruggeman finds you in Iowa? When he won’t take no for an answer?”

  “I’m going to tell him the truth,” said Gina. “She’s not with me. See? It’ll be so simple. You know why? Because you won’t be with me.”

  “It won’t matter,” retorted Candy. “He knows you were lying to him in Springfield, and hid behind the pol
ice to get away.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Gina said bravely. “The truth will set me free.”

  “Not with him.”

  It was six in the evening.

  “Candy, what are we supposed to do?” I asked.

  “Stay off the interstate,” said Candy. “That’s first.”

  “For how long?”

  “Permanently.”

  “Permanently?” Gina raised her voice. “Well, how are we going to get all the way to fucking California if we stay off the interstate?”

  “What did people do before the interstate?” I piped in.

  “What did they do before the interstate?” exclaimed Gina. “What did they do before shampoo, or eye glasses, or cars? I suppose they took their horse and buggy across the fucking prairie and washed their hair with ashes. But what does that have to do with us, what people did before the interstate?”

  “Fewer trucks off the interstate,” said Candy. “Less likely to be spotted.”

  “Yes, and if we found a cave, and sat in it for the rest of our lives, we’d be less likely to get spotted, too. We need to get going. I don’t know about you, Candy, but Sloane and I have some place to be.”

  “Gina’s right,” I said. “It’s taken us all day to go sixty-nine miles, after running into Candy’s father.”

  “He’s not my father.”

  “This is a big country, Candy,” I continued. “The 4,000 miles aren’t going to drive themselves. And I don’t know about your division skills, but sixty-nine into 4,000 is a fuckload of days.”

  Gina oohed at my dry wit and my swearing. Candy didn’t. We gulped our coffees. I got out my notebook. I wasn’t sure what to do. I’m always unsure what to do, which is why I usually end up doing nothing. Opening the notebook always made me feel, perhaps falsely, that I was about to devise some kind of plan and do something. “All right, girls,” I said. “What do you see as our options?”

  “We leave her here, we go,” said Gina.

  Candy said nothing.

  This is the difference between dogs and people. Dogs—mighty annoying to have in a confined space, smelling of wet fur and farts; dogs—stepping in poop, licking their own balls, then expecting you to allow them to tongue-kiss you—all that was child’s play, a measly game of jacks compared to the trouble a non-odorous, non-ball-licking (at least not her own) stranger brought into my life.

  “Candy,” I said. “You know this isn’t fair what you’re doing.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “It isn’t right.” But she knew my weakness, even if Gina, my friend since early childhood didn’t. Gina, my friend since sandbox days, preschool days, neighbors down the block, played in diapers, went to kindergarten, to elementary school, to junior high, to high school, were thick as thieves, and our honor was as thick, too. And it showed. And this stranger, a girl I’ve known for five minutes, knew about me what Gina didn’t know and refused to know. Candy knew I did not want to be like the Black Truck Driver. I do me—you do you was not going to become my motto. Perhaps it had been my motto to this point. I never really did think of anyone but myself. I didn’t think of Gina when I stopped wanting to be friends with her because she became friends with Agnes, the dog of girls. I didn’t think of Emma when I yelled those nasty things to her every time I got mad, I didn’t think of Marc, or Gina’s mother, or my friend Melissa, who wanted to come with us and whom I told no, because I thought she was too needy. I never thought about anybody but me. And it showed. I had no regrets. I was young, that’s what the young are supposed to do, not think about much, not think about consequences, and so I hadn’t. But I didn’t want that black truck motto as my bumper sticker, no matter how funny it was to the passers-by. Perhaps because it was funny to the passers-by. It certainly had been funny to us.

  “I just want to get to Paradise,” said Candy, looking into her Styrofoam cup.

  “I know,” I snapped impatiently. “Who doesn’t know this? Does Erv know this? That you’re headed there?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she replied.

  “What about your mother? Where’s her allegiance?” Gina demanded.

  For a long time Candy didn’t answer, and when she spoke, she couldn’t look at either of us. “Not with me.”

  We were all quiet after that.

  “Like I said, Sloane,” said Gina. “It’s no choice at all.”

  “Let’s paint the car,” said Candy. “Paint it black, or something.”

  “Paint it black,” I said. “That’s good. That’s rich. Should we do it ourselves, in the parking lot of Earl Scheib?”

  “Who?”

  “Painting the car costs money. I don’t know how much but it’s not cheap.”

  “Let’s find out,” said Candy. “In Quad Cities, we can find a paint store, ask.”

  “Paint store? You mean body shop?”

  “Whatever.”

  Gina groaned in disgust. “My father painted his station wagon last year. It was a Chevy wagon, but it cost him a thousand dollars, and he didn’t care about matching the car or lowering its value. To paint a Mustang is going to require some hefty cash. And afterward, it’ll be worth nothing. You’ll see.”

  “Let’s look into it when we get there,” said Candy.

  “No. We shouldn’t paint the car,” Gina said. “We should leave you and get going, is what we should do.”

  “Gina, come on,” I said quietly. I looked into my spiral. I had an empty page in front of me. Picking up a pencil, I wrote: Number 1. Look into car painting. Number 2. Think straight.

  I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t want to glance at Candy and her doe-brown eyes. “Let’s get to this place Candy knows, and then we’ll figure out what to do. Candy, can we let you off there?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “If you wish. If you want to, you can let me off anywhere.”

  “Here?” Gina said, enthusiastically, and then was mock-deflated when she saw my glaring face. We threw away our Styrofoam cups, and got back on the road.

  We were all young. We rebelled against despair, went into self-defense mode. Candy started talking about music, asking Gina questions. “What’s the best song you’ve heard all year? Really? Why? And what about last year? What’s this disco thing? Is it any good? You say you can dance to it? No, I’ve never heard ‘I Will Survive.’ Should I have? So what’s Larchmont like? Are you close to the sea? Are there mountains? What is this Westchester? Shel, did you like living in Larchmont? Did Emma?” She didn’t spit out the word Larchmont the way she spat out the word Pppparadise, as if maggots lived there. But then why was she going to a place that disgusted her?

  Thus we whiled away what remained of the road between Missouri and Rock Island, Iowa, on the Mississippi River. We sputtered forty miles an hour in my souped-up eight-cylinder, 350 horsepower, tiny loose cannon of a yellow car, a car that was like the bullseye on the Royal Airforce planes during the war, making it so easy for Germans to see them and shoot them down. We got to the Quad Cities near sunset, so near sunset that we didn’t have time to find a better place to park. We stopped at a rocky embankment near an industrial district and warehouses off River Avenue. There was a gazebo, and children’s swings, some ducks in the water. Other people had come out, too. Gina said it was ridiculous to stop here when we were all so hungry and tired, but Candy said, “Gina, look, it’s sunset over the Mississippi.”

  “Yeah? So? It’s a sun and it’s setting. Happens every day. After the kind of day we’ve had, excuse me for not waxing misty-eyed.” Gina walked away and, propped by a tree, stood with her arms crossed.

  Candy pointed across the river at a moored riverboat called “Isle of Capri.” That was our hotel, she said, and she and I walked away, leaving Gina to herself.

  Sometimes words fail me. Often they do. Our stomachs were empty and scared, our hearts sore and disappointed. I know mine was. I know Gina’s was. This wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what Gina wanted. But going to Baltimore and to Three Oak
s, and to De Soto wasn’t what I wanted either. And living without a mother wasn’t what I wanted. Or a father. Or siblings. Out of this whole shebang, Candy was the only thing I chose.

  I know this was why Gina was upset with me, and angry. I knew what she wanted back is what we had five minutes before Picnic Marsh, before that traffic light in Fremont. The dogs, the idle conversation about Valparaiso, the mild boredom, the anticipation of something. I knew, because I wanted it back, too. Perhaps it was the boredom that got us here. We were looking for something. And sure enough, sometimes when you look for something, you find it.

  I felt absurdly responsible for our predicament, and scared for Candy, which was novel for me, feeling anxious for another human being instead of for myself.

  But the sunset over the mighty river was blazing. For five minutes, in my head, it had stopped raining nails.

  SIX

  ISLE OF CAPRI

  1

  Eighteen and Twenty-One

  I don’t know how Candy knew of this place. Isle of Capri Casino Boat and Hotel. It was so cheesy with its stained old red velvet carpet. I asked her about it as we waited in line at the reception desk.

  “Been here once before,” she said, sucking a cinnamon Life Saver, making her breath fresh.

  “Been here once before?” I said. “In Iowa?”

  She didn’t elaborate despite our stares. She was funny like that. She said there was a buffet, but it closed at nine. There was, and it did. We just made it with ten minutes to spare, and the crabby waitress said, “We’ll be closing in five minutes, girls, if you want to go and get more.”

  The pot roast was dry, the chicken wings not spicy, the cabbage cold. We didn’t care, we were so hungry. I had valeted my car, hoping that the valet parking lot was in the bowels of the building somewhere, not outside. It was dark. When we got back to the room, I fell on the bed, exhausted. Candy did not share my energy level. She wanted to go gambling.

  “Candy, you’re seventeen years old. Do you even have a fake ID?”

  She showed me her ID. Candy Cane, it said, born May 11, 1963. “Candy . . . but that makes you eighteen.”