“Much like tonight.”
“No, not at all like tonight. On this particular Saturday night, the three boys were joyriding, and there is no joy tonight. One of them was a security officer at a local bank, one of them had a gun, one of them was fifteen years old. They were playing around, but they’d been drinking and driving; the gun was playfully pointed, they hit a bump, the gun went off. No one meant for it to go off, but it did just the same and hit one of the boys in the neck. They stopped the car, the bleeding boy fell out onto the sidewalk.” Candy was spinning the postcard in her hands. “You know neck wounds.”
“We don’t know neck wounds,” I said quietly. We were all leaning against the hot Mustang.
“There’s a lot of blood. It looked pretty hopeless. And the boy who shot him was so distressed, so horrified at what he’d done, that he turned the gun on himself.”
Gasping, we said nothing.
“The wounded boy on the sidewalk,” said Candy, “lived. Got a scar in his neck. Will talk funny for the rest of his life, but lived. The fifteen-year-old wasn’t harmed.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “The boy who turned the gun on himself was your Mike?”
“The boy who turned the gun on himself was my Mike.”
“And his friend?”
“They weren’t friends. They were brothers. All three of them.”
We were quiet for a long time. The last purple streaks on the western horizon darkened finally to black while we struggled to find something to say.
“Are you going to the funeral?” asked Gina. “Because you’re taking your time, if you are.”
“I’m not going to the funeral,” replied Candy. “Mike’s parents would have me arrested if I ever came near them.”
“They hate you?”
“Deeply. They thought their boy was too good for the likes of me.”
You were trouble, I wanted to say. You are trouble.
“Well, if he’s dead, and they don’t want to see you, why are you risking your life going to Paradise?”
“Because Mike was the father of my baby girl.”
“You have a baby?” gasped Gina.
“What, not old enough?” Candy said, pulling a small envelope from her Mary Poppins bag and handing it to us.
Plenty old, I thought, old like a wizened woman. But a child, too. I turned on the dashboard light to see the small card, written in the neat scrawl of a child.
“Hapy Valentin, Mama, wen u com, I giv u chokolats and roses. From Tara.”
“I had her five years ago when I was almost thirteen,” Candy said, taking the card from my hands. “I got to my mom’s, met Erv, met Mike, and got pregnant straight out of the gate, so to speak. Before anything else. What could I do? I had the baby, and she lived with them. I visited her all the time, but then they moved.” Candy spat on the ground. “She was two. They took her, took her deliberately away from me, pretending it was for work or some shit, and moved to that god-forsaken hole in the ground, Paradise. Mike didn’t want to go, but what could he do? He was just a kid himself. He hated them for it, and hated Paradise like I can’t tell you. Whenever I talked to him, he’d tell me he was counting the days until he was out of school and could get a job and move away. He said it was like prison, like hell on earth.” Candy made a stricken noise. “Mike was the only decent one in that whole family. We were both saving money so we could take our baby and be together. But now that he’s dead, I’ll be damned before I leave her another day with those blood-sucking sons of bitches.”
“You’re going to Paradise to take the girl?”
“Yes.”
In the dark I swallowed air like a fish, as if I wanted to breathe and couldn’t. “Are . . . they going to be okay with it?”
“Well, I’m hardly going to ask them, am I?”
“Is the girl going to be okay with it?”
Candy paused before she slowly replied. “Shelby, a small girl needs to be with her mother, that’s all there is to it.”
God help me, I said nothing. I was panting. In my universe, these were undreamed of dilemmas. I had once thought, once believed the answer to that question was so simple. “Yes,” I finally said. “Yes, I agree.”
“But what are you going to do?” asked Gina, her voice transformed, considerably softened. And why not? Nothing she had hitherto known about Candy made more of an impression on Gina than this small but monumental fact. She was a mother. She had a child. She didn’t have a hairbrush, yet she had a child. She didn’t have a suitcase or a wallet to put her earnings into. She didn’t have a pen or a plaque. She looked like she’d never seen a doll, much less played with one. She was younger than me. This person had a child. At seventeen, I was sucking lollipops in the hall, pining after Tony Bergamino and running 440-meter sprints.
Gina said, wishful hope lifting her voice past the peaks of the Badlands, “So you started doing what you were doing to make money for the baby?”
“Uh, no,” replied Candy, who, for all her vices, found it difficult to lie. “I don’t think it was that thought out. I just sort of walked into it. Knowing that I had experience—having given birth and all—Erv asked if I’d be interested in making good money for a few hours’ work. I said why not. I bought Tara a few things, treated her well for Christmas. After they left, I worked, sent Mike some money. But one day, his bitch of a mother opened his mail, saw the cash from me and flipped out. After that, it was hard to send money. You have to be eighteen to receive a Western Union wire or your parent has to sign for you. Then I started sending some to a woman named Nancy, who owned a bookstore in Paradise. I’d wire it to her, and she’d give it to him.”
“There are no easy answers,” Gina said.
Candy frowned. “No easy answers to what? You don’t wrestle with the question of the meaning of life, but this gives you pause? I need my kid. I need my money. She and I disappear, start a new life, away from everything. What answers are you talking about? You think I got dealt the wrong hand? Or that I should be unhappy with the hand I was dealt?” She shook her head. “I never complain.”
“Oh, I know that. That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” But before Gina could think of a response, Candy added, “And you know what? I knew a girl during the five minutes I went to school, who was four foot ten and picked her face so bad it bled all the time. None of her clothes fit and the boys laughed at her. All she wanted, and I mean, all she wanted, was to be able to wear a miniskirt. So she did. Her rolls of fat spilled under her halter top, her legs were trunky and hairy. Her face bled as she applied her mascara and blush, but still, she put on her miniskirt, and every night asked God for only one thing—to fit into it, to just once be looked at by the boys the way I was looked at by the boys. Everything I had she wanted or so she thought. But you know what? Not for anything would I give what I got dealt to be her. So she prayed to God and asked him for what I had, and I prayed to God and asked him to help me make sense of what I had been given.”
“Some of it not so good, Candycane,” said Gina, scooting a little closer. “Personally, I’d ask, what the fuck?” I scooted closer on the other side. Candy stared at us from one face to the other.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you worried? Don’t worry,” she said. “Floyd will be here soon.”
Touching her bare arm, I said nothing. She took my hand and, for a few moments, held it.
How long could we sit and wait in the dark at the foot of the Badlands for Floyd to arrive with Candy’s money? It was unbearable for me. What was it like for her?
“Do you see why one way or another I have to get my money? Because without it, I can’t have a life with my baby. Without it, I can’t change anything.”
I think I nodded. I may have wished I did. “But, Candy,” I whispered, “where is there to fly to where Erv can’t find you?”
Candy moved away from my patronizing, compassionate hand-wringing. “I’m not writing poetry here,” she said. “I’m going to get us a p
lane ticket and she and I are going to Australia. Just me and her.”
From the hood of my car, I could see the dark outlines of those monolithic, ragged rocks rising out of flat ground. The neon of the bar was broken and intermittently flashing. Not “Horseshoe,” but “Horse hoe.” “You’re planning to go to Australia?”
“Yes.”
“Do you even know where Australia is?” said Gina.
“Har-de-har.”
“That’s your plan? Take her and fly to Australia?”
“Yes.”
“Australia?”
“Yes! No one knows us there. Erv won’t find me, and I can begin afresh. Tara will be starting school next month. I have to think about making a stable home for her. I can’t just be traveling from bar to bar.”
“No, no, of course not.” I rubbed my chin, not wanting Gina to catch my incredulous stare.
“Australia is exotic, Sloane,” said Gina, trying to find something positive to say.
“Yeah, but no one speaks English,” I said.
“What language do they speak?” said Candy. “Australian?”
“They speak the Queen’s English,” Gina said slowly. “Sloane is just fooling with you.”
“I read about a place there,” Candy said, “a little mining town in the middle of vast semi-arid desert lands called Broken Hill. It’s nicknamed Silver City. That’s where I want to go live with my Tara. In the outback of Australia. Silver City. It’s just right for me, but to get there I need my money. Do you see how badly I need it?”
“I do, I do.” Hopping off the car, Gina started to dance, swirling and skipping, accompanying herself with song.
“Up jumped the swagman, sprang into the billabong
You’ll never catch me alive, said he
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by
That billabong
You’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me . . .”
We watched and when she stopped, I said, “What about passports? You’ll need those, too.”
“Oh, Sloane,” said Gina with a disapproving frown. “Leave the girl alone. Let her have her dream for five minutes.”
“Passports? To Australia?” Candy seemed surprised by that.
“Yes. It’s a foreign country. You need a passport to travel out of the United States.”
Candy shrugged. “Well, I’ll get these passports if that’s what I need. How hard can that be?”
“You need a permanent address,” I said.
“Sloane!”
“You need a birth certificate,” I continued. “For you and the baby. You need pictures of her and you, certain kinds of pictures, certain size, certain profile. You need identification, and you need to wait a few weeks until you get them.”
“Shelby!” exclaimed Gina. “Her parade is so short-lived. Why do you want to rain on it?”
“Because I want her to succeed. And she can’t go without the passports.”
“I don’t have birth certificates,” Candy said. “My father might have mine, but I don’t have Tara’s. I don’t even know where it might be. I’ve never seen it.”
“Mike’s parents should know where it is,” said Gina. “You’d have to ask them.”
“I don’t have weeks to wait,” said Candy. “I don’t have days. I was going to take her, go to ’Frisco that very day, fly out the next. I didn’t know I needed passports. And you know I can’t ask Mike’s parents for anything. They hate me, I told you. They’re not going to help me with shit. I’ll be lucky if they don’t call the cops on me for taking my own kid.” She started to cry. “They won’t give me her birth certificate,” she whispered.
“You are her mother,” I said. “They will.”
“You are her mother,” agreed Gina. “Sloane’s right. They should.”
“I am her mother,” concurred Candy. “I need to get her somewhere safe. I can’t fail her. I have to help her. She can’t grow up without a mother.”
I pressed my sad hands around Candy’s shoulder.
She lowered her head. “I’ve seen some bad things in my life.” Restlessly she looked down the road, one way, the other. “I want to keep Tara from them.”
The night became hot and humid. We were stuck to the car, and the accidental touch of another’s bare clammy skin was unpleasant. Candy jumped down from the hood and started pacing. I started twitching. Gina was curious. I wanted to talk about the baby; Gina wanted to talk about Mike. Did Candy love him?
“We were twelve, thirteen.”
“I know. But did you love him.”
“I guess. I thought I did.”
“Did you want to get married?”
“We were thirteen.”
“Did you talk to her on the phone?” I asked, and held my breath for her answer.
“Yes,” she said. “Mike would take her out for a walk in the stroller, and I’d call them at the library, or the bookstore.”
It was so dark, so quiet, so frightening. Where was Floyd?
“How far do you think you can run from your life, Candy?” asked Gina.
“Ten thousand miles to Broken Hill,” she replied.
“A man like Erv, you don’t think he’d miss you? You don’t think he’d notice you were gone? All the things you know about him and what he’s done to hurt young girls, the film you stole from him, you think he’d just let you wander the earth? You could have him put away for life.”
Candy was pacing, not answering. “Yes,” she said at last. “I told him in my letter. As long as he leaves me alone, I’m forever silent. He knows that. I once believed he’d let me go. He as much as said so. ‘Any time you want out, darlin’, you just tell me, and you’re out,’ he told me. No fuss, no muss.” She paced more furiously.
“Not really a man of his word, is he,” I said.
“I got mixed up with him, he was no good, and my mother couldn’t help me. But you’ll see. I’m going to be a better mother to my Tara. I’ll put braids in her hair. She’ll play with her dolls, and wear pretty dresses, and I’ll never let her wear makeup till she’s sixteen. I’ll be so strict with her. Strict but fair. I’ll homeschool her, so she stays away from the bad boys. She is so beautiful. She needs to stay far away. Tara is going to have a long childhood, I’m going to make sure of that.” Suddenly she swore. “Where is that fucking Floyd?!”
I couldn’t stare down the dark road anymore, waiting for his lights. I hopped off the car. “Do you know how to braid hair, Candycane?”
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t know any lullabies either. But I’ll learn.”
I walked to the trailer. “We’ve been waiting for over three hours,” I said.
“Going on three,” corrected Gina.
“Thank you. How long are we going to sit here? Will we stay the night?”
“I don’t want to,” said Candy. “But what choice do I have? He has my money.”
“Where do you think he keeps it?” I asked. “In a bank?”
“I don’t know,” she said. I was quiet. She stared at me. “What are you getting at?”
“What I’m getting at,” I said, “is perhaps he keeps it in his trailer. He’s not here. It’s your money. You see what I’m getting at?”
We ransacked the place. We were like irate ATF agents on a gun raid without a warrant. The trailer was locked, but Candy crawled through the bathroom window, and let us in. We were quick and careless. We didn’t worry that he’d know we’d been looking for her money: the place was a biological and human dump, he’d never notice. It was a trash heap of someone’s life, and all of it was on the floor, on every available flat surface. “This doesn’t seem like Floyd,” said Candy, looking around. “I’ve seen his room. He was always so clean. I used to call him tidy Floyd.”
“Maybe you were being ironic?” said Gina.
“Perhaps he has a messy roommate,” I countered.
After twenty minutes of looking, in dusty corners, under a ravaged mattress covered with grime and gunk, we finally found a metal box
with a lock on it. It took an energized Candy, a hammer, pliers, and five minutes to break the lock. Inside was cash.
My relief was short-lived.
“This can’t be right,” she said after she finished counting. “There’s only a thousand here.”
“Maybe he divided his talents among little metal boxes,” said Gina. “Maybe he doesn’t want to keep his treasure all in one place.”
“Yes, yes,” I said in vigorous agreement. Gina and I stood close together, watching Candy on the floor with the metal box.
We searched some more, but it felt futile. There were no other metal boxes. “This has to be some kind of a mistake.” She shook her head. “Floyd is a good guy. This must not be my money.” She went to put it back.
Gina and I, gesticulating wildly at each other, took her by her arms and persuaded her not to. It was insurance money, we said. If it’s a mistake, you give it back. When he gives you your money, you return this and apologize.
She kept it. “Floyd wouldn’t do this,” Candy insisted. “He went to church with me. He sang in the choir with me. We sang hymns and Psalms together, every Sunday.” She wouldn’t move from the now empty metal box, holding on to the fifties. “What if this is all that’s left?” she whispered. “It can’t be. It just can’t!”
“It’s not,” I reassured her, patting her shoulder, trying not to touch anything else, trying even not to touch her. Imagine patting someone without touching them, it’s not easy. I wished I could float and not stand on the filthy floor. And all the while, my heart thumped dully, thickly in my chest, all the while, I kept listening for the sound of Floyd’s car, dreading the confrontation.
“What are me and my baby going to do?” Candy whispered. “It’s not enough to get to Australia.”
I took a breath. “Candy, we’ll have to make you a plan B. Just in case you can’t get the passports and all.”
“I don’t have a plan B,” she said, clutching forlornly at what she suspected was all that was left of her money. “I have only one plan. To take my money from Floyd and go to Australia.”