Road to Paradise

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!”

“And they’ll know this how?”

“Gina! Don’t you have to be in Bakersfield?”

“Shh!” There was just us two in the room.

“Why do you keep telling me to shh,” I exclaimed, “every time I say the word Bakersfield?”

“Because no one knows I’m going there. I told them I was just going with you for the ride. That you wanted some company. This is what friends do. That’s why they think there’s no hurry.”

What could I do but shake my incredulous head? “I thought you wanted to get to”—I waved my hand around—“as soon as possible? To get to him?”

“Why do you keep referring to Eddie as him?” she asked, her blue eyes narrowing.

“As opposed to what?”

“As opposed to Eddie.”

“He’s not here,” I said, taking out my spiral notebook and my Bic pen. “I can refer to someone in the pronoun form when he’s not here. It’s not rude.”

“It’s weird is what it is.”

Oh, that’s not the weird thing, I thought, writing down: Number 1: Must leave, must go, must get going! “Besides,” I said, “why do you say, keep referring to him, as if we talk about him non-stop?”

“Yes, okay, you’re right, you win, you can have the last word.”

“Fine, you can have the last word. So when we go out cruising for boy toys, is your twelve-year-old sister coming with us?”

“She can if she wants,” said Gina. But even Molly refused. We went by ourselves. Gina turned up the radio real loud, and the only discussion we had was about whether or not the Nazis in “Raiders” had been destroyed when they opened the Ark of the Covenant because the Ark was not to be a tool in human hands. Gina maintained it could have been opened and looked at by the good guys.

“Gina, you think if Indy opened that Ark, he wouldn’t have gone up in flames?”

“No, I don’t think he would’ve.”

“He most certainly would. Why did he tell Marion to close her eyes, to not look? They only made it because they didn’t look!”

“You’re wrong. He told her just in case, not because they couldn’t look.”

“You’re so wrong.”

“No, you’re wrong.”

I think the Yankees lost. They could’ve won. It was hard to tell sitting a mile away in the bleachers. Men hit a small ball with a stick, ran about, then the game was over. Everyone around us had too much beer and was therefore unappetizing to Gina.

As we were returning to Aunt Flo’s house, I told Gina we had to leave tomorrow.

“Okay,” she said.

It took us another two days to get out.

Aunt Flo, to help us, I hope, told Gina and me that Aunt Betty, whom Gina hadn’t seen in years and who loved Gina and liked me, too, lived near Toledo which was on the way. “Why don’t you stay with her, save yourselves some money? I’ll call her while you’re getting ready.”

I didn’t want to say that I’d been ready for days. “On the way to where?” I cut in.

“To California.”

“Toledo is on the way to California?” Once more I wished I had a clearer idea of what the U.S. looked like. An adult woman was saying to me Toledo was on the way; what was I going to do? Say excuse me while I skeptically check the map, because I don’t believe you; check the map in front of you, just to prove you wrong? So I said nothing, thereby, with my ignorant silence, tacitly agreeing that Aunt Betty was “near” Toledo.

“Shelby, why do you always look like you know best?” Aunt Flo threw open the map. “Look. Toledo is right off Interstate 80, and you have to take I-80 to California, don’t you?”

Well, now I definitely couldn’t even glance at the map in front of her. “Of course, you’re right,” I agreed. “I got confused in my head.”

“Oh, we’d love to, Aunt Flo,” said Gina. “What a great idea. Aunt Betty’s wonderful. Molly, you want to come with us?”

I widened my eyes. Gina did not (would not?) return my gaze. Wow. Gina really didn’t want to be alone in the car with me. By some miracle, Molly declined. She said she didn’t like Aunt Betty’s companion, Uncle Ned. “He makes me feel weird,” she said. “He is weird. A starer.” She made a yuk sound.

Visibly disappointed, Gina tried to convince her. “He’s not so bad. He’s quiet.”

“Yes,” said Molly. “A quiet starer. Nothing worse. So, good luck with that.”

Finally around noon of the nth day, sunny, possibly a Wednesday, though it could’ve been Friday, I screeched out of the driveway, going from nought to 136.7 in three seconds.

“How can your aunt live in that house with so many yapping animals?” I finally asked, after the radio was the only sound in our car for twenty minutes.

“You know what I think?” Gina said casually, tossing her hair about. “I think you’re not a dog person. You don’t like dogs.”

What was she talking about? I loved dogs. I just didn’t love them in my brand new beautiful yellow car on my all-vinyl black seat, barking for 200 miles, needing to go “potty”. I liked my dogs bigger. And farther away. I liked dogs the way dog people like children.

“You have to give them a chance,” Gina continued, putting on peach lipgloss. She was wearing a white tube top and jean shorts today. “Dogs are wonderful. And therapeutic. Did you know they bring terriers to terminally ill patients in hospitals to comfort them?”

“What? And who’s they?”

“Like my mother said, you should keep an open mind, Sloane. You’re narrow-minded. You’re not open to other ideas.”