Road to Paradise

“Open to ideas about dogs?”

“No. Dogs as an idea. An ideal of affection and comfort.” What was she talking about? Why did she sound annoyed? I had driven her mother’s dogs, hadn’t I? It wasn’t enough for me to drive them, I was supposed to love them, too?

She put on the radio to drown out the barking silence.

David Soul beseeched me not to give up on us but then Mac Davis begged me not to get hooked on him and Toni Tennille wished things to be done to her one more time. Woof, woof.

Finally I had to know. “So what’s with the dogs? That’s new. Your mom, Aunt Flo. I don’t remember them being like that.”

“Aunt Betty, too,” said Gina. “All the sisters got into dogs. They breed them, sell them.”

“Really?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.” I coughed. “It takes time, though. And what about Hathayoga? Your mom was obsessed with that. She was so into …” I tried to remember the name. “… Swami Maharishi?”

“You mean Baba Muktananda?”

“That’s it.”

“My mother’s moved on from Baba,” said Gina. “She and all my aunts.”

“From Baba to dogs?”

“She keeps busy, makes a little money.” Gina turned her face away from me to the passenger window. “Dogs are kind and loving, gentle creatures.” When Mrs. Reed had discovered Eastern spiritualism, she spent four Christmases in a row trying to convert me. Get in touch with your inner Chakra, Shelby. You are one with everything, and everything is one with you. I kept telling her I could not be converted because that would imply a verting. I’m just trying to open your eyes, Shelby, open your eyes to the truth that’s out there. I listened politely, ate turkey at her house, and opened my Christmas presents.

We were going rather slow on Liberty Street, with strip malls all around, stopping at every light. I didn’t care, I was so happy to be on the road again. Number 1: Leave Glen Burnie at 9 a.m. Number 2: Gas up, buy Cokes, potato chips. Number 3: Keep conversation with Gina light. Number 4: Drive 500 miles to Toledo, OH. According to the map, in one and a half inches we would be near the Appalachian Trail and then the Pennsylvania Turnpike would take us north to I-80. Mrs. Reed and her three sisters had been into the reality of yoga and the oneness of the swami so seriously, they even persuaded their brother, a classics professor at University of Connecticut, to come with them to the Ashram, their upstate monistic Upanishad retreat. How many miles had we gone on Liberty Street, ten? It was one in the afternoon. Gina had taken off her sandals and put her bare feet up on the windshield.

“What happened with the yoga?”

Gina sounded reluctant. “Nothing. The dogs have replaced Baba.”

“Why?”

Looking away into the passenger window, Gina said, “Aunt Ethel killed herself.”

“She did?” I tried to keep the wheel straight. It wasn’t easy.

Gina shrugged. She still wasn’t looking at me. “It was called a car accident. But we knew. A clear blue day, no drugs, no alcohol, no heart attack, and she’d been depressed for years. Really depressed. The Ashram didn’t help one bit.”

“No, of course not,” I muttered, clutching the wheel. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

“How could you not know? Agnes told everybody.”

“I make it a point,” I said, “to immediately stop listening to anything that’s begins with the word Agnes.”

As we drove past the bars and the tattoo parlors, I thought about Aunt Ethel. She was beautiful, soft-spoken and loving. “Her poor kids.”

“They’re okay. Daughter is grown. The son has a year left of high school.”

“What about the husband?”

“My mother thinks he’s the reason my aunt killed herself.”

I clutched the wheel tighter. I remembered him, with his overgrown beard and intense eyes. He never quite fit in the family celebrations. “What’s he doing now?” I asked carefully.

“I don’t know. We don’t see him anymore. He never liked our family.”

That was true. He always seemed like an outsider. I had thought Aunt Ethel was the only one he actually liked. He looked at her fondly when he said her name. “Ethel.” Yet I also remember feeling there was something slightly creepy about him, the way he stared at me longer than appropriate, the way he tried to engage me in conversation, and how, once, after Ethel and Mrs. Reed were done regaling me with the consciousness of the yogic vision and the attainment of the Moksha, he recited Donne’s poetry to me. I will not look upon the quickening sun/but straight her beauty to my sense shall run/the air shall note her soft, the fire, most pure/waters suggest her clear, and the earth sure.

I had been hoping he was talking about Ethel, beautiful for an aunt, and said nothing, embarrassed under his gaze. I was relieved when I didn’t see him at Easter.

How gravely Gina and I had grown apart, that not a rumor, a rustle had blown my way, not even from scandalous Agnes. “When did your aunt die?” We used to talk about everything. Every day. Not a day would go by without Gina knowing every minute of my life and me knowing every minute of hers.

“A year this November.”

This made me sad, made me think about things I didn’t want to think about—reminders of the past I wanted put away. Here I was, leaving home for parts unknown and still couldn’t leave them behind. Gina and I used to babysit for Jules and Jim, Aunt Ethel’s kids. Ethel would feed us dinner, and then she and her husband would go out to the movies. They had a beautiful house on the water in Rye. They had a boat, their own slip, eighty feet of private beach, a membership to the yacht club, and both the elementary school and Rye Playland were within walking distance. To Gina and me they had seemed to live an enchanted life, but I guess it was more like enchanter’s nightshade. Beautiful on the outside, poison underneath.

“My mom couldn’t forgive the Vedantists for not bringing my aunt any peace or comfort,” said Gina, “when she needed peace and comfort most. See what I mean about religion?”

I didn’t see what she meant, but I did finally begin to notice that nearly every road we crossed was named Divine Way, Mary’s Way, Cross Way, Holy Road, Holy Family Road, Trinity Drive, Spirit Way. And on every corner rose a church, sandwiched between tattoo parlors and a Jack in the Box. Or were the tattoo parlors sandwiched between the churches? The only thing I noticed about the one church remotely near us in Larchmont was that on Monday each week, the bulletin board in the front would change its inspirational message. “JESUS IS THE ANSWER.” “JESUS IS THE ANSWER TO EVERY QUESTION.”

“Gina, look at all the churches. I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?”

“Well, there aren’t any churches on the Jersey Turnpike. So no. But I wouldn’t have noticed even these had you not mentioned them. I don’t notice things like that.”

“Hmm. Hard to miss.”

Gina must have been thinking troubling things, difficult things—her eyes were unseeing. “What a weird life it must be around here,” she finally said, coming out of her reverie. “What do you think these people do all the time?”

“Well, judging from the road, get tattoos and go to church.”

She laughed. “I’d die if I lived here. Absolutely die.”

I stopped at a light. The road was called St. John’s Path. A white church on one corner, a white church on the other. We waited. There were no more strip malls or Burger Kings. Now, beyond the white spires were rolling fields of green, shivering trees, and sunshine.

“Did you know,” Gina said, “that 57 percent of all people who get tattoos regret them later in life? And that number goes up to 71 percent for women. More men get them, but more women regret them. And tattoos for females are on the rise. Like smoking. Apparently it’s the next trend. Women getting tattooed. Interesting, eh?”

“Yeah, very.” I was only half-listening, trying to figure out a mathematical riddle on the white board.

1 Cross

+ 3 Nails

_________

= 4 Given