Road to Paradise (33 page)

“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.” When I said nothing, she said, “What, you don’t agree?”

God help me, I
still
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. But 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 mini-skirt. 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 mini-skirt, 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 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 plane 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.” There wasn’t a car in sight, nor the sound of one coming. “You’re planning to go to
Australia
?”

“Yes.”

“Do you even know where Australia is?” said Gina.

“Har-de-har,” replied Candy.

“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?”

I was skeptical.

“They speak the Queen’s English,” Gina said slowly. “Sloane is just fooling with you.”

“I read about a place there,” Candy said, unbaited, “a little mining town in the middle of vast semi-arid desert lands called Broken Hill. It’s nicknamed Silver City and 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, inexplicably swirling and skipping, accompanying herself merrily with song.

We watched and when she stopped the odd revelry, 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 thought about it, then 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 for 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 wouldn’t even know where it might be. I’ve never seen it.”

“Mike’s parents should know where it is,” said Gina. “You’ll have to ask them.”

“I don’t have weeks to wait,” said Candy. “You know 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.”

Mutely, 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, Cand,” 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 home-school 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 drunk 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.