Макс Коллинз - Road to Paradise

He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Annie, it is odd — no getting around that. But maybe it’ll help us, you know... get back in the swing.”

She said nothing, but hugged him and went off to her room — one of the few moments with Anna in this house that he would treasure.

Michael knew how hard it was for her — missing the last two months of her senior year, taken away from her friends, her boyfriend, no Sound of Music , no prom that she would have been queen of. For a girl her age, could anything be worse?

She wouldn’t even be valedictorian of her class. The transcripts from St. Paul that would eventually go to the University of Arizona would have a 3.7, so Anna would have a strong academic record without attracting the attention such an honor would bring. Strangest of all, she wouldn’t really finish high school — it was too late in the year to transfer to anywhere in Tucson, so WITSEC would cook up a diploma for the girl from Minnesota, saying she’d graduated early in anticipation of the Arizona move.

All of this served to put Anna in limbo, not to mention a deep sulky funk.

In addition to homesickness for her boyfriend and the life she’d had to run out on, Anna was annoyed that she was a “prisoner in her own home.”

She had made this clear to Michael when he took her for an afternoon drive in the Lincoln around the university campus, an oasis of learning in a residential section between Speedway and East Sixth. Wearing a yellow tube top and cut-off jeans, her long dark hair in a braided ponytail, Anna would fit in fine with the kids on this endless acreage — she already had a dark Indian tan, and they’d only been here a week.

As father and daughter wound through immaculately landscaped drives, rambling red-brick buildings nestling among sunshine-dappled trees and shrubs, he extolled the virtues of the school, with its great programs in the arts; she’d have every opportunity here to pursue her music and acting...

“I feel like goddamn Gilligan,” Anna said suddenly, slumped against the rider’s side window.

“Who?”

“Gilligan! Stranded on his island with the Skipper and a bunch of other idiots?... Daddy, here I am eighteen, and you’re driving me around like I’m a little kid.”

“Honey, you know I intend to buy you your own car, in the fall, when you start college...”

The dark eyes flared. “If I behave myself, you mean!”

“I didn’t make any conditions... That’s the auditorium over there — largest in the Southwest. You’ll be on that stage, before you know it.”

“I’d rather be on the first stage out of this hick town.”

“Annie...”

She cast an outrageously arch expression his way. “And why, pray tell, will I need a car?”

“Well, Annie... because Tucson sprawls all over the place. You’ll have to be able to get around.”

“If I was living in one of the dorms, I could get by without a car. But you don’t want me living in a dorm, do you, Daddy? Like any other real college student! You want me at home... under your thumb.”

He pulled over in front of a three-story red-brick building, the library, leaving the car and its air-conditioning going. He looked at her hard and yet lovingly, though her gaze flicked from him to this and to that, her half-smirk digging a dimple in one pretty cheek.

“I’m not trying to smother you, sweetheart. You know this is no game — we’re in danger, all of us. I have to make sure we’re safe.”

“Will we ever be safe?”

Not really , he thought, but he said, “I think so. But let’s just... settle in, okay? And make a new life for ourselves?”

She grunted something that wasn’t exactly a laugh. “What, I’m supposed to make a new life for myself in my bedroom ? You make me leave everything behind but you won’t let me replace it with anything!”

“It’s early, Annie... Day at a time, okay?”

“Easy for you — you’ve got a job, a really real new life! I’m just at home with Mom, who these days has about as much interest in life as one of these cactuses or cacti or whatever the fuck!”

He sighed. “Your mother will adjust.”

“You really think so? She’s just this, this zombie Donna Reed, anymore.”

“She’ll adjust. And so will you. You’re already making friends, right?”

“Yes, and if it wasn’t for Cindy living across the street, I’d be insane by now!”

“And I haven’t stopped you from going out with Cindy and her friends, right?”

She swallowed and granted him a look that acknowledged him as a human being. “No. I appreciate that. I do. And it’s fun out here, sort of.”

“You liked the horseback riding, right? You said that riding trail was really beautiful...”

“It was okay. It was fine.”

“And you and Cindy and those kids went off together, and I didn’t have any trouble with that, I wasn’t a jerk about it or anything, right?”

“Right.”

“It’s beautiful out here. You know it is. We can make a new start here, all of us.”

“I know.”

“We can go out for golf. You wanna go golfing with your old man?”

“Sure, Dad.” She seemed worn down by the conversation. “Let’s keep looking. At the campus.”

“Sure, sweetheart.”

But Anna was right about her mother; this Michael knew.

Pat was going through the motions, not much else. Her grooming remained typically immaculate, even if she did look like she’d aged ten years in the last few months. Her uniform had become pale pastel pants suits, the colorful, western-style clothing of Tucson not to her tastes; she looked as pale as her clothes, sitting by the pool sometimes, but in the shade, avoiding the sun.

She did the cooking and the shopping and even the cleaning, saying she’d prefer not to have any housekeeping help. All of the housewifely stuff she took in stride, and seemed to get lost in.

When she wasn’t keeping house, she sat and drank orange juice (she promised him it was just orange juice, since alcohol with her medication was not a good idea) and read paperbacks she’d picked up at the supermarket or watched television. She had gotten hooked on several soaps, particularly General Hospital , during the Washington, DC, hotel stay; and she liked some game shows, the ones with celebrities like Hollywood Squares and The $25,000 Pyramid .

“Did you ever meet Peter Lawford, dear?” she asked him once. “He was on the Pyramid today.”

“Yeah, a couple of times.”

“He’s an idiot, isn’t he?”

“Pretty much.”

This was what her life had become — TV, housework, cooking, the occasional inane comment. She had made no move to get involved in anything political or with a church. Her political impulse seemed limited to saying, “Fucking Nixon,” whenever the president came on the TV screen; and they had not yet found a church, which was a major shift for the Satariano... the Smith... family.

“Wouldn’t you like to join somewhere?” he’d asked her one evening, at the supper table, after Anna had gone off to her room to listen to Deep Purple (the rock group, not the song).

“I don’t think so,” his wife said, drinking her coffee, not looking at him, or anything, really.

“Several nice possibilities on this side of Tucson. We could even go to one of these funky old mission churches.”

“No.” She made a slow-motion shrug. “We’re supposed to keep a low profile, right?”

And that was all she’d say on the subject.

He hoped Pat would indeed adjust. And he would do his best to help her. He knew she was lying about the orange juice, because the vodka bottle in the cupboard wasn’t draining itself; and he doubted Anna was snitching it. Right now, so early in this new life, he didn’t have the heart, the will, to confront his wife about it.