Paullina Simons - Road to Paradise

He said nothing, just raised his hand in a wave.

“Come on,” said Aunt Betty. “I only have the one guest room. You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you? You used to all the time when you were small.”

Gina and I said nothing. Perhaps she did mind. If only we could put Molly between us, maybe that would be better.

Adolescent Molly may’ve been right about Ned. He gave me the willies, sitting there lumpen, his great blubber-belly hanging over his belt. Each time he turned a page of his newspaper, a frightening shower of dandruff snowed from his sparse, greasy comb-over onto his light blue T-shirt.

Later when he left the table and the paper open, I glanced over to see what had happened in the world that was so fascinating. A 500-pound woman had died and was two months in the deep freeze while waiting to be cremated. There was some issue about who was going to pay for the “highly involved” process of cremating a body 200 pounds over the allowable weight of 300. The son was indigent, and the coroner’s office, the hospital, and the morgue remained in bitter disagreement about who had to pay for it. I saw the date of the story: April, 1974. Ned couldn’t tear himself away from a news story seven years old.

After “Wheel of Fortune,” when I was faint with hunger, Betty gave us food, but not before she showed us the backyard with pens for her dogs. She cooed over them, fussed, fed them (fed them !). Then us, then Ned. He was last, after the dogs and the guests.

“Sloane,” Gina said to me quietly, “honestly, don’t let it slip how you feel about small furry pooches. Even Hitler liked dogs.”

“Yes,” I barked. “Preferred dogs to children. Quite the paragon of canine-loving virtue, that Adolf.”

Gina tutted and turned to Aunt Betty. “Aunt Betty, is there somewhere fun to go around here?”

“Fun like where?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

“No, that’s why I’m asking. What kind of fun are you talking about?” She narrowed her eyes. “There’s a bowling alley in South Bend. It’s about forty miles away. But that’s a college town. It can get real rowdy there. Real rowdy. There’s an outlet mall in Michigan City. It’s closed by now. You can go there tomorrow.”

“We’ll need to be on our way tomorrow, Aunt Betty,” said Gina. “I’m just asking for tonight. Anywhere to go to in Three Oaks tonight?”

Betty’s eyes remained narrowed. “What kind of fun you talkin’ about?” She looked at Ned, dutifully drinking his beer, not looking up from his news page. He was re-reading the story about the obese woman. “Boy fun?”

Gina shook her head. “Not boy fun. I have a boyfriend. We’re getting married soon.”

“You are ?” I whispered. “Shh.”

“What about your friend, here?”

“I can’t vouch for Shelby,” Gina said. “Can I, Sloane? Vouch for you?” She was turned to Aunt Betty when she addressed me. “We were looking for a bar or something. To get a quick drink.”

“No bar you’d want to go to. Girls don’t go to bars around here. Not good girls anyway.”

Some small measure of sense and her aunt’s Calvinist expression kept Gina from saying, “Who says we’re good girls, anyway?”

“You don’t want to be going into no bars around here.”

“Okay, gotcha.”

“You’re my sister’s kid,” said Aunt Betty. “I don’t care if you’re forty-seven, you ain’t givin’ up no pooty while you stayin’ in my house.”

Pooty? Gina stifled a groan. “Allrighty, then. Well, Aunt Betty, we’re feeling kind of tired. I think we’ll have a shower and head on to bed. Get up nice and early tomorrow, set out. Thanks for dinner. Goodnight.”

“We’re going to bed?” I whispered. It was nine in the evening!

She pulled me to our room. I told Gina I’d been there a thousand times, when a woman who was not my mother kept me from going out, from having fun.

“So what’d you do?”

“Nothing. I stayed in.”

“Fool. I just lied to my mother.” Gina was looking in her suitcase for clothes. “I told her I was sleeping over a girlfriend’s house. She never checked. She wanted to trust me, and as long as I didn’t get caught, I knew I’d be okay.” We giggled at the gullibility of mothers and Emmas trying to keep their girls from having fun. “Well, don’t just stand there. What are you doing, pulling out a book? Hurry, go have a shower, get dressed.”

“For bed?”

Gina grinned. “Whatever you want to call it, girlfriend. Just put on some ‘pooty’ clothes.”

“We’re going out?”

“Of course. What do you think? I didn’t let my mother tell me what to do, you think I’m going to let my mother’s enfeebled sister do it?”

“But she said no!”

“Oh, well, better tuck ourselves in, then.” She snorted. “Come on. We’re not going to walk out her front door.”

“How are we going to get to the car in the driveway?”

Gina pointed to the window.

“We’re going to sneak out the window like cats?”

“Cats on the prowl. What, you’ve never done it?”

“My window was on the second floor above a garage. So—no.”

“Chicken. I would’ve built a ladder in the trees.”

“Yes, I suppose you would’ve.” After showering, she put on her jeans, and a cute beige top that came with cleavage. I didn’t have a beige top that came with cleavage, but I had runner’s legs. So after showering I put on a mini-skirt and high heels. We spent extra time on our makeup. Gina was really taking time with hers. Three different eyeliners, two shadows, mucho blusho.

“Gina … um. What about Eddie?”

“What about him?”

I watched her apply another coat of black mascara. “Must be some fun you’re thinking of having with four coats of Great Lash. Didn’t you just say you’re going to California to marry your boyfriend?”

“Fiancé. He asked me to marry him before he left.” She waved the mascara wand, licked her lips. “I love Eddie. He’s the only one I want. But he’s been up to no good.”

“How do you know?” And is that how it worked?

“Oh, he confessed. He didn’t like having the burden of his wrongdoing on his conscience. To make himself feel better, he told me.”

My throat went kind of numb. I said, “Told you …”

“His little thing with Teresa. You know Teresa, the county slut? God. He justified it, as he justifies everything, by saying it was my fault. After all, he said, I had a boyfriend I refused to break up with when we first got together.”

“Huh,” I said carefully, throat less numb. She did actually have a boyfriend she refused to break up with when she and Eddie first got together. He was the tallest jock in school. Eddie was short.

“I know. But I was in love with Eddie, and he knew it. Still am. I just didn’t know how to break it off with John.”

“So how’d you break it off?”

“Don’t you know anything? Agnes isn’t doing her job. I didn’t. He broke up with me. So then Eddie and I were supposed to be exclusive, but now he’s gone back to Bakersfield and I know there’s a girl there he used to, like, date.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. He doesn’t like to keep that stuff to himself.”

“Really?” I wasn’t looking at her, and she wasn’t looking at me.

“They’re sitting by streams, on rocks, picking flowers, reciting poetry or some shit. When we talk he tells me they’re hypothetically talking of what it might be like to be married. After all, that’s what they talked about when they were twelve.”

I didn’t know what to say. “Does he know you’re coming?”

She nodded. “I called him before I left, told him I’m on my way. He said, please come as soon as you can. Please. Save me from myself. I think I may accidentally end up marrying her.”