Road to Paradise. Paullina Simons
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few days, relax. Then you can drive your sister back, so she doesn’t have to take a bus home.”
“Aunt Flo!” That was Gina. “We’re not driving Molly back. Mom and I agreed. We’re going cross country. We’re not commuting back and forth along the Eastern seaboard.” Way to go, Gina. But to me she said, “She’s right. What’s the rush?”
No, no rush. In one day I was going to chew off my own skin, piece by piece, beginning with my hands.
“You’re right to go,” Marc had said. “This is the only time in your life to take a trip like this, Shelby. Once you start college, you’ll have to work during the summer. You’ll be an intern. And then you’ll have a job in the city. When you have a real job, you’ll have an apartment, bills, a dog. And then even you might find a husband—and then forget everything. Once the kids come, you’ll never willingly get in the car again.” Marc talked of these things as if he knew. “I do know,” he said indignantly. “My older sister has four kids. You should see her. You won’t believe she’s a member of our species.” He drew her bent over the corn bread; the corn bread a happy yellow, and she all in gray. Later, when he showed me the picture, I said, don’t show it to your sister, but he told me she had had it enlarged and framed.
Gina and I went downtown to Harborplace Mall, looked around, flirted with some boys, bought nothing. The following day we went to the town pools. That was okay, even though we took Molly with us. We also took Molly to Burger King and to see “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” That night I lay fretting, and when I woke up, it was another day. In Glen Burnie. Close to the factories and the Camden Yards and the airport; just another drab neighborhood, familiar enough and bland, but how was staying in a small house with a large yard helping me get to California on my road to self-discovery? I took my Folgers instant coffee outside.
The backyard was home to dozens of Flo’s dogs, small and smaller, running around, yapping. It was the yapping that got to me. I wasn’t used to the cacophony. My inner life was quiet, so too my life with Emma. Sometimes my friends were loud, but they were loud temporarily, and then I went home, retreating into quiet again. I liked to listen to music, but quietly, even rock. When Emma and I cleaned or cooked, the house was quiet. Sometimes Emma would put something classical on. I enjoyed that; but this? A constant high-pitched, grating yelping? My point isn’t that it was unpleasant. Undeniably it was. My point is this: someone had chosen this voluntarily; a green backyard with trees and ungroomed flowers, filled with a running mass of barking fecal matter. I then realized. Flo couldn’t hear them. After an hour outside, I couldn’t hear them either. The house was under the path of planes landing at BWI airport four blocks away. Every five to seven minutes a deafening roar in the clouds muted any dog mewling which seemed like Bach’s cello concertos by comparison.
“Girls, why don’t you do something? Why are you sitting around? It’s a beautiful day. Drive down to Annapolis, see the harbor. There’s so much to do around here.”
“We were thinking of leaving to do something,” I said.
Gina kicked me under the table. Aunt Flo said, “Yes, yes, good. There’s an afternoon game today, why don’t you go? The Orioles are playing the Yankees.”
My interest in baseball was only slightly below that of cleaning a yard full of dog poop. And that, at least, would take less time. Besides, we didn’t budget for ballgame tickets. But Gina wanted to go, though she also had no interest in baseball. “Come on, we’ll get some bleacher tickets, they’re cheap.”
Aunt Flo picked up the shovel scooper. “I have to keep at it, otherwise they overrun me.”
“Really?” I said, neutrally.
“Oh, yes, yes. I have to clean the yard four to six times a day. Well, just imagine—twenty-four dogs, pooping at least three times each. Some as many as six.”
“I can’t imagine.”
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,”