Road to Paradise. Paullina Simons
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heard me.”
“Sloane, come on …”
“Gina, I am not your chauffeur, while you sit in my car with your eyes closed and act like Molly.”
“I’m not that bad, am I?”
“Almost! You see me struggling and yet you refuse to help me out by looking at the map.”
“You wouldn’t stop the car! How is that fair?”
“You’ve got absolutely no shame for deceiving me. We’re going to see your stupid aunt in Toledo and you won’t even help me figure out where we’re going!”
“We’re going to see my stupid aunt, as you put it, because we stay with her for free. Your little spiral notebook likes that, don’t it?”
“I’m not your hired driver, Gina. You want to get to Eddie? Take a bus. Or fly. Call him from Bakersfield airport, ask him to come pick you up. But I can’t do this anymore.”
“Shelby, we’ve been on the road five minutes …”
“Yes, and doesn’t it feel like five centuries?”
“I’m sorry, okay?” She waved her hand dismissively, not remotely sorry. “I’ll look at the map, if you want. Jeez, I didn’t realize it meant that much to you.”
“You know what means that much to me? You pulling your weight. You helping me out. You sharing in this. I’m not your mother.”
“Okay,” she said, quietly now. “I thought you had things under control, you and your written-down plans.”
“Leave my plans out of it,” I snapped, looking around for a phone booth. “Yellow Pages will tell us where a bus station is.”
“Sloane, come on. I said I’d try to do better.”
“What is this try? Yeah, and I’ll try to put the gas into the tank, and I’ll try to put the car into first, and I’ll try not to turn the map upside down when I look for your aunt’s house. What’s with the try?”
We went on like this for a few more minutes. But the bubble had burst; deflated I knew I could not take her to the bus. I also knew three other things.
One, I did not have enough money to get to California without her.
Two, I was hoping a little bit she would talk me into driving her to Bakersfield.
And three—I couldn’t do this by myself. When I got out to pump gas, I made Gina get out with me, her mother’s imprecations notwithstanding. Not so much for company, but because I couldn’t get out of the car without some man, young, old, white, black, Hispanic, hassling me. Saying hello from his car. Smiling, coming over to see if I needed help. Now I’m no beauty. I’m either somebody’s type or I’m not. That’s not the point. And maybe they were coming over for Gina. Cute little Geeeeena, her shorts and blouses always tighter than mine, her breasts bigger. All these things, true. But that’s not why they sauntered over. I started bringing Gina out of the car only after I realized that every time I went to get a can of Coke, male strangers were giving me the eye. I knew, if I put Gina on that bus, my own trip would be over. For a number of good and not very good reasons, I wouldn’t be able to continue. Fear—but justified or unjustified? Real or imagined paranoia? My bravado was big, but some of my vexation was at myself, a thin thread of self-hatred for not being braver, the kind of girl who could pull into a gas station and get out of her car without worrying that some man was going to be casing her from ten yards away, hiding in the camouflage of Pepsi bottles and potato chips. But it was hardwired; I didn’t feel safe, and Gina made me feel only marginally safer. Still, even a few degrees of confidence was better than not being able to pump my own gas for 3000 miles. This is one of the reasons the bus felt unsafe to me, to Gina, to Gina’s mother, to Emma. This is one of the reasons a car was better. It allowed a measure of control, no matter how illusory, and I thrived on control. You could lock the car. You could hide in it. You could speed away. They’d have to catch me first on my canary Pegasus.
I sighed. She sighed. She apologized. I apologized. We hugged, awkwardly. Hugged for the first time in almost two years, and drove out to the Interstate. She asked if I wanted a piece of gum and even unwrapped it for me. “Are we going to put it behind us?” she asked, and I wanted to say with a falling heart, put what behind us, but instead said yes, hoping she was talking about the argument we just had. She opened the atlas, and asked where we were, and when we saw we were near Emmaville (Emmaville!) she found it in the atlas.
The scenery had changed dramatically from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Where Maryland was rustic and rolling, Pennsylvania was all about the green-covered Alleghenys. Every five minutes on the Interstate there was a warning sign for falling rock. WATCH OUT FOR FALLING ROCK. What were we supposed to do about that? Swerve out of the way down the rocky ravine? The highway curved and angled, and every once in a while ascended so high it seemed like I could see half of southwestern Pennsylvania and a little bit further. I kept saying the mountains were pretty, and, in response, Gina regaled me with Pennsylvania trivia.
“Did you know the Pennsylvania state insect is the firefly?”
“Gina, do you remember how you couldn’t pronounce firefly when you were a kid?”
“No.”
“You called it flierfly.”
“Did I? I don’t remember.”
“You did.” I trailed off. “It was so cute.”
“Well, fine,” she said. “The state insect is the flierfly. And did you know that George Washington’s only surrender was in Pennsylvania, in Fort Necessity?”
“George Washington surrendered? Aren’t the mountains pretty?”
“On July 4, 1754, to the French.”
“I don’t understand. How can you know so much about Pennsylvania, but not know where Pennsylvania is?”
“I’m going to be a teacher. And what does one have to do with the other?”
I was tired. It was my usual afternoon exhaustion. This Penn Turnpike wasn’t dull like Jersey, flat and straight, but it didn’t matter; even the high vistas through the Alleghenys couldn’t keep me from drifting off to sleep. The next rest area wasn’t for twenty-seven miles, and there is nothing more debilitating than trying to drive when your eyes are gluing shut. It’s worse than falling asleep in math class. Worse than falling asleep during final exams, or oral exams, or at the movies on a first date (more accurate to say one and only date) with someone you really like, worse even than falling asleep on the couch after having too much to drink with your friends. There is a different component that enters into falling asleep on a gently curving road through the mountains doing seventy. You’re going to die, my brain kept yelling at me. You’re going to die. Wake up. You will never get anywhere. You will not go to college, see your mother, get married, have a life. You will have nothing. You will be dead. Wake up!
It didn’t work. I opened the window, gulped the hot air, banged the wheel, turned up the music, tried talking except I couldn’t string two words together.
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Gina.
I couldn’t explain. I tried chewing gum, one stick after the other; I had a wad of gum twenty sticks big in my mouth. That helped as long as I was chewing; trouble was, I wanted to be sleeping. An excruciating twenty-three more miles passed before I finally pulled into the rest area.
“What are we doing?”
“Sorry, I have to close my eyes for a sec.” I parked in the large lot away from other cars. I rolled down the window and tilted back my head.
“But it’s the middle of the day!”
“Yes.