Road to Paradise. Paullina Simons

I hope, told Gina and me that Aunt Betty, whom Gina hadn’t seen in years and who loved Gina and liked me, too, lived near Toledo which was on the way. “Why don’t you stay with her, save yourselves some money? I’ll call her while you’re getting ready.”

      I didn’t want to say that I’d been ready for days. “On the way to where?” I cut in.

      “To California.”

      “Toledo is on the way to California?” Once more I wished I had a clearer idea of what the U.S. looked like. An adult woman was saying to me Toledo was on the way; what was I going to do? Say excuse me while I skeptically check the map, because I don’t believe you; check the map in front of you, just to prove you wrong? So I said nothing, thereby, with my ignorant silence, tacitly agreeing that Aunt Betty was “near” Toledo.

      “Shelby, why do you always look like you know best?” Aunt Flo threw open the map. “Look. Toledo is right off Interstate 80, and you have to take I-80 to California, don’t you?”

      Well, now I definitely couldn’t even glance at the map in front of her. “Of course, you’re right,” I agreed. “I got confused in my head.”

      “Oh, we’d love to, Aunt Flo,” said Gina. “What a great idea. Aunt Betty’s wonderful. Molly, you want to come with us?”

      I widened my eyes. Gina did not (would not?) return my gaze. Wow. Gina really didn’t want to be alone in the car with me. By some miracle, Molly declined. She said she didn’t like Aunt Betty’s companion, Uncle Ned. “He makes me feel weird,” she said. “He is weird. A starer.” She made a yuk sound.

      Visibly disappointed, Gina tried to convince her. “He’s not so bad. He’s quiet.”

      “Yes,” said Molly. “A quiet starer. Nothing worse. So, good luck with that.”

      Finally around noon of the nth day, sunny, possibly a Wednesday, though it could’ve been Friday, I screeched out of the driveway, going from nought to 136.7 in three seconds.

      “How can your aunt live in that house with so many yapping animals?” I finally asked, after the radio was the only sound in our car for twenty minutes.

      “You know what I think?” Gina said casually, tossing her hair about. “I think you’re not a dog person. You don’t like dogs.”

      What was she talking about? I loved dogs. I just didn’t love them in my brand new beautiful yellow car on my all-vinyl black seat, barking for 200 miles, needing to go “potty”. I liked my dogs bigger. And farther away. I liked dogs the way dog people like children.

      “You have to give them a chance,” Gina continued, putting on peach lipgloss. She was wearing a white tube top and jean shorts today. “Dogs are wonderful. And therapeutic. Did you know they bring terriers to terminally ill patients in hospitals to comfort them?”

      “What? And who’s they?”

      “Like my mother said, you should keep an open mind, Sloane. You’re narrow-minded. You’re not open to other ideas.”

      “Open to ideas about dogs?”

      “No. Dogs as an idea. An ideal of affection and comfort.” What was she talking about? Why did she sound annoyed? I had driven her mother’s dogs, hadn’t I? It wasn’t enough for me to drive them, I was supposed to love them, too?

      She put on the radio to drown out the barking silence.

      David Soul beseeched me not to give up on us but then Mac Davis begged me not to get hooked on him and Toni Tennille wished things to be done to her one more time. Woof, woof.

      Finally I had to know. “So what’s with the dogs? That’s new. Your mom, Aunt Flo. I don’t remember them being like that.”

      “Aunt Betty, too,” said Gina. “All the sisters got into dogs. They breed them, sell them.”

      “Really?”

      “What’s wrong with that?”

      “Nothing, nothing at all.” I coughed. “It takes time, though. And what about Hathayoga? Your mom was obsessed with that. She was so into …” I tried to remember the name. “… Swami Maharishi?”

      “You mean Baba Muktananda?”

      “That’s it.”

      “My mother’s moved on from Baba,” said Gina. “She and all my aunts.”

      “From Baba to dogs?”

      “She keeps busy, makes a little money.” Gina turned her face away from me to the passenger window. “Dogs are kind and loving, gentle creatures.” When Mrs. Reed had discovered Eastern spiritualism, she spent four Christmases in a row trying to convert me. Get in touch with your inner Chakra, Shelby. You are one with everything, and everything is one with you. I kept telling her I could not be converted because that would imply a verting. I’m just trying to open your eyes, Shelby, open your eyes to the truth that’s out there. I listened politely, ate turkey at her house, and opened my Christmas presents.

      We were going rather slow on Liberty Street, with strip malls all around, stopping at every light. I didn’t care, I was so happy to be on the road again. Number 1: Leave Glen Burnie at 9 a.m. Number 2: Gas up, buy Cokes, potato chips. Number 3: Keep conversation with Gina light. Number 4: Drive 500 miles to Toledo, OH. According to the map, in one and a half inches we would be near the Appalachian Trail and then the Pennsylvania Turnpike would take us north to I-80. Mrs. Reed and her three sisters had been into the reality of yoga and the oneness of the swami so seriously, they even persuaded their brother, a classics professor at University of Connecticut, to come with them to the Ashram, their upstate monistic Upanishad retreat. How many miles had we gone on Liberty Street, ten? It was one in the afternoon. Gina had taken off her sandals and put her bare feet up on the windshield.

      “What happened with the yoga?”

      Gina sounded reluctant. “Nothing. The dogs have replaced Baba.”

      “Why?”

      Looking away into the passenger window, Gina said, “Aunt Ethel killed herself.”

      “She did?” I tried to keep the wheel straight. It wasn’t easy.

      Gina shrugged. She still wasn’t looking at me. “It was called a car accident. But we knew. A clear blue day, no drugs, no alcohol, no heart attack, and she’d been depressed for years. Really depressed. The Ashram didn’t help one bit.”

      “No, of course not,” I muttered, clutching the wheel. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

      “How could you not know? Agnes told everybody.”

      “I make it a point,” I said, “to immediately stop listening to anything that’s begins with the word Agnes.”

      As we drove past the bars and the tattoo parlors, I thought about Aunt Ethel. She was beautiful, soft-spoken and loving. “Her poor kids.”

      “They’re okay. Daughter is grown. The son has a year left of high school.”

      “What about the husband?”

      “My mother thinks he’s the reason my aunt killed herself.”

      I clutched the wheel tighter. I remembered him, with his overgrown beard and intense eyes. He never quite fit in the family celebrations. “What’s he doing now?” I asked carefully.

      “I don’t know. We don’t see him anymore. He never liked our family.”

      That was true. He always seemed like an outsider. I had thought Aunt Ethel was the only one he actually liked. He looked at her fondly when he said her name. “Ethel.” Yet I also remember feeling there was something slightly creepy about him, the way he stared at me longer than appropriate, the way he tried to engage me in conversation, and how, once, after Ethel and Mrs. Reed were done regaling