Road to Paradise Read Online Free PDF

few miles, and I was terrified by what lay beyond my open window, its deep and abiding mystery.
    One night I decided to test Emma. We were done with our work and were sitting on the couch between commercials. It was a weeknight, and I was staying in. I said, “Emma, where did you say my mother lives?”
    “Your what ?” That got her attention.
    “My mother,” I said calmly. “Didn’t you once tell me she lived in a town in California? Montecito? Manzanita? Monte Carlo?”
    “I never said,” Emma said slowly, “your mother went to California.”
    “You did. What was it? Mesa Vista? Mokelumme? Monte Cristo? When I was five, you said she was sick and she went to some town in California to get better.”
    “I don’t remember saying that. How do you remember this?”
    “It’s just the kind of stuff you remember.” Montesano? Minnesota? Mira Loma?
    “I don’t think I said it.” Emma shook her head. “It’s possible I said it, but, Shelby, I was talking to a five -year-old. You asked me when your mother was coming back. What was I supposed to say? I just said something to make you feel better. Like she was far away and couldn’t leave. But honestly …”
    Commercial ended; we went back to watching “Dynasty”.
    That night, I pulled out a map of the United States. After thirty minutes of carefully combing the fourth largest state in the union, I gave up. Maricopa? Mission Viejo? Mira Flores?
    “I don’t think it’s a town,” Emma continued the next day, as if she knew I’d been looking, thinking about it. “I thought she went to have a rest at a mental hospital. Like Bellevue. Or Menninger in Kansas.”
    “What was the name of the mental hospital?”
    “Shel, I don’t know. I wasn’t serious.”
    “You know she went somewhere.”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You told me a name back then. I know you did. Did she have family from there? Why am I so sure it begins with an M? That it has four syllables?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Mariposa? Minnelusa? Miramonte?”
    She rubbed her eyes, as if she were tired of me. The commercial ended, “Dallas” came back on, and Emma had no time to respond. Nor did she respond during the next commercial. And then “Dallas” was over and she got up and said, “I’m going to bed. Goodnight.”
    “I thought maybe that’s why you got me a car,” I said after her. “So I could go visit my sick mother at the Montezuma mental hospital.”
    Emma turned around. “I got you a car,” she said, “so you could be free. You kept saying you wanted to be. So now you are. I don’t know where your mother is. I never knew.”
    “I’m not going to be gone long,” I said. “Just a few weeks. Maybe two.”
    “Two weeks? Takes longer than that to drive there and back.”
    “Nah. I’ll be quick. Maybe two and a half. I’ll be back by the middle of July. You’ll be okay for a couple of weeks, won’t you?”
    “I’ll be okay,” said Emma. “But two and a half weeks to where? And starting when?”
    I bought a map of California from the Rand McNally store in New York City. I put my finger on the letter M in the town index, and went down, mouthing the names to myself one by one, from Mabel to Mystic, and then back again from Mystic to Mabel.
    The third time through, at two in the morning, I found it.
    Mendocino.
    Men-doh-SEE-no.
    Mendocino!
    I couldn’t sleep until Emma woke up at five.
    “Mendocino!” I exclaimed later, like an operatic clap.
    She gazed at me through bleary, blinking eyes, as if she’djust woken up. “You have your notebooks, your running stuff?”
    “Emma, Mendocino! Isn’t that right?”
    “I think so,” she said. “That sounds almost right. Do you have your lunch, or are you going to buy one in school?”
    “I’ll buy one in school. It is, it is right. It feels right.”
    “Good. You want some eggs before you go?”
    I had eggs. I had orange juice.
    Mendocino=Missing Mother.
    Emma! I wanted to yell. But yelling’s not our style,