Road to Paradise

by Max Allan Collins

  While not Pat’s first visit to Vincent’s, this was the first time their daughter hadn’t been along. Tonight Anna was staying with the neighbor girl, Cindy—desert-trail riding followed by a slumber party. And Michael and Pat were anxious for Anna to expand her circle of friends.

  They shared Chateaubriand and an especially expensive bottle of French wine from Vincent’s cellar of over one thousand. In the candlelight, against a window of sparkling city lights, Pat looked lovely and even happy. They mostly talked about Anna, since Pat didn’t have anything else going in her life right now, except television and the household.

  “This is going to be a hard weekend for our little girl,” Pat said.

  “Really? Why?”

  “Saturday night—back home? Prom.”

  “…Oh.”

  Pat sipped her wine. Then she shrugged with her eyebrows and said, “She still carries the torch for that Gary.”

  “Well, he’s a handsome kid, nice enough. Star quarterback, president of the class.…Hasn’t been any contact, has there?”

  This time Pat shrugged her shoulders, which were bare; she wore a chic white dress, lace over a satin shell. “If so, she’s hiding the letters well. I’ve been through her things a thousand times.”

  “Terrible.” He shook his head.

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Oh, I’m not being critical. It’s just…what this…situation reduces us to.”

  She sipped her wine.

  He nodded toward the cityscape in the window beside them and said, “Pat, if you gave this town half a chance, you’d really love it.”

  “I don’t have any problem with this town.”

  “Honey, you’ve barely seen it.”

  “I’m just keeping a low profile, that’s all. Aren’t we supposed—”

  “Actually, we’re supposed to live our lives.” He reached across the linen-covered table and took her hand. “And, darling, you need to start living yours. We need to start living ours.”

  She smiled just a little. Her eyes flicked toward the assistant manager, who wore a white shirt with tux tie and black trousers, mannish attire that made her no less a strikingly attractive woman. “Has she moved in on you yet?”

  “…What?”

  “Your little minx assistant. Has she made her move yet? She’s had her eye on you from the beginning.”

  He waved that off. “Don’t be silly. I’m not interested in anybody but you.”

  Her mouth twitched a bitter knowing smile. “I wasn’t talking about you, Michael. I was talking about that little predatory bitch.”

  He sighed, gave her half a grin. “Let’s just say I haven’t let her make a move.”

  “Don’t.” Now she reached her hand across and squeezed his. “I know I…haven’t been very romantic lately.…”

  They’d made love perhaps half a dozen times since moving in at Paradise Estates, strictly perfunctory.

  “No problem,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No. No, I’ll make it up to you. Michael, I will make it up to you.…”

  Several hours later, she did.

  Like all the Paradise Estates backyards, theirs was fenced off. Just a little drunk, they swam nude in their pool under a swatch of blue velvet flung across the sky, scattered with jewels, held together by a big polished pearl button. He dogpaddled after her and chased her and cornered her and kissed her, sometimes on the mouth. They crawled out, and without drying off lay on a big beach towel on the Bermuda grass and necked and petted like teenagers.

  He sat on the edge of the towel, heel of his hand wedged against the cloth and ground beneath, and he gazed down at his still-lovely wife, with her slender fine body pearled with water, the breasts full firm handfuls, the legs sleek and long and soon to be wrapped around him.

  “I love you, Patsy Ann O’Hara,” he said.

  As she lay on her back, her blonde hair splayed against the towel, her pale flesh washed ivory in the moonlight, she held her arms open, her legs, too, and her eyes were wide, her lips parted, in an expression perched at the brink of smiling, or perhaps crying.

  “I love you, too, Michael Satariano,” she said.

  He lowered himself into her embrace, and indeed those legs locked around him as he entered her, and he kissed her mouth and her neck and her breasts, and she laughed and sobbed and held on to him so tight, it was as if she were trying to meld herself with him, disappear into him.

  He came harder than he had in many months, perhaps years, and her cries of pleasure may well have alarmed the neighbors. They lay together, laughing quietly, stroking each other’s faces, and kissed a while.

  “Everything but the fireworks,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  He played with a lock of blonde hair. “In the moonlight, you remind me of that first night, after I got back from service?…We were in your father’s Buick, backseat, parked by that cornfield.…”

  “Fourth of July!”

  “Yes, and we could see the fireworks.”

  “Oh, Michael.…” She smiled at him, and her look was so loving, she broke his heart even while warming it. “…I saw the fireworks. Didn’t you?”

  The coolness of the night got to them after a while—Arizona could get damn cold after dark—and they padded into the kitchen. She got robes for both of them—after all, Anna was just across the street at Cindy’s—and they sat and had decaf.

  He was trying to find the words for something when she said, “What, Michael? What is it?”

  “Would you…please think about starting to go to mass again? And getting involved with a church?”

  Her face fell. “Oh, Michael.”

  He leaned forward, patted her hand. “Honey, it would be so good for you.”

  She smirked. “You mean, keep me busy?”

  “Is that bad? It’s not busywork, it’s…meaningful.”

  She studied him; she was almost staring. “Don’t tell me.…Oh, Michael, don’t tell me you still believe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her eyes were huge. “You believe in God? After all this, you really still believe in God, and the fucking Catholic Church, and all that pomp and circumstance?”

  He shrugged; oddly, he felt embarrassed. “Tradition isn’t a bad thing. It gives things an order. Puts a framework on.”

  She laughed humorlessly. “Then you don’t t believe. It’s just… social. Like a country club without the golf. A nice thing for a family to do. A way to expose your kids to a moral outlook on life, and give them some…some structure.”

  He was shaking his head. “You’re wrong, darling. I do believe there’s something out there, something bigger than us, a father who loves us and understands us. And forgives us.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “If so, He hasn’t exactly been breaking His hump doing anything for either the Satarianos or the Smiths.”

  “Pat.…”

  She sighed, then leaned forward, and her smile was not unkind. “Michael, if it makes you feel better to believe this ridiculous superstitious nonsense, go right ahead. Just don’t ask me to go along with you.”

  “Then you have lost your faith?”

  She reared back. “Are you for real? Whatever ‘faith’ I had died when we got that telegram about Mike! Jesus, Michael—look at our life! Look at your life! Your mother and brother, shot down like animals. Your father dead on a kitchen floor. These gangsters you’ve worked for, for so many goddamn years, they’re ankle deep in blood…knee deep!”

  He cradled his coffee cup in both hands, couldn’t look at her. “None of it’s God’s fault.”

  “Whose fault is it, then? Ours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, because we’re born sinners? Give me a break.…”

  “My father chose his path. I chose mine.”

  She grunted. “Revenge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you do it any differently?”

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “You wanted to
kill the men who killed your father. Just like your father wanted to kill the men who killed your mother and Peter. Would you do it any differently today than thirty years ago?”

  “…I don’t know.”

  She sipped her decaf, thought for a moment, then said, “You told me once that you thought it was sad that your father felt he could commit murder, then walk into a confessional, fess up, get forgiven, and walk back out and commit murder again.”

  “I remember.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “I…I don’t know how I see it. I…I haven’t had to see it, look at it, for a long, long time. We’ve had a good life, Patsy Ann, for a lot of years now. We had two great kids.”

  “Have two great kids.”

  “Have two great kids. All I’ve been doing over the years is trying to keep my head down and provide for us. And all I’ve been doing these past couple months is trying to keep my feet under me.”

  “Me, too. Me, too.”

  “But I don’t think I could do that, if I didn’t think that…that there was something out there, bigger than this, better than us. A heavenly father. Forgiveness.”

  She shook her head, smiled distantly, but her eyes were locked on to him. “You really do still believe.”

  “I guess so.” His eyebrows went up. “But I never thought you’d think less of me for it.”

  Her expression dissolved into concern, and she reached both hands out and took one of his. “Oh, I don’t, darling. Really I don’t. I think it’s…sweet. Naive. Kind of cute.”

  “Cute?”

  She shrugged. “Or maybe I envy you. Because if I believed what you believe, I could handle the days better. And the nights.” She sipped the decaf again. “Maybe even…face the thought that I may never see Mike again.”

  “It’s not a crutch, Pat. It’s—”

  Shaking her head firmly, the blonde locks bouncing, she said, “No, Mike, it’s a crutch. It is a crutch. And God knows I could use a crutch. Because, Mike—most of the time? I feel like I’m falling down.”

  “I’m here to catch you, baby.”

  “I know. And I do love you. You’re not gonna let that little bitch at the restaurant come between us are you?”

  “No. Hell no.”

  She smiled; there was love in it. “Good. Take me to bed, why don’t you? Let’s fall asleep together in our four-poster bed like the old married people we are. And we won’t talk religion anymore. Or bitches.”

  “I can dig it,” he said.

  “Ha! Aren’t you the hepcat?”

  She was laughing as they walked arm in arm to the bedroom. Pat hadn’t laughed like that for a long time, and Michael found the sound pleasing, and chose not to recognize the desperation in it.

  SEVEN

  In the shimmering distance, a dazzling white edifice seemed to hover over the beige expanse of desert to meet a violet ragged ribbon of mountains and rise into cloudless blue.

  The castle-like Mission of San Xavier del Bac was no mirage, rather a Moorish monument whose stately dome and proud parapets contrasted sharply with an otherwise stark Arizona vista. In the midst of the hell of an American Sahara, the church promised paradise, burning bright and white, stucco covering adobe bricks to conspire with the intense desert sunlight to create that ghost-like glimmer.

  Michael had driven out Mission Road, onto the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, through a severe landscape of tiny houses and tilled fields that made Paradise Estates seem a world away, not just a few miles. The White Dove of the Desert, as the mission was called, was a tourist attraction, but it was also a working church, holding mass daily, four times on Sunday.

  This was Friday, the morning after Michael and Pat had discussed religion, among other things, and he’d asked her to come along, and she, in her robe at the kitchen table with coffee and a cigarette, had declined.

  “But by all means, darling,” she said, “you go.”

  And she’d waved a hand in a regal fashion reserved for monarchs, popes, and wives.

  Things had gone so well the night before that he knew getting back into the touchy subject of church attendance—much less the existence of God—was no way to start their day. But he had gone to mass regularly for as long as he could remember; even on the road with his father, all those years ago, they’d stopped at churches, if not for mass, for confession and to light candles for those Michael’s father had dispatched to final judgment.

  Almost two months of no mass had put Michael into a kind of spiritual withdrawal. He needed a God fix.

  The mission sat on a slight elevation—to call it a hill would be an exaggeration—which had encouraged that optical illusion of hovering that Michael had, from a distance, noted. The parking lot was about half-full, separating the mission buildings from a plaza of craft shops and stalls selling American Indian snacks, the fragrant food aroma and displays of pottery, jewelry, and baskets emphasizing the tourist aspect of San Xavier.

  But the churchgoers making the pilgrimage to the mission for mass were a mix of sightseers and locals, the latter comprised of Indians and Mexicans.

  Many of these wore suits and ties, however humble, while the tourists wore sport shirts and slacks and sundresses, including western-style apparel picked up on their Tucson trip, right down to cowboy hats and brand-new boots. Michael—the only Anglo in a suit and tie—could not avoid feeling he was, with these other whites, invading the land of the natives once again.

  On the other hand, the collection-plate contributions would stay here, in this parish, just like the money made across the way, selling fried bread and friendship bowls.

  At the edge of the parking lot, Michael paused to take in the magnificent wedding cake of a structure, which was a series of arches and domes, every surface elaborately decorated. The only use of wood he could see was in the window frames and doors; otherwise, all appeared to be burned adobe brick or lime plaster.

  Twin towers—one lacking a crowning dome, as if to say God’s work is never finished—bookended the finely carved Spanish baroque stone entry, which was a weathered red in contrast to all the surrounding white, embellished by gifted if naive native artisans with arabesques, shells, and swirling scrolls.

  Past the weathered mesquite doors, Michael felt a welcoming warmth that was in part his relief to again be inside a church but also this particular church, with its ornate carvings, painted statues, and faded frescoes. Even if the colors had dimmed over time, indications of a vivid interior remained, as on the corner supports of the dome before the sanctuary, where large wooden angels perched, bearing bright banners.

  He slipped into a well-worn wooden pew at the rear, on the aisle, next to a Papago family, the father with his straw hat in the lap of his threadbare brown suit, the mother in a dark blue dress touched gently with lace at collar and cuffs, and two boys, perhaps nine and eleven, in black confirmation suits that hadn’t had a chance to get worn out yet. They were obviously comfortable here, in this warm and lived-in sanctuary, suffering the presence of tourists with quiet dignity.

  The church interior was more elaborate than your typical Spanish mission church. Colorfully painted religious statues filled niches, and on the ceiling and walls were panels detailing Christ’s life and death and resurrection. The somewhat crude execution indicated these were likely the work of primitive painters, but though the faces held little expression, Michael found the depictions deeply moving.

  When he took Communion, Michael got a closer look at the altar, which—beneath the wide sanctuary arch—was vividly painted, polychrome with gilt touches, and arrayed with images of the patron saint Xavier and of the Virgin, as well as scrolls and cherubs. The altar itself was backed by an intricately carved brick and stucco retable.

  The service lasted forty minutes, but Michael lingered afterward, sitting alone in the sanctuary but for an occasional tourist, who climbed to the choir loft for a better look and to flash photos.

  He prayed for his family. He prayed for forgiveness for h
imself and his father. He prayed for a miracle for his boy, Mike. But mostly he prayed for guidance and strength. When he settled back in the pew, he felt a presence beside him—it was Father Francisco, a Mexican American in his late forties with a dark-brown face, creped by sun and responsibility; his eyes were large and dark and kind.

  The father sat beside Michael in the pew and said, “You don’t look like our typical tourist.”

  “I’m not a tourist, Father.” He introduced himself, shaking hands with the priest, then said, “I’m local. My family and I just moved here.”

  “And you’re looking for a church?”

  “We are. But I’ve missed mass for a few weeks, and I’d heard about your lovely church.…It really is quite beautiful…and, well—”

  A wonderful smile broke through the leathery face. “You needn’t apologize for stopping by to see us, Mr. Smith. And you and your family would be welcome here.”

  “My wife has lost her faith.”

  It just came out.

  The kind dark eyes did not tense. Gently, the priest said only, “Why?”

  “Lot of reasons. Starting with our son is MIA in Vietnam. And…we got rather violently uprooted from our old life, and dropped down here in Arizona, kind…kind of like Dorothy in Oz.”

  The priest nodded. “A move takes adjustment. And the loss of a son is an adjustment we never really make. It’s the kind of wound that doesn’t heal. But if your wife could find her way back to the loving embrace of our Lord, that would be a start.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “If you’d like to take confession—”

  “No! Uh, no. Thank you, Father. You really do have a beautiful church here at San Xavier. Pleasure meeting you.”

  The priest took his cue and rose and allowed Michael out of the pew. “As I said—you and your family are always welcome here. We do have several Anglo families who are members.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  Outside, Michael moved quickly to his Lincoln in the parking lot. Across the way, tourists were buying trinkets and finger food—somehow it cheapened the experience. No way would he give confession, though he had two more killings on his conscience, Tommy and Jackie, those DeStefano crew would-be hitters he’d taken out at Cal-Neva.