GLORIA

When Gloria heard the syncopated footsteps—cane, foot, foot—coming up from the basement, she poured a fresh mug of coffee. Iris looked scrubbed clean despite still wearing yesterday’s rumpled clothes, but her face wore an expression of profound disorientation. She sat down, leaned her cane against the kitchen table, and hugged her pocketbook on her lap.

“Good morning,” Gloria said. “Milk and sugar in your coffee?”

Iris nodded.

“You know, you don’t need to carry your purse everywhere,” Gloria said. “We’re alone here and safe until three this afternoon when the kids get home from school. We’ve got to be out of here by then.”

“I need to take my pills.” Iris’s voice trembled. “I have no clean clothes. I didn’t even pack fresh underwear. I shouldn’t use my credit card and don’t have much cash, just what was left in my grocery jar. What was I thinking? I’m usually a planner, but this, well, this just shook me up so badly.”

Gloria handed her the coffee. “This will help.”

Iris sipped. She touched the vase of cut flowers on the red checked tablecloth. “These help too. Thank you.” She turned to Gloria. “How could I leave with no plan other than getting away from Asher? And now the police are out looking for me with dogs. So stupid.”

“Is there anyone you can call?”

“My daughter would probably help without telling anyone. But I left my phone at home.” She cradled her purse in her lap, rocking it like a baby.

“You can use the phone here,” Gloria said.

Tears flooded Iris’s cheeks. Gloria handed her a tissue.

“I’m sorry, dear. You’re being so nice to me. And I can’t believe what I’ve done. I don’t know how to go forward.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Gloria said. She spoke from hard experience. “What can I get you to eat? Toast? Eggs? You must be ravenous.”

“Yes. Thank you. But first I need my pills.” Iris pushed aside the thick wad of papers in her purse, rattling the pill bottles at the bottom of the bag and lining them up on the table.

Gloria pointed at the bottles. “Are you ill?”

Iris looked thoughtful. “I don’t think so. A few weeks ago, I discovered something horrible my husband did many years ago. I said angry things. I even threatened him with exposure. The next night I noticed that one of my heart pills was different. Asher is a doctor, and he said the pills were the same, just a different brand. But they weren’t the same. They made me confused and wobbly, and I couldn’t think straight.”

“You don’t seem confused now,” Gloria said.

“Not anymore. You don’t think I kept taking those new pills, do you? But I was confused and, well, heartbroken.” Iris dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, then dug in her purse for a scrap of paper which she shook in the air. “I found the substitute pills in Asher’s pharmacology book that’s got pictures and looked them up. They’re used to sedate people. I refilled my old prescription and stopped taking the new ones. I pretended to be confused so Asher wouldn’t know. It was hard to believe my Asher would do that to me, but I had to accept that he did. That’s when I started thinking about leaving.”

Gloria read the paper and handed it back to Iris. “These are hardly ever prescribed these days. They have terrible side-effects.”

“Are you a nurse?”

Gloria hesitated. “I used to be,” she finally said.

Iris reached across the table for Gloria’s hand. “How did you end up living in your car? I don’t mean to pry or give offense. But I’m curious. You’ve been so good to me.”

Gloria tried to calm her breathing. She stood up and poured more coffee. “Are you ready for some breakfast?” she asked.

“Yes,” Iris said. “Thank you.”

Making toast and scrambling eggs were ordinary things, but precious when you couldn’t do them anymore. Gloria’s meals were takeout when she was lucky, sometimes free food at one of the churches. She regularly dined from the tasting tables at Costco. She called them tapas for the desperate. What would she do when her parents’ membership card expired next month? Sometimes—and her face blazed to think about this—she resorted to table scraps from the dumpsters behind restaurants.

She placed two plates on the table, one in front of Iris and one for herself. She sat down and sniffed deeply. “Smells so good, doesn’t it,” she said.

“Wonderful,” Iris agreed.

Gloria forced herself to eat slowly, to taste every bite. When her father was sick, she fed him small forkfuls of scrambled eggs, the last solid food he could manage.

“I was a nurse,” Gloria said. “I went to college in California and worked there for years. Not sure why I came back east. I applied for a job at the state hospital, but my mother freaked out about me working there. Too dangerous, she said, so I took a job in a nursing home. Three years ago, my mother got sick and I quit my job to take care of her. She died, and then my father started failing.” She paused. “My mother turned into a sour old woman, but I adored my dad.”

She hadn’t minded leaving her job, hadn’t minded doing round-the-clock care for two old sick people. It had felt right to wash them and feed them. Full circle of life and all that.

“What a good person you are to take care of them like that.”

“My parents adopted me,” Gloria said. “They chose me. I was glad to be able to repay their kindness.” Glad, but it didn’t turn out well. After her father’s death she learned that there was no money. Their home, where she had lived for six years of caregiving, was heavily mortgaged.

“My father died in my arms eight months ago,” Gloria said. “Wrapped in that old comforter I keep in my car.”

Iris smiled. “You bundled me up in that too. Green vines and faded peach roses. Worn and well-loved.”

“After he died, the bank took the house and I moved into my car,” Gloria said. “I hadn’t worked as a nurse—not outside my parents’ home—for several years and couldn’t afford to renew my nursing license.”

“I’m so sorry.” Iris patted Gloria’s hand. “We’re both in bad shape, aren’t we?”

Gloria forced a laugh. “We are. But we can stay here for a few hours and eat as much as we want. My friend is kind, but her husband doesn’t like me. We have to figure out our next step.”

“I have no clue what to do,” Iris said. “Shall we call Lexi?”

Gloria had mixed feelings about that plan. The daughter might be more concerned with getting her mother home than with helping her escape her life. But there weren’t a lot of options. “Sure. Maybe your daughter can help. Do you want to use my friend’s phone?”

Iris shook her head hard. “No, they’ll be able to trace the call back here, won’t they? That could get your friend in trouble, maybe lead back to you. Do pay phones even exist these days?”

“A few. There’s one at the library. We’ll head over there after lunch.”

“But we’re just eating breakfast.”

Gloria laughed. “Welcome to my life! When I have a comfortable place and free food, I stay as long as I’m welcome and eat as much as is offered. After lunch we’ll call your daughter and maybe check out the basement that I was telling you about.”

“If I ever go home,” Iris said, patting Gloria’s hand. “If I still have a home after all this, you have a place to stay until you get back on your feet. As long as it takes.”

Gloria squeezed Iris’s hand. “Whatever happens, it’s good to not be alone.”