THREE

“Do you think he’ll stick around this time?”

Luke had just left, and Gloria and Celia were talking.

Celia shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I doubt it.”

“You heard him. He says he missed us, and missed Colorado. He definitely seems glad to be back.”

“How long do you think that’s going to last? Face it, Glore. He’s a flake. Always has been, always will be. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. If I hadn’t accidentally found him, there’s no way he would have called us. And once he screws up and loses his job or gets bored, he’ll be off again.”

She was probably right, but Gloria couldn’t help thinking—well, hoping, really—that this time their brother had changed. Maybe she was being too optimistic, but he genuinely seemed more mature than she remembered him being, and more responsible. He had a real job, was putting money aside in a bank account, and was apparently dating a woman who was educated, financially stable and his own age.

“I think he actually might have grown up,” Gloria said.

“We’ll see,” Celia told her.

Benjamin could have probably offered a more clearheaded perspective, but he hadn’t been there for the lunch. The two of them had had a fight this morning, and he had stormed off, which wasn’t like him at all. Neither of them, in fact, had been acting like themselves the past few days. They’d been testy with each other, at odds for some reason, though she could not figure out why. Everything she did seemed to irritate him, and everything he did seemed to irritate her, and they’d spent most of their time staying out of each other’s way.

She hadn’t discussed it with her sister, though. Or anyone else. Her problems with Benjamin were not exactly outside this life—in fact, they seemed specifically tied to it—but Gloria knew she needed to find a way to get past this on her own.

By the time Benjamin returned, Celia was long gone. If he was still pouting, she was prepared to sit him down and pull the we-need-to-talk routine, but he walked into the house apologetic, chastened even, and they hugged and made up. “I don’t know what got into me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too. We’ve both been on edge lately,” Gloria admitted, “although I have no idea why.”

He smiled. “The wind? The old Raymond Chandler thing?”

“I guarantee I haven’t been looking at either knives or your neck.”

He laughed, a real laugh, and she realized how much she missed that sound. It had been awhile since either of them had found anything the other person said funny, and she hoped this was a sign that they could start anew.

It actually had been unseasonably windy lately, and the fires this year had been bad enough to make the national news. She had no idea how anyone who’d lived in Colorado for any length of time could deny that the weather patterns had altered, and she tried to recall if climate change had been this noticeable in every iteration she’d gone through or if some version of the world had somehow managed to stave it off.

By dinnertime, they were each back in their corners, although Gloria wasn’t sure how that had happened. Even though it was Sunday and his business was supposed to be closed, Benjamin had spent most of the afternoon on the computer, walking through solutions to technical problems with a couple of his clients, while she had worked briefly in her garden, gone grocery shopping and planned the coming week’s meals. They came together to eat the shrimp gumbo that Gloria had prepared, and for some reason found themselves acting irritable and impatient with each other. It was probably her fault as much as his, but they both bristled at innocent questions, became defensive and took offense at subsequent answers and soon lapsed into a prolonged silence as they ate their food.

Looking at him across the table, watching him methodically chew his food and take a small sip of milk after every fourth bite, she began to be irritated by his very existence. He was so rigid, so set in his predictable routines. Sometimes, Gloria had to remind herself of why they were even married. It wasn’t as though they were natural soulmates. Both her friends and his friends had expressed surprise when the two of them had gotten together. But she had honestly fallen in love with him, and it was that moment that she tended to revisit when she started feeling like this. For, as corny as it sounded, it had been a specific moment, a quickflash realization that he was The One. She had been a college sophomore, a scholarship student at UC Brea in Southern California, and she’d been dragged to a party she didn’t want to attend by Nina, a friend who had her eye on a senior she knew was going to be there. Gloria was quickly left alone after Nina zeroed in on her target. Not knowing anyone, she parked herself by the punchbowl, realizing unhappily that her increasingly debauched fellow partygoers were not people she would ordinarily want to socialize with.

Then Benjamin walked up.

He seemed as out of place as she felt, and after getting himself a cup of spiked punch, he stood awkwardly next to her. Neither of them spoke at first, but eventually he made some cleverly disparaging remark about the party which made her laugh, and the two of them began talking. It turned out that he had been dragged here as well, by his roommate, and when she found out that he had his own car and was the one who had driven here, she asked him if he’d be willing to take her home.

They both happily left the party, but instead of following her directions and driving her back, he drove to the Disneyland Hotel. They parked in a side lot, and, without telling her where they were going, he led her between the two multi-story hotel buildings to a tiered series of ponds in a corner of the central area. “What’s this?” she asked.

He looked at his watch and said, “Nine o’clock. Dancing Waters.”

As if on cue, music began playing, and a sequence of fountains sprayed upward from the ponds, lights beneath the water turning the fountains different colors. The water jetted up in various configurations, swaying and jumping in time to the music as the colors changed. It was getting chilly, and as a Disney tune segued into the kitschy theme from “Happy Days,” he put his arm around her to keep her warm.

That was when she knew.

Her friends tried to warn her away. He was a dork, they said. She deserved better. But she didn’t want better, she wanted him, and they began spending more and more time together, all of their available time, and after graduation they became engaged.

It surprised her to realize now that they had met this way more than once, and from behind the fog of experiences and layers of lives, she had the impression that this was how they’d really met.

She continued to look at him across the table, her attitude softening. Maybe he was a little stodgy, but deep down so was she. And, at heart, he was a good person, a nice person.

She loved him.

She found herself smiling. “Want to do it tonight?” she asked.

And calmly, as if she had merely asked him to pass the salt, he said, “Always.”

****

“Told you,” Celia said with a subtle note of triumph in her voice.

Gloria had to admit that her sister was right. Luke seemed to have disappeared into thin air. She had tried calling her brother several times during the week, but with each instance the phone on the other end just rang and rang, with no one picking up and no voicemail answering. She’d finally driven over to his apartment this morning, only to find it abandoned. The door was closed and locked, but the front window’s shades were up, and she could clearly see that there was no furniture inside; the apartment was completely empty.

“Do you remember the name of that girlfriend?” Gloria asked. “Maybe—”

“Oh, give it up,” Celia told her. “He’s gone, he’s husking, he’s history.”

“Husking?”

“I heard it somewhere. Don’t badger me.”

Gloria smiled. She was glad her sister was here. But she felt genuinely sad that Luke had lost touch with them again. Celia was right, they should have expected it, but hope sprang eternal, and Gloria had thought that this time things might be different.

Why had he turned out this way? she wondered. It must have something to do with their upbringing, but while their childhoods hadn’t been ideal, they were no worse than what most people went through. Sure, their father had left when she was two, Celia was three and Luke was a baby, and maybe that had been harder on their brother because he was a boy, but their uncle and grandfather had always been around, so it wasn’t as though he’d had no male role models. And their mother had done a pretty good job of taking care of them, keeping them fed and clothed and housed and happy.

Or had she?

For some reason, Gloria thought that maybe that memory wasn’t quite correct, although she could not come up with anything else to supersede it.

Benjamin’s parents, she recalled, had died in a hit-and-run accident in Orange County, where he had been born and raised. She had never actually known them—they’d been killed before she and Benjamin met—but there’d always seemed something suspicious to her about their deaths. Why had they been walking in an industrial area, far away from where they lived and nowhere near where either of them worked? Had the police ever caught the driver of the vehicle that had hit them? Had he been drunk or had he…intentionally run them over? Over the years, Gloria had tried asking Benjamin for more details about what had happened, not just for the sake of her own curiosity, but because she thought it would be good for him to talk about it rather than keep everything bottled up. True to form, however, he’d exhibited very little interest. She wanted to believe it was because the memories were so painful, but that was probably just wishful thinking on her part. In his dispassionate reciting of the facts of their killing, he might as well have been talking about two strangers he’d seen on the news.

“Ceelie,” she said, “what do you remember about Dad? Anything?”

Her sister sighed. “This again?”

“I was just wondering.”

“Not much. I told you before, a million times.”

“But Mom… She did a good job, right? With us?”

Celia snorted. “She did a great job with Luke, can’t you tell?”

“Overall, though, we had a pretty good childhood, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, I guess. What’s all this about?”

“I don’t know,” Gloria admitted. “I was just thinking.”

“Think about something more cheerful, why don’t you?” Celia glanced down at her watch. “Look, I gotta go. Danny’s going to be wondering where I am.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“No, and my phone battery’s low, so I can’t call.”

“You could—”

“I think we’ve had enough family time for now. I’ll see you later.” She held up the bottle of water Gloria had given her as she walked out of the kitchen. “Thanks for the drink.”

And she was gone.

It had to be their upbringing, Gloria thought. Because their familial bonds were almost nonexistent. Luke had been absent for most of his adult life, and while she and Celia lived in the same city and talked on the phone once a week or so, there was a superficial quality to their relationship, as though they were acquaintances rather than sisters.

She considered Benjamin her real family now, but even here there were problems, since the two of them often seemed to be moving forward not together but apart, on diverging tracks.

Maybe it was her. Maybe she was the one who couldn’t connect with people. She wondered if their kids would end up turning out the same way.

Kids?

Yes, they had kids. Teenagers. Two boys and a girl. That had not been the case only seconds before, but it was true now, and Gloria knew that Paul, their oldest, was at band camp this weekend, while the twins, Liz and Brady, were in their bedrooms. Liz entered the kitchen just at that moment, carrying an empty can of V8 that she tossed into the recycling bin. She opened the refrigerator and took out another. “Did Uncle Luke really disappear again?” she asked.

Gloria nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

Liz laughed. “What is with this family? They’re all so crazy!”

“Present company included,” Gloria said.

“Come on, Mom. You know what I mean. I’ve seen him, like, twice since I was two. And Aunt Ceelie won’t acknowledge my existence because she’s a religious fanatic and thinks I’m a lesbian.”

Was Celia a religious fanatic?

Apparently so.

Was Liz a lesbian?

“Are you a lesbian?” Gloria asked.

“Oh, Mom!” Liz popped the top of her V8 can and went back to her room.

That wasn’t an answer, and Gloria realized that there was a lot she didn’t know about her children. Not just because they had suddenly appeared in her life but because they were typical teenagers. She actually remembered their entire histories, had sense memory of the twins’ births, recalled when Paul had broken his arm playing stuntman on the school playground, recollected thousands of minute details of their childhoods. But, again, there was a distance, and once more Gloria wondered if it was something within herself that bred detachment.

Paul returned from band camp late Sunday afternoon, and he returned with an attitude. Two days away from the family had given him a self-confidence that bordered on arrogance, and what started out as condescension toward his brother and sister blossomed into self-righteousness in his interactions with his parents, so much so that halfway through dinner, he and Benjamin got into a heated argument over nothing, and Paul stormed off to his room, leaving most of his food on his plate. There were ripple effects over the next week as Paul remained apart from the rest of the family, claiming that he had band practice or had to study at the library or invented other reasons to be home as little as possible. The twins complained that Paul got to go to band camp and do fun activities while their requests for subsidized pursuits were always rejected.

The thing was, her kids had always been this way. There’d been no major personality shifts when they hit puberty. The teenage years were perhaps cementing their characters and temperaments, but those traits had been there all along. Paul had always been self-centered, Liz heedlessly outspoken, Brady secretive.

It was tiring being a mother, Gloria realized, and tiring being a wife. If she’d still had her job, the drudgery of it all might not seem so obvious, but with nothing else to focus on, domestic responsibilities seemed nearly overwhelming. Of necessity, family minutiae became the center of her life.

“Maybe it’s time for me to start looking for work,” she suggested to Benjamin as they were getting into bed.

“If you think so,” he said noncommittally.

She felt suddenly annoyed. “If I think so? Well, what do you think? Have you ever thought of expressing an actual opinion?”

He looked over at her, surprised. “What?”

“Maybe you could engage a little more?”

“You always say you don’t want me to dictate what you should do.”

“I don’t want you to treat me like one of the kids, but it would be nice if we could have a normal discussion and, you know, actually be involved in each others’ lives. Like a real couple?”

“Can’t win with you,” he muttered, crawling under the covers.

She slept that night with her back to him.

The next morning, Benjamin left early for work without eating breakfast, although he did give her a quick perfunctory kiss goodbye. Paul tried to sneak away without eating breakfast, too, but since he’d be at band practice this evening and wouldn’t be here for dinner with the family, she made him stay and have cereal with his brother and sister. All three were silent and sullen for some reason, and she made their lunches while they got ready for school, sending them off with exhortations to have a nice day, which they ignored.

Lupe stopped by later to see if she wanted to walk, but Gloria told her friend that she couldn’t today. Instead, after closing the front door, Gloria went to look at her children’s rooms. She knew every detail of them intimately yet still felt distanced. Standing next to Paul’s bed, looking at the pile of clothes on the floor, the posters on the walls, she could still see what the room had looked like before.

Something had changed her life while she was in the middle of living it, giving her children she had not previously had. Well, she could change her life, too, and on impulse, Gloria packed some underwear, socks and a couple of changes of clothes into a suitcase, then drove herself to the bus station. She could have gone anywhere, but the next bus out of town was heading southwest to Tucson, Arizona, and she used her Visa card to buy a ticket, humming “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” to herself, trying to remember at what point in the lyrics, in what city, the woman in the song had finally noticed that the man was gone. Phoenix? Albuquerque? Houston?

When would Benjamin and the kids notice that she was gone?

Probably when dinnertime rolled around and there was no food, Gloria assumed.

Would she even be missed?

That was a hard question to answer. From a practical standpoint, she definitely would be. She did almost everything around the house. But emotionally? Perhaps not.

That wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t entirely true. Benjamin would miss her. As different from each other as they might be, as much as they got on each others’ nerves, deep down they loved one another. Even on the surface they loved one another.

So why was she leaving?

It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing with no real reason behind it, but it occurred to her now that while, in this life, she was supposed to be watching Benjamin and her ultimate goal was to bring him back to their real life, it might be safer for him if she were not around. Her previous attempts to safeguard him had all been for naught. Perhaps if they were apart, whatever forces were working against them would be divided and diffused.

Or was she just rationalizing?

The bus wasn’t leaving for another hour, so she waited around the transportation center, avoiding eye contact with the homeless people sleeping on the benches. As soon as the doors to the bus opened, she got on, choosing a seat in the back. Gradually, the bus filled with passengers, and, finally, with a pneumatic hiss, the accordion doors closed. Seconds later, they were rolling smoothly out of the transportation center and onto the street, headed for the highway. Not wanting to speak to the seedy-looking man in the seat next to her, Gloria leaned back against the cushion, closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. It was broad daylight and she had awakened from a full-night’s rest only a few hours ago, but somehow, she actually did manage to fall asleep (although it took more than a half-hour), and when she finally opened her eyes again, there was no sign of any trees, and the only thing she could see outside the window was desert.

She began mentally tallying everything she had: a suitcase with clothes enough for several days, a cell phone, thirty dollars or so, and her Visa card, which she could probably use for only a day or two, since once Benjamin had determined that she’d left, he would probably close the account. If he determined that she left. Because she hadn’t left a note or called anyone, and if she maintained phone silence and didn’t answer when her husband or sister tried to call her, he would most likely determine that she had been kidnapped or was the victim of some other type of foul play.

Was she planning to call?

Of course she was. But only to let everyone know she was all right, not to provide them with her whereabouts. She had no plans beyond that, however. Vaguely, she thought she might try to get a job—wasn’t that what Ellen Burstyn did in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore? Find a job in Tucson?—but if she wanted to be hired on as a nurse, she would need proof of her education and experience, references. Was she qualified to do anything else? Maybe. She would see.

It was a twelve-hour ride, with only two pit stops and a short half-hour in Gallup for lunch, and by the time they passed through Phoenix, the sun had already set. The land between Phoenix and Tucson was dark, with only the occasional twinkling lights of far off ranch houses pricking holes in the uniform blackness, but as they approached Tucson, deep jet brightened to what was almost a dark red as the lights of the city illuminated the sky ahead.

Gloria found herself slightly concerned. It was after ten, and bus stations weren’t ordinarily in the nicest area of town. She needed to find someplace to sleep for the night, a motel that was hopefully safe and cheap.

She needn’t have worried. The bus pulled into the terminal, and through the large window, she saw Benjamin standing on the sidewalk waiting for her.

How was that possible?

Feeling uneasy, she stood, getting in line behind the other passengers shuffling up the central aisle of the bus, keeping an eye on Benjamin through each window she passed. He broke into a huge grin as he saw her step through the doorway and start down the steps, almost as though he had not seen her for a long time. His hair was longer than it had been this morning, and he was wearing different clothes: torn faded Levis and a denim shirt.

Benjamin didn’t even own a denim shirt!

Only…

He did. There were three of them hanging in the bedroom closet in their house, located less than three miles away on Rancho Road. And two more in the laundry.

Things had shifted around her again.

Gloria suddenly felt tired. This Benjamin was slightly older, and a little paunchier than she was used to. They were both older, she realized. She had aged on the bus ride over, and at the moment she wanted nothing more than to get back on that bus, return to Colorado and resume life with her family. But Paul and the twins no longer existed, and Gloria felt a sharp stab of loss when she thought about them. In this life, she and Benjamin had no children, and as soon as the bus driver unloaded the luggage compartment, she retrieved her suitcase and the two of them drove home.