FOUR

Saturday.

Bradley and Lucas were out. Bradley’s friend Chris Alvarez’s mother had called earlier in the week, inviting Bradley to come with their family to Railroad Days in Fullerton. Chris’ mother knew what had happened—everyone did—and thought it might do Bradley good to have a day out. Both Bradley and Chris were big train fans, and in addition to touring a real engine and other train cars, including Bradley’s favorite, the caboose, the kids would be able to look at elaborate setups of various model trains. Gloria had said gratefully that indeed it would be good for her son and had thanked Mrs. Alvarez for her thoughtfulness. Meanwhile, Lucas had been asked on a playdate by his friend Brian’s mother, who had told Gloria that she would be taking them to Craig Park and then, afterward, to McDonald’s for lunch.

So Gloria was on her own. She thought about cleaning the house, thought about shopping, thought about calling Paula again and inviting herself over, but eventually decided to confront her mother again. She had no idea what she would confront her mother about, but things had been left unresolved, and more than ever Gloria felt a need to get to the bottom of what exactly was going on. She had been far too complacent about her mother’s resurrection until now. What should have horrified her or filled her with awe she had simply taken in stride. This was momentous. This was the stuff of religious prophecy or supernatural fiction.

And it was happening to her.

So why didn’t it feel as earth-shakingly historic as it should have? How had it merely become a part of her everyday life?

There was an unfamiliar car in her mother’s driveway when she arrived, an old-style Trans-Am. To Gloria’s knowledge, no one outside of their family had visited her mother since she’d…come back. But someone was definitely there now, and Gloria wondered who it was. It couldn’t be someone from her mother’s previous life—she seemed to have jettisoned everything from before—but Gloria couldn’t for the life of her figure out where she might have met someone else.

Something about that car in the driveway made Gloria uneasy, and instead of parking behind the vehicle or by the curb in front of the house, she pulled into Maxine’s driveway across the street. It had been at least a month since she’d even seen their old neighbor, and she wasn’t sure what their status was, but Maxine came out of the house before Gloria had even gotten out of the car, and Gloria could tell from the expression on the old lady’s face that her visit was very welcome. “Gloria!” Maxine exclaimed, giving her a hug. “How good of you to drop by! How are you? How’s your husband and your two darling boys? Oh, I miss your mother more every day!”

She didn’t know about Benjamin.

Gloria didn’t feel like explaining what had happened, was not sure she could even get through the story without breaking down, so she put on a smile and said, “Fine. Everyone’s fine.”

“Oh, that’s good. Would you like to come in and have some coffee?”

“I would love to,” Gloria told her. She knew from past visits that, unlike her mother, who drank coffee with guests at her kitchen table, the more formal Maxine liked to socialize in what she called “the front room.” Gloria, in fact, was counting on that, since the whole reason she had come over here was to spy on her mother’s house through the window.

Moments later, they were both settled on different couches, Gloria having purposely chosen the one that faced the street. “So, have you had any other run-ins with…our tenant?” she asked.

Maxine sighed. “That woman. She’s a monster. I just avoid her, although I’m sure she’s causing problems for other people. I notice that you’ve had to go over there quite often to talk to her.” Maxine fixed Gloria with a direct stare, awaiting confirmation.

She had been keeping track.

“Yes,” Gloria said. “And I suppose we’ll sell the place eventually, but, honestly, I can’t bring myself to do it right now. And we need the money, so we need a tenant.”

“Your mother didn’t have life insurance?” Maxine pretended to look puzzled. “I thought for sure she told me once that if she died, you and Benjamin would be set.”

Her mother and Maxine were such old friends that they’d shared everything, but Gloria didn’t want to go into the details of her mother’s life insurance right now. Besides, it wasn’t as much as Maxine seemed to think, and though everything had been settled, the insurance company hadn’t even sent her the check yet.

“We haven’t gotten the insurance money,” Gloria said simply.

Maxine was curious. “Problems?”

“No,” Gloria said. “The wheels just turn slowly.”

Maxine sighed again and turned to look out the window at the house across the street. “Have you thought of evicting her and renting it out someone else?”

“We have,” Gloria lied, “but there are so many rules and regulations that it’s almost impossible to kick someone out unless they’ve practically committed a crime.”

Maxine leaned forward. “You know, the other day I went out for my morning walk, and I found feces on my walkway. Human feces.”

Gloria was not sure she had ever heard anyone say the word “feces” before. But, beyond that, it seemed she was insinuating that Gloria’s mother had defecated in her front yard. “That seems like something teenagers would do,” Gloria said.

“There are no teenagers on this street. No kids at all. It’s just us old people, except for your new tenant. And while I was washing it off with the hose, I looked across the street and saw that woman standing on her porch and watching me. She was smiling!” Maxine sat back as if that proved everything.

Gloria had to admit that, as weird as it was, she couldn’t automatically dismiss the idea that her mother had, in some sort of bizarre escalation of an inexplicable feud, gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night on her ex-friend Maxine’s walkway. But any reply she might have made to that unspoken assertion was pushed aside as, across the street, a man came out of her mother’s house and walked over to the Trans-Am parked in the driveway.

Bobby Perez.

Gloria immediately forgot about Maxine and whatever the woman had last said. All of her attention was on the scene across the street, and she watched Bobby get into what was evidently his car, back out and speed away, driving far too fast for such a residential street.

Three days ago, her mother had sat in her kitchen and sworn that she had no idea who Bobby Perez was. Now, here he was, leaving her house after a secretive meeting.

What had they talked about?

Her?

Gloria shivered, feeling cold. This was wrong. She could feel it in her bones. But who could she tell about it? The police? Someone in local government or state government or the federal government? Who would believe a wild story about a get-together between two dead people who had come back to life? And what if someone in authority did believe her? Who would have jurisdiction over such a thing? And what would they do? Exhume her mother’s and Bobby Perez’s bodies to see if they were still in their coffins?

What if the bodies were still there?

What if they weren’t?

Her head hurt from all the possibilities. Maxine was watching her oddly from the opposite couch, and Gloria excused herself, explaining that she didn’t feel well. “I’ll come back and visit when I’m not under the weather,” she said. “It was so nice to see you again.”

“You, too,” Maxine said. “And I hope you’ll give some thought to evicting that horrible woman. If you need me to swear to anything or verify what she’s done, I’m always here.”

“Thank you,” Gloria said sincerely. Something occurred to her. “And if you see anything weird over there, anything I should know about, write it down. Times, dates, everything. You have my number if you need it, right?”

Maxine nodded firmly. “It’s in my book.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see you soon. And thanks for the coffee and your hospitality.”

“You know you’re always welcome. Your mother was my best friend, and I’ve known you since you were born. I consider you a member of the family.”

“Me, too,” Gloria said. Saying goodbye once again, she walked outside. For a brief moment, she considered walking across the street to her mother’s house, but the sight of Bobby Perez had thrown her off balance, and she found that she was afraid to go over there. She was afraid to be alone with her mother. Driving out of the neighborhood the way she had come, Gloria did not look at her childhood home, not wanting to know if she was being watched through one of the front windows.

Once back at her own house, she called her Aunt Ruth. Something, some vague sense of dread, had kept her from getting the two sisters together until now, but even though Aunt Ruth had not recognized the woman who’d shown up after the funeral, Gloria decided that the time had come for them to meet again. If anyone would know her mother, it would be her own sister.

“I was wondering if you could come over for lunch tomorrow,” Gloria said, following some chitchat about how she and the boys were holding up.

“After church?”

Gloria had forgotten how religious Aunt Ruth was. There’d been the hint of a rebuke in her aunt’s question, but Gloria chose to ignore it and simply said. “Yes.”

“I would not be able to make it until one. Services end at noon—”

“That would be fine,” Gloria said.

There was a bit of an awkward pause. “Is there a reason you’re inviting me over? Not that you need a reason,” she added quickly. “And of course I love to see you, Brad and Luke.”

Bradley and Lucas, Gloria almost said, but she held her tongue.

“No,” she lied. “No reason.” Gloria understood why she would ask. Other than the two recent funerals, the last time she had seen her aunt was Christmas. In fact, the only time she ordinarily saw her aunt was Christmas.

“Then I will be there with bells on,” Aunt Ruth said. Gloria had no idea what that meant, but she was pleased that she’d been able to put her plan in motion and hung up feeling satisfied. The only question was: how was she going to get the two sisters together? Gloria didn’t want to invite her mother over, so that left going to her house, and she was not at all sure she would be able to convince Aunt Ruth to go along. Maybe if she made up a story about having to go back and check on some item that her mother had wanted Ruth to have…

What to do with the boys, though? She couldn’t very well call up Brian’s and Chris’ parents and ask them to take Lucas and Bradley for another day. There might be a couple of other moms she could call, but Gloria didn’t know them as well and would feel as though she were intruding. Should she take the boys with her? That seemed unwise. Who knew how things were going to go? And she definitely didn’t want them to hear that their grandmother had returned from the grave; they’d both have nightmares for a year. If only Benjamin’s dad hadn’t moved to Florida. He could have babysat the kids.

Eventually, she decided to ask her next door neighbor, Cecily Yang, to watch Bradley and Lucas. She and Benjamin had always been friendly with the Yangs, if not close, but knowing everything Gloria had been going through, Cecily had volunteered to watch the boys if Gloria had ever needed help, and she decided that this was the time to take her neighbor up on the offer.

“We don’t even know them,” Bradley whined, when told the news.

“You’ve met them. And Mr. and Mrs. Yang are very nice.”

“But what are we going to do over there? They don’t have any toys!”

“How do you know they don’t have any toys?”

“They don’t have any kids,” Bradley reasoned. “And grownups don’t play with toys.”

“Well, I’ll be gone just for a little while,” Gloria said. “I’m taking Aunt Ruth somewhere, and it’s boring, and it’s not for kids. You and Lucas can bring your own toys to the Yangs, and as soon as I get back, I’ll pick you up. Or you could watch TV,” she said brightly. “I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Yang will let you watch what you want on TV.”

“They’ll probably make us watch the news.” Bradley pouted.

Gloria laughed. “I’ll tell them you can watch cartoons. Or you could even bring your own DVD. Scooby-Doo or SpongeBob or whatever you want.”

It turned out, when she took the boys over the next day, that Mrs. Yang had just baked a batch of peanut butter cookies, which they could smell as soon as the door opened, and which flabbergasted both Bradley and Lucas. Gloria had never baked cookies and seldom even bought them. The idea that a woman without children would make cookies just for herself and her husband was a revelation to both kids, and when Mrs. Yang suggested that the two grab themselves a handful while they were still warm, Bradley and Lucas were sold. They ran into the kitchen.

“Thank you,” Gloria said sincerely.

Cicely smiled. “It’s no problem at all.”

“I should be back in an hour or so, and then I’ll take them off your hands.”

“No need to rush,” her neighbor said. “We’ll be fine.”

After returning home, going to the bathroom and locking up the house, Gloria drove to Aunt Ruth’s, having convinced her aunt that it would be better if she picked her up. She knew it would be easier to hijack her aunt if she were already in the car, and that’s exactly what she did. “We need to stop by Mom’s house first,” Gloria said. “There’s something I need you to see.”

“The will’s already been—”

“Oh, this has nothing to do with the will,” Gloria said, mock cheerfully. “It’s something else entirely.” She quickly changed the subject. “How’s Kate doing?”

“Oh, Kate,” Aunt Ruth sighed, and, as Gloria knew she would, her aunt spent the rest of the drive lamenting her daughter’s poor taste in boyfriends and terrible career choices.

Then they were there.

It was the house in which Gloria had grown up, but just since yesterday, the ranch-style home had taken on a darker aura. She knew it was all in her mind, but to Gloria the low-slung structure looked like the top half of a distorted head, with the peeling shake roof its hair, the wide-set windows its eyes, the front door its nose. The mouth would be buried beneath the ground, and in Gloria’s conception it was smiling malevolently.

“What are we here for again?” Aunt Ruth asked as they got out of the car.

Gloria did not answer but led the way up the walk to the door. She knocked, pounding the wooden door more forcefully than she’d intended. Inside, her stomach was churning.

Her mother opened the door. “Gloria,” she said, surprised. And, looking over her shoulder, “I see you brought Ru—…a guest.”

Aunt Ruth stepped forward. “Hello. My name’s Ruth.”

Her mother smiled. “Nora. Glad to meet you, Ruth.”

Gloria couldn’t take it anymore. “You don’t recognize her?” she asked.

Her aunt shook her head. “No. Am I supposed to?”

“That’s my mom!”

“What?” Gloria could hear the confusion in her aunt’s voice.

“It’s my mom! Your sister!”

“No it’s not,” Aunt Ruth said flatly.

“Do you remember what she looked like when I was little, in the nineteen-eighties?”

“What are you talking about?” Aunt Ruth stared at her as though she was crazy, and Gloria wondered for a second if maybe she was. Then she saw the look her mother was giving her and knew with utter certainty that she was not.

“I know this sounds insane, but hear me out. Remember after the funeral, here, when everyone came over? A woman showed up dressed in bright Eighties clothes? That was her! I recognized her instantly, but—”

“I think I know my own sister.” Aunt Ruth’s voice was hard and serious. “And Nora is dead. I was with her in the hospital. I saw her body. So did you. I don’t know why you’re trying to torture me with this…blasphemy, but I do not appreciate it. I do not appreciate it at all.”

Gloria focused on her mother’s face and saw the sly smile slowly spread. It was the same sort of smile she’d imagined the house having beneath the earth. Her mother seemed to possess some sort of superpower, the ability to hide in plain sight even from those who knew her well, and that frightened Gloria more than anything else.

Moments later, she left with Aunt Ruth. They hadn’t had lunch, the ostensible reason for the visit, and Gloria offered her aunt a meal at the restaurant of her choice, but the older woman shook her head primly at the suggestion and said that she had to be getting home. Gloria knew that wasn’t true. Nevertheless, she drove her aunt back, and they said a strained goodbye. The boys at least had had a good time, as short as their visit had been, and Gloria thanked the confused Cecily as she picked up the boys a mere half-hour after she’d dropped them off. To make up for everything, she let Lucas pick where he wanted to eat lunch, and they went to Del Taco, though neither boy ate much since they’d filled up on Mrs. Yang’s peanut butter cookies.

Gloria avoided her mother after that. Bradley and Lucas started with the afterschool program on Monday, so she didn’t need her mom to babysit anymore, and, despite earlier offering to take the boys from her—

Do you want to run away?

—there was no indication that her mother actually cared about seeing her grandsons at all, since she made no effort to contact them. To Bradley and Lucas, she’d been “Miss Nora,” their babysitter, and while they missed her for the first few days and asked over and over again why she didn’t watch them anymore, the afterschool program quickly mitigated their sense of loss. And the fact that several of their friends were in the program, as well, made the transition even easier. A week later, they seemed happier than they had been before.

But if Gloria wasn’t in contact with her mother, that did not mean that the woman was not on her mind. In fact, eating her lunch at work each day, she often found herself wondering if Bobby Perez was still having salad at his window-side table in Fresh Garden. And in between patients, when she’d caught up on her officework, Gloria would invariably start thinking about what her mother might be doing at that moment.

What did she do all day? Gloria wondered. She didn’t have a job, credit cards or a bank account. Where was the money coming from to buy groceries, household items and her ever-expanding wardrobe? Was she somehow getting it from Bobby Perez? Gloria was half-tempted to evict her mother from the house and sell it, since, legally, the woman was dead and the house now belonged to her, but fear or inertia or a combination of both kept her from acting on the impulse.

In a delayed reaction, perhaps, to Benjamin’s death, it was becoming increasingly hard for Gloria to sleep through the night. For some time, she had been going to bed around eight, shortly after Bradley and Lucas, finding the house far too empty in the evenings. But recently, she’d begun awakening sometime between midnight and two. At first, she tried falling back asleep again, but after several nights staring up at the ceiling, wide awake she found herself getting out of bed and trying to catch up on household chores, things she’d let slide or things that Benjamin had previously taken care of, thinking that if she was going to be awake anyway, she might as well use the time wisely. Her secret hope had been that she would tire herself out and be able to fall asleep again, but that did not happen. She did, however, clean out the junk drawer next to the refrigerator, and, climbing on chairs, move items down from the top shelves of the kitchen cupboards, where only Benjamin had been able to reach, to lower locations where she could easily access them.

Gradually, between weekend work and these clandestine nighttime efforts, the house was being remade in her own image, and traces of Benjamin were disappearing. Pictures from their wedding, pictures of him with her, pictures of him with the kids, a Sears portrait of the entire family and other photographic testaments to his life were still displayed throughout the house, but already the sound of his voice was fading in her mind, and Gloria knew, objectively, that the boys, Lucas in particular, had been so young when they’d lost their father that their memories of him would become faint enough that their recollection of him would be determined more by the stories she told them than by their own personal experiences. The thought depressed her.

One Friday night, Gloria was dead asleep and might have actually made it all the way to morning, but motherly instinct sensed the presence of one of her boys, and immediately she was wide awake, sitting up in bed and with one smooth movement turning on her bedstand lamp.

“Mommy?” Lucas was standing in the doorway in his shorty pajamas. “I’m scared.”

She was instantly out of bed and hugging him. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“It’s all right. Mommy’s here.” She gave him an Eskimo kiss, rubbing her nose against his.

“I was dreaming about Miss Nora. She snuck into my room and was trying to eat me. She had big sharp teeth, and she already ate Bradley. His bed was all bloody and just his skeleton was there.”

Gloria was horrified. Where could Lucas have come up with an idea so gruesome? She and Benjamin had always been very strict about what they let the kids watch, and she had no clue what could possibly have made her little boy think of something so violent (although, as reprehensible as it might be, a small secret part of her was glad that his adoration of “Miss Nora” had turned to fear. She thought the reaction far more fitting).

Lucas’ lip trembled, the way it always did before he started to cry. “Can I sleep in your bed? I’m scared.”

She took his hand. “Come on.” Leading Lucas to the bed, she tucked him in on Benjamin’s side and gave him a kiss on the forehead. “Nighty night.” She almost said, Sweet dreams, but decided it was better not to mention dreams at all right now.

Lucas turned to her as she got in on the other side of the bed. In the yellow light of the lamp, she could see the worry on his face. “I didn’t know it was a dream at first. I thought it was real.”

“It wasn’t,” Gloria said. “Now go to sleep.”

She shut off the lamp, hoping she sounded more certain than she felt.