TWO

A month later, Gloria was marveling at how easily and seamlessly her mother had integrated herself into their lives. She had indeed stayed in the house, and though Benjamin had originally wanted to sell it after her death (“What do we need with two houses in the same city?”), he seemed to have forgotten all about that notion. He also seemed to have forgotten his backup plan of renting it out, because her mother was somehow living there without paying a dime.

But she was definitely earning her keep. Now that she was young and well enough to do so, she was babysitting her grandchildren after school, which took a huge strain off Gloria and Benjamin, who hadn’t had an actual vacation in several years because their vacation hours had been nickled-and-dimed to death as one, then another, would take off work early or go to work late in order to take care of the boys’ needs. Invariably, after coming over to babysit, her mother would tidy up the house as well, for which Gloria was grateful. She’d also been bringing them food. “It’s too hard to cook for one person,” she said the first time she brought over a pot of stew, and she’d continued to make more than she needed for lunches and dinners, favoring them with the surfeit. Gloria had always appreciated her mother’s cooking—as had Benjamin—and since she didn’t particularly like preparing meals herself, the leftovers were a godsend.

In a way, her mother’s return had also helped her relationship with Benjamin, or, at least, increased her appreciation of him. Because the truth was, over the past few years, they had been gradually drifting apart. It was nothing so obvious or specific as differing interests or changing feelings. And neither of them had found anyone else. In fact, at its core, it probably had a lot to do with her mother. Ever since her mother had gotten sick, Gloria had had to shift her focus from Benjamin and the boys to the needs of her ailing parent. Her husband understood this, at least intellectually, but the reality of it meant that she was more tired, more distracted, more physically and emotionally unavailable. And, Gloria had to admit, spending so much time with her mother had, by a kind of osmosis, influenced her opinions, leading her to see things from her mother’s point of view. Since her mom had never really taken to Benjamin, this meant that she herself had started to look at him with a jaundiced eye. She’d begun to grow slightly disappointed with him, with his maddening evenhandedness, with his stodgy plodding approach to everything.

She’d thought, when she originally met him, that Benjamin had been a pianist. It seemed foolish and impossible to believe now—he didn’t even like music all that much!—but the first time she’d ever laid eyes on him, in the dermatologist’s office where she was a receptionist and he was a new patient, he’d checked in with her and then sat there on the utilitarian chair opposite her window with his hands on his legs, doing that thing where he was tapping on his pants, each of his fingers randomly moving up and down. It looked like he was playing an invisible piano as he absently glanced around the waiting room, and she assumed that he was mentally practicing, going over in his mind a difficult piece that he would perform at some future date. He was actually just doing the finger exercises that a previous doctor had told him to do because of incipient carpal tunnel syndrome, and perhaps if she had known that, Gloria might not have been so susceptible to him. But he came by again the next week, still playing air piano while he waited, and since it was almost lunchtime and there were no other patients, the two of them started talking, both of them disappointed when the nurse opened the door and called him into the back. They talked even more when he returned the following week, and even more the week after that, and on his last visit, he asked her out and she said yes.

Would she have done so if she’d known at the time that he was not a pianist but a computer programmer? It was hard to say. She might well have, but going forward her expectations would have been different, and they might not have ended up where they did.

But it was all good now, as the kids said. Her mother’s arrival as a younger, more energetic woman had freed up time for Gloria and Benjamin to be with each other, and they’d discovered that they were still compatible, something that had been by no means certain two months ago. No, he wasn’t the most exciting person in the world, but neither was she, and if their marriage wasn’t one of the world’s great romances, it was nice and comfortable. They’d even taken to kissing each other and saying “I love you” before going to bed each night, something they had not done since the first years of their marriage, and regular lovemaking, which had been intermittent at best, was back from hiatus.

Benjamin was a good man, and he cared about her, and both of them loved the boys. What more could a person ask for in life?

Still, despite all of the positive changes that had come about as a result of her mother’s return, Gloria felt uneasy about the woman. She had died. Now she was back and roughly the same age as Gloria herself. She also seemed to be getting money from somewhere, since she was able to buy groceries and had purchased an entirely new wardrobe. The 1980s style of her initial reappearance was gone, but the clothes left in the closet, in addition to fitting the more matronly figure of her mother’s later years, were of an old-lady style that no longer suited her. So she’d gone out and, somehow, managed to buy herself an entirely new, more modern and appropriate wardrobe. Gloria was not sure how this was possible. Was her mother tapping into some hidden cache of funds that no one else had known about? Was she secretly selling off household items? Was someone else providing her with cash?

This last possibility was the most disturbing, and though Gloria did not want to think about it, it was the one idea that remained floating in the back of her mind.

Disconcertingly, her mother and Maxine were no longer friends. True, they were no longer the same age, but they had lived across the street from each other and had been closer than sisters for literally decades, so Gloria was shocked when she went over one day to check in, and her mother said, “Boy, that Maxine’s a bitch, isn’t she?”

“Maxine’s your best friend!” Gloria responded.

“Was my best friend,” her mother corrected.

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I just woke up, and now I see her for what she really is.”

I just woke up.

That might be the most accurate description of what had happened, Gloria thought, but her mother hadn’t meant it in that sense. The reference had been to having her eyes opened in regard to her old friend’s character, and while, in the past, Gloria would have automatically taken her mother’s side in any disagreement, she now felt more kinship with Maxine, and after leaving, she walked across the street to get Maxine’s side of the story.

“Oh, that woman is just maddening,” her old neighbor fumed. “I know you and your husband probably need the rent money, but I swear, if it was me, I’d just evict her. Your mother would be appalled that such a person was living in her house and cooking in her kitchen and sleeping in her bed. Who is this Nora anyway? Where did she come from? I tell you, Gloria, I don’t trust her. If I were you, I’d take a full inventory of all your mom’s belongings just to make sure everything’s still there when she leaves.”

The fact that, even after close contact and personal interaction, Maxine still did not recognize her old friend made Gloria feel uneasy. Why was she the only one to recognize her mother? Even Aunt Ruth and Cousin Kate had had no idea who the anachronistic woman at the post-funeral gathering had been. Kate lived a couple of hours away, but Aunt Ruth was still close by, and Gloria could have easily invited her over to meet with “Nora.” She did not, however, and Gloria was not sure if her reluctance to do so was because she was afraid Ruth would not recognize her sister or because she was afraid she would.

Gloria nodded sympathetically as Maxine aired her complaints.

“All I did was try to talk to her, welcome her to the neighborhood.” Maxine leaned forward. “And do you know what she called me? ‘A meddling cunt!’ Can you believe it? Have you ever heard such a thing? What kind of woman says something like that? Your mother and I were friends for forty years, and I guarantee you that she would not put up with that kind of talk! I’m not blaming you, you understand. I know that you and Benjamin need the extra income. But to my mind, that kind of behavior is totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable!” Her eyes were wet. “And the fact that that woman’s living in your mother’s house?” She wiped an escaped tear. “I don’t know what all!”

After that, Gloria was sure Maxine spied on her each time she came over for a visit, which was why she preferred to have her mother come over to their house (and she didn’t know what Maxine thought about this “Nora” being allowed to drive her mother’s car).

Despite all of the uncomfortable weirdness, however, her mother’s renewed presence in their lives had freed up more family time, allowing them to go places and do things on the weekends for the first time in a long while.

And, strangely, the boys seemed to love her. Gloria found this particularly baffling. Neither Bradley nor Lucas had ever had much of an emotional connection with their grandmother, which was understandable since she had been sick for a good portion of their lives. But they adored this woman whom they called “Miss Nora.” They asked their parents if she could stay and eat with them each time she cooked food for the family, and when Gloria got off work early on the Friday before Presidents’ Day and picked up the boys from school, telling them that they didn’t need a babysitter that afternoon, she could see the disappointment in their faces.

Benjamin even brought it up one time when Bradley and Lucas were in bed and asleep. It was her turn to do the dishes, and she was rinsing out the cups when he came into the kitchen. Apparently, the boys had asked him if Miss Nora could come with them on their Spring Break trip to Disneyland. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Nora’s a wonderful woman. Really. There’s not a bad thing I can say about her. She’s been, as my mom might have said, a ‘blessing.’”

“But…” Gloria prompted.

“But don’t you think Brad and Luke are maybe a little too close to her, a little too dependent?”

Brad and Luke. She didn’t like it when he shortened their sons’ names. For someone who insisted that everyone always pronounce all three syllables of “Benjamin,” he was very lax and disrespectful when it came to the two syllables of “Bradley” and “Lucas.” But this wasn’t the time to get into that discussion again, because she knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d felt it, too, and while she’d wondered if it wasn’t just some sort of maternal jealousy on her part, the fact that Benjamin had noticed the same thing meant that her feelings had some validity. It would be understandable if the boys had known she was their grandmother, but they didn’t. To them, she was just a nice lady who watched them after school and sometimes made the family meals or helped their mom with grocery shopping. The attachment they’d formed to her was far out of proportion to what it should have been.

Then again, maybe they could sense the familial connection even if they didn’t consciously recognize it.

Gloria finished rinsing and wiped her hands on a dishtowel, turning toward Benjamin. “You’re right,” she said. “And I don’t want to encourage it, but I don’t want to discourage it, either.”

“Me neither. I’m not saying anything like that. I’m just saying that… Well, I guess I’m saying that I don’t think we should invite her to family outings like trips to Disneyland.”

“Of course not,” Gloria agreed.

“Good.” That seemed to be all he had come in here to say, and as he left the kitchen Gloria wasn’t quite sure why he had made the effort. It suddenly occurred to her that her mother might have lobbied to go along on the Disneyland excursion, putting the idea in the kids’ heads, and she wondered how her mother was going to react upon discovering she was not invited.

As it turned out, there was no reaction, at least not that Gloria heard, so perhaps it really was the boys’ idea after all.

Losing her mother and, to a lesser extent, getting her mother back, had caused Gloria to reflect on her own children. At the moment, they were completely dependent on her. She woke them up in the morning, made them breakfast, packed their lunches, drove them to school, helped them with their homework, made their dinner, put them to bed. She was the buffer between them and the outside world, and if any problem arose, they would call “Mommy!” and she would deal with it. But already she could see changes to that dynamic. Bradley, nine, one year older than his brother, was starting to question some of her instructions and talking back. He was becoming more independent, something that would eventually spread to his brother. Soon, too soon, she would no longer be at the center of their world. The thought made her sad, and she wondered if her mother had felt like this when she herself started pulling away.

The day at Disneyland was wonderful. As always, they woke up early. Their house in Brea was only fifteen minutes away—a half-hour if there was traffic and the lights on Harbor Boulevard went against them—and Disneyland didn’t open until eight, but it took them awhile to dress and eat breakfast, and parking was always a problem. Indeed, when they arrived at seven-thirty, there was already a long line waiting for the tram from the Donald Duck parking structure to the front gate, and they made it just as the gates were opening.

Benjamin and the boys had their itinerary all planned out, heading first to the most popular rides, and Gloria, who didn’t really care, followed along. Bradley was braver than Lucas, and there were rides he would go on that his brother would not, so Gloria and Lucas became partners for the day, heading to alternate attractions when Benjamin and Bradley went on thrill rides, sitting together on those that the whole family rode.

In The Haunted Mansion, the “doom buggy” in which she and Lucas sat glided past a ballroom filled with ghosts. One of them, a woman, was blowing out the candles on a birthday cake, and the mundane act put Gloria in mind of her mother, who, at this moment, was probably in her kitchen cooking herself lunch.

What was her mother?

It was a question that was always there, in the back of her mind, although at certain moments, like these, it pushed its way to the front. Her mother might not be a ghost, but she was…something. She had come back from the dead, and was alive again, nearly forty years younger.

Why didn’t that frighten Gloria more?

She wasn’t sure. But if she wasn’t as frightened as she should have been, neither did she feel the love that she should have felt for her mother. There was a distance between them, an emotional remove that Gloria did not understand but accepted. She had no idea what her mother might be experiencing or if the woman was able to experience any emotions at all now. Despite the radical uniqueness of their situation, the two of them did not talk openly and honestly about anything important; their conversations were always practical and superficial, as though her mother really were just some new acquaintance named Nora.

Open House was coming up at school. Ordinarily, both Bradley and Lucas were excited for their parents to see what had been going on in their classrooms, showing off their artwork and displayed projects, but this year, Bradley did not seem to want them to attend. Nevertheless, all four of them visited first Lucas’ class then Bradley’s, and Gloria’s fear that Bradley might not be doing well turned out to be unfounded. His reluctance stemmed more from a sort of peer pressure, which she discovered when she saw two young toughs wandering through the room without their parents and snickering at those students whose parents did attend. Benjamin noticed, too, and in the car on the way back he warned Bradley to stay away from those boys.

“I do,” Bradley said defensively.

“And don’t let them get to you. They’re the last people whose opinions you should care about. Kids like that usually end up in jail. Either that or they’ll grow up to be bums. You may take their opinions seriously now, but believe me, when you see them pushing their shopping carts and muttering about aliens, all you’ll want to do is get away from them.”

Both Bradley and Lucas laughed.

Gloria smiled. Benjamin was good that way. He knew how to make a point in a humorous manner. It was a technique she needed to learn. When she tried to tell the boys something, it was a lecture rather than a conversation. Benjamin had the ability to talk with them not at them, and those were the lessons that tended to stick.

There was nothing less romantic than Open House night. The kids were still hyped up when they came home, and all of them smelled of fruit punch and Chips Ahoy cookies. But once the kids were in bed and asleep, and they were in their own bed, things turned amorous. With everything going on, it had been awhile, and when Benjamin entered her, Gloria thought he felt bigger. For those first few seconds, she was stretched so tight it was almost painful, but as they got into it, the sensation became more pleasurable, and pretty soon it was wonderful. They would have to do this more often, she decided.

After, instead of rolling over and going to sleep, they talked.

“Do you remember that goofy guy I used to work with when we first started going out?” he asked, turning on the pillow to face her. “Melvin?”

Gloria laughed. “I forgot about him!”

“Remember how, whenever I had car problems and you picked me up at work, he would try to invite himself along on our date?”

She giggled. “Oh, yeah. And we always had to scramble and try to think up some reason why he couldn’t come?”

“Well, didn’t you think that one kid’s dad tonight kind of looked like Melvin? An older Melvin, I mean.”

“Which dad?”

“The one who kind of stayed in the back of the room and kept staring at the bulletin board with the ecology stuff?”

“Kind of,” she admitted.

“I wonder whatever happened to Melvin,” Benjamin mused.

“He doesn’t work there anymore?”

“No, he moved on years ago. I think he got a job…” He shook his head. “I don’t remember.” Benjamin was silent for a moment. “Isn’t it weird how people you know kind of drift away? They may not be friends or family, they may even be annoying, like Melvin, but they’re a part of your life, and then…things kind of move on, and they’re not there. One day you look up, and you think your life has stayed the same, but you suddenly realize that, even though you haven’t gone anywhere or done anything different, everything around you has totally changed.”

The conversation had taken a melancholy turn, and Gloria said nothing, not wanting to follow this direction. The happy afterglow she had felt faded.

“You know,” Benjamin said, “I was thinking about Nora.”

Gloria tensed up.

“I feel like I know her from somewhere. She seems real familiar, and it’s, like, on the tip of my tongue—or the tip of my brain, really—but I can’t remember where we met before. You know what I’m talking about?”

Here was her chance to come clean. And for a brief moment she actually considered it. But the truth was so crazy that there was no way Benjamin would believe her, so she just shook her head. “I’m getting tired,” she said. “Why don’t we go to sleep.”

At work the next day, Benjamin’s words came back to her. When she’d first started working at the dermatologist’s office, the practice had consisted of old Dr. Gorshin and young Dr. Lee. Dr. Gorshin had long since retired, handing over the entire practice to his partner, and now Dr. Lee was almost as old as Dr. Gorshin had been then. At the time, she had been the ingénue, and the two nurses, one clerk and two assistants had all been older than she was. But the oldest nurse, Guyla, had retired with Dr. Gorshin, not to be replaced, and the other nurse, Susie, had eventually transferred over to Beverly Hospital. The clerk, Pam, had been fired for stealing, her position not filled, and Eve, one of the assistants, had moved back to Minnesota, replaced with Hong, who was younger than Gloria. The other assistant, Beth, had quit last year, unhappy with her hours and pay.

Benjamin was right, Gloria realized. She hadn’t moved, but the world around her had changed, and now, except for Dr. Lee, she had been here longer than anyone and was the oldest person in the office.

Although, to save money, she usually brought her lunch to work (and, indeed, had a container of leftover pasta in the small office fridge right now that she’d intended to microwave), Gloria decided to mix things up today, climb out of her rut, and go elsewhere to eat. She had an hour break, and ended up driving almost to Yorba Linda before she found something that looked appealing: an independent fast-casual place called Fresh Garden. Sitting at the tables in the restaurant, alone, in groups or in pairs, were other workers on their lunch hour, most of them women. Before today, such a sight would have made her feel right at home, as though these were her peers and she fit in with them. But now she recognized that she was older than most of the women here, that the view she had of herself was probably a decade behind reality.

She ordered a spinach wrap and a passion fruit iced tea, sitting alone at an empty table for two near the window.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

Gloria looked up from her food to see a tall bearded man holding a lunch tray on which he was balancing a bottle of Evian and a sizeable salad. She hesitated, not knowing what to say, not wanting a stranger to sit with her but not wanting to seem rude either. She glanced around the restaurant, hoping to find an alternative seat to suggest. To her surprise, there were plenty of open spaces; she’d assumed he’d approached her because all of the other tables were taken.

The man laughed. “You don’t recognize me, do you, Gloria?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I—” And then it came to her. She tilted her head, changing her viewing angle, trying to imagine him without the beard. “Bobby Perez?”

He grinned. “The one and only. Mind if I sit down?”

“No,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Back in high school, back in junior high, even, she had had a big crush on Bobby, although she had never admitted it to anyone. He hadn’t been the obvious choice for a schoolgirl infatuation. He wasn’t on any sports teams, he wasn’t on the student council, he wasn’t hugely popular. He was just a regular guy. But something about him had always appealed to her, and the semester that he had sat next to her in Economics, her grades had gone down because she’d spent so much time looking over at him to see if he was looking at her. Even now his presence caused her to blush.

He sat. “So what are you doing these days?” he asked.

“I’m married,” she said, wiggling the fingers of her left hand to show him her ring. “Two boys: Bradley and Lucas. I work in a dermatologist’s office in Brea. My husband’s a computer programmer, works for Automated Interface.”

“Happy?” he asked.

She smiled. “Very.” She took a sip of her iced tea, childishly not wanting to eat in front of him. “Obviously you haven’t left the area. Unless you’re just here for a visit.”

“No, I live in Yorba Linda. Married, also.” He held up his hand to show his ring. “No kids. Yet.” He chuckled. “My wife’s younger than I am.”

He looked young himself, Gloria noticed. Certainly younger than she and Benjamin did. She suddenly felt self-conscious.

“I own my own business. Perez Pool Supplies. Over on Imperial past Rose. It’s in the Stater Brothers shopping center, next to the Goodwill.” He picked up a forkful of salad. “You wouldn’t happen to have a pool would you?”

“With two little boys?” She smiled. “Definitely not.”

He ate easily, and Gloria felt comfortable enough to start eating herself. They reminisced about old times—neither of them were in touch with anyone from high school—but, unfortunately, after finishing her wrap, she had to head back to work. She didn’t feel it would be appropriate to give him her phone number or email, and he didn’t ask or offer to give her his, so they parted awkwardly, each saying that it had been nice to run into the other before saying goodbye.

That night, Benjamin informed the family that next month he was going to have to go on a weekend business trip to a coding convention in Phoenix. It was his first business trip ever, the first time either of them would be spending a night away from the kids, and while such an event might be commonplace for a lot of people, it was a big deal to them. Gloria could tell from the way he picked at his food that he was not happy about leaving the boys for two days, and she tried to cheer him up by telling him that maybe he’d been invited because some sort of promotion was in the works.

“Nah,” he said. “Everyone’s going. It’s mandatory. Has nothing to do with any promotion.”

The kids did not seem as unenthusiastic about it as he did.

“Can you bring us back a present?” Lucas asked.

“A souvenir?” Bradley said.

Benjamin smiled at them. “Sure.”

“You could send us a postcard,” Lucas suggested.

Bradley looked at his brother with pity. “He’ll be back before the postcard even gets here.”

“I don’t care. Then we can read it together.”

“Done,” Benjamin told him.

On the Friday he flew to Phoenix, Gloria went in late to work so she could drive him to the airport. He was flying out of Orange County, which meant that it was closer than LA or Ontario, and while he could have taken a Lyft, Uber or even the airport shuttle, Gloria wanted to see him off. She asked her mother to come over and watch the boys for an hour before taking them to school, and Benjamin kissed both Bradley and Lucas on the forehead, telling them to be good and listen to Mommy. Bradley wiped off the kiss, obviously feeling too old for such sentiment, but Lucas left his kiss intact and gave his dad a big hug before letting him go.

There was work traffic on the freeway, but they’d anticipated that and left home with plenty of time to spare. Gloria had never dropped Benjamin off at the airport before—whenever they’d flown, they’d gone together—and she was surprised to learn that TSA rules were so strictly enforced that she could not even go into the airport with him; she was required to simply drop him off and leave. She’d been planning to sit with him until the boarding call came, then watch through the windows as his plane took off. Instead, they said a rushed goodbye, he grabbed his single carry-on bag from the back seat, and then she was driving away.

He called her at work to tell her that he’d arrived safely, then called home that night to talk to the boys. They were excited to hear from him, wanting to know all about the plane flight and asking if he’d bought them any presents yet. Benjamin told Gloria that there’d been a change in the schedule of events. A required seminar that had been planned for this evening had been moved to Sunday afternoon. Originally, he was to have come home Sunday on a two o’clock plane, but he and everyone else from their company had had to trade in their tickets for a later flight, and now he wouldn’t be setting down in Orange County until six-thirty. “But you don’t have to pick me up,” he told her. “I’m hitching a ride with Dang and Nick.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “I could—”

“It’s Sunday night. Brad and Luke need to go to bed early and get ready for school on Monday. Besides, you need to make them dinner.”

“Bradley and Lucas,” Gloria said.

“What?”

“Never mind.”

He was right, Gloria knew. She could have pushed, insisting that she pick him up, but the next day was a school day, and the truth was that she did not feel entirely comfortable having her mother come over to babysit the boys. As irrational and superstitious as it might be, she didn’t mind her mother watching Bradley and Lucas after school (in fact Gloria was grateful), but the idea of her coming over and spending time alone with them at night made her feel uneasy.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Benjamin said. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Both boys giggled.

Benjamin did call the next day, late in the afternoon, just before he was about to leave the hotel for the airport. Gloria asked if he was going to eat an early dinner in Phoenix or get something with his coworkers on the way home, but he told her to just save him some leftovers. He’d eat when he got back.

By her calculation, he should be home around seven-thirty, unless someone else in the carpool got dropped off first. For dinner, she made chicken and rosemary potatoes, one of everyone’s favorites, and one that could easily and quickly be reheated. After dinner, she let the boys have control of the television, and they watched one of the How to Train Your Dragon movies on some kids’ channel.

It was a surprise when six-thirty came and went and Benjamin didn’t call, but there was probably a reason. When Gloria still hadn’t heard from him by seven-thirty, however, she began to worry.

Where was he? Why was he so late? Whatever else might be said about Benjamin, he was reliably punctual, particularly with anything that involved the boys. Right now, for example, he knew that they were waiting up for him, and even if the plane had been delayed, he should have called to tell Gloria to put them to bed, that he would see them in the morning. Unless phone calls were not allowed from planes. She had no idea what the rules and regulations were these days, and while it seemed farfetched, there was a possibility that Benjamin was not able to call and let them know there was a delay.

“When’s Daddy coming home?” Bradley whined, not for the first time.

“I don’t know,” she told him, an unfortunate hint of annoyance creeping into her voice.

And then the phone rang.