Gloria Read online

  GLORIA

  Bentley Little

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  Baltimore

  2021

  Copyright © 2021 by Bentley Little

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cemetery Dance Publications

  132-B Industry Lane, Unit #7

  Forest Hill, MD 21050

  http://www.cemeterydance.com

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58767-821-9

  Front Cover Artwork and Design © 2021 by Elderlemon Design

  Digital Design by Dan Hocker

  ONE

  Gloria Jaymes had not expected to see her mother again, but immediately following the funeral, her dead mom showed up at the house. For some reason, she looked not the way she had when she died, but the way she had in the 1980s, when Gloria was a child. She was wearing one of those big-shouldered, bold-colored jackets, a bright blue thing over a white blouse with large black polka dots. Her makeup was garish as well—thick red lipstick, high purple eyeshadow—and her hair was blonder than Gloria ever recalled it being, so teased and sprayed that it made the head beneath it look somehow too small.

  Gloria did not remember the fashions of the Eighties as being quite so hideous, although that was a strange and frivolous thought to be having when her dead mother was standing in the doorway, waiting to be let in. She glanced back at the guests (or mourners, as they should probably be called), milling about in the living room, dining room and kitchen. The house, she realized, still looked much the same as it had in the 1980s. The sofa and loveseat in the living room had been switched out a couple of times since then, although the replacements had always had the same rough cloth texture and the same off-white color scheme, but the remaining furniture, the tables and lamps and bookcase—and even the books on the bookcase—were the same ones she’d grown up with. The only part of the house that was substantially different than it had been during her childhood was her own bedroom, which her mother turned into an “office,” once Gloria had moved out.

  In the living room, her husband and sons were standing awkwardly next to the fireplace, forced to speak with people they barely knew. Not their forte. Her Aunt Ruth and Cousin Kate were handling all of the food, bringing out drinks from the kitchen and coordinating the potluck dishes on the dining room table. None of them were looking in her direction.

  “May I come in?” her mother asked.

  Flummoxed, Gloria nodded. It occurred to her that vampires were supposed to have to ask in order to enter a house for the first time. That could explain how she was here, even though she had just been buried. But her mother had not asked the question in the intimidating way a monster would; she had done so in the annoyed sarcastic manner she adopted whenever her daughter was not doing something she wanted her to do. Still, Gloria waited a moment, and when her mother did not bite her neck or start attacking the guests (mourners!), Gloria closed the door behind her.

  Amidst all of the black and somber gray, her mother’s gaudy wardrobe seemed rude, vulgar and entirely inappropriate. No one commented on it, however. Benjamin and the boys welcomed her in, several people nodded hello, and Kate handed her a paper plate, leading her over to the food table.

  No one recognized who she was.

  How is that possible? Gloria wondered. Maxine from across the street, her mother’s best friend since before Gloria was born, was here, as were old friends from work and from church, not to mention Aunt Ruth and Cousin Kate. They’d all known her mother at that age (and Aunt Ruth was her own sister!). How could they not recognize her? Could this version of her mother have been so superseded in everyone’s minds by the frumpy elderly woman of later years that it had rendered her earlier self unidentifiable?

  “Mom!” Gloria said, approaching.

  Her mother turned toward her. As did everyone else. She saw the looks on all of their faces: shock, sadness, pity. Benjamin hurried over. Like the rest of them, he clearly thought that grief had addled her mind, that stress had taken its toll and she had somehow gotten confused, making her forget that her mother had died. He put his arms around her, and she was about to tell him the truth, when she saw her mom looking directly at her and slowly shaking her head.

  For the first time, Gloria felt the emotion that she should have felt from the beginning: fear. She looked away, peering into Benjamin’s worried face, then glanced back. Her mother was scooping up a plate of tuna casserole.

  “It’s okay,” Benjamin said. “It’s all right.”

  She glanced over his shoulder at the boys. Both Bradley and Lucas looked frightened. Everyone else was purposely turned away, embarrassed for her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Habit. I just…” She trailed off, not knowing where to go from there.

  “Why don’t you go and lie down?” Benjamin suggested. “Get some rest. We’ll take care of things out here.”

  Maybe she would. Her head hurt, and she was tired of nodding politely and accepting condolences. She wanted all of this to be over, and maybe if she went into the bedroom and took a nap, everyone would be gone by the time she woke up, and she could avoid the lengthy goodbyes that she knew were coming.

  And, hopefully, her mother would be gone.

  “I think I will,” she told Benjamin. “Wake me up when people start to leave.”

  “I will,” he said, but she could tell from his tone of voice that he had no intention of doing any such thing, and for that she was grateful. Gloria retired to the guest room—she was not up to sleeping in her mother’s bed—and closed the door behind her before stretching out on the twin bed in the corner.

  She was unable to sleep, however. Her most fervent wish at this moment was that she would doze for a half hour and awaken to find that this childhood version of her mother was gone. She might never know why or how her mom had appeared, but that would be okay. As long as she was not here, Gloria would be satisfied.

  But was that reasonable to expect? Looking at it from a practical point of view, where did her mother have to go? This was her home. Would she simply vacate the premises, going out with the rest of the crowd, to…what? Wander the streets? It seemed far more likely that Gloria would wake up to find that her mother was back in her bedroom, lying down on her bed, or even cleaning the house after the guests’ (mourners’) departure. The probability that she would leave in the same manner that she had arrived was, to Gloria’s way of thinking, mighty slim.

  She awoke in a darkened room, unaware that she had even fallen asleep. She had no memory of getting drowsy and drifting off. Her last memory was of mentally cataloguing the possible outcomes of her mother’s reappearance, which probably meant that sleep had overcome her instantly, as with a person administered anesthesia before surgery. With the stress she’d been under, such a response was perfectly natural and to be expected, but it was still disconcerting, and Gloria sat up in bed, wondering if everyone had left.

  Where was her mother?

  That was the real question. Her hope was that the entire incident had been a consequence of her overworked, overtired, overburdened brain and that it had never occurred, but through the partially open bedroom doorway, she heard the distinct and unmistakable cadence of her mother’s voice speaking with Benjamin and the boys. It was a voice from the past, a younger version that she had forgotten but that came roaring back from some distant part of her memory banks. All of a sudden, Gloria wasn’t sure she remembered her mother’s older voice, the one she’d lived with for the past decade, the one she’d heard just five days ago in the hospital.

  She remained in place for a moment, eavesdropping. The four of them were talking about dinner. Gloria was sure there was plenty of food left over, but Bradley was complaining that he wanted Taco Bell, while Lucas chimed in that he wanted Del Taco.

  Her mother laughed, an unexpectedly loud and inappropriately raucous laugh that she remembered from her childhood, and for the first time since her mother had returned, Gloria felt a twinge of sadness. “Homemade tacos are better than any fast food,” her mother said. “And healthier, too! I’ll make you my famous ground turkey tacos with pico de gallo.”

  “Thank you, Nora,” Benjamin said. “We really appreciate it.”

  Had her mother revealed her identity, Gloria wondered, or had Benjamin figured out who she was? Because now Benjamin not only knew her name, but she was seemingly integrated into the family in a way no stranger could ever be in so short amount of time.

  Gloria got out of bed. Shouldn’t her family have been more frightened? Her husband’s mother-in-law, the children’s dead grandmother, had come back to life as a younger version of herself. Didn’t that deserve more of a reaction than passive acceptance? Now wide awake, she made her way out to the kitchen. All four of them were standing in the center of the room, in front of the sink, her husband and sons on the left side, facing her mother on the right.

  Benjamin saw her the moment she stepped through the doorway. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Feeling? I’m feeling fine.”

  “I just meant, after your outburst—”

  “Outburst?” she said, annoyed, as always, by his condescension. “I didn’t have an outburst. I was just—”

&nb
sp; Her mother had turned to look at her and, as before, she met Gloria’s gaze with those heavily made-up eyes, shaking her overly coiffed head.

  So Benjamin and the boys didn’t know who she was.

  Was it reflex, the naturally submissive response of a child to a parent’s directive, or was it something else that caused Gloria to break off in mid-sentence? Either way, she dropped her defensive posture and Benjamin chose not to further engage. “Nora here has kindly volunteered to cook us dinner,” he said, switching subjects. “I wasn’t sure when you were going to wake up, and knew you wouldn’t be in the mood to cook when you did, so when she offered to stay over and make us tacos, I took her up on it. I know there are still a lot of potluck leftovers,” he added quickly, “but Nora’s already wrapped them up and put them away, and besides, you know the boys don’t like casseroles. I figured we could eat them for lunch ourselves over the next few days and give the kids something else.”

  Gloria nodded in acquiescence, although she didn’t really care about the food. What concerned her was the fact that Benjamin did not recognize his mother-in-law (the boys she could understand). Gloria wasn’t the only one who could see her, but apparently she was the only one who knew who she was. What did that mean? The idea that her family would so readily invite a stranger—a bizarrely retro-looking stranger—into their lives was also disconcerting. They were not that kind of people, not ordinarily, and it made her wonder whether her mother was able to exert some sort of influence over Benjamin and the boys.

  What would her mother do after dinner? she wondered. The woman had no home. This was her home. Or, rather, it had been. Was she planning to move back in? Was that her intent? Or was she going to move on after cooking the food? Gloria doubted that her mother had any money, and she definitely didn’t have any credit cards because Benjamin had, sensibly, cancelled them upon her death. Would she end up wandering the streets, homeless? Or would she try to get a job and find her own place, at an extended-stay motel? Although, thinking realistically, her mother should not be able to get a job because she had no Social Security number or valid ID.

  Gloria’s headache had returned. She watched her mother walk over and open the refrigerator door, and something about the visual angle jogged her memory. She suddenly remembered seeing her mother in this exact same outfit before, with the same big teased hair. It had been at JCPenney’s, and Gloria had been in the toy department, trying to find a present for her friend Celia’s birthday. Her mom had stood there, making suggestions which Gloria ignored. She was looking for the latest Jem figure because she liked the commercial and the song that said Jem was “Truly Outrageous.” Her mother had no doubt worn the same outfit numerous other times, but for some reason, that moment stuck in Gloria’s memory, and it gave the woman before her a more concrete and tangible presence. This was actually her mother. She had known that intellectually, but now she felt it, and she wanted more than anything else for the two of them to have the chance to talk.

  She thought of the look her mother had twice given her, the subtle shake of her head, and knew that if they had a real conversation, they would have to do so out of earshot of the rest of the family.

  Benjamin was ushering the boys and her out of the kitchen. The dining room table had been cleared of food while she’d been asleep, and used paper plates and plastic cups had been dumped in an open black garbage sack next to the breakfront. “It was a nice service,” he told her. “Everyone said so. They all wanted me to let you know how much your mom will be missed.”

  Gloria almost had to smile at that. She glanced back into the kitchen, where her mother was grabbing something out of one of the cupboards. Beans, she thought. Her mother always put a layer of refried beans beneath the ground turkey in her tacos. She turned to Benjamin. “Could you take the kids into the back room and get a game out of the closet and play with them for awhile? I’d like to talk to…Nora…alone.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Who did he think the woman was? Gloria had no idea, and at this moment didn’t care. She just wanted some time alone to talk to her mother. Bradley and Lucas were herded into the back room—“Connect Four!” Bradley said. “Monopoly!” Lucas countered—and Gloria steeled herself before walking back into the kitchen.

  “Mom?” she said.

  “Yes?” The bright lips smiled radiantly. Gloria expected there to be some sort of giveaway, dead eyes, perhaps, but the entire face was vivacious and engaged and looked just the way her mother’s features had when Gloria was a little girl.

  “Is it really you?”

  Her mother’s loud laugh again. “Of course, it’s me!”

  “How?”

  A look of consternation flitted across her mother’s face, and to Gloria the effort seemed studied, theatrical, put on for her benefit. But was that really true? Or was she merely seeing what she wanted to see? Because the feeling of insincerity lasted only a few seconds before her mother appeared to her to be genuinely puzzled. “I don’t really know,” she said.

  “But you do know that you died. You had a heart attack here at home last Monday, and then a few days later, at the hospital, you had some kind of embolism and died. We just buried you today.”

  Her mother was frowning. “It seems like I know that? But I don’t remember it.”

  “What’s the last thing you do remember? Because somehow you look like you did when I was little. You’re even wearing the same clothes.”

  “I don’t know.” Gloria heard the slightest trace of frustration in her mother’s voice. “I understand that I’m younger than I should be. But I still know all about Benjamin and Bradley and Lucas. I’m still me.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes! There’s just…some things missing.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know. I only know I feel different.”

  It was their old conversational rhythm, and they’d fallen into it naturally. She missed her mother, Gloria realized. She hadn’t really had time to miss her, but not talking to her for even less than a week had left Gloria feeling surprisingly bereft, something she had not noticed until this moment. Their exchange brought home to her just how reliant she was on her mom, how she sought her mother’s advice or approval on everything from major life choices to simple household decisions, despite the fact that she now had a family of her own. She had never stopped being her mother’s child, and she wondered if that dynamic held true for everyone. Benjamin’s mom had died when he was a teenager, so the tether had been broken early, but in her case, that break had not happened until now.

  And suddenly it had been rescinded.

  It was comforting to talk to her mother again, yet at the same time there was a reticence on her part because…her mother was dead. This person, this childhood version of her mom, might or might not be who she claimed, and Gloria was expending far too much effort in trying to decode subliminal signals and spot subtle discrepancies in order to figure out which. She took a deep breath and said what she was thinking. “Are you my mother? You? Not another you or some version of you, but you?”

  “Of course.”

  Gloria sighed. “So how’s this going to work? Do you plan on living here? I mean, it is your house. But how are we going to explain that to people? What are we going to say? And what about our relationship? Are we just going to pick up where we left off? I mean, for the past few years, I’ve been more of a caregiver than anything else; you were so old, and had so many problems. Now you’re as young as I am. What are we going to do?”

  Her mother smiled. She took Gloria’s hand and patted it, in the same way she’d always done. “Why don’t we just play things by ear and see how it goes.”

  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.