1. Dumped                                                             

     Glory was on her way to join her husband on a NOAA research vessel when she tried to call him to say she was running late. That was when she discovered he wasn’t on the ship; without telling her, he’d pulled out of the offshore project days before. With that failed phone call, all of her recent, uncomfortable inklings fell into place. Her marriage was over. He just hadn’t gotten around to telling her yet.

That was how she ended up at Sea-Tac Airport, halfway between Seattle and Tacoma, with her hair in braids, wearing a pink Where’s the Powwow? sweatshirt. She carried only her wallet, a camera, and a faded blue gym bag. The bag was filled with the same kinds of clothes she was wearing, a few books, and a photo of her husband. The photo—frame and all—she chucked into a trash barrel outside the airport terminal. She would have liked to toss it out of the airplane, but she was pretty sure it would make the stewards cranky if she opened the emergency exit at 35,000 feet.

Her original destination, the research vessel, was scheduled to drop anchor over the undersea volcanoes off the coast of Washington State. The scientists on the ship were to study the marine life that thrived in the hot water that spewed out of the craters.

 After the research trip, she and her husband, Rick, were to take a much-needed vacation to Mexico and reconnect. They hadn’t had any identifiable problems, but her husband had been moody and refused to talk about it. Glory had hoped he would open up after a few days rest on a hot sandy beach with a Margarita in his hand. Rick hadn’t been in favor of the vacation, but Glory had insisted. Finally, he had thrown up his hands and given up.

Before the research trip, he had convinced her to put all of their things in storage because they didn’t know if they’d be back in Seattle when the project was over. There was no use, he’d said, in paying rent while they were gone.

It made sense.

Sort of.

But why hadn’t she been suspicious when he’d insisted on putting all of his things into separate marked boxes? How dumb was she? The dirty rat! And what would she have done on the research ship without him for three weeks? Her specialty was in freshwater turtles; there would be no real work for her there. No paycheck. He was the specialist in coastal underwater volcanoes. He belonged there. She would have been nothing more than a guest with no way off the boat. Her cheeks burned at the embarrassment she felt. What was he thinking?

   Her new destination was her mother’s in Oklahoma. Getting a last minute ticket was expensive, and Glory was thankful for her credit cards. No one ever went to Oklahoma unless they had to, and airline tickets to the Sooner State were never a bargain. Glory handed the woman at the check-in counter her credit card and mumbled a quote from a rich friend, “All it takes is money.” The woman briefly looked up, then, expressionless, continued adding up the full fare charges on her keyboard.

On her way to the airplane boarding area, over and over, Glory thought, this isn’t the way normal, educated people get divorced.

I’ve been dumped!

With no explanation.

No discussion.

No apology!

How could this happen to me? What did I ever do to deserve this? Another phone call to him went unanswered. Finally, too frazzled and confused to try to unravel the puzzle of her husband’s behavior, and too much in shock to react in her normal, feisty way, Glory tried to force Rick out of her mind. One step at a time, she told herself. After all, she was already a rotten flyer. There was no use in taking the chance of bringing on an anxiety attack. First, she told herself, get through the plane ride to Texas without throwing up on your seatmate.

She knew she had to call her mother before she boarded her plane. Then, when she got to the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, she’d call Rick again. She pulled out her cell phone and pressed the speed dial number for her mother’s. It was the hardest phone call of her life—and it was short.

“Mom? I’m at the Sea-Tac Airport. I’m coming home. No, I’m alone. Rick isn’t coming.”

“Glory! What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. But Rick left me.”

“I thought you two were going on a research trip?”

“I thought we were too. I guess he changed his mind.”

Glory’s sobs alarmed her mother. Over and over, she repeated, “Glory, just come home. We’ll work out whatever it is when you get here.”

“I’ll be there around three. I’ll call you when I get to Ft. Worth.”

Afterward, she sat huddled in the waiting area for her flight with her gym bag on top of her feet to hide her shaking legs. The rest of her she pulled as far into her sweatshirt as she could, like a turtle protecting itself from a predator. Only it was too late—the predator had already struck, and was smirking at her somewhere in Seattle. She pictured him sitting on a stack of cardboard boxes filled with all of his earthly belongings, guzzling champagne through a snorkel. She hadn’t yet considered that, if he were devious enough to pull the research ship stunt, he probably already had his new apartment set up. She definitely hadn’t considered exactly whom he might be setting up the apartment with. That wasn’t the kind of thought you allowed yourself when you got nauseous just looking at a picture of an airplane.

She shuddered when she entered the plane’s doorway and looked down the long, claustrophobic insides of the Boeing seven thirty-seven. As she moved down the aisle between the seats, she felt the passengers behind her suddenly zig-jag from left to right. An obnoxious eight-year-old, who wore a Bellevue Elementary tee-shirt and iPod earphones underneath her Mariner’s baseball cap, tried her best to shove her way to the front of the line through the already weary boarders.

It was the same twerp who had annoyed passengers all over C Concourse before their delayed airplane had arrived. There was little doubt that, as soon as this Pea Princess wannabe entered the area, airport personnel all over Sea-Tac had regretted the Please arrive two hours early for your flight signs that hung from the walls and counters of the terminal.

I’ve been dumped! The billboard that ran across the inside of her mind kept flashing. In no mood to be jostled by the upper crust, especially by a brat with a mouthful of gum blowing big blue bubbles, Glory swung her tote to the left, and successfully blocked the stampede of the Creature From the Bellevue Swamp.

     “Let me by! I’m supposed to be in front,” whined the little brat, as she held her Mariner cap on her head with one hand and tried to quarterback her way past Glory.

     “You are?” Glory asked incredulously, “Let me see your ticket.”

     “I don’t have it,” the brat whined some more as she looked down to the front of the plane where her mother was, “but I know I’m supposed to be in 42A.”

     “Sorry. No ticket, no seat. You’d better step aside and wait for your mom.”

     What followed next was an earsplitting, “Mom! I need my ticket!”

     Glory looked back and saw her mother, a thin and fortyish-woman with a beach-in-the-box tan. She wore white cotton shorts, a tight red tank top, and white leather Keds. Her expensive sunglasses rested comfortably above her bottle-blond hairdo, and her sweater was casually tossed around her shoulders and looped in front by its sleeves. Gold chains glittered around her taunt neck.

Bellevue Mom was flirting with a young guy in shorts and a muscle shirt stamped with the word STUD on its front. Regretfully, she tore her eyes away from the hunk and looked exasperatingly in the direction of her daughter’s voice. The passengers behind Glory bunched up and filled in every inch of space as if it were a planned maneuver. There was no way they were going to let the spoiled trout swim upstream to her mother at the expense of their kneecaps.  Obviously, almost everyone who was boarding the plane had already experienced the company of Ms. High Maintenance and her Bellevue Brat.

Clueless at how annoyed her fellow passengers were with her, Pea Princess jumped up and down to try to see her mother as the crowd completely blocked her view.

Hopelessness began to shorten her bounces and she finally moved to the side of the aisle and pouted as the other passengers filed past her. Grins were abundant. One passenger gave Glory a thumbs-up. Said another, “I owe you a drink.”

   “Thanks, but just promise me you’ll make a donation in my name to Planned Parenthood,” said Glory, as she tossed her gym bag under the seat in front of her. She mumbled under her breath, “My work here is done,” as she listened to the whiney voice that was drawn further and further toward the back of the plane. As she got settled, she checked out the businessman sitting next to her in the window seat; she thought she’d get acquainted.

     “I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said to the man.

    The man looked at the woman in her early thirties wearing jeans, Reebocks, and a ragged sweatshirt and sneered, “And what might that be?”

     “The bad news is I’m a terrible flyer. The good news is I’ve taken two Dramamine. If you’ll be patient with me until we take off, the drugs will kick in and you won’t hear a another peep out of me until we land at DFW.”

     The man frowned and pulled his financial magazine over his face and tried to move as far away as possible in the cramped conditions. Glory tried to bite her tongue, but couldn’t resist: 

“I’ll try to miss you when I throw up.” What an Asshole.

   Glory heard a heavy, sarcastic sigh on the other side of the man’s magazine and she whispered, “Don’t mess with me, Cowboy. I’ll throw your little pinhead out that window you’re sitting next to.” She knew he heard her; his knuckles turned white.

What a lucky break. A human seatmate might have loosened her tongue, and she didn’t need to pour out all of her troubles to a complete stranger. Glory tucked her pillow behind her head, covered herself with her blanket, and tried to go to sleep as the Boeing airliner rocked and rolled at a snail’s pace on its way to the runway to get into position to take off. With her eyes tightly closed, Glory prayed for the motion sickness medicine to kick in. As the plane lifted off, she briefly wondered if she was going to Oklahoma to start a new life or merely going for a visit. The answer to her question was still in Seattle; Rick was controlling her life and she didn’t like it one bit.

     At the back of the plane she could hear the Pea Princess whining; twice the flight staff told the Bellevue twerp to take her seat and belt up. Ms. High Maintenance seemed oblivious to the problems her daughter was causing. When Glory looked back, the mom’s eyes were searching the seats. No doubt, she was trying to locate the muscle shirt and the young stud in it. Glory couldn’t locate him either. Was he hunkered down, hiding from the woman who was old enough to be his mother? He must be, Glory thought when her second scan of the plane’s interior failed to locate him.

     After take-off, the drink cart passed Glory and hit her twice, once in the elbow, and once in the leg. Glory smiled sweetly when the steward apologized, but she swiped an extra can of pop off the back of the server to get even. It was easy. The steward was distracted by the Pea Princess who tried to worm her way past the cart so that she could go to the bathroom in the first class section. “Use the bathrooms at the back of the plane, honey,” the steward suggested through gritted teeth.

     “There’s already somebody in them,” the Pea Princess whined.

     “They’ll be out soon,” the woman said encouragingly, “the bathrooms at the front are full too.”

     Pea wasn’t convinced, but she turned around and headed toward the back. She was complaining to her mother about the mean airplane lady when a door to one of the rear bathrooms opened. She raced to get in front of the other passengers waiting in line, and shot past them below their kneecaps. Before they knew it, she was on the other side of a slammed bathroom door. Glory could tell by the sound her feet made as they pounded the aisle carpet that she had taken off her shoes. When she looked back, she noticed that the Pea had taken off her socks as well. And they used to call me a wild Indian, she thought.

     Sadly, Glory looked at the phone on the back of the seat in front of her, but resisted an urge to try to call Rick. Even if she did get him to answer, what could she say at five thousand feet in the air surrounded by strangers? And wouldn’t the man next to her love to hear her beg Rick to come back to her? Besides, the motion sickness medicine was kicking in. Glory was asleep before the Pea got out of the potty.

     Before she went to sleep, she tried to prepare herself for what she’d find when the Saab commuter plane she’d transfer to for the final leg of her trip landed at the Lawton Airport. Her beloved family was getting smaller and smaller, much too fast.

 It had started shrinking before she had ever left Oklahoma to go to college. First, they’d lost her Uncle Rudolf, her Aunt Vera’s husband. He had been a real friend to a five-year-old Glory and her mother when the two were trying to get away from Glory’s father. Rudolf’s sudden death from a heart attack had hit all of them hard. Gregoria, Glory’s grandmother, was the next to go. Her grandmother’s sister-in-law Lilia, who was also Gregoria’s best friend, followed soon after.

Someday, Glory knew, she’d have nothing but cousins. Unfortunately, Carlos, the cousin she’d grown up with, was living in New Jersey with his wife and family. She’d call him. Maybe he and Angelica could grab the kids and come down after it cooled off in August.

    Glory could feel a sense of urgency in her seatmate, and was about to open her eyes and move her knees over so he could go to the bathroom when she heard him mutter, “Damn Indian. Wouldn’t you know she’d sit next to me?”

    After Glory heard that, she locked her knees and the man tumbled almost headfirst into the aisle. After a few more derogatory mumbles, he stumbled toward the bathroom. Glory went back to her thoughts about her family.

     Tears ran down her face when she remembered the biggest loss in her life, Powwow Pete. Even before he’d married Glory’s mom, Grace, he’d watched over Glory and tried to protect her from her father, Dwayne. He’d had his hands full because her father’s stupidity and greed threatened Glory’s survival. Between her father and his second wife, Frieda, she was lucky to have survived her childhood. Before she was a teenager, each of them had tried to hasten her death so that they could collect on the accidental-death insurance policy her father had taken out on her.

     Pete, who became Glory’s stepfather, had been her first choice on her new father list after her father had left eight-year-old Glory and her mother to marry Frieda. When her mother had married Pete and made her dream of having a real father come true, she never imagined that she would someday lose him. She was in college in Washington State when the news came that he had been killed in a pickup accident. She grieved over not being there to help him when he needed her; she kept telling herself that if she’d not left Oklahoma to go to college, maybe it never would have happened. Pete and Glory were inseparable when she was growing up, and Glory often rode in Pete’s pickup as he drove around the reservation conducting the tribe’s business when he was tribal chairman. No one was sure how he had ended up all alone with his pickup in a ditch on the far end of the reservation. What was he doing way out there? The family thought someone must have been chasing him, but the heavy spring rains had washed away any clues.

     But who would want to kill Pete? There had been a fight over who was going to manage the tribe, but Pete was fed up with tribal politics and had announced that he was going to step down. Besides, tribal chairmen were recalled all the time by the Comanches without bloodshed. No one could picture a member of the tribe killing Pete, especially not over an election, but not knowing for sure had made the family distrustful of the very people Pete loved so much. Other suspects were few. If her father hadn’t been blown up in a boating accident when Glory was eight, she would have suspected him of killing Pete. Another possible suspect, her stepmother, had been run out of town soon after her father was killed, so Glory knew it wasn’t her.

     Soon, the Dramamine did its job, and Glory drifted off to sleep. However, she couldn’t ignore a finger that kept rudely poking into her upper arm. When she opened her eyes, she found herself nose to nose with the Pea Princess.

     “Can I have your blanket and pillow?” the question sounded more like a demand than a request.

     “Get your own,” Glory mumbled.

     “They’re all gone and I’m sleepy.”

     Out of the corner of her eye Glory saw the businessman’s blanket and pillow on his seat where he’d left them when he went to the bathroom.

     “Here. Take these,” Glory said as she shoved the pillow and blanket into the child’s arms. The kid took off like she had a pocketful of stolen candy. Glory was almost asleep again when she heard her returning seatmate swearing under his breath. Before he even sat down, he impatiently jabbed at the service button over and over until the steward appeared.

     “I need another blanket and pillow. Someone’s taken mine.”

     Glory braced herself for the steward’s reply. Underneath her blanket, she dug her nails into the palm of her hand so that she wouldn’t laugh when it came:

      "I'm sorry, sir, but we're all out of blankets and pillows."

     Upon their arrival at the Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport, the terminal was a crowded mix of travelers and vendors. Glory checked out the bumper of the passenger carrier that beeped as it raced past her to see if the driver had impaled any slow-moving bodies on its front grill. Surprisingly, it was bare.

     The slow Texas drawl of a young woman floated atop the hurried heads, and hovered over the airport noise that bounced off all of its hard surfaces. Glory’s eyes followed the sound to a shoeshine booth, where a young blond woman in her twenties sat on a high leather chair, and chatted easily with the black man who was busily shining her camel-colored, leather cowboy boots with red roses tooled on their sides.  Although Glory was un-noticed, she smiled in the woman’s direction, but frowned when she looked down at her own feet. She was a mess, inside and out. Her clothes in her gym bag, including a frumpy skirt, were not any better. She didn’t have to wonder what her mother and the rest of the women would think when they met her at the plane. She knew they would think the worst, but she also knew they would welcome her with open arms. Wasn’t that why people ran home when their heart was carelessly fed to a shark and their future kicked into an ocean called never? Was that the way it was going to be? Never having another home? Never having a soul mate? Never having children?

     In front of Glory, a frazzled black woman walked off a covered walkway and merged with the foot traffic a few feet ahead. Suddenly, overwhelmed by the huge interior of the airport and the crowds, the woman dropped her carry-on bags on the floor in the middle of the terminal and started screaming, “Oh, Lord, help me!”

     Before Glory could reach her, several businessmen stopped dead in their tracks and raced to her side. “What’s the matter?” they all asked.

     “I have to get to D terminal in ten minutes to go see my sick son and I don’t know which way to go,” she sobbed.

     “D terminal?” a man asked, “I’m going close to there now, come with me. I’ll get you there on time. We’ll take the tram.”

     The terminal filled in like a sinkhole filling up with sand as the two moved toward the tram stairs. The hopeless sobs of the desperate woman were replaced by the sounds of women’s heels rushing to their assigned gates; the plastic wheels on the bottoms of their suitcases made a dump-dump, dump-dump sound as they sank in and out of the mortar between each ten-inch floor tile. Their sounds didn’t do anything to lighten Glory’s mood. “Dump-dump. Dump-dump!” She answered back under her breath.

     Numb all over, she felt out of place as she passed groups of old ladies going in the other direction. Carrying huge metallic tote bags, they chatted gaily as they ambled happily past Glory, no doubt headed for a place in the sun that was just as hot as where they were—only with palm trees and expensive drinks served in pineapples topped with paper umbrellas. She saw so many shiny gold purses, belts, and shoes on the women that she decided Texans must be growing metallic cows.

       Even though she was hungry, none of the food booths had what she craved. The yogurt had brightly colored confetti toppings that looked like plastic, the hamburgers were laced with jalapeño, and the Greek gyros looked downright nasty. Whatever happened to plain old hamburgers and fries? She passed all of the snack bars on her way to the tram and sipped her pilfered soft drink from the plane.

  Before she got on the tram that would carry her to the lower level, she tried to call Rick again. No answer. She left a message. Reluctantly, she shoved her phone into her jean’s pocket. She completely forgot to call her mother as she’d promised.

Usually, Glory was fascinated by the mix of people on the lower level of the Texas airport. There, passengers gathered to catch commuter flights that flew to little dots on the map with names left over from the Old West. Places like Tishomingo, Cheyenne, Amarillo, Durango, and of course, her hometown, Lawton. More than a few real cowboys and cowgirls hung out on this level, waiting anxiously to leave what the rest of the world called civilization, and fly back to the sanity of their ranches.

     Along with the cowboys and girls in Western shirts, the familiar groups of Army inductees were there. Total strangers when they got to the airport, they were already bonded into tight groups and had formed friendships that would last throughout their training. 

     There was also the usual mix of housewives laden down with shopping bags who’d flown to Dallas for the day. Glory guessed they’d spent the day getting their gynecological exams from a doctor recommended by a friend over a bingo game at a church social. Then, they’d treated themselves to a shopping trip to Neiman-Marcus before catching a flight home. Businessmen on their way back to the small towns they came from filled in the other chairs. Big fish in little, stagnated ponds at home, Glory guessed that they’d swallowed a lot of water in Dallas. Of course, to each other, they bragged, “Business is great. I’m having a super year!”

     Scattered all over the waiting room, like roses on a back fence, were young girls wearing their brother’s or boyfriend’s Ivy League sweatshirts.

    “Why don’t you go off to a big college and get your own sweatshirt?” Glory asked a young girl sitting across from her.

     “Oh, no. I promised to wait for my boyfriend.”

     “To do what?”

     That was when the conversation ended. Apparently, the girl didn’t want to tell Glory that she assumed he’d rush home and marry her as soon as he graduated. Glory ignored her silence. “You’d better wake up, Girlie. Do you think you’re going to look good to him after he spends the next four years with college girls? The next time he comes home, you’d better go back with him and crack some books. I can tell just by looking at you that you’re spending way too much time polishing your nails and dying your roots. Your brain is going to turn to bubble gum.”

     The youngster went away crying. “What did I say?” Glory insincerely asked the old lady sitting next to her, although she knew exactly what she’d said and she didn’t give a damn. Women in this part of the country were treated like little Scarletts until they’d grown up. Then the tables turned, and they were supposed to be perfect wives and mothers. Never complaining, always happy with whatever crumb their husbands threw at them. About the time their nests were empty, the men were tired of their children’s mothers, and they were discarded and replaced with someone younger, greedier, and more cunning.  In big cities, these new women were called trophy wives. In Oklahoma, they were just called sluts. Quicker than a bug hits the windshield, they squandered the money the first wife had strived to save, and the more they spent, the prouder their new husband was. As Oklahoma was not a community property state, the financial settlements in divorces were sometimes less than equitable. Wives who had devoted their lives cooking and cleaning for their husbands and children suddenly found themselves doing the same thing, at minimum wage, for strangers.

She knew her own divorce settlement wouldn’t be much better. Even though Washington was a community property state, she and Rick had very little money to fight over, and no property or children. When they were together, it never seemed important; but now, Glory was giving her finances thought for the first time. She knew she’d have little left after she’d paid the few bills she had. As all of her research was on a contract basis, she didn’t have a 401-K account. She didn’t even have a car to sell.

     The old lady looked up from her crochet long enough to throw Glory a disapproving look, then returned to her needlework.

“Well, bite me. Times have changed, Maudie,” Glory informed the woman. Just because the last generation of women had blindly followed each other in a long Conga Line to poverty was no reason for the newer generation of women to automatically fall in at the end of the line.

Of course, she had to admit to herself, she thought she’d done everything right, and here she was—with a degree in an overcrowded field and little else. She didn’t even have a sweatshirt with the name of an Ivy League school printed on it. A passing suitcase on wheels sang again: dump-dump, dump-dump.

3.      The Ladies

Glory didn’t look forward to facing her mother and aunts. Her body felt heavy and she could almost feel her tail between her legs as she inched down the plane’s ramp. However, she quickly put aside her humiliation over losing Rick and joined her fellow passengers in a footrace for the door of the air conditioned terminal when she reached the pavement. The heat that reflected off the cement was so hot she could feel her face burn.  She didn’t understand how it could be hotter than the pavement at the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport when the two weren’t that far apart, but it definitely was. What was it that made her grandparents’ wagon train stop here? What could have been the attraction?

She almost didn’t see her welcoming committee. They were all mixed in with the newly arrived passengers, and were hugging and kissing their way through the crowd as if they were at a family reunion. Was there anyone in Lawton they didn’t know?

     When the women saw Glory, they all lined up like a reception line at the White House, only this reception line looked as if it would be more at home on a beach in Waikiki. Glory’s mother, Grace, grabbed her first. She wore a tasteful khaki skort whose legs hit her right at the top of the knee, with a plain white tank top and sandals. Around her neck and wrist, she wore turquoise jewelry that Glory recognized as pieces that had been handed down in Pete’s family for years. Almost all of it was Comanche-made, with huge hunks of turquoise held snugly by ounces and ounces of pure silver. Pushed above her forehead were sunglasses. Glory could swear they were the same ones her mother had ten years ago. That’s my mom…she wouldn’t lose a Green Stamp, much less a pair of sunglasses.

     “Hi, Mom! You look like an Indian princess. Love the skort.”

     Grace didn’t answer; she just kept patting her daughter’s arm. Glory soon realized she wasn’t talking because she was crying behind the dark lenses. It had been too long between their visits. Although they had always been close, after Pete’s death, the two reacted differently to their loss. Glory had thrown herself into her work, and Grace had surrounded herself with her siblings to cushion her grief and pain.

     Glory’s Aunt Vera was next. Short and chubby, she looked the same as Glory’s earliest memories of her. Strong. Healthy. And tough. When Glory was a kid her aunt was feisty enough to grab a bull by the horns and make it cry “Caramba!” and Glory could see she hadn’t changed a bit, even if silver streaked her hair. Make no mistake about it; Vera is in charge, Glory thought. Her oldest aunt was dressed in a stylish black and white printed muumuu; underneath, she wore a black one-piece swimsuit.  A necklace of the biggest puka shells Glory had ever seen hung around her neck, with earrings to match. Her short wavy hair curled around the shells on her ears and nestled over the earpieces of her Ralph Lauren sunglasses. On her feet, she wore white leather slides with big white flowers flirting over her toes.

     “You’re looking good, Auntie Vera. Nice pukas.”

     “I found them in your mother’s jewelry box. I brought them to her in the fifties, after a trip to Hawaii. They still had the price tag on them.”

     “How much were they back then?”

     “Two dollars. For the set.”

     “You can’t buy pukas that big at any price now. The last ones I bought were five dollars and they were so small they looked like orzo.”

     Just then, Glory’s other aunt, Pauline, spun her around and, after a quick examination of her attire, announced a shopping trip. Soon. Just as thin as she was in her early years, the family fashion expert was anxious to remake her niece into a Mora: that was, tastefully dressed, with a feminine slant.

     “Glory, you look like you’ve been in a war. Have you slept?” she asked as she looked at Glory’s sad face. Her aunt’s eyes scanned down to Glory’s sweatshirt and baggy jeans. “And where on earth did you ever find those clothes?” she asked.

     “I think she stole them out of Paul Bunyan’s closet,” Glory’s Aunt Vera answered.

     “Get out the matches!” Pauline cried.

     “This is what we wear in Washington State. It’s cold up there,” Glory looked down at her attire and saw it from her aunts’ perspectives. “Besides, I left in a hurry,” she mumbled ashamedly. She didn’t bother to explain that a research ship wasn’t anything like a cruise ship, and no one dressed to impress onboard a rusty vessel used for oceanographic studies.

     “We heard about your phone call to your mom; you’ll never catch a new guy dressed like that,” her Aunt Vera moaned, “but don’t worry. We have some new stores here now. We’ll have a good old-fashioned shopping party at the mall.”

     “Only if you feed me first. You wouldn’t believe the pitiful snack they served me on the plane.”

            “Oh, we won’t go now. We’ll wait until the weekend when they all have sales,” Vera said.

     Mickey, a longtime friend of all the women, was at the end of the line. In her seventies, with red, curly hair and big blue eyes, she wore a multi-colored print muumuu over her fuchsia one-piece swimsuit. Around her neck, a glistening eighteen-karat gold chain peeked out underneath a plastic lei. She gushed, “We’ve got a pool! Pauline won it for us at the mall. Did you bring your swimsuit? We won’t be able to skinny dip because we have a mean landlady.”

     “You do? I thought Mom was your landlady.”

     “She is, and she’s mean. One of the tenants complained, so she made me take my life-size Elvis cut-out off my front door.”

     “She didn’t,” Glory pretended shock. “Do you still have it?” Glory whispered, “We’ll put it back up—on her door.”

     Mickey squealed and clapped with delight.

     “What are you girls planning now?” Grace asked. “This better not be about another Billy Bass in the backseat of my Trans Am. I almost ran off the road because that thing started singing the other day when I was on my way to Apache.”

“What were you doing in Apache?” Glory asked.

            “I went to have lunch with some of the girls who used to work for me. There’s a shirt company there now. They’ve got eighty machines!”

      Glory noticed that they were creating a lot of attention. The hall had filled up with people doing nothing less than gawking. “Mom do you realize you’re a celebrity? People can’t take their eyes off of you.”

     “Off of me? Who are we kidding here? Look at this group. We all look like we escaped out of a retirement home for cruise directors.”

     “I think you all look great.”

     “We were in the center court watching the pool fill up and you forgot to call, so we lost track of time.”

            “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry!”

“That’s okay, Hon,” Grace said while she patted Glory’s arm. “When your plane flew over the apartments, everyone was all so excited that they piled into my car and came just as they were.”

            “How did you know it was my plane?”

            “The plane from DFW was the only one scheduled into Lawton this afternoon.”

     Mickey sidled next to Glory and said, “See if you can get her to tell you what she did with the Billy Bass. We’ve searched high and low for it.”

     Grace looked at Glory and raised an eyebrow, “It’s in the trunk of my car underneath the mat. That fish will never see daylight again if I can help it.”

“Look, I have to rent a car. Why don’t you tell the girls to go on home and we’ll drive home together? We can catch up on the news,” Glory said as she headed for the car rental counter.

     Glory waited until she saw Grace hand the car keys to Mickey before she shouted, “Mickey! It’s in the trunk of Mom’s car, under the mat!”

     “Traitor!” Grace said.

            Glory looked over at the group and asked, “Where’s my Aunt Norah?”

            “You just missed her. She flew out to California to visit her grandkids. From there, they’re all going to fly to Florida and take one of those cruises to Australia. They’re stopping at all the exotic islands.  She’ll be gone until fall.”

            “Wow. That’s beyond traveling, that’s exploring!”

            “Yes, no one can hold her down. She’s the youngest of us, and her health is really good, so there’s no reason for her to hang around here.”

     Grace and Glory were at the car rental counter when Grace called the girls back. “Wait, don’t go! We forgot to take a picture. Automatically, the girls moved to the middle of the terminal underneath the skylight. They looked around for Grace but she was gone. By the time Glory got the keys to her rental car, her mother was back with the airport’s black luggage carrier.

     “Lester will take our picture,” Grace said.

     The girls smiled for the camera. Satisfied that they had at least one picture suitable for Grace’s scrapbook, they began mugging as Lester took picture after picture. Before they were done, Grace pulled the luggage carrier into the shot and snagged a total stranger to take a picture of the whole group.

     On their way to their car, Grace whispered to Glory, “When Lester puts your bag in the trunk, tip him double.”

     “Why?” Glory asked.

     “Because he’s just like family. He married Louise when his first wife died. You remember Louise—she used to work at the factory. She did the buttonholes.”

     “I was afraid you were going to tell me he’s a full-blooded Comanche Indian like my Aunt Pauline.”

     “Speaking of your Aunt Pauline, did you know she got an Indian squaw dress, beads, earrings, moccasins, and the whole mess and had her photo taken downtown? It cost her over a hundred and eighty dollars.”

     “Why do you think she does things like that?”

     “She used to kid about being a Comanche when she was young, but now I think she’s starting to believe it. Sometimes, she even pretends she doesn’t understand Spanish anymore.”

     “I can’t wait to see the photo.”

      “Oh, you’ll see it. I think she had an extra one made for you. They also sent one to all of Mickey’s relatives in New York City. Actually, it may have been Mickey that put her up to it.”

     “Lordy. Well, if it makes her happy, what’s the harm?”

     “True. Mickey is giving her fits, though. She thinks the photo is great, but if Pauline really wants to make a change, she thinks she should become a Jew...she says there are more eligible men in a synagogue than in a tepee, and they know their jewelry.”

    “Okay!” Glory didn’t see how she could top that.

Grace began to chat with Lester as they moved towards the rental cars. When they got to their car and Glory tried to tip him, he firmly refused and said he never took tips from family.

“So what else is going on? Oh…want to stop at Cluck’s for some chicken?” Glory asked. “I’m starving.”

    “Might as well. I think everyone is going to the art show tonight, so we’ll eat alone. We’ll go tomorrow to look around—early—while it’s still cool.”

     Grace called Cluck’s with her cell phone to place a takeout order for two fried chicken dinners and two orders of fried okra. They didn’t even have to get out of the car when they got there. Lucille, the assistant manager was waiting at the door. Money and chicken were quickly exchanged.

     “You girls have a nice night, now. Good to see you, Glory. Come by and tell me about the folks in the big city someday.”

     “Oh, Lucille, we have too many Californians now; I’m sick of them. All they do is whine, whine, whine.”

     “I hear that. We’re gettin’ ‘em here too. They move out here because it’s nice and peaceful. Then, first thing, their kids get a gun and hold up a gas station. And they blame us because there’s nothing for their kids to do here!”

     Glory headed for home with the chicken dinners on the floor by Grace’s feet. From the size of the bag, Glory thought there must be something else in there besides chicken.

     “Mom, why is that bag so big?”

     “Oh, chicken’s cheap around here. We probably got four pieces for each of us. And then there’s the fried okra, it’s more than we need, I’m sure.”

     “Speak for yourself. That snack they gave me on the plane wasn’t edible. The airlines aren’t serving peanuts anymore because of some people’s allergy problems. They announced that it was an emergency “pull” and that new snacks were on order. On order! Lordy. My stomach was growling so loud that the jerk next to me might have thought I had a rattlesnake under my sweatshirt, and he wasn’t too fond of me to start with.”

     “Why not?”

     “I think he was General Sheridan. Anyway, he definitely didn’t like Indians.”

     “Speaking of Indians, Riding Wagon is being recalled. He’s the same Indian who started a recall on Pete.”

     “Well! What goes around comes around. What did he do?”

     “They say he mishandled tribal funds. Right after he was elected, his ranch showed a marked improvement.”

“Like what?”

 “Like a new fence, a new barn with a cement floor, a new well, and a herd of pricey angora sheep.”

     “Whoa, all at once?”

     “Yeah, it turned out that he’d bought all of it with money his mother left him after she died, but by the time the mess was all straightened out, everyone was on the warpath, and they were so aggravated that they’d spent so much time being mad over nothing, that they stayed mad.”

     “I’d like to see those angora sheep; I’ll bet they’re cute. Let’s swing by there when we go out to the resort.”

     “Oh, you can’t see them from the road. And, I guess I should warn you, the resort is in bad shape. I never go out there—too many memories.”

 “How is the resort in bad shape?”

     “I don’t know the details, but apparently, it needs some expensive repairs. The government wants handicap access to all buildings and bathrooms, the pool won’t hold water, and the dock isn’t wide enough for a wheelchair.”

     “Yikes! Who’s managing it?”

     “Soap is doing his best to keep it running, it’s still almost full in the summer. I just leave it all to him.”
     “Soap? Who’s that?”

     “I guess you know him as Jeffrey Rides a Cow. You went to Indian School with him.”

     “Jeff? He was a nice kid. Why do you call him Soap?”

     “Because he went to law school and got a degree and started standing on soapboxes at town picnics, preaching about pollution and the evils of corporations dumping toxic stuff onto our land and into our waters. Lately he’s having a fit because the tribe wants to remodel my old factory and put in a casino.”

            “Why do they want to use your building? It’s just an old wooden box; it doesn’t look like a casino.”

            “I think it’s the location they want. It’s right on the lake, and it’s on a main road. That, and I own the land. Almost all of the other suitable spots have multiple owners who would all have to agree to sell. Soap has been helping me fend off the vultures.”

     “Sounds like one smart Indian. I’d sure like to see him again.”

     “You will. He lives two doors down from me.”

     “In your building?”

     “Well, sure. He’s in his mom’s apartment. He also stays in the apartment behind the office at the resort when it has customers.”

     Glory had never seen the apartment building, but she knew where it was. Her mother had built the complex after Pete had been killed and Glory was working on the turtle project in the Northwest. A lot of the land had belonged to her sisters who had been using the houses for rental properties. They pooled their money and had the whole block leveled, and put the apartment building right smack dab in the middle. When they pulled into the parking lot, Glory parked where it said Manager.

    “Glory, go around the corner. It’s awfully far to walk from here.”

     “What do you mean, Mom? I’m right in front of your door.”

     “Oh! I forgot to tell you, I don’t live here anymore. I gave the manager job to your Uncle Ben. He takes care of everything except the girls. The other tenants were driving me crazy, ringing my doorbell at all hours of the night just because they forgot their key.  Some of them never stopped complaining, and the rest didn’t pay their rent on time. I made a deal with Ben, free rent if he’d do the managing. Plus, it’s nice to have him around.”

            “Let’s stop by and see him.”

            “Oh, he’s not there now. He’s on the golf course.”

            “So where do you live now?”

            “I live around the corner close to Pauline.” 

     “Who’s in the apartment next-door to you?”

     “No one yet. I keep it for when one of us has guests. Besides, there are always a couple of apartments vacant on the second floor. The younger renters don’t seem to mind the stairs, and it keeps the noise down.”

Glory could see herself in that apartment. She hadn’t been anxious to leave Oklahoma and her family to go to college, but after she’d graduated, turtles weren’t threatened in her home state, and there was no work for her in her specialty. Her business card that said she was a marine biologist in a state on the Pacific coast was confusing to a lot of people. Actually, most of her work had been in freshwater. Occasionally, a few sea turtles in California got swept up in the currents and ended up on a Washington beach somewhere, but most were just crated up and sent back to California and released into warmer water. A few unfortunate tortoises were harvested by clueless beach scavengers and ended up as ornaments for fireplaces.

Turtles weren’t the reason she’d signed up for the recent research trip with Rick. She had joined the crew on the research vessel with her marine biologist husband as an attempt to get closer to him. They hadn’t been fighting, but he’d grown distant the last few months. When she’d asked him what was wrong, all he’d say was, “It’ll pass. Leave it alone.”

He’d always signed up for every offshore project that had an opening, but this time, she’d had a feeling that “leaving it alone” for six weeks while he went away on a research vessel would be disastrous. Never for a minute had she considered that there was an alternative reason for Rick to join a project that was putting out to sea for weeks.

     She had another reason for wanting to go on the ship with her husband. Although saltwater wasn’t her field, she was curious about what they might find in those deep, coastal waters. No one had really done a thorough study of the area. On the off-chance that they might find a rare sea turtle swimming in the hot, volcanic water, she wanted to be there. The head of the project had agreed that her expertise would be valuable if such an event should occur. They both admitted, however, that her volunteer role would most likely be cataloging bacteria specimens, not turtles.

Glory had been fascinated by turtles since she was a child when she’d had small turtles with flowers painted on their backs for pets. Later, she’d had life-saving encounters with a huge alligator snapping turtle in Lake Elmer. In the summer between Glory’s second and third grades, that turtle was always around to help out whenever Glory was in trouble. The experience had imbedded in her a deep affection for the shelled creature that had influenced the course of her education, and led her towards a degree in marine science.

It made Glory shudder to think about her childhood now. At the time, she was too young and naive to fully understand that her father was trying to kill her so he could collect on the accidental-death policy he’d taken out on her. All of his attempts to murder her at the lake were thwarted by one of the huge turtles. Once, her father had put a bait bucket around her neck and set her up to be attacked by water moccasins. One of the alligator snapping turtles in the lake didn’t see snakes, he just saw lunch, and frightened away any water moccasins he didn’t manage to eat. Another time, when she and her dad were in the middle of the lake, a big turtle had scraped the bottom of the boat with its hard shell when her father was about to tip it over. It had saved her life because her father had become convinced that the turtle was an alligator. An alligator would have solved his problem of getting rid of Glory, but tipping the boat over would have meant that he, too, would have been in the water with it. The idea hadn’t appealed to him.

When Glory was at her father’s home, and the turtle wasn’t around, she wasn’t any safer. Once, her stepmother almost succeeded in killing her by putting poison into a chocolate cake. At the time, Glory wasn’t aware that the incidents were anymore than evidence that her father was short on brains. Other accidents were also suspect, but it took years for Glory to realize that the accidents were actually attempts on her life, carefully planned to look accidental.

 After her first encounter with the huge turtle in the lake, her future stepfather, Powwow Pete—really Pete White Silver—had described the alligator snapping turtles that few people even knew existed to Glory and her cousin, Carlos. Pete was so fond of them he’d named all of the big turtles Watchatookas, after a dear friend of his who was a fancy dancer. He’d explained to the two cousins that he’d given them all the same name since he could never get close enough to tell them apart.

That was the same summer that Glory’s father, Dwayne, had been fishing on a creek when he discovered a nest of turtle eggs in the sand and gleefully destroyed them. Glory guessed that it made the mother turtle mad, and that she must have carried a grudge about those eggs, because she always seemed to have it in for Glory’s father. At least, Glory thought it was the same female Watchatooka who kept coming to her rescue whenever her father took her out to the lake. It was mostly a childhood hunch, because Pete wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get close enough to tell one turtle from another. Sadly, Glory realized that her big turtle most likely had outlived Pete. She was probably out in the lake somewhere, and had long forgotten the summer she came to Glory’s rescue.

     Glory was brought back to the present when Grace and Glory met the girls coming out of their apartments just as they were going in. The women had changed into a joyous mix of capri pants, shorts, loose tops, and sunhats. Following along beside them was a big yellow dog with a purple Western bandana around his neck. “Is that dog going with them?” Glory asked.

            “Oh, no, he’s just walking them to their car. Do you think Vera would let a dog in her new Cadillac?” Grace laughed.

As they passed, Glory looked back and noticed the difference in the women now that they were in their seventies and eighties. From behind, Glory would never have guessed that they were the same women; old age had crept in and stolen their young bodies while they were busy dancing through life. There was a slight slump in their shoulders, and they now stepped gingerly on feet that had run a footrace through life. Luckily, their minds were still sharp—as well as their tongues, if need be. Now, however, all the voices were happily chatting, and her Aunt Pauline’s voice was a melodic song that mixed in with the others and set the chatter to music. Even stars in Hollywood, who made their livings with their voices, would have been envious of the song Pauline’s words sang.

     “We’ll bring you some fry bread,” Mickey called from the sidewalk.

     “Okay!” Glory called back. To her mother, she said, “Has anyone ever told Mickey she’s Jewish?”

     “We tried, but after she moved in next to Pauline she just got worse. I have a heck of a time getting her to follow our powwow rules. She stays until the drums grow cold, even if it’s the wee hours of the morning. Not all of the dances are at Eagle Park, which is already in the middle of nowhere. Some of them are even further out on the reservation.”

     “Why did she come here from New York all alone in the first place? Doesn’t she have family?”

            “She has a daughter and other family members back there. Her move had something to do with her asthma.”

“Well, I’ll try to have a talk with her. She should at least carry water in case she breaks down.”

     “That’s true. We tend to forget we’re getting old because we go for days and only see each other at the apartment.”

     “It has nothing to do with age, Mom. Every car on the road should have extra supplies of water, food, and blankets. And around here, a snake bite kit is a must.”

     “A snake bite kit wouldn’t be a bad idea, but we all have cell phones now. It’s not likely that we would need anything else except the water.”

     “I guess that’s right. Boy, have times changed!”

     In her mother’s spare room, Glory pulled off her heavy sweatshirt and changed into a tee-shirt. She took a pair of scissors off the dresser and hacked off the legs of her pants. One leg turned out a little shorter than the other, but she was too hot to care.

            She opened the door to put her gym bag away and discovered a closet full of cotton skirts and sundresses. “Mom! Whose clothes are these?”

            Grace stuck her head in the door and said, “Yours, if you want them. I was going to mail them to you this summer. I made everything with an elastic band so I wouldn’t have to worry about fit.”

            “Why did my aunts say we needed to go shopping? What could be better than these?”

            “Oh, I hadn’t shown them the clothes yet. There’s been too much going on around here.”

            Glory took out each piece to admire it. “Mom, you outdid yourself.”

            “I bought the jacket. Try it on to see if it fits. That’s the only piece I’m not sure about. 

            Glory slipped it on. Not surprisingly, her mother’s instincts were right on target. It was a perfect fit. Grace breathed a sigh of relief. “I spent hours sewing the beading on the back.” Glory turned the jacket over and discovered a multi-colored beaded turtle with a red rose on its back.

            “Carmen!” Glory said when she saw the turtle. It was just like the turtle she’d had as a child. “Mom, I had three turtles that summer, where are the other two?” she said playfully.

            “Please! I almost went blind on that one!”

            “Well, I don’t need to shop for a wardrobe now. Thanks, Mom.”

            “You’re welcome. A lot of the fabric was leftover from the shirt business. I had fun sewing it. I was going to send it all to you when I had used up all of the material.”

 Glory had another surprise when she walked into the living room and for the first time really understood the layout of the building. It was a perfect square, with a new above- ground pool on the inside courtyard. All of the apartments had a backdoor by the parking strip and a front door that looked onto the courtyard. The girls would come in, lock their backdoor, and leave their front door open. There were iron gates at both ends of the courtyard, but they looked unused.

     “Mom, what a neat layout you’ve got here.”

    “Yes, we all feel safe with this arrangement, and we have each other, so we’re never lonely.”

      “Don’t you have air-conditioning, Mom?” The tee-shirt Glory had just put on was already sticking to her back.

     “Of course. We’ll turn it on if it gets warm, but then I’ll have to shut my front door. We all like to have our doors open because it makes us feel connected.”

    Glory looked over at the little resin Mexican man with a big sombrero that sat on the mantle. The thermometer on his poncho said 101 degrees. She wondered what her mother’s definition of hot was. She looked longingly out at the pool where the old yellow dog was sleeping in its cool shade. “Mom, is that pool filled yet?”

            “I doubt it. All we have is a garden hose. I imagine it’ll take hours, and it doesn’t have any chlorine yet. Soap said he’d bring some from the resort and put it in for us.”

     Remembering the lesson in eighth grade science that said heat rises, Glory stretched out on the living room floor and clutched her iced tea with both hands. Her mother was in the kitchen, so she rolled the glass over her face. While she was down on the floor, gasping for air, she studied the living room. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost think she was in her grandmother’s old apartment. The floors, walls, furniture, and drapes were all the same, and were obviously salvaged from the old place. Her mother had even rescued the art nouveau stainless steel gas fireplace with the grill and trim that matched the ceiling fixtures and light switches. The twenties architectural embellishments that seemed so out of place in a land rush town had always fascinated Glory. Originally, Pete had purchased them from an apartment that was going to be torn down and had installed them in Gregoria’s old apartment. Then, after Gregoria died, they were put in Grace’s apartment when the new apartment building was finished.

Curiously, a brass menorah adorned the center of the fireplace mantle, right next to the little man with the sombrero covering his face. “Hey, Mom, what’s with the menorah?” she said in the direction of the kitchen.

“Oh, Pauline hates that! She’s made me promise to hide it if the priests come over,” she said as she brought their plates and drinks into the living room.

“Like that’ll ever happen. Those priests never leave their rectory unless they’re going to get pizza. When I was a kid, I used to think about writing the pope and telling him how lazy they were.”

“Really?” Grace asked. “Didn’t you know that they visited the white people all the time?”

“No! Really? It never occurred to me!” Glory was astonished.

“Well, you were just a kid, so you probably never knew, but it broke my heart because Momma loved those priests so. After all her years of devoted tithing, they always treated her as if she was invisible. That’s why I kept the menorah; it’s my own little form of rebellion. It makes Pauline squeamish, but I always thought it was pretty, and when Mickey got a new one, she gave it to me.”

“This one looks perfectly good. Why did she need a new one?”

“Her daughter sent her a new, electric one.”

“They have electric menorahs now?”

“Yeah, quite a switch from the early days when they used olive oil and wicks, huh?”

“How do you—?”

“Mickey told me.”

Glory continued her visual tour of the room. The windowsill was still loaded down with the familiar dancing trophies that Ben and his friend Donna had won at the Oklahoma State Fair, only now there were five or six more. When her mother was young, she used to dance with Ben, and they were so good that they cleared the dance floor. For some reason, they’d never competed in contests. On the windowsill in the kitchen, Glory counted her Uncle Ben’s golfing trophies. Over thirteen! Over at her Aunt Vera’s, she assumed that the windowsill was lined with golf and bowling trophies her aunt had won. Their competitive nature was born of years and years of trying to prove they were good enough. 

Good enough to be accepted in a white community.

Good enough to deserve a scholarship.

Good enough to get a house loan.

Good enough to be invited to nice homes.

Good enough to marry someone’s daughter.

This drive had been known to backfire when her family members proved themselves to be better than their peers. For instance, it was impossible for a referee to see the fist that landed in their ribs when the boys were at the bottom of a pile of football players in the middle of the field.   “No one likes a showoff,” her Grandmother said to her boys when they were too eager to excel in sports. With practice, the boys learned to walk a very tricky line between good enough and too good.

     “Mom why did you leave the resort? You always loved it so much out there,” Glory asked when her attention returned to the room.  

     “I didn’t want to leave the resort where Pete and I lived, Glory. But after the factory closed, I was alone out there a lot of the time. Anyway, all of the girls wanted to be together after we retired from making shirts. And, you know, they say there’s safety in numbers. This is getting to be a real dangerous town. We have too many men without jobs.”

            “Are the other apartments this fancy?”

“No, the other apartments in the building are all modern. I offered to pitch a tepee in the courtyard for your Aunt Pauline,” Grace kidded, “but she declined because she was afraid she’d miss her soaps on TV.”

“Guess there’s a downside to being a full-blooded Comanche Indian.”

     “We’d better finish our chicken and rest up. Everyone will come by tomorrow for coffee to say hello. We’ll have to be up early and dressed.”

    “What’s early?”

     “The first shift, your Aunt Vera, will be here for breakfast at seven o’clock. She’s always been an early riser. Dan and Soap will be here some time around eight o’clock. The rest of the girls will float in and out as they please, most likely before and after their soap operas.”

“Boy, our dance card is full!”

“That’s the advantage of living so close together,” Grace said. “What do you want to do tomorrow? We really should go to the art show first, while it’s still cool.”

     “After that, let’s take a ride out to the resort. I’d like to look for a Watchatooka. I’d also like to see my old room that Pete made for me. Is it still there?”

     “As far as I know. Soap has been renting it out, though. You might have to wait a few days to get inside. With the view of the lake and that tree branch furniture Pete made for you, it’s the best room. I see that style of furniture in all of the magazines now. It’s quite popular.”

     “I remember him making it. I thought I was really helping him by holding the nails.” She paused, “I saw the patchwork quilt he bought for me at a garage sale on my bed. I’m glad you didn’t leave it out there.”

     “I’ll never forget when he rushed in the door with that. He was so excited.”

     “I can see why. I always wondered why anyone would give away such a beautiful old quilt. I used to think some old dumb Okie got rid of it when he found out the pattern was called Texas Stars.”

     “Maybe so. I guess there’s no such pattern as Okie Stars,” Grace kidded.

Reluctant to go to sleep, the two sat down on the couch.

            “Glory, how long are you planning to stay?”

            “Why? Do you have more company coming?”

            “No, I was just wondering if this thing between you and Rick is serious, or just a spat.”

            “I don’t know for sure yet, but I think this is about as serious as it can get. I just tried to call him again, but he won’t answer. I guess I’ll call a lawyer tomorrow.”

            All of the stress of the day hit her at once, and Glory’s eyes flooded with tears. She tried to wipe them dry with the palms of her hands, but the tears overflowed her eyes and ran out her nose so fast she ended up smearing the tears and blubber all over her face.

            “It’s probably all my fault—I wanted to start having kids, and he didn’t. Maybe I pushed too hard, but I’m in my thirties—how much longer could we wait?”

            “He didn’t want kids now, or never?”

            “He said he didn’t ever want kids because he didn’t want anything to interfere with his research trips. He said his married friends always had to cancel trips because one of their kids was sick.”

            “Was his work that important?”

            “Mom, I loved Rick, but his research was hardly world-acclaimed. He was just your average scientist who had an ego that was way beyond average.”

            “Well, this is a good place to work out your problems. Between all of us, we’ve probably been through at least four divorces if you count Mickey’s. You can have all the good advice you want for free.”

            “I might need it!”

     On their way down the hall, Glory hugged her mom. “It’s good to be home, Mom.”

     “Stay as long as you want—I happen to know the landlady here—if I start to drive you crazy she can find you a good apartment cheap. Maybe the one next door? I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have in it. Well, to bed!” Grace said, not waiting for an answer. “It’s still early, but Vera will be here at sunrise, even though I told her to let us sleep. Nobody can tell that girl anything.”

Glory opened the door to her room and almost fell over a life-size cutout of Elvis playing a guitar with a plastic lei around his neck. Taped to his chest was a big sign, “Welcome home, Glory!” How did the girls get it in there? It wasn’t in the room when she hung up her clothes. She felt a breeze and saw curtains on the courtside window flapping in the air. That’s how they got in. Had to be. Weren’t they a little old to be climbing through windows four feet off the ground?

“Momma, come look at this!” Glory shouted.

       Grace took one look and threw up her hands. “Don’t forget to check out what your Aunt Pauline left you,” she said, pointing to the photograph of Glory’s aunt in full Indian squaw costume on Glory’s bed table.

On her way out she cautioned, “And look out for the singing bass. It’s probably under your pillow.”