Return Trips Read Free

of that girl with the missing leg has persisted; she knows it was a sign) have combined to produce in Gloria an almost trancelike state. She is so quiet, so passive that she can feel Sharon wondering about her, what is wrong. Gloria does not, for a change, say anything critical of Sharon’s housekeeping, which is as sloppy as usual. She does not tell anyone that she, Gloria, is a cleaning person.
    A hot wind comes up off the water, and Gloria remembers that tomorrow they go to Mount McKinley, and the wild life tour.
    Somewhat to her disappointment, Mrs. Lawson does not get any postcards from Gloria in Alaska, although Gloria had mentioned that she would send one, with a picture.
    What she does get is a strange phone call from Gloria on the day that she was supposed to come back. What is
strange
is that Gloria sounds like some entirely other person, someone younger even than Gloria actually is, younger and perfectly happy. It is Gloria’s voice, all right, but lighter and quicker than it was, a voice without any shadows.
    “I’m back!” Gloria bursts out, “but I just don’t think I want to work today. I was out sort of late—” She laughs, in a bright new way, and then she asks, “She’s not back yet, is she?”
    Meaning Miss Goldstein. “No, not for another week,” Mrs. Lawson tells her. “You had a good trip?”
    “Fabulous! A miracle, really. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
    Hanging up, Mrs. Lawson has an uneasy sense that some impersonator will come to work in Gloria’s place.
    But of course it is Gloria who is already down on her knees, cleaning the kitchen floor, when Mrs. Lawson gets there the following day.
    And almost right away she begins to tell Mrs. Lawson about the wild life tour, from Mount McKinley, seemingly the focal point of her trip.
    “It was really weird,” says Gloria. “It looked like the moon, in that funny light.” She has a lot to say, and she is annoyed that Mrs. Lawson seems to be paying more attention to her newspaper—is barely listening. Also, Lawson seems to haveaged, while Gloria was away, or maybe Gloria just forgot how old she looks, since in a way she doesn’t act very old; she moves around and works a lot harder than Sharon ever does, for one example. But it seems to Gloria today that Mrs. Lawson’s skin is grayer than it was, ashy-looking, and her eyes, which are always strange, have got much paler.
    Nevertheless, wanting more attention (her story has an important point to it) Gloria raises her voice, as she continues, “And every time someone spotted one of those animals he’d yell out, and the man would stop the bus. We saw caribou, and these funny white sheep, high up on the rocks, and a lot of moose, and some foxes. Not any bears. Anyway, every time we stopped I got real scared. We were on the side of a really steep mountain, part of Mount McKinley, I think, and the bus was so wide, like a school bus.” She does not tell Mrs. Lawson that in a weird way she liked being so scared. What she thought was, if I’m killed on this bus I’ll never even get to a doctor. Which was sort of funny, really, now that she can see the humor in it—now that the lump is mysteriously, magically gone!
    However, she has reached the dramatic disclosure toward which this story of her outing has been heading. “Anyway, we got back all right,” she says, “and two days after that, back in Fairbanks, do you know what the headlines were, in the local paper?” She has asked this (of course rhetorical) question in a slow, deepened voice, and now she pauses, her china-blue eyes gazing into Mrs. Lawson’s paler, stranger blue.
    “Well, I don’t know,” Lawson obliges.
    “They said, BUS TOPPLES FROM MOUNTAIN, EIGHT KILLED, 42 INJURED . Can you imagine? Our same bus, the very next day. What do you think that means?” This question too has been rhetorical; voicing it, Gloria smiles in a satisfied, knowing way.
    A very polite woman, Mrs. Lawson smiles gently too. “It