Gloria appeared next to him, her face a reddish blotch, the puffiness of her eyes magnified by her glasses. She crossed her arms over her chest and stood staring as well as she was able at Stephen, her lids so swollen her irises were hardly visible.
My father talked softly to her. Stephen went back inside but she remained guarding the entrance, now staring at my father’s lips, staring in a determined blank way, as if to say that every word coming from his mouth had nothing to do with her. He made simple statements. “You know you can’t hold him here.” “It’s time.” “In a few minutes you’ll go and get the passport.” “Gloria, please, now, get the passport.”
His lulling, gentle demands finally prompted her to disappear into the house, the clock ticking away to the airplane’s departure. Stephen returned to the door, he and my father standing there not saying anything. When she came back she slapped the document into her lover’s hand.
“Thanks,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head and began to cry. “No!” She tried to get the passport out of his clutches even though she’d just given it to him.
My father grabbed Stephen’s arm and pulled him onto the porch. “It’s time,” he said again.
“No!” This was a crooked noise, jagged, not at all a Gloria kind of sound. She pitched herself at Stephen, as if by sticking hard she might be able to go along with him to Washington. Even though she didn’t look or sound or behave like herself, so that it seemed private, these various aspects of her, we set the cats down and gawked.
My father yanked Stephen toward the car. Gloria jerked him by the other arm toward the house. Stephen had a felt hat with a ribbon around it, the kind of hat fathers wore to work in the 1950s, which made him especially look like someone who should not be at the center of a tug-of-war. In one brilliant motion my father both let go of his cousin and plucked Gloria from Stephen’s coat. He held her, her back to his chest while she screamed and kicked and flapped her arms, trying to scratch. “Go,” my father cried to Stephen over her commotion, “get in the car right now.”
Stephen stumbled down the slope of the yard holding his hat to his head with one hand, and in the other the long green sausagey duffel. He threw it in the back of the van, dove in after it, and locked the doors. To us my father said, “Find Mama.”
The library wasn’t far off. This errand was more important than being the instruments of the pumpkin visitors. We had rarely been so excited and certainly never felt so essential as we ran, as we steamed into the library to the circulation desk. When she saw us she instantly intuited the general circumstances. She called to Hildegard Bushberger to keep an eye on the place, and somehow, in her clogs, she galloped across the baseball diamond, through the stand of cedars, and up the incline to the cottage. She took Gloria from my father’s arms—Gloria was beginning to get tired out, bent over and sobbing—and led her into the house while my father hurried to the car to drive Stephen away. In the heat of the moment we had all forgotten that we were supposed to go to the Plumlys’ house.
My parents had also forgotten their anger about the dinner party and the broken plate, so that was good. We thought every time the librarians visited and my mother tried to behave in a sophisticated way, like an intellectual, maybe Gloria could have an emergency that would force them to work together. We sat on the porch and petted the cats, not looking at each other, for a while not speaking while we listened to Gloria wailing inside. She must have realized the truth about Stephen, that he’d once been a Lombard child, and that’s why he needed to stay. She’d only been trying to get him to live where he was meant to live, everyone, except my mother, who liked to complicate matters, on the same side. We had to cover our ears, Gloria’s sorrow pooling out, as if she thought her distress would reach Stephen even as he drove farther and farther away.
When she quieted somewhat we remembered how she had found us in the woods when we were lost, and so it seemed only fair that we perform a feat to help her. I reminded William that when we’d been curled up in the tree’s roots he had told stories to comfort me.
“I didn’t tell you stories,” he said.
“You did too. You told me about the girl who lived near the end of the world. Our own house picked up its skirts and came to find me.”