These Unlucky Stars

by Gillian McDunn

20

  Looking up at Gloria’s house, Ray lets out a low whistle.

  “This place needs a whole lot of work,” he says.

  “It’s not so bad,” I say. But when I look at it through Ray’s eyes, I see the rotting wood trim, the peeling paint, the overgrown flower beds, and I know he’s right.

  Ray reaches out to the dangling shutter—the one I knocked loose that first day I checked on Gloria. The moment he touches it, it falls right off the house with a clatter.

  He steps back. “Yikes. In a strong wind, this house would blow right over.”

  “Hush,” I say firmly under my breath. “She’ll hear you.”

  Otto’s at the screen door, wagging his tail like a maniac.

  “Hi, Otto! Good boy!” I tell him, which makes his tail wag even harder.

  “Come on in, or you’ll be arrested for loitering,” Gloria shouts.

  Ray’s mouth drops open.

  I shake my head and hold the door open, giving Otto ear scratches. “She’s joking, Ray. Come on in.”

  His eyes widen but he follows me. I watch to see how Otto reacts, but he’s in a friendly mood. He even wags his tail. No teeth, no barking. Ray, on the other hand, looks nervous. He holds his arms stiffly by his sides.

  “Whoa,” says Ray. “This is one unusual-looking dog.”

  “Distinct, you mean. He’s one of a kind.” I grin. “You should pet him.”

  Ray shifts uncomfortably. He’s not used to being around dogs, either. But he lowers his hand toward Otto and begins patting him gently. Otto soaks up the attention, letting his tongue loll out of his mouth. Ray smiles and seems to relax a little.

  “See, Otto?” I say. “Now you have a new friend.”

  Ray flashes a smile.

  “Well!” Gloria says with a scowl. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?” She reminds me of a queen, sitting in her armchair like that.

  Ray gulps. He shoots me a look, not so relaxed anymore.

  I shrug. I’m used to Gloria now. “This is my brother. Ray, this is Gloria Crumb.”

  “Hi,” Ray says. I’ve already warned him not to try any of that ma’am business.

  He turns to me, wrinkling his nose. “What’s that smell?”

  Otto sits between us, looking back and forth at us. He doesn’t realize he’s been insulted.

  I frown, leaning over to scratch his ears. “Aw, come on, Ray. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

  Ray shakes his head. “No—something else. Something burning.”

  I sniff deeply, and I can smell it, too. Together we head for the kitchen. The stove has been left on. A pot on top has boiled dry. Ray switches off the heat.

  I slide open a window. “Yuck. It smells terrible.”

  “Told you,” says Ray. He looks closer at the pan. “I think this pan is finished.”

  The outside of the pan is discolored, and the inside has a chalky black residue.

  I head back to the front room. “Gloria, were you making tea?”

  She looks surprised, then confused. It’s like her thoughts are trying to connect back to what she did, but she can’t quite get there.

  “A pan boiled down to nothing,” I say.

  “Oh no,” she says quietly.

  “Ray turned it off,” I tell her. “But I think the pan is ruined.”

  “I don’t care about the pan,” she says. “But promise me you won’t tell Albert.”

  I look at her sideways. “I’m not sure, Gloria. That phone call was one thing, but this seems like it might be different.”

  “I get confused sometimes,” she says. “It’s like my brain is rusty. But it’s only a little bit. It’s because my arm’s broken and I sit here bored all day. It’s like my gears have seized up.”

  When I hear this, my stomach ties itself right in a knot. She thinks her brain is rusty, since she fell—and she fell because of me.

  I fix her blanket, which has fallen on the floor. Then I return to the kitchen.

  “We should call Dad,” Ray says immediately.

  I shake my head. “If Albert finds out about this, Gloria will have to go to a home.”

  Ray frowns. “Leaving the stove on is a big deal. It’s electric, so at least there isn’t a flame. But it still burned that pan—it’s dangerous.”

  “She won’t leave Otto,” I say. “You can’t do that to them.”

  Ray’s lips press together in a line. I can tell he still wants to tell Dad. I have to stop him. If Gloria is sent away from Otto, I won’t be able to bear it. It will be all my fault.

  “Swear you won’t tell anyone,” I say. “Please, Ray.”

  Ray lets out a deep breath. “Annie, this is a really bad idea. She could get hurt.”

  I have to convince him. I can’t let my bad luck rub off on her. It wouldn’t be fair. Not to her. Not to Otto, either.

  “I have an idea,” I say. “We can compromise.”

  He looks at me skeptically.

  I take a deep breath. “I think she’s just confused because of her fall. She mixes up her words sometimes. Says her brain is rusty.”

  Ray shakes his head. “This sounds bad.”

  “If she goes somewhere Otto can’t follow, I don’t know what she’d do,” I tell him.

  Ray pauses. I know my brother. Underneath it all, he has a soft heart.

  “What’s the compromise?” he asks.

  “If she isn’t doing better by the time summer ends, I’ll let Albert know,” I say. “Okay?”

  He frowns. “I don’t know, Annie. What if she gets hurt?”

  “Leaving Otto behind will hurt her the most,” I say. “She’s too old for a broken heart.”

  Ray is still for a long time. I know Ray thinks I’m being obstinate, but there’s no way I can let this happen to Gloria and Otto.

  “I think I can move the stove out enough to unplug it,” he says finally. “You have to tell her, though.”

  I wait, holding my breath. He hasn’t said anything about telling Dad.

  Ray chews his lip. “If one other thing happens, even if it’s small …”

  I’m already nodding. “Even if it’s itty-bitty. Even if it’s teensy—”

  He interrupts me. “You have to promise that you’ll tell Albert. And Dad.”

  I breathe a sigh of relief. “You won’t regret it—”

  Ray narrows his eyes. “Not so fast, Annie. You have to promise or the deal is off. Promise. Swear it.”

  “Deal,” I say breathlessly. “I promise. I swear.”

  Finally, he nods. Just once.

  Something fierce comes over me. I grab Ray in a hug and squeeze him as tight as I can. “Thank you, Ray!”

  He squirms away. “Okay, okay. That’s enough of that.”

  His nose is wrinkled, but I see the corners of his mouth quirk up.

  Ray heads outside with his toolbox and sets to work. I sit on the floor in the living room, sorting through boxes. I gaze at the room, feeling proud. Things are starting to look good in here, thanks to the fact that I’ve cleared out so many boxes.

  Gloria says she understands about the stove being turned off. She even seems a little relieved. Together we watch her favorite game show, Wheel of Fortune. Gloria calls out the answers when she knows them. She gets a lot of them right, too.

  The boxes are never labeled, so I never know what I’m going to see when I open the flaps. Sometimes it’s old Christmas ornaments wrapped in tissue paper. Another time it’s office supplies—enough paper clips to last a lifetime.

  I pull off the tape and peek at the next box, and right on top, there’s a feather boa—it’s purple. I pull it out of the box. Underneath are a silver crown and a pair of rainbow-striped knee socks.

  I hold them up. “What’s all this stuff?”

  A slow smile spreads over Gloria’s face. “That’s from my roller-disco days.”

  I wrinkle my forehead. I understand the words but not the meaning. “Roller disco?”

  She reaches out with her good arm. “Let me see.�
��

  I carry the items to her, shedding a trail of feathers behind me. Otto sniffs at one suspiciously.

  “When I came back to take care of Mother, I used to go out to that roller rink on the edge of town. It was called …” Gloria closes her eyes in concentration. She opens them again, shaking her head. “Well, I’ll remember it later. They were open every day. Tuesdays we could skate half-price. But Friday and Saturday nights were roller disco.”

  “What is that?”

  Gloria’s face softens, remembering. “There was music and lights. And we’d dance until it shut down. One night they named me queen—Queen of the Roller Disco.”

  She has a faraway look in her eye as she turns over the crown in her hand. “Thingamajig,” she says in almost a whisper.

  She’s forgotten the word. “Crown. Or maybe tiara.”

  She glares at me. “I’m talking about the name of the rink! It was called Thingamajig.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “The music was the best. So much fun. With a beat you could groove to.” She starts humming and singing something that sounds like “boogie oogie oogie.”

  I pinch my arm so I don’t laugh. Gloria Crumb grooving on roller skates. The world is full of surprises.

  I turn back to the box, flipping through old photos. They’re all at the roller-skating rink. The photographs are faded, but the smiles are bright. Gloria with a group of friends, looking at something off camera. Then another, wearing a sparkly jumpsuit. Then there’s one of her by herself, in the center of a circle, everyone watching. She has white skates with pink wheels and pom-poms on the laces. Gloria is leaping into the air, a blur—but even so, I can see that she’s smiling wider than I’ve ever seen her do in person.

  “You were really good!” I try to keep the surprise out of my voice, but I can’t hide it. These pictures show a Gloria Crumb I never could have imagined. I know the Gloria Crumb who’s crabby all the time—who leaves a pot on the stove and almost burns down her house. But these pictures show Gloria Crumb, always laughing. Gloria Crumb, the roller-disco queen.

  I hold up the photos. “Do you want to see these?”

  But Gloria shakes her head. “Better to forget. What good will those memories do me now?”

  “But, Gloria,” I say. “You look so happy.”

  She scowls. “I don’t want to talk about it. You’ve tired me out, girl. I need to take a rest.”

  She hobbles down the hall to her bedroom door and shuts it firmly.

  I look at Otto and shrug. I can still hear Ray whistling outside.

  Otto comes over and lies next to me, tail thumping in slow motion. His eyes droop, and he seems like he needs a rest, too.

  I rub behind his ears, where the fur grows thick and soft. The open screen door lets in the smell of pine trees and the growl of a distant lawn mower. Ray is on the front porch, nailing and hammering—and, of course, whistling while he works. Each time Ray hits a high note, Otto’s ears twitch and he opens his eyes again.

  “He’s not so bad,” I whisper. “Once you get to know him.”

  I know he doesn’t understand my words, but he relaxes anyway—as if he was waiting for me to say them. He lets out a deep sigh and falls asleep.

  CHAPTER

  21

  When we finish at Gloria’s, Ray says he’s going to Tyler’s house, which obviously I have no interest in.

  I already know Faith is in Newford visiting her mom today. No one’s at the park. I wander over the lake bridge and end up at Logan & Son. At least I can get some popcorn from the machine.

  The store is empty, which is a bad sign. Sundays can be busy, even though we’re open for only a few hours. But at least Dad brightens when he sees me.

  Then I see why and my heart sinks.

  “Cleaning day,” he says cheerfully.

  I groan. A store cleaning day is way more involved than mopping and dusting. For a cleaning day, we attack the store one section at a time. First, we take each item off the shelves and clean it. Then we scrub the shelves. Finally, we put everything back. It’s incredibly boring. I’d rather hold a hundred ladders.

  “Come on, Annie,” Dad says. “It’s not so bad. I’ll pay you in popcorn.”

  “Our popcorn is free,” I grumble.

  Instead of answering, he hands me spray cleaner and a rag. I sigh and start scrubbing shelves.

  The truth is, once I get started, it isn’t so bad. In a hardware store, the shelves do get dusty. There’s something satisfying about seeing everything become organized and sparkling clean.

  Dad seems to be in a good mood. Like Ray, he whistles while he works.

  “How was your time at Gloria’s?” he asks.

  I shrug. “I thought it was okay. Maybe even good. We were looking at old pictures. Then she got upset all of a sudden.”

  Dad glances at me. “Dredging up those old memories might be hard on her.”

  Figures that he would think that. He’s the one who’ll never talk about Ma.

  “I don’t know about that,” I say. “I think it’s good to remember things.”

  “I’m glad you’re helping her,” Dad says quietly.

  I pick at some gunk with my fingernail. All day I’ve been thinking of the roller-skating version of Gloria.

  “She was a roller-disco queen,” I say. “Did you know that?”

  Dad shakes his head, smiling. “I had no idea.”

  “She’s had this whole big life,” I say. “You’d never know it now, the way she sits in her chair in her house all day long. She doesn’t seem like someone who was a roller-disco queen, a babysitter, a grumpy old lady, a flight attendant.”

  Dad puts clean boxes back on the shelf.

  “She took care of all her brothers and sisters,” I continue. “She rode a mule at the Grand Canyon. She’s been a hundred versions of herself. Which one is the real Gloria?”

  “Maybe she’s all those things together,” says Dad absentmindedly. Then he looks at what I’m doing. “Don’t spray so much cleaner.”

  I ignore him. Spraying the cleaner is the best part of a cleaning day.

  “So, Dad—do we have a box like that with pictures of Ma?” I blurt it out. Someday I’ll learn to ease into these kinds of questions.

  Dad stiffens. “She didn’t like pictures—you’ve seen all we have. Why do you ask?”

  “I guess I was thinking it might give us a clue about where she went,” I say. “If we knew there was a specific adventure she wanted to have.”

  And this is what I think but don’t say: If I knew more about her, maybe we could find her. Maybe we could know when she’s coming back.

  “She wanted a different life,” Dad says. “One I couldn’t give her.”

  “But why—”

  Dad shakes his head. “Sometimes questions don’t have answers.”

  He sets down his cloth and moves on to the next section. He’s only a few feet from me but it feels like he’s a mile away.

  To him, the subject is closed. To me, it feels unfinished. But I don’t know how to say the question written in my heart.

  Was I the reason she left?

  CHAPTER

  22

  Otto is slowly becoming a different dog.

  Not literally. He still has the same crooked teeth, the same strange look about him. But he’s calmer. He doesn’t bark as much. And the more I spend time with him in the backyard, the happier he seems.

  We haven’t quite conquered the front yard yet. Earlier this week, I put a leash on him. I figured that was the first step to eventually taking a walk outside. But he did not appreciate it. He plopped down in the doorway and eyed me suspiciously.

  “Otto,” I told him. “Have a little faith in me, would you?”

  He didn’t budge, of course. But since then, I’ve been putting the leash on him each day to try to help him get used to it. He’s wearing it now, inside, even though he’s pouting about it.

  After I say hello to Gloria, I go to the kitchen to make her a ne
w batch of tea. Now that her stove is switched off, I use the microwave to heat the water. I do it just like she tells me and am careful not to squeeze the tea bags. I pour her a glass over ice and take it to her in the living room.

  She sips it, shuddering. “Too sweet. If my teeth haven’t fallen out by the end of summer, it will be a miracle.”

  I shake my head. But she drinks it anyway, taking small bites from the cookies I put on a plate for her.

  She pats her mouth with a napkin. “These cookies are decent. Did you make them?”

  “They’re from Lulu’s,” I say. I was surprised this morning when I saw Dad carrying the pink box. He said something about helping Faith’s aunt Louise with a project—I guess he decided to overlook his usual policy on healthy eating.

  Gloria takes a bite of a citrus crisp, then another. For someone so picky about sugar in tea, she doesn’t seem to mind these sugary cookies. Typical Gloria.

  Otto stands up and walks over to her, trying to sniff the food.

  Gloria nibbles her cookie. “These aren’t for you.”

  Otto pushes his nose against her.

  “Sakes alive!” Gloria says, shooing him away. “You’ve had him on this leash long enough; maybe you should try taking him out.”

  I pick up the end of the leash and pull Otto away. It takes some effort, but eventually we reach the doorway. I step onto the porch, but he won’t come outside. He’s frozen with either fear or stubbornness—I can’t tell which.

  “Come on, Otto!” I say.

  He plants his rear on the threshold.

  “Otto,” I say in my most encouraging voice. “Let’s go!”

  It doesn’t do any good. The more I talk to him, the more he seems glued to the floor. Eventually he lies down, stretching his paws and yawning in a way that lets me know he is thoroughly unimpressed.

  I sigh. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the best he can do.

  I sit on the porch next to him, still holding the leash even though I know he’s not going anywhere.

  “I want to give you a more interesting life, Otto. Remember that squirrel in the backyard? There are lots of interesting things to look at if we go for a walk. We could go to the park. Or if that’s too far, we could go to the corner. See the sweet gum tree? In the fall, they drop sticker balls that hurt your feet like anything if you step on them barefoot. But we know how to watch where we step, right, Otto?”