Gloria
GLORIA
by Mike Holt
As she looked out over the frosted gray landscape from her early morning, winter sun-soaked porch, the painfully cold wooden floorboards of her third-floor balcony bit into her feet as she crossed the deck. When she settled at the railing, standing where the sun had struck the wood, that the cedar gradually warmed as the heat escaped her soles. The stiff ache that permeated her ankles, shins, and knees from the frozen, crystal-covered floor, as it waned, was comforting. It was a small reminder that one can endure much more than thought possible.
While her body focused on tolerance, Gloria lost herself. She focused not on the heat escaping her extremities, but on a single snowflake falling gently on an otherwise bare leaf of the lone winter camellia she tended daily alongside the elements. She contemplated the journey this unique piece of frozen water traveled to end up exactly where it did. Its shape, like no other, had become its signature—only to land there in her world, for her to witness, slowly dissipating like bleeding ink from an old quill pen. As quickly as it found a resting place on the leaf, its random structure liquefied and dripped away. Some of it evaporated; never again would it take the same form Gloria saw there that day.
What a journey, an ever-changing life. How many times had that snowflake adapted to its environment by morphing into other forms: solid, liquid, vapor? How many times must we do the same—adapt—in our lifetime to end up where we inevitably always are, for we were always where we are? What a profound, yet childishly simple concept.
Gloria shifted her gaze from the plant to the horizon. Past the expanse of the tundra-like field to her front, dense woods rested on either side of her periphery. In the distance stood a lighthouse on a rocky shore, guiding seafarers away from the shallow waters and a would-be devastating outcropping of rocks. From Gloria’s perspective, she could only see the beacon—none of the sea itself, hidden behind the rolling hills that crossed the landscape.
The lighthouse did not sit on Gloria’s fifteen narrow acres, but the two properties joined, separated closer to the tower by a gateless, rustic wooden fence. Soothing light, as the lantern made its revolutions, welcomingly intruded into her bedroom at night when she purposefully left the window blinds open. She only knew of the man who lived in the tower from overhearing others gossip when she ventured into the quaint local town. The lighthouse didn’t need to be kept any longer, but for some, there was an allure in its history and the solitary nature of the thing. The “keeper” who resided there now kept to himself. How did he end up there? Has he made a Salingeresque escape from the world? Is the lighthouse the keeper’s Cornish, NH?
Gloria embraced the night light of the beacon; she found the darkness with its meditative, repeating glow, a sanctuary for thought. Likewise, perhaps the tower was the keeper’s thoughtful hermitage. Did he stand in the lantern room on icy mornings, and spy across the rolling hills in the opposite direction to Gloria’s balcony, barefoot and pensive?
Gloria had witnessed one exchange the keeper had with a local woman, Ms. Grassley, at Abigail’s Market in town. The keeper had removed his scarf and laid it on the counter before paying for his groceries, but left it behind when he rushed away from what Gloria surmised was a chaotic environment for the man. Ms. Grassley followed to return it, catching him immediately outside the automatic glass doors. He looked off-put, startled. Gloria watched them exchange a few words before the awkward man thankfully accepted the garment from the confused woman.
When another patron, young Miss Margaret, asked what the man had said, Ms. Grassley paused to compose herself, sorting the short conversation in her own mind before she answered. “First he asked me if I liked the scarf, and if I’d like to keep it. When I declined, he offered to show me the lighthouse, if I was inclined to go see it.”
“That’s quite forward and out of the blue, isn’t it?” asked Margaret.
“I’d say so,” June replied. “I’ve never talked with him before. Not a word. Besides, I only returned his scarf. Seemed a bit odd. There is obviously something off about the man. I mean, no one even knows his name.”
“I’m sure the chief does, June,” Margaret replied.
“Well, it’s not normal to hole up in a freezing lighthouse and venture out only for food. He’s a recluse, and I bet he’s dangerous. He’s got to be dangerous, right?”
This was the typical conspiracy theorizing some in town took part in—especially June Grassley, and especially about the keeper. People did know the keeper’s name, in fact. June just liked to tell stories and create drama, a pastime to escape her humdrum, stable life as the recent widow of a wealthy tech mogul. Overhearing their conversation, Gloria rolled her eyes and closed them tightly. She could not understand why people tolerated June’s nonsense. Of course the keeper had a name, and locals other than those two dimwits knew it to be Lawrence Godard.
Lawrence had arrived in Hyacinth Park several years ago, purchasing the light tower from the more socially engaged Dwight Chastain. Dwight was a lovely, generally adored older man who, after thirty years of maintaining the beacon, supposedly moved on to literal and figurative greener pastures. He had moved south, away from the cold, damp winters of the Pacific Northwest that had become increasingly unbearable to him. It was a life change June Grassley was about to make herself—a departure the entire town would notice, bringing a sigh of relief they would all soon release.
Coming back to reality after her meditative escape, Gloria walked two flights down to the first-floor kitchen. Mark would be home soon, and she, the ever-abiding wife, would have dinner ready for her husband. Gloria, reluctantly, had always yielded her status in her marriage. It was a constant battle in her mind, a palpable dissonance. The estate was hers, after all, a fact that set off Mark at times—most times. It was a thought, a demon that had taken up living space in his mind; he felt unworthy but projected a fragile, desperate confidence. To say the marriage was a loving one was to say the world was flat—and it might as well have been for Gloria.
She had tried to separate from Mark before, only to be met with his misplaced anger, followed by empty apologies and pitiful pleading. She had always given in, and now she could not escape. The many years of recurring bruises, broken teeth, and bloody lips had kept her captive inside her luxurious mansion near the sea, able to socialize only once her visible wounds had healed.
Neither Mark nor Gloria grew up wanting. Mark was one in a line of prominent West Coast surgeons, as were his three siblings. Gloria had met all the brothers and found them pleasant—each of them more so than Mark. How he had come to be so arrogant was lost on her. At first, she was attracted to his strong personality; his decisiveness and drive were traits she was accustomed to in her own family. But Mark’s hidden aggressiveness eventually devoured his otherwise admirable qualities.
Gloria’s parents had made a fortune in the energy industry. When her father passed, her mother changed course, using her immense wealth to build a global philanthropic empire. Gloria traveled the world with her, promoting civil rights, universal healthcare, and environmental conservation in the remotest of places. Despite its ethically questionable beginnings in the oil industry, the organization developed a tremendous platform that grew into a behemoth for good causes. Gloria could have inherited it all, but after her mother’s passing, she chose Mark and her sizable payout from the sale of the company assets. She was fully aware of her own submissiveness, but how it came to be—much like Mark's aggressiveness—remained completely lost to her.
Mark arrived home from his practice across the bay in a surprisingly good mood. Gloria suspected he was seeing other women, especially when he did not come home for several days because—as he insisted—the daily commute on the ferry was exhausting. He kept a small apartment close to his clinic, and Gloria did not give a damn about whom he entertained, or who entertained him, while he was there. She had laid out dinner for the two of them: chicken and lentil soup with homemade sourdough bread. She could have hired a chef, but she enjoyed cooking. And, although she had never done it, Gloria liked the sense of control that came with knowing she could easily poison her abusive husband’s food. Indeed, she often thought to herself what a slow and miserable death that would be.
She was not frightened by Mark or his abuse. Perhaps a more fragile woman would have cowered, but the hold Mark had over Gloria was born not of fear, but of pity. Spending so much time helping others around the world with her mother had instilled in her a compulsive need to keep helping—in this case, Mark. Despite his success in the family business, he was always regarded as the family outcast. Where his brothers went into respectable fields of surgical practice like brain, heart, and general surgery, Mark had chosen the cosmetic route, steering toward the money. Gloria did not fault him for that; she, too, had chosen money over purpose. His family’s condescension did not, however, excuse his violent breaks. Though Gloria saw it all clearly, she used his fragility as an excuse for staying with such an awful man—a slippery slope the abused slid down to land on self-blame.
Later that week, Gloria treated herself to a day at the salon. Mark would be away for a few days, and his wrath had not surfaced recently to force her sequestration from the public. There she met—not by design, but coincidence—Miss Margaret. June Grassley had since managed her escape from Hyacinth Park, and Margaret seemed to have taken on the role of braggadocious town meddler. “Hello, Gloria!” Margaret’s greeting was emphatic and gratuitous. The two were not particularly good friends, mere acquaintances, really. But without the ear of her old counterpart, Margaret was eager to drop gossip on anyone familiar. Gloria, to her chagrin, was that day's target.
“Hi, Margaret,” Gloria responded with the most genuine smile she could muster. “How are you?”
“Oh, fine thanks. I’m preparing for a cruise to Hawaii. My hubby is taking me for our anniversary.”
“That’s nice. When do you leave?”
“Well, the cruise isn’t for a month, but I leave next week to meet John in San Francisco. He’s working there now, you know. We’ll sail from there!” Margaret’s overzealous excitement made Gloria cringe as she conjured another smile and nod, sitting down for her hair appointment. Margaret continued, “Yeah, I’m taking the ferry across next week and catching a flight from the city. I could stop by on my way out. Maybe have a drink before I leave.” Gloria’s house sat directly on Margaret’s route to the ferry dock.
“Sure, maybe. If I’m in. Call before, OK? I never really know when Mark will be home.”
“OK,” Margaret replied, sensing Gloria’s obviously dismissive tone. “You know, Gloria, June did go to see that lighthouse. She said she had to see it before she left. She told me that she’d stop in before she caught her ride off the island.”
“Do you know if she did? She wasn’t too keen on going after the whole scarf episode.”
“I haven’t heard a single word from her since she left,” Margaret said, shaking her head. “But I suppose she did. I guess curiosity got the best of her.” Gloria knew June’s curiosity was just her being nosy.
Gloria listened to Margaret drone on about her usual drivel for what seemed an eternity until her hair was finished. The two exchanged goodbyes—Margaret again mentioning stopping in before leaving on her romantic getaway—and Gloria headed back to her empty house, a quiet, peaceful refuge. On her drive home, she thought about the lighthouse keeper. She, too, was curious about the man, but for her, it wasn’t simplistic nosiness. She spent hours every week in a mindful state on her balcony, gazing across her property with the beacon always in view, her thoughts wandering wherever they might go. She had never considered visiting, and certainly not just showing up, but they were neighbors. Had it been too long—several years—for it to be acceptable to knock on his door to ask for a cup of sugar? Could she bring a welcome-to-the-neighborhood pie now? She had always thought not, and that day, she again thought not. So, she drove on, past the driveway that led to the tower, to her home. That night, Gloria kept the bedroom blinds open, and the pacifying light from the lantern house, as she counted each passing glow over her eyelids, soothed her to sleep.
Mark arrived home several days later, mentally off-balance as usual. Gloria suspected a bad row with a mainland fling—maybe he had scheduled two on the same night by accident. She liked to make up these kinds of stories for her own amusement. He claimed he had an argument with a staff member or whatnot, but Gloria rarely listened to his ravings about his excursions. She simply nodded and smiled, as she often did when she cared nothing for what someone—especially her cheating, abusive, fragile husband—had to say.
She didn’t know why she did it that day; she could have said nothing, or raised it on a day when she didn’t feel the tension turning to violence. But she did it anyway. Gloria had, in fact, visited Lawrence—she couldn’t get June’s visit out of her head. And after Mark stopped talking, she confessed to doing so. She knew damn well Mark would flip into a jealous, control-freak rage. She was counting on it. While she was indifferent to his sexual transgressions, her husband was quite the opposite—although Gloria’s marital missteps only stalked his imagination. Maybe she confessed in order to hurry up the inevitable—the violence that always came after Mark had a bad few days across the bay. Maybe she just wanted him to get on with it so she could go to her bedroom, and he to his, and call it a night. Maybe. The evening went as expected.
Gloria woke to her phone ringing. The caller ID showed “M. Nesbitt,” but she was in no shape or mood to entertain the young Miss Margaret—as she still liked to be called, even though she was actually the irritating Mrs. Nesbitt. She let voicemail pick up the call. At the same time, she heard a car door slam. Going to the balcony, she saw Mark speed away toward the lighthouse.
Gloria calmly walked the two stories down to the kitchen, pulled one of the dark-stained wooden stools away from the marble-top island, and poured herself a glass of brandy. She sat there with her eyes closed, sipping and losing herself in thought. Thirty minutes or so passed. Gloria stood up, grabbed her keys from the counter, donned her coat, and made her way on foot toward Lawrence’s home on the shore.
A light snow fell, layering on top of the dirty mush from the day before. She followed the tracks of Mark’s car down the road, spinning jovially with her arms wide and her head back, catching ever-so-unique snowflakes on her tongue. What a journey they must have had before landing randomly where they fell that day. What a journey indeed.
Gloria approached the lighthouse knowing what she would find inside—what she had orchestrated. The front door was ajar. At the threshold, a stone balanced on top of another, the predetermined sign that everything had gone according to plan. She walked in and sat opposite Lawrence, who occupied one of two chairs facing each other only a few meters apart. During her visits over the past couple of weeks, Gloria and Lawrence had come to know each other on a rare level. As Gloria had surmised, Lawrence did spend time in the lantern room peering across to her balcony, wondering what a life other than his might look like. She had learned why he left his past behind; he had lost his wife and children in a violent home invasion some years ago. His whole worldview and mental state had become a morbid abyss of dread and hate. Gloria had shared how she was isolated in her own home, wanting little to do with anyone after years of mental and physical abuse. Like the keeper, her own mindfulness was her beacon of light, her escape. Kindred spirits? Perhaps. Common wishes were shared—to be left to their own thoughts and dreams, vices and glories, wake and rest after lives of torment and turmoil. And then they had found themselves in each other.
Gloria looked to the line of expertly constructed coffins aligned neatly behind Lawrence. They encased the preserved bodies of those who thought nothing of encroaching on his world, depicting a dark chronology she had come to understand during her past visits. Dwight Chastain, the former owner who had supposedly escaped south, began the line. Several others unknown to Gloria led to the last: Mrs. June Grassley, whose exodus had also been fumbled. Why Gloria wasn’t in one of those boxes herself was perplexing. But looking into Lawrence’s eyes, she imagined he saw the same torment looking back at him. Empathy of the damned.
And hoisted by the neck, hanging offset to the right of her line of sight, Mark’s body still swayed slightly. The rope creaked. Without a word between them, Gloria reached into her coat pocket, produced a small pistol, and leveled it at Lawrence. How did I end up here, she thought to herself. How did Lawrence? We are each as unique as a snowflake. We all have our own specific demons, but demons, nonetheless. Did we end up here randomly? We each chose our own path, but do we choose consciously? Could we have made different choices—leaving or enduring violence, choosing life over death? Regardless, in the end, should we not pay for our subliminal choices if we succumb to our demon’s calling?
A half-mile away, Mrs. Margaret Nesbitt stopped, cocked her head, and furrowed her brow. “Jonas, did you hear that?” she asked the young man schlepping her bags aboard the ferry. “Yes, ma’am,” Jonas replied. “Sounds like the geese are in for it early this season. The Chief’s gonna have a fit. Sounded far away, though.” Moments later, a second shot rang out from the same direction. “I guess so, Jonas,” Margaret muttered, turning her back to the shore as the ferry horn blew. “And don’t ever call me ma’am.”
Mike Holt is a contemporary fiction writer specializing in psychological noir, dark literary realism, and allegorical prose. His cohesive body of work explores the themes of systemic captivity, moral compromise, human isolation, and the relentless search for internal peace.
