Maureen at the Mall

by R.K. West

Maureen was not surprised to see her late aunt Maude standing in line at Sbarro in the mall food court, because lately she had seen several of her deceased relatives at the mall, although usually they were somewhere ahead of her in the crowd, moving just a bit too fast for her to catch up, panting and wheezing with the effort, and she lost sight of them—except for her second grade teacher, Mrs. Wallis, who wasn’t related, but for whom she had always had a great deal of affection, who was standing outside the pet shop, gazing thoughtfully at some romping beagle puppies, but who turned out, upon closer inspection, to be someone completely different, which made Maureen question all those other sightings—but only for a moment, because it was obvious that they were exactly who they were, just like Maude, who turned around when Maureen touched her shoulder and smiled with a stranger’s face as Maureen, her heart pounding, stammered an apology before dashing back to the promenade so she could keep scanning the crowd, expecting but not expecting to finally see the one person whose presence would explain everything, or so she thought, and at that very moment she saw the familiar pink jacket and grabbed the arm of the woman who looked right at her with her own face, laughed, and said, “Hello, Maureen,” to which Maureen, pulse throbbing in her ears, could only choke a reply: “Maureen.”

R.K. West is a former ESL teacher and travel blogger now living in Washington state, next to the Columbia River, whose stories and poems have appeared at Bright Flash Literary Review, Right Hand Pointing, Sudden Flash, and elsewhere. Website: http://rkwest.com/.