My mother and my son had both said some things about John Davidson, unpleasant and untrue, and they had started to spread as rumors. One of them, the one my son said, had actually been printed as a headline in a newspaper. John was in our town one day and so we told them they had to talk with him and tell him what they said, that they were responsible for it and to apologize to him. My mother did it. My son also did it. He said he wanted me to be with him when he did. Shortly after, I saw him sitting down at a table with John so I went over to join them. When I got there all of the seats were taken by many of Matthew's friends and John. I asked Matthew if he still wanted me there. He said, well, since I didn't ask you to be here in the first place. He started laughing and looking at his friends. I slapped his check, not too hard but hard enough to sting. I told him that's what he gets for lying and I walked away. I was walking through the town looking at the houses as I walked. I came upon several houses that had black wrought iron shelves on the back outside walls. They were on rollers, kind of like the roller ladders you see by high library shelves. I was commenting on how much I liked those. I was thinking about buying one of those houses. I heard that John was interested in this particular house. I remember thinking that perhaps John and I would get together then. Somebody standing near me asked me if I had seen the fifth floor of the house. I remember looking up at it for the first time and counting the floors. I only saw four so I thought it must have a basement. They took me inside to show me the fifth floor. When I went inside to see the fifth floor, I was suddenly a teenage girl accompanied by my mother and a girl friend. As we went through the house I noticed how old it was, and that it needed a lot of remodeling but I thought how fun that would be. I also noticed the floors were all hardwood and in very bad shape. I thought about the stripping and refinishing that would be needed. When we came to the fifth floor, there were two rooms. The first room was a nicely decorated dining room. It seemed as though there might be a kitchen off the dining room, but I did not see it. The table was set for a meal and in fact there were two people sitting getting ready to eat and they had food on their plates. A third person emerged through a door with more food, perhaps a turkey. It seemed as though they were preparing to celebrate a holiday meal and that they were expecting us for dinner. They asked us to join them. The person who emerged with the food was a blonde, pretty woman perhaps in her early 40's. The next thing I know, we are still in the house. I see the housekeeper, a black, heavyset woman, looking very sad as though she will not be needed here any longer. The next thing I see she is putting two children to bed. She is lying in bed with them to tell them a bedtime story. The one child is very small, perhaps one year old or less. The other appears to perhaps be near the age of three. At this moment, I get the sense that I am the older child, though I am watching this happen and I am still in the same house. We then go to see the other room of the fifth floor of this house. There is nothing in the room except a ladder that leads to a very dark area, maybe another room or attic? My girlfriend and I are alone so we decide to climb the ladder and see what is up there. I don't know how we manage but we seem to both be near the top of the ladder looking into this area. It is indeed an attic. It has a lot of stuff in there that we think looks so cool! There is something almost right in front of us that is covered by a cloth. We remove the cloth and are startled to find it is a very small gorilla, about the size of a monkey. The gorilla only moves slightly, looks directly at us, but makes no sound. We cover it again quickly. We debate whether we should go into the attic and look around. We think we shouldn't but we go anyway. We are too curious and really want to look at some of this cool stuff up here. We are now walking through several rooms of the house talking about what it would cost to redecorate and how we can come up with a budget. I am wondering how I would go about this. I want to have a decorator come in. I am still with my girlfriend. We are making a list of what we would need to do in each room. Wallpaper, curtains, wall plate covers, paint, throw pillows, and bedspreads. We go into another room and do the same thing. One room had a bed in it that had a bedspread on it. There may have actually been two beds. I also saw some baskets and throw pillows that I liked but I thought they were the wrong color. They are what prompted me to add throw pillows to the list for redecorating. The baskets were somewhat attached to the throw pillows and I saw some type of rings or large hoops, also attached. We are back in the attic now, looking at things from two perspectives. One was just the curiosity of seeing what was there and the other perspective was to see if there were things that we could use in the house when we redecorate. I found this straw purse. I'm not sure it was a purse. I commented that it would be really neat to have on a dresser and have scarves flowing out of it. My girlfriend told me to go for it. I can't remember much else of what we found. There were many cats around. I remember thinking of my allergy to cats but it did not bother me enough to make me leave. The last thing we found was a book about three people. I think they were trapeze artists or perhaps circus performers. They were two men and a woman. The woman was in the middle of the picture. We wondered if the woman in the picture was the owner of the house. Just at that time, my mother was at the bottom of the ladder telling us we shouldn't be up there and especially not going through those things. As she was reprimanding us, the owner of the house appeared. She didn't seem particularly upset that we were up there. She seemed somewhat sad, and that she wanted to explain some things to us. I get the feeling that she was going to tell us that she was in fact that woman, that the gorilla was a gift/reminder of that time, and that she just couldn't bear to part with it because of that. I also get some sense that the gorilla was in this attic and covered up because if anyone found out she had it, it would be taken away by the zoo or some such authority. I also some sense of something about her feeding it everyday.