South of Superior (11 page)

A bell had jingled when she opened the door and after a moment Paul came out from the kitchen. He wore chinos, a white T-shirt and half apron, silver-rimmed spectacles. She didn't remember those from before.

“Madeline Stone,” he said, sounding really pleased. “Hello. What brings you in? Hungry? Thirsty?”

Madeline felt flustered. She only wanted to ask about the job now that she knew there was one. It was true that Arbutus needed her, especially at the crucial moments, but she didn't want to be watched like a hawk from sunup to sundown and even her sweet nature was showing signs of strain. For her own part, Madeline was getting more than a little restless, and more and more worried about money. She was already dipping into her savings to pay the few bills she had, and that made her nervous. “I wondered about your sign,” she said, hearing how abrupt it sounded after the words were out.

“Ah.” Paul ran his hand through his hair. “Aren't you working for Gladys and Arbutus?”

“Well—yes. But it's not exactly filling all my hours.”

“Ah,” he said again, and Madeline started to regret having said anything.

“If you've already hired someone—” she began, but he stopped her.

“You took me by surprise, is all. usually the Russian girls who come for the summer to clean rooms at the big motel come looking, but I put the sign Up early this year, so you're the first.”

“You get Russians Up here to work?”

“Oh, sure. It's an adventure, and good money—to them. But it's not much, I have to tell you. And it's a lot of work.”

“I know that.”

He squinted at her. “It'd be part-time, at least to start—I hire a few part-timers—and only Until fall.”

“That'd be perfect.”

“I need someone who can do whatever. Wait tables, chop vegetables, grate cheese, sweep the floors, wash dishes. It's no sinecure.”

“I was a waitress in Chicago,” Madeline said, annoyed. He seemed to have sized her Up somehow and found her lacking, or Unlikely. “This is the only kind of work I've ever really done. I know what it's like, trust me.”

“Sorry. I just would hate to get you in here Under false pretenses. If you're really interested, I'll show you around.”

Half an hour later she was employed, four days a week from noon to five. It wasn't the busiest shift, he said, but she thought it was the best time of the day to be away from the house. She was almost back there when it occurred to her that probably she should have asked Gladys and Arbutus how they felt about this before she plunged in. Her victorious feeling faded a little. But she needed this job. Gladys and Arbutus would Understand. They'd have to.

 

 

“How nice for you,”
Arbutus beamed when Madeline got home—not only empty-handed but also much later than Gladys had expected, how was she supposed to get the
ruskettunut lanttu
ready for dinner when she didn't even have the rutabagas yet?—and told them her news. “You'll meet people, get out of the house.”

“Plenty of ways to get out of the house without taking a job. What about Butte?”

“Oh, pshaw. I'm all right.”

“She's here to work for Us, not go gallivanting around town.”

“I'm fine. You're here, and if something goes wrong she's not far away. Goodness, what a worrier you've turned into.”

Gladys did worry. She couldn't sleep through the night, as often as not. After tossing and turning she'd go sit at the kitchen table at two and three in the morning, holding Madeline's cat on her lap, stroking his fur—this was more comforting than she ever would have dreamed—staring at nothing.

How to solve this fix they were in? For a while now she'd been selling things on eBay with Mabel Brink's help, a fact she'd wanted to keep to herself but which Madeline had found out. She felt a little lift of pride, remembering how astounded Madeline had been when she stopped in at Mabel's one afternoon and caught them scanning photos of an old silver alarm clock into Mabel's computer. Gladys wanted forty dollars for it, if some fool would pay so much for something that hadn't cost five new in 1956. She had twelve of them, all exactly alike. Madeline had been amazed at the two of them, so handy with the digital camera and scanner, but why shouldn't they know how to do these things? They were old but they weren't dead yet. A now familiar feeling of Urgency gripped Gladys, though. She wasn't dead but she was eighty-five. She wouldn't go on forever.

“You might as well help me mail the packages, now that you know,” Gladys had said to Madeline after she found out about eBay. Arbutus wasn't to know a thing about it, period, just as she was not to know anything about the kicksled, which Gladys hadn't yet dealt with. It was still lodged in the trunk of that disreputable car of Madeline's that was now sitting like an abandoned wreck in the drive. Madeline had agreed to keep quiet, but reluctantly. She didn't seem to think Gladys should keep so many secrets. Well, she was young, she didn't know there was a lot in life you'd do just as well to keep to yourself.

The fact was that the eBay money was a drop in the bucket compared to what they needed. It helped, but it wasn't enough and never would be no matter what she dragged out of storage and sold. Frank's autograph collection had been one of the first things to go. The Hummel figurines he'd given Gladys in their more prosperous years went next. Right now she had Up for auction a 1963 Raleigh bicycle, a six-point antler rack (imagine someone paying good money for that, couldn't go out and get their own), a crate of glass soda bottles from the fifties, and two wool sweaters Mabel Brink had knitted coon's ages ago. Just last night Gladys had Madeline help her wrap Up her sterling silver flatware set in its mahogany box. That had been a wedding gift. “Doesn't it hurt to let it go?” Madeline had asked.

“Bah. Someone else may as well have the Use of it, it doesn't matter.”

This was half true. It did matter, but it also didn't. There was something freeing in letting the old stuff go. It felt a little like a new beginning, although why she should think about such things at her age Gladys really could not imagine.

At any rate, some money came in, but it went out again just as fast. Everyone got something, except for the SuperValu. Gladys refused to budge on that despite the increasing insistence of the Bensons' requests. The reminders came in the mail with the balance due circled in red, and each time there were more exclamation points after the request to
Please Pay!
Gladys tossed every one of these into the garbage.

The only solution was to sell the hotel. No matter what she'd said to Arbutus, no matter how the idea broke her heart, in the end there would be no other way. The kicksled and all the rest of the old things were just the tip of the iceberg.

Albert knocked on the kitchen door just then, a box of produce balanced on his hip, and Gladys was glad of the distraction. With a frown she wasn't even aware of, she snatched the box from his hands and shooed him and Gus into the kitchen for coffee. She noticed as she took the sugar bowl off the side counter that Madeline hadn't taken the bills to the post office like she'd promised. Gladys sighed in vexation. Two of those bills were already close to being late, and now there was no chance they'd go out Until tomorrow. She'd have to remind Madeline in the morning, or else do it herself.

Gladys knew very well that Madeline was not like her mother. Jackie had been careless and selfish and immature from the day she was born, and obviously Madeline didn't fit that bill. But still, every now and then Gladys felt a deep stab of Uncertainty at what she'd done, pleading with Madeline to come help them, bringing her into their home. Why had she done it, why had she not left well enough alone?

We needed the help
, she told herself.
There was no one else.

But that wasn't really the reason. Not the whole reason anyway.

The real reason was that Gladys was getting old. She felt the truth of that when Arbutus got so bad and there was nothing Gladys could do about it. They'd ended Up marooned in Nathan's apartment, helpless to decide their own fate. That was when she really Understood, one day she'd be dead and gone. In the meantime, she had to live with herself.

She couldn't stand to think of leaving things so Unresolved. The burden of guilt and regret sat heavier and heavier on her shoulders. She had failed when Madeline was a child, failed to ever soften Joe's heart, and that was wrong. He'd been wrong and she'd been powerless to change it. That was why she'd asked Madeline to come here. To make things right. Or at least more right. So far she wasn't doing a very good job of it.

M
adeline reported at Garceau's for her first shift a little before noon the next day, and realized as she arrived that she'd forgotten the mail again. She'd grabbed it off the counter on her way out but forgot to drop it at the post office. That was so Unlike her that she actually stopped in her tracks. But it was too late to fix now, the bills would just have to wait.

Paul let her in the front door. “I just got here myself. Give me a minute.”

Madeline nodded, but he was already gone. Her eyes wandered to the chalkboard. The Nietzsche quote had been erased. She studied the setup behind the counter while she waited for him to reappear. There was a juicer, a Bunn, an ice machine, a milk shake maker, an ice cream freezer—a little bit of everything. She was peering into the ice cream case when she heard music come on in the kitchen—something Latin and salsa-y—and then Paul came back out. He went straight to the chalkboard and wrote,
That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger
.
F. Nietzsche.

“Having a rough day?” Madeline asked, meaning to be funny. Paul gave her an inscrutable look and didn't answer. She bit her lip.

He wiped the chalk dust from his hands. “Okay, then. Here we go.”

When he'd shown her the basics—the equipment, the kitchen, the register—and turned the sign to “Open,” he offered her a cup of coffee and sat down in the nearest booth.

“So, you always open at noon?” Madeline asked, sliding in across from him.

“Yeah. I work down at the prison in Crosscut Until eleven, so I can't really get here any earlier.”

“You have this place
and
you work at the prison?” Gladys and Arbutus hadn't told her this, only that he owned the pizzeria.

“I'm off there on weekends, so it works out.”

“But that's, what? Ninety hours a week, at least, between the two?
And
commuting? You must be exhausted.”

Just for a moment she saw in his face that it was true. But he shrugged and said, “It's not bad. I don't open Up here on Mondays, so that's a day off. Half a day. Gives me a chance to do other things. Pay bills, do laundry.”

“That's crazy.”

“It's what I signed Up for.”

Madeline studied him over the rim of her coffee cup, thinking that this attitude was at least in part a front. “You'll kill yourself, nobody can keep that Up.”

Paul gazed at her, his brows slightly lifted.

“Sorry. None of my business.”

He nodded.

“What do you do at the prison?”

“Cook.”

“Do you like it?”

“It's a paycheck.” He seemed to not like how this had sounded and added, “It's all right. Somebody has to do it.”

“Have you been there a long time?”

“Six years.”

“How long have you had this place? You know, I always think of pizza guys being Italian, but Garceau sounds French. I guess here it doesn't matter, right? I mean, not so many Italians to go around, and who doesn't like pizza?”

“Garceau is French. Acadian, actually. I've been here nine years. And pizza was just something I fell into. The guy who was in here before me tried it but gave Up. I thought I'd have better luck.”

“Oh,” Madeline said, nodding and smiling. “And have you?”

“Sure.” Paul took a long swallow of coffee.

Madeline stayed quiet then, which was awkward, but everything she'd said so far had been worse.

After a moment Paul said, “You'll need a T-shirt, they're in the case beside the register. Take whatever color you want, it doesn't matter. What I'm thinking is, you can get here a little before me, get things set Up, open the door. Then when I get here we can start serving.” He glanced at the clock. “Speaking of which, it's time I got going in the kitchen. So, what'd I leave out?”

Madeline shook her head. “I don't know yet. Probably a lot, I'll tell you later.”

“Sounds fair. So I'll just throw you in and we'll either sink or swim. That okay?”

Madeline was about to say that was fine when the doorbells jingled and Randi Hopkins came in. Despite the cool day she was wearing a short, vividly green dress with satiny spaghetti straps. Madeline felt her lips compress in a prissy disapproval that made her roll her eyes at herself—since when did she censure clothing? The dress showed off Randi's shoulders, which were perfect somehow, neither too bony nor too fat.

“Hey, Paul,” Randi said in her husky voice. “You open?”

“Just.” Paul stood Up, smiling and heading toward her. “How's everything? How's Greyson?”

Randi laughed. Shook her braids so the beads and bells clacked and jingled. “He's
good
. He's a doll. Thanks for looking after him Monday, he sure does like you. It's Mr. Garceau this and Mr. Garceau that every other minute. He kills me.”

“Glad he had a good time. Where is he?”