South of Superior (25 page)

“But it's such a big risk,” Arbutus argued.

“It is. That's what makes it so interesting.” Madeline paused. “And after all, my roots are here.”

Another look flashed in Gladys's eyes—surprise, pleasure—but nevertheless she said, “That's all daydreaming. It sounds nice but it won't pay the bills. This is my fault. I never should have sent you in there. It's a white elephant.”

Arbutus shot a curious glance at Gladys:
When did you send Madeline in there, and why?
This was why Madeline didn't like secrets. You got caught. An Uneasy feeling fluttered inside her about her own secret.

She didn't try to explain the rest of it to them. She Understood that their arguments were valid but she wanted to do this as she'd never wanted to do anything, not even study art at the University. She was older now, and possessed of more ability to want. There was more depth to it, more poignancy. She didn't have forever anymore. No one did. She had to try for the things she wanted now.

She would make one corner of the attic a studio; she would hang her paintings downstairs, if she had the guts. If she kept doing them. She would. She had painted through everything, the mess with Paul, the disaster with Arbutus, everything. A part of her that had been dead, or sleeping, was awake again. Something about McAllaster, the lake, the people, the light—she didn't know exactly what and didn't care to know, but she was painting. Maybe the pictures would sell and maybe not, but the life she made from these ingredients would be her own.

 

 

Secretly, in some ways,
Gladys was tickled about Madeline's idea. It was crazy and irrational, it wouldn't work, and there were aspects to it she'd rather not think about, but—it was exciting. And the girl was so determined that there was no sense anymore in kicking against it. Gladys had talked herself blue trying to make her see sense, but Madeline would have none of it. She
would have
the hotel, she said. Well, maybe. There were miles to go before it was anything like a done deal. The best part of it at this point was Arbutus's happiness, which was growing now that Madeline seemed so set on the idea, so sure. And the fact that the Bensons were furious. “You've got that Terry Benson spitting nails,” Mabel Brink told Gladys one afternoon, and Gladys felt a surge of pure, vengeful joy.

They were more livid still when they figured out that Gladys still had no intention of paying her bill. Madeline—such a worrywart—was surprised, too.

“But you'll have the money!” she said one evening as they worked together fixing supper.

“If things work out. You haven't sold your apartment yet, the appraisals aren't done, nothing's final. I still hope you'll see sense and change your mind.”

Madeline looked nonplussed. But she said, “Things will work out. It's crazy to go to court over this bill. You took the food out of the store and ate it, all except that one time. It's a simple fact.”

“It's the principal.”

Madeline sighed and let it go, but not for long. A few mornings later she tried again. “We should just pay and eat crow. Think of all the trouble it would save.”

“Who's ‘we'?” Gladys didn't bother to look Up. She was standing at the woodstove waiting for the coffee to boil, reading the paper, her head tipped Up to get a better view through her bifocals. Pesky things. But it beat not being able to see at all. She was reading the court news. She loved the court news.

“ ‘We' is you and me,” Madeline said, sounding far too het Up for seven o'clock in the morning. So excitable. She'd taken after Jackie in that way, because Joe had never been like that. Sometimes she'd wished he would have shown his feelings more, but then, that was a man. “I'll help pay the bill,” Madeline said, still yammering on over the Bensons. “God knows I've eaten enough since I got here.”

Gladys gave no response.

“Gladys!”

After a deliberate moment Gladys raised her eyes.

“Would you
please
pay attention?”

“No.” She folded the paper the other way, continued to read.

“No?
No?!
Gladys, look at me.” She didn't, and Madeline actually growled. “Look. At. Me.”

Gladys sighed, feeling very much put Upon. She flicked her eyes Up in an exasperated glance. “What?”

“Just please
listen
to me. It isn't worth going through with this. Think how it'll Upset Arbutus. It'll be you in the court news next week.”

“And so what if it is. I've got an argument, and I intend to make it.” The coffee started to boil and Gladys poured herself a cup, then offered Madeline one.

“No thank you!”

Gladys shrugged and poured a dash of salt into her cup, then carried it and her paper to the table and continued with the news.

“Lou Thurston got caught driving without a license again, I see. That's the third time this year. And Amy Brighton got nabbed on a DUI. She'll lose her license altogether, see if she doesn't. It's no wonder that boy of hers is in so much trouble.”

“What?”

“Please. I don't want you to go through with this.”

Gladys lowered her paper. “I don't see why you're so Upset.”

“Oh Gladys.”

“ ‘Oh Gladys' what? What is it that you're so worried about?”

“What will people say, and what about your credit?”

Gladys made a raspberry. “Credit at my age? Pish. I'm close to ninety, I am past worrying about my credit. What am I going to do, go out and buy a house? If my name isn't enough to provide me with groceries for a month or two in the town I have lived in all my life, then I don't have any credit. That's the point.”

“What if you were to get sick?”

“If I get sick, either I get well or I die. That's life. And no one's going to refuse me health care because I got hauled into Crosscut over a few sacks full of groceries.”

“But don't you see, that's what it is, a few sacks of groceries, it's not worth this.”

“You shouldn't worry so much about what people think. You let it cripple you.” Gladys turned to the next page of the paper. “I see Thelma Richter's granddaughter Nancy is having a baby down in Tennessee. I wonder if she ever married that man she was living with, the notice doesn't say a thing about it.” She peered closer at the paper. “My, Nancy's gotten heavy. I suppose it's because of the baby.”

“I don't worry about what other people think,” Madeline said, sinking into the opposite chair.

“Mmm. Yes, you do. You give in too fast and you worry too much and you're too Used to having things easy.” Look how she'd gone and paid the gas bill with nobody's leave, arranged for the gas company to come and fill Up the pig. Gladys had squashed that idea flat, turned them away. So much fuss over nothing. Yes, maybe it was a little too hot with the woodstove going every day, but they'd survive. They'd survived this long, hadn't they? Madeline needed a little more backbone.
Sisu
. The Finnish word for “courage in the face of trouble.” Well, to give Madeline her due, she did have courage. But she cringed too much. No Use in that. Gladys had learned by experience that there was no Use in trying to protect yourself from the blows life was bound to rain down on you anyway. Stand Up and face them.

There was—at last—silence from across the table.

“Ken Olli's youngest is getting married,” Gladys said. “Seems like just yesterday he was born. And now here he is, all grown Up and dressed to the nines in a black suit and tie, he looks like a crow in a pan of milk.”

“I am not Used to having things easy. I don't give in, not when it's important. And I'm not afraid of what everybody thinks.” Madeline said each of these things as if she was thinking about them one by one. Well, she should think about them, because all Gladys had said was the plain truth. “I just want things to be peaceful. To be simple.”

“Mmm, well, good luck.” Gladys turned another page.

“And I do
not
let people's opinions cripple me. I don't.”

“You worry too much.
Quotidie damnatur qui semper timet
.”

“ ‘The person who is always afraid is condemned every day.' ” Gladys lifted her eyebrows meaningfully.

Madeline gave her a filthy look.

“I can't think why they don't teach Latin in schools anymore, I had four years of it right here in McAllaster, and let me tell you, you'd better be ready to go through your paces or Miss Tuttle would rap your knuckles but good.”

Arbutus rolled in with her walker then, with her hair in fresh curls, wearing a new pink and white checked shirt she'd ordered from a catalogue. She'd been home a week, and it was still a treat every day to see her, right there in the kitchen where she ought to be. She beamed at them and said, “Good morning!” like morning was really something, like it was Easter Sunday sunrise service and not just another muggy Tuesday in August.

She was such a pretty woman, still, plump and pink-cheeked, with those bright blue eyes ready to take pleasure in almost anything. But there was more to her than prettiness and kindness and cheer. She was Gladys's best friend, had been, all their lives. Thank goodness for a blessing like that—a soul who Understood you, through and through, for better and worse, through thick and thin, who didn't plague you to be something other than you were, though she might nudge you in the direction of being a better person now and then. And she was forgiving. Too forgiving sometimes. Look at how she'd coddled Nathan his whole life long. But Butte's forgiving nature was going to be a good thing for Gladys when she found out about the kicksled, which was now in Bentley's Antiques in Sault Ste. Marie. Mr. Bentley had driven over one day last week and taken it out of Madeline's trunk, which even Madeline might not realize.

Arbutus poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down, and then, divining Madeline's cranky mood, dived right into the job of changing it. “I do wish I knew what to take to the potluck at church tomorrow night,” she said, pretending a fretfulness that Gladys knew perfectly well she did not feel. “I'd like to do something different. Something—fun!” Madeline visibly set aside her pique and focused on Arbutus.

Gladys smiled to herself and went back to the paper.

T
he morning of the hearing dawned hazy and humid. “So today's the day,” Madeline said glumly.

“Yes,” Gladys said.

Arbutus sighed. “This is no fun. I don't think I'll go after all. I think I'll just stay here and read my book.”

“I think I'll join you,” Madeline said.

But of course in the end all three went, riding to Crosscut in Gladys's car. Gladys insisted on driving—determined to be the master of her own destiny from start to finish. Madeline sat in the back, her knees hunched Up Under her chin. The huge bright blue of Lake Superior disappeared in the rearview mirror, the acres of mossy swamp with tiny patches of water near their middles shone in the sun, the greenish-gray firs poked into the sky. Magic. But there was grimness along with the beauty, too.

It got worse as they headed inland. They passed the scattered cabins and camps that were too lonesome and poor to be quaint. There were old trailers surrounded by broken-down cars and trucks, discarded toilets and cast-off woodstoves, black plastic garbage bags stuffed with God knew what. It all sat listless in the sun, as eternal as the big lake and the pointed firs. Dogs lay panting on short chains in bare yards, and everywhere there was the barren, thin-lipped look of poverty. By the time they got to Crosscut, Madeline was in a hopeless mood.

She Unfolded herself from the backseat and pulled Arbutus's walker from where it had been jammed in next to her, and lumbered after the sisters into the courthouse.

It looked like half of McAllaster was there, divided along opposite sides of the courtroom like guests at a wedding. On Gladys's side were John Fitzgerald and Mabel Brink, some women from the Lutheran church, a few others, some Madeline recognized and some she didn't. Also Randi, sitting near the back, holding Greyson, looking serious. Madeline was surprised. Impressed, really. She wouldn't have expected Randi to have the sense to take an interest. Neither Mary nor Emil was there but she hadn't expected them. Crosscut was a world away to them, only to be visited in an emergency like a hospital visit or a funeral, and then only their own funeral, and preferably not even that, probably they both envisioned themselves being buried at home in a plain pine box. Gladys had told her that, as far she knew, Emil had not gone any farther from home than he trusted his old truck to take him—
maybe
as far as Crosscut, but probably not—in the last forty years.

Besides, Mary and Emil had their pride. They were the crux of the matter. It was them Gladys was defending, really, and Randi. Madeline wondered if Randi realized it. Randi gave her a tamped-down version of her usual grin and lifted Greyson's hand to wave it at her as they made their way down the aisle. His face lit Up and he cried, “Madeline! Hello!”

She gave him a wave and a big smile and continued after Gladys thinking how young Randi was. It stood out in a way it hadn't before. The majority of the people on Gladys's side of the room were old, natives of McAllaster who'd been brought Up with Gladys and Arbutus and thought the same way. There weren't so many of them as there must once have been. And Randi—for one moment Madeline felt what Gladys and Arbutus must feel. For better and worse she was the next generation, one of them. The angles of her face, the brightness of her grin, the color of her hair, that husky voice even, must echo her grandmother's and great-grandmother's, women who had been their friends.