South of Superior (29 page)

“That sounds harsh.”

“Maybe.” Mary gave herself a shake, tossing away the mood. “Don't listen to me. Probably it's not that way for most folks now, retired folks with pensions and such. They're rich, even if they don't know it. They got money. Choices.”

“I'm not rich,” Madeline said, morosely.

“Not even once that apartment sells? People are saying it'll bring a lot.” Mary eyed Madeline with frank curiosity.

“Oh, it'll bring some money. But there's a mortgage. Once that's paid, and the hotel's bought—
if
Gladys will still sell it to me, which she says she won't now, but we did have a contract, wouldn't that be awful, if we ended Up in court over it? And
if
I still want it, which I'm not sure I do—and the roof and the wiring and everything else is fixed, there won't be anything left over. There won't really be enough. She told me in the beginning that it needs a lot of work, and it does.”

“So you accept that, or you don't do it.”

“But I don't
know
what to do. Everything is all screwed Up.”

“Oh, pshaw. Everything is always all screwed Up. You want me to tell you stories about what other people have done? I wouldn't worry about it.”

“Right.”

After a bit Mary said, “You've got the guts for it. Runs in your family.”

Madeline ran a hand through her hair—it
had
gotten a little shaggy, but it didn't look bad to Mary. “Does it?”

“Sure it does. Ada, she was a character. A survivor. And Joe, too. He was a hard man, some ways, but he wasn't a bad one.”

“Gladys said that.”

“Because it's true. And Walter—well, he's got his own kind of courage.”

Madeline smiled. “He does.”

“Even your mother had nerve. You think it was easy to leave here and go to Chicago? She wasn't a good mother, I know. She made a whole lot of bad choices, I guess. But even then you have to admit, she had spirit.”

“Well, that's one way to look at it.” Madeline snapped the ends off a few beans. “I guess she never set fire to anything, huh?”

“It was just a fire. Not even a big one. It's not the end of the world. Look at me—I burned my own house all the way down and I survived.” She gave Madeline a grin and eventually Madeline looked less glum and broody.

“You can always come stay with me if you need to,” Mary said as Madeline was leaving. “I got that old camper, you're welcome to it. I spent a winter in it, it wasn't so bad. Heats Up real nice.” The camper wasn't much, but Madeline gave her a quick hard hug and said thank you like it was the Taj Mahal and Mary waved her away feeling unaccountably good.

 

 

Madeline drove back
to Arbutus's house on Mill Street and pulled the Buick in the drive, hoping it would start again the next time she needed it. That was always a question now. The car was a dying beast with a terrible wasting disease, but she kept putting that truth out of her mind because without it she wouldn't even be able to go and see Walter, say nothing about ever getting back to Chicago.

She went in and put a pot of coffee on, then mixed Up a batch of brownies. In the last two weeks she'd kept the lawn mowed and weeded the flower beds, cleaned every scant square foot of the place with a toothbrush, shined the windows, replaced the gaskets on the leaky faucets, washed the rugs, cleaned the linens and hung them out to dry, reorganized the closets and cupboards, painted the bathroom and kitchen, polished the pine paneling in the living room and bedroom, moved the furniture into an arrangement that gave the illusion of more space, and kept the little jugs of flowers she'd placed here and there changed and fresh. Now there was nothing left to do but wait.

For what she wasn't completely sure. She was here only because Arbutus had pleaded with her to be. For obvious reasons, that hadn't been her plan. She'd done enough damage. But Arbutus wore her down. It was impossible to refuse her anything after what had happened.

First Arbutus talked her out of leaving McAllaster the morning of the fire, and then talked her into staying at her house. She said she wanted Madeline there when people went through. She thought the house would sell faster if someone was living in it, making it smell good and look inviting (hence the brownies and flowers), and she couldn't stand the thought of being the one to let people in herself, nor to have them poke through her things with the realtor, who was a stranger from Crosscut. She wanted Madeline there. Would Madeline do that for her?

Madeline took the brownies out of the oven and glanced at the clock—half an hour yet before a guy was due to come look at the place. It would be a waste of time because so far, of the dozen or so people who'd trooped through, no one had any real interest. Most of them were just sightseeing, and the few that weren't, lost whatever interest they'd come with pretty fast.

The house was tiny and unassuming. It was quaint, but on all practical levels it was a mess. The plumbing and septic and wiring were old, as were the fixtures and counters and cupboards—nothing had been Updated since the house was built back in the forties. Plus it had a foundation of cedar posts that were rotting at different rates, giving the floors an interesting sloping pattern that alarmed people once they were thinking about plunking money down on it.

Madeline wished these weren't the facts because she knew Arbutus wanted the ordeal over now that she'd made Up her mind to sell. When it did she could begin to pay off her medical bills. And when the hotel sold—whenever that was, to whomever it was—the burdens would really lift from her shoulders. She would go and live in the senior apartments, she said. It would be nice. Clean and convenient and modern, easy to get around with her walker, and friendly, with neighbors all along the hall. She wouldn't have to impose on Gladys every hour of the day, and they'd be able to go back to what they'd Used to be, loving sisters with homes very near each other.

Madeline didn't know what Gladys thought of all of this because Gladys would not speak to her and left the house each time Madeline cautiously knocked on the screen and went in to see Arbutus, but she could imagine. Arbutus's mind was made Up, however, so that was that.

Madeline opened the newspaper she'd picked Up at the gas station. Maybe she could find a job in Crosscut. An apartment too, because the current arrangement could not go on forever. There was a notice that the prison was looking for kitchen help. She was thinking about that—the prison, Paul hated working at the prison, she wondered how he was doing, how he and Randi were coping with the summer trade, all the hours and craziness, and why did she wonder, it was none of her business, and even if the prison was awful it'd be good to get a job like that, it'd be year-round, with benefits, a decent paycheck—when a knock came at the door.

“Hello?” a man's voice said. “Anybody home?”

Madeline went to the door and at first she was very confused. “Hi. My gosh, what are you doing here? This is such a coincidence. Or are you looking for me?” She racked her brain trying to think of a reason why Pete Kinney should be there.

Pete looked baffled too. “
Hello
. I wasn't looking for you, no, though I planned to, later. Thought I'd see this place and maybe ask whoever was showing it if they knew you, knew how I could find you. I guess that worked out.”

“But, Pete, what brought you here? Why are you looking at a house?”

He shrugged, seeming bashful. “Daydreaming, maybe. I was roaming around on the Internet, looking at properties Up here—I do that sometimes—and I saw this one listed. I liked it, so I made an appointment.”

“Well, this is weird but nice.”

Pete nodded his agreement. He looked the same as always: a trim, slightly formal man somewhere in his seventies in a worn but clean work shirt the color of split-pea soup, with matching trousers. His hair had once been black but was now well salted with white, and his eyes were sapphire blue. He'd been so kind back in Chicago. When she took the Buick into his shop—old-fashioned, like him, the building sided in porcelain tile, the advertising sign a red-winged Pegasus, the pop machine so old that it dispensed small glass bottles from behind a narrow glass door—he'd told her she needed a new set of tires, an oil change, the points cleaned, the timing checked, the hoses replaced. She'd started to fear the car wouldn't be Up to the trip but he assured her he'd get it into shape.

His eyes had twinkled when she protested that the bill was far too small. “I like the idea, you going way Up there. Wish I could go with you. Eunice has been gone now close to four years and it's still hard, living in our house without her. I think of selling but my kids say no, I shouldn't.”

Madeline knew how that was. So many people had ideas of what you should and shouldn't do, but in the end you had to decide for yourself. A moment of pure Understanding had passed between them. And now here he was. Madeline stood in the doorway holding the screen open and could not think what to say.

“How's your car holding Up?” he asked.

“It got me here.” He looked dismayed and she hurried to reassure him. “You did some kind of miracle, considering how it's fallen to pieces since. If it wasn't for you I'd probably still be sitting in Milwaukee, waiting for a tow.”

“So it needs some work, does it?”

“Well, in an ideal world, sure. But the way things are—” Madeline decided not to elaborate. “So you came all this way to look at this house?”

“It was just a notion I had.”

She waited for him to say more, but he didn't. “Here, what am I thinking, come in. Let me get you some coffee.”

“Things going all right for you, then?” he asked after she poured him a cup.

“It's been interesting.” She heard how ambivalent that sounded and added, “It's beautiful.”

“It seems mostly like I remember. Lots of new houses down on the water, though—mansions, aren't they? Where do people get that kind of money, I wonder.”

“They bring it with them I guess. You're sure not going to make it once you get here.” They smiled at each other.

“Going to stay awhile, then?”

“I—don't know. Maybe. I'm thinking of buying a place, a hotel, to run it again as a business. But there've been some—complications.”

“Ah. Well. Sounds like an Undertaking. Good luck to you.”

“Thanks. I think I'm going to need it.”

When he'd eaten a brownie and finished his coffee (he paused to inhale the aroma steaming off the surface before he took a sip, and Madeline remembered that about him, how appreciative of small things he always was), she showed him the house and yard. “Are you really thinking of buying something here?” she asked when they'd finished and were outside beside his car.

“Yes.” He drew a voluminous handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his nose. “Life hasn't been the same without Eunice. I expect you Understand.”

“I think so. After Emmy died, nothing was right.”

“The two of Us, we always said we'd maybe retire Up here one day. It was mostly a daydream. But she did love it here, we both did. Ever since I fixed Up your car I've been thinking, why not come see it again? So I told my son I was taking two weeks—the shop's his now really anyway—and put my toothbrush in a bag, and here I am.”

“Nice.”

“Yup.” Pete surveyed Arbutus's yard and house with a considering gaze. “Eunice would have loved this. I like it too. It suits me. Not too big, not too fancy, just about the right size for one.”

“Are you really serious about it?”

“Maybe. It may just be that I am.”

 

 

Apartments in Crosscut
weren't just depressing. They were wrist-slittingly bleak, and not quite as cheap as Madeline had imagined. Three hundred a month before heat and Utilities seemed like a lot once she saw how bad they were. Small, dark, and grungy, most of them haphazard collections of rooms carved out of old rickety houses that would be frigid in the winter and boiling in the summer. “I'll let you know,” she said to the landlords she'd made appointments with after Pete Kinney had left the other day, trying to keep the dismay out of her voice. She'd take Mary Up on her offer to stay in her old camper before she'd live in any of these places. She'd give Up and go back to Chicago.

She went to the prison to fill out an application—at least that job would let her rent a decent place—and the human resources person told her there would be no decisions made for at least three weeks.
Okay
, she said, feeling crestfallen.

Next she went to 512 Pine Street. She did this almost every time she came to Crosscut. The house held a horrible fascination. It was so grim. She could not imagine having grown Up here; something about it made Jackie Stone real in a way she never had been before. Madeline could never bring herself to knock on the door and draw the shrieking woman from within the depths and say,
Did you happen to know my grandfather? Do you mind if I look around?
She came, she looked, she left.

She went and visited with Walter after that but before long she took herself and her burgeoning headache back Up the highway.

She ran into Randi hitchhiking a few miles out of Crosscut. Randi appeared to have set out on a thirty-mile walk in her party clothes—a gauzy top, velveteen miniskirt, strappy sandals. Madeline let off on the accelerator.

“Hey!” Randi said, trotting Up to the window. “How cool, nobody's been by at all, not going north anyway.”

“You have to get in the back and climb over the seat if you want to sit Up front, the passenger-side door doesn't open.”