South of Superior (38 page)

“Just what I need,” Gladys said now. “Canuck elevator music. Give me some of that Big Band like we Used to dance to over at the VFW Hall, remember, Butte?”

Arbutus smiled, but she didn't answer. She was sitting in an armchair by the window reading with Marley on her lap. She seemed serene at the prospect of being married and feted in just a few days. Of course, Gladys was doing all the planning. Arbutus was to be decorative and Pete and Madeline were the mules. Willing mules.

Madeline glanced at the clock. Greyson was due home from kindergarten any minute. Home, well. This was only temporary, Madeline had to remind herself of that, but for now, yes, home. She set a pint of Mary's maple syrup on the shelf thinking that it was a kind of elixir, a cordial for the sustenance of life itself.

 

 

At dusk she lit
the jack-o'-lanterns they'd carved with Paul Monday night. They'd carved the pumpkins and then made macaroni and cheese from scratch and put it in the oven (which Pete had repaired), and all evening long it sent out a smell that said
Home
. Once it was baking, Paul sat down at the piano in the dining room and started playing. Greyson climbed Up on the bench beside him.

“What's that called?” he asked.

Paul smiled down at him. “ ‘Maple Leaf Rag.' I learned this one to impress girls, back in junior high.”

“Did it work?”

Paul grinned. “It wasn't the worst idea I ever had.”

“Harmonica, piano, what else do you play?” Madeline asked, and he looked Up at her while his hands kept moving.

“Guitar. That's my real love. Used to play all the time, it's all I ever did.”

“How can you stand
not
playing now, then?”

“I don't know.” The thoughtful look settled on his face as his hands went still. “There aren't enough hours in the day anymore, I guess.” He shoved his glasses Up with his wrist and then sat with his hands dangling between his legs. Thinking. But Greyson poked him and said, “Don't stop,” and Paul started playing the melody of “Yellow Submarine,” very slowly, saying, “Come on, you know this one,” giving Greyson one note to play in the bass.

For that night they'd been a family. She wished Paul could go trick-or-treating with them now, but he was working. Always working.

The trick-or-treaters began to arrive, the little ones brought to the door by their parents, the older ones covering the streets with their friends, the girls and adults sheltering themselves beneath Umbrellas, the boys getting drenched beneath ball caps and sweatshirt hoods. There were ghosts and witches and ballerinas, monsters and psycho killers and cowboys and Indians. A steady stream of children came to the door and Madeline hoped she wouldn't run out of candy.

She was going to take Greyson out as soon as Gladys and Pete and Arbutus arrived to man the door. He was impatient, running to the hall every time someone knocked, sighing in exasperation when it was only another batch of children. He'd been dressed since four, as a clown in huge shoes of Paul's and a polka-dot jumper Arbutus had sewn, with circles of rouge from Randi's makeup case on his cheeks.

At last Pete and Arbutus came; Gladys had stayed home to hand out candy on her own porch. Wanting to practice being on her own again a little, maybe. “Let me get your coat,” Madeline said, and Greyson said, “No! It'll ruin my costume.”

“Yes. It's cold out there.”

“Madeline!”

“Greyson!” She rummaged in the closet for something she remembered, a big old suit jacket with a patched elbow. She held it Up. “A clown coat, just like at the circus.”

“Excellent choice,” Pete said. “It makes the costume.”

Greyson flicked a mistrusting look at them but then sighed and said, “All right.”

Madeline put the jacket on him and adjusted the ruffed collar of his costume and dropped a candy bar into his bag. “Seed candy,” she said solemnly.

“Thank you, Madeline.”

“You're welcome. Ready, then?”

“Ready!”

Madeline pulled her lime green polka-dotted hat on, and a rain coat, and they ventured out. She felt so tender. Even if things went terribly wrong, he'd still have this. He'd have these happy times when he dressed Up as a clown on Halloween and got given a Snickers bar at the Hotel Leppinen. For now his world was small and as safe as it could be, all things considered. It wasn't perfect, but it was what they had, and it was good.

T
he judge was senatorial and yet twinkly in his office the morning of the wedding, and did not rush through his speech about how moving it was to see two people vow to love and care for each other at any age. Arbutus wore a new suit in soft pink wool with a frilly ivory blouse beneath, and sensible shoes in a darker shade of pink. Pete stood nearly strangulated with feeling beside her in a trim blue suit. His voice caught as he said, “I do,” while Arbutus's rang out clear.

“He's a wonderful man, your dad,” Madeline whispered to Pete's daughter.

“He is,” Marion agreed. She was slight and unremarkable-looking except for the startling sapphire eyes she'd inherited from him. She had a wonderful laugh.

“She's just like my Eunice,” Madeline heard Pete tell Arbutus after the ceremony was over, gazing on his daughter, and Arbutus nodded, smiling her Understanding. She did not seem Upset that Nathan hadn't come. Madeline had to give him credit, there'd been a gigantic display of flowers delivered by FedEx with a card that said “Best Wishes from Nathan.” It must have cost the earth. But then, considering that he already had his inheritance, he ought to be able to afford it.

According to the satin-covered guest register, more than three hundred people drifted in and out of the reception through the long afternoon and evening. Not Paul, sadly. He was working. Gladys presided over everything with tranquil confidence, her planning-stage brusqueness gone. Madeline, on the other hand, lapsed into scattered moments of panic—
More coffee! More punch! We're out of 7-Up! Where's the mustard?!
Greyson ran around in a steadily more rumpled suit and tie, and John Fitzgerald and his wife served punch and refilled bowls of potato salad and cole slaw with Unflagging enthusiasm, promising not to abandon Madeline for the cleanup.

Pete and Arbutus opened their gifts late in the evening—Arbutus and Gladys both getting teary-eyed over the kicksled that Madeline had bought back from the antiques man over in the Soo—and then drove off in Pete's sedan, a string of streamers and tin cans tied to the bumper fluttering and bouncing down the street after them. They were going home to Mill Street, and then in two days to Chicago for another party and a visit to Pete's friends and family. They'd be gone two weeks—time to make the trip in stages so that Arbutus wouldn't get too tired and Uncomfortable. Madeline wondered how she and Gladys would manage without them.

 

 

Sunday was devoted
to cleaning Up, Monday to recovering, Tuesday to running the errands she'd let go the week before. Madeline took Greyson to see Randi on Tuesday afternoon, leaving him with her in the main room and climbing the stairs to Walter's room. He was dozing and didn't wake Up when she came in, so she sat in his armchair and looked out the window. After a while, looking for something to read, she opened his desk drawer. Maybe there'd be a magazine in it—he had a subscription to
Sports Illustrated
he must've paid for with his spending money. She didn't care much about any sports but baseball, or any teams but the Cubs, but it'd be something to look at.

There were a few magazines in the drawer, and also a thick notebook with tattered cardboard covers held together by a piece of string. It was worn and very old. Glancing at Walter—was this a terrible thing to do?—Madeline slipped the book out of the drawer and onto the desktop.

It was a journal, a notion book, really. The name inscribed in old-fashioned script in the front cover was Ada Stone. Madeline stared at it, her heart beating faster, and gingerly turned the first few pages. Ada seemed to have put down whatever she wanted in it: recipes, quotes, thoughts, the weather. How to get an ink stain out of cloth, what to give a baby for croup. Madeline turned more pages and stopped to study a drawing: Ada had planned out how she'd set her furniture in the cabin. Madeline leaned over to gaze at the penciled diagram on the yellowing paper that had suffered many erasures: here the settee, there the coal stove, over on the other wall a sideboard and rocker and table.

Walter stirred and her head snapped Up. He swung his feet over the edge of the bed and sat rubbing at his eyes. “Hello, Madeline,” he said.

“Hi, Walter. You were sleeping, I didn't want to wake you.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I was looking for something to read and went into your desk. I'm sorry.”

“That's okay.”

“I found this.” She pointed at the journal. “I know I shouldn't have taken it out, but I couldn't resist.” Walter scratched the back of his head and yawned. “I'm sorry,” she said again.

“That's okay. That's Mama's book. Joe had it after she died, he gave it to me. She liked to write things in it.”

“I see that,” Madeline said gently. “She says that on June sixth, 1932, it was cool and rainy and you helped her clean Up the cabin.”

“Oh, yes. I always liked to help Mama.”

Madeline read the rest of the entry.
A mouse in my drawer of stockings. I caught it and put it outside. It will be back in tomorrow but it looked at me so pleading I couldn't kill it
. She turned a few more pages and then became very still. She'd come to a sketch, a drawing. It was a picture done in ink of a skunk with a sweet and mischievous expression on its face. “Oh,” she breathed.

Walter walked to the desk and leaned over her. “That's Jim.”

“It's wonderful.” She thought of the ink bottle she'd found, imagined Ada Stone dipping her pen into it, sketching, Jim emerging from thin air on the paper.

Walter sat back down on the bed and yawned again. “I'm hungry.”

“It's almost suppertime, probably.”

“We're having spaghetti, Ted said.”

“I love spaghetti.”

Walter nodded. “It's messy.” He smiled at her then and said, “You can have Mama's book if you want it.”

“Oh Walter, no. No, I can't take it from you.”

“It's okay,” he said, looking shy and pleased. “I want you to. There's no one left but you and me.”

She stared at him, tears pooling in her eyes. He did know, more than she thought sometimes. “I'll take it someday, then. Not now. I'll just look at it when I come to see you, if that's okay.”

“Okay.” Walter sat swinging his legs, his hands folded in his lap. “Joe always took good care of me, and Mama too.”

“I know. You've said.”

“When Mama got older we came to live with him in the winter. It was on Pine Street. Number Five One Two, Mama made me memorize it. It was a nice house, there was a bathroom inside.”

Ted tapped at the door and said that dinner was almost ready, and Madeline went to get Greyson. He and Randi were watching TV, Randi in her wheelchair and Greyson on the floor at her feet.

 

 

Greyson and Madeline
ate supper with Gladys. After the roast and potatoes were gone, Greyson went to watch television, taking a slab of apple pie with him and promising not to spill it on the sofa. Madeline stayed in the kitchen. A fire was burning and the room smelled of pie and meat. It seemed timeless, a world apart. She poured coffee, cut slices of pie and slid them onto plates. How familiar she'd become here. Had it really been more than six months since she left Chicago? Even with their problems, she and Gladys kept dealing with each other. They had become, however wary, family. She told Gladys about Ada's journal.

“Is that right? I never knew he had such a thing.”

“It was in his desk drawer. It's fascinating—like I get to meet her, in a way.”

“I expect it is like that.”

“She had a sense of humor. She seems smart.”

“I'm sure she was. Joe was a very smart man. Not educated but smart.”

“Walter said Joe had them come spend winters with him when she got older, at the place on Pine Street.”

“It was awfully harsh for them back on Stone Lake in the winter, I think. They would've had to get all their supplies in before the snow got deep, or else snowshoe out. That was all before I knew Joe.”

“Did my mother grow Up there, on Pine Street?”

“Yes. Mostly. Joe never lived Up here Until he moved in with me.”

Madeline paused in forking Up a bite of pie. “Moved in with you?”

“Yes.”

Madeline narrowed her eyes. “You weren't—Were the two of you married and you never told me?”

“No, we weren't. I hope that doesn't shock you. But I didn't care to marry again. There came a time when it made sense for Us to share a house, and I wanted to stay here.” Gladys cut a precise triangle of pie and ate it.

Madeline was about to take a bite of pie herself, but she paused. “You and Joe got together
after
I was born, you said. And I was born here, my birth certificate says so. It doesn't add Up.”

Gladys shifted in her chair and made as if to get Up, but Madeline leaned closer and said, “What, Gladys? What aren't you telling me?

Gladys sighed. “Jackie got expelled from Crosscut in the tenth grade, so she came Up here to school. There was nowhere else. We still had a high school here in those days. She didn't want to go to school at all but Joe insisted. He drove her back and forth every day, and then—well.”