South of Superior (12 page)

“He's down at Halfway with Roscoe and Annie, he just loves Andrea. He's so cute with her, you'd think he was her big brother or something. Such a little old man.”

A thoughtful look flickered across Paul's face. “That he is.”

“So, when are you ever finally going to quit that nasty job down at the prison?” Randi asked after a moment.

“Never, I guess. Those poor guys have to have someone who can cook for them.”

Randi's eyes drifted over to Madeline and Paul said, “I'm just showing Madeline around. She's going to be working here this summer.”

“Oh. Well, that's cool.” Randi sounded anything but enthused and Madeline thought,
You've got a thing for him.
Then she thought if that was so it might show the girl had at least some sense, because all in all, Paul Garceau seemed like a decent person.

 

 

After a week
Madeline felt like she was getting the hang of the place. Paul even left her alone for ten or fifteen minutes sometimes, if he had an errand to run. The doorbells jangled one afternoon and Madeline looked Up from juicing lemons to see Randi coming in with Greyson. His red hair was tousled and his freckled, narrow face was as intense as Madeline remembered.

“Hello, Madeline!” he said.

“Grey! You know better. You have to say, ‘Miss Stone.' ”

“Oh, no,” Madeline said. “He can't do that, I won't know who he's talking to.”

“Well, but I like him to be polite. He does a real good job of it, don't you, Grey?”

Madeline wondered if she could ever get Used to that voice—husky and sexy no matter what Randi said. Randi leaned against the counter and plucked a lemon from Madeline's bowl. “So you're helping Gladys and Arbutus. That is so cool.”

“I like them.” Madeline squeezed another lemon, her eye on the one in Randi's hand. It was silly, it was only a lemon, but she wanted it back where it belonged.

“It is so cool of Gladys to, like, send me leftovers. She is such a good cook, tell her thank you again for me. I sort of forgot in the Trackside that day, I was so Upset.” Randi rolled the lemon on the counter Under her palm. Madeline wanted to snatch it from her and say,
Tell her yourself, you thoughtless girl, and you don't really think they're leftovers, do you?
But she didn't. She said, “All right.”

Randi put the lemon back in the bowl finally and ordered a lemonade, then scooped Greyson Up so they could drink it together. After a few sips she said, “So, where's Paul, is he in the kitchen?” Madeline was a little ashamed of herself for feeling a stab of satisfaction at being able to say, no, he wasn't, he'd gone to the bank. Randi shrugged and said “Oh” in a way that was hard to read. Madeline wondered at her own curiosity—were Randi and Paul a couple, did Randi have a crush on him?—but supposed it was only human nature. She watched them leave, Greyson waving from his perch on Randi's hip, then ran a bucket of hot water to clean Up the juicer.

For Pete's sake
, she sighed to herself, and smiled sadly. (That had been one of Emmy's catchphrases, Emmy who never swore ever.) She made a mental apology to Emmy for wanting to wring Randi's neck. She'd promised to be more forgiving, but so far it wasn't going so well.

The doorbells tinkled again a moment later.

“Hey!” Randi said, popping her head back in. “Are you, like, really super busy?”

“Ah—not right at the moment.”

Randi came fully inside, tugging Greyson behind her. “Can I ask you, like, a really, really big favor?”

“Umm. Well. You can ask.”

“Could you look after Greyson for a tiny minute? Like for maybe half an hour?”

“I—”

“I promise, he is totally no trouble.” Randi turned her son toward her and tugged his T-shirt straight. “You be a good boy for Madeline,” she told him and he nodded.

“Hey, I don't—”

“Paul won't mind, I promise, he is
such
a sweetie. I've just got to do, like,
one
thing, and then I'll be back. Forty minutes, tops.” She gave Madeline an enormous smile. “Thank you
so much
. You are a sweetheart, I totally owe you. And I will be
right back
, I promise.” Then she said, “Mama loves you, sweet pea,” to Greyson and gave him a little wave. He waved back, and she grinned with delight. “He kills me,” she said, and vanished out the door.

When Paul came back, he turned a CD on low in his kitchen and the Latin, salsa-y music drifted out. He always acted cheerful enough, but nonetheless there were times when she thought he was sad, or thoughtful, and she associated this music with that now. She wondered what he was thinking about.

“What do I do?” she whispered to him across the pass-through when he'd put his apron on. Greyson sat at a table with a place mat and crayons, coloring.

Paul was dicing onions, pushing every now and then with the back of his wrist at the glasses that made him look scholarly and a bit owlish.

“I don't know,” he whispered back, seeming to be mocking her a little.

“No, really.”

He glanced at Greyson, smiled at him, went back to chopping. “She'll show Up sooner or later.”

“Oh, that's reassuring. And if she doesn't?”

“Take him home with you if she's not back when you're done.”

“You can't leave him here, I'm sorry.”

Madeline gave him a dirty look. “He's absolutely no trouble, I promise.”

“I know, he really isn't. But no one's coming on after you tonight, and I have too much going on to be responsible.” He waved his knife, indicating the tables, the kitchen, the oven, everything. “Otherwise, I'd say let him stay.”

Madeline fidgeted a moment, but couldn't think of anything to do but go on being slightly disagreeable and put Upon. “Well, where is she? She said forty minutes.”

Paul shrugged. “Welcome to McAllaster.”

“Does she, like, just
do
this?”

“She does.”

“That's crazy.”

“Not really. It's working for her, isn't it? She got me the other day, same way she got you. Not that I minded. He really is a good kid.”

Greyson had looked Up and was watching them with sharp, Unwavering intelligence. Madeline gave him a big smile. He gazed at her for a moment without returning the smile before he went back to his coloring.

“Oh, God.”

“Really, you might as well take him home with you, your old ladies will get a kick out of him. I'll tell Randi where you are.”

“She drops him off with whoever'll take him. That's great. I'm surprised social services doesn't get after her.”

He paused to look at her, then looked back down at his chopping. She could tell her comment had irritated him. “Greyson's fine. Randi'll be back, don't worry. She's just young. Too young to have a kid, maybe, but there you go. It's a done deal, might as well cope with it.”

“I don't want to cope with it, it's not my problem. I don't want—” A kid. The responsibility. Anything to do with Randi Hopkins, who rings way too many bells. Madeline didn't say any of this, one, because it didn't reflect well on her and, two, because Greyson was looking at her again, and she knew that he knew what she was thinking.

“Nice,” Paul said.

“She's very irresponsible.”

Paul never looked Up from his chopping. “Not really. She loves Grey. And you're hardly an ax murderer.”

“I could be. She doesn't know.”

“You're looking after Arbutus, for God's sake. You
radiate
safeness.”

“Well, it still seems wrong to me,” Madeline said, annoyed.

“Cheer Up,” he said, impersonally. “Take him home with you, give the old ladies a treat. Randi will be around to pick him Up, I promise. And if you really can't, well, he can stay here. I'll figure it out.”

 

 

At five o'clock
Greyson and Madeline walked home, from Avenue C to Main, then down Edsel to Lake to Bessel. Somewhere across town a dog barked. Madeline could hear the lake crashing into shore. A seagull keened. It was sneaking Up on her, but this remote outpost was starting to seem normal to her. She remembered how it looked from on top of the hill that first morning: a tiny clearing in a vast wilderness of trees, Lake Superior spread out before it like the sea. Without that oceanlike horizon she'd feel claustrophobic, climb the walls. But with it—despite her frequent loneliness and boredom—she had a sense of having been set free.

“Hey, Miss Stone, guess what?”

“Call me Madeline. But what?” She was taking small steps to match Greyson's and holding his hand at the street crossings, but she realized she hadn't been paying much attention to him really. She wondered at his equanimity.

“Did you know that gravity holds people down onto the earth and it's also the same thing roads are made of?”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. I learned about it on television. The holding-people-down part. The road part I figured out for myself.”

Gravity, gravel. Well, he was close. “I see. That's very smart of you.”

“Yes. I am pretty smart, people say so.”

They walked along quietly for a little while. Madeline tried to figure out something intelligent to say. “So what's your favorite food?” she finally asked.

“Mr. Garceau's meat lover's pizzas, those are the best.”

“Do you eat there a lot?”

“Yes. Whenever my mom has enough tips, we go. She loves to eat at Mr. Garceau's. She works at the bar, you know.”

“I did know that. Does she like it?”

“It's okay. She says when guys hit on her it's annoying, but it's not too bad Unless they're really drunk.” Greyson hopped over a crack in the sidewalk, then looked Up at Madeline with an expression that was both sunny and knowing.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I suppose.”

“Yep. She says, ‘What the Hell are you gonna do?' Oops! I'm not supposed to say Hell, she says so.”

“Better not, then,” Madeline said, feeling sad.

“Okay. Don't tell, okay?”

“Okay.”

“She has to come home late and she smells all smoky and sleeps in Until noon, I don't like that part. It makes her tired, working there.”

“Yes, I imagine so.”

“She's a nice person, my mom.”

Madeline squeezed his hand. “She must be, you're such a nice kid,” she said, and he smiled somewhat smugly.

 

 

Gladys and Arbutus
were as pleased as punch when Madeline brought Greyson in. They fawned over him and fed him cupcakes and milk and Gladys played hangman with him. “Blue moon” was one of her mystery phrases. “Power Ranger” was one of Greyson's. Gladys ended Up hung on that one.

Randi didn't show Up Until after dinner. There was a quick tap at the kitchen door and then it opened. “Okay if I barge in?” she said, and did without waiting for an answer.

Greyson bolted across the room and jumped into her arms. “Hey, little man!” she cried and gave him a squeeze and a shower of smacky kisses that made him giggle.

Madeline stood with her arms crossed, watching.

“Thank you
so
much,” Randi said. “You're a peach to look after Grey.”

“It's after seven.”

“Oh, I know, time just disappears, doesn't it?”

“Apparently it does. You said forty minutes.”

A puzzled look flashed across Randi's face, a look that wondered why Madeline was being so churlish, especially in front of her little boy. Hadn't she enjoyed him, did he deserve to be made to feel like a burden?

“He wasn't a bit of trouble,” Gladys declared. Arbutus chimed in, “No dear, not a bit. You bring Greyson by any time, we're always glad to see him.”

“He was fine,” Madeline said. “He was great. But you're very late.”

“Oh, gosh, I got sidetracked. You know how it is.”

Madeline gave her a fake, angry smile because she didn't. She did not approve and she didn't mind if she showed it. She assumed she and Gladys would be in solid agreement for once. “That certainly is one feckless girl,” she said after they'd gone.

“Randi?”

“Yes, Randi, who do you think? She just left her child with me for the day, a complete stranger.”

“Greyson is a dear boy, and you're hardly a total stranger.”

“
I
think I am, and besides, that's not the point.”

“It didn't hurt you a bit to look after that child, he's no trouble.”

“That is
not
the point.
He's
no trouble, she is. Big trouble.”

“Randi's young, that I will grant you. But she's not a bad girl.”

Real anger boiled inside Madeline. “How can you say that? She treats him like—like a spare jacket or something. He's an
after
thought. Why do you stand Up for her?” She banged a dirty pot into the sink.

“She's a child,” Gladys said, her eyes skimming the newspaper she had open.

“That's no excuse.”

“It's the best excuse she's got.” Gladys clucked at Marley, and he—the traitor—hopped into her lap.

“That is completely lame. Her behavior is inexcusable. She's an Unfit mother, he should be taken away from her.”

“Glad to know you've got everything all figured out,” Gladys said, her tone dry and her eyes still skimming the paper.