South of Superior (41 page)

He nodded, yawning. When she checked on him ten minutes later he was already asleep, one arm flung over his head, the other curled around Marley, who gazed at Madeline with a satisfied expression. Greyson was still in his clothes and wearing a sneaker. He'd probably crashed before he ever got his teeth brushed. Good. He was worn out from their excursion.

He'd perked Up a little when they turned off the highway onto the two-track that led to Stone Lake, and by the time they climbed Up the small rise to the shore of the vanished water, he'd shed several layers of sadness. So had she, at least temporarily.

It didn't change the fact that they would miss Paul. They would. But they'd have to go on. They'd survive this. Madeline felt as though a hole had opened in the fabric of her fledgling life here; it must've felt the same way to Greyson. But it was a hole she'd just have to figure out how to mend, or jump over, or live with. They both would.

S
uddenly it was the twelfth of November. In two days the hunters would arrive. Madeline was almost ready to pull the little chain to light Up Gladys's sign that said “Rooms to Let.”

She quit at eleven o'clock that night. The sofa and easy chairs she'd had delivered looked plump and inviting; the antiques that had been in the lobby—two plant stands with marble tops (now topped with Boston ferns she hoped wouldn't freeze when winter came), a curio cabinet, a library table, a china cupboard—shone with polish. A fire flickered in the woodstove, casting a soft light on the modestly stocked shelves. She'd found a dozen rugs rolled Up Under the eaves in a corner of the attic early in the fall, runners woven on Gladys's grandmother's rug loom, and cleaned them with a scrub brush and hot water and hung them outside to dry. Now they lay on the wooden floors as if they'd never been taken Up and stashed away.

The rug loom itself sat in a corner, reassembled by Madeline with the help of Gladys. It wasn't strung yet, but she thought visitors would like to see it. Someday she'd learn to Use it. She had vague ideas of selling rugs, eventually. It was a four-harness loom, Gladys had told her. A good one, you could make patterns instead of just stripes if you knew what you were doing. Which she did not, Madeline pointed out. Gladys had better remember how it all went. In fact, she'd better write down everything she remembered about the loom and the grandmother who'd brought it from Finland before it was too late and the story was gone.

As far as Madeline knew, Gladys hadn't written so much as her name in the journal she'd given her, but she kept prodding anyway.

She sank down onto the sofa. Done. The registration desk gleamed and the guest register—a massive book—lay open on top of it, the hunters' names penciled in.

There were probably a thousand things she'd missed. She sprawled out, exhausted but still thinking, ticking things off in her head. Clean towels—thick and plush, in eggplant and sage and periwinkle and rose—hung from the bars in the rooms. The sheets and blankets smelled of fresh air, and the iron bedsteads shone with new black paint. Extra blankets were folded at the foot of each bed, crisp paper lined the dresser drawers, and a balsam sachet lay in each. She had coffee beans in the hopper, cocoa mix and tea bags in tins on the kitchen counter, fresh cardamom cake in the cupboard. The issue of what to do with the impossible old kitchen and how to serve breakfast—Madeline thought she wanted to do this—were yet to be dealt with, but for this winter she wouldn't worry about it.

Madeline pushed herself Up from the couch and headed toward the stairs. All kinds of things would have to be enough to start: the little bit of money she had left, her patchy knowledge of what she was getting into, the time and energy she was splitting in so many different directions. But there was time. She told herself not to panic. On her way out of the lobby she straightened the picture she'd hung near the front door. The study of the lake out the attic window. She'd framed it and hung it with a discreet tag advertising that it was for sale. She bit her bottom lip, studying it for the thousandth time. Good, bad? She wasn't sure, but she left it hanging.

The hunters came,
and were both a delight and a letdown. For the duration of their stay Madeline felt like a real innkeeper, smiling her welcome, handing out keys, changing sheets. The men were affable, but Gladys was right, they were only looking for a room. They weren't interested in the ambiance of the hotel, or traditional Potawatomi baskets woven by Naomi, or woolen Hudson's Bay blankets. She did sell one of them half a gallon of Mary's syrup. She let them hang the deer they shot from the limbs of the maple in the side lot, as they always had when Gladys was the owner, and told herself she would get Used to the sight.

Only a few scattered visitors, walk-ins, stayed in December. Madeline tried not to worry about that. She was just getting started. There was time to figure things out. The entire winter. She felt a rush of glee each time this thought came. It was as if she was embarking on an epic adventure, a trek to the Arctic by dogsled. And at the same time, a voice inside her nagged:
Look at the money the place is already eating
.
How're you ever going to keep up? Gladys was right.

She couldn't worry about it. Not yet. Not Until she'd had her winter.

 

 

Madeline went to
26 Bessel one morning, a week before Christmas, to return a casserole dish. She tapped at the door but when there was no answer she went in. Banging came from the direction of Arbutus's old room, and Madeline headed that way. Gladys was just coming down the hall, her hair covered with a printed scarf, an apron over her slacks and sweater. “Oh, Madeline, it's you. I was Up on a ladder—”

“A
ladder
? Are you nuts, you could fall and break your neck.”

“Oh, fizzle. I'm not falling anywhere. Come in the kitchen, I'll put coffee on.”

Just then a small form darted down the hall, skidded on the linoleum, circled the kitchen at high speed, and slammed into Gladys's ankles.

“Don't be a pest, Edmund.”

Edmund had a tan body and chocolate ears, feet, and tail. He gazed at Madeline with slightly crossed blue eyes. Madeline squatted down and held a finger out toward him, and he trotted over and rubbed his face along it. Madeline looked Up at Gladys. “Where on earth did you get a Siamese kitten?”

Gladys went to the sink, Edmund tagging behind, and ran water in the kettle. “John Fitzgerald found him down in Crosscut at the pound. He brought him home but Ruth claims she's allergic. So John brought him over and asked if I could take him in, though what he thinks I want with a cat I don't know.” Gladys sat down and Edmund leapt into her lap. She began petting him and Madeline could hear his purr from across the room. Madeline tried—not very hard—to hide a grin.

“Gosh, I don't know either, everybody knows how you feel about cats.”

“I couldn't tell John no, he's always been good to Us.” Gladys turned Edmund belly-up to cradle him in the crook of one arm and he continued to purr. She stroked his throat with a bony finger before setting him back down. “So now I have a cat.”

“So you do.” Madeline pulled mugs down from the cupboard. She got milk from the icebox and adjusted the flame Under the kettle. Gladys still did all her baking with the woodstove, claiming everything turned out better in it, but she would Use the gas stove for simple things like boiling water now. “What are you Up to on a ladder, anyway?” she asked when the coffee was perking.

“Making Butte's room over. John had a table he didn't want any longer, so he brought it over and moved the bed for me. I'm just putting shelves Up.”

“Really. What're you going to do in there?”

Gladys blushed, to Madeline's astonishment. Then she cleared her throat and said, “I'm going to write down my memories. My life story, I guess you'd say.”

“You're kidding, that's great.”

“Do you think so?”

“It's a great idea, haven't I been telling you that for months? I can't wait to read it. I mean, if you'll let me.”

“We'll see.” Then Gladys made another admission. “I've bought a computer. One like Mabel's.”

“A computer! Gladys, you're amazing.”

“I went ahead and got that high-speed Internet connection, I thought I might go on eBay. I'm looking for alarm clocks for you, if you want to know the truth. I wish I never would have sold them. You wouldn't believe the price I'm going to have to pay.”

Madeline laughed and then—probably to Gladys's astonishment, and to her own as well—she got Up and gave Gladys a hug.

 

 

Gladys went back
to work when Madeline left. There was the still the closet to go through. Arbutus had insisted she didn't need more than a few inches of space while she was there, and shame on herself, Gladys had acquiesced. She was going to have a devil of a time now.

First there were the hangers to empty, clothes of Frank's she hadn't been able to part with when he died. Now was the time. That red-and-black plaid hunting jacket might fit Madeline. She tsked at herself over the shirts and pants. Frank had been buried in his one good suit, no one was going to Use what was left here Unless Madeline ever got around to getting that old rug loom Up and running. She came to Frank Junior's dress Uniform and gazed at it for a long time. She left it hanging.

She began pulling boxes from the recesses of the deep closet: old receipts, letters, bills, photograph albums. She leafed through one. There was Frank Junior with Henry out on the docks with a big steelhead they'd caught, grinning to beat the band. Oh, it was too much. Gladys closed the album and reached for the next box.

More photos, she wasn't going to look at those, and more odds and ends. She lifted Up a pair of suspenders and then she knew—these were Joe's things. Oh, dear heavens. She did not know that she was Up to this. But well started was half done. They were modest things—the suspenders, some tarnished cuff links, a pipe, a shaving mug, some road maps, a few photographs. Gladys stopped short at the photos. She should have remembered these long ago. What had she been thinking?

She hadn't been thinking, that was the truth. She didn't like to think of any of it. She'd loved Joe, more than she ever would've wanted anyone to know, and she still missed him. At the same time she hated how obstinate he was over Madeline, a little child left to be brought Up by strangers. It wasn't right. Gladys always thought it wasn't right, and she found it galling and insufferable how little there was for her to do about it. All her life, Gladys had been doing things. It was the only way she knew. But this—there had been nothing to do about this, or if there had been she hadn't discovered it. It was all water Under the bridge.

Only it wasn't. Madeline was here, and little by little Gladys had been trying to admit that the past wasn't all done and gone after all.

It was late when she left the room Arbutus had stayed in. She was grubby and tired and sore, but she was victorious, too. The closet was clean. She should have done it years ago. She had a pile of things for Emil, and one for the thrift shop, a big bag of garbage, and a few things Madeline might want. There were only two things she kept back, and only Until Christmas.

T
he countryside near Saginaw where Paul grew Up was flat, cut into big squares by country roads that bordered fields of corn and wheat and sugar beets. It had seemed beautiful to him once, and it was still pretty in a way, but it felt oppressive, too. Where was the water? At least in the winter the air was not as heavy as it was in the summer.

When he was growing Up, his parents had an old farmhouse on an acre of land at the edge of Edwardsville, but a few years ago they'd moved into a subdivision. Paul had always hated subdivisions—their sameness and banality—but it wasn't bad. The house was cheerful and bright, comfortable. It was nice, in a way, that his mom had gotten rid of most of the old furniture when they moved; everything didn't remind him of the past.

Paul had a routine. Get Up in time to go to the gym, get a shower, change into work clothes, stop by the Speedway for coffee, then head to the office. Mostly he was on the phone and the computer, ordering materials, looking for deals, doing paperwork. He took a bag lunch and ate at his desk around noon, and then worked Until five.

At home he fixed dinner if he could talk his mother into letting him, washed the dishes, ditto if his mother would let him, then strong-armed his dad into taking a walk because his doctor said it was important to do that. Then they'd watch a little television and go to sleep. Weekends he got together with his sisters and their husbands and kids. The job was okayish (although more deskwork than he'd expected), and it was good to be around his family, but after a month Paul started to think,
This is it?