Madeline Mann (5 page)

Now I was immersed in the complications of his life, and I'd met his sweet wife and his wonderful little boys. I was supposed to be outlining a travel article for the paper. I'd been planning a day trip to St. Charles or somewhere similar. That much of what I'd told Jamie had been true. I'd promised Fritz that I'd look into the disappearance of Logan Lanford, only to find a family that Logan had left in the lurch. I'd basically promised Jamie that I'd drive to Michigan to see if Logan was holing up in his dad's rustic cabin or meeting with a friend named Quinn, whom he wanted to get him “out of a hole.” I had fought with my lover over something pretty stupid, and in comparison with Logan, Jack was starting to look like Man of the Year.

To Michigan it was, I supposed, and my article could be, in fact, about the lovely little Saugatuck, which I'd visited a few times before as a kid. I had memories of ducks swimming near the docks (little Fritz had called them the “Saugaducks”), boat sails against the sunset, souvenir shops and a boat ride on Lake Michigan, and plentiful helpings of tourist food. The town was quaint and full of bed and breakfasts, so it probably wouldn't be so bad if I made an overnighter of it.

I
drove home, listening to one of the Dixie Chicks on the oldies country station make a mournful plea for her marriage in “When You Were Mine.” The woman in the song had two little children, and she asked her two-timing husband to consider them, if not her. Was this a common occurrence, then? To me, Logan's behavior seemed like unprecedented selfishness; maybe I was naïve.

By the time I parked the car, I had tears in my eyes.
Damn those country crooners,
I thought bitterly.
Where do they get off trying to make people cry?

When I arrived at the Old School, it was only twelve-thirty. I had gotten to Jamie's rather early, so I had much of the day before me. I contemplated going in to the office to get a head start on some of the next week's work. While I debated, the phone rang. It was my mother.

“Madeline—brunch. Although it's really lunchtime.”

“Right,” I said, my spirits falling. I had forgotten again. So much for free time. Normally the family met at the Webley IHOP for Sunday breakfast, often after attending church together. This week we had agreed to meet on Saturday because my mother was busy on Sunday, and it was my mother who strictly enforced these gatherings. She loved to see her family clustered around her, and I couldn't fault her for that.

“I'll be there in ten minutes,” I told her. I checked my outfit: navy turtleneck, blue jeans, a tweed-look jacket, and some walking shoes. I decided they passed muster, and left the apartment. When I reached the parking lot, it was raining. Still, it was a beautiful fall day. The sky was an inexplicable shade of gray, an almost metallic sheen, and some bright leaves were plastered on my windshield, along with a note from Jack. I pulled it out from under my wiper blade and opened it only once I had reached the warm, dry interior of my car.

“Are we on for tonight? Please let me know,” read Jack's missive. Since he had already asked me this not three hours before, I thought it was overkill. It didn't exactly make me feel like running into his arms. I would talk to him, I decided, after I got the family obligation out of the way. With a guilty glance at Jack's window, I drove away again.

The Saturday rescheduling was actually because my mom had work to do for the mayor on Sunday in preparation for the big Webley festival on the St. Fred's campus the following weekend (although somehow she'd ended up having to work part of Saturday too). I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel at Webley's longest stoplight and glanced around at the clean main street. It was so shiny on this brisk fall day it seemed as if someone had been waxing and buffing all night.

Webley is an image-conscious town. It likes to see itself as an arty-literary center. Residents put a high priority on creating this appearance in town, which is why there are plenty of booksellers, stationers, crafters, and artisans gracing the main drags. True, no major writers or artists have ever been spawned in Webley—a real sore point for townies—but they're working on it.

Webley is located more than an hour south of Chicago and is bounded on its north side mainly by cornfields; however, it is in constant competition with the thriving neighboring suburbs of Chateauville and Mosston. One of these boasts a renowned upscale shopping mall; the other has reared several notable people, all of whom are listed on the “Welcome” signs: “Welcome to Mosston, home of Joe Schmoe, Pulitzer Prize winner.” That kind of thing.

Anyway, it is the aura that counts in Webley, and there was plenty of aura at this time, thanks to the dogged labor of Mayor Don Paul and his staff of zealots. Talking to them was like listening to a promotional video, as I had unhappily discovered upon several visits to my mom at work. It was true, though, that tourism had improved under Paul's leadership. St. Frederick's University was in town, and a university, it was generally believed, gave a town a sense of scholarship and sophistication. Tourists came partly for this reason. They liked to shop up and down the clean, shady, shoppable boulevards, they liked to stroll on the verdant lawns of St. Fred's, and they liked to come to the festivals, of which Webley had no shortage.

When I reached the IHOP, I pulled into the parking lot, found that the only spot was the farthest one from the door, and decided it was an appropriate repentance for the amount of food I was planning to eat. Cap'n Crunch does not fill one up for long.

Before I was even seated at the table, I realized that I'd been betrayed. Fritz and Gerhard were studiously avoiding eye contact, and I felt the high beam of my mother's gaze upon me. She was ostentatiously looking for Jack, craning her head this way and that; he generally joined us at these brunches, and today I had opted not to bring him.

“So, are you breaking up?” My mother began her verbal attack before my bottom hit the chair. She paused briefly, at seeing me up close, to ask me in astonishment why I'd done that to my hair, but without waiting for an answer, she began to pepper me with questions about Jack, thanks to the bug planted in her ear by two disloyal brothers.

In my mind, as I waited for the food we had ordered, I began imagining a long-lost Grimm's fairy tale by that very name, “The Two Disloyal Brothers,” in the end of which the brothers are nailed into coffins and dragged through town for their treachery. Actually I'd only come up with the ending, which I imagined again and again as the meal wore on and I viewed my
fraters
through narrowed eyes.

“Like I said, Mom, I just asked for a little space.” If I had smoked, I could have furiously stubbed out a cigarette about a hundred times, just for emphasis. I settled for tapping my foot. I glanced at my watch too.
I should have gotten out of this
, I thought. I had things to do, places to go, an explanation to make to Jack.

“Don't tap your feet, Madeline, you're ringing the bell for the devil,” my father warned as he admired his blueberry pancakes. Never mind that I was twenty-six and no longer intimidated by the whole devil threat. For my dad, it was a tradition. His own father had scared his little lederhosen off with the statement at their dinner table in Germany some fifty years ago.

“Space? Don't be cliché, Madeline,” my mother said. “You have a perfectly fine young man in Jack. If you're not careful, you could lose him,” she warned. I didn't miss the implication that Jack could bounce back but that I, in my mother's estimation, might not.

“He loves me, Mom. That's not going to change overnight. And if it does, I'm better off finding it out now.”

She threw up her hands in despair, and Fritz blew some toast crumbs in my direction. “Okay, modern woman,” he said. “We're all blown away by your independence. Now may I share some actual
news
?”

Despite his obnoxious introduction, I was glad enough of the potential diversion.

“What is it?” asked Gerhard, cutting a sausage link.

“The Grinning Bishops, man! We're in the festival!”

The entire family stared in disbelief. It can't have been the response Fritz was hoping for.

“Which festival?” I asked skeptically, expecting him to name some mining town in an unincorporated part of Alaska. Most of Fritz's gigs were in what you'd call “unique” venues.

“St. Fred's!” Fritz's narrow face beamed at us all in turn. “University!” he added when we remained stationary.

“How…,” I began.

“Who?” queried Gerhard.

“
Our
St. Fred's University?” asked my mother, confused.

My father chewed reflectively, his expression pleasantly blank, as if he awaited a translation from the Swedish.

“They're having a big rock fest on Saturday. We auditioned with like, a hundred bands, and we made the grade,
mon frère
. We're on the bill!”

My mother, sensing a potential loss of face in the town, became all business. “Sweetheart, you have to let me sew you some nice costumes. Something neat, and tidy, and matching, so people know you're all in the same band. You can't wear those horrible ripped T-shirts and jeans. What would people think?”

“That we were cool?” Fritz tried.

“I think sequins would be good, Mom,” Gerhard suggested. Gerhard was a man with no loyalties, apparently.

“And hats,” I added vindictively. “Some sort of round, bowler sort of hat with a silk sash.” Here was a punishment for one disloyal brother, since the coffin was obviously not going to be a reality. I'd fix Gerhard another time.

“In fact, Mom…” My eyes lit up with sudden inspiration. I saw Fritz's own orbs squinting in anticipation of pain. “Don't you still have those costumes you made for the German polka band at the church show?”

My mother brightened. “Father Joe has them! He felt we could use them again some time, you know what a pack rat he is, and—”

“There's no way, Madman, so just wipe the grin off your face! Mom, our outfits were part of the tryouts. They don't want us pulling any changes now. It's part of our motif. We're the remnants of the grunge generation.” Fritz spoke passionately, the last of his omelette momentarily forgotten. “Pick on Gerhard, Mom. He never gets the treatment from you, and I happen to know he's been dating the same girl for quite some time now.” Another traitorous moment.
Is it in our blood?
I wondered as I viewed Gerhard's stricken face.

My mother's face paled as she skewered her eldest son with a look.

Gerhard intervened before the flood of words came. “It's three. Three dates. Girls get scared if you ask them home to meet the family too soon. They think you want a commitment right away. That's what's scaring Madeline.”

All faces were back on me, heads shaking slightly, as though all the evils of feminism lay within my too-human frame. I was impressed—really impressed—with Gerhard. It had taken less than five seconds to deflect my mother's disappointment and send her back to me. I had to hand it to him. He was back to his sausage now, sawing away with a serene expression, his handsome dark head careful not to turn my way.

“You know, he's right—,” my mother began.

“Hey! Fritz!” I yelled, desperate. “I've been looking into the whole Logan Lanford thing.”

Fritz frowned. A cloud had passed over the bright sun of his egotism. “Yeah, right. We may have to scramble around for a bass player now, because Madeline's precious Logan Lanford has disappeared off the face of the earth.”

I paused with my fork in midair, wanting to argue with Fritz but ultimately wanting my French toast more. I chewed while my mother sprayed him with questions, all of which were just rephrasings of the basic idea in her first: “What do you mean, disappeared?”

Fritz made a hand gesture that was apparently supposed to represent someone disappearing. “I mean, he's pulled a Houdini, and even Jamie doesn't know where he is.” He turned to me. “So what did you find out?”

“I told Jamie I would follow up on some things.” I didn't intend to go into complicated details or share my destination. Every member of my family would disapprove, if only on principle. They were in the habit of disapproving, so it would be the natural response. “She and the kids are…well, Logan sort of left them in the lurch. I'm really disappointed in him.”

“He is most likely staying with friends.” My mother shook her head, then stood up. “I must go briefly back to the office. We have some more festival business to organize.” She loved it when there was some big to-do to plan for the town. We had always been thrown very elaborate birthday parties.

She gave Fritz a kiss. “Now I can tell them my son will be part of the entertainment.” She waved at the rest of us, giving me her special motherly look of hurt mingled with warning. I was to be a good girl and reconcile with Jack, it said, after which we could arrange the wedding she felt was long overdue.

“Bye, Mom,” I called. We watched her walk briskly out of the restaurant on her sensible black heels.

I turned back to my brothers and my father, the latter wearing a look of longing now that his pancakes had been consumed. I reached for my purse.

“I'm going too.”

Fritz nodded at me. “You do that, Madman. And if you find Mr. AWOL, you can tell him that he'd better get his butt to practice tonight. By the way,” he added, “last time I saw him he told me to give you this. It's some tape you guys made in high school.” Fritz dug in the pocket of his jacket, retrieved a cassette, and pushed it across the table. It was one of the many “party tapes” Logan and I had compiled when we were seniors, partly because Logan had inherited a very portable tape recorder. We had shared similar musical tastes and enjoyed putting together what we considered ideal music combinations. At the time, I'd been heavily into the Eurythmics, R.E.M., and the Eagles. Logan and I liked oldies. I hummed “Desperado” and turned the case over in my hands. “Why is he giving this to me?” I asked.

“I dunno. Cleaning his closets or something.” Fritz ran a smoothing finger along his red mustache. “I obviously don't know the guy's motivations, or I might understand why he was acting so lame. Anyway, thanks for looking into it.”