South of Superior (13 page)

“Oh—for
get
it,” Madeline snapped, disgusted with Gladys, and Arbutus, too. She'd seemed nothing but pleased to see Greyson, absolutely Unconcerned that his mother was hours late to get him. Didn't either of them wonder how that made him feel? She finished the dishes in angry silence and decided to finally tackle the flat on her car.

It took her half an hour to wrangle the kicksled out of the way so she could get at the jack, and then get the jack set to her satisfaction, another ten minutes to find the lug wrench and get the first nut loosened. She kept having to reread the owner's manual, which was—miraculously, really—stowed in the glove box. No matter how frustrating it was, it beat reviewing what a wonderful mother Randi Hopkins was. She gave the next lug nut a fierce wrench and it loosened. She got through the other three that same way:
I do not
, wrench!
like
, wrench!
Randi Hopkins
, wrench!

All done. She stepped back, inspecting her progress. What next? She was on her stomach trying to attach the doohickey to the jack when a great feeling of peace washed over her. Who needed therapy when you had a crappy old car to contend with?

 

 

Gladys watched Madeline
out the parlor window. When she rolled over on her back and grinned at the sky, Gladys thought,
At least she worked that out of her system. For the moment.
How like she was to Joe in some ways. Quick-tempered, judgmental, so sure of being in the right, so slow to forgive. Stubborn and guarded, not one to wear her feelings on her sleeve. But she seemed to have a good heart like Joe too. Not that Madeline would ever believe that about him.

Gladys knew she'd started things off wrong with Madeline, snapping at her when she asked which house in McAllaster had belonged to Joe. She wasn't sure why she'd done that. Maybe because Madeline already had her mind made Up about him. Maybe because her tone that morning had reminded her of Jackie, however Unfairly. Too familiar somehow. Chummy ahead of real friendship, charming you out of something. Probably mostly because Gladys felt guilty. For years she had told herself there was no reason why she should, but it was a feeling that would not go away.

Gladys let the lace curtain fall back across the window. She stood frowning for a moment, then headed to the kitchen for a bucket of hot soapy water and some glass cleaner. Enough brooding. Brooding never did any good.

W
hat
jack
asses,” Gladys cried after she'd returned from a walk to the post office and was opening the mail one morning the next week.

“What is it?” Madeline asked, looking Up from a crossword.

Gladys flapped the papers in the air. “The nerve!” She inhaled a wavering breath. “Those
people
. I should have
known
.” She began to pace around the kitchen.

“What are you talking about?”

“They can't get away with this. Why, I ought to—” She slammed a fist down on the table. “Bullies, that's what they are. They think they can have anything they want, any way they want.” She was trembling with anger.

“Gladys, stop. Please sit down.”

“I don't want to sit down. I will not stand for this kind of—
malarkey
.”

“You're going to make yourself ill. Stop a minute and breathe.” Madeline had stood Up and now prodded Gladys toward a chair.

Gladys sat, making sharp, furious exhales. Madeline went and got her a glass of water. When she'd drunk a little of it, Madeline pulled Up a chair and tugged at the letter Gladys still had clenched in her hand. When she finally wrested it free she saw that it said that due to nonpayment of accounts due, Alex and Terry Benson of Benson's SuperValu were pursuing a case in court, to be heard at the courthouse in Crosscut on August the sixteenth.

“Oh, Gladys. This is bad. I've got a little money, I can lend it to you. Maybe I'll drop the insurance off the car, save something there. I practically can't drive it anyway.”

“I am
not
paying that bill!”

“But you have to. I mean, you did Use the groceries, right? Aside from the ones you took back that day? If you don't pay, they'll get a judgment against you.”

“I don't care. I wouldn't pay that bill now if they dragged me to China on the end of a rope.”

“But, Gladys—”

“I mean what I say.
I will not pay
.”

Madeline sat back. Gladys pressed her lips into a thin line. They glared at each other for a long moment. “What about Arbutus?” Madeline asked at last. “How'll she feel? You tell me you don't want her Upset with money worries or anything else, you're sneaking around to sell off your prized possessions, but you're going to fight a battle you can't win in court?”

Gladys brushed invisible specks of lint off her slacks, and said again, “I will not pay that bill. Not like this. Not their way. I won't go crawling. I'll see them in court.”

 

 

Paul thought the situation
was funny when Madeline told him about it the next day. She was doing an extra shift because one of the Russian girls he'd hired claimed she was so ill she couldn't get out of bed, but Paul said it probably had more to do with a party he'd heard went on the night before. “So she's history,” he'd said on the phone when he called Madeline to see if she could come in.

“You're firing her? What if she's really sick?”

“She's not sick,” he'd said, as if that answered the question completely.

“But it's not funny at all,” she said now, snapping an order Up on the wheel. “Arbutus will hate it, all the fuss, people talking. Gladys'll get listed in the paper for God's sake, don't you ever read the court news?”

“Everybody reads the court news. Major entertainment.”

“My point exactly.”

Paul slid a deep-dish Mediterranean onto the shelf and Madeline delivered it. After that they were too busy to talk. The stream of tourists coming through was getting larger; McAllaster was a different town than the one she'd pulled into a month before.

She returned to the subject of Gladys and the SuperValu in the late afternoon lull. “I can't believe she's going through with this.” She shucked off her sneakers and flexed her feet. Paul sprawled in the booth opposite her.

“I'll send a calzone down with you to the prison, hide a file in it.”

“Stop.”

“If Channel Four news comes, mention Garceau's.”

“Be serious.”

“We could Use the publicity. I'll be glad to come out in support of this brave old Finlander who's fighting for her right to free groceries.”

“Paul.”
She swatted at him across the table.

He grinned. “Well, isn't that what she's after?”

Madeline sighed and shoved her feet back into her sneakers. “It really isn't funny, you know.”

“But it is. Everyone gets so excited. Every little thing is an inferno.”

“I thought you'd be on my side.”

“I am on your side.”

“Right.” She gave him a look.

“Of course I am. Otherwise, would I offer to ruin a perfectly good calzone with a file, and compromise my reputation as a law-abiding citizen to boot?”

“Stop it, I'm worried.”

He tipped his head slightly and his glasses glinted in the sun coming through the side window. He ran a hand through his hair. “So do something about it.”

“Like what? You know Gladys.”

“Go and explain to the Bensons, maybe. I don't like them much but they're not monsters. Maybe they don't really know the situation, maybe they just need to be asked. Sometimes that's all people want, to be made to feel correct, you know? You're right, I'm wrong, forgive me my trespasses.” He had his hands together as if in prayer or placation, and he was smiling, but there was sympathy in his face, she thought.

“I don't think so.”

Paul shrugged.

Madeline considered his suggestion through the last hour of her shift. Maybe he was right, after all. It was the simplest solution, and maybe for that reason alone it would work.

 

 

“I'll drop the case
when the entire bill is paid in full, including what she returned that day, no sooner,” Terry Benson said. “That is, Unless she's willing to negotiate.”

“What does that mean?”

Terry shrugged.

“I'm sure you'll get paid,” Madeline lied, because of course Gladys was as good as her word. “But taking her to court—come on. She's trying to take care of her sister and she's having trouble keeping Up. You should see what they charge for a day in rehab. Stuff like this happens and things fall apart.” Look at what she and Emmy had gone through, trying to keep things together. Sometimes it was almost impossible.

“That is
not
my problem. Do you have any idea how many Unpaid accounts there are? I can't afford it!”

A man in a striped shirt joined her at the register. Her husband, Alex. “I can afford it,” he said. (But Madeline wondered. How like a man, especially this sort of man, to claim a wealth he didn't actually possess.) “I'm just not going to. Half these people Up here expect a free handout and I'm not going to provide it, not for Gladys Hansen or that old drunk Emil, or anyone. And Randi's got plenty of ways to make a buck from what I hear. You might as well not come begging for
any
of them.”

Madeline wanted to dive across the counter and strangle him. When she managed to speak, her voice was Uneven. “You know what? I think you're pathetic. You're a pathetic, self-righteous
loser
. You may be in the right legally, but you are just wrong out here in the world where I live. To Hell with you.”

She turned and stalked out. Her heart was racing and she felt her pulse everywhere, in her throat and wrists and legs.
God
, she hated smug people. What business was it of his if Emil drank? At least Emil wasn't an Uptight, supercilious pig! Besides that, Alex Benson drank plenty himself and lost at cards too, from what she'd heard working at Garceau's. And he should be careful what he insinuated about Randi's habits, given his own reputation for trying to feel Up the female employees. Why, Verna Callihan had quit over it not a month ago, Madeline thought with indignation, though she had only heard this secondhand and had never met Verna.

She marched back to her car and slammed the door, then sat panting in fury. One good thing, Gladys would've been proud of her for telling them off. But of course she wasn't going to tell Gladys. Gladys would kill her if she knew Madeline had not only presumed to go peacekeeping, but also failed at it.

Humiliation started to seep in. What had she been thinking, to put herself in such a stupid position? Of course the Bensons weren't going to say, Okay, we'll back off since you've asked so nicely. That had just been a really bad idea of Paul's. Why had she listened?

Madeline huffed in aggravation and closed her eyes, wishing she could hit rewind and Undo the last half hour. Eventually she felt a breeze pat her cheek through the open window, heard the lake sloshing into shore, the gulls keening. She opened her eyes and gazed at the Hotel Leppinen. She longed to climb Up to the attic, get out her sketchbook, and draw Until she forgot this humiliation. The idea was so appealing. The key to the back door was sitting in the ashtray of her car, where she'd put it after that second time she Used it. She told herself that when Gladys did ask for the key, it would be most natural if it was there. It would seem as if she'd never Used it without permission at all, seem as if it had sat in the car ever since the first errand. It would seem that way to herself as well as to Gladys. That was human nature, right? To justify things, to believe its own half-truths and evasions? And what harm could there be in going in? None. Gladys wouldn't even care. Probably.

Madeline had been Up in the attic for nearly half an hour when something clicked into place in her head. Scattered phrases replayed themselves:

The Bensons wanted the hotel. It had to be. Frowning, Madeline put her pencil down. It was a horrible thought. She tried to go back to the drawing—Mary Feather in the doorway of her place—but she couldn't. Before long she had trotted down the stairs and was back in the Buick. She had to go ask Gladys straight out.

Madeline turned the key in the ignition, but the car didn't start. It was just—dead. She didn't believe it at first. But after twenty minutes of fiddling, she faced the inevitable. The Buick was staying here, and she was walking home, and no telling how long it would take to fix or what it would cost.

 

 

Gladys sat beside Arbutus
on Butte's bedroom floor, reading a story out loud. It was one of Butte's sillier romances, but what did she care, as long as it passed the time and kept their minds occupied. She glanced at her watch as she turned a page.
Where
was Madeline? Even if she'd had to work a little late she should have been back by now.

Arbutus had been doing so well lately, they'd gotten lax about her always having help in and out of bed, and sure enough, while Gladys was in the kitchen doing dishes, Arbutus had woken Up from a nap and gotten Up on her own. Gladys had heard a thump and a yelp and had gone running, her hands dripping dish suds.