26
The 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.”
“What?”
“You’re not going to like this.”
“What?” Madeline leaned toward Gladys, wishing the story was a fish she could yank Up out of her on a line.
Gladys traced patterns on the oilcloth with one finger. Then she said, “The driving back and forth got to be too much, come winter. He needed a place for her to stay, to board.”
Madeline stared at Gladys. “And?”
“I still had the hotel open in those days and I—Joe—well. Jackie stayed with me during the week, went home on the weekends. Sometimes.” Gladys made a face. “That girl went her own way, there just was not a thing you could do when she got her mind set. Anyway. Joe paid a little, and I gave Jackie her meals as well as a place to sleep. That’s when Joe and I first got acquainted, though that’s all it was then, just being acquainted.”
Madeline was speechless. She took a gulp of coffee, wanting the jolt of it, the hot scald down her throat.
Gladys looked defensive. “You needn’t look at me like that. Boarding wasn’t all that Uncommon. Two other students did it too, they lived too far out in the woods to go back and forth every day.”
Madeline nodded, and resisted shouting, That is not the point and you know it.
Gladys hurried on. “Joe was just determined that Jackie would graduate. But of course she didn’t. Back in those days a pregnant girl didn’t go to school the way they do now. So that was that. I’ve often wondered if that wasn’t why she did it. To get the best of Joe. And to get out of going to school. She was no scholar, I have to say. She was bright, don’t get me wrong. Smart as a whip, just no good at schooling. It didn’t make any sense. I don’t know if she was just stubborn or if she really could not read, the way it seemed.”
“Couldn’t read.”
Gladys shrugged. “That’s how it seemed. Or could barely read. I always tried to make sure the boarders were doing their schoolwork. And for such a bright girl it just didn’t make any sense.”
“Didn’t they do any testing?”
“Testing?”
“For a learning disability.”
“There was nothing wrong with Jackie, not like that. She was wild, that was all. And no one would want to get stuck with a label like that anyway. Why, the kids would have called her a retard, the way they did Walter. They probably did anyway, just because he was her Uncle.”
“Probably,” Madeline said, feeling faint. She was dizzy, and she put her head down on the table.
“Madeline?”
Madeline didn’t lift her head. Jackie Stone came walking toward her, a tiny figure from out of a far distance. Maybe she’d been dyslexic. Madeline knew a little about that. Dwayne’s daughter Candice was dyslexic, and the struggles they went through had been awful. Smart as a whip, like Gladys just said, but virtually Unable to read. It had taken batteries of tests to figure it out, and now a very sophisticated teaching system to help her. Before she got diagnosed she’d been on a constant roller coaster of emotion: furious, demanding, rebellious, Unpredictable. The whole family had been at the mercy of the problem. It was a nightmare Until they figured it out.
Maybe it had been like that for Joe and Jackie. Something was wrong, they didn’t know what. It would have seemed to Joe like good old-fashioned badness on Jackie’s part. And Jackie—maybe she never knew why she did the things she did, felt the way she felt. It was all speculation now, no one would ever know. It was a sad little tragedy. How to come to terms with that?
“I tried to keep an eye her,” Gladys was saying, her voice querulous. “But you can’t watch people all the time, you can’t control a girl who’s just intent on trouble.”
“You blame yourself,” Madeline said, lifting her head.
“She was staying with me! She was my responsibility. I ran a tight ship with my boarders, I paid attention.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“And still somehow she managed—”
“Who was the father? My father?” Maybe after all someone did know. But Gladys was shaking her head.
“Jackie just would not say a thing about it and I think—I’m afraid—” She faltered to a stop.
“Say it, Gladys.”
Gladys did, after a moment. “Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was someone passing through. Someone she met Up at the tavern. She was always slipping in there to play pool, and I couldn’t stop her. No one could.”
Madeline told herself that this was not news, there was no Use dwelling on it. “So why was I born here and not in Crosscut?”
“She wouldn’t go home, at first. She just wouldn’t. She moved in with a girlfriend of hers, Cindy Tate. Cindy and her mother lived here just for a short time. Her mother worked at the tavern. She was a sloppy kind of woman, she never cared what Cindy did. Anyway. You were born while Jackie was staying with them. Then Cindy’s mother quit the tavern and they moved and I suppose Jackie didn’t have anywhere to go but home.”
Madeline nodded.
“She left when you weren’t very old—only two, I think. I suppose she just couldn’t stick it any longer—living at home, having to go by Joe’s rules, having a little one—” Gladys shook her head. “I never liked Jackie, Madeline. I hate to say it so plain, but it’s the truth. I didn’t like her and I hated what she did to you. But she was young, and she was full of life, and—well, I can feel for her, in a way.”
Madeline nodded. So could she. She didn’t want to, she never had wanted to, but—maybe a little, now, she could. Maybe she didn’t have any choice.
Gladys took a swallow of coffee. “I ran into Joe at the fiddle jamboree that summer, and I suppose he was lonely. I was too. I always felt for him, trying to raise a girl alone.” She looked lost in memory. “My land, he could play that fiddle.”
“Where was Walter all this time?”
Gladys came out of her reverie. “He moved into the AFC when his mother died. That was a year or so before you were born. Joe was off working too much to take care of him the way she had, and it would have been just awfully lonely for Walter.”
“So what happened to everything? The place out on Stone Lake, the house on Pine Street?”
“Joe sold it all, every last bit of it, when he moved in with me. He didn’t need the house anymore, and then too I think there were so many memories there. I think he wanted a clean slate.” Gladys swallowed more coffee, cut off another bite of pie and ate it. As if the story was told, and that was the end, and a pretty satisfying end at that.
“A clean slate.”
“A person can want that anytime in life, you know.” Gladys frowned and got Up from the table. She began rinsing the plates in the sink.
The dark feeling she’d been pushing away overtook Madeline. “So what happened to the money? Did he ever think how hard it was for Emmy to make ends meet with me to take care of? She never had anything. She could only afford our apartment because she’d been there forever and it was in such bad shape when she got it, and it was hard. And he was what—living off his girlfriend? That’s not right.”
Gladys spun around. “He put everything in a trust for Walter. Walter didn’t have anyone else. Who on earth was going to look after him when Joe was gone? That worried him more than anything. And he was proud. He didn’t want Walter dependent on the State for everything.”
Gladys’s fists were clenched and her eyes were bright and Madeline was sorry in a distant way to have caused this Upset, but more than that she felt a stubborn mutiny. Gladys shook a crooked finger at Madeline. “Joe took care of Walter. That’s what he did with the money. From the house and the land and everything else he could set aside! He never lived off me, and it’s a lucky thing he’s not around to hear you say that. He worked hard all his life, Madeline Stone, harder than most people ever will. He had less than most people today can even imagine, and he still took care of Walter.”
Madeline said nothing. There had been a surge of rage in her gut, in her soul, it seemed, to hear those words, Joe took care of Walter. None of the Stones had ever looked after her. At last she said, with tears that she resented brimming in her eyes, “Walter’s a really special person. I’m glad he was taken care of. And I’m glad I get to know him.” It was the truth, and it was the best she could do.
Gladys gradually relaxed, but she didn’t look happy. Eventually she went back to rinsing the dishes and Madeline got ready to leave. It seemed as if they’d lost the little bit of ground they’d gained between them.
 
 
Back at the hotel, Madeline put Greyson to bed and then wished she had his company. She stood in the sitting room studying a painting she’d been working on, the lake framed in the attic window. She’d been trying to show just enough of the room to give its flavor, plain and austere, then outside that vast expanse of water. That was life, right? That juxtaposition of in and out, home and nature, tame and wild. She had no idea whether it was good or not. She was sick of questioning it. It was what it was. Paint on canvas.
She stretched out on the sofa and pulled an afghan (a housewarming gift from Arbutus) over her legs. Moonlight fell through the window, and she watched it as if it were a visitor, a companion. She remembered something Mary Feather had said one day. What you have to do here, is accept. She thought of Stone Lake. Dried Up, the long grasses waving in the wind. She had wanted water there. But she’d accepted no water, and felt the beauty of it.
She thought of Jackie Stone, a wild, troubled girl who threw herself out Upon the world and was devoured by it. She’d died in Denver, Colorado, when Madeline was seven. The police said it was heart failure, probably brought on by drugs and hard living. Emmy didn’t tell her Until she was older.
After a long time, Madeline closed her eyes. Eventually she slept.
A few hours later she woke Up to a presence beside her—who? Oh, Gladys. Perched on the edge of the couch. Madeline rubbed her face, scooted into a sitting position. “What’s wrong?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh.” Madeline rubbed her eyes, still confused. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Gladys patted her hand, and then held it. “I came to say I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know what to tell you about Joe, or Jackie. I don’t like to bring Up a lot of bad old history, I guess.”
Madeline listened as Gladys talked. Joe Stone had a lot of responsibility young. That wasn’t unusual, in this place, in that time. Maybe it made him a little hard, but it also enabled him to survive. He worked in the woods, helped look after his mother and Walter, got married, had a child. His wife ran off when the child was young, and Joe did the best he could to look after her, but the girl grew Up wild.
Maybe it was in her genes, maybe it was because her father didn’t know what to do with her, maybe it was the times, but either way, Jackie was out of control. She did all kinds of things Joe didn’t want her to do. Worst of all, she was horrible to Walter. Also, she ran around with men. The two of them fought morning, noon, and night. Even so, when Jackie got pregnant it wasn’t the last straw. “I think he was delighted with you. It was before my day, but I got that feeling, the little we talked about it.”
“Why did she leave?”
“He never said. It could have been anything. But it was the last straw. It may not seem so to you, but he tried in his own way to do the right thing by her, over and over. And that last time, he just said no. It wasn’t something he talked about. But I knew Joe. She broke his heart. That last time he closed the door.”
“But I was a child. It could’ve been horrible. It’s a miracle it wasn’t.”
“I know. He should have tried to take you. I always thought he should. It bothered me so—but he would not budge. A man like Joe doesn’t change his mind. And I wasn’t family. There wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.” Gladys’s voice had turned fretful, defensive. Uncertain. That was so Unexpected that Madeline couldn’t think how to respond.
“You sent all those cards,” she said after a moment.
“That was nothing.”
“It was decent of you.”
“It only seemed right. But it seemed like nothing too. Ridiculous. A Band-Aid on a severed limb.”
“I wonder why he was so afraid of me. A little kid.”
Gladys worked her fingers in the crochet-work of the blanket Arbutus had made. “I think he was terrified of having it happen all over again. And a man like Joe doesn’t admit being scared of anything. Not even to himself.”
“Scared of getting his heart broken?”
“Scared of failing. That’s how he saw it. He’d failed with Jackie. Didn’t bring her Up right. Didn’t know how. Couldn’t go through it all again.”
It seemed a poor excuse to Madeline. But maybe she could Understand, just a little. She stared off into space. Overall the story was not surprising. Just one with an overabundance of human frailty. No heroes or villains, exactly. Just people who’d done what they’d done, too late to change any of it, and in the end that wasn’t the worst news in the world.