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.