27
On a very windy night soon after, after a
long sprint of cleaning and errand-running and taking Greyson to
see Randi (and feeling exasperated with Randi, Madeline’s good
intentions of seeing her good side, sympathizing with her pain and
depression, flown out the window in the face of Randi’s ill humor),
Madeline fixed the easiest thing she could think of for supper,
hamburgers, and made Greyson succumb to a bath. When he was shiny
with cleanliness and in bed, she snuggled the comforter Under his
chin with a sense of relief. One step at a time, they had survived
another day. He gave her a peaked smile. He was worn out by the
visit to Randi and so was she.
“You want me to read you a story?”
“Okay.” He sighed and she smoothed a flop of bangs
away from his forehead.
“What’ll it be tonight?”
“I don’t care. Whatever you pick.”
Madeline read from the Song of Hiawatha,
whose rhythms had been so entrancing to her at his age. Outside the
wind had picked Up another notch and was howling around the
building with an insistence that was a little alarming. Thrilling
too, though. “‘By the shore of Gitche Gumee, by the shining
Big-Sea-Water,’ ” Madeline recited, the roar of the lake and
the moan of the wind seeming a fitting backdrop to Longfellow’s
poem.
After Greyson dropped off to sleep she curled Up on
the couch with a sketchbook and found herself drawing Ada’s cabin.
She frowned at the picture, but how unsurprising that this is what
her hand would choose. In quiet moments her thoughts lit on her
family, on Jackie and Joe and Walter and Ada. She thought of the
little skunk in Ada’s journal, so alive and mischievous. No matter
what else had happened, this was something they had in common, Ada
and Madeline. And Joe.
Maybe she would find one of Joe’s caricatures
somewhere, someday.
This Unexpected thought—startling in its arrival,
its matter-of-factness, in the forgiveness it implied—brought with
it a sudden, Unlooked-for sense of peace.
Maybe it would not be impossible after all to keep
her word to Emmy. Promise me you’ll try and forgive the
man.
She headed downstairs after a while, thinking of
cocoa, but stopped on the way at Room Five. Jackie’s room,
according to Gladys. It was the same as all the others. Floral
wallpaper, a light dangling from a cloth cord, a bed and dresser
and chair, a rope fire escape coiled on the floor beneath the
window. Had Jackie ever Used it to sneak out? Probably. Madeline
went and grabbed the rope—thick scratchy hemp anchored to the floor
by a massive bolt, with knots tied in it every few feet—and tugged.
Still solid. Every room had one. Maybe this was the only one that
had ever been Used.
She could, if she squinted, see a girl flinging her
books on the bureau, scrambling out of her school clothes and into
something more fun. How prisonlike this room must’ve seemed in
1973, when Jackie was burning with energy and youth and
frustration. When the world outside was happening, and nothing at
all was going on in McAllaster, never had been and never would be,
in the mind of a sixteen-year-old girl. Or maybe instead it had
been a release from the tensions at 512 Pine Street.
Something was banging against the building. She
went to the window to see if she could tell what it was, but it was
too dark to be sure. Maybe a tree branch. After a moment the
banging stopped, though the wind howled on. Madeline closed the
door and continued toward the kitchen.
While she was putting the kettle on, the phone on
the registration desk rang. “Madeline?” Gladys’s voice came tetchy
over the wire. “Is that you?”
“Yes.” Who else?
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, why?”
“Oh, this wind. My power’s gone out.”
“Mine’s on.”
Gladys grunted. “I wondered about those old apple
trees in the yard. They’re so close to the dining room
windows.”
“I think they’re okay. I didn’t hear anything. You
want me to go check?”
“My dad planted those.”
“I’ll go take a look.”
“No, don’t. You’d have heard if a limb cracked off,
I’d think. And what would you do about it, anyway? No, stay
inside.”
“All right.”
Gladys was quiet then. Madeline tried to figure out
what it was she really wanted. Maybe she was just Unnerved by the
wind and the loss of her electricity. “Do you—”
“It’s just wind,” Gladys broke in, as if Madeline
had been the one to call her. “A November gale. It was like this
the night the Fitzgerald sank. I’m going to bed,
goodnight.”
Do you want me to come up there? was what
Madeline had been going to ask, but Gladys had already hung
Up.
In the tiny hours of the morning, Paul
stood in the street staring at a mishmash of shingles and rafters
and two-by-fours and clapboard and tree limbs and branches. His
pizzeria, his loved and hated pizzeria, smashed. He couldn’t get
his mind around it.
“You okay?” John Fitzgerald asked. His face and
gear were littered with sawdust. He’d been sawing Up maple limbs
and branches for the better part of two hours, ever since Paul’d
called the volunteer fire department in to help him make sure the
tree that had come down wasn’t going to bring any other surprises,
like a fire from downed wires. So far, so good, on that score. But
as for Garceau’s—the kitchen, anyway, where the damage was the
worst—it was a disaster.
Paul nodded, although he was not okay, not at
all.
“You want to come stay with the wife and me for the
rest of the night?”
Paul shook his head.
John considered this, and then he said, “I think
you better.”
Two days later Paul called Jim and told him
he’d be ready to start in a week. He gave his notice at the prison,
put in a forwarding order for his mail, told his suppliers he’d pay
them off as he could, put the Fairlane in storage, and notified the
water company and the phone and electric and gas companies that
Garceau’s was history. He hauled truckloads of debris and ruined
equipment to the landfill in Crosscut, got a couple of guys to help
him patch Up the roof and wall as best he could with plywood and
tarpaper and tarps, and barred the doors and windows so no one
could sneak in and get hurt. He was operating in a haze, but a
methodical haze.
He avoided everyone while he made his arrangements,
especially Greyson and Madeline. They tracked him down a couple of
times, but he pleaded busyness, something pressing he had to do,
somewhere he had to be, and shuffled them away before anything of
consequence could be said, or asked.
It was a lousy way to act, but necessary. He was a
turtle drawing into his shell. He knew it, he knew it wasn’t fair,
but he had to do it. Turtles had shells for a reason. He saw
himself now as a man who had been drowning gradually, sinking Under
an ever-increasing weight. The mammoth old maple cracking through
the kitchen roof and wall was the last stone on the pile; it put
him Under.
He walked from John’s to the hotel on the day he
was leaving, a sunny November afternoon, Unseasonably mild. It was
hard to believe that just a week ago a gale had been blowing. Hard
to believe that in a few minutes he’d be headed down the highway.
He switched the thought off. Madeline and Greyson were sitting in
rockers on the porch.
“Hello, Mr. Garceau,” Greyson said.
“Afternoon, Mr. Hopkins.” Paul tried a smile out on
Greyson, but it fell flat. He couldn’t manage to make it real, and
Greyson didn’t even pretend he was interested in joking
around.
His expression was very serious. “I’m sorry about
the wind blowing the tree down and wrecking your kitchen.”
“Me too, buddy. Me too.”
“What will you do?” Madeline asked. She had a shirt
that must be Greyson’s in her lap, and it looked like she was
trying to mend it.
“I’m going downstate. I came to say goodbye.”
“Oh,” Madeline said, looking dismayed.
Paul transferred his attention to Greyson. “I’ll
miss you, kid.”
Greyson nodded, biting his lip.
“I’ll write to you. You write back, tell me how
you’re doing. I’ll call, too.”
“But you aren’t moving away for good, right? It’s
just for the winter?” Greyson looked at him anxiously, and Paul
didn’t know what to say. A lot of people went away for the winter,
for work or warmer weather, it wasn’t unusual. It’d be easier for
Greyson to think that. And by the time spring came—maybe he’d have
forgotten Paul, more or less. Didn’t kids do that? Bounce back,
adjust?
“Yeah, I might be back in the spring.”
Madeline was frowning, and he knew what she was
thinking. Don’t get his hopes up if that isn’t true, he’s had
enough disappointments. Just be honest. That was fair, but Paul
couldn’t do it. Faced with leaving the boy, the lie made Paul feel
better too, was the truth of it.
Greyson scrambled from his rocker. “I’m going to
get you something to take with you. Wait, I’ll be right
back.”
Paul nodded.
“I’m sorry too,” Madeline said quietly. “Gladys
told me she heard you were moving, but I guess I didn’t believe it.
You know how rumors are.”
“The damage is bad. You can see.”
“I know. But—don’t you have insurance?”
Paul didn’t want to talk about what insurance might
or might not pay out, or how he might be able to rebuild. He was
leaving, period. Part of him yelled No, stop, at every turn,
but it was the only thing left to do.
“What happened?” Madeline asked when he didn’t
answer her first question.
“The wind brought that old maple on the west side
down. It’s my own fault. I should have had it taken down years ago.
It was rotten at the core and I knew it. But I loved it. I loved
the shade. And then there was a leak in the roof I never got around
to fixing. The wall was pretty rotten, worse than I realized, and
it just gave.”
Madeline grimaced in sympathy. “You were there,
right?”
“Sleeping. The first crack of it breaking woke me
Up.”
“Scary.”
Paul shrugged. “Yeah, well. It’s my own
fault.”
“It was a wind,” Madeline protested. “A wind like
the wind that sank the Fitzgerald, is what Gladys
said.”
“I knew that tree was rotten. I knew the roof was
leaking. I just didn’t do anything about it. I deserve whatever I
get for being so stupid.”
“You can’t blame yourself, it doesn’t do any good,”
Madeline said. She knew this from experience.
“It’s a miracle it didn’t happen a long time ago.
This was just so damned Unnecessary.”
Madeline saw that he was not going to be talked out
of his guilt and regret. She reached Up and took his hand. “I’m
really sorry.”
He’d heard this so many times that he couldn’t
respond to it again.
“Hey,” she said, shaking his hand to get his
attention. “I mean it.”
“I know,” he said, staring off across the
water.
“Do you really think you’ll be back in the
spring?”
He looked at her then. Her eyes seemed full of
sympathy, a willingness to Understand. “I don’t know. The truth is,
I was thinking about going anyway.”
Madeline took her hand back and poked her needle in
and out of the fabric of Greyson’s shirt a few times. Without
looking Up she said, “Greyson’s going to hate this.”
“Me too.” Paul rubbed the back of his hand against
his face, then took off his glasses and scrubbed at his eyes. He
thought about taking off, avoiding this. But no, he had to wait for
Greyson.
“You’ve been so much help.”
“No big deal.” He could hardly get the words
out.
“Ha. All that drywall! And the time you spend with
Grey. This will be hard.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m going to miss him like
crazy.”
“Randi was in such a bad mood the other day. I
guess this is why.”
Paul looked at the top of Madeline’s head, her
short dark hair, the curve of her neck. He swallowed back a feeling
that wanted to burst out of him, an emotion that would interfere
with the course he’d laid out for himself in the last few days.
“Randi got rid of me awhile back.”
Madeline’s head shot Up then, and her expression
was gratifyingly baffled. “What? Why? You have to be the
best thing that’s ever happened to her.”
He couldn’t help but laugh, a real laugh. Something
inside him felt less weighted down for an instant. “She didn’t see
it that way.”
“Well, then she’s blind. Anyway, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“You’re too old for her anyway.”
“Thanks!”
“I didn’t mean—I meant she’s too young for
you.”
“Great.” Paul made it sound sour, but he was
smiling. He was going to miss Madeline. Greyson, Madeline, the
smell of the water always in the air, the outlines of this town
that had become so familiar, everything. He couldn’t think about
it.
The door of the hotel opened and Greyson came out
holding something in his hand. A kaleidoscope. He held it out to
Paul. “This is like looking at the stars,” he said. “Only you can
look anytime, even when it’s light. It’s really cool, you want me
to show you how it works?”
A great quietness descended over Madeline
after Paul left.
“I’m going Upstairs,” Greyson said, sounding
flattened. Madeline nodded, but pretty soon she decided this was no
good. She trotted Up the stairs and banged on his door and flung it
open. He was lying on his bed, staring Up at the ceiling, tossing a
rubber ball in the air. “Come on, get Up.” She grabbed his ankle
and shook it.
“I don’t want to.”
“Too bad. There’s someplace we have to go.”
“Where?” he said, without interest.
“It’s a secret. Put on your shoes.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Too bad,” she said again. She went to her own room
to get a knapsack, and after a moment heard his feet hit the
floor.
It was dark before they got back. Madeline
fixed grilled cheese sandwiches with the last of her energy, and
watched Greyson nearly nod off over his plate. “Go on, get ready
for bed,” she told him when he’d finished eating. “I’ll be Up in a
few minutes.”
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.