South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [101]
Someone in town (Madeline never knew who) organized a collection to help with Greyson’s Upkeep. It was a bundle of cash given anonymously, and Madeline was nonplussed at the trust this showed, and the easy acceptance of her as his substitute parent. Gladys brushed this off. “People’re just doing what they would for anyone. You’ve said you’ll look after him and you will. Take the money. You’ll need it.”
There was another collection to help with Randi’s medical bills, and Madeline heard that even the Bensons sent something.
“That’s amazing,” Madeline told Gladys, but Gladys shrugged this off too. Despite everything, Gladys had accepted them at some level, that was suddenly clear to Madeline. Personal feelings didn’t enter into it, not in a crisis.
And that—the bipartisan way people turned out to help—did amaze Madeline. More accurately, it took hold of her and rattled something in her. There was something to Understand, here: McAllaster was a kind of tribe. This wasn’t cozy, or nice. She sensed that it was an equation, that membership would exact a price: the loss of privacy, anonymity, certain freedoms she’d taken for granted in Chicago, maybe the loss of the right to selfishness. Everybody in this tribe didn’t love each other. They disagreed and gossiped and argued; they laid traps for each other and rejoiced when the trap was sprung; they relished placing blame wherever it would stick and took pleasure in one another’s mistakes. But when there was trouble, there was help.
That was sobering. At a time like this—when she needed all the help she could get—it was something to pay attention to.
Madeline’s life became divided into before the accident and after, as if a cleaver had been whacked through it. Pretty soon it was hard to remember a time when she hadn’t been responsible for Greyson. Her goal was to get into a routine: school, hospital visits, meals, chores, getting the hotel in order. The hardest thing was trying to keep Greyson on a reasonable emotional balance, but she just kept putting one foot in front of the other, telling herself that things would work out.
She started collecting bids for work on the hotel. The apartment hadn’t sold yet but she was going forward anyway. Like Gladys said from the start, the scope of the work was huge. The roof, the wiring, the heat—all nonnegotiable, they had to be fixed. It was going to be so expensive that every time she looked at the numbers her heart seized. The cleaning she could do herself, the gutting of the charred paper and plaster and lathe in the attic, and the interior painting and papering, too—eventually—but there was no way she could tackle the outside, not physically or financially; it would have to wait. The most important thing was getting ready to open, which she wanted to do by Thanksgiving. I need a job, she’d told Gladys and Arbutus. I want to take care of Greyson for as long as he needs me. I still want the hotel, and I’m sure my apartment will sell, so what do you say?
They said all right. She could act as if she owned the hotel already. They’d pitch in any way they could. Arbutus said this with all her natural warmth and openheartedness; Gladys was a different story. She was polite now. She’d talk to Madeline almost naturally. But Madeline was sure she hadn’t forgiven or forgotten. She was behaving well for Greyson’s sake, and that was all that mattered.
Pete was helping too. He was buying Arbutus’s house, but he’d wait to move in Until Madeline moved out. He was staying in a rented cabin and helping Madeline with handyman tasks. He said it was good to have a job, even if it didn’t pay. Madeline’s protests, her worries that this was Unfair to him, could only evaporate in the face of his good humor. “It’s good to be needed,” he told her one day when it was just the two of them in the hotel, looking at the boiler. “I’ve been bored these last few years. I don’t like working on the newer cars much, they’re all computer chips. I’m not a rich man but I’m