South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [103]
“I can sound any way I want to, I’m the one stuck in this bed feeling like crap.”
“Whose fault is that?” Paul snapped.
“See? You’re mad at me.”
Paul groaned.
“Look,” she said, after a moment. “I know you’re mad. You’re mad I screwed Up, mad I’m in trouble, mad about the accident, all of it. I kind of don’t blame you. But I’m mad, too. You’re here like it’s a duty. I don’t want to be anybody’s duty.”
“You’re not a duty.”
Randi sighed and closed her eyes again.
Paul reached out and touched her hair—cropped short since she’d been in the hospital. It felt soft and bristly. “This is just a hard time. We’ll work it out.”
She shook her head. “No. We won’t. You’re too old for me, Paul. You’re too serious. You’re too—” She made a face and gave Up trying to explain what was wrong with him.
“I know how you feel, you know. When I was in that accident as a kid, I was in the hospital for weeks. I hurt, bad, and I hated everybody. I remember how it is.”
Randi closed her eyes for a moment, as if to shut him off, like a TV or a radio. “Stop.”
“I’m just trying to say, I get it.”
“I don’t want you to get it.”
“Randi, come on.” He tried to take her hand but she jerked it away.
“Look. I have all kinds of trouble to wade through. I don’t want to have to go along feeling grateful to you the whole way.” She shut her eyes again.
Paul waited, but she didn’t open them. Finally he got Up to leave. When he was at the door he stopped. “Why’d you do such a dumb thing, anyway? That’s what I want to know. Things were good with Us, I thought. Why get mixed Up in this? Did you want the money, or what? You could’ve asked. I could’ve lent you some.”
She shook her head, and tears leaked from her closed eyes.
“Why, Randi?”
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Because it’s what I do. I screw Up.”
“Randi, that’s not—”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d get caught. The money—that wasn’t it. Not really. I like Leon and them. They asked me could I get them some stuff. And I did. That’s all.”
One afternoon Madeline put down her scrub brush and collected Greyson from where he was playing train with a row of cardboard boxes, and headed across the street. Mary was lounging in her lawnchair with Jack tied nearby. It was a bright day, mild for early October, the sunshine making everything clear-edged. Madeline thought of how to paint that—sharp outlines, primary colors. The light made the world seem unambiguous. Of course that was an illusion, but illusions had their place.
Greyson went and sat in the dirt just out of range of Jack’s teeth and Madeline settled down into Mary’s spare lawnchair with elaborate gestures of comfort, stretched her legs out and her arms Up over her head, groaned a loud ahhh that made Greyson giggle.
“You’re cheerful,” Mary said, giving her a look that was both skeptical and indulgent. Madeline didn’t mind that. Mary was older and had seen more. In a way she was Madeline’s lost past. If Jackie Stone had stayed in Crosscut, local women—tough northern women like Mary and Arbutus and yes, even Gladys, women with big stoic hearts—might have looked after her when she was a child. They might have raised and taught her to some extent, kept an eye on her. Even though she’d had something else good in its place, it gave her a right feeling to be watched over by them now.
“Sheriff been here yet?” Madeline asked.
“Nope. Late today.”
“What a coward.”
Mary gave her a look. “Thought you didn’t like con-fron-tations.”
Madeline had confessed that one day. “Aw, that was somebody else,” she said, grinning beneath the brim of her hat. The hat was white with lime polka dots and had a huge floppy brim. She’d found it in the hotel, still in a crinkled, yellowed cellophane wrapper—an old piece of inventory, circa 1970 probably. It had made Greyson laugh when she put it on so she wore it whenever she could. She shoved it back on her head, slumped in her chair, tucked her thumbs in her belt loops, and said, “Let’s give ’em Hell,” drawling like a gunslinger on one of the old Westerns Greyson and Arbutus liked