South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [110]
Maybe Randi was feeling just well enough to realize how bad things were. Her injuries were slow to heal and the doctor said she’d be lame for the rest of her life. Her court date had been postponed, which prolonged the agony of waiting, and it was very likely things would not turn out well when it did happen. Sometimes her mood was so bad that Madeline thought it would be better not to take Greyson to see her so often, but the visits seemed crucial to him.
“Mom, look what I did in school,” he told her one day, a big sheet of green construction paper cradled in both hands. He had carried it on his lap in the car, declining Madeline’s offer to set it on the backseat because if they had to stop fast it might slide and get bumped. “I love you MOM,” was spelled out, the “MOM” done in elbow macaroni. Thick gobs of glue had oozed from beneath the crooked pasta pieces, drying in translucent bumps on the fuzzy paper, and a red crayon heart encircled all of it. In one corner Purple Man brandished his sword. Greyson said the teacher had helped them to write whatever they wanted on their papers, but he’d done everything else himself. Madeline had told him truthfully that it was beautiful.
Now he struggled to clamber Up into Randi’s lap without crumpling the paper. She was sitting in a wheelchair in the front room facing the enormous television.
“You’re hurting, Grey, get down.” She didn’t take her eyes from the TV.
Greyson’s face crumpled.
“Randi,” Madeline said. After a few stubborn moments Randi raised her eyes and they glared at each other. “Greyson, go and find my Uncle Walter.”
“No, I don’t want to, we just got here, I want to show my mom what I made her.”
“You can show her in a few minutes. Go find Walter. He likes to see you.”
Greyson trudged away.
Randi was staring at the television again. Madeline went and switched it off, to the disgust of an old man parked in a recliner who shouted, “Hey!”
“Sorry.” She switched it back on. Randi looked pleased and Madeline grabbed the handles of her chair and pushed her out onto the porch.
“It’s cold out here, take me back in.”
“I’ll take you back after you listen. You have royally screwed Up, Randi, you’re going to jail Unless some miracle happens. Did you ever stop and think how that’s going to be for Greyson?”
“He’s fine. He’s got you.”
“He’s not fine. He does have me—and Paul and Gladys and Arbutus and a dozen other people—but the one he wants is you. Don’t make it worse than it is. Get yourself together. Pay attention to him.”
“You have no idea what this is like.”
“I don’t care what this is like. You created the problem, you fix it. Greyson looks forward to seeing you like crazy, and you act like he doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“I’ll just screw Up his life anyway, he’s better off without me. Everybody is.”
“That’s a cop-out. People care about you.”
“Like who?”
Madeline stared at Randi in disbelief. “Half the town’s pitched in to help.”
“People just do that here, they’d do it for anybody, they have to. They don’t care about me.”
“Nobody has to do anything. And what about Gladys and Arbutus? And Paul? And me?”
Randi bit her lip, shaking her head, and stared into the distance.
“Look. The worst thing you can do to Greyson is to just disappear.”
“I’m right here,” she said dully.
Despite herself Madeline felt a flash of sympathy. How hopeless it must all look from the vantage point of this chair. But Randi couldn’t give in to that. “Ignoring him is like disappearing. You’re not yourself anymore.”
“No shit.”
“Things will get better,” Madeline said, thinking that they would. Better, and worse, and better again, that constant ebb and flow that life was.
“Nothing’s ever gonna be the same,” Randi said, and for the first time her tone was devoid of attitude. “I can’t even