South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [117]
“I sure can. Is that a garden down there?”
“Yep. Those are tomato plants. I put them in ’cause there’s orange in them and I thought it needed some orange.”
“Good call.”
“I still have to put a car in it. That’s what I’m doing next.”
“Sounds good. I’ve got to finish these dishes, and then we’ll go, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, outlining a car in green paint.
Madeline finished the dishes feeling a strange mixture of things: joy, peace, a wistful lonesomeness for which there might not be a cure.
Halloween day was chill and blustery, drizzling an icy rain. Madeline worked all day on the lobby, cleaning and dragging furniture around. Now she was stocking a small expanse of shelves behind the registration desk with a mini-inventory—some of Mary’s syrup, coffee beans from a company in Chicago, a tiny fleet of woven baskets. Madeline had worked Up the courage to approach Naomi in the shop one day, and she’d agreed to let her carry some of her things. It’d be good to have some merchandise out in time for the wedding reception—which was only a week away. Not in order to sell, but just to show that she would be selling.
She hummed along with the radio as she set out bags of coffee. It was the public station out of Sault Ste. Marie, and the reception faded in and out with the wind. They were playing a recording of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that Madeline had always loved, done by the Academy of St. Martin’s in the Fields, and even though the signal was weak it made her happy.
“You going to play this elevator music all the time in here?” Gladys asked.
“Leave her be, Glad,” Arbutus said without looking Up from her novel.
“The next fine day, I’ll get Up on the roof and set Up a better antenna for you,” Pete promised from where he lay on the floor, peering at the Underside of a radiator. Gladys had charged him with getting the heat pouring out in time for the reception. “You might even pull in something out of Canada then, when the weather’s good.”
Gladys sighed from where she sat at the registration desk over a spiral-bound notebook where she was keeping track of her party organizing: how many tables and chairs and coffee Urns and punch bowls borrowed from which churches, how many pounds of meat and rolls and salads ordered from the big grocery store in the Soo, announcements sent to which papers, flyers put Up when and where, individual invitations sent and answered. It appeared that not only all of McAllaster but most of Ojibwa County and the eastern U.P. was invited. What if they all come? Madeline asked her that morning, looking dubiously around the lobby, which was roomy but not that big. They won’t, Gladys said. But they’ll like being asked, and those that do won’t all stay long. Still, the list of things Madeline was not to forget to bring back from the Soo the coming Friday was staggering. Gladys added to it all the time Until Madeline was sure there wouldn’t be room in the car, especially given the wedding present she was bringing back with her, a secret no one but Pete knew.
“Just what I need,” Gladys said now. “Canuck elevator music. Give me some of that Big Band like we Used to dance to over at the VFW Hall, remember, Butte?”
Arbutus smiled, but she didn’t answer. She was sitting in an armchair by the window reading with Marley on her lap. She seemed serene at the prospect of being married and feted in just a few days. Of course, Gladys was doing all the planning. Arbutus was to be decorative and Pete and Madeline were the mules. Willing mules.
Madeline glanced at the clock. Greyson was due home from kindergarten any minute. Home, well. This was only temporary, Madeline had to remind herself of that, but for now, yes, home. She set a pint of Mary’s maple syrup on the shelf thinking that it was a kind of elixir, a cordial for the sustenance of life itself.
At dusk she lit the jack-o’-lanterns they’d carved with Paul Monday night. They’d carved the pumpkins and then made macaroni and cheese from scratch and put it in the oven (which Pete had repaired), and all evening long it sent out a smell