South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [124]
“Scared of getting his heart broken?”
“Scared of failing. That’s how he saw it. He’d failed with Jackie. Didn’t bring her Up right. Didn’t know how. Couldn’t go through it all again.”
It seemed a poor excuse to Madeline. But maybe she could Understand, just a little. She stared off into space. Overall the story was not surprising. Just one with an overabundance of human frailty. No heroes or villains, exactly. Just people who’d done what they’d done, too late to change any of it, and in the end that wasn’t the worst news in the world.
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?