South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [130]
Only it wasn’t. Madeline was here, and little by little Gladys had been trying to admit that the past wasn’t all done and gone after all.
It was late when she left the room Arbutus had stayed in. She was grubby and tired and sore, but she was victorious, too. The closet was clean. She should have done it years ago. She had a pile of things for Emil, and one for the thrift shop, a big bag of garbage, and a few things Madeline might want. There were only two things she kept back, and only Until Christmas.
29
The countryside near Saginaw where Paul grew Up was flat, cut into big squares by country roads that bordered fields of corn and wheat and sugar beets. It had seemed beautiful to him once, and it was still pretty in a way, but it felt oppressive, too. Where was the water? At least in the winter the air was not as heavy as it was in the summer.
When he was growing Up, his parents had an old farmhouse on an acre of land at the edge of Edwardsville, but a few years ago they’d moved into a subdivision. Paul had always hated subdivisions—their sameness and banality—but it wasn’t bad. The house was cheerful and bright, comfortable. It was nice, in a way, that his mom had gotten rid of most of the old furniture when they moved; everything didn’t remind him of the past.
Paul had a routine. Get Up in time to go to the gym, get a shower, change into work clothes, stop by the Speedway for coffee, then head to the office. Mostly he was on the phone and the computer, ordering materials, looking for deals, doing paperwork. He took a bag lunch and ate at his desk around noon, and then worked Until five.
At home he fixed dinner if he could talk his mother into letting him, washed the dishes, ditto if his mother would let him, then strong-armed his dad into taking a walk because his doctor said it was important to do that. Then they’d watch a little television and go to sleep. Weekends he got together with his sisters and their husbands and kids. The job was okayish (although more deskwork than he’d expected), and it was good to be around his family, but after a month Paul started to think, This is it?
From Christmas to the third week of January the construction office was closed. Jim did that every year, laid everybody off and took a couple of weeks himself. Paul had known it was coming Up, but when it happened it threw him. He couldn’t stop prowling around the house, looking for things to do. There wasn’t much, barely even a lightbulb to be changed.
“You’re making me nervous,” his mother told him one morning, a week into his mandatory vacation. His dad had gone to drink coffee at Hardee’s with his buddies. He’d invited Paul to come along but Paul didn’t want to. “Why don’t you relax?”
“I am relaxed,” Paul said, drumming his fingers on the table, then jumping Up to fiddle with the doohickey that controlled the blinds. It seemed sticky to him, maybe he could fix that.
“Paul. Sit down.”
Paul frowned but he did sit because even all these years later he was conditioned to obey when his mother spoke in a certain tone of voice.
“What are your plans?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re welcome here anytime, but—”
“You’re not throwing me out, are you?”
She put her hand over his to stop the tapping. “You can’t go on like this.”
“Like what?”
“You’re just marking time. There’s more to life.”
Paul had tried for that brass ring, the elusive “more to life” people talked about, and he’d failed. Marriage, Garceau’s, Randi—nothing worked. He never said that, it sounded like whining. But his mother was looking at him with such a serious expression that he decided to tell her the truth. “I don’t think there is, though. I really don’t.”
His mother was a lanky woman with a strong,