South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [32]
“Ah.” Paul ran his hand through his hair. “Aren’t you working for Gladys and Arbutus?”
“Well—yes. But it’s not exactly filling all my hours.”
“Ah,” he said again, and Madeline started to regret having said anything.
“If you’ve already hired someone—” she began, but he stopped her.
“You took me by surprise, is all. usually the Russian girls who come for the summer to clean rooms at the big motel come looking, but I put the sign Up early this year, so you’re the first.”
“You get Russians Up here to work?”
“Oh, sure. It’s an adventure, and good money—to them. But it’s not much, I have to tell you. And it’s a lot of work.”
“I know that.”
He squinted at her. “It’d be part-time, at least to start—I hire a few part-timers—and only Until fall.”
“That’d be perfect.”
“I need someone who can do whatever. Wait tables, chop vegetables, grate cheese, sweep the floors, wash dishes. It’s no sinecure.”
“I was a waitress in Chicago,” Madeline said, annoyed. He seemed to have sized her Up somehow and found her lacking, or Unlikely. “This is the only kind of work I’ve ever really done. I know what it’s like, trust me.”
“Sorry. I just would hate to get you in here Under false pretenses. If you’re really interested, I’ll show you around.”
Half an hour later she was employed, four days a week from noon to five. It wasn’t the busiest shift, he said, but she thought it was the best time of the day to be away from the house. She was almost back there when it occurred to her that probably she should have asked Gladys and Arbutus how they felt about this before she plunged in. Her victorious feeling faded a little. But she needed this job. Gladys and Arbutus would Understand. They’d have to.
“How nice for you,” Arbutus beamed when Madeline got home—not only empty-handed but also much later than Gladys had expected, how was she supposed to get the ruskettunut lanttu ready for dinner when she didn’t even have the rutabagas yet?—and told them her news. “You’ll meet people, get out of the house.”
“Plenty of ways to get out of the house without taking a job. What about Butte?”
“Oh, pshaw. I’m all right.”
“She’s here to work for Us, not go gallivanting around town.”
“I’m fine. You’re here, and if something goes wrong she’s not far away. Goodness, what a worrier you’ve turned into.”
Gladys did worry. She couldn’t sleep through the night, as often as not. After tossing and turning she’d go sit at the kitchen table at two and three in the morning, holding Madeline’s cat on her lap, stroking his fur—this was more comforting than she ever would have dreamed—staring at nothing.
How to solve this fix they were in? For a while now she’d been selling things on eBay with Mabel Brink’s help, a fact she’d wanted to keep to herself but which Madeline had found out. She felt a little lift of pride, remembering how astounded Madeline had been when she stopped in at Mabel’s one afternoon and caught them scanning photos of an old silver alarm clock into Mabel’s computer. Gladys wanted forty dollars for it, if some fool would pay so much for something that hadn’t cost five new in 1956. She had twelve of them, all exactly alike. Madeline had been amazed at the two of them, so handy with the digital camera and scanner, but why shouldn’t they know how to do these things? They were old but they weren’t dead yet. A now familiar feeling of Urgency gripped Gladys, though. She wasn’t dead but she was eighty-five. She wouldn’t go on forever.
“You might as well help me mail the packages, now that you know,” Gladys had said to Madeline after she found out about eBay. Arbutus wasn’t to know a thing about it, period, just as she was not to know anything about the kicksled, which Gladys hadn’t yet dealt with. It was still lodged in the trunk of that disreputable car of Madeline’s that was now sitting like an abandoned wreck in the drive. Madeline had agreed to keep quiet, but reluctantly. She didn’t seem to think Gladys should keep so many secrets. Well, she was young, she didn