South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [33]
The fact was that the eBay money was a drop in the bucket compared to what they needed. It helped, but it wasn’t enough and never would be no matter what she dragged out of storage and sold. Frank’s autograph collection had been one of the first things to go. The Hummel figurines he’d given Gladys in their more prosperous years went next. Right now she had Up for auction a 1963 Raleigh bicycle, a six-point antler rack (imagine someone paying good money for that, couldn’t go out and get their own), a crate of glass soda bottles from the fifties, and two wool sweaters Mabel Brink had knitted coon’s ages ago. Just last night Gladys had Madeline help her wrap Up her sterling silver flatware set in its mahogany box. That had been a wedding gift. “Doesn’t it hurt to let it go?” Madeline had asked.
“Bah. Someone else may as well have the Use of it, it doesn’t matter.”
This was half true. It did matter, but it also didn’t. There was something freeing in letting the old stuff go. It felt a little like a new beginning, although why she should think about such things at her age Gladys really could not imagine.
At any rate, some money came in, but it went out again just as fast. Everyone got something, except for the SuperValu. Gladys refused to budge on that despite the increasing insistence of the Bensons’ requests. The reminders came in the mail with the balance due circled in red, and each time there were more exclamation points after the request to Please Pay! Gladys tossed every one of these into the garbage.
The only solution was to sell the hotel. No matter what she’d said to Arbutus, no matter how the idea broke her heart, in the end there would be no other way. The kicksled and all the rest of the old things were just the tip of the iceberg.
Albert knocked on the kitchen door just then, a box of produce balanced on his hip, and Gladys was glad of the distraction. With a frown she wasn’t even aware of, she snatched the box from his hands and shooed him and Gus into the kitchen for coffee. She noticed as she took the sugar bowl off the side counter that Madeline hadn’t taken the bills to the post office like she’d promised. Gladys sighed in vexation. Two of those bills were already close to being late, and now there was no chance they’d go out Until tomorrow. She’d have to remind Madeline in the morning, or else do it herself.
Gladys knew very well that Madeline was not like her mother. Jackie had been careless and selfish and immature from the day she was born, and obviously Madeline didn’t fit that bill. But still, every now and then Gladys felt a deep stab of Uncertainty at what she’d done, pleading with Madeline to come help them, bringing her into their home. Why had she done it, why had she not left well enough alone?
We needed the help, she told herself. There was no one else.
But that wasn’t really the reason. Not the whole reason anyway.
The real reason was that Gladys was getting old. She felt the truth of that when Arbutus got so bad and there was nothing Gladys could do about it. They’d ended Up marooned in Nathan’s apartment, helpless to decide their own fate. That was when she really Understood, one day she’d be dead and gone. In the meantime, she had to live with herself.
She couldn’t stand to think of leaving things so Unresolved. The burden of guilt and regret sat heavier and heavier on her shoulders. She had failed when Madeline was a child, failed to ever soften Joe’s heart, and that was wrong. He’d been wrong and she’d been powerless to change it. That was why she’d asked Madeline to come here. To make things right. Or at least more right. So far she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
8
Madeline reported at Garceau’s for her first shift a little before noon the next day, and realized as she arrived that she’d forgotten the mail again. She’d grabbed it off the counter on her way out but forgot to drop it at the post office. That was so Unlike her that she actually stopped in her tracks. But it was too late to fix