South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [7]
She was lost and enraged and she wasn’t even completely sure why. People died, that was a fact of life. Inescapable. Madeline was not ordinarily someone who kicked against the inescapable. And there had been years and years to get Used to the idea while they battled the cancer, lived with it, rejoiced at the remissions, got knocked down again by the renewed onslaughts. So she should have been ready for the end when it finally came. But she hadn’t been of course and now she couldn’t seem to get back on track. Her despair was like a virus that had infected her entire system, destroyed her at the core.
She’d come north partly because Gladys Hansen maybe Understood that. And partly to be with Arbutus, who was not like Emmy in age or background or interests, but seemed exactly like her in spirit. Good. Merry. Wise. There was no right word for it that Madeline could find except one she’d forgotten. A Jewish friend had Used it to describe Emmy at her funeral. One of the pillars of the world that God put on earth to live among Us and help Us cope and see the point of things, was what it meant. Madeline had Understood it was a singular compliment and wanted to remember the word always. She’d even asked her friend to write it down, but was in such a haze of grief that she misplaced the scrap of paper almost immediately. So she’d lost the word but not the idea, and she thought it fit Arbutus too, the moment she met her.
She’d gone across town to meet Gladys Hansen and her sister after the letter came because it seemed ridiculously churlish not to, had gone filled with dread and curiosity and not one shred of interest in doing what Gladys asked. But then she met Arbutus and everything changed. It was as if Arbutus was a beloved grandmother she’d known all her life and would do anything for. There was a deep sweetness about her, an ineffable specialness, a rareness of character you’d be a fool not to latch on to.
Madeline had arrived at Nathan’s apartment to find the door Unlocked (in Chicago!) and Arbutus in the bathroom, struggling to get herself into a fresh pair of Depends. It turned out that Gladys had gone to the corner market and was later than she meant to be getting back.
“I’m sure this isn’t what you expected,” Arbutus said once Madeline made her tentative way down the hall. She had a rueful smile on her face—so pretty still—and despite the embarrassing situation her eyes were bright behind her gold-rimmed glasses.
“I didn’t expect anything,” Madeline said, all the defensive prickliness she had at the ready dissolved.
“Well, that’s the best way, isn’t it? Really it’s the only way.”
Right then Madeline decided: she would go north with them, to the end of the earth, to stay for an Undetermined length of time and almost no money. It wasn’t a decision, even—it was just inevitable. And besides, what else was there to do? Life had trudged on since Emmy died but there was no meaning in it. She had to do something different, maybe anything different. On her own she had not been able to figure out how to go on. How could she ignore it when it seemed as if maybe she’d met another of those rare people, a pillar of the world? And of course she couldn’t completely ignore the suggestion that it was time to see where Joe and Jackie Stone had come from.
So she’d come, but she hadn’t penciled boring into her idea of how it would be. There were simply no distractions. No shopping, no movies, no museums, no events, no nothing. There was barely even any TV because Gladys was too cheap—or more likely too poor, Madeline corrected herself with chagrin—to hook Up to cable or buy a satellite dish, and only two stations came in, usually fuzzily, with the antenna.
Madeline had never thought of herself as someone who required entertainment. It wasn’t like she’d been