South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [71]
“Mainly that I was sabotaging myself. You know, destroying good chances because I didn’t think I deserved them, that I was determined to keep myself down.”
“Oh, so he was the one right answer on the test.”
“Yes! That’s how it made me feel. Nobody got that. I guess because it all seemed so nice. Well, it was nice. We were going to buy a little house in Evanston, it was really sweet, and he was going to help me go to school—everything lined Up.”
“Only it didn’t?”
Madeline shook her head no. She turned to lean against the sink and face him and pulled her mouth into an upside-down smile. “Maybe it was crazy, but I just decided: I would come Up here. And Richard took it so personally. Like he couldn’t have waited a few months or whatever it turned out to be?”
Paul wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do: sympathize, offer some kind of fix-it solution, just listen? “I’m sorry,” he said.
Madeline shook her head, so he’d guessed wrong. “I’m glad, now. It wasn’t going to work. I don’t miss him as much as I should if we were going to be married. Everything with Richard was too easy. Where was the challenge? And we were from such different worlds. His family was rich. Well, not rich. But very comfortable. And me, well—Emmy picked me Up in a church basement because my druggie runaway mother abandoned me there. I’m not complaining. Emmy was an angel in my life, she went through hell and high water to keep me.”
“You were adopted, then?”
“More like signed over.”
Paul made a face. “What, like a package?”
“I know. It sounds bad, but apart from the fact that I will forever think my grandfather was a rotten bastard, it was pretty great. Emmy was great.”
“So how did she get you? I mean, what, she just carried you home?”
“Crazy, huh? She found me sitting there long after lunch was over, coloring in a book my mom left me with. I remember that. I remember the crayons, how they smelled, and I remember thinking if I just kept coloring, nothing bad could happen. But I was scared. I was so, so scared. I knew something was wrong. Really wrong.”
Paul nodded, imagining it.
“Emmy always told me we took to each other right away. She was the only one I’d calm down for. She thought maybe my mother would come back a few days down the road, want me back, and somehow she convinced the pastor and the guy who ran the soup kitchen not to ship me into the system right away. And then when she got me home, she found a letter in my little parka, all folded Up tiny in one of the pockets. It was from my grandfather to my mother. She must’ve written him for help and he wrote back and told her no. So, we always knew who I was and where I came from. And my mother never did come back.”
“Wow.” Paul stared at her, the peppers abandoned.
“Yeah. My grandfather didn’t want me, but the State wasn’t so sure about handing me over, either. Good thing possession’s nine tenths of the law. Emmy had to hire attorneys which I’m sure she couldn’t afford, though she never said that, and get him to sign off on it. It was forever before it was all final. Signing off was the only thing Joe Stone ever really did do for me. But anyway. Richard and I—our whole baseline outlook was different. Way different. There was going to come a day when that was a big problem, you know?”
“I can imagine.”
“So what’s your story?” she asked, turning back to the dishes.
His story. How did you answer a big sloppy question like that? He told her he’d grown Up downstate, near Saginaw. His mom was a schoolteacher, his dad worked at Steering Gear, he had three sisters, all of them older. He’d come to McAllaster more or less by chance, and he’d been here ever since.
Madeline raised her eyebrows. “Well. Thank goodness you’re not holding anything back. I mean, I just poured out my entire story and soul, so of course you’re going to do the same. I’m so touched.”
So he told her a little more. “I was running away, I guess.