South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [75]
“There’s no money in it,” Gladys said. “There really isn’t. Oh, sure, there are tourists now, right through color season, but you’ve got the whole rest of the year to contend with. Snowmobilers aren’t going to stay in a rooming house. They don’t want quaint. They want swimming pools and a bar and cable TV. And the place needs work. We haven’t put anything into it in years. The wiring went in in forty-seven and none of it’s been changed since. Why, McAllaster didn’t even have full-time electricity Until the sixties, the power went off with the mill at night. There’s just so much that needs doing. You can’t imagine how expensive it’ll be.”
“I want to try. I need a job. And your hotel—there’s something about it. I want it. It’s right. And letting the Bensons have it and tear it down—that’s wrong. I don’t know how else to explain.” And she didn’t, quite. Not without admitting to them that she’d spent hours in their hotel without their permission, wandering, daydreaming, working.
One trip at a time, she’d taken all of her art supplies Up to the attic. It was a miracle that no one had noticed her comings and goings, though she always was very careful. She considered the idea that the very secrecy the spot necessitated had something to do with her painting again. If she kept it an iron-clad secret—almost even from herself—then there could be no pressure, no expectation, no disappointment or failure. There could be magic, and art could happen. The picture of the sisters at the table over their morning coffee was almost done, and she liked it. She thought it might be good, but most of all she’d liked the making of it.
Gladys and Arbutus looked at each other with worried eyes and they both said the same thing, in different words. If it was the Bensons she was worried about, she must not do this. The two of them had gotten by this long without selling to Terry and Alex, they could get by longer. She couldn’t do this out of some kind of loyalty to two foolish old women who ought to have arranged their finances better decades ago.
“No, that’s not how it is. I want the place. I want to make it live again. I want you to help me, Gladys.” Gladys’s eyes flashed with an interest that Madeline saw her immediately quell. So she’d guessed right about that, no matter what Gladys felt obliged to say about how hopeless and impossible it all was.
“I want to run it. I want to rent the rooms to people who’d love staying there. I want to shine the windows and wax the floors and polish the furniture. I want to sell antiques from behind the front counter, and serve coffee and rolls in the dining room. Cardamom rolls, I could be known for it. I want to have a big ledger for the guests to sign, and I’ll hang the sheets out on the line to dry in the wind off the lake. I think I can do it. I want to try.”
Neither sister said anything, but Madeline saw the skepticism on both their faces.
She flUng her hands out and kept talking. “There are a hundred reasons for me to do this. I love the place. I want to stay here. I want to be part of something. I want to do something—to do this. I’m thirty-five. I’m single, I have no family and no real job. I can’t stay with you forever. I have zero responsibilities, really, and it turns out I hate that. Who knew? You know, people thought it was so sad that I gave Up so much to take care of Emmy, but it wasn’t sad. It was love, it was life. And now I’m basically nothing to anyone.”
Arbutus made a sound of protest but Madeline stopped her. “I’m not trying to be pitiful. Just factual. I’m on my own. And that’s good in a way. No one but me gets hurt if I fail. And if I don’t fail, look what I get. I get a beautiful old hotel in a beautiful spot and I get to—take care of people. It’s what I’m good at, usually.” When she wasn’t preoccupied with figuring out what it was she wanted to be good at.
“But it’s such a big risk,” Arbutus argued.
“It is. That’s what