South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [77]
“Just please listen to me. It isn’t worth going through with this. Think how it’ll Upset Arbutus. It’ll be you in the court news next week.”
“And so what if it is. I’ve got an argument, and I intend to make it.” The coffee started to boil and Gladys poured herself a cup, then offered Madeline one.
“No thank you!”
Gladys shrugged and poured a dash of salt into her cup, then carried it and her paper to the table and continued with the news.
“Lou Thurston got caught driving without a license again, I see. That’s the third time this year. And Amy Brighton got nabbed on a DUI. She’ll lose her license altogether, see if she doesn’t. It’s no wonder that boy of hers is in so much trouble.”
“Gladys.”
“What?”
“Please. I don’t want you to go through with this.”
Gladys lowered her paper. “I don’t see why you’re so Upset.”
“Oh Gladys.”
“ ‘Oh Gladys’ what? What is it that you’re so worried about?”
“What will people say, and what about your credit?”
Gladys made a raspberry. “Credit at my age? Pish. I’m close to ninety, I am past worrying about my credit. What am I going to do, go out and buy a house? If my name isn’t enough to provide me with groceries for a month or two in the town I have lived in all my life, then I don’t have any credit. That’s the point.”
“What if you were to get sick?”
“If I get sick, either I get well or I die. That’s life. And no one’s going to refuse me health care because I got hauled into Crosscut over a few sacks full of groceries.”
“But don’t you see, that’s what it is, a few sacks of groceries, it’s not worth this.”
“You shouldn’t worry so much about what people think. You let it cripple you.” Gladys turned to the next page of the paper. “I see Thelma Richter’s granddaughter Nancy is having a baby down in Tennessee. I wonder if she ever married that man she was living with, the notice doesn’t say a thing about it.” She peered closer at the paper. “My, Nancy’s gotten heavy. I suppose it’s because of the baby.”
“I don’t worry about what other people think,” Madeline said, sinking into the opposite chair.
“Mmm. Yes, you do. You give in too fast and you worry too much and you’re too Used to having things easy.” Look how she’d gone and paid the gas bill with nobody’s leave, arranged for the gas company to come and fill Up the pig. Gladys had squashed that idea flat, turned them away. So much fuss over nothing. Yes, maybe it was a little too hot with the woodstove going every day, but they’d survive. They’d survived this long, hadn’t they? Madeline needed a little more backbone. Sisu. The Finnish word for “courage in the face of trouble.” Well, to give Madeline her due, she did have courage. But she cringed too much. No Use in that. Gladys had learned by experience that there was no Use in trying to protect yourself from the blows life was bound to rain down on you anyway. Stand Up and face them.
There was—at last—silence from across the table.
“Ken Olli’s youngest is getting married,” Gladys said. “Seems like just yesterday he was born. And now here he is, all grown Up and dressed to the nines in a black suit and tie, he looks like a crow in a pan of milk.”
“I am not Used to having things easy. I don’t give in, not when it’s important. And I’m not afraid of what everybody thinks.” Madeline said each of these things as if she was thinking about them one by one. Well, she should think about them, because all Gladys had said was the plain truth. “I just want things to be peaceful. To be simple.”
“Mmm, well, good luck.” Gladys turned another page.
“And I do not let people’s opinions cripple me. I don’t.”
“You worry too much. Quotidie damnatur qui semper timet.”
“What?”
“ ‘The person who is always afraid is condemned every day.’ ” Gladys lifted her eyebrows meaningfully.
Madeline gave her a filthy look.
“I can’t think why they don’t teach Latin in schools anymore, I had four years of it right here in McAllaster, and let me tell you, you’d better be ready to go through your paces or Miss Tuttle would rap your knuckles but good.”
Arbutus rolled in