The Summerhouse Read online

  When Madison walked into the office of the top modeling agency in New York, her first thought was that she felt old. The office was full of girls young enough to be her daughter.

  But there was a mirror by the door and a brief glance showed that her body was as young as these girls’. But she was happy to see that age was the only thing that they had in common.

  The girls were dressed as she had been the first time she’d walked through those doors. They had on their “Sunday best,” which meant little suits and lots of jewelry. And their makeup was in the style that was taught in “charm schools” all over the U.S.: too much and too obvious.

  Standing amid the other girls, Madison, with her plain white blouse and her plain black trousers, with her glowing skin without any makeup, looked like a perfect pearl beside a bed of aquarium gravel.

  Sitting behind the desk was the same squat, ugly, bad-tempered receptionist she remembered so well. “Yeah?” she said as she looked up at Madison.

  The first time around that sullen glare and the hostility of the woman had enraged Madison. But this time, she smiled sweetly at her. “I’d like to present my portfolio and possibly see Mrs. Vanderpool,” Madison said.

  The receptionist tried to cover it, but she was impressed by the look of Madison. Obviously, the woman recognized the quality—and cost—of the clothes she had on. “You got an appointment?”

  “Actually, I do,” Madison said. She’d been caught in this trap the last time. “It’s for eleven, and I believe it’s that now.”

  “I’ve been waiting for three hours!” said a girl from behind Madison.

  “We didn’t even open until an hour ago,” the receptionist snapped; then she looked down at her appointment book. “I don’t see you in here.”

  Madison pointed to the eleven A.M. slot. “That’s me.”

  “What kind of name is ‘Madison’?” the receptionist snapped again.

  Madison resisted the urge to snap back. “The one my mother gave me,” she said, still smiling. “Perhaps you’d like to look over my portfolio while I wait,” she said, then she put the big black book on top of the woman’s desk. This time the portfolio was leather, not plastic.

  More than anything in the world, Madison wanted to stand there and watch the face of the woman when she first opened the book and saw the pictures that Cordova had taken. In the end, she’d spent three days with the man. Once his creativity was unleashed, there was no holding him back. When a crate of peaches had been delivered to him to shoot, he’d sent the hairdresser out to buy a cheap black wig and he’d sent his assistant out to find clothes “like a gypsy would wear.” After the snake, the assistant wasn’t protesting any assignment.

  Cordova had photographed Madison dressed as a gypsy sitting in the middle of a thousand peaches. Well, it looked like a thousand when Cordova got through arranging them around an artificial hill.

  It was Madison who suggested that he drop the “Michael” from his name and just go by Cordova. He’d liked the idea instantly, but he kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as though he were afraid that any minute she might change into a creature from outer space.

  But now, in the agency office, Madison made herself keep her back to the receptionist as she walked to the end of the room to the only vacant chair. But when she turned around, she had the deep satisfaction of seeing that dreadful little woman looking at the photos with her mouth hanging open in shock.

  When she looked up and saw Madison watching her, she closed her mouth and the book. Then, as though it were something she did every day, she got up from her desk, pulled her too-tight blouse down, then picked up the stack of portfolios off her desk. Acting as though taking Madison’s were only an afterthought, she dropped it on top of the stack, then went to the door of the office where Mrs. Vanderpool decided the fates of hundreds of young women.

  The receptionist gave a quick knock; then when she opened the door, they heard, “This better be good,” from inside the office. Obviously, Mrs. Vanderpool didn’t like interruptions.

  When the door closed behind the woman, Madison realized that her heart was pounding. Had she been too aggressive? Maybe she should have just had her photo taken by a good New York photographer. Something plain. Ordinary. Not with a snake.

  It was probably only minutes later that the door opened, but to Madison, it seemed hours. And when the door swung wide, it wasn’t the snotty little receptionist standing there but Mrs. Vanderpool herself. Or, in the modeling world, that would be, Herself.

  Madison held her breath as the woman, with her iron gray hair, in her ordinary little dress, scanned the room. When she saw Madison, she halted. “Are you Madison Appleby?”

  Madison gave the woman a polite smile and nodded. Truth was, there was a lump in her throat too big for her to speak.

  “Would you like to come into my office?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Madison managed to get out; then she had to make her feet move forward.

  She followed Mrs. Vanderpool into her inner office, and the door closed behind them.

  Twenty-nine

  “That is, without a doubt, the most wonderful story I have ever heard,” Leslie said.

  “Even the second time around?” Madison asked, smiling.

  “I could hear that story a thousand times and it would get better with each telling,” Ellie said. “So what happened next?”

  “But you know the rest,” Madison answered, looking about for the waitress. “Do you think they have a dessert menu?”

  “It’s Maine, ask for blueberries,” Ellie said impatiently. “I want to know what happened next.”

  Leslie put her hand on Ellie’s arm. “But we know the rest, don’t we? Haven’t we been seeing your picture in magazines for years?”

  “Have we?” Ellie asked eagerly.

  “Here and there,” Madison said, smiling, “but I’ve had other things to do besides stand in front of a camera. But then, you two know that story. Oh, good, here comes the dessert cart.”

  “Madison,” Ellie said slowly, “I will buy you everything on that cart if you’ll just tell the rest of the story.”

  Laughing, Madison pointed to a large slice of chocolate cake with chocolate icing. “I behaved myself,” she said simply as the waitress placed the dessert in front of her.

  Ellie and Leslie waved the cart away.

  “And that means?” Ellie encouraged her.

  “I showed up on time for bookings, and I took all the work I could get. I don’t mean to brag, but the result was that I was on the cover of three fashion magazines and was offered a lucrative cosmetics contract at the end of just eight weeks.”

  Madison paused to take a bite of her cake. “But when I held the checks I’d received for the work, I thought, I could send two kids to college on this. And that’s what gave me the idea, and you know the rest.”

  “No we don’t!!!” the other two said in unison.

  Madison looked at them in disbelief that they could have forgotten something so big. “I used the money to start working on getting my degree,” she said.

  “Your degree in what?” Ellie asked, her breath held.

  Madison narrowed her eyes at her. “You know as well as I do that I’m a doctor.”

  “Of medicine?” Leslie asked, her eyes wide.

  “Yes. I’m a physiatrist,” Madison said, shaking her head at them. “I’m glad I chose that specialty because I had a wonderful teacher at Columbia, Dr. Dorothy Oliver. It was as though she and I had known each other forever.”

  Ellie looked at Leslie; then Leslie looked at Ellie. At first they smiled at each other; then they grinned. Then, in a spontaneous gesture, they began to laugh. Then they threw back their heads and laughed some more. Then they pushed their chairs back and got up and linked arms and began to dance around, laughing happily.

  The other patrons looked up, at first frowning, but when they saw the unabashed happiness of the two women, they smiled.

  There was music playing i