The Summerhouse Read online

  Ellie gave a glance to Leslie, then took the licenses back to Ira. At least he didn’t pretend to be sorry for the mistake he’d made. “I guess you three will just have to wait a little bit longer, won’t you?” he said with a smile. “Right there on that bench. And you better not leave the building in case I need to ask any of you any questions.”

  Ellie opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of him, maybe even to demand to see his supervisor, but then her vanity got the best of her. To be singled out to sit with two women like Leslie and Madison, to be a sort of living photograph, well . . . It didn’t exactly make her feel bad. In fact, when she walked back to the bench, she was walking a little straighter than before.

  She took her place between the two women. “So,” she said, then turned to Leslie, “tell us all about the boy you jilted.”

  Leslie laughed. “Are all New Yorkers as blunt as you are?”

  “I have no idea. I’m from Richmond, Virginia.”

  “Then we’re all newcomers,” Leslie said. “And are we all here to try to make our fortune?”

  “Not try,” Ellie said. “We’re going to do it, right?”

  “Yes!” Leslie said firmly, but Madison didn’t say anything.

  Ellie turned to Madison. “What about you? How many devastated young men did you leave behind?”

  “None. Actually, I was dumped by my boyfriend.”

  Madison didn’t say anything else, so Ellie stared at her in silence. She was too shocked to speak. After a moment she looked at Leslie and saw that she, too, was shocked. “No offense, Leslie,” Ellie said, “but I need to hear this story first.”

  For a moment Madison was silent; then she said, “Oh, what the heck? Everyone in Erskine knows what happened, so it isn’t exactly a secret.”

  Ellie bit her tongue to keep from remarking that everyone in Erskine could probably be told the secret of life, but it would still remain a mystery to the world.

  “It was a case of high school love,” Madison said. “Roger went to a high school about fifty miles from mine, but I was a cheerleader and—”

  “Me too!” Leslie said; then they both looked down at Ellie in question.

  “Not quite,” Ellie said. “Debating team. Latin club.”

  “Mmmm,” Madison said. “So anyway, Roger and I met and were a couple all through high school. I never dated anybody but Roger. Our plan was that after we graduated, we would go to college together, then get married and live happily ever after. We even had the names of our kids picked out.”

  For a moment, Madison looked away, and when she turned back, her face was as composed as before, but there was pain in her eyes. She’s used to hiding her emotions, Ellie thought, and for a moment she could see past Madison’s beautiful face to see the real person inside.

  “I should have known that there would be problems. You see, Roger’s family is rich and my mom and I weren’t.”

  “What about your father?” Ellie asked, heedless of manners and her mother’s constant admonitions to not snoop into people’s private affairs.

  Madison shrugged one shoulder in a beautiful way. She should be on the movie screen, Ellie thought.

  “Married man,” Madison said. “He walked away—well, ran actually—the moment my mother told him she was pregnant. All I know about him is that his last name is Madison. My first name is my mother’s revenge. She couldn’t have his name, so she gave it to me. She said he couldn’t deny her that small part of him.”

  For a moment the air was heavy with the anger that was in Madison’s voice.

  “Beats ‘Ellie,’” Ellie said cheerfully. “My mother said she was sick of big, husky boys and she wanted a little girl, so she gave me a girly little name.”

  “Your real name isn’t Eleanor?” Leslie asked.

  “Nope. Plain ol’ Ellie. I think I’ll change it to Anastasia. So what happened to Roger?” Ellie asked Madison.

  Madison let out the breath she’d been holding. Ellie’s light remarks had broken the tension. “Two weeks before my high school graduation my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.”

  “Yeow!” Ellie said.

  Leslie put her arm across the back of the bench and gave Madison’s arm a squeeze.

  “Along with Roger, my mother was my life,” Madison said. “She and I were a team. She’d raised me herself, working two jobs to make ends meet. At night she worked as a checker in a grocery and since she couldn’t afford an evening baby-sitter, I used to go with her and hide in the back storage room. I can tell you lots about how a grocery is run.” She had meant this as a joke, but neither Ellie nor Leslie was smiling.

  “Anyway,” Madison continued, “after Mother became ill, college had to be postponed.” Again, Madison looked away for a moment. “To make a long story short, my mother died, but it took her four years to do it. By that time my college money had been spent on doctors and hospitals.”

  There was nothing Ellie could say, and judging from Leslie’s silence, she felt the same way. “And Roger?” Ellie asked softly.

  “Good ol’ Roger, the love of my life, returned from college—where he’d gone on a full football scholarship, I might add. His parents are rich, but they have to be the cheapest people on the planet—and he had a fiancée on his arm.”

  “A what!?” Ellie said. “Why would any man marry someone other than you?” She didn’t realize that she’d said this quite loudly until an entire line of people turned to look at them in interest.

  “Beauty isn’t everything,” Madison said with a little smile.

  “I’m not talking about beauty. You gave up your education to stay home and nurse your mother. That’s beauty on the inside!”

  Madison looked at Ellie in surprise; then she smiled until her whole face lit up. “I think I like you,” she said, and Ellie smiled back.

  “Go on,” Leslie urged. “What did you do? And I agree with Ellie; why would he want someone else?”

  Madison took a deep breath. “He said that since he’d graduated from college, he needed someone he could talk to. Someone educated.”

  At that, Ellie turned to look at Leslie, then back at Madison. “Castration would have been too good for him,” she said softly.

  Madison made a little face of agreement. “I thought so too at the time. Especially considering that all through high school I did most of his homework for him. He used to drive to my house three times a week and he’d always have a box full of schoolwork I was to ‘help’ him with. The truth was that he’d watch football on TV while I worked. Our dates often consisted of my doing his homework while Roger tossed a ball with somebody. And in college if he had a paper to write, he usually sent me the assignment and I wrote it.”

  “Could he get away with that?” Leslie asked. “Surely he would have been caught when he took his exams. You couldn’t very well do those for him.”

  “No?” Madison asked, an eyebrow arched. “Roger was the best football player his high school had ever seen. He pretty much single-handedly won each and every game. The principal told the teachers that if Roger didn’t get grades good enough to get him into college, then that teacher would stand a chance of losing his or her job, with or without tenure. I wasn’t there, but I think the attitude at college wasn’t much different.”

  “Well, that’s fair,” Ellie said, turning to Leslie. “Don’t you agree?”

  Leslie laughed. “So you got him into college, then helped him stay there, and all the while you were a saint.”

  At that Madison laughed. “A saint for nursing my mother? You know something, I enjoyed it.” When the other two started to speak, Madison put up her hand. “No, no, I didn’t enjoy my mother’s suffering. But I was interested in the medical side of her illness. I even took a part-time job at the hospital. I had to drive seventy-five miles to get there, but—”

  “Every day?” Ellie asked.

  “Only three days a week. But Montana isn’t like Virginia,” Madison said, smiling. “You can put your foot on the gas peda