The Summerhouse Read online

  “Yes!” Ellie said, and her eyes were sparkling as she looked up at Madison. “Yes, yes, and double yes! Miranda, who owned the gallery, sent photos of my work to a friend of hers here, and, well, one thing led to another and I was offered a studio loft apartment in the Village to sublet for one year. It’s ugly and damp and has an elevator that looks like something out of a horror movie, but it has good light and lots of space, and—”

  Ellie broke off so she could take a breath. “It’s a chance,” she said after she got her composure back. “My parents are forking out all the money. Only one of my brothers went to college, so my parents said I could have the college money of the other three, but I think that . . .” Again she broke off and looked down at her hands.

  “They’re helping you because they love you,” Leslie said softly, then squeezed Ellie’s shoulder.

  Smiling, Ellie looked at Leslie and thought, She’s a romantic. All the way through, she’s a romantic.

  “More or less,” Ellie said, smiling. “My mom and I say we have to stick together against the boys.”

  Madison was looking at Ellie intently. “There wasn’t one boy you were interested in? All the way through high school and college?”

  “I’m not a, you-know-what, if that’s what you mean,” Ellie said. “I’ve been out on dates, but the men I liked physically couldn’t tell a Renoir from a Van Gogh. They thought Rubens played for the Dallas Cowboys. And the guys in the art department . . .” She raised her hands, palm up, and grimaced. “Half of them liked each other, and the other half looked like they’d never had a bath.”

  Madison leaned back against the bench. “I can’t imagine not being with a man,” she said softly. “Maybe it was seeing how hard life was on my mother, but I grabbed on to Roger and never let go. Even when he broke up with me, I—” She broke off, then looked at the other two. “I asked him not to,” Madison said with a little smile, and again Ellie saw that pain in her eyes.

  Ellie wanted to get Madison’s mind away from her past. “But now we’re here and all that’s behind us.” She turned from Leslie to Madison. “You got away from Alan, and you got away from Roger. And good riddance to both of them.”

  “She’s going to be the first of us to fall for some man and leave her art behind,” Madison said solemnly. “Three years from now she’ll be living in a tiny house somewhere and have half a dozen kids.”

  “If not more,” Leslie said.

  “Ha!” Ellie said. “The only man who could win me is one who had a thousand times more talent than I do. So . . . Unless I meet the reincarnation of Michelangelo, I’m safe.”

  “Wasn’t Michelangelo gay?” Madison said to Leslie.

  “Or was he the crazy one who cut off his ear?” Leslie replied.

  “Okay, okay, you two. You can give me all the grief you want, but now we’re on equal terms.”

  “Wait a minute!” Leslie said. “Speaking of equal, isn’t today our birthday? I know it’s mine, and isn’t it—”

  “Mine too,” Ellie said, and Madison echoed her.

  “We have to have a cake,” Leslie said firmly.

  “She’s going to make a great mother,” Ellie said to Madison, deadpan.

  Leslie ignored them. “I’m going to ask little rat-fink Ira where the nearest bakery is, and I’m going to buy us a birthday cake.”

  At that she got up, and the words that Ellie and Madison were about to say stopped on their lips, for to watch Leslie walk was to watch beauty in motion. She moved as though she were floating, the sheer skirt clinging to her long, shapely legs.

  “Wow,” Ellie said under her breath when Leslie reached Ira’s window. “Wow.”

  “Exactly,” Madison said, her eyes wide.

  Leslie waved as she walked out the door; then Ellie and Madison were left alone. And when they were, they found that they hadn’t much to say to each other. For all that Leslie was the quietest of the three, there was something about her that enabled the three of them to talk. There was something warm, some easiness within Leslie that created an atmosphere that made it okay to reveal secrets.

  The silence made Ellie nervous, but Madison just leaned back against the bench and closed her eyes. Ellie was all kinetic energy, while Madison seemed to have the patience of the ages.

  When Ellie looked up a few minutes later and saw Leslie coming toward them with a white box, she was surprised. It certainly hadn’t taken her long.

  “You’ll never believe this,” Leslie said as she sat down beside Ellie and opened the box. Inside was a small cake with fluffy white frosting; their names were written on the top in pink icing.

  “That was fast,” Ellie said, looking up.

  Leslie’s eyes were laughing. “There’s a bakery next door, and every day they make a cake for ‘Ira’s Girls.’”

  Ellie blinked at her. “You mean us? We are now called ‘Ira’s Girls’?”

  Leslie was laughing. “You were right, Madison; the little twerp chooses two to three young women every day and makes them sit here on this bench while he makes a thousand mistakes on their licenses so they have to wait. Since so many people go to the DMV on their birthdays, it seems that a lot of them come up with the idea of sharing a cake.”

  “Does he get a kickback from the bakery?” Ellie asked. “And why does the City of New York let him get away with it?”

  Leslie leaned forward and lowered her voice. “That’s what I asked them. Not about the kickback, but why he’s allowed to do it. See that little window up there?” she said, turning her head and looking up at the wall behind Ira.

  Above their heads, directly above Ira’s caged window, was a small window, so dirty that it was a wonder anyone could see out of it.

  “Ira’s boss works up there,” Leslie said. “From what the women in the bakery said, nothing has ever been said one way or another, but Ira’s allowed to get away with this because his boss likes the view as much as Ira does.”

  “I’m sure I should be furious about this,” Ellie said, “but then, today I’ve met you two, and . . .” She shrugged. “So what kind of cake is it?”

  “Coconut. The woman at the bakery said that chocolate was too messy. And look, she gave me plates, napkins, and forks. So, Ira’s Girls, let’s dig in.”

  And dig in they did.

  Three

  “Please fasten your seat belts to prepare for landing,” came the voice over the speaker, and Ellie came back to the present.

  What had happened to that beautiful, beautiful girl? Ellie wondered. In the intervening nineteen years Ellie doubted if she’d ever looked at a fashion magazine without thinking of Madison. “She isn’t as pretty as Madison,” Ellie had said so many times that her ex-husband had said, “Let me guess: Whoever or whatever it, she, or he is, isn’t as pretty as Madison.” After that remark, Ellie had never again mentioned her aloud, but that didn’t stop Ellie from thinking of Madison. Had Madison returned to her little hometown in Montana and gone to nursing school? Maybe she’d married a doctor and had half a dozen kids.

  At the thought of children, Ellie pushed up the shade and looked out the window. Children was a place she’d better not go. In fact, children had been what had ended her marriage. The day after Christmas, the day after her ex had thrown yet another of his all-day tantrums about how Ellie never “gave” him enough, “did” enough for him, Ellie had looked at her husband and thought, I gave up children for this selfish man. She didn’t know it then, but that was the moment when she left him. Left him in her mind, that is. The physical leaving and the courts would take nearly a year of her life, but her mind left him in that one instant.

  As the plane touched down, Ellie’s nervousness returned. It really was a foolish thing to make a date to see women you hadn’t seen in so many years. It was like those horrible high school reunions. You return with pictures in your mind of how people were, so the lines on their faces and the rolls on their bodies were shocking. Then you go to the rest room and see yourself in a mirror and you realize that