“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
you have the same lines and the same rolls.
When the plane had stopped, she picked up her tote bag and stood up. As she waited to exit, her mind went back to the day at the DMV. Madison had been hiding something that day, she thought. Back then, Ellie had been so full of herself, so sure that she was going to set the world on fire with her art, and she’d been so positive that both Leslie and Madison were going to do the same thing. Looking at Madison, you thought you knew all about her. She would have been the prom queen and the most popular girl in school. Of course she would marry the captain of the football team.
Madison had fulfilled part of this scenario, but things had changed for her. Why hadn’t she made it in the modeling world? Ellie wondered. Why hadn’t Ellie been seeing pictures of Madison for the last nineteen years? It seemed to Ellie that all Madison would have to do is walk on the streets of New York and some photographer would beg her to model for him. Didn’t that kind of thing happen all the time? Weren’t models still discovered sitting in restaurants and in drugstores or wherever?
The people across from Ellie moved into the line in the aisle, and Ellie stepped behind them. As she waited for the line to continue moving, she thought about Leslie. A dancer was more difficult to keep track of, especially since Ellie didn’t get to see too many Broadway shows. Had Leslie danced on Broadway, then met some fabulously wealthy man and married him? Or had Ellie been watching too many old black-and-white movies?
As the line began to move, Ellie took a deep breath. This was it, she thought. When she’d invited the other two women, she’d asked that if they said yes, to please send her their plane information. This had been Jeanne’s idea. Using the flight information, Ellie had arranged for cars to meet the women at the airport and take them to Jeanne’s house on the coast, northeast of Bangor.
Maybe it had been cowardly of her, but Ellie had arranged a flight that made her the last one to arrive. It would probably mean that she got the sofa bed instead of a bedroom, but she was willing to pay that price. When she got to Jeanne’s house, Leslie and Madison should already be there.
As Ellie walked into the airport, a man in a black uniform was standing there with “Abbott” written on a piece of cardboard. She handed him her tote bag and her luggage claim tags, then followed him to the baggage carousel.
When they were finally in the car and he’d pulled away from the airport, Ellie wanted to tell him to turn around and go back. How could she tell them about her life? She had been a success, but now all that was gone. She had let a man beat her, let a court system beat her. All Ellie’s life people had said that she was a little bulldog, that she never let go, that when she wanted something, she went after it. “And heaven help anyone who gets in her way,” her mother used to say. But Ellie had given up. Ellie hadn’t held on and, in the end, Ellie had failed.
But now, Ellie didn’t tell the driver to turn back. In the last three years she had lived with constant, never-ending fear, and now was the time to start fighting back.
Some fight, she thought as she turned to look out the window at gorgeous Maine. The tree leaves were aflame with red and gold. Was it the same with everyone that their birth month was their favorite? October was certainly Ellie’s favorite month, when the air was cool and the leaves turned brilliant shades of color. After the lethargy of the summer, autumn seemed to wake people up.
It will be all right, she told herself. I am nineteen years older and so are they. Even Madison must have aged. Maybe if I don’t tell them what was done to me, they won’t feel sorry for me. Maybe if . . .
“Ever been to Maine before?” the driver asked, snapping Ellie out of her thoughts.
“No. Do you live here?”
“All my life.”
“So tell me everything,” she said, wanting something to take her mind off the coming meeting, and a chatty driver would work as well as anything else.
Ellie saw them before they saw her. And when she saw them, it was as though a thousand pounds of worry was taken off her chest. She gave a great sigh of relief and took a step forward, but then she halted, wanting to give herself time to look and to think.
The driver had taken her to the address she’d given him, then took her bags out of the trunk while Ellie had a look at the house. Jeanne had said that the house was fairly old, built by a ship’s carpenter in the 1800s, but she hadn’t told Ellie that it was so charming. It was small, two-story, with a deep porch in the front. What made the house stand out was the beautiful gingerbread trim around the exterior. It looked like something that a guidebook would caption, “Most Photographed House in Maine.” Just looking at the house made Ellie smile. Jeanne had said that the caretaker would leave the house unlocked so all three of them could arrive when they wanted and not have to worry about being locked out. That the house could be left unlocked said everything about the little coastal town.
Once Ellie had tipped the driver, she picked up her case and quietly opened the front door. There were three unpacked suitcases on the floor in the little living room, so no one had yet chosen a bedroom.
The living room was charming, a few Colonial antiques, interspersed with lots of local crafts and a couple of pieces of real art. There was a big model ship above the entrance doorway, and one wall of the room was taken up by an enormous stone fireplace. The rest of the furniture looked vaguely Colonial, but, more important, it looked very comfortable. The colors of dark green and rust, with touches of yellow here and there, matched the exterior autumn splendor perfectly.
“No wonder you lent this,” Ellie whispered aloud, thinking that her therapist wanted to show off the place.
Straight ahead was a wide doorway, where Ellie could see the kitchen with its cheerful yellow cabinets, and through there she could see into the back garden. And that’s where two women were sitting under a tree that was covered in magnificent dark red leaves. The women were facing the house, with what looked like a pitcher of lemonade between them on a small wooden table, and they were quietly talking.
Ellie stepped through the living room, into the kitchen, and paused at the sink to look out the window. She expected the women to see her instantly, but because the sun was behind them and reflecting on the glass, they didn’t. When she realized that she could see and not be seen, Ellie couldn’t resist the temptation to stand and look.
Leslie was no longer extraordinary. She looked like a middle-aged, middle-class housewife. She was still slim, but she had lost all definition to what had once been a body-to-die-for. Her hair seemed to have lost its auburn glow and was now just a sort of brown, and judging by the many gray strands running through it, she didn’t color it. Her skin was good, but it showed the lines about her eyes, and there were deep channels running from her nose down to her mouth.
She’s very unhappy about something, Ellie thought.
Ellie kept looking at Leslie and remembering the girl she had once been. Now, the only thing that remained of the Leslie she’d met so long ago was her posture. Leslie still sat upright, her back as straight as a yardstick.
I wouldn’t have known her, Ellie thought, frowning.
She knew that, sooner or later, she was going to have to turn her head and look at Madison. But Ellie didn’t want to. She’d seen more than she wanted to when she’d first glanced at that once-beautiful woman.
For a moment, Ellie closed her eyes and gave a little prayer that asked for strength; then she opened her eyes and turned to look at Madison.
Seeing Madison now was like being handed a Monet that someone had left in the rain and snow for nineteen years. She was something unbelievably beautiful that had been destroyed by neglect and time.
Madison was still tall, but her spine was slightly curved now, as though she spent a lot of time hunched over a desk. And she was smoking. In the few minutes that Ellie had been standing there, Madison had finished one cigarette and started another. In front of her was a big glass ashtray that was full of filter stubs, and there was a pack of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter beside
it.
If Ellie looked hard, she could see the beauty that Madison had once been. But now there were dark circles under her eyes. Her skin, which had once glowed with health, was now almost gray. Her hair was still long, and even though it was pulled severely back off her face, Ellie could see that there was no luster to her hair.
Whereas once Madison had been slender, she was now gaunt. She wore a thin, long-sleeve knit shirt that clung to arms that were too thin, too lacking of muscle. Her legs didn’t fill out trousers that were stovepipe style.
To Ellie’s eyes, Leslie looked unhappy, but Madison looked as though life were a Mack truck and it had run over her.
Jeanne’s words that maybe the other two women had had a harder time than Ellie’d had, came to her mind. And with this thought, came relief to Ellie. She wasn’t going to be judged by these women. She wasn’t going to be condemned because she’d gained a whopping forty pounds. And she wasn’t going to be ridiculed because she’d lost her success, and lost her direction in life.
Nor did she think she was going to receive pity—and that was an enormous relief.
For a moment Ellie looked away from the two women sitting under the tree and waiting for her. How did she play this? Did she put on her happy face and say that they hadn’t changed a bit? Did she lie and say that she was well and happy and working on a new book that was, like the others, sure to be a best-seller?
For a moment Ellie thought back to the day in the DMV. That day she’d been sarcastic and arrogant. Oh, yes, the arrogance of believing in herself, knowing that she was going to conquer the world. In other words, she’d been herself. And they had liked her then. So now she was going to be herself again.
After taking a deep breath, she put her hand on the knob of the back door and opened it.
When she walked outside, the other two stopped talking and looked up at Ellie. She could see the shock on their faces at the size of her. She was a great deal heavier than she’d been when they last saw her.