“I don’t want to see anyone,” Ellie had said. “Everyone knows me as I once was.”
Jeanne had sighed. No matter what she said to Ellie, nothing seemed to penetrate the wall she’d put around herself. “You still are who you always were. It’s time you got over this and went forward with your life.”
“But who would even recognize me as I am now?” Ellie said heavily.
Jeanne narrowed her eyes at Ellie. “You can lose the weight. You need to go to a gym. Who knows, you might meet someone there and—”
“Not again!” Ellie had exploded. “I’ll never, never go through that again. And who would want me? I’m fat and I’m rich!”
Jeanne had blinked at Ellie a couple of times, then they both laughed at the absurdity of what Ellie had just said. Not many people looked on having money as something bad.
“You know what I mean,” Ellie said. “After what was done to me I’m afraid that people only want me for what they can get from me.”
“Yes, I know,” Jeanne said, surreptitiously gla
ncing at the clock behind Ellie’s head. In these months they had made little progress in getting Ellie past what had happened to her, and the trauma was making Ellie stand still in life, unable to move forward. Three years ago, Ellie had been on top of the world with her great success as a writer, but now she rarely left her apartment. And to make matters worse, she’d given up nearly all forms of physical activity, so she’d put on forty pounds, and forty pounds on someone just five foot one was a lot of weight.
But, try as she might, Jeanne couldn’t get Ellie to move, to go anywhere, to try to get out of what was turning into a serious depression.
“All right, there must be someone you could spend your fortieth birthday with. If you don’t want to be with your publishing friends, how about someone from your hometown?”
“Richmond? You mean I should call up an old high school buddy and ask her to share a pink birthday cake with me? Think I can get someone who’ll wear her old cheerleading skirt?”
Jeanne knew too well the trap of Ellie’s sarcasm. “There must be someone,” she said forcibly. “Someone somewhere!”
“Actually . . .” Ellie had said, looking down at her nails, which were no longer professionally manicured.
“Yes,” Jeanne said encouragingly.
“On my twenty-first birthday I met two other women at the DMV here in New York. It was their twenty-first birthday also, and we . . .”
“Yes?” When Ellie didn’t say anything more, Jeanne pushed. It was the first time Ellie had mentioned these women, and if there was any possibility that Ellie would spend time with them and get out of her apartment, then Jeanne just might write the invitations herself. “Who are these women?” Jeanne asked. “How can you get in touch with them? Can you three spend your birthday together?”
“I really don’t know where they are now. We met that one day and spent a few hours together. It was, you know, just one of those things that happens to people. We were at the DMV for hours because—” Ellie broke off and gave a bit of a smile at the memory, and it was that smile that made Jeanne pounce.
“Call them. Find them. You know their names and their birth dates. Get on the Internet and find them. No, better yet, give me their names and I will find them. You can have a party together, the three of you. Talk about old times.”
Ellie gave her therapist a look of disgust. “One was a dancer with the most incredible body you’ve ever seen, and the other was a model.” What Ellie didn’t say was that she couldn’t possibly see them looking as she did now.
Jeanne gave Ellie a hard look, then pulled a photo album off a shelf behind her and opened it. She passed the album to Ellie.
Ellie looked at the picture but didn’t understand. It was a photo of a ballet dancer, tall, thin, graceful. Beautiful. It took Ellie minutes before she understood. She looked up at the therapist. “You?”
“Me,” Jeanne said.
Ellie gave her a weak smile. Jeanne was now in her sixties and had a body the shape of a potato.
“A person is more than her body,” Jeanne said. “If they liked you then, they’ll like you now. And, besides, it’s been nineteen years. Have you seen either of these women’s faces or names plastered on billboards?”
“No . . .” Ellie said softly.
“Then obviously they didn’t make careers out of dancing and modeling. So who’s to say what they look like now? Maybe they’ve put on a hundred pounds and—”
“And married the town drunk,” Ellie said, visibly cheering up.
“Yes,” Jeanne said, smiling. “Think on the bright side. Maybe worse things have happened to them than have happened to you.”
Ellie thought about that for a moment. “Maybe . . .” she said.