“You mean you were asking him to feed himself, clothe himself, get himself on and off a toilet, all by his widdle self?” Ellie asked in sarcasm.
Madison laughed. “You’re reading my mind. I was so depressed a
nd so tired that all I could think of was sleep. I told Roger that I’d throw the biggest fit the earth had ever seen in order to get his parents to hire a nurse to go with him, but to please let me stay there and rest.” Madison stubbed out her cigarette, then drew up her knees and clasped them to her chest.
“But Roger could be persuasive when he wanted to be. He said he couldn’t go without me, that I was his whole life, and that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to live if I didn’t go with him.”
“Been there, done that,” Ellie said bitterly. “So you went with him.”
“Yes,” Madison said softly. “I went, and it wasn’t anything like what I thought it was going to be. You see, the truth is that I was afraid of going. This boy was from Roger’s college and his parents both had degrees and there was an older brother in medical school. When I heard the credentials of these people, I wanted to turn tail and run.”
She smiled as she stared at the floor. The bad memory of the miscarriage was fading and in its place was the wonderful memory of that time at Scotty’s parents’ summerhouse. And Thomas. The beautiful memory of Thomas.
Looking up again, Madison continued. “By the time the plane landed in Upstate New York, I was a nervous wreck. I was sure these people were going to take one look at me and know that I had no education and therefore think that I was worth nothing.” For a moment, she closed her eyes in memory. “But they weren’t like that, not at all. Scotty’s mother was what my mother had always wanted to be, except that my mother had no husband and a daughter to support. Mrs. Randall loved to feed people, loved to take care of everyone. I had nothing at all to do.”
“Except wait on Roger hand and foot.”
“Oh, no,” Madison said, grinning at the women. “Roger couldn’t stand me. Once we got there, he wanted nothing to do with me. He said I reminded him of the months when ‘someone,’ meaning me, had to change his diapers.”
“Why, that ungrateful—” Ellie began, but Madison interrupted her.
“No, no, by that time it was a relief. I never had the courage to be absolutely honest, but I was truly sick of Roger, tired of looking at him day after day, month after month, with no company but him. He was worse than taking care of triplets, what with his complaining and his—” Madison laughed. “Oh, well, that’s over with now.”
When she didn’t say anything else, the women stared at her.
“So?” Ellie said. “What happened?”
Madison smiled. “I spent most of the time I was there with Thomas, Scotty’s older brother.”
Ellie was about to say something, but Leslie put her hand on her arm. “What did you do?” Leslie asked softly.
“We went white-water rafting, hiking, spent the night together in a tent.”
Smiling, Ellie said, “I want to hear every single word. In chronological order.”
Madison hugged her legs tighter to her chest. “Okay,” she said slowly, then closed her eyes for a moment. “They were rich and their summerhouse was huge, built in the 1840s and added onto by generations of Scotty’s family until the thing had about eight bedrooms. Only two baths, mind you, and that sometimes caused problems, like the time Mr. Randall . . . No, you said, chronological order, didn’t you? Okay, let’s see. Where do I begin? Scotty’s father met us at the airport in a pickup truck, a horrible old thing that was nearly rusted through. I thought he was the gardener, but Roger gouged me in the ribs and told me the man was a professor of medieval history at Yale. Head of the department, even. But Mr. Randall didn’t seem like what I thought a professor would be, and we hit it off right away. In fact, he put Roger in the back of the truck, while Mr. Randall and I sat in the front. I can tell you that Roger didn’t like that one little bit. No, he didn’t like that at all.”
Five
“Look, the man is a full professor,” Roger said as though Madison were too stupid to understand the full importance of this fact. “At Yale. Do you understand what that means, Maddy?”
“I can’t very well forget, can I?” Madison snapped. “You keep reminding me every ten minutes.”
“I knew it was a mistake to bring you,” Roger muttered under his breath.
Madison opened her mouth to reply, but then Frank Randall got out of the truck and approached them. He didn’t look as though he were a college professor, Madison thought, certainly not one who had a half-mile-long list of abbreviations after his name, as this man did. Instead, he looked like someone’s father in his old plaid flannel shirt and his worn-out denims. There were lines at his eyes that Madison was sure he’d acquired from smiling so much.
Madison liked him right away, and her smile told him so. “Hello,” she said warmly. “Did you have a long drive to get here? We could have rented a car and—”
“Wouldn’t hear of it,” Frank said, but he was looking from Roger, on his canes, then to Madison as though something were wrong. He knew Roger from other summer visits with his son Scott, but he’d never met Madison.
Again, Frank smiled, then stretched out his hand in welcome. “I didn’t know Roger was bringing his girlfriend.”
After a startled moment in which she realized that Roger had not told their hosts that she was coming, Madison said tersely, “Wife”; then she took Frank’s hand. She didn’t dare look at her husband or she would have killed him.
“Congratulations,” Frank said, as he turned to smile at Roger. “You should have told us. Newlyweds are always welcome.”
“We’ve been married over two years,” Madison said, still not looking at her husband.