“And your hometown has prospered,” Ellie said.
“Yes, they have, but then I owe them everything, don’t I?” Madison said. “I wanted to do something to repay them for sending me to New York and for caring about me after my mother died and after my boyfriend dumped me.”
“What happened to Roger?!” Ellie and Leslie said loudly in unison, making Madison laugh.
“Poor guy,” Madison said, shaking her head. “I feel so sorry for him.” For a moment she looked down at the table, then back up at them. “I’m not sure you’ll believe this after what I told you about what he’d done to me—you do remember that part, don’t you?”
“Yes!” Leslie and Ellie again said in unison.
“He called me in New York not long after I got there and told me that he’d been seriously injured by a car running over him. He was a mess, both mentally and physically. He told me he needed me and he begged me to return home to help him. He said that since I’d nursed my mother, I knew all that I needed to know, and that I was the only one on earth who could help him.”
“And what did you say?” Leslie asked.
When Madison looked up, there was a bit of a grimace on her face. “You know, to this day, I still feel a bit guilty about what I did to him. Now that I’m older I realize how much pain he must have been in, but at the time, all I could think of was the way he’d dumped me after all I’d done for him. I’m afraid that I wasn’t very sympathetic to his plight. I told him . . .”
Madison had a guilty look on her face. “I told him that his family could afford to hire the best and that I wasn’t going to be his free nurse. Pretty callous of me, wasn’t it?”
When Madison saw the way that Leslie and Ellie looked at each other, and saw the joy that lit up their faces, she glared at them. “If you two start dancing again, I swear I’ll walk out of here. One time was interesting, but two would be embarrassing.”
“We’ll restrain ourselves,” Leslie said.
Smiling, Ellie said, “So what happened to good ol’ Roger?”
“Mmmm,” Madison said. “That’s where I do feel guilty. He didn’t get the care that he needed after the accident. But, worse, he had been misdiagnosed. Right after the accident, he was told that he would never walk again, and it seems that no one questioned that diagnosis.”
“You mean that today he’s still in a wheelchair?” Ellie asked.
“Yes. It was awful, really. His parents always were the coldest people in the world, and I think that they were embarrassed by their imperfect son, so they put him on the second floor of their house and left him there. He had a male nurse to tend to his basic needs, but no one ever questioned the original diagnosis. And no one ever gave him a MRI after his injuries had healed enough to see that the lesion had not been complete, as they’d originally thought.”
Madison paused for a moment. “As I told you, for a while after his call, Roger and I exchanged a few letters, but I think his parents discouraged the correspondence, as they always did think I was of a lower class than their son. Anyway, Roger never recovered from his injuries. His parents died in a boating accident years ago, and Roger inherited their house and lots of money. But it hasn’t made him happy. He’s been married three or four times—I don’t remember which—and each divorce has made him a great deal poorer.
“I know so much about him because three times a week he travels the distance to our clinic. I was the one who saw that his spinal cord had not been severed, as he’d been told. We’ve worked hard on his rehabilitation, but . . .”
Madison raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “The truth is that Roger’s heart isn’t into the work that it would take to make him walk again. He needs someone to push him and beg him and . . . I guess he needs someone to make him believe that he’s once again the captain of the football team and the most popular boy in school. But no one can give that to him. It’s too late.”
For a moment, Madison looked angry. “Truthfully, it’s all such a shame! And such a waste. If his parents hadn’t been so cheap years ago and had shelled out for proper therapy, Roger might have recovered. And who knows what he could have been?”
At that Leslie and Ellie looked at each other.
“Yeah, who knows?” Ellie said. “Roger was such a nice guy, wasn’t he?”
“I don’t think you should judge him just by what he did to me,” Madison said. “Sometimes I’ve wondered what would have happened to me if I’d returned to him that time when he called and—”
“No!” Ellie half shouted, then looked at the table next to them and lowered her voice. “You did the right thing by not going back to him.”
“Of course I did,” Madison said, frowning. “But I still feel that I owe him. If he hadn’t dumped me, the town wouldn’t have sent me to New York. And if it hadn’t been for Roger’s letters, I wouldn’t have applied at Columbia. And even after I was introduced to Thomas by Dorothy, if it hadn’t been for his brother knowing Roger, Thomas and I might not have come to know each other because . . .” Madison smiled. “Well, Thomas is from a rich family, and let’s just say that he’s a bit leery of pretty girls who are friendly to him. Thomas can be a bit intimidating.”
“But not to you,” Leslie said softly.
“No, not to me. I seemed to understand Thomas from the moment I met him. He and I—” Madison broke off because she could tell her story but she didn’t want anyone to see how deeply she felt about her husband, her children, her work, and about her life in general.
“You know something,” Madison said softly. “I’m happy. I know it’s an old-fashioned way of thinking, but I’m happy. I have family and friends, and I have my work. My life isn’t exciting; in fact, it’s very ordinary. We have hot dogs on the Fourth of July and I go out trick-or-treating with my children, but I enjoy it. Sometimes people see photos of me, especially the one with the snake, and they can’t believe that I gave up a chance to be a ‘supermodel’ and lead a life of flying to Rome for the weekend for running a clinic in tiny, boring Erskine. But . . .”
Emotion seemed to overcome her, and for a moment she looked away to calm herself. “What about you two?” she asked when she turned back.
“Very happy,” Ellie said, as her mind was beginning to clear.
Both women looked at Leslie in question.