“So what happened?” Ellie urged. “What made you come here to New York?”
“The town council thought that they owed me for something.” Madison waved her hand when Ellie started to speak. “It doesn’t matter now for what, but after Roger dumped me, they decided to send me here to New York so I could become a model.”
Madison didn’t tell them what her pastor’s daughter had spat at her in an angry fit one day. The girl had always been jealous of Madison, because not only was Madison beautiful, but she was smart, and when people could get past her beauty, they liked Madison a lot. It was too much for the spiteful girl to stand, so she told Madison a secret she wasn’t supposed to know. It was true that the town council had put up the money to send Madison to New York. “If she becomes famous, it will put us on the map,” they’d reasoned. But the girl’s father, the pastor of the church that Madison and her mother had always attended, said that the money they had gathered wasn’t enough. The girl just “happened” to have picked up the telephone one day when her father was dialing and she’d heard a child’s voice say, “Madison residence.” Her father the pastor had said, “I’d like to speak to your father, please.” A moment later a man came on the line. “Yes?” he said. “Your daughter needs ten thousand dollars. Now. Send it to me here at the church. You remember my name and address?” There had been a pause on the line, then, “Yes, I remember.” After that there was a click and the phone went dead.
But Madison didn’t tell this part of the story about her father sending money. That was private and not to be told. Instead, she summed up by saying that the town council had sent her to New York to become a model, and left it at that.
Ellie sensed that Madison was leaving out some information, so she’d fired off lots of questions. But Madison had smiled in a Mona Lisa way and not answered them.
“What about you, Leslie?” Madison had asked in a way that made Ellie know that no amount of coaxing was going to get her to reveal more. “What about the man you left behind?”
“Alan,” Leslie said, and tried to look sad, but there was such a gleam of happiness and anticipation in her eyes that Ellie didn’t think anything could make her sad. “We were going to get married, but I chickened out. I know I’m already twenty-one and quite old enough to settle down and start producing babies but, . . .”
“You want to see life,” Ellie said enthusiastically.
“Oh, yes!”
“So you ditched the boy and came to New York,” Ellie said, smiling.
“More or less. Although, Alan was pretty angry about it. He said he could have done some things in college if he’d had any idea that I was going to turn out to be a—” Leslie looked down at her hands. “It wasn’t a pretty scene.”
For a moment the three of them were silent; then Madison said, “You have his address? Maybe Alan and I could get together.”
It was what was needed to lighten their mood, and the three of them laughed hard. “What about you?” Leslie asked, looking at Ellie. “So far we have one jilter and one jiltee. What are you?”
“Nothing,” she said, then quickly added, “I mean, nothing one would associate with romance, that is. I’ve wanted to be an artist since I was a child. All I ever wanted for any Christmas or birthday was paints and crayons and colored pencils, anything that I could draw with. In high school I think I went on three dates. I had four big brothers, all of whom have rocks for brains, I mean, I love them and all and they’re good guys, but—”
“Stupid,” Madison said.
“Yes,” Ellie said with a sigh. “Big, good-looking, great at all sports, but my mother had to use a whip over them to get them to open a book. Like your Roger, they—”
“Please,” Madison said, “not my Roger.”
“Right. Sorry. Anyway, like you, their girl friends did their homework for them. And I mean that as two words: ‘girl’ and ‘friend.’ They had girlfriends to date, pretty girls who could fill out a strapless dress, but they also had some mousy little thing to do their work for them. That’s why when I first saw you, I . . .” Ellie trailed off and looked away from Madison.
“Why you assumed that I was as dumb as the girls your brothers dated. Don’t worry about it; it happens all the time.”
“But you didn’t have a boyfriend?” Leslie asked Ellie. “But you’re—”
“I know, so cute,” Ellie said with a sigh. “I guess I had more testosterone than I could handle in my house, so I didn’t want any more. I just wanted to draw, so that’s what I did in college. I graduated with a degree in fine arts in May, and this summer I lived at home and worked in an art gallery in Richmond. There was an old shed in back of our house that my mother used to call her ‘summerhouse’ because she planned to nag my father enough to get him to add some doors and windows and make it a place where she could sit and read. But, so far, she’s been nagging for nearly thirty years and hasn’t made any headway.” Ellie said this with a smile, as it was a great family joke. At least it was a joke to everyone in her family except her mother.
“She should remodel it herself,” Leslie said firmly. “My father is a building contractor and sometimes he would take me to work with him. I can use a hammer and a screwdriver as well as any man.”
Both Ellie and Madison smiled at Leslie, because the way she said this was so very defiant.
“I am woooooomman, hear me roar,” Ellie sang under her breath, and the three of them laughed.
“Anyway,” Ellie said, “I used the old shed as a studio this summer and worked every minute that I wasn’t at the gallery. And in the end . . .” She trailed off and looked down at her hands.
“Someone here in New York saw your work,” Madison said softly.
“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.