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.