Straight ahead was a wide doorway, where Ellie could see the kitchen with its cheerful yellow cabinets, and through there she could see into the back garden. And that’s where two women were sitting under a tree that was covered in magnificent dark red leaves. The women were facing the house, with what looked like a pitcher of lemonade between them on a small wooden table, and they were quietly talking.
Ellie stepped through the living room, into the kitchen, and paused at the sink to look out the window. She expected the women to see her instantly, but because the sun was behind them and reflecting on the glass, they didn’t. When she realized that she could see and not be seen, Ellie couldn’t resist the temptation to stand and look.
Leslie was no longer extraordinary. She looked like a middle-aged, middle-class housewife. She was still slim, but she had lost all definition to what had once been a body-to-die-for. Her hair seemed to have lost its auburn glow and was now just a sort of brown, and judging by the many gray strands running through it, she didn’t color it. Her skin was good, but it showed the lines about her eyes, and there were deep channels running from her nose down to her mouth.
She’s very unhappy about something, Ellie thought.
Ellie kept looking at Leslie and remembering the girl she had once been. Now, the only thing that remained of the Leslie she’d met so long ago was her posture. Leslie still sat upright, her back as straight as a yardstick.
I wouldn’t have known her, Ellie thought, frowning.
She knew that, sooner or later, she was going to have to turn her head and look at Madison. But Ellie didn’t want to. She’d seen more than she wanted to when she’d first glanced at that once-beautiful woman.
For a moment, Ellie closed her eyes and gave a little prayer that asked for strength; then she opened her eyes and turned to look at Madison.
Seeing Madison now was like being handed a Monet that someone had left in the rain and snow for nineteen years. She was something unbelievably beautiful that had been destroyed by neglect and time.
Madison was still tall, but her spine was slightly curved now, as though she spent a lot of time hunched over a desk. And she was smoking. In the few minutes that Ellie had been standing there, Madison had finished one cigarette and started another. In front of her was a big glass ashtray that was full of filter stubs, and there was a pack of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter beside
it.
If Ellie looked hard, she could see the beauty that Madison had once been. But now there were dark circles under her eyes. Her skin, which had once glowed with health, was now almost gray. Her hair was still long, and even though it was pulled severely back off her face, Ellie could see that there was no luster to her hair.
Whereas once Madison had been slender, she was now gaunt. She wore a thin, long-sleeve knit shirt that clung to arms that were too thin, too lacking of muscle. Her legs didn’t fill out trousers that were stovepipe style.
To Ellie’s eyes, Leslie looked unhappy, but Madison looked as though life were a Mack truck and it had run over her.
Jeanne’s words that maybe the other two women had had a harder time than Ellie’d had, came to her mind. And with this thought, came relief to Ellie. She wasn’t going to be judged by these women. She wasn’t going to be condemned because she’d gained a whopping forty pounds. And she wasn’t going to be ridiculed because she’d lost her success, and lost her direction in life.
Nor did she think she was going to receive pity—and that was an enormous relief.
For a moment Ellie looked away from the two women sitting under the tree and waiting for her. How did she play this? Did she put on her happy face and say that they hadn’t changed a bit? Did she lie and say that she was well and happy and working on a new book that was, like the others, sure to be a best-seller?
For a moment Ellie thought back to the day in the DMV. That day she’d been sarcastic and arrogant. Oh, yes, the arrogance of believing in herself, knowing that she was going to conquer the world. In other words, she’d been herself. And they had liked her then. So now she was going to be herself again.
After taking a deep breath, she put her hand on the knob of the back door and opened it.
When she walked outside, the other two stopped talking and looked up at Ellie. She could see the shock on their faces at the size of her. She was a great deal heavier than she’d been when they last saw her.
Leslie was trying hard to collect herself so she could speak, but Ellie beat her to it. “Too bad we didn’t offer a prize for which of us looks the worst,” Ellie said with great cheerfulness.
“I’d win,” Madison said. She was sitting on a chair, the cigarette between her fingers, her long legs extended before her, and she smiled at Ellie. And when she did, Ellie could see part of the original Madison, the one who could outshine the sun with her smile.
“I don’t know about that,” Ellie said as she sat on the chair next to Leslie. There was a third glass on the table and she filled it with lemonade. “I think fat is pretty shocking. It shows a lack of discipline.”
“At least you’ve made a success of your life,” Madison said. “You’re a big-deal writer. The whole world buys your books, but I work in a vet’s office. If a dog is sick, I’m the one who cleans it up. No husband, no kids. Zip.”
Her words were dreadful, but they were said with such cheerfulness that they made Ellie smile. It was good to hear that someone else had problems. In the last years it seemed that everyone she met had a wonderful life with no problems at all. They were all probably lying, but even that thought hadn’t penetrated Ellie’s misery.
But now she could smile about it. “You think that’s bad? I’m a has-been. Dried up. Haven’t written a word in three years. I had nearly everything I’d earned in ten years of writing taken away from me in a divorce court, all of it given to an ex-husband who did nothing all day.”
“At least you had something to take away,” Madison said happily. “I never did anything to earn a lot of money. I never had anything that anyone could take away.”
“But isn’t that better?” Ellie asked. “You don’t have a world asking about what you used to be.”
“Oh, no,” Madison said seriously. “It’s better to have been than never to have been at all. I think Nietzsche said that.”
“Plato,” Ellie said firmly. “It was Plato who said that, but I agree with Socrates. He said that—”