The Summerhouse

by Jude Deveraux

  “Yeow!” Ellie said.

  “And you left New York and modeling to go back to him?” Leslie asked softly.

  Madison stubbed out her cigarette. “Yes. But before you two start thinking of what I gave up, I want to remind you that modeling wasn’t my idea. It was the town’s idea.”

  “You wanted to be a nurse,” Leslie said.

  “Yes.” Madison smiled at them. It was nice to be remembered so well. “Roger called me from the hospital and said that he’d been told that he’d never walk again. Then he told me that he still loved me, that he’d sent his fiancée packing, so I went running home. It wasn’t any great sacrifice for me to give up the idea of modeling. I hated . . .” Pausing, she lit another cigarette.

  “I didn’t like modeling,” she said after a moment, “so I was glad of any excuse that allowed me to return home. And Roger said all the right things. He blamed his dumping me on his father, saying that his father had threatened that if he married an uneducated girl like me, he’d be disinherited.”

  “No wonder you have a chip on your shoulder about not having gone to college,” Ellie said under her breath.

  Madison pretended she hadn’t heard Ellie. “So I went home and I married a man who was in a hospital bed in a body cast. Then, let’s see . . . How should I put this? Then I entered hell. Yes, I think that’s about right.”

  Madison looked at Ellie and Leslie to laugh, but they didn’t.

  “Roger was a horrible patient. He’d always been very physically active, so he didn’t take well to being confined to a bed. And his parents—” Madison stopped for a moment to take a deep drink of her wine; then she looked up at the other women. “Roger’s parents were very rich, but they were also extremely cheap. They wouldn’t shell out any money for Roger’s rehabilitation. I’ll never know for sure, but I think my ex-father-in-law got Roger to marry me so I’d be a free nurse. After all, I’d had years of experience with my mother. I’d even worked in a hospital.”

  Ellie and Leslie could see that Madison was trying to make light of what had obviously been a horrible situation, but the women didn’t smile; they couldn’t. It wasn’t fair that Madison had had to give up college to nurse her mother, then she’d given up a chance at modeling to nurse a husband.

  “What about the ‘one who got away’?” Leslie asked as she refilled Madison’s glass.

  “Oh, yes,” Madison said, and there was a genuine smile on her face. “Thomas.”

  As she picked up her glass, Leslie looked at Ellie and raised an eyebrow. There was something about the way that Madison said the name . . . Thomas.

  “Roger was injured, but he could still, you know,” Madison said as she set down her glass, “so I was six months pregnant and Roger’s parents were away that weekend, so—”

  “You were living with your in-laws?” Ellie asked in horror.

  “Oh, yes. Roger didn’t have any money and I didn’t either. I mean, I had the money the town had given me for modeling, but that was soon gone.”

  Ellie opened her mouth to explode at that, but Leslie put her hand on her arm and stopped her. Madison had given her college money to her mother’s illness; then it seemed that she’d given her modeling money to a rich, whining, ungrateful—

  “That weekend Roger’s parents were away, so we were alone, and, as I said, I was six months pregnant. What happened was very simple really. I was rolling Roger to the bathroom when one of the wheels of the chair caught on one of those expensive rugs his parents had everywhere. I was afraid that the rug was going to move and topple one of their vases.” Madison’s still-beautiful mouth hardened into a line. “His parents would make me beg them for money for rails in the bathroom, but they’d go to New York and pay ten thousand dollars for some old Chinese vase.”

  She had to light another cigarette before she could speak again, and the other two women watched in silence. Already, the air was full of Madison’s pain, and no matter how much she tried to pretend that she wasn’t still angry, she obviously was.

  “Roger’s legs were healing and they had spasms where they’d kick out of their own accord. I had several bruises on my ribs from being in the line of them during a spasm. To this day I don’t know why I didn’t think of those legs as I bent down and pulled the rug out from under the wheel.”

  She looked up at the other two women. “You see, I had paused at the head of the stairs, and when Roger’s leg kicked out, it knocked me off balance and I went headlong down the stairs.”

  At that she stopped for a moment and concentrated on her cigarette. The other women just watched her. There was nothing they could say, as “I’m sorry” was wholly inadequate.

  “I was unconscious, so Roger had to get to the only phone on the second floor, in his parents’ bedroom. He couldn’t get the chair through the doorway, so he had to drag himself across the room. His upper body was strong, but, still, it took him a while. And I . . . was bleeding.” Madison took another deep drag, then slowly let out the smoke. “The nearest hospital was—and is—over fifty miles away. And it was winter in Montana. Roger managed to get hold of some neighbors and they came, but there was nothing they could do. Except soak up the blood, that is.”

  Madison looked down at her full ashtray. “By the time the ambulance got there, I was in labor. He didn’t live very long. He was so tiny.”

  Madison turned to look out the window for a moment. “When I did get to the hospital, the only way the doctors could get the bleeding to stop was to remove my uterus.”

  At that Ellie reached out to take Leslie’s wrist. She didn’t dare touch Madison, as she guessed that this proud woman wouldn’t want to think someone was feeling sorry for her.

  After a long moment, Madison looked back at the two of them and gave them a strained smile. “So now you know why I never had kids. But weren’t we talking about something else?”

  “The summer you met a man,” Leslie said softly as Ellie withdrew her hand.

  “Ah, yes. It was the summer after the miscarriage and I was still pretty low. I’d lost a lot of weight and I admit that I was looking pretty bad. And I’d been having more fights than usual with Roger’s parents. They were embarrassed by their son’s injuries. He no longer fit in with their idea of the perfect son, so they kept him, and me with him, locked away on the second floor. There was no wheelchair ramp built—not that I hadn’t tried to get one, but they said it would destroy the ‘lines of the house.’”

  “So you and Roger were kept prisoners,” Leslie said.

  “More or less. And I can tell you that we were sick of each other’s company. But, to be fair, I think it was more my fault than his. I was pretty, well, I guess . . . sad about the baby.”

  “Suicidally depressed?” Ellie asked.

  “Exactly!” Madison answered, and gave a bit of a real smile. “Truthfully, I was going crazy with grief and loneliness. And I was so tired that my hair was beginning to fall out.”

  “Now that’s tired,” Ellie said, and was glad to see that Madison smiled wider at her joke.

  “Yes,” Madison said, and her voice was lighter. “Anyway, when some college friend of Roger’s called and asked us to fly to Upstate New York to spend two weeks with him and his family at their summerhouse, both Roger and I were ecstatic. The man had been Roger’s college roommate and he’d recently fallen over a washtub while playing touch football and broken his leg. He was in a cast, and by that time Roger was using two canes, so the two of them planned to commiserate together.”

  “With you waiting on both of them,” Leslie said in a voice that said she knew all about waiting on people.

  “Actually, that’s just what I thought would happen. In fact, I was so sure that that’s what the trip was going to be that I begged Roger to go without me.”

  “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.

  “I see,” Frank said good-naturedly, then turned away to hide his laugh, for he could see that Madison was furious and that Roger was going to catch it. “I’ll just put your luggage in the back of the pickup.”

  As the older man carried two suitcases to the truck, Madison turned to her husband. “You didn’t tell them I was coming?” she hissed.

  “Could we talk about this later?” Roger said, motioning his head toward Frank’s back.

  Madison wasn’t about to stop. “You didn’t even tell them that you’re married.” Madison had to calm herself or she thought she might explode in anger. “If you didn’t want to admit to having a wife, then why did you put on such a show to get me to come with you? I wanted to stay in Montana.”

  “Look, it’s complicated, so I’ll explain later.”

  “You’re damned right you will,” Madison said as Frank turned back toward them.

  “Sorry about the mix-up,” Roger said to Frank, “but I couldn’t very well leave the ol’ ball and chain at home, now could I?”

  His attempt at humor fell flat with Madison. When she glared at her husband, all the anger she felt showed in her eyes.

  As Frank picked up another suitcase, he slowly looked Madison up and down. “Roger, you must be getting old if you can forget to mention something like this extraordinarily beautiful woman.”

  At that, Madison smiled at Frank in gratitude. It had been a long time since anyone had called her “beautiful.” And she wasn’t sure anyone had ever added “extraordinarily” onto the word. And considering that, to her eyes, she was too thin, her hair was scraggly, and her sadness showed on her face, she was especially pleased by the compliment.

  “Madison, my dear,” Frank said, “why don’t you sit up front with me? Roger can get in the back with the luggage.”

  “I’d love to,” Madison said happily.

  But Roger moved forward on his canes and placed himself between Madison and Frank. “I think that, under other circumstances, that would be a great idea, but . . .” He gave a sigh and his face was full of sadness. “But I think that after what has happened to me, I would be much more comfortable sitting inside the truck rather than on the hard metal truck bed. And the luggage being loose like that might further injure me.”

  Madison, who was more than used to this, just gave a quick look skyward, then put her hand on the back of the truck, ready to vault over the gate and place herself next to the luggage.

 
But Frank’s laugh halted her. “Boy, you have one enormous case of self-pity, don’t you? Well, we don’t allow pity, self or otherwise, up here. You can get in the back of the truck, and this gorgeous young lady can sit up front with me.”

  For a moment, all Madison could do was blink at him. Since her marriage, just after Roger’s injury, she’d been isolated in Roger’s parents’ house, with just Roger and his parents for company. An oxymoron if she ever heard one, she’d often thought. His parents were all concern for Roger and none for her. If Roger kept her awake all night, they cared only for his pain, not that she’d had to run up and down stairs for eight hours. After the miscarriage, they’d said, “Well, maybe it was for the best.” She’d nearly lost it then. “Best?” she’d shouted. “Best for whom? For you? If I had a child to care for, maybe you’d have to shell out the money for a nurse for your son. If I had a child, it might cost you as much as you pay for one of your vases, wouldn’t it?” At that his parents had left the room and Roger had put himself in the doorway so she couldn’t follow them. Madison had locked herself away for two whole hours and cried.

  But now here was a man she’d never met before not giving pity to Roger. What was more, he hooked his arm around Madison’s, led her to the passenger side of the truck, opened the door for her, and helped her climb up to the seat. He left Roger alone to get into the back of the truck all by himself.

  Once Frank was behind the wheel and had started the engine, Madison began to apologize. “I’m sorry about the mix-up,” she said. “I didn’t know that I wasn’t expected, and I know that an additional guest will be a burden on your hospitality, so—”

  Frank heard her words, but he was listening harder to her tone, and he cut her off before she could finish her apology—before she could offer to leave. “Our family has known Roger for years, so I know he and my younger son are a great deal alike. They want to be thought of as men of the world, so they don’t want anyone to think that they got ‘caught’ by a woman. Mark it down to immaturity.”