The Summerhouse

by Jude Deveraux

  When Madison walked into the office of the top modeling agency in New York, her first thought was that she felt old. The office was full of girls young enough to be her daughter.

  But there was a mirror by the door and a brief glance showed that her body was as young as these girls’. But she was happy to see that age was the only thing that they had in common.

  The girls were dressed as she had been the first time she’d walked through those doors. They had on their “Sunday best,” which meant little suits and lots of jewelry. And their makeup was in the style that was taught in “charm schools” all over the U.S.: too much and too obvious.

  Standing amid the other girls, Madison, with her plain white blouse and her plain black trousers, with her glowing skin without any makeup, looked like a perfect pearl beside a bed of aquarium gravel.

  Sitting behind the desk was the same squat, ugly, bad-tempered receptionist she remembered so well. “Yeah?” she said as she looked up at Madison.

  The first time around that sullen glare and the hostility of the woman had enraged Madison. But this time, she smiled sweetly at her. “I’d like to present my portfolio and possibly see Mrs. Vanderpool,” Madison said.

  The receptionist tried to cover it, but she was impressed by the look of Madison. Obviously, the woman recognized the quality—and cost—of the clothes she had on. “You got an appointment?”

  “Actually, I do,” Madison said. She’d been caught in this trap the last time. “It’s for eleven, and I believe it’s that now.”

  “I’ve been waiting for three hours!” said a girl from behind Madison.

  “We didn’t even open until an hour ago,” the receptionist snapped; then she looked down at her appointment book. “I don’t see you in here.”

  Madison pointed to the eleven A.M. slot. “That’s me.”

  “What kind of name is ‘Madison’?” the receptionist snapped again.

  Madison resisted the urge to snap back. “The one my mother gave me,” she said, still smiling. “Perhaps you’d like to look over my portfolio while I wait,” she said, then she put the big black book on top of the woman’s desk. This time the portfolio was leather, not plastic.

  More than anything in the world, Madison wanted to stand there and watch the face of the woman when she first opened the book and saw the pictures that Cordova had taken. In the end, she’d spent three days with the man. Once his creativity was unleashed, there was no holding him back. When a crate of peaches had been delivered to him to shoot, he’d sent the hairdresser out to buy a cheap black wig and he’d sent his assistant out to find clothes “like a gypsy would wear.” After the snake, the assistant wasn’t protesting any assignment.

  Cordova had photographed Madison dressed as a gypsy sitting in the middle of a thousand peaches. Well, it looked like a thousand when Cordova got through arranging them around an artificial hill.

  It was Madison who suggested that he drop the “Michael” from his name and just go by Cordova. He’d liked the idea instantly, but he kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye, as though he were afraid that any minute she might change into a creature from outer space.

  But now, in the agency office, Madison made herself keep her back to the receptionist as she walked to the end of the room to the only vacant chair. But when she turned around, she had the deep satisfaction of seeing that dreadful little woman looking at the photos with her mouth hanging open in shock.

  When she looked up and saw Madison watching her, she closed her mouth and the book. Then, as though it were something she did every day, she got up from her desk, pulled her too-tight blouse down, then picked up the stack of portfolios off her desk. Acting as though taking Madison’s were only an afterthought, she dropped it on top of the stack, then went to the door of the office where Mrs. Vanderpool decided the fates of hundreds of young women.

  The receptionist gave a quick knock; then when she opened the door, they heard, “This better be good,” from inside the office. Obviously, Mrs. Vanderpool didn’t like interruptions.

  When the door closed behind the woman, Madison realized that her heart was pounding. Had she been too aggressive? Maybe she should have just had her photo taken by a good New York photographer. Something plain. Ordinary. Not with a snake.

  It was probably only minutes later that the door opened, but to Madison, it seemed hours. And when the door swung wide, it wasn’t the snotty little receptionist standing there but Mrs. Vanderpool herself. Or, in the modeling world, that would be, Herself.

  Madison held her breath as the woman, with her iron gray hair, in her ordinary little dress, scanned the room. When she saw Madison, she halted. “Are you Madison Appleby?”

  Madison gave the woman a polite smile and nodded. Truth was, there was a lump in her throat too big for her to speak.

  “Would you like to come into my office?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Madison managed to get out; then she had to make her feet move forward.

  She followed Mrs. Vanderpool into her inner office, and the door closed behind them.

  Twenty-nine

  “That is, without a doubt, the most wonderful story I have ever heard,” Leslie said.

  “Even the second time around?” Madison asked, smiling.

  “I could hear that story a thousand times and it would get better with each telling,” Ellie said. “So what happened next?”

  “But you know the rest,” Madison answered, looking about for the waitress. “Do you think they have a dessert menu?”

  “It’s Maine, ask for blueberries,” Ellie said impatiently. “I want to know what happened next.”

  Leslie put her hand on Ellie’s arm. “But we know the rest, don’t we? Haven’t we been seeing your picture in magazines for years?”

  “Have we?” Ellie asked eagerly.

  “Here and there,” Madison said, smiling, “but I’ve had other things to do besides stand in front of a camera. But then, you two know that story. Oh, good, here comes the dessert cart.”

  “Madison,” Ellie said slowly, “I will buy you everything on that cart if you’ll just tell the rest of the story.”

  Laughing, Madison pointed to a large slice of chocolate cake with chocolate icing. “I behaved myself,” she said simply as the waitress placed the dessert in front of her.

  Ellie and Leslie waved the cart away.

  “And that means?” Ellie encouraged her.

  “I showed up on time for bookings, and I took all the work I could get. I don’t mean to brag, but the result was that I was on the cover of three fashion magazines and was offered a lucrative cosmetics contract at the end of just eight weeks.”

  Madison paused to take a bite of her cake. “But when I held the checks I’d received for the work, I thought, I could send two kids to college on this. And that’s what gave me the idea, and you know the rest.”

  “No we don’t!!!” the other two said in unison.

  Madison looked at them in disbelief that they could have forgotten something so big. “I used the money to start working on getting my degree,” she said.

  “Your degree in what?” Ellie asked, her breath held.

  Madison narrowed her eyes at her. “You know as well as I do that I’m a doctor.”

  “Of medicine?” Leslie asked, her eyes wide.

  “Yes. I’m a physiatrist,” Madison said, shaking her head at them. “I’m glad I chose that specialty because I had a wonderful teacher at Columbia, Dr. Dorothy Oliver. It was as though she and I had known each other forever.”

  Ellie looked at Leslie; then Leslie looked at Ellie. At first they smiled at each other; then they grinned. Then, in a spontaneous gesture, they began to laugh. Then they threw back their heads and laughed some more. Then they pushed their chairs back and got up and linked arms and began to dance around, laughing happily.

  The other patrons looked up, at first frowning, but when they saw the unabashed happiness of the two women, they smiled.

  There was music playing i
n the restaurant, something soothing, but Ellie and Leslie seemed to find a beat as they whirled each other about in what looked like fifties swing. “Doctor!” Ellie said. “She’s a doctor.”

  “Of medicine,” Leslie answered, laughing, as she twirled about with Ellie.

  When it came to dancing, Ellie was outclassed by Leslie, so she stepped back, and in the next second Leslie was on her toes. In a way, it had been about eighteen years since Leslie had danced, but in another way, for the last two weeks, she’d spent two hours a day dancing. Now, she put her hands above her head in a graceful arc and began to twirl her body in a tight little circle; then, still twirling, she made her way between the tables.

  The diners knew talent and experience when they saw it. They put down their forks and gave their attention to Leslie, and when Ellie began to clap to the rhythm of the music, so did they. Leslie twirled through the entire restaurant, never losing her balance, or her momentum.

  When she returned to their table, she stopped. And when she stopped, the restaurant burst into applause. Smiling, her face red with embarrassment, but pleasure also, Leslie dropped into a deep curtsy, as though she were a ballerina at the end of a bravura performance.

  Moments later, they were again seated at the table, both Ellie and Leslie looking at Madison with shining eyes.

  “You still have it,” Madison said to Leslie.

  “No, not really,” she answered, but this time there was no sound of “failure” in her voice. “The truth was that I never did have it.”

  “But I just saw—”

  Leslie had to take a deep drink of water. Yesterday she may have been twenty, but today she was forty, and the body she’d just used was not in shape. “I’m a better dancer than the average person, but I’m not as good as the best dancers. And that’s what I always wanted to be: the best.”

  “But—” Madison began, but Ellie cut her off.

  “So how did you meet Thomas?” Ellie asked.

  Looking down at her empty dessert plate, Madison smiled. “Do you two remember that when I met you, I said that I’d been jilted by a boy back home?”

  “We remember,” Leslie said quietly. “What happened to him?”

  “Don’t tell the punch line before the story, remember?” Madison said, smiling. “The boy who jilted me, Roger, that was his name, wrote me a couple of letters while I was in New York, and it was through him that all the best things in my life have happened.”

  Pausing for a moment, Madison waited for Leslie or Ellie to make a reply to this, but both women wore identical expressions: both women had curled upper lips, as though the mention of Roger’s name disgusted them.

  “Roger wrote me that the brother of a college friend of his was going to Columbia University. With my background, I didn’t know one college from another, but that school was in New York, so I applied there.”

  Looking down at her water glass, she gave a secretive little smile. “At the time, I didn’t know what a prestigious school Columbia was and how difficult it was to get into. But all through high school, I’d done my own schoolwork and Roger’s as well. So, in essence, I’d had two educations. I’d studied English and history, but Roger wanted to impress people, so he’d taken physics and chemistry courses.” Still smiling, she looked up at Leslie and Ellie. “Let’s just say that Roger made straight As in all his courses. So, any test they gave me, I passed with high marks. I was told that I should apply for a scholarship, but I wanted to pay my own way.”

  “So you went to Columbia thanks to Roger,” Ellie said, smiling; then she exchanged looks with Leslie.

  “Yes,” Madison answered. “But when I got there, I was much too shy to introduce myself to Roger’s friend’s brother.” Smiling, Madison looked down for a moment. “I’m not sure either of you saw it in our one brief meeting so long ago, but I used to believe that I wasn’t . . . Well, I guess you’d say that I didn’t believe that I was of the class of people who went to medical school.”

  “I never noticed that, did you, Leslie?” Ellie said, with her eyes wide in feigned innocence.

  “I certainly never thought you were less than brilliant,” Leslie said, smiling.

  “You two are great for my ego,” Madison said. “But, anyway, I think it was Roger’s letters telling me about something that had happened to him that made me choose my specialty, and because of that, I met my wonderful teacher, Dr. Dorothy Oliver. And, by some one-in-a-million chance, it turned out that her nephew was the friend’s brother who Roger had written me about.”

  Madison waited for a moment as though she expected this extraordinary coincidence to garner exclamations from Leslie and Ellie, but, instead, they sat there silently, waiting for her to continue.

  “So I finally met Thomas in my second year in med school,” Madison continued, “and we hit it off immediately. He helped me every step of the way through school and we were married the day after I graduated.”

  Ellie and Leslie leaned back in their chairs, smiling in satisfaction.

  “And you have children,” Leslie said, not as a question but a statement. Happiness sounded in her words.

  “Yes, four of them,” Madison said, still smiling. “Both Thomas and I would have a dozen if we could. We love kids. They make life worth living. If I didn’t have them . . .” She looked up. “Well, anyway, I can’t imagine what my life would be like if I didn’t have Thomas and the children. Sometimes I think that we were all made for each other, that if we didn’t have one another, that there wouldn’t be anyone else for us. Does that make sense?”

  “More sense than you can possibly imagine,” Leslie said.

  “So now all of you live in New York?” Ellie asked.

  “No,” Madison said. “Didn’t I tell you—Oh, right. You don’t remember anything. The lot of us live in Montana, in Erskine. We have a clinic there.”

  Ellie had once researched clinics in small towns, and she knew that they made little money. Without thinking, she said under her breath, “That’s right. Thomas was wealthy.”

  “Oh, no,” Madison said quickly. “It was my money that we used for the clinic. What money Thomas has is tied up in trust for the children.”

  “From modeling,” Leslie said pointedly to Ellie. “She earned the money from modeling.”

  “No,” Madison said; then she looked down at her cup of coffee for a moment. The waitress had taken their plates and refilled their coffee cups. “You two are going to think this is strange, but I made the money in the stock market. It was weird, but I could look at a list of companies that were on the stock exchange and I seemed to know which stocks were going to go up.”

  For a moment she looked at the other two women, as though waiting for them to express surprise at this, but when neither of them said anything, Madison continued. “It started out innocently enough. One day one of my fellow medical students was reading aloud about the stock market and I told him which stocks were going to go up. It was as though I knew which products were going to catch the imagination of the American people.”

  When neither Leslie nor Ellie replied to this, Madison went on. “I began investing what I could spare from the catalog modeling work that I did while I went to school.” Madison paused to take a sip of her coffee. “And when the Internet started, I invested heavily. I was sure that thing was going to do well!”

  Again, she paused; then, looking up, she gave them a brilliant smile. “To make a long story short, I made millions.”

  Still, she saw no shock on the faces of Ellie and Leslie.

  “I felt that I owed my hometown a lot because, if it hadn’t been for their sending me to New York, who knows what would have happened to me? I might have ended up never leaving the place and marrying some guy I hated and . . .” She trailed off, as though the idea were too ridiculous to pursue.

  “Anyway, I talked to Thomas about what I wanted to do, and he agreed wholeheartedly, so we invested most of the money in equipment to start a clinic in Erskine. We practiced general medicine for
a year or so, but we always knew that we wanted to go into rehabilitation medicine, which is my love. So now, Thomas and I have a small hospital with six physical therapists working for us.”

  Smiling, she leaned back in her chair. “And you know something? The clinic is not only paying its way, but we make a profit, so we can give our employees fat Christmas bonuses. We get a lot of the ski injuries from the resorts near us, and it’s their injuries that pay for the clinic. And our profits also allow us to give free medical care to any resident of Erskine.”

  She looked at Ellie and Leslie as though waiting for questions from them, but both of them were silent, which encouraged Madison to continue.

  “Life is funny, isn’t it?” Madison said. “When I was first told that I was being sent to New York to become a model, I resented what I thought of as interference from some meddling old-timers. Truthfully, I thought they wanted me to put Erskine on the map so they could profit. It’s funny to think of now, but I was even angry at my father—who, by the way, is a nice man and often sees his grandkids—but I was angry that he sent the money for me to go to New York. I don’t know what changed my mind, but suddenly, the resentment was gone.”

  For a moment, Madison looked at them. “You know something? I changed the day we met. After I left the DMV, it was as though the resentment had vanished and I knew what I was to do and where I was going.”

  “Almost as though someone had waved a magic wand,” Ellie said softly.

  “Yes! Exactly! I changed after we met. And because I changed my attitude, everything good happened to me. I met Thomas, and we have a beautiful family, and—”

  “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?”