She wasn’t going to take his bait. Long ago she’d learned that when Roger knew he was in the wrong, he compensated by attacking. When she spoke, it was with a quiet, calm voice. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t tell them that you were married and that you were bringing your wife.”
She’d heard Roger coming down the hall and he had been swift and sure on his canes, but now that they were alone in the room, he was limping. As though in great agony, he lowered himself onto the side of the bed. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t start one of your fights.”
She had to swallow a couple of times before she could reply to that. But again, she was not going to be bullied by him. Roger wasn’t an impulsive person; everything he did was for a reason. “I just want to know why, that’s all. I came here thinking that I was an invited guest, but I get here and find that they know nothing about me.”
“All right, calm down,” Roger said, as though Madison were on the verge of hysterics. “I never told Scotty or his family about you because, well, it’s just a guy thing. We—”
“Being unmarried made you more macho?” she asked softly. Oddly enough, she wasn’t angry at him. In fact all she was feeling was curiosity.
“Yeah!” Roger said. “So what’s the harm in that? I haven’t felt very male in the last years, so what if I let my best friend think that I was still a free man?”
“Free man?” she said under her breath, and it went through her mind all that she’d given up for him. “If you want your freedom, just let me know.”
“Maddy, honey, you know that I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He reached out for her, but she stepped away.
“No, Roger, I don’t know that you didn’t mean to hurt me. In fact, lately I’ve thought that most of the pain you inflict on me is intentional.”
Roger ran his hand over his face as though in extreme exasperation. “Couldn’t we have just a few days without your nagging? Is it possible for you to enjoy yourself? Look, I know you’re upset about the baby, but—”
“Not just one baby, Roger, all babies. Forever.”
“Is that my fault? Is that what you’re saying? I did the best I could to get to a telephone. I—”
Madison turned away as tears came to her eyes. Would she ever get over this feeling that her life was over? She was missing a uterus, true, but she had other things. People didn’t have to have children to have a full life.
She turned back to face Roger. “All right,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to apologize, but maybe she could soothe the situation. Anyway, she was too tired to fight. “Okay, we’ll call a truce. No fights for as long as we’re here. How does that sound?” Roger looked relieved.
Suddenly, Madison couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him. If she stayed near him much longer, she’d start screaming. But she paused, her hand on the door latch. There was something she needed to know. “If you knew you’d not told them you were married, why did you insist that I come here with you? I wanted to remain in Montana.” For a moment Roger just sat there on the edge of the bed and didn
’t say anything.
She knew him so well. “Out with it,” she said.
“Mom and Dad said they needed a break.”
“I see,” Madison said, then turned away. She wasn’t going to allow herself to dwell on the injustice of that statement. She had left New York to return to Montana to nurse their injured son. She’d spent her days and nights waiting on him. The only “time off” Madison took was to read textbooks lent to her by her friend Dr. Dorothy Oliver, in an attempt to learn how to better rehabilitate their son. But yet his parents had declared that they “needed a break” from Madison.
“Maddy?” Roger said, and she turned back to look at him, but he didn’t say anything else.
“What else?” she said, because she knew that he had something big he wanted from her.
“Let me have a good time,” he said softly. “Just for the time we’re here.”
It took her a moment to understand what he meant. A “good time” to Roger meant drinking and laughing and being the high school football hero again. And that meant girls, lots of them, all looking up at him adoringly. All of them imagining what a great lover he was. But Madison knew that most of Roger was show. He liked sex now and then, but he liked it short and over with quickly. What he liked best was the adoration—something that Madison no longer gave him.
“Sure,” she said. “Have a good time. I’ll—” She didn’t know what she was going to do with herself, but if she could sit down on a rock and look at the water for one uninterrupted hour, that would be more than enough for her. “I’ll leave you alone,” she said after a moment. “Anything else?”
“No,” he said, then smiled at her in a way that he hadn’t done in years. For a moment she was the head cheerleader and he was the captain of the football team and everything was perfect. Madison smiled back at him. “Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” she answered and meant it; then she opened the door and left the room.
Maybe it was cowardly of her and it was certainly being a bad guest, but Madison found a side door and slipped outside without searching out her hostess to say thank you. Outside was what looked like a deer trail between the trees, and Madison took it. This had been one of her problems in New York City: she was a country girl and she wasn’t used to a place that had no wilderness. She liked to walk for hours alone in a forest, drifting about, looking at the trees and the tracks left by the animals.
She walked for about an hour, then decided that she’d better get back to the cabin. No doubt they had dinner at a certain hour, and no doubt she was being discussed now as being a bad guest for not helping, et cetera, but her walk had done her good. It had been a shock to arrive at a place, uninvited, unwanted. And Roger’s reasons for begging her to go with him had been a shock, but now, as she stood under a tree that had to be a couple of hundred years old and looked down at the sparkling water, she thought, What the hell? She hadn’t wanted to go with Roger because she hadn’t wanted to nurse him. She’d wanted a break from twenty-four-hour-a-day nursing and now she was going to get it.
When she got back to the cabin, she was feeling much, much better.
“You must be Madison,” said a woman who greeted Madison the moment she stepped inside the door, and instantly, Madison knew that she was Mrs. Randall, Frank’s wife, the woman with the old, old money. She was small, and beautifully preserved. No surgeon’s knife had ever touched her face, but her skin was an example of what happened after a lifetime of care. What lines she had were confined to about her eyes, and her skin was soft and flawless. She wore lightweight wool trousers that had to be ten years old but Madison knew they must have cost a thousand dollars when new. And they had probably been made just for this woman. A pale pink cashmere twinset topped the trousers.