by Lisa Jackson
“From Ina Garten, you know, the Barefoot Contessa. She’s my celebrity chef crush.”
Ellen approved of his choice. Ina Garten—now there was a woman who would chow down with you. And how adorable was she with her husband? That was still what Ellen wanted, wasn’t it, in spite of the damage Peter had done to her heart and soul? A long and happy marriage with someone who was, first and foremost, her best friend.
After dinner Rob and Ellen moved to the battered and sagging couch in the main area of the house. Ellen curled her legs up under her. Rob extended his out before him.
“You know,” he said then, “since that conversation we had the first time you were here at my place, I’ve been thinking about that summer I went to sleepaway camp. All these memories came back to me, things I haven’t thought about in years.”
“Really? Like what?” Ellen asked.
“Well, there was a woodworking course. I remembered how much I loved it. I remembered the smell of the freshly cut wood and how satisfying it felt to carve a recognizable shape out of a boring old log. It gave me a great sense of purpose. And I remembered that, when I got home at the end of the summer, I asked my father for a saw. It didn’t go over so well.”
Ellen laughed. “I should say not! You were a child!”
“Oh, it wasn’t that my father had any objection to giving a saw to an eight-year-old. It was just that he didn’t want his eight-year-old to have anything to do with craft work or manual labor.”
“Then why did he send you to camp in the first place?” Ellen asked. “Everyone knows that camp involves getting down and dirty and building stuff.”
Rob shrugged. “It was a cheap and easy way to get rid of me for a few months?”
Ellen thought that was sad, and from what Rob had told her about his family, she also thought that it was likely. She wondered what the senior Mr. Penn thought of his son’s being a working artist. Was he ashamed? Was he disappointed? And what did poor Mrs. Penn think of her son? Had she ever seen one of his paintings in a show?
“What else do you remember?” she asked, pushing aside those unspoken, unhappy questions.
“Tuna melts,” Rob said promptly. “We learned how to make tuna melts over an open fire. That was fun. And delicious. And s’mores. Boy, did I love them. The food at camp was way more kid friendly than it was at my house. Oddly enough, given her troubles, my mother has always been a health food freak.”
Ellen smiled. “It sounds like you had a great time that summer.” Far better, Ellen thought, than the time she had when she went to camp. That summer would always be associated in her mind with fear—fear of her father’s dying, fear of her parents’ abandoning her, fear that the awful boy who had teased her with that awful nickname would somehow follow her back to her real life. In spite of the warmth of the summer night, Ellen shivered.
“Hey, are you okay?” Rob asked. “Do you want a sweater?”
Ellen smiled. “No, I’m fine. Thanks.”
“All in all that summer was a lot of fun.” Rob laughed. “Except for one thing. There was this girl, oh boy, she was a terror!”
Ellen grinned. “Why? I mean, what did she do that was so bad?”
“If it was something that would annoy me, she did it.” Rob paused for a moment, as if more closely remembering. “Steal my soda when my back was turned. Stick out her tongue every time she passed me. Poke me in the arm and then run away. Stuff like that. She was really pretty, too. She had this long blond braid, and she wore these cute pink glasses, but she was a horror. I think that’s what freaked me out the most, that she was so adorable and yet so—so . . . obnoxious!”
A blurry image came to Ellen then, a vague memory of having worn a braid at one point in her childhood.... But then again, most little girls with long hair wore a braid at some time. And there was that brief period of her childhood when her eyes had been weak, and she had had to wear glasses.... Had they been pink? And when was that, exactly? She couldn’t really remember.
“She drove me crazy!” Rob was saying. “I don’t know why she got to me so much. One time, I even spoke to a counselor about her. I demanded she be thrown out of camp. Can you imagine? I guess I thought pretty highly of myself back then if I, a puny eight-year-old kid, could demand a fellow camper be tossed—and a girl, at that!”
Ellen’s stomach clenched. Maybe, she thought, she shouldn’t have had a second helping of the mac ’n’ cheese. Maybe she shouldn’t have had all that ice cream, either. “What was the worst thing this girl did?” she asked.
“The absolute worst? Well, hmm, I guess that was when she put big globs of red Jell-O in my sneakers.”
“Jell-O?” Ellen smiled a weak smile. “That doesn’t seem too bad. . . .”
“It was, for me. I was a squeamish kid when it came to blood. Anyway, I’d just come out of the lake. I’d left my sneakers on the shore. The shore was all rocky and pebbly. . . . So, I got to my sneakers and jammed my feet into them—I don’t think I ever tied the laces—and suddenly all this red goo came squirting out. I screamed. I thought I’d cut my feet on the rocks. I remember feeling suddenly light-headed, and I woke up in the infirmary.” Rob chuckled. “I tell you, this girl was a brilliant criminal mind in the making.”
Ellen put her hand to her forehead. It was hot. Red Jell-O . . . No. It was impossible . . . “Um,” she said, “how do you know this girl was responsible?”
“Because she admitted it! She must really have wanted to be sent home. Or maybe she was just in serious need of attention and didn’t know how else to go about getting it.” Rob pretended to shudder. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she grew up to be a psychopath. One thing’s for sure. I wouldn’t want to run into her now.”
There was a very loud buzzing in Ellen’s ears. She felt as if she were going to pass out. The past . . . That summer had always been such a fog. . . . But now . . .
This could not be happening. And yet, it most certainly was.
“Um, what was her name?” she asked.
Rob shook his head. “I’ll never forget it. Nellie. Cute name, really. It fit her. I mean, it fit the cute part of her.”
“Nellie,” Ellen repeated numbly. “What was her last name?”
“I never knew. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but after a while she made me so mad I started to call her Smelly Nellie. I didn’t expect the nickname would catch on with the other kids, but it did. I felt bad about that, until I got home at the end of the summer and didn’t ever have to set eyes on her again. Then, I guess I just didn’t care any longer. Not very nice of me, I know, but . . .”
Ellen jumped to her feet. Her hands were shaking. She felt sweat prickling at the back of her neck.
“What’s wrong?” Rob asked. “You look sick. I should have gotten you that sweater. . . .”
“What’s wrong?” Ellen said, her voice wobbling. “What’s wrong is that I’m Smelly Nellie!”
“What?” Rob shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“And you were Bobby. Bob. Rob. I never put it together. I never thought . . .”
Rob’s face became a remarkable shade of pale. “But—You’re kidding me. Right?”
“I wish I were,” Ellen said, her voice trembling with disbelief. “I can’t believe I’ve been falling for the person who tortured me that awful summer!”
“I know, I was horrible,” Rob said promptly. He reached a hand out to Ellen, but she jumped away. “It’s not right to call someone a bad name, even when you’re a stupid little kid. Ellen, I’m so sorry. I—”
“You ruined my life for months!”
Rob flinched at the volume of her words. “Please, Ellen, I—”
“I hate you!”
Rob gave a choking little laugh. “Well, that’s pretty inconvenient because you see, I’ve fallen in love with you. I wasn’t planning on telling you just yet, but—”
“No, you haven’t. You’re just saying that to trick me.”
“Right now, I almost wish that I were. Bu
t it’s true, Ellen. I am in love with you.”
“Well,” Ellen said, with a wild little laugh. “That’s just too bad.”
Rob was silent for a moment, his head bowed, his hands on his knees. “You were mean to me, too,” he said finally. “But you know how despicable kids can be, boys and girls. I’m sure neither of us really meant any of it. I’m sure if either of us had known what damage we—”
“Just—don’t.”
Ellen grabbed her bag from the chair onto which she had tossed it earlier, and ran out of the cottage, making sure to slam the door behind her. The window next to the door rattled in its frame. Ellen hoped that it fell out and shattered into a million pieces and that Rob had to pay to replace it and . . .
Behind her she heard Rob calling out: “Ellen, wait! Don’t leave like this!”
She ran down the little drive, got into her car, and drove off until out of sight of the house. Then, she pulled over to wait until her hands stopped trembling.
She waited a long time. And during that time, through the clamor of anger and indignation and surprise, she realized that what she felt most of all was very, very sad.
Once again she had badly misjudged someone, let down her guard when she shouldn’t have. Once again she had made a bad, bad mistake. She had liked Rob. She had really, really liked him.
When would she ever learn!
CHAPTER 16
At eight fifteen the following morning Ellen was behind the wheel of her car, on her way to Cora Compton’s house.
She had spent a sleepless night, her mind a dreadful blank. She had expected to be haunted by memories of the time she and Rob had spent together these past few weeks, to be tortured by every laugh and smile and kind word. But this blankness, this deadness was somehow far worse.
Still, one thought had taken firm hold in her mind. She had been able to make one decision. She should have stuck to her guns in the beginning, politely and firmly refused Cora’s invitations to socialize. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage a summer of solitary healing. God knew she now had more misery from which to recover.
Cora was at home. At least, her old black Cadillac was in the drive. Ellen pulled up behind it and walked to the front door. It opened after one knock. Cora must have seen her coming.
“Ellen, what a nice surprise.” Cora’s eyes narrowed. “But no. I see from your expression that you are rather upset. Come in, come in.”
Ellen had to clear her throat before she could speak. Even then, her voice was a dreadful rasp. “No, thanks,” she said. “I won’t take long.”
“My dear—”
Ellen lowered her eyes. “Please, Cora. I won’t—I can’t—go into details. Something has happened, and I’m very upset. Please . . . Please understand that I can’t see you for some time. I can’t see anyone. I never should have . . . It’s my fault. We can leave it at that.”
“But you must let me help you, dear.” Cora reached out to put a hand on Ellen’s arm.
Ellen, raising her eyes, stepped back. Cora’s face was gray with concern.
“No,” Ellen said, as steadily as she could manage, which was not very steadily. “You can’t help me. No one can, not right now. I’m sorry, Cora. Please believe me. Please don’t come to my house.”
There was a long and horribly awkward moment of silence. Ellen lowered her eyes again, unable to face the older woman. She felt like an enormous coward in that moment.
“I acknowledge your need to be alone,” Cora said finally. Her voice was chilled with hurt and rejection. “And I wish you well. Now, if you will excuse me, I have gardening to do.”
Cora, gathering her voluminous skirts, walked past Ellen, and headed around to the back of her house. Clovis appeared from behind her and followed his mistress.
“Hi, Clovis,” Ellen whispered.
He brusquely twitched his tail at her and stalked on.
With a heavy heart, Ellen walked back to her car. She wasn’t entirely conscious of the ride home. It seemed as if a moment after leaving Cora Compton’s driveway she was pacing the living room of her rented house, struggling to understand what awful and destructive thing had happened to her life in the last twenty-four hours.
Could it be, she thought in one wild moment, that Rob had planned their reunion all along with the intention of humiliating her? No, it could not be. She felt stupid to have even considered such a crazy notion. Calm down, Ellen, she scolded. Be sensible.
But it was hard to be sensible when there were so many questions with no solid answers.
Was Rob lying about how badly she had behaved that summer at camp? But why would he lie? And why couldn’t she remember more?! So much of that summer was a blank. Bits and pieces of memory had only begun to come back to her when, the night before, Rob had told his tale.
A fairy tale in which she had been cast as the wicked witch.
She was glad now that she had said nothing to either her mother or to Caroline about Rob. What a travesty!
For the remainder of that dreadful day, time alternately scurried past and crawled by. At seven thirty that evening, Ellen went to bed. She didn’t expect sleep to come, but it did, almost immediately and with a heavy hand.
“No!”
Ellen shot up in bed, tossing the lightweight blanket aside as she did. The illuminated clock on her bedside table told her that it was a quarter to three, the middle of the night.
Her heart was beating madly, and she felt worn-out and sweaty, as if she had been running for a long time over difficult terrain.
She had been dreaming of that long-ago summer at camp. The dream images had been so terribly vivid and so terribly . . . terrible.
Had she really been such a little beast? Had she really dumped a bottle of black paint over Rob/Bobby’s art project? Or was that an exaggeration of her unconscious (and guilty?) mind? Had she really stolen Rob/Bobby’s favorite T-shirt from the laundry room and cut it to shreds with blunt-end scissors filched from the art teacher? Had she really put a garden snake in Rob/Bobby’s bed? No, that didn’t sound possible. Ellen was afraid of snakes. She always had been. Hadn’t she?
And then . . . This was the most disturbing part of the dream. At one point she had seen her seven-year-old self, long braid and pink glasses, sitting on a fallen tree, deep in the woods. Pine trees loomed all around her. Night was coming on and the temperature was rapidly falling as the sun went down. But she did not feel afraid. She felt—annoyed.
Why annoyed? Why was she alone in the woods feeling annoyed? What normal seven-year-old girl wasn’t scared out of her mind in such a situation?
My God, she thought, falling back against the pillows and rubbing her temples, if even one of those episodes was real, I have an awful lot of bad behavior to answer for!
Ellen realized that she was desperately thirsty. Why did bad dreams make a person thirsty? She got out of bed and went down to the kitchen for a glass of water. She drank it down and leaned back against the sink.
No, she decided. Those dream images weren’t memories at all. They were unimportant fictions; they were inventions; they had to be. They were fictions brought on by Rob’s wild accusations. Because if they were memories—long buried in her unconsciousness—well, what else about her life was a mystery to her? It was a terrifying question.
With dragging steps, Ellen went back upstairs to her bedroom, wondering—dreading—what the rest of the night would bring.
CHAPTER 17
“What has happened to you? You look awful. Like you have seen the ghost.”
Ellen grimaced. “Thanks.”
It was two days after the explosive revelation at Rob’s house. Ellen was leaving a hardware store in Wells; she had needed lightbulbs and had guessed that it was unlikely she would run into Rob in Wells when he could fulfill his hardware needs much closer to home. So far, so good. There had been no sign of Rob Penn or of Cora Compton.
Nadia, it seemed, had been shopping at the secondhand store next door. “Well, you do,” she said. “Com
e, I don’t have to be at the restaurant for an hour. Let us get a drink, and you can tell me all about what has put you in such a state.”
“No, thanks,” Ellen said quickly. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
Nadia peered closely at her. “There are the dark circles around your eyes.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“And your hair. It has no luster.”
Ellen laughed a bit wildly. “All right, I’ll come with you.”
There was a tiny little pub close by, a place Nadia knew, and at this time of the day, two thirty in the afternoon, she said it would be fairly quiet. Except for an elderly couple sitting at the bar watching a sporting event on television, Ellen and Nadia were the only customers.
They sat at a little table out of earshot of the older couple and ordered two beers.
“So,” Nadia said. “What has happened?”
Ellen sighed. “What happened is that yet again I made a mistake in judgment.”
Nadia frowned. “You speak in enigmas.”
“Sorry. I just can’t bear to talk about the details at the moment.”
“I understand. But then, I am afraid there is not much I can do for you. Of course, your trouble involves a man.”
Ellen managed a smile. “How did you know?”
“Trouble always involves a man. That is, when it does not involve a woman. And in your case, I think it is a man.”
“Yes.” Ellen hesitated. “You know,” she said, after a moment, “it’s funny you should have said I looked as if I’d seen a ghost. I have, actually. A specter from the past. Someone I used to know—in an odd way—a very long time ago. Someone I had hoped never to see again. Someone I—someone I failed to recognize.”
“Someone—a man—you realized that you like. Maybe even more than like.”
“Yes.”
“So, what is the problem? He does not like you?”
Ellen looked down at the glass of beer. She simply could not answer that first question for Nadia. As for the second question . . .