“So you were alone and you started writing,” Leslie said as she finished the bowl of strawberries.
“More or less, yes. While Martin was away, I began to write down the stories that were going around in my head,” Ellie said. “I had a whole imaginary life going, one about a man named Max and—”
“And you were Jordan Neale,” Leslie said, smiling. “I’ve read every one of your books.”
“I haven’t read any of them,” Madison said. “So tell me about them.”
Ellie started to reply, but Leslie beat her to it. “They’re funny, sexy, complicated romantic murder mysteries about this married couple who—” She turned to Ellie with wide eyes. “In the last book you hinted that Jordan might be pregnant. Is she?”
“Beats me,” Ellie said.
“But you’re the writer,” Leslie said in disbelief.
“If I knew what was going to happen, why would I bother to write the story? In fact, when I get two-thirds the way through a book and can see the ending, I’d like to stop writing it and start something new.”
At this, Leslie opened and closed her mouth a couple of times. Like most people, she thought that the author knew everything there was to know about the characters in her books.
“So the books were your fantasy about you and your husband,” Madison said, then looked around the kitchen.
“More strawberries?” Leslie asked, her radar up when anyone needed something in the kitchen.
“I’ll get them—” Madison began, but Leslie was on her feet before Madison could move.
“I guess they were,” Ellie said. “I didn’t think about it while I was writing them. I was just filling up my evenings with something besides TV. And my weekends. They were the worst.”
Leslie put a huge bowl of strawberries in front of Madison, then another pile of pancakes beside it.
“So how did you get published?” Leslie asked. “I don’t know much about the business, but a friend of mine told me that to get published you have to get an agent and the better the agent, the better your contract.”
At that Ellie said a very rude word and made an even ruder sound. “Agents put out that rumor. My editor does a hilarious skit in which she shows the training of a person becoming an agent. She picks up a piece of paper, writes ‘I am an agent’ on it, then puts the paper on her chest.”
When neither Leslie or Madison seemed to get this, Ellie took a drink of her tea. “Let’s just say that it is not necessary to have an agent to get a book published, nor do you have to have an agent to continue to be published. I don’t have one and never will.”
There was so much passion in Ellie’s voice that when she stopped speaking, it left the others in silence.
“Sorry,” Ellie said. “Pet peeve of mine. Now, where was I?”
“Too bad you didn’t use that tone with your husband,” Madison said under her breath.
“Isn’t it?!” Ellie said. “When I look back and think of the things that I’d do differently . . . Oh, well, that won’t happen. Anyway—”
“What did your husband think of your writing?” Leslie asked.
“I didn’t say a word about it to him,” Ellie said. “You have to understand that there wasn’t room in our lives for much more than Martin’s sadness. We lived and breathed his suffering. Our ‘conversations’—if you can call them that—were about how rotten the world was because it didn’t give brilliantly talented men like him a chance. I couldn’t very well tell him that while he was suffering so much, I was having the best time of my life writing funny little mysteries.”
&
nbsp; “And all the while you were supporting the two of you?” Leslie snapped so sharply that the other two women looked at her. “Sorry. It’s just that I believe that you put up with a lot about a man, but he does earn money. And that money is used for family expenses.”
“You would have been better with Martin than I was,” Ellie said. “But then, according to him, he was paying ‘family’ expenses. Now and then he’d get a job with a band and he’d fly off to some state I’d barely heard of and stay there for months at a time. The only problem was that what he earned he spent on electronic equipment. We had four speakers in our living room that you could set up house in. We had three beat-up old chairs, no coffee table because there wasn’t room, but we had speakers that the Rolling Stones would have envied. Martin said that everything he bought was an ‘investment’ in our future.”
“I can’t stand this!” Madison said. “What is wrong with us women that we get men like these guys? Last night I told you of Roger, and now this guy . . .” She trailed off, as though she couldn’t think of a description bad enough for Martin Gilmore.
Ellie shrugged. “When you’re out of an intolerable situation, you can never make anyone understand why you remained in that situation. I don’t understand it myself. When I was in it, I didn’t question it. It’s just the way it was.”
“But you knew that it was bad, so you wrote yourself into a whole different life,” Leslie said.
Ellie smiled at her warmly. “Exactly! That’s just what I did, only I didn’t know then that that’s what I was doing. I wrote just for the pleasure of doing it. Five books in all.”