Private Affairs

by Judith Michael

"Why?"

  "Because my mother just advised me to pretend nothing's changed between Matt and me."

  Heather frowned into her cup. "Why?"

  "To save my marriage."

  "Oh. Well, it might. But I didn't think that was the kind of marriage you wanted. Was she talking about another woman? We wondered if he'd found one. Has he?"

  "So I hear."

  "And you're going to Houston to find the truth?"

  "I'm going to Houston to find out what we have left. If he's changed so much that he's having a serious affair—not just a casual fling, which I'd expect—"

  "Have you had a casual fling?"

  "No, but that has nothing to do with it. I thought I'd wait to see . . . I chose to wait, that's all. But I realized last month that it was silly to think Matt would go on, month after month, with no one; he's a sexual man and he's never felt deprived; especially for a couple of years, when we had such a wonderful—" She stopped, her throat tight. "Damn. It isn't as easy to talk about as I thought."

  "Or to be casual about. 'Of course my husband will have his little affairs . . . what's it to me?' Did you really think that was how you felt?

  Didn't you know you were hurting inside? You don't have to hide it as if it's shameful or old-fashioned. It's okay to hurt inside."

  There was a silence. "Heather," Elizabeth said, "you've never mothered me before."

  Heather grinned. "Maybe I'm growing up. Paying attention to somebody besides me and my own problems. Saul would say it means I'm ready to get married."

  "Would he be right?"

  "He might—oh, don't get me started again. We're talking about you. What if you find you and Matt don't have anything anymore?"

  "I don't know. I haven't thought that far."

  "I don't think it will happen. He refused to sell the Chieftain to Saul, you know; he was vehement about it. We think he's clinging to Santa Fe. Afraid to let go."

  A slow smile lit Elizabeth's face. "I hadn't thought of that. You could be right. If he wants a place waiting for him . . . something to replace the Rourke papers. . . . But how could the Chieftain ever do that?"

  Heather was frowning. "I think I shouldn't have said any—"

  "No, it's all right. It's an idea and you may be right. This may be his way of telling us he hasn't really made up his mind."

  "Elizabeth, I wouldn't jump to—"

  "I'm not, I'm just thinking. Thank you, Heather, you're wonderful; you've given me something new to think about. And thank you for the tea." She stood up and slipped into her suit jacket. "I want to be home when Holly gets there. I want to explain why I'm not taking her to Houston, and I want to have the evening with her. Thank you again; I'll talk to you when I get back."

  She waved to her mother in the back of the store, and once again to Heather, who sat quite still, wishing she'd kept her mouth shut until—as Saul was fond of saying—she had a few facts to back up what she was talking about.

  Matt was in his office when Elizabeth arrived. She had called his secretary the day before and left a message telling him she would be there. "No, don't disturb him," she said when the secretary wanted to ring him. "Just tell him I'm coming in. No, I don't know exactly what time. Probably in the morning."

  So Matt was prepared, but only barely, and when he came out to greet Elizabeth in the reception room, his smile showed his uncertainty as he held her hands and kissed her lightly on the lips. "You're looking well," he said formally.

  It's because he doesn't like uncertainty, Elizabeth told herself; he likes knowing his options in advance. Anyway, the receptionist is listening: discreet but very alert, like Polly Perritt. "So are you," she replied as they went to his office. "Holly told me your hair was turning gray; it seems she exaggerated."

  He chuckled. "She counted three gray hairs. I pulled them out."

  "To please her or yourself?"

  "Probably my own vanity. Are you ready for lunch? I'm free for the rest of the day."

  "I'm not really hungry; could we go to your apartment first?"

  "If that's what you'd like. I made reservations—"

  "Later. If you don't mind."

  Matt told his secretary to change their reservation at the Remington, and he and Elizabeth rode the elevator in silence to the lobby.

  The vast space was crowded with workers on their lunch break, their chatter and hurrying footsteps echoing off massive marble pillars and window walls, filling the silence between Matt and Elizabeth as they made their way to the parking deck. Even when they reached his car, Elizabeth said nothing; Peter and Holly had already told her about the white Mercedes and she stubbornly refused to comment on it, even though both of them were conscious of how it contrasted with all the other cars they'd owned. "I never gave you that tour of Houston we talked about," Matt said as he drove out and merged with the traffic on Westheimer.

  "I know." Elizabeth looked behind them at the sprawling white buildings of the Galleria. Everything in Houston seemed oversized, like the city itself, and its state, and Elizabeth wondered if anyone who came to take that for granted ever could be content with life on a smaller scale. She turned back. "We'll have the tour some other time, perhaps."

  "How is Holly?" Matt asked after a moment.

  "Fine. She has a new voice teacher, someone from New York—"

  "Yes, she told me on the phone."

  "Oh. Did she tell you about Juilliard, too?"

  "No. She's decided that's where she wants to go to college? She'd be starting at the top."

  "Her voice teacher thinks there's no question she'd be accepted."

  "New York. A long way from home."

  "Yes."

  They withdrew again into their own thoughts until Matt drove through open wrought-iron gates to the glass entrance where the doorman waited.

  "Keep the car here, Johnnie," he said. "We won't be long enough to put it in the garage."

  Through Elizabeth's eyes, he saw the lobby as it had appeared to him the first time, its chandeliers, butternut paneling, and Oriental carpets making it seem more like a hotel than a residence. But she made no comment about it, nor about the mirrored elevator they took to the thirtieth floor, and Matt was the first to break the silence, as he unlocked the door to his apartment. "Of course, it's bigger than I need, but it's convenient—"

  "—and you need the space for entertaining. Holly and Peter told me." Elizabeth walked through the foyer into the living room, struck again by excess: oversize furniture, huge modern paintings, vivid flashes of color, a striking arrangement of cattails, bare branches, and wheat stalks in an antique Black Mesa floor vase near the windows that stretched, unobstructed, across two walls. Reluctantly, she admired it: overdone, not the style she would have predicted for Matt, but sophisticated, with a sense of excitement.

  "Do you want to see the rest of the place?" Matt asked.

  "Of course," Elizabeth said, and followed him on a swift tour of the two bedrooms, his study, and the kitchen—not used much, she saw, but fully equipped for anyone with a sudden urge for domesticity.

  When they returned to the living room, Matt opened the door to the terrace. "We wouldn't do this in the summer," he said. "But it's pleasant, now." They walked out into the late October warmth, shading their eyes, looking down at the flat, densely crowded city and, in the distance, a cluster of buildings with the Transco Building towering over them.

  "Something to drink?" Matt asked.

  "Sherry, please."

  They sat in cushioned wrought-iron chairs on the terrace, a little distance from each other. "You look wonderful," Matt said. "I like that suit."

  "Thank you."

  "Did you get it in Santa Fe?"

  "No."

  "In Los Angeles?"

  "Beverly Hills."

  "Where in Beverly Hills?"

  "The Rodeo Collection. Ungaro."

  His eyebrows rose. "A long way from the Plaza. Good for you; you deserve the best. 'Private Affairs' is superb, Elizabeth; of course it always has be
en, but you get better all the time. You're very fine on television,

  too, but I have a special feeling about the columns. Nothing in any of our papers gets the reader response they do."

  She smiled coolly; it was the kind of compliment she got from strangers.

  "And congratulations on Markham Features," Matt said. "It's a real triumph."

  Elizabeth's eyes widened. "That only happened night before last."

  He smiled. "Paul Markham called me last week to ask about your status with us. I told him we'd rewrite your contract with Rourke Enterprises so it wouldn't conflict with his."

  "You didn't tell me."

  "He said he hadn't made up his mind. I think he probably had, but he asked me not to say anything until he saw you in Los Angeles. I'm so pleased for you; it's a dream come true, isn't it?"

  She studied him. "Yes. Is Nicole your dream come true?"

  In the sudden silence, the hum of traffic from Post Oak Boulevard drifted up to them. "Nicole is a friend," Matt said finally. "And a companion."

  "Steady companion. And hostess. And, according to people in Houston, yours."

  "Who the hell said that?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "No. She's not mine. Nicole is not the kind of woman to belong to any man." He stood. "More sherry?"

  "No thank you."

  "Then we should go to lunch."

  "Could we just eat here? It doesn't have to be elaborate. Whatever you have in the refrigerator."

  He hesitated. "I chose a restaurant I thought would please you."

  "I'd rather talk where it's quiet. Please, Matt." She stood. "Let me see what I can put together for lunch."

  "No. I'll take care of it. You relax; you're the guest. Magazines in the study, if you want."

  / don't want a magazine. I want to know why you won't let me cook for you.

  But she didn't ask him; instead, while he was in the kitchen she unashamedly took another, more careful look at his apartment. Books were everywhere; he was reading as much as ever. The bar was stocked with Scotch, sherry, Stolichnaya and Absolut vodkas, and a dozen kinds of cognac. A brass magazine rack held newspapers from New York, London, Paris, Rome, and Jerusalem; a cabinet held an enormous television

  set, a video recorder, and a compact disc player, with a collection of concertos and quartets that included most of the ones they had collected together over the years. He's been here five months, and he owns almost as much as we had after nineteen years.

  The master bedroom closet was open an inch so she felt guiltless in opening it wider. Alongside a wardrobe of men's clothes she had never seen, hung a woman's black cashmere robe piped in white velvet, with an R embroidered in white silk on the cuff. My size, Elizabeth thought. What a coincidence. Quietly she shut the closet door and went to Matt's study.

  At the back of his desk, behind a clutter of computer-printed reports, hand-written notes, memos, and newspaper clippings, stood a small silver-framed photograph of Nicole, looking just as Elizabeth remembered her from Aspen and from Rourke's party. Her lips were curved in a small smile; her eyes were dark amber; she wore a dress of layered black lace and a long strand of pearls. Across the bodice she had written in silver ink: "For Matt—a champion at Ping-Pong and other games."

  Raising her eyes, Elizabeth saw herself in the full-length mirror in the adjoining bathroom. She put back the picture, exactly where she had found it, and walked slowly toward her reflection. She was slender, well-dressed, beautiful. Everyone told her so. But I'm forty-three years old. She's ten years younger; she doesn 't have children in college, reminding her that she's getting older; she doesn't have children at all. She's perpetually young.

  "Did you find everything you need?" Matt asked, his reflection suddenly appearing beside Elizabeth's in the mirror. Her eyes met his. Does Nicole make you feel perpetually young?

  "Is there anything I can get you?" he asked.

  Love, cherishing, sharing, a marriage, home.

  "Nothing, thank you. But I'd like to help in the kitchen."

  "It's all done. You can help me carry, if you'd like to eat on the terrace."

  "Fine. How efficient you are."

  "You said you didn't mind a simple lunch. I took you at your word."

  "I took you at yours," Elizabeth said, carrying a tray to the terrace. "When you said you could go fastest alone."

  "I am alone. And I'm going as fast as I want. Did you come to Houston to play the betrayed wife?"

  "That's the first time you've asked me why I came to Houston."

  "I was sure you would tell me."

  They set the table with plates and silverware, glasses, a bottle of Sauvi-

  Private Affairs 335

  gnon Blanc, and a platter of cheeses, grapes, sliced nectarines, and English water biscuits. "Napkins?" Elizabeth asked.

  "I'll get them. I always forgot the napkins, didn't I?"

  "Yes." She closed her eyes briefly. "You always did."

  He left and was back in a moment. "Did I forget anything else?"

  "No. It's a lovely lunch. Thank you."

  "I should thank you. You taught me how to function in a kitchen. I remember when I couldn't slice a nectarine without mangling it."

  "Do you really remember that?"

  "Why shouldn't I?"

  "It doesn't look as if you kept anything of the past."

  "You mean the apartment." He shrugged. "It isn't what I would have chosen, but I've gotten used to it. Did you come to Houston because of Nicole?"

  "Of course I did. You can't be surprised."

  "Can't I? You didn't come when I asked you to move here; you didn't come with Peter and Holly on their visits; why should you come when you hear I've found a companion? Did you expect me to commute to Rourke Enterprises from a monastery?"

  "No. I expected you to sleep around."

  "You what? When have you ever known me to 'sleep around'?"

  "Never. That's why I thought you'd do it now." She leaned forward, elbows on the table, her chin on her clasped hands. "Aren't you doing a lot of things you never did before? We met in our first year of college, Matt; you had one year of dating in your senior year of high school and then you met me. You never slept with anyone but me, you never lived alone, you never made your way in the big world without either your father or your wife as a partner. Now you're doing it all. You're finally getting the adolescence you never had."

  "Adolescence."

  "That may not be the best word—"

  "How clever of you to recognize that."

  "How clever of you to talk about one word you don't like instead of facing what I'm saying."

  "I know what you're saying. You don't like what I'm doing so you give it a name that makes you feel superior."

  "It makes me feel rotten," Elizabeth said bluntly. "After you left, last May, I thought maybe it wasn't such a bad idea for us to have some time apart, maybe we needed it, but I also made a lot of predictions about you and none of them has come—"

  "Predictions?"

  "How else do you think I could watch you walk away from our house? I predicted you'd do all those things you'd never done before and then you'd grow—" She caught herself. "—Wake up and think differently about things. I predicted you'd see through Keegan and stop idolizing him; I predicted you'd want to be your own boss again. I was sure you'd miss your family, and working with your wife. And I predicted you'd get tired of casual screwing and remember how loving we were. ..." The words hung in the air between them. "I bought a couple of lots in Nuevo —did Holly and Peter tell you? It was a silly thing to do—sentimental—it helped me believe you'd remember what we once dreamed of, and want it back. But none of that has happened. I can't believe how wrong I was. You're all snug and settled with that cold bitch who slid out of Keegan's bed and into yours—"

  "That's enough. You don't know what you're talking about."

  "I know as much as I see. As much as I hear."

  "You see and hear what you want. I'm not snug
and settled with Nicole, but I'm damn lucky she's here. She's attractive and stimulating and supportive of me—"

  "Clean, brave, reverent, and loyal. Just a good little Texas girl scout."

  "You can't make her disappear by being sarcastic. She's a good friend who doesn't criticize me, or my work, or the man I work for. Can't you understand what it was like when I came here? I was learning, I was on trial, I was being watched by Rourke and his executives, I had more work than I could handle. But I was making it. I was buying papers and making them pay; I was reaching millions of people; I was getting supplements into the schools and working with community leaders . . . damn it, / was beginning to have some influence! That was my dream; you knew it; and every time I took a step forward or won a battle I turned around to tell my wife—to share, damn it!—and where the hell were you? At my side, making the days easier and the triumphs more satisfying? Hell, no, my wife was in Santa Fe or the playgrounds of California, thinking what a son of a bitch her husband was for wanting to grab his brass ring while he was young enough to take it for all it was worth."

  He poured more wine into their glasses. "I was so busy and tired I could hardly think straight when I got home at night, but I was awake enough to know I missed you and wanted you and you didn't give a damn. I kept expecting you to show up, apologizing for not standing with me, telling me you missed me and loved me and we'd work out our two lives. I missed Saul, too, but that's another story. I missed a lot; but / wasn 't going to miss the chance Rourke gave me."

  "Of course not," Elizabeth murmured, feeling closer to him than she

  had in months. She looked at his dark unruly hair, wanting to touch it; her hand almost reached out to smooth away the lines between his eyes that had not been there before. Damn it, she cried silently. Smile at me the way you used to; show me the warmth I know is there; don't pretend you're someone else.

  Unless you are.

  "I wasn't going to miss it," he repeated. "And that was all I spent my time on for four months; I barely saw Nicole or anyone else outside the company in all that time. I waited like a good little scout, as you put it, until I didn't know what the hell I was waiting for. And Nicole gave me what I'd been wanting from you: she listened, she admired, she encouraged me. She even changed her plans last summer to be with me. You could learn a few—"