Private Affairs

by Judith Michael

  She opened the door and ran to the car parked in the circular drive. The tires screeched as she turned into the road and drove away. It was only when she was halfway down the canyon that she remembered it was Tony's car; she'd left him behind, with Boyle. A small laugh broke through the red anger still churning inside her.

  Let them work it out; they make a fine pair.

 
  ♦♦

  I

  n the smoke-filled, windowless conference room of the Dallas Post, Matt opened that morning's paper, fighting off boredom as talk of advertising lineage droned on. The fourth conference of the day; the eighth day of what Chet cheerfully called wall-to-wall meetings in cities from San Diego to Dallas; he'd had more than enough. He turned to the second page to read "Private Affairs." Elizabeth's picture was at the top, as usual, but beneath it was an odd sentence, in italics. This interview was intended for television. For unknown reasons it was canceled, and so it appears here, almost exactly as in its original form when it was taped three weeks ago on February 6.

  What the hell, Matt thought, but before he could begin to read he heard his name. "—need your opinion on that," the managing editor was saying.

  Matt struggled to recall his name; by now everyone in every meeting looked and sounded the same, and so did the discussions. They were part of his job, and he didn't try to delegate them; even if he wanted to, there was no one to whom he could delegate the job of stroking corporate advertisers, keeping track of fluctuating readership, and dealing with Keegan Rourke's unexpectedly frequent suggestions, criticisms, requests

  for explanations, and changes in plans that Matt had to accept if he couldn't get them changed back. All of it was a long way from his idea of newspapering, and too much of the time it frustrated or bored the hell out of him.

  He remembered the managing editor's name, dealt with the question he'd asked, then did what he'd ordered himself not to do: barely concealing his impatience, he took control of the meeting away from his editor, got everyone talking on the same subject, and led the discussion to the conclusion he'd wanted in the beginning. And then he told them he was calling it a day.

  He refused several invitations to adjourn to a local bar, folded his copy of the Post to read on the plane to Houston, and strolled through the building. Six-thirty: the third- and fourth-floor offices were almost empty; only the executives who had been in the meeting were still there, closing up to go home. In the second floor bullpen, some reporters on the graveyard shift were coming in early, meeting those on the daytime shift who were leaving late. Matt stood in the doorway, watching the men and women sort through the clutter on their desks, talk on the telephone, pound the silent keys on their computers as if they were still working on typewriters.

  Even at this time of night, the room had a vitality and sense of purpose that awoke memories; Matt could feel the urgency that had knotted his muscles years ago when he and Elizabeth and their small staff raced to get the Chieftain printed and onto the waiting delivery trucks. He turned away, then turned back and found his way to the pressroom.

  The huge room was quiet now; in a few hours it would be rumbling and crackling with the sounds of thousands of sheets of paper rolling through ceiling-high presses, eight pages at a time being printed, folded and collated, stacked, tied, and sent on conveyer belts to the loading dock. Now, only one press was running as two pressmen freed a mass of paper chewed up within the gears and worked on a lever mechanism. Instinctively, Matt moved forward, then stopped, smiling ruefully at himself. Only at the Chieftain, he thought, remembering his elation at working with his hands the day Saul had mistaken him for the repairman. He and Saul had laughed together. The pressmen of the Dallas Post probably would not be amused to find the publisher of Rourke Enterprises muscling in on their territory.

  I've lost all the fun of it. I've forgotten what it's like to roll up my sleeves and work in a newsroom. I'm not a newspaperman; I'm a goddam executive. I might as well be running a bank or a manufacturing company; I wouldn't be much farther from real newspaper work than I am now.

  But what the hell could he do about it? He sat on the plane, leaning back and staring out the window at dull flashes of distant lightning in the immense black sky. He'd wanted power; he had it, and it was a full-time job. And when he wasn't frustrated or bored, he could get back the feeling that it was what he'd dreamed it would be. When he was alone behind the closed door of his hushed, comfortable office, writing his own memos that would set the future course of his newspapers on national and state issues, then he felt a surge of power that made him forget everything else. Or when he spoke at conferences where he was sought out for his support and he could choose which programs and candidates would be endorsed by his papers: then he was satisfied. Or when he heard from contacts in state legislatures, and in Washington, that legislation he had fought for had been passed, and he knew he'd helped shape the lives and fortunes of the people in half a dozen states, then once again, as in Aspen with Nicole, he knew this was what he wanted.

  The steward brought his vodka. He lowered the tray table in front of him and ordered a second drink, knowing how long it always took to arrive; then he pulled out the morning paper and turned again to Elizabeth's column.

  Construction crew chief Jock Olson has powerful shoulders, blue eyes under shaggy brows, a gravelly voice, and a broad grin that makes him look like a kid who's built his first tree house and feels on top of the world. "This is a damn nice valley we're talking about!" he says, looking into the distance, as if he could see that peaceful valley, and its small town of Nuevo, isolated in the mountains of New Mexico.

  "And the people there care about it!" But he frowns as he says it. Because the people of Nuevo are being forced out by developers who will flood the valley for a lake and private resort. And the reason Jock Olson frowns is that he's come to love Nuevo.

  "I've been all over the country, but I really like that place, especially the people. And somebody's gonna clean up there without those people getting one damn thing out of it. They've lived there all their lives—their parents and grandparents, too—so how come they can't share in it? Listen, I know that place: Nobody should be kicked out of there because there's room for everybody in that valley/"

  "I'll be goddamned," Matt muttered.

  Beside him, a man in a pin-stripe suit looked up from his yellow legal pad and saw Elizabeth's picture. "Good, isn't she? We get her in Phoenix. Which one is that?" He peered at it. "Oh, the construction guy. I read that a couple days ago. Damn shame, isn't it, what's happening to those people? My wife and I sent a check; so did my secretary."

  Matt contemplated him. "Did you?"

  "Why not? They need help, don't they? Least we can do; nobody's kicking us out of our home."

  Matt nodded thoughtfully. "You're right. And, yes, she's very good." He turned back to the column and read Elizabeth's description of Olson's work as crew chief, his slow acceptance by the townspeople, his feeling of belonging in Nuevo, and his desire to build a house of his own there.

  "I'd even work for nothing, after hours, to help them," he says, but he knows the town is doomed. "They're gonna drown it and the people don't have the money to buy land higher up, even if whoever owns it would sell. No money to build new houses, either, or move some of the old ones, and the old church, to save them, you know, because they should be saved, they're terrific: like something out of a story book."

  He lets loose with a few four-letter words, and some a little longer, and then goes back to work. This winter it's an office building in Albuquerque, but next summer Jock Olson will be crew chief again in Nuevo: forced, because it's his job, to build a dam that will drown the place he loves, and take a town and a valley away from people he loves, whose only crime is that they happen to live in the path of a posh resort.

  At first Matt was stunned by the boldness of it; then a surge of pride swept through him. The column was wonderfully done, bringing Olson and Nuevo to life while throwing down the gauntlet t
o the developers by offering a solution—all of it without preaching or sounding shrill. He had never felt so proud of her.

  He wondered if the idea of moving the town was Olson's, or if she'd put it in his head. It didn't much matter. Olson was right: the idea was terrific. And Matt strongly suspected that Elizabeth had some ideas on how it might be worked. And Isabel, he thought, and others in Nuevo, and probably Saul and Heather, too.

  The same nostalgia that had swept him in the pressroom of the Post

  tugged at him again, this time for that group of friends in Santa Fe and Nuevo working together to keep the town alive. He wished for a moment he could join them; they were helping people in just the way he'd hoped to do with his newspapers. And they'd found a better solution than the only one he'd known of: the offer of financial aid for resettlement—

  He frowned. Where the hell was that report? He'd promised it to Elizabeth at Saul and Heather's wedding, in December; she'd called a couple of times since then, asking about it; he'd said they hadn't found it yet, and then told Chet, again, he wanted it. He'd have to get after Chet, he thought; no reason for a simple request to take this long.

  The plane began its descent into Houston. On impulse, Matt opened his briefcase, pulled out a sheet of stationery, and wrote a short note to Elizabeth. He'd mail it at the airport, on his way to the lower level, where Nicole would be waiting to take him home.

  Elizabeth read the note two days later, on a plane to New York. In her rush to get out of the house to drive to the airport in Albuquerque, she'd stuffed the mail in her briefcase, opening it only when she had settled back and lowered her tray table as the stewardess brought her sherry. The handwriting gave her a shock as it always did, even though Matt regularly sent a check with a brief note. / ought to be used to it after eight months. But the check had come last week; this was something else. She tore it open. "Dear Elizabeth," he had written in his bold scrawl with strong, slanted lines. "You've made Olson a hero and Nuevo everybody's idea of home. It's a wonderful, moving piece and proves (though no one could have doubted it) that you're the best there is. With love, Matt."

  She read the note over and over, her anger growing with each rereading until she was trembling. The best there is. But evidently not better than Nicole. Not better than Keegan Rourke. Not better than that fawning crowd in Houston. Not better than glamour and wealth and a very fast track.

  She crumpled the note, letting it fall to the floor, and accepted a second sherry from the stewardess, though she never had more than one. But it's been quite a month, she thought. First the blow-up with Bo and Tony, then, as word spread through the industry that she had left "Anthony," without warning and with sixteen weeks still left in the season, she began receiving invitations to radio and television talk shows—and she began to travel.

  Now it was more than a speech in New York or Philadelphia or Tulsa, and perhaps a night away from home; now the appearances were stacked up by Elizabeth's agent and she was away two or three nights in a row. In

  between, she fit in interviews and wrote her column on planes or on the days she was in Santa Fe. She never prepared for her appearances; she answered questions spontaneously about her taped interviews and those for Markham Features, in Europe and America, using anecdotes and charm and the on-camera skills she had learned in Los Angeles.

  She never talked about "Anthony" or about Tony Rourke. "Why not?" Heather asked after Elizabeth's second week of travel, as they sat in the bookshop unpacking cartons from publishers. "If you tell the truth, you could puncture his whole fake image!"

  "Nothing I could say is as devastating as silence," Elizabeth answered. "It gives Bo nothing to contradict."

  "That's very clever." After a moment's hesitation, Heather said, "Elizabeth, how long will you go on with these shows?"

  "I don't know. I hate living out of a suitcase, but I'm afraid to give up being in front of a camera, and being treated like a star. I'll probably get enough of it one of these days, Heather, and then I'll settle down with my column and the little bit of work I do at the Chieftain."

  "And live happily ever after?"

  "No, that's for you and Saul. You both look so content these days. Don't you ever quarrel anymore?"

  "We'll always quarrel. But we have a huge amount of fun when we're getting along, which seems to be more and more often lately. It's harder than I thought, living with someone, and for some reason it's even harder when you're married."

  " 'Husband' has a different meaning than 'lover,'" Elizabeth murmured.

  "Yes. That's true." Heather opened a new carton and removed some paperbacks. "Elizabeth, I know you like the camera and the attention, but I want to talk to you . . . ask you . . . it's none of my business, of course, except that we're like your family, Saul and I, and . . . Elizabeth, you've been home two days this week."

  "I've only been gone three nights."

  "But I want to talk to you about that, too."

  "Heather, if you're going to talk about Holly—"

  "Which I am—"

  "—don't. She understands that my crazy schedule won't last. I'll have a few weeks of talk shows and press interviews and then I'll be replaced by a chef who murdered his wife because she told him his veal needed salt, or a Japanese couturier whose fall sportsclothes are made entirely of rusted automobile fenders."

  "I don't think you should joke about leaving Holly alone."

  "I'm not joking about leaving Holly alone. Heather, how much do you know about young women who are almost eighteen?"

  "I was one."

  "So was I. But I'm not expert at being a mother of one, and neither are you. Holly's going through some stage these days, in between a child and a woman, and she's so restless she nearly drives both of us crazy. She doesn't confide in me the way she used to; she's uncomfortable with me—

  "But you know she's not."

  "I know she is. We're two women; we share a house; each of us has a talent. But I'm an adult, living by my talent, seeing adult men . . . and Holly has to live as if she's still a little girl, in her mommy's house, with no audience for her talent. She probably hates me sometimes for what I have."

  "She doesn't hate you."

  "I know that. But she's ready to be grown up and these last few months before she can go to college and really be on her own are hard for her. Anyway, she's been avoiding me, staying late at school for rehearsals or practicing in the music room, and driving out to see Luz, and eating with you and Saul—do you know, she sees more of you than she does me?"

  "Because we're here. I'm not trying to take your place, Elizabeth; Holly doesn't love us more than you—"

  "I know that. Good heavens, Heather, I'm not accusing you; I'm glad you're here. You're close enough to Holly's age to be her friend and she needs somebody older who isn't a mother. Who knows that better than you?"

  "Oh. You mean the way I feel about Lydia. Isn't that odd? I never thought of it. I love her because she's wonderful, but it's even more wonderful that she's not my mother."

  "That's what I meant. And it's good for Holly to be with Saul, too. So just enjoy her; I wish she was as nice to me as she is to you."

  "But you talk, don't you? You don't ignore each other."

  "Of course not; we talk about a lot of things, just not very personal ones. I told her about quitting Tony's show and why I'm traveling so much—"

  "What did you tell her?"

  "Just that Bo canceled my interview with Jock and that Tony and I disagreed about it and about how the show should be run. I'm sure she wonders about the two of us, but she must not want to know for sure, because she's never asked. I told you: we don't talk about personal things. But she knows that everything will settle down pretty soon and I'll be

  home most days and nights. Though that seems to be the last thing she wants."

  "Isabel says young women always need their mothers more than they admit."

  "Probably true. But I'm here a lot, Heather. More than Holly is, if you want to count hours."<
br />
  "Maybe. But, still, if you could slow down a little bit—?"

  "I can't; not yet." / can't slow down; I have to be admired by people in my profession, be one of them, to make up for failing. I didn *t handle myself like a professional on "Anthony"—I should have known I needed Bo as an ally —/ treated it like a hobby, not a job. Matt wouldn f t have failed; Matt succeeds at everything; he has control of his life. And I've got to have control of mine. "I just have to keep moving," she said to Heather. "At least for now."

  "How will you know when to stop?" Heather asked.

  "I suppose when I feel all right about myself again." She hesitated. "Damn it, Heather, don't you see? I'm ashamed of myself. I'm ashamed of sleeping with Tony and thinking I might learn to love him; I'm ashamed that I wanted to love him."

  "Oh, stop whipping yourself," Heather said calmly. "We've all lied to ourselves to make it all right to sleep with somebody; there wouldn't be any affairs at all if we couldn't close our eyes to the truth about a lot of men. But you don't have to wallow in it."

  "Thank you," Elizabeth said gravely. "I didn't think I was wallowing. I just thought I was being suitably ashamed."

  After that, she'd talked briefly to Isabel, who was working late every night with Maya, preparing the speech she hoped to give on moving their town, and then to her parents, but she didn't try to explain herself to any of them; she just kept moving.

  On the plane to New York, holding a glass of sherry in her hand as her thoughts floated free, Elizabeth's foot touched the crumpled letter under her seat. Matt must know that she wasn't on "Anthony" anymore; she'd been on too many network shows for him not to have seen or heard about her. He must even know—or did he?—that she'd been working for Rourke all along. Just like her husband. But this note was the first she'd heard from him, and he'd written only about Jock Olson.