Private affairs : a novel

by Michael, Judith

  "The same as ever?" Holly asked. She and Peter were sitting straight now, watching their mother for signs of evasiveness.

  "The same as ever," Elizabeth repeated firmly. "It's not as if his brain was damaged. He won't be any different."

  "Can we see him?" Peter asked, and just then broke into a huge yawn. "Sorry."

  "You can't see him because he's sound asleep," Elizabeth said. "And you should be, too. There's nothing to do here until this afternoon; you can see him then for a little while. Right now I want you to go home; we'll get you a cab." She opened her purse and handed Peter a ten dollar bill. "You've been up all night and you're in no shape to go to school; get some sleep, then come back here and we'll have a bedside reunion."

  "What about you?" Holly asked.

  "They're putting a cot in Daddy's room; I'll lie down there. Then when he wakes up he won't be alone. Come on, now, finish your cocoa so we can get you a cab."

  Holly shook her head. "Somebody has to take care of you. I'll stay here."

  "There's no place for you in Daddy's room," Elizabeth said, becoming impatient. "Please, Holly, I want you to go home. Get a good sleep and come back this afternoon."

  Stifling another yawn, Peter took his sister by the hand. "We'll go if you promise you're telling the truth."

  "Peter, I told you—!"

  "Okay, okay, I just had to make sure. And you'll call us if anything, uh, happens?"

  "Yes. Now please — "

  "We're going. Right now. Where do we get a cab?"

  "I'll go with you."

  When she had seen them off, Elizabeth went back to the waiting room and crumpled in a heap on the couch, no longer pretending to be calm and strong. She was shaking with fear and exhaustion, and a kind of superstitious refrain kept running through her head: You weren 't satisfied with your marriage; it wasn't exciting enough for you. And you almost lost it. You almost lost Matt. Almost lost —

  "Mrs. Lovell?" The doctor stood in the doorway and Elizabeth shot up from the couch, forcing open her heavy eyes. "Mr. Lovell is asking for you; you can see him in the ICU for a few minutes. He's very restless," the doctor added as they walked down the corridor. "Talking about his father. Perhaps you can calm him down."

  Matt's face was ashen, the skin pulled tight over his bones. His deep-set blue eyes looked even deeper, so dark they were almost black. "Competing with Dad," he whispered with grim humor when Elizabeth bent over him. "Couldn't let him be the only one to die."

  Elizabeth kissed him and smoothed back his hair. She put her cheek to his, her lips close to his ear. "It's not a contest. He's gone, Matt; we're here. And we don't want to lose you."

  He grunted. "Close call."

  "Yes, but it's all right now," she said. "Really all right, Matt. The doctor—"

  "Just like Dad. Funny, isn't it? Strokes . . . they were close calls, too . . . and then he died."

  "Matt, you're going to be fine!" She held his hand between both of hers.

  "Try to believe me; you are not going to die!" He turned his head away, "Matt!" she cried.

  The nurse intervened. "Mrs. Lovell, we hoped you'd calm your hus= band down."

  Tm sorry," Elizabeth said, and repeated it to Matt. "I'm sorry. We'll talk about it when you're stronger." She kissed him on his forehead and his lips. "We want you home. We love you."

  It wasn't enough, Matt thought later when he woke in his hospital room and saw Elizabeth asleep on a nearby cot. You're going to be fine, he recalled her saying through the anesthesia still fogging his mind. It's all right now. You're going to be fine.

  But it wasn't that simple. Because even when he was out of the hospital and home again, he knew something was wrong with him that lay beyond the reach of any surgeon. He felt trapped, smothered beneath a kind of cloud that had settled over him.

  My father is dead.

  I came damn near dying myself.

  I'm running out of time.

  "Leave it alone," he said to Elizabeth as she adjusted a pillow behind him. He was sitting in an armchair beside the doors to the garden; it was a warm June morning, almost hot, two weeks after he'd come home. "It's fine."

  "A minute ago you said you were uncomfortable."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "It matters to me."

  "Elizabeth, will you please not hover." She took a quick step back and he threw out his hands. "I'm sorry. I'm a lousy patient. You shouldn't have to suffer my moods. Aren't you going to the printing plant? Or, no, you were going to write up that Woman's Club thing today."

  "Frank can handle the plant for one day without me, and the Woman's Club story isn't important."

  "It's part of your newspaper job, and you've always said your job was important to you."

  "I'd rather not leave you alone today."

  "But you know what I want most is to be left alone."

  "Matt," Elizabeth said after a moment, "what can I do?"

  "Nothing. Elizabeth, stop worrying about me. Go to work."

  "You're my work right now!" she said bluntly. "Either I find a way to cheer you up or I ship you somewhere else for a while, It's been like a graveyard around here ever since you got home; you're so bitter and . . .

  angry. What are you angry about? Your accident? Zachary's death? Something about your work?"

  "All of the above," he said with a flash of humor. "I'm sorry," he added, and it occurred to Elizabeth that what they did most of the time lately was apologize to each other for one thing or another. "It's just that . . . I'm running out of time!" he blurted. "Don't you see that? In two months I'll be forty years old—"

  "So will I," she said quietly, but he did not hear her.

  "The years are going so damned fast I can't keep track of them, and I'm standing still. A failure. What the hell have I got to show for forty years?"

  "A family," Elizabeth said, repeating the things she'd told herself only a few days before. "A home, your own business—"

  "I know all that. It's not enough!"

  Elizabeth tested the coffee pot with her hand, found it still hot, and poured each of them a cup. She carried hers to the chair opposite Matt's and sat down. "Go on," she said. "You've been bottling it up; why don't you tell me all of it?"

  He smiled at her, a quick, loving smile, and Elizabeth felt the pain of what had slipped away from them over the years. She wanted to put her arms around him and get back the rest of it, all the love and passion that she remembered, but she stayed where she was, carefully holding her cup so the coffee would not spill, and said again, 'Tell me about it."

  He gazed out the window. "Do you know what happens when I sit here? I listen to Holly singing in her room: voice exercises, scales, those wonderful songs . . . and I imagine Peter in his room, writing down those legends his pueblo friends tell . . . and I say to myself: they're the lucky ones, doing what they love best. And then I think, at thirteen and fourteen, with no other demands pinning them down, why the hell shouldn't they do what they love? It's crazy for me to resent my children's good fortune just because I'm a loser."

  "You're not a loser," Elizabeth said. "You're depressed over Zachary's death and your accident, but you are not a loser."

  He smiled faintly and looked at the table beside him, cluttered with a telephone and piles of notes, memos, and bills Elizabeth brought home each night from the office for him to act on. "I can't do these, you know," he said almost casually. "I can't concentrate on them or care about them. Because I keep coming back to that minute when I knew I couldn't stop the car—and the things I was thinking about just before it happened— and that's all that matters. If I'd been killed, that would have been the end of all those plans I had once upon a time. And I go around and

  around, trying to sort out what's important to me, what's necessary, what's right. I'm not getting any younger, as the saying goes, and when the hell am I going to break out and do the things I really want?"

  Elizabeth held his eyes with hers. "I feel slightly invisible," she said. "Where do I fi
t in all those questions?" Stunned surprise swept across his face; he opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, the doorbell rang.

  Matt grimaced. "More good Samaritans bearing food, drink, and half the books in Santa Fe. When will I read them all? Do they think I'm going to be an invalid for ten years?"

  "I'll be right back," Elizabeth said, escaping his ill humor. She went through the arched entry hall to open the front door, and found Tony, leaning casually against the garden wall, arms folded, waiting for her.

  "If I'd called first," he said calmly, "you would have found some reason to teD me not to come."

  "Tony, you should have called; this is a terrible time—"

  "But we had a date. Four weeks ago you gave me permission to come for lunch. You may have forgotten, but I didn't." He walked past her through the shadowed entry hah to the brightness of the living room. He paused so his eyes could adjust to the clear desert light pouring through a wall of paned windows and a paned double door leading to the courtyard. The room came into focus, with its white walls, dark vigas, or beams, half embedded in the low stucco ceiling, and vivid Indian rugs in red, blue, and black scattered on the cream-colored, tiled floor. "Always takes me by surprise," he mused aloud. "The air ... the light , . . after the smog of my beloved Los An—-"

  He stopped abruptly as he became aware of Matt, unmoving in his armchair, wearing a bathrobe. "Matt! What's wrong? Ailing? Wounded? Hangover?" Smoothly shifting from Elizabeth's private visitor to a warm friend of the family, he pulled a chair close to Matt's and sat down. "Don't glower at me; I don't stand on ceremony with long-time friends. Did someone beat you up? I'll avenge you as soon as I can assemble an army; I myself am a man of peace." He waited, but Matt, his face expres= sionless, said nothing. "You and your horse disagreed on which direction to go? One of your printing machines ran amok? Or another Indian uprising, though I rather thought those had ended a century ago. Elizabeth, won't you sit down and join us?"

  Taken aback by his sudden, overwhelming presence, Elizabeth stood still, gazing at him- Fame had made him sleek and breezy, and his tall, handsome confidence, especially beside Matt's depression, made him even more attractive and dominating than she remembered- The air around

  him was electric, as if he were a messenger from a world filled with excitement and success, buzzing, bustling, bursting with energy, while she and Matt sat in their static little house in their quiet little town, waiting for the Tonys of that world to bring them news of all they were missing.

  Matt must feel it, too, she thought, seeing his scowl, and she took a step forward, phrasing a graceful way to get Tony out of the house. But he had settled back in his chair, listening attentively to Mart's brief description of his accident, then, in turn, regaling him with the antics of the producer of his television show, called "Anthony." And when Matt chuckled at something he said—the first time in weeks Matt had come close to a laugh—it occurred to Elizabeth that maybe it was good that Tony was there. Matt needed amusement, something to think about other than himself and Zachary.

  And maybe Tony's forceful presence could break down the wall of Matt's self-absorption. Sometimes it took someone from outside to get a husband and wife talking to each other again.

  "You'll stay for lunch?" she asked, ignoring Matt's deeper scowl at her invitation.

  "Of course," Tony said, smiling easily. "It's been too long since I've seen ... the two of you. Nothing fancy, though; if you spend hours in the kitchen I won't have a chance to talk to you before my plane leaves."

  "We'll talk in the kitchen," Elizabeth responded. "All of us. Matt? Please? Tony can tell us all the gossip from Los Angeles."

  "And you can fill me in on the scandals that shake Santa Fe," said Tony, offering Matt a hand.

  Matt stood up by himself. "Few scandals shake Santa Fe. We natives are cautious, ingrown, and very protective of our little backwater."

  "Do I hear a note of dissatisfaction?" Tony asked. "Why don't you leave?" He kept pace with Matt's slow steps as they walked into the kitchen and sat in wicker chairs in an alcove opening onto the courtyard. "I've often wondered why you haven't."

  "My father was here," Matt replied briefly.

  "My father was in Houston," said Tony. "Still is. I'm not." He leaned back in his chair, stretched out his legs in their perfectly pressed white duck pants, and accepted the glass of Mexican beer Elizabeth offered him. "I left Houston; I left my father. Left his business and his shadow and the reach of his long arm. Made my own fortune that has nothing to do with Keegan Rourke and owes nothing to him. I had to get out, you know, to survive. After eleven interminable years, I had to get out or be his little boy forever. And as Elizabeth knows, I am not the little boy type."

  After a moment, Matt said evenly, "You were telling me about your producer. And your interview with Sophia Loren."

  "So I was," said Tony, smoothly changing subjects. "A remarkable woman, magnificently beautiful, warm, earthy, honest. . . ."He broke off as Elizabeth brought to the table a platter of sopapilla rellenos, stuffed with meat, beans, and chile, and covered with cheese. "Elizabeth, I'm ashamed; you did make something special. You work too hard; I should have taken you to a restaurant."

  Matt's mouth tightened and Elizabeth said quickly, "I didn't want to go to a restaurant; I wanted to eat right here. And I would love to hear about your producer and Sophia Loren."

  "In a minute." Tony dug into the rellenos. "Incredible. What a marvelous cook you are, Elizabeth." Between bites he told them anecdotes about his producer, and some of his guests, bringing reluctant chuckles from Matt and laughter from Elizabeth. "Could I have another one of these?" he asked after a while. "Or even two? I don't want to be greedy—"

  "No one could accuse you of that," said Matt blandly.

  Tony smiled. "I pride myself on never going after anything that truly belongs to someone else."

  "An interesting rule," Matt observed with an edge in his voice. "People who talk about priding themselves on it are usually the ones who pride themselves on violating it."

  Tony gave him a sharp look. "I've noticed that people with injuries tend to be bad-tempered. It's good to see you've avoided that, Matt."

  "Oh, why don't both of you just eat?" Elizabeth said in exasperation. She handed Tony the platter. "Help yourself. As much as you want."

  "Thank you," he said meekly. "Well, you wanted to hear about Sophia. My producer wanted me to zero in on her fantasies, get her to describe them; you know producers are voyeurs, all of them. But I'll tell you something, if you won't laugh at me." He gave a small smile, like a little boy afraid to give himself away, but at the same time wanting to share a secret. In spite of himself, Matt was drawn to him, and impressed. No wonder the guy was a success. How the hell did he get all that into one smile—and almost fool Matt Lovell, who couldn't stand having him around, who kept hearing echoes of that smooth voice saying / left my father. Left his business. Had to get out to survive.

  "No, you wouldn't laugh," Tony went on, almost to himself. "I'll tell you: I was so awed by Sophia—how beautiful and generous she was, helping make my show better—that I could barely ask her anything, much less about her fantasies. In fact, I was having a few of my own." He gave a small laugh, asking Matt and Elizabeth to share a joke on himself.

  "Of course, it's no secret that I'm interested in women: their sexual fantasies, longings, dreams, and the way they act them out"—Matt shot an involuntary look at Elizabeth; he knew Tony saw it, but Tony went on without a pause—"and my audience wants to know about them, too, but they're dying to know all of it: what weaknesses celebrities have, what they're faking or hiding, the skeletons in their closets, the tender touches that make them human and frail when they want to seem untouchable, above all of us. ..."

  He's forty-six, Matt thought, and doing exactly what he was dreaming of when Elizabeth knew him in Los Angeles. He's got it all: money, fame, success—and he's had them for ten years.

  "That's what I expose on my show," Tony was
saying. "A whole person. Sometimes that makes glamorous people more glamorous, knowing their secrets, because you assume they're keeping back something even worse. Others become less glamorous: their warts show. Either way, audiences eat it up. Why are you still living here?"

  "We're not glamorous people," said Matt shortly, and then they ate Elizabeth's caramel flan, and drank coffee flavored with cinnamon, and Tony talked about other interviews, in Russia, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, the Netherlands—"and even in Amalfi, where I have my new villa; I do want you to see it; we'll have to get you over there. Both of you, of course."

  How civilized this is, Elizabeth thought; but she wanted Tony gone, and when dessert and coffee were finished he did leave, citing plane schedules, meetings and interviews in New York, and a hectic week ahead. He thanked them for lunch and good company, and when Elizabeth saw him to the door he did not even say, as he usually did, that he would telephone as soon as he could, and stop off to see her again whenever he could. He simply lifted her hand in his, kissed it gently, and then was gone, leaving Elizabeth wondering how he had managed to control his arrival and departure and almost all the conversation in between.

  "Holly and Peter will be home soon," she said to Matt when she returned to the kitchen. "I want to talk to you before they get here."

  He was standing at the counter making another pot of coffee. "How often does he show up?"

  Stacking dishes at the table, Elizabeth glanced at him. "I've told you every time he's been here. About five times in the past year."

  He nodded. "So you did. You did tell me. And he calls more often that that."

  "I've told you that, too."

  "And he didn't think I'd be home today."

  "I'm not sleeping with him, Matt"

  "You brought it up; I didn't."