A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  Because it was on top, there was an air of excitement everywhere in the KTOV building, not felt by outsiders, but as real and powerful to Sybille as a current running through her blood. Much of the time she barely noticed Nick's long days and weekends; she was engrossed in her work at the station or at a desk she had set up in a corner of their bedroom. She liked knowing that Nick and Ted were just a few feet away, in the family room, but they did not see each other until a break came in their work or one of them decided it was time to eat.

  Sometimes Sybille emerged first, to suggest dinner or just to wander around the cluttered family room that was the office, workshop and research lab for Omega Computing Services. Huge flow charts were tacked to the walls; reams of computer printouts were strewn over a long table made from a door balanced across two file cabinets. A large computer, its glowing numbers and letters seeming to dance on its dark screen, sat on an identical table nearby. A rolling stool and a typist's chair found in the storeroom of the engineering building at Stanford rolled from one table to the other. Nearby was a Ping-Pong table with two scarred paddles and a sagging net, the scene of fierce competitions. A coffeepot stood beside two Mickey Mouse mugs; cardboard doughnut boxes were filled with notes and sketches; and in a corner a pencil lay forgotten beneath dusty cobwebs.

  Sybille would watch the men absendy, still thinking about her own work; or she would peer at their printouts, trying to decipher the

  program language, or gaze in bewilderment at the rows of equations on the computer screen. She knew vaguely what Nick did all day as a consultant, and she knew that their goal was to expand four- or five-or sixfold as rapidly as possible, to hire a staff and move into new quarters and then expand even more. She knew it all, but she could not understand what they wrote.

  "It's a foreign language," she said. But she did not ask him to explain it. When he tried, the numbers and symbols swelled and swayed dizzyingly in front of her; she just wasn't interested enough to work at understanding them. So she glanced at Nick's work, surprised at its mysteries, and then asked about dinner. The three of them usually ate right there, shoving papers aside to make a clear space on one of the worktables, and then Sybille would go back to her desk to work on the next day's schedule, or the new program she was creating that she would soon present to the station manager and the news director, for their approval.

  On the nights when he was home, Nick came to her after midnight and led her to bed. As tired as they both were then, they were buoyed up by an energy that fed on what they had done all day, and thoughts of tomorrow. Nick was instandy aroused, as soon as they lay together, and it was the closest Sybille ever came to the kind of intense peak of feeling she had once dreamed of It was as much exhaustion and the excitement of their separate lives as passion, but they did not know that. While it lasted, they thought it was love.

  Valerie doesn't have anything like this.

  The thought came to Sybille at odd moments, like flashes of lightning, so bright it blocked out everything else. Then it would be gone. But other thoughts of Valerie would appear at any time, her image dimmed by Sybille's unabated ftiiy, but still there, intruding. Where is she? What is she doin0?

  She knew a litde bit, from talking to her mother, who still sewed for Valerie's family. She had spent a year in Europe after college, and then traveled around the world. Somewhere along the way, she had married Kent Shoreham, someone from Boston whose parents knew Valerie's parents. She and Kent divided their time between Maryland's Eastern Shore and New York, where they had bought an apartment on Fifth Avenue. That was all Sybille's mother knew.

  It was enough for Sybille, for now. All she could do was keep track of Valerie until she found a way for them to meet again. And tlien... She didn't know. But she would, when she had time to think, and to plan.

  She wanted to learn to ride horseback, knowing Nick had shared that with Valerie, but it was too expensive, and so, temporarily, she gave it up. But she did take up skeet shooting, another of Valerie's sports, and she was so good, her aim so steady and her eye so sharp, that her score was better than Valerie's ever had been. Valerie doesn't have the patience, she thought, to become an expert at anything.

  I have Nick, Sybille thought; I have my job, I have my shooting. She repeated it at night before she fell asleep. In every way she was superior to Valerie.

  When she learned she was pregnant she bought a few new clothes and managed to squeeze in a doctor's appointment once a month; otherwise nothing in her life changed. In February she hired a nanny. And in March, Chad was bom.

  For a few days, Sybille let herself relax, backing off from the relentless pace she had kept for nearly two years, to sit at the window, staring at the heavy clouds above the houses across the street, thinking about how this might affect her plans.

  "That's an astonishing kid," Nick said, sitting beside her a week after Chad was born. "Did you see him smile?" And even through her absorption, Sybille heard the pride and elation in his voice.

  "He's very handsome," she said. "He looks like you."

  Nick grinned. "I thought so, too. But he has your mouth. Lucky kid; it's a very kissable mouth."

  She shook her head. "I don't see any of me in him; he's much more like you. He'll probably use a computer before he learns to talk."

  She did not nurse Chad; she had no time. "I'll be at the station all day and if I don't get my sleep at night I won't be worth a thing at my job."

  "Don't go back for awhile," Nick said. "They've given you two months off; why not take it?"

  "Without pay."

  "We don't need it. Don't think about it."

  "Ifs all right, Nick. I'm doing what I want to do."

  When Chad was two weeks old, she turned him over to the nanny and returned to the station and her usual fourteen-hour days. At the end of a month she was too tired even to go out to dinner.

  "You weren't ready," Nick said. "Take a few months off, starting today." They were lying in bed on a Sunday morning, the radio playing softly, Chad asleep in a crib nearby. Now and then a shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds and reached across the room to touch their bed. Nick felt the beauty of the moment and put his arm around Sy-

  bille. "I told you when Chad was born: we can afford it. Ted and I are getting clients faster than we can take care of them."

  "No," she said.

  He was silent. There was probably nothing he could say to convince her, but her exhaustion had alarmed him and so he tried once more. "It wouldn't hurt to take some time off; it wouldn't even slow you down. Enjoy Chad for a litde while; you don't have to have everything at once,"

  "Why not?" she snapped. ^HTou want it all; why shouldn't I? You know how many things are happening for me, why should I give any of it up? What for? A baby who doesn't care who feeds him as long as somebody does?"

  "You were the one who wanted a baby," Nick said, his voice puzzled. "I thought we should wait a couple of years more, but you wouldn't. Why not, if all you wanted to do was work?"

  "I wanted both," Sybille retorted.

  "Why?" he said again. "You're happier at work than you are with Chad."

  She looked at him sharply. "Are you saying I don't love my own son?"

  "I'd never say that. But you don't seem comfortable with him. You close up, somehow; you're not open—"

  "Not loving," she said flatly.

  "Of course you love him. I don't doubt that."

  'Tou do," she insisted. "You think I don't love him, that I shut him out. Thafs what you said."

  "Not quite." He pulled back to look at her. "Do you care about him? Do you want to be close to him? You've never made any secret of what you've wanted, and it sure as hell isn't a child." She was silent, but her rigid body told him how angry she was. "Sybille, look at me! You're not home enough to be anything of a mother. When you are here, you pay damn little attention to Chad; you even have trouble holding him for very long. You get tired, or bored, or you start thinking of all the other things you could be doing. You—" />
  "You're doing it again!" she said furiously. "Saying I don't love him!"

  "Tell me I'm wrong!"

  "Every mother loves her baby! You make me sound like a monster!"

  The word struck Nick. "I don't mean to. But I'd like to hear you tell me you love Chad."

  "God damn you, you know I do!"

  "I wish I did. I don't know what I know. I watch you with him and there isn't any—" He stopped, then shrugged. "Even when you hold him it looks like you're keeping him at arm's length. It bothers me. He needs a mother, you know."

  "He has a nanny!"

  "He also has a mother, and he needs her."

  "You're trying to make me feel guilty!"

  "Not guilty, Sybille; loving! But that can't be forced, can it? He's part of you, but there's nothing in you reaching out to him." He saw the darkness of her face and would have stopped, but he was too angry. "I suppose I could understand that your work is more important to you than anything else—I'd have trouble understanding it, but I'd try—but what made you insist on having this baby? You're too self-centered to take care of him; you're an infant yourself, all wrapped up in yourself with not an inch of compassion or interest in anyone else What the hell got into you to have a baby when you don't—"

  "Because Valerie doesn't have one!" she blurted out.

  A shaft of sunlight brushed the bed, then vanished as clouds piled up. The baby sighed. The room was very still.

  Nick pulled his arm from beneath Sybille's shoulders and sat up. The room seemed to shrink around him, like a prison.

  "I didn't mean it!" She was sitting beside him, her eyes alarmed. "I mean she doesn't want one. Or she—oh, I don't know—we used to talk about having babies, we talked a lot, and she said she didn't want any... she didn't like them..." Her voice ran down. She and Valerie had never talked about having children. They had never talked about anything personal. "Anyway, it's not important... we have Chad and that's what counts, isn't it?" Her eyes filled with tears. 'Tou're right, I'm not very good with him, but I don't know what to do— I'm sure

  I can learn, I want to, you know, but I've been so scared I can't

  imagine how some people just pick up a baby and know what to do right away; don't they worry about smothering them or crushing them or something like that... ?"

  Bitterness welled up in Nick. Of all that he had learned about his wife, he had never guessed that she harbored such envy. Who was she, this woman he had married, that she could be so deeply obsessed, and let it control so ftindamental a part of her life as the birth of a child? His bitterness became anger; he was ftirious at himself for not seeing what must have been there from the beginning. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he wanted to get out of there, before he could discover how

  much else he did not know about her. But Chad slept on the other side of the room, and Nick could not move.

  "Nick, listen to me." Sybille's hand was on his arm. "Are you listening? I don't know what to do!"

  He heard the plea in her voice, and knew it was genuine. Tears trembled in it. He looked searchingly into her face, and she returned his look steadily. She had never been afraid, he thought; she always met trouble head on. "I'll learn; I promise I will," she said, her voice warm now, caressing, still a little unsteady. "I want you to be proud of me and I can learn anything if I try; remember you said that once?"

  Slowly, he nodded. He took her hand and forced himself to pretend nothing had changed between them. And nothing had, he thought, except that now he saw more clearly. "I'm sure you'll learn," he said quietly. "You and Chad are going to get along wonderfrilly."

  And neither of them observed that that was an odd way to describe a mother and her son.

  The nanny was named Elena Garcia. She was thirty-one, round and rosy-cheeked; she had raised nine younger brothers and sisters, and, more than anything in the world, she longed for a bed all to herself. Suddenly, with her new job, she had not only a bed but a whole room, one of those on the second floor vacated by Ted Mcllvain, who had moved out when Omega Computing Services began making money. Ecstatically, Elena explored her room, Chad's room across the hall, and the bathroom, used by no one but herself From that moment, she loved Chad for making this possible, and she made him the center of her Ufe.

  "Have a nice day together," Sybille said, handing Chad back to Elena. She still couldn't get the hang of holding him. It was easier now that he was seven months old and could hold himself straight—she'd been terrified of the way his head flopped around the first month— but seven months meant he was much heavier, a real burden now that she'd exercised and dieted back to ninety-five pounds. He squirmed a lot, too, and sometimes he would screw up his face and start to scream, for no reason in the world that Sybille could fathom, transformed in an instant from a pleasant baby to an inhuman creature in such agony that all she wanted to do was give him to someone who could solve whatever problems he had. And it seemed that Elena always could.

  "I don't know what time I'll be back," Sybille said. She picked up

  her car keys and briefcase and went to the door. "I left money on the kitchen counter for groceries; don't forget to ask Mr. Fielding if he wants something special for dinner before you go shopping."

  She opened the door, but something—Elena's silence, perhaps— made her turn back. Chad was asleep, rosy and beautiftil, a tiny fist tucked under his chin. Sybille met Elena's eyes, then crossed the room and bent to rest her cheek briefly on Chad's. It was velvety and fragrant, like an opening flower; she was always amazed at the softness of his skin. "Don't let him get sunburned," she said, and touched her cheek to his once again before walking swifdy to the door, and out of the house.

  From that moment she forget Chad and Elena; she forgot Nick; she forgot how much she hated their small house, shabby and crowded and in a poor neighborhood that she detested, with large families, roaming dogs and cats, and even a tethered goat a few houses down. She forgot it all, because this was the day her program was to be broadcast for the first time.

  She had developed and produced it; she had convinced the station executives to allow her to make two pilot episodes, and the station had used the pilots to sign up sponsors for thirteen weeks. Then she had taped four more programs, and tonight, as one of the new shows premiering throughout September, "The Hot Seat" would be shown at six-thirty, following the local news.

  There was nothing left for her to do: the program was on tape and her part was done. There was nothing to do but watch the hours crawl past. She sat in the control room during the noon news and tried to do her job while excitement churned inside her and she had to swallow through the dryness of her throat. Because it wasn't just excitement; it was fear too: that even though the pilot had gotten good reviews, no one would like tonight's program, critics would tear it to pieces, viewers would flick their remote controls to other channels. And she had other fears: that a devastating earthquake would strike just before six-thirty and her half hour would be given to news of the disaster. Or, if not an earthquake, the crash of a jumbo jet, terrorists in Miami, the death of the President, a nuclear war. Any of them would knock "The Hot Seat" out of its hard-won slot and she would have to go through another week of agonized waiting.

  But of course nothing like that would happen. The show would go on at the proper time and it would be an instant success. Her name would become known; she would have something to show when she

  went to bigger stations in bigger cities; she would step from here to more powerful positions. And she would have something with which to bargain when she demanded her own show, that she would produce and host. It all began tonight.

  Tonight, she thought, my life really begins.

  And then, at last, for the first time in months she left the station early and went home. "Come and watch something with me," she said to Nick, taking a pen from his hand and laying it down. He was standing at one of the long tables, writing notes on a spread sheet, one hand holding a Ping-Pong ball that his thumb rolled rhythmically across his palm
. His body was tense with coiled energy, and his eyes, when he turned to her, were distant.

  "Watch something?" he echoed. He brought her into focus. "What time is it?"

  "After six. I want you to watch a new program on television." She tugged at his hand like a child with a reluctant parent. "It's mine, I wrote it and produced it, and it's starting tonight. And I want us to watch it together. Nick, are you listening?"

  He frowned then. "Yours," he said slowly. "New programs take months. You haven't mentioned it."

  "I couldn't, not until I knew it would really happen. I can't bear to talk about things that might not work out, you know that. Oh, Nick, don't start something; I'm telling you about it now, aren't I? I want us to share it." She looked up at him. "Nick, I can't watch it alone."

  He saw the tension in her face. "Of course you can't. You shouldn't." He reminded himself that it took both of them to keep their marriage going. Sybille had been trying; he had watched her. She was better with Chad; she was making an effort to be caring and loving even though it was clear to Nick that she had trouble being a caring and loving person, with anyone, and probably always would.

  Still, she had been trying to be closer to Chad and to him, ever since that terrible Sunday morning in bed. For days after that, they had barely spoken; it had been a kind of separation. Then, litde by little, it faded to the background. Living in the same house, it was hard not to talk, and soon they were talking about Chad and then the house and their jobs, and finally it was almost as if they had forgotten, and everything was the same as before.

  He put his arm around her. "If you have a new show, it should be a family affair. Come on; we'll get Chad. For the first time, the Fieldings are going to watch television together. Maybe we'll make popcorn."