A Ruling Passion

by Judith Michael

  "No. I was sure there was someone, but he denied it and I didn't push. I thought we'd work things out, or we wouldn't, and another woman wouldn't be the cause of anything; she was only a sign that things weren't that wonderful between us. But now I'd like to know."

  "Why? It's been a year and a half; why fret over it.> Put it behind you."

  Valerie slipped the fuel bills into an envelope. "I can't. I think about it a lot. I haven't been able to do much about it, but it's always there, at the back of my mind. There's too much I don't know."

  "About what.>"

  "About an)iJiing. Carl's affair—or affairs; I don't know how many he had—what he did with our money, what he meant by the things he said before he died. They probably don't have anything to do with each other, but that bothers me, too. There are too many mysteries. If I can't find all the answers, that's no reason not to try to find some of them." She went to the telephone. "I'm going to Placid. If Carl was there with someone, Mae would know."

  "Mae.> Oh, the housekeeper. But the detective already talked to her."

  "Of course. Obviously she didn't tell him Carl was up there in the spring and fall, without me. I'll have to ask her about that, too."

  She called the airline to make reservations; she called Sophie to tell her she would not be in the next day; she called Nick at home and left a message with Elena. "I'll be back Tuesday. I have some business to take care of." And early Monday morning, she flew to the Lake Placid airport.

  Mae Williamson still lived in town, in the house she had lived in all her life. After calling to make sure she was home, Valerie rented a car and drove to the house. "Oh, but it's good to see you!" Mae cried, hugging Valerie. She was tall and spare, with a narrow, long-nosed face, sharp eyes, and a warm smile for the few who won her approval. "You don't know how I've missed you, I cried for you when Mr. Sterling was killed, poor Mrs. Sterling, I said, she'll be alone now." She sat in the swing on the front porch and patted the seat beside her. "We'll have lunch in a few minutes, I fixed something when you called, but first tell me how you are and what you're doing."

  "I'd love some lunch," Valerie lied, knowing she could not refuse Mae one more chance to feed her. "But then I'll have to leave; I have a job now."

  "You? Oh, Lx)rd, Lx)rd, we heard about your money being gone, we didn't know how, but we heard it, and I said to myself, things'll be bad for Mrs. Sterling, I knew they would."

  "Not too bad," Valerie said. "I'm getting along. Mae, I'm trying to find out some things about Mr. Sterling. I know it's been a long time, but you always had an amazing memory and if you could help me I'd appreciate it."

  Mae fixed her with a melancholy look. "My memory ain't what it used to be, it skips around like a goat, there's whole patches it just misses, but I'll tell you what I remember if you're sure you want to know."

  Valerie smiled. "That sounds like a warning. Mae, he had women up here, didn't he?"

  "One woman. That he did."

  "You didn't tell the detective."

  "Why would I tell him, and make Mr. Sterling look like a bastard and you like a fool? It didn't make any difference to the detective, he was just poking around for whatever he could dig up, and he wouldn't care if you heard it from him or the town crier, but I cared, I thought if you ever needed to know I'd tell you, and it wouldn't be so hard, coming fi-om me. I don't have secrets from you, you know."

  "Who was she, Mae?"

  "That I don't know; I never did get her name. At first, I thought it was you. I mean, Mr. Sterling told me not to come the days he was there—he always said 'he,' never Sve'—so I didn't, I'd come in when he'd left and all I knew was somebody'd been there, and why not think it was you, since your robe was out—" Valerie winced and Mae put her hand to her mouth. "Oh, damn me, I'm hurting you."

  "No, it's all right. I want to know it all; there's no sense in just knowing part of it."

  "Well, that's so; nobody ever pulled a tooth halfway out and called it a day. She used your robes, both of them, and there was a little of your face powder spilled on the dressing table, and one of your lipsticks not put away, that sort of thing. I never thought too much about it at first, but later that spring I started thinking something was fishy, you never calling me like you usually do, so the next time he called and said he was coming up, I was in the house when they got there, like I hadn't finished cleaning, and I looked all surprised when they walked in, not as surprised as he was, let me tell you, but then I really was surprised, no pretending about it, because it wasn't you. I made sure I saw her a few other times after that, but I didn't know who she was. But, hold on, what's wrong with me, I'm forgetting the important part. You know her. That was another reason I didn't tell the detective, I didn't

  want you to know your husband was playing around with one of your friends. I don't know how good a friend, but good enough to be a guest, because you had her staying here, her and that little blond preacher, that last weekend, just before Mr. Sterling was killed."

  Chapter 26

  t first, Lily was the only one who noticed a change in Sybille. She seemed distracted, unable to focus on anything for very long, and always very angry. Lily would have talked to her about it, asked her if she couldn't take some time off, maybe even go away for a vacation, but she did not. Because, just then, Lily had her own distractions. She had fallen in love.

  Three months earlier, on her twenty-third birthday, Gus Emery had taken her to lunch. She was so surprised when he invited her that she went straight to Sybille to ask her what she thought. "He's probably looking for a raise," Sybille said. "Go ahead, find out what he wants; Gus never does anything without a reason."

  After that, whenever Gus asked her anywhere, Lily kept it a secret. She had always liked him for his soft voice and careftil manners, the way he seemed to be watching himself to make sure he was nice to her. Sometimes he reminded her of Rudy Dominus, trying to be fatherly. And she liked his looks: handsome, almost pretty, with pale skin, long eyelashes, and a mouth that shaped each word he spoke. His voice was rough, but he kept it low with her.

  Lily knew no one liked Gus as well as she did; even Valerie hadn't gotten along with him when she worked there, and that puzzled her. But Lily often was not sure what made other people behave the way they did. Sometimes she lay awake in bed, worrying about that; she really didn't know a lot about people, so how could she be giving them advice? And if she didn't know much about others, probably she didn't know very much about herself either, and then she certainly had no business telling anyone what to do.

  Those were the most awfiil times, when she doubted herself. But they passed. Sybille always told her how important she was to others; Reverend Bassington put his arm around her—which she didn't like, but he meant it lovingly—and praised her miraculous understanding of the human heart; and after every sermon her congregation touched her hand and told her they loved her. Then Lily forgot those black hours and believed she was unique.

  And so she did not worry about Gus's unpopularity. She liked him; she saw the good in him. It bothered her that Valerie hadn't, but Valerie had been gone for a long time, and Gus was always there. At first they'd just worked together and it had been pleasant because he was so helpftil and admiring, but later he sought her out. It was uncanny how he seemed to know where she would be, and he would be there first, or he would appear within a few minutes, at her elbow, monopolizing her, being helpful with whatever she was doing, telling her how wonderftil she was. Often he gave her little bits of advice, like suggesting she use people's names more often as she answered their letters on "At Home with Reverend Grace," to make them feel she was talking right to them.

  Gus knew a great deal about the world, and he seemed totally self-sufficient. Lily was intrigued by that: how could one person not need anyone else? She asked him that the first time they went to dinner in a small town near Culpeper. "You can teach yourself not to need anybody," he said. "It's hard, but once you've learned it, nobody can hurt you, ever."

  "W
ho hurt you so badly that you feel that way?" Lily asked. "What happened to you?"

  He shook his head. 'Tou don't want to hear about me."

  "Of course I do! I like you and I want to know all about you."

  That pleased him, Lily saw ... or was it satisfaction that had crossed his face so fleetingly? She could not be sure. She knew so litde about him. Or about any man. Of course he was pleased, she told herself. He's pleased that I'm interested in him.

  "Someday maybe I'll tell you about my past," he said. "It'll be short, though; I've forgotten most of it."

  "That's not true," Lily said softly.

  "It sure is. Well, for tonight ifs true."

  Sybille had asked about their lunch and Lily had told her exactly what had happened: they had talked about Graceville and "At Home with Reverend Grace" and the weather. "I think he just wanted someone to eat with," Lily said. "He wasn't after anything at all."

  Later, when Sybille asked Lily if Gus had suggested lunch again, Lily said no, which was the truth, because by then Gus was asking her to dinner. They went out once a week, always on Wednesday when Sybille was at a meeting; she was having so many meetings lately she was paying much less attention to Lily. Gus thought it might have to do with the spreading scandal of Jim and Tammy Bakker. Everyone involved with television evangelism was absorbed in the story, trying to be prepared for any new revelations; everyone but Lily, that is, who was serenely confident that she had nothing to do with any of it, or anything like it, and felt only pity and sorrow for those who did. But since the scandal had broken, which happened about the time Graceville was becoming a real town, Sybille had been very busy, and Lily, in her small house in Culpeper, was on her own more than ever before.

  And there was Gus, taking her to dinner every Wednesday night at tiny out-of-the-way restaurants where they sat for three or four hours, talking about themselves, their hands almost touching on the tablecloth. Gus told her about his past, a few small stories at a time. Most were sad, a few were tragic. Occasionally Lily had the terrible thought that he was making them up, but she was never sure why she thought it. It might have been the calm way he told them, or the fact that he never once had tears in his eyes, or the way he would pause and look at her to see her reactions. But all that could be explained by his pretended toughness, too. Lily was convinced he was far more sensitive than he said he was; she was convinced he was acting when he seemed so self-sufficient. And so she refused to listen to her doubts: she wanted to believe that he was completely honest with her, and she did. She believed she knew him better than he knew himself.

  It was the first time she had made friends with a man who was not old enough to be her father or grandfather, and it gave her a warm, shivery feeling. She never asked herself what that meant; she only knew she looked forward to her Wednesday nights with a slight shortness of breath that made her feel a little odd, until Gus arrived at her door and then she began to feel wonderful.

  She hugged her feelings to herself: she had a friend. Sybille had kept people away, women and men both; Sybille had said she had to conserve her strength and hoard her energy for her congregation; Sybille had said she couldn't take chances with strangers who would take advantage of her goodness and generosity. But it had been years since they even talked about that; Lily seemed so setded, and bound to Sybille, that the subject never came up anymore. Lily hadn't even thought about it very much until Valerie's friend Sophie asked her about friends and dates. It was a few months after that that Gus had asked her to lunch, and they became friends.

  But even Lily knew it was more than a friendship. One Sunday night, Gus sent her a gardenia, with a note that said her sermon that morning had been the best he had ever heard anywhere. She had inhaled the heav}^, dizzying scent of the waxy flower, and not one thought of religion had come to her. Instead, she thought of Gus's hand, close to hers on the tablecloth a few nights before, and the way his soft lips shaped her name. The following week, he sent two gardenias, and Lily had to put them outside, because the scent made her slighdy ill, but all night long she visualized those pure white, glossy flowers nesded in their bed of green tissue paper, and she thought of Gus pinning them on her dress before her next sermon, his hands touching her, and she felt faint and ver}^ hot.

  She remembered, years before, the girls in boarding school talking about getting hot and excited, but she had never dated, and had never experienced any of that herself. Still, she recognized it now, and thought she knew what was happening: her body had taken over and was having its own feelings about Gus, completely separate from her mind. Her mind said he was only a friend. Her body seemed to think he might be something else too. As soon as she let herself think that, guilt washed over her, and even in the privacy of her bedroom, she blushed.

  For a week she avoided Gus and would not answer her telephone. She missed him and was miserably unhappy; she burst into tears without warning, and lost interest in food. I have to talk to Sybille, she thought; this is terrible. I mustn't be like this; it's all wrong. But Sybille did not come to church on Sunday morning, and it was the next day that Lily went to her office and found her changed. No one else seemed to notice, but Lily was so close to her that she felt her anger the minute she walked into her office. She seemed so angry, in fact, that Lily thought she must have found out about her dinners with Gus, but after a few minutes she knew it was not that: something else

  had happened that made Sybille hardly even aware of Lily. On the surface, she behaved quite normally, but Lily saw she was really turned inward, thinking, planning, plotting how to deal with something that enraged her so much it was consuming her.

  There was no one to whom Lily could talk. She stood in the hallway outside Sybille's office, feeling uncertain and alone, almost afraid. She knew she ought to go to her own office and read her mail, and prepare for Wednesday's taping of "At Home with Reverend Grace," and next Sunday's sermon, and next week's talk to the Rotary Club of Arlington, but she couldn't concentrate on any of that. She wanted someone to tell her what to do.

  She stood in the hallway. She was there only a minute before Gus walked by. And then she knew that was what she had been waiting for.

  He shot a glance at Sybille's closed door. "Were you two talking about me?"

  "No," she said, startled. "Why do you think we were?"

  His face smoothed out. "I thought she might not like you and me being friends." He peered at her. "You okay? You want somebody to talk to?"

  "Yes," said Lily, "thafs what I need more than anything."

  He took her hand, holding it tightly against her instinctive pulling away until he felt her relax. "We'll go somewhere; shall I take you for a drive somewhere? The mountains?"

  "Oh, yes, perfect." Lily felt the warmth of his hand clasping hers. I love you, she thought involuntarily. She wished he would put his arms around her and hold her close and make her feel safe, the way Sybille used to do, when they lived together in the Watergate. I love you, she thought again, and shivered. She was twenty-three years old and in her whole life she had said that to only three people: Rudy Dominus, Quentin Enderby and Sybille.

  Gus talked about himself as he drove to the mountains, but Lily was not as attentive as usual and he fell silent as they ascended the Skyline Drive along the crest. Now and then he turned off to an overlook that gave expansive views of the misty Shenandoah Valley on one side, or the Virginia hunt country on the other. At one point he stopped and they got out to walk. The forest smelled fresh and cool, and sumacs and maples and other trees Lily could not identify made a roof over the hiking trail and the two of them as they walked. Lily felt free. "Isn't it wonderful!" she cried

  Gus created a smile for her. He hated forests and walking; he hated

  the mountains. He liked restaurants, motel rooms, television studios and the interiors of luxury automobiles. If he hadn't been convinced she was ripe, he wouldn't have come near the fucking Blue Ridge Mountains. "It's great," he said. "You talked about the mountains in one of your sermon
s."

  "Oh, you remembered! Thank you for telling me, Gus; I love it when people remember what I say."

  They walked on. Gus looked with distaste at the dust on his shoes. Lily plucked a small flower and held it tenderly, so as not to bruise the petals. A breeze lifted tendrils of her hair, and she turned up her face, breathing the scent of leaves and damp soil. "So much beauty in the world," she said, and looked at Gus with a shy smile. "You feel it, too; I know it. That means so much to me; sometimes I think it means everything. There's too much that I don't know—I'm scared by how much I don't know, and maybe that I'm wrong about things because of it—but if I can be with someone who cares about me and feels the way I do, it's not so scary. I need that so much; it hurts sometimes, needing to be with someone who understands how I feel, and feels the same way."

  Gus took a deep breath. "Lily!" he cried. He grabbed her hands and fell to his knees before her on the dirt path. He was wearing good pants, but what the hell; this was the kind of thing that would get to her. "You're whafs beautiful in the world; thafs what I need. I need the same things you do. I need you to make the world beautiful and a place I can Hve in."

  Dimly, Lily knew that was not poetry, but it did not matter. She'd been right: he was sincere and sensitive, he understood her, he was not afi-aid to tell her he needed her. Not so self-sufficient after all, Lily thought with a surge of pleasure.

  "You have my friendship," she said, and her voice trembled. "You're my only friend. When you need me, I'm here for you."

  That odd look of satisfaction flashed across Gus's face again, but it was hidden when he leaned forward, resting his forehead on Lily's breasts. She barely had time to realize what he was doing when, suddenly, he was even closer, his body pressing against hers, his arms around her waist. She felt his breath through her linen blouse, warm and moist on her nipples. "I love you," he said, the words muffled but clear enough for Lily to be sure of them. "Darling Lily..." He put back his head for a quick look at her face, then he went back to her breasts. "Sweet little girl... love..."