Private affairs : a novel (31 page)

"Maybe."

"Probably. And Mom in Houston. Probably. And Dad traveling around and popping in now and then for a piece of ass."

"Peter, that's an awful thing to say!"

"Why? Shit, Holly, I'm mad at him."

"Me, too, but you shouldn't talk about him that way."

"A lot he cares about how we talk about him. One thing I've been wondering. About Mom. Do you think she's got somebody else?"

"No! Peter, what is wrong with you? Daddy doesn't have anybody else and neither does Mother! They'll be together in June and everything will be fine."

"Sure." He drove in silence. "We seem to be in Albuquerque. Where's the University of New Mexico?"

Holly unfolded a map and gave him directions. "Oh, God, I'm starting to shake."

"You want me to come with you?"

"I don't know. Yes. No. Oh, Peter, I'm scared to death!"

"You're going to knock them off their chairs. You're going to be sensational. You're going to be the greatest soprano the Santa Fe Opera chorus has ever seen. Heard."

Holly drew a long breath. "You can come with me. I guess I need you, after all."

"If you win, are you going to call Dad and tell him?"

"Of course. Peter, could we not talk about him anymore right now? I've got enough to worry about . . . turn left here ... let's not talk about him or Mom or anything. Okay?"

"Okay." A few minutes later, he said, "Is that the building, up ahead?"

"I think so." A shudder went through her.

Peter touched her shoulder again. "Take it easy. I'm your family and I'll be there. And you're going to win. And everything is going to be fine."

In a pale blue dress of light wool, her shining ash-blond hair falling halfway down her back, Holly stood alone on the stage of the university auditorium, looking at the group of people in the first row of seats. She had no idea that her loveliness had made them catch their breath when

she walked out from the wings; she saw on their shadowy faces only the same polite interest they had shown other singers. Far behind them, from the center of rows and rows of empty seats, Peter blew her a kiss.

But she couldn't sing. She couldn't remember her songs. Her throat was blocked. Her stomach was a hard knot and her feet and hands felt like lead and she was going to throw up. I've got to get out of here. Vm going to die in front of all these people.

The white-haired man at the piano cleared his throat and she turned toward him. "Everyone freezes at first," he said very softly. He smiled at her. "Shall we begin?"

Holly nodded in desperation. Still looking at her and smiling, he played the first chord of the accompaniment—and Holly remembered everything. With her hands clasped lightly in front of her, she held her head high and let the notes of Mozart's "Non mi dir" soar upward. The song told of a woman's love for a man, and in Holly's voice was all the love that was locked inside her, making her feel she'd explode because there was no one to whom she could give it.

Oh, I want to love someone, she thought as the trills and phrases flowed like liquid silver from her throat. I want to be loved and held and made love to. I want to make love to . . . someone.

She held out her hands, filled with love, offering love. Passion and pain were in her voice; the sexuality of a young woman longing to be awakened was in her graceful body as she leaned toward the audience. When she finished there was not a sound in the auditorium.

"Bravo!" Peter shouted. Holly blushed with embarrassment.

"Quite right," said one of the men in the first row. "Have you something in English?"

Quite right. Suddenly radiant, Holly nodded to the accompanist, and when he began to play, she sang "The Little Drummer Boy," a Christmas folk song so ditferent from Mozart in its simple, storytelling cadence it was hard to believe the same young woman was singing.

But in one way it was the same: the song was about someone who longed to be noticed, admired, loved, and, just as in her first song, the longing was so passionate in Holly's pure voice that everyone broke into applause when she finished.

A woman among them nodded to the accompanist, who gave Holly a sheet of music. Nervously, she glanced over it: an aria from Peter Grimes, a modern opera she had not studied. But sight reading was a requirement in these auditions and with a deep breath and another glance at the accompanist, she began, making her way carefully through the song until she began to feel its rhythms and emotions. Finally, in the last few bars,

she let go, her voice gathering force and volume, reaching a note she had never managed before without difficulty, holding it and gradually letting it fade away. While the reverberations still hung in the air, she made a slow curtsy, though her heart was pounding so she could barely breathe, and forced herself to walk off the stage without a backward glance.

Peter met her there. "I'm the proudest brother in the world." He held her while she tried to stop trembling. "Why didn't you tell me you're a superstar?"

"I'm not," she managed to say.

"You are to me. You will be, to everybody. You're the greatest, most wonderful ... do you know how you sounded?"

"Miss Lovell," said one of the men from the group in the front row. "Would you come with me, please? We'd like to talk to you."

Elizabeth sat at the head of the dining room table, listening to Holly and Peter tell Maya about the audition. Three weeks had gone by and they'd told the story dozens of times, but each time they added new details. "They said they'd never heard anyone her age with a voice like that," Peter exclaimed as excitedly as the first time, when they came back from Albuquerque and their voices kept climbing over each other as they told Elizabeth about it. "They only take forty apprentices from all over the country, and usually only people at least twenty years old, but sometimes they make exceptions and this was one of them. They said Holly has a brilliant future. They said she didn't have to wait to be notified. They said she starts in June."

"It's like a dream," Maya said.

"Better," said Peter. "It's real."

She nodded. "I meant ... to get what you've always wanted."

"I don't have it yet," Holly said. "This is just the beginning. Two summers with the opera, and years in a music conservatory, and then maybe back here with the opera again ... a lot of the apprentices do that, they come back and sing with the opera and help new apprentices, like me. ..."

Elizabeth listened to Holly's bubbling voice and Peter's proud one and Maya's envious one. Now and then she suggested they eat their paella before it was cold, but mostly she listened, wishing Matt were there, angry that he wasn't.

He had known Peter was bringing Maya to dinner for the first time: a special occasion. But at the last minute he'd called to say he couldn't make it; he'd try to get in on Sunday, even if only for a day. "Tell Maya I'm sorry; the way Peter looks when he talks about her, I really am

anxious to get to know her better. Maybe we'll drive to Nuevo on Sunday."

"If you're here," Elizabeth said.

"I'll do my best. By the way, I've been looking at houses for us; you should plan to come down and help choose one."

"All right."

"Not much enthusiasm there."

"That's asking a lot, Matt, when you've just disappointed Peter, and all of us."

"I was there last weekend; I helped celebrate Holly's audition triumph. I do the best I can, Elizabeth. So much is going on here; even Keegan hasn't taken a vacation."

It isn't a vacation to spend weekends with your family.

But she didn't want to quarrel; too many of their calls ended that way. "Fine," she said briskly. "We'll look for you on Sunday."

"And I love you all."

And miss us all?

"We love you, too, Matt. And miss you."

"It won't be much longer. Three months."

Holly was singing a passage from "The Little Drummer Boy." "It's easy," she told Maya. "You keep the rhythm of the drum the whole time. Try it."

Self-consciously, Maya hummed along with Holly, then began to sing the words. Peter joined them, unashamedly off-key. Elizabeth smiled at the three heads close together—Holly's pale blond, Maya's black, Peter's flaming red—like a mosaic, she thought; like my life these days, crowded with different events and people and emotions.

In some ways, she had never been so content. Through Matt's newspaper purchases, her column was carried in twenty papers with hundreds of thousands of new readers, her mail was heavier than ever, and when she was at the Chieftain her telephone rang constantly with calls from readers giving suggestions, asking advice about their problems, wanting to argue about something she'd written, telling her how wonderful she was.

He was finally doing what he really wanted. She'd written that about Spencer, then wondered if it was about Matt—but what about her? For the first time she was working full time at writing; she was taken seriously as a writer instead of as a housewife indulging a part-time hobby; she was earning enough from her writing to live on even if Matt weren't there.

But if Matt weren't here, I wouldn't be in twenty papers.

And if / weren't here the Chieftain wouldn't have been such a success

—and Keegan wouldn't have hired Matt—and he wouldn't be buying twenty papers for me to be in.

Elizabeth listened to the young people sing, Holly's pure voice floating above Maya's shy one and Peter's vigorously flat one.

We were so good together; we were such a good team, Doesn *t he miss it as much as I do?

And that was the trouble. At long last she was doing what she'd always wanted, but she couldn't be content because Matt wasn't sharing it with her. They weren't partners in anything: not their work, not their marriage.

And it seemed he was too busy and successful to notice.

"Not bad!" Peter exclaimed. "For a couple of amateurs trying to keep up with the star of the Santa Fe Opera, we were pretty good. Well, Maya was good. I was awful."

"You were all good," Elizabeth said, pushing her thoughts away. She'd face them later, as she did every night, when she lay in bed alone, looking at the telephone beside her, debating, and finally deciding—more and more often lately—not to call her husband, because they had so little to say to one another.

"Daddy should have heard us," Holly said. "That's one of his favorite songs."

"Are we going to Nuevo with him on Sunday?" Peter asked.

"I told you we would if he's here," Elizabeth said.

"Yeh. I just wondered if you'd heard any different."

"Not so far. How about dessert? Fresh figs? And Holly and I made a chocolate cake." The doorbell rang. "Peter, would you get that? Holly, if you and Maya clear the table, I'll make coffee."

A moment later Peter came into the kitchen with Saul. "Damnedest thing," Saul said, kissing Elizabeth on the cheek. "I just got around to reading this week's Capitol Observer. Look what's here." He handed Elizabeth the daily report from the state legislature, with a small item circled in red: Pecos Valley: Nuevo State Park and Dam. Committee hearings March 9-10, 9 A.M.

"Nuevo State Park and Dam?" she said in bewilderment.

"What?" Maya and Holly asked together.

"There's no state park at Nuevo," said Peter. "No dam either."

"Yet," said Saul. "Looks like somebody has it in mind."

Maya frowned. "Why do we need a dam?"

"Good question. Another one is how come I don't know anything about it. Usually by the time hearings start the paper's had endless fact

sheets and hype about the wonders our legislators are about to perform. This has been kept so quiet my journalist's nose is twitching."

"Somebody wants it kept secret," said Peter.

Saul nodded. "Looks like."

"Dams create reservoirs," Elizabeth said. "Lakes."

"That's what they're for," Saul said.

"But if someone dams the Pecos at Nuevo . . . Well, it can't happen. The town is there."

"It could still be there. Under the lake."

"They can't do that!" Peter said. "You can't drown a whole town!"

"Quite a few towns lying at the bottom of lakes these days," Saul observed.

"But the houses," Maya said, echoing Peter. "And the farms and animals. They couldn't be drowned!"

"Not the animals. Someone buys the land and buildings and the people pack up their animals and worldly goods and find someplace else to live."

"Where? My father has only one farm—in Nuevo. How can someone force him to leave?"

"Maya," Elizabeth said. "Does your father still own his land?"

"Oh." There was a long pause. "No, of course not; I forgot. That Mr. Ballenger bought it from him. But that was two or three years ago! And he's rented it to us ever since. He never said he wanted it; we have a lease—"

"Ballenger," Saul mused. "Two or three years ago. First name?"

"I don't know. But we have a—"

"Terry," said Elizabeth. "He bought our land, too."

"Anybody else been buying around there?"

"Two other men, I'm told. Do you know their names, Maya?"

Maya shook her head. "My father might, but I wanted to say—"

"How much have they bought?"

"More than half the valley," Elizabeth replied.

"Will somebody let Maya finish a sentence!" Peter thundered.

"I'm sorry," Saul said. "What is it, Maya?"

"We have a lease—Ballenger rents us the land and the house. It's for twenty years."

"Twenty years?" Saul echoed.

She nodded. "My father said it would be time for him to retire by then and since Ballenger was offering good money and letting him stay, it was a very good deal."

"Too good." Saul put back his head and gazed at the ceiling. "It looks to my aging and cynical eyes as if somebody is trying to sneak something

big through the legislature with no publicity. Now I ask myself—why would that be? And how could someone accomplish it? My nose is twitching because something smells putrid. And my journalist's instincts tell me I should go to those hearings."

Elizabeth looked at Maya's troubled face and Peter's indignant one. "I'll go with you," she said. "Nothing could keep me away."

But first they went to Nuevo. Maya had told her father the news and it had spread to everyone in the valley. When Elizabeth and Saul arrived on Sunday, with Holly and Peter but not Matt, who had called to say he couldn't get there after all, they found people clustered in small groups, talking, gesturing, some of them pacing, others standing with heads bowed, drawing circles in the dust with the points of their boots. All of them were moving gradually toward the old church where Cesar was wrestling open the heavy door.

"Elizabeth!" Isabel cried when she saw the four of them. "What the devil is going on?"

"We're not sure yet. I brought a friend to help. Saul Milgrim, managing editor of the Chieftain —Isabel Aragon; Cesar Aragon."

They shook hands and Saul looked at the open door of the church. "Looks like someone's called a meeting."

"I did," Isabel said. "I wanted Padre to do it, but he said he was too old."

"Too old to get into a battle," said Cesar. Barrel-chested, with broad shoulders, he had heavy eyebrows and a thick, downturned mustache. "Young people should fight. Old, tired ones should help but stay in the background."

Isabel shrugged. "I tried to talk him into it. He's too stubborn for me."

"Talk him into what?" Elizabeth asked.

"Firing up the town. Saul, I'm glad to meet you; Elizabeth's talked about you. Maybe I could call on you to talk to us. Could I? To tell us what's going on in that state capital of yours."

"It's yours, too," said Saul. "But I'm not a public speaker."

"Saul, they need information," Elizabeth said. "You know how helpless people feel when they're in the dark. Please help them."

"You only want information?" Saul asked Isabel. "Not a leader from the big city?"

"Information," Isabel said.

Elizabeth studied her friend. "I think the people of Nuevo already have a leader."

Isabel spread her hands. "Somebody had to do it. I'll see you inside. Sit in the front row, if you can find seats."

"Saul, you will help them, won't you?" Elizabeth asked. "Just tell them what's likely to happen. You can use it all in the story you're going to write."