Private affairs : a novel (82 page)

Holly laughed with them and Matt finally did begin to relax as they talked casually together; they were good to be with, he thought: bright, warm, charming. I'd like them even if they weren't my offspring, he reflected as the waiter brought their salads. But there's that added love and pride that goes with knowing they are. As they ate, he admired the table with its white damask cloth, blue Limoges china, and slender vase with one blue iris. "Good taste," he told Peter. "Have you been here before?"

"This is Mom's favorite place when she's here."

"Well, she has good taste, too," Matt said after a moment. Then he asked about Peter's classes, and they stayed with safe subjects all through lunch.

"After my two o'clock," Peter said as they finished coffee, "I'll take you to my new apartment. I need your approval."

"Of what?" Matt asked.

"You'll see when we get there."

When they left him at the science building, Matt turned to Holly, sitting beside him in the front seat of the car. "What needs my approval?"

"Peter will tell you," she said. "It's his news; not mine. Don't worry, though; it's not anything dreadful."

"Is there something dreadful in your life?" Matt asked bluntly.

Holly flushed. "No."

"It looks to me as if there is, sweetheart. I won't pressure you to tell me anything, but I'd like to help, if I can."

Holly shook her head.

"Can you tell me why you're not singing anymore?"

"How did you know that? I told Mother not to tell you!"

"She didn't. Saul told me. Can you talk about it?"

"No." When Matt did not respond, Holly's voice rose. "I'm sorry! I really am, I'd tell you if I could, but don't ask me!" Tears were running down her cheeks like shining threads. "Please! There isn't any way . . . there's no way I can tell you!"

"Sweetheart, it's all right," Matt said quickly. He put his arm around her. "It's all right," he repeated softly. "I know you'd tell me if you could."

Holly rested her head on his shoulder. "It's just something that happened and I can't"—Matt held out his handkerchief and she took it— "Thank you. I can't tell anybody but Mother."

He pushed aside the jealousy that flared up. "I'm glad you can tell her. It would be terrible if you couldn't talk to either one of us."

"Oh. that's nice—that you understand." Holly pressed her cheek against his shoulder. "I don't know why I'm not singing. I wish I could; I miss it; it's like a big piece of me is gone. But when I try, nothing happens. I'm all numb inside, where the songs begin, and I don't know what to do about it."

"Whatever happened to you must still hurt," Matt said. "Deep down. And the songs are trapped there, waiting for you to find a way to free them."

Holly looked up at him. "Mother said the same thing."

"Did she? Well, your mother and I often think alike."

Still looking at him, Holly said, "Then why don't you come home?"

He frowned. "Didn't your mother tell you . . . ?"

••What 0 "

"That she's divorcing me?"

**Oh. Yes. but . . . oh, I don't know. That was weeks ago. We haven't talked about it since that article came out, except she told me Saul said you didn't know anything about it. I don't know whether she's even talked to her lawyer since then."

"But, Holly, as far as I know, she wants a divorce."

•*Do you want one?"

He held her in silence. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't know what I want. Everything changed so suddenly, I haven't put all the pieces together yet. One day I thought I knew what I was doing and the next it all fell apart."

"I know what that's like," Holly said. "Do you miss it? Everything that fell apart 0 "

"I miss pans of it a lot. I miss a job, for one thing. Do you know, I've never had a day since college when I didn't wake up in the morning knowing I had an office, work to be done, people waiting for me to make decisions. . . ."He laughed ruefully. "I feel like I've come unraveled."

Holly smiled. "That's the kind of word Mother would use."

"Yes, it is, isn't it? Well, that's how I feel. And I miss being at the center of power, too. I wasn't as powerful as I thought I was, but I did have influence, I was part of an organization that made news instead of only being affected by it. It felt good to have that; it's not easy to walk away from it without missing it."

"And thinking you made a mistake by leaving it?"

•'No. I'm sure I didn't make a mistake. About the job, or anything else I broke away from. It's just that I miss parts of everything I had, and I

don't know what comes next. I can't even go after it until I decide what I absolutely need, and how much of it is really possible and how much is only a beautiful mirage that will disappear if I get too close." Smoothing her hair, he kissed her forehead. "Lots to think about."

"What about Mother?"

"I have to think about her, too. But your mother and I have changed, Holly. I don't know if it's ever possible to recapture what we had."

"Wasn't that what you tried to do when you bought the Chieftain?' 1 Matt nodded. "Well, if it worked then, why can't it now?"

He smiled. "Damned if I know. You make it sound so simple. But we'd have to find our way through all the debris of years apart, and misunderstandings, and separate—" He stopped.

"Private affairs," Holly said.

"Yes."

She shivered. "Let's talk about something else."

"We got off the subject of your singing."

"I don't want to talk about that either. Tell me where you're going in Europe. I wish I could go."

"You will. Next time, when you're not in school. I'm going to wander around Paris and Rome and not think about newspapers or Texas or America for at least a couple of weeks. Maybe more."

"Mother was in Paris and Rome."

"I know."

"Do I really look exactly like her?"

"You've seen her pictures; you know you do. In every way. The arch of your eyebrows, the way your mouth curves when you smile . . . even the look in your eyes when you learn something new: like gray pearls filled with light."

Hesitantly, Holly said, "Do you know what Peter would say?"

"What?"

"That you sound like a man in love."

Matt was silent. "Would he?" he asked finally. "Well, that's something else for me to think about."

Holly sat up. "Can we drive somewhere?"

"Sure. We have half an hour before we pick up Peter." He started the car. "Holly, the hurts that we suffer fade after a while and the songs inside us come back. I know that sounds simple to the point of stupidity, but it's true. Time changes the look of almost everything. I'm not saying you forget; I'm saying you tuck things away in the crazy quilt of yesterday and the day before and last year and that way you can handle them— think about them, decide what they meant to you and what they did to

you—and fit them into the whole fabric that makes up Holly Lovell. If you're lucky, you learn from the things you do. If you're not, you repeat them. I hope you're lucky." He pulled away and drove down the broad street. "Now there's a building I've always admired; what do you think of those arches? More like a Spanish church than a university building, wouldn't you say?"

Holly leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Thank you," she said. "I love you."

Peter was waiting on the steps of his class building when they drove up, and he sat on the edge of the back seat on the drive to his apartment. "You see, Dad, we talked it over," Peter said as he unlocked the front door. "And we decided that mature men and women make a commitment to each other." Inside the door, Maya waited, wearing a dress as blue as a Santa Fe sky, her eyes pleading for approval.

Without hesitation, Matt put his arms around her. "My dear," he said. "So you're the reason Peter looks so well." Over his head his eyes met Peter's. "Commitment? Are you married?"

"No!" said Maya against his chest.

"One commitment at a time," Peter said. "We decided that, too. But you see"—he was looking at Maya now, with a tenderness Matt had never seen in his eyes—"I need her and she says she needs me. We won't die if we're not together, but do you know how incredible it is to wake up in the morning with somebody you love and know you've got a whole day ahead of you, to be together?" He looked at Matt. "Sure you do. You did once, anyway."

After a moment, Matt held Maya away from him. "What about your parents?"

"They don't like it," she said simply. "But they like Peter. And everything is so unsettled in Nuevo, they can't spend a lot of time worrying about me, and finally I think they were relieved to turn me over to Peter."

Peter reached out his hand and Maya moved quite naturally from Matt's side to his. As they began to tell Matt about the courses Maya would take in the fall, Holly watched from the side of the room, as if she were trying to memorize the radiance on their faces. And Matt gazed at them almost reluctantly; another reminder of a time when he and Elizabeth, only a few years older than Peter and Maya, had begun living together.

Would it last for the two of them? He had no idea. They had a chance. Maybe no one could say any more than that these days: begin with love, and if you have a dream to share, grab it, hold onto it, nurture it, but don't let it consume you.

He put his arms around Peter and Maya and kissed them. And perhaps love will endure.

Elizabeth was in Nuevo when Saul called. Shouting so she could hear him over the construction noises outside Isabel's house, he told her about Matt's story. "He called ten minutes ago to tell me he's writing it. He was in Las Cruces yesterday and the governor will be calling Isabel any minute. I couldn't wait; I wanted to be first. This is the crucial part—are you listening?"

"Yes."

Rapidly, Saul shouted the key words. "Rourke's giving a hundred acres . . . Nuevo Corporation . . . build and own the resort . . . Did you get that? Elizabeth? Are you still there? Hey! Is there a live person on the other end of this phone?"

"I think so," Elizabeth said. "I can't believe— He's agreed to all that?"

"He's already donated the land. Laidlaw's probably calling Isabel this minute and getting a busy signal. They have to get started on forming the corporation. And moving the town. And finding a developer; Laidlaw's already sounded out a few."

"Saul, I want you to be the one to tell Isabel. Would you? Hold on." She put down the telephone; her hands were trembling. The most they'd thought they would get was land for a new town; they'd never dreamed of anything like this. And Matt had thought it up! "Isabel!" she called. "Saul wants to tell you something!"

Isabel came from the bedroom where she had been packing books. "My God, you look like a kid at Christmas! What happened?"

"Here. Listen." She handed Isabel the telephone and walked outside. After the quiet winter, the valley was again shaken by Olson's construction crew. Dust, gasoline fumes, and black smoke dulled the sunlight; the river was brown and sluggish, clogged with loose soil and rocks; jackham-mers, engines revving up, trucks bouncing across the valley floor, all made a deafening cacophony.

And the valley was changing. Around the town, bulldozers had stripped the land of bushes and trees, to make movement of equipment easier and also because the lake bottom had to be clear so no debris would float to the top. The town was next: Jock Olson had told Isabel he couldn't stall much longer on his orders to bulldoze the church and houses and stores, whether the people had moved out or not.

But the biggest change was the wall of earth and stone rising beside the town, wide at the base and narrowing as it grew higher each day. Begun the previous year, the Nuevo dam was two months from completion.

Standing beside Isabel's house, a few hundred yards away, Elizabeth felt the earth shake beneath her. Today, for the first time, it did not make her feel sick.

"It'll be different," said Isabel, appearing beside her. "But it's ours. Ours! My God!" She threw her arms around Elizabeth. "We won! Can you believe it? We won! You won! Good Lord, how can we be so lucky to have you for a friend? We'll build a statue of you, pen in hand—Elizabeth the Great!"

"Stop!" Elizabeth laughed. "You'll have me believing it. Everybody helped, Isabel. I didn't win; the town did."

"Wait, I'm not through. Saul got a message while we were talking. You're back in all your newspapers! He's going to—"

"What?" Elizabeth grabbed her arm. "How does he know?"

"Paul Markham called, looking for you, and Heather talked to him and told Saul. Markham said Matt called him from Palo Alto and told him about the meeting with the governor, and said he'd send him a copy of the story when it was done."

"Matt called Paul?"

"He also called the AP," Isabel said. "And told them the same things he told Markham: the gist of the meeting and he'd be sending a copy of his story. Nice to have a wire service ready and waiting to spread your words around the country. Though Matt's almost a wire service by himself: Saul, Markham, the AP. ..." She was watching Elizabeth. "Are you divorcing him?"

"I haven't done anything about it for a while." Elizabeth's eyes were on the clouds of dust rising above the dam. "I'll have to make up my mind pretty soon."

"Good idea," Isabel said casually. "Though I don't recall that it took you so long to make up your mind to fight for Nuevo."

Elizabeth turned to look at her. "What does that have to do with it?"

"Come on, my brilliant friend, you know what I mean. How come you fought harder for all of us than you did for your marriage?"

"Harder . . . ? I don't know. You've never mentioned this before."

"Never thought of it before. But just now, when I heard myself saying you'd won, it came to me. Usually I'm quicker."

"Usually you're smarter. There are differences, Isabel."

"Big ones?"

"I think so. Matt wanted me to make my life fit his. I didn't want the life he had; he wouldn't make any changes in it. Why would I fight for that? It was different when I fought for Nuevo; that was something I wanted to do, and I decided how to do it and when to do it. Do you think