Private Affairs

by Judith Michael

  Everything seemed fine; everything should have been fine. Especially now, with business out of the way and nothing to think about but dinner in this lovely restaurant, decorated in soft pastels with modern paintings on burgundy suede walls. It was a spacious room bisected by a long, low planter thick with azaleas. Lavish bouquets were on every table, but they were as low as the planter; nothing was allowed to obstruct the views of the corporate and social elite who came to Tony's specifically to be seen.

  "Tony has a new wife," Rourke was saying. Elizabeth turned to him in surprise. "Marion, I think, but perhaps that was his first."

  "Ginger," said Elizabeth. "They were at our wedding."

  "Ah." He nodded. "I lose track. In any event, they've been married a year, I believe; a record for Tony. He speaks warmly of you. Doesn't miss

  one of your columns. Neither do I, by the way. I'm sure Matt told you, but it doesn't hurt to repeat it. Yes, two more," he said to the waiter who stood nearby, and to Elizabeth, "More wine, my dear?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  Rourke nodded, then went on. "We're very excited about you, Elizabeth. I don't know how you do it: two superb columns a week, and you've made the features section of the Daily News the most lively in Albuquerque." He sat back as the waiter brought another glass of wine for Elizabeth and two more glasses of vodka embedded in silver bowls of crushed ice. "You know, my dear, I've watched you grow up from a baby into a remarkable woman. I can't tell you how impressed I am."

  Elizabeth flushed and began to relax. Why should she look for reasons behind Rourke's words? In the brightly-lit room, she saw only sincerity and pleasure in his eyes, and looking at Matt's proud smile, she felt more of her tension slip away.

  Matt put his hand on hers. He had been silent, letting Rourke win Elizabeth's confidence. He was tired of having to defend Rourke to her; annoyed even when she evaded discussions of him because he knew she was simply keeping her doubts to herself. Strange that he'd never seen the obvious solution: bring her to Houston and let her see Keegan Rourke on his own ground: a shrewd businessman wealthy enough to look for wider horizons; a sophisticated, charming host; a good friend for them to have. Matt tightened his hand on Elizabeth's. All he wanted was that the two of them would be friends.

  "Keegan acts like a proud father," he told Elizabeth. "I'm afraid he takes credit for inventing you."

  "No, no." Rourke chuckled. "Elizabeth Lovell is definitely her own person. And as of last week, a famous one! My dear Elizabeth, we haven't toasted your triumph!" He lifted his glass. "To a lovely and talented lady and her 'Private Affairs,' especially the one on 'Joey,' which was reprinted in this month's Good Housekeeping. You're not a local writer anymore, my dear; you've leaped over all of us."

  "It was only one column," Elizabeth protested.

  "One is all it takes. Remember that, Elizabeth. One triumph changes everything. When a magazine with such an enormous readership reprints your column, you are a national writer and you must think of yourself as one. That's how I talk about you to my friends when I read your columns to them."

  "You what?" She could not imagine him doing that.

  "I carry them around with me. Not all of them, of course, but"—he held up a small packet of clippings—"enough to give people their flavor.

  Not quite as bad as forcing pictures of one's infant on a captive audience, but close." He smiled. "And I agree with Good Housekeeping: 'Joey' is one of the best. It reminds me of Tony when he was young; when we still got along. And when my friends read it, especially the part about Joey's rebellion and how he's never sure if he's gone too far and made his parents stop loving him, they ask me how you know their teenagers. My dear Elizabeth, Joey is every teenager in America! This is a masterpiece!"

  Elizabeth regarded her wine glass, wondering how one responded to such overheated praise. She knew the story was good; she also knew it wasn't a masterpiece. "Thank you," she said. "I know readers liked that piece; we got a lot of mail on it—"

  "More than any other story at any time," Matt put in.

  "—but it could have been better. I don't have as much time as I'd like to work on each piece."

  "I understand. That's a real problem. Here you have a talent, a rare talent, and you can't concentrate on it."

  Tino Escobedo, the maitre d appeared and Rourke said to Matt and Elizabeth, "I'll order for us, if you don't mind; the best dishes aren't on the menu."

  The two men plunged into a serious debate and Elizabeth and Matt exchanged a smile. Their hands tightened. "I love you," Elizabeth whispered, her lips close to Matt's ear.

  Matt brushed her lips with his. "I'm glad you're here. You were right and I apologize for being a boor and telling you to stay home."

  "You were extremely angry," Elizabeth mused. "As if I were horning in on a deal ... or intruding on a love affair. ..."

  "Nonsense." He drained his glass. "I thought we were past that kind of talk."

  She studied him. "You never used to have two drinks before dinner."

  "Now," Rourke said, turning back. "Where were we? Yes, Elizabeth's writing." He turned his glass thoughtfully in his fingers. "Isn't there a way you could concentrate on it? With the attention you've gotten with 'Joey,' you should be appearing three times a week instead of two."

  "I can't do it," Elizabeth replied. "I'd love to, but I can't. I barely have time for two as it is."

  "Exactly my point! You don't have time for the one talent which will make you famous. And help make our papers famous as well."

  Elizabeth frowned. Why did he exaggerate so? Newspapers don't be= come famous because of one columnist, and he had the money to buy any columns he wanted from national syndicators. Did he think she was a fool?

  "Elizabeth, you're forgetting what I said. The more you appear, the larger your audience and the more likely that other publications will reprint your pieces. Then you'll be syndicated by one of those companies —NEA, Knight-Ridder, Markham Features, I can't remember them all —and you'll appear in three or four hundred papers. Now you're not going to tell me that doesn't appeal to you!"

  "Of course it does," said Matt. "You should have seen her face when the Good Housekeeping editor called to say they wanted 'Joey' for their series on teenagers. She didn't come down to earth all week."

  Rourke nodded. "An exciting step. And well-deserved."

  "More than exciting," Matt said. "It was the first time Elizabeth was on a level with professionals who publish nationally. It's a little like being born: suddenly you're for real."

  Surprised, Elizabeth said, "I never knew you understood that."

  "Because you never knew I felt the same way."

  "When?" she asked, then quickly said, "Oh. I see." How strange that she had never realized it was Keegan who made Matt feel like a real newspaper publisher. She'd thought the Chieftain and the Sun would do it. But if I needed a national magazine to feel like a real writer, she reflected, why wouldn't Matt need more, too?

  "The whole Daily News staff celebrated," Matt told Rourke. "And Holly and Peter made enough copies of the story to flood the southwest. But more important"—letting go of her hand, he put his arm around her —"it made Elizabeth Lovell the center of attention. And about time, too. She was feeling the lack of it."

  For the second time, Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. "I never told you that."

  "And you thought I was too dazzled by my own importance to see it."

  She looked away—and met Rourke's amused glance. "Yes," she said. "I thought you were."

  Tino arrived with a bottle of wine. Rourke read the label, and nodded, and Tino drew out the cork and handed it to him so he could pass it lightly beneath his nose. He nodded again and Tino poured a small amount into Rourke's glass. He swirled it, sipped it, nodded once more, and Tino filled all three glasses and left.

  Elizabeth barely watched the ritual; she was thinking about the past four months. Matt was right: it had bothered her that he was the one who got the attention and the credit for im
provements they'd worked out together. He was the one Chet Colfax called to report that Rourke was pleased or needed some information or wanted a particular story written; he was the one whom businessmen praised for the new liveliness and

  brightness of the paper; he was the one=because he wrote the editorials —who was asked to give speeches on local issues. "Private Affairs" was admired; it got mail and telephone calls; but only when it appeared nationally did Elizabeth get the kind of star treatment Matt got.

  And Rourke wanted to know if that appealed to her!

  "I've wanted you to get more credit from the beginning," Matt told Elizabeth when their dinners were before them. "But there's no glamour in being features editor, and no visibility. Keegan is right; you've got to work on 'Private Affairs' full-time. Three columns a week would be wonderful; you could do that, couldn't you?"

  "Of course I could." The wine glowed within her, the pastel birds on the blue chintz chair covers seemed to sing. Most important, Matt's pride and understanding of her feelings, when she'd thought he hadn't even been paying attention, made her feel loved. Dreamily, she watched Rourke wind pasta around his fork and bring it to his mouth without a single dangling end. I'll have to tell Peter about that, she thought; he always says it's impossible. "I'd love to write three a week. But I run the features department and that's a full-time job in itself."

  "I thought you understood," said Matt. "It's absurd for anyone with your talent to edit features all day. Keegan and I have talked it over and we both feel, now that you've organized the department, you should do something more important."

  It took a minute, in her dreamy mood, for Elizabeth to grasp Matt's words. Keegan and I have talked it over. "I don't understand. You and Keegan have already decided this?"

  "Of course not," Rourke said with a smile. "We wouldn't decide anything behind your back. We were discussing personnel the other day when I telephoned—"

  "And I come under 'Personnel.' "

  "Everyone does, my dear, including myself. All we said about you was that we were wasting your talent by forcing you to be part of the daily grind of running a department."

  "We said more than that." Matt put down his fork. "We want to use everyone in the best way and it isn't best if your interviewing and writing take second place to another job. We think you should get out of editing. First, because you're too good to be doing it, but more than that: you get too tired, you have no time for yourself, you don't see your friends, and you've been worried about not spending enough time with Holly and Peter."

  "I've been worried that neither of us is spending enough time with them."

  "I know that and I'm going to see what I can do about it. But right now, if one of us has to cut back, it should be the one who can work anywhere. You can write your column at home; you write it there most of the time as it is, at night, after the rest of us, who only have one job, are asleep."

  "I also said we weren't spending enough time with each other."

  "We'll do something about that," said Rourke. "I don't want'my favorite people to be unhappy. Though of course I'm sure you didn't expect to continue working together much longer."

  Of course we did; the whole idea was to work together.

  "I see it all the time," Rourke continued. "Teams that start out together eventually move apart as each one finds a niche or a new path. Of course if they trust each other it doesn't matter; they take whatever direction is necessary to succeed, like the two of you. The paper flourishes, the Lovell name is becoming known, Elizabeth even has the Good Housekeeping seal of approval." He smiled at his wit. "And Matt, too: making quite a name for himself. That talk you gave in Wyoming the other day— Laramie, wasn't it?—was written up as far away as Phoenix and Oklahoma City."

  "Chet's been very thorough," said Matt dryly.

  "Chet gets paid for being thorough; how can I know what my executives are up to if he doesn't keep me informed? Well, popularity and success carry a price; it's no wonder you don't have enough time together. But I promise we'll do something about it."

  "I think we can work on that ourselves," Elizabeth said coolly, her dreaminess gone. It was strange, she thought, that as clever as Rourke was, he didn't realize when he was going too far and too fast, or how it made her feel to know he kept such close tabs on them.

  My father's shadow. The reach of his long arm. In that luxurious restaurant, being given a sample of the kind of life that came with being part of his empire, Elizabeth understood what Tony had meant. She felt a sharp longing for her home and her family. The four of us, she thought, as we were before, with the excitement of owning the Chieftain.

  But it was too late. It was no longer exciting to Matt. She looked at him thoughtfully: her handsome beloved husband, who wanted to accomplish so much. He had echoed her—"Elizabeth is right, Keegan; we'll handle that problem ourselves"—and then they had begun to talk about the circulation of the Daily News and the Houston Record. So Matt was involved with Rourke's Houston paper, Elizabeth thought. And probably with other parts of Rourke Enterprises. Too late; too late. The words ran through her head. It was too late to go back to their small success. They

  had to learn to handle this larger one because it didn't matter whether she wanted part of it or none of it. It was theirs.

  She put her hand on Matt's, interrupting his talk. "What do you think? Do you want me to leave the features department? We wouldn't be working together if I did."

  A wave of fatigue and frustration swept over Matt. He loved her so much, but Keegan was right: there was a time when people had to go in separate directions. "Yes," he said. "I want you to do it." He turned his hand and clasped hers. "It doesn't make sense for you to do anything but write: it's your strength, it's what you love, and you always say you'd like more time for it. You've trained a good staff: you could promote your assistant to features editor, come in one or two days a week until everything is under control, and write your columns at home where it's quiet and you have all the time you need. And you'll see more of Holly and Peter. You can even keep an eye on Saul; I think he's beginning to believe the Chieftain and the Sun are his. Elizabeth, it's the right thing to do."

  "It's very well thought out," she said quietly.

  "It's worth a try, don't you think?"

  It sounded like a question, but Elizabeth knew it wasn't. Her husband was telling her he wanted her to agree, because this was something very important to him.

  And if I said no, what would I win?

  "Of course it's worth a try," Elizabeth said. "We can always change back if it doesn't work out."

  "But it will work out," Rourke said. "It's a real breakthrough for you. Wait until you see how much greater your audience will be, especially when we begin to buy new papers. My dear Elizabeth, this is a wonderful thing for you; I'm so pleased. Your parents will be delighted." One of the waiters brought a fruit basket to the table, with a dish of powdered sugar on the side. Rourke took a strawberry, dipped it in the sugar, and said, "Raspberry souffle for dessert. And while we're waiting, we'll have another bottle of wine. To celebrate."

  Tuesday: a hot, dry August morning, the first weekday in months Elizabeth had stayed home. After Matt left alone for Albuquerque, she sat in the kitchen drinking a second cup of coffee. She imagined him driving through the landscape of sand and sage, past the Santo Domingo school silhouetted against the mountains on the horizon, past birds perched on telephone wires, heads tilted as if testing the wind before soaring on its currents, higher and higher, until they could no longer be seen from the

  road where she and Matt had driven for four months, beginning their day together.

  I've got to get out of here, she thought. Just to clear my head. There's so much to get used to. I'll take a drive with Holly and Peter; then I'll come back and get to work.

  I can't take a drive. Matt has the car.

  Something they'd forgotten: they hadn't needed two cars since buying the Chieftain because they'd been working together. Now they were back t
o separate jobs. And two cars.

  Elizabeth picked up the telephone and called Lydia. "Mother, could I borrow your car, just for the morning? It's something we didn't think about. We'll have to buy another one."

  "Heather will drive over and you can drive her back," Lydia said. "And why don't you keep it for a few days? I can use Heather's, and your father won't be going anywhere; he's decided to become a cabinetmaker."

  "A cabinetmaker? He's never even sawed a piece of wood in half."

  "My very words. He says if Matt Lovell can have a midlife crisis and change his life, Spencer Evans can have a late-life crisis and change his. He says he's always wanted to work with wood. He says he's restless and bored and Heather and I can handle the bookshop perfectly well and he wants to get back to nature and use only basic tools, no power saws and so on, and make beautiful things."

  "He said all that?"

  "All that and more. And if it makes him happy, why not? I won't see him much, since he'll be in the garage—that's why he was cleaning it; he's converted half of it to a woodworking shop—but if he's more pleasant at dinner, it's probably worth it."

  "He just left you with the bookshop—"

  "It's perfectly all right, dear; I love it and it's what I do best. It will work out and I'm sure we'll both be better for it."

  And where have I heard that before? Elizabeth wondered, cleaning up the kitchen. She glanced through the window and saw Holly and Peter, watching for Heather, deep in discussion. They were getting along so well, Elizabeth thought. They were growing up.

  "I suppose you'll disappear when we get to Nuevo," Holly was saying, shading her eyes to look up the street.

  Peter squinted. "I suppose."

  She picked up a branch that had broken off their olive tree and drew a circle in the packed red dirt of the street. "Maya is very pretty."

  Peter nodded.

  "She has such beautiful hair. It shines in the sun."