Holly stirred in her lap. What am I saying? Is this the way a mother talks to a daughter?
"Go on," Holly said, when Elizabeth hesitated. "Please. How long were you lovers?"
"A whole summer." All I can do is be honest with her; I don't know what else to do. "And then he went back east and found someone else and married her."
Holly drew a sharp breath. "But you must have quarreled—or you found someone you liked better—?"
"No. Tony found someone. And I thought I'd die."
Cuddled against her mother, damp tissues wadded in her hand, Holly was very still. "But he came back," she said at last. "He kept coming to Santa Fe, to see you."
"I've told you, Holly: Tony likes drama. Somewhere between his third and fourth, or fourth and fifth marriages, he decided I was the love of his life. A dream love, unattainable because I was married. Happily married. But for Tony that set the stage for exaggerated sighs and declarations that were perfectly safe because they couldn't lead to anything serious. Those visits were just part of a role he was playing. Until"—her voice slowed— "he saw that my life had changed. Tony is very good at spotting people who are vulnerable, and he's at his best with them because its the weaknesses of others that makes him feel strong. That doesn't show at first, because he's an actor and very good, even at fooling himself, which actors often do."
Elizabeth looked over Holly's head, at tree branches barely visible in the darkness beyond the window. "He saw that I needed someone to make me feel loved and desired. And young. You think I betrayed your father, Holly, but we were already apart, and he'd made another life, and I felt . . . old. And unwanted. ..."
"So you went to bed with him."
"It wasn't quite that simple, but that's close." Elizabeth thought she might as well hear all of it. "He knew what to say and how to say it; he knew what I needed. He took me to Europe where everything seemed new, even Tony Rourke, even lovemaking. And we were working together in that strange, wonderful place; and he made that seem new, too, so it didn't matter if I didn't always like the things he said or if there were things we didn't share at all, because he's not always nice or lovable. ..." She stopped. "I think you must have seen that. But you were so excited and everything was new—"
"Just the way you said." Holly's voice was muffled. "I didn't know you could feel like that when you're older and know everything."
Elizabeth bit back a laugh. "You can always feel that, Holly. It's nicest when you feel it with somebody who makes you happy."
"He did."
"Really? You were happy with him?"
Holly's tears started again, quiet this time, streaming down her face as they had that first night with Tony. "I wanted to be happy. But things kept getting in the way. He'd say something, or . . . hurt me ... or I'd think how awful it would be, leaving you and Daddy. ..."
Elizabeth remembered the suitcase on the bed. "Where were you going?"
"To Malibu, and then Amain. He said his house in Malibu was cold and empty without a woman in it and the only thing he had to talk to was his refrigerator and I'd bring the house to life. He said we'd swim in his pool and he had a blue bathrobe that matched his, and would make my eyes as blue as the sky ... it was so lovely when he said things like that . . . And even when he didn't seem . . . nice . . . when it wasn't as wonderful as I thought it would be, I still was so full of love and wanting . . . wanting to love and be loved, and share ... do you know what I mean?"
Elizabeth nodded, her cheek brushing against Holly's hair. "I know what it is to be full of love and wanting."
"From Tony?"
"From your father."
"Oh. But it didn't last, between you."
"Because of other things. But it's still most wonderful, most joyful, when you find someone you really love, not someone you have to pretend with."
"I wasn *t pretending!"
Elizabeth let the sound of the words fade before she said, "Were you really going to leave school for him, and Juilliard, and everything you've been working toward?"
"I didn't want to, not at first, but Tony said I didn't need anybody but him. He said even after years of college I'd still have to know the right people to get anywhere and he could find them for me now. He said he'd introduce me to people in television and the movies, and he said when he went into politics and became a senator—"
"Senator? Tony?"
"That's what he said. He was going to move to New Mexico—something else for us to share, he said—and then he'd move to Washington when he got elected, and he'd meet other important people, and . . . make me famous."
Fairy tales, Elizabeth thought, to impress Holly in case she somehow heard about his show being canceled. "And you believed him?" she asked.
"I wanted to." Holly's voice was almost inaudible and Elizabeth bent her head closer, to hear. "When he touched me I believed everything he said. I loved it when he touched me. It was scary but it was wonderful because he said I was perfect and bewitching and he made me feel beautiful—not just pretty—really beautiful, like you. And he kept saying my name, as if there wasn't anybody in the world like me . . . Nobody else ever made me feel that way. ..."
Her words poured out; she couldn't talk fast enough. At first her mother's confidences about Tony had shocked and embarrassed her, but then they made her feel wonderful; she'd never loved her mother so much, she wanted to talk and talk and tell her everything that she hadn't been able to tell anybody, even Luz—or even think about, to herself! Holly felt so grateful—she had her mother back—maybe now she could get rid of the awful feeling inside her, like a rocket in her stomach, and feel good about herself again.
"I mean, you and Daddy always made me feel special, and Peter too, and Grandma and Grandpa, and Luz—but I wanted to be loved in a different way—I wanted somebody to make me feel special, not like a girl in high school, but like a woman who had these feelings ... I wanted to know the things I felt and wanted were the way a woman ought to feel, and when he . . . when he undressed me"—her voice dropped even lower—"he didn't like me to undress myself, he'd always undress me and
he'd look at me and say I was the most beautiful, desirable woman in the world. . . ."
Elizabeth shrank inside, contempt for Tony mixed with a feeling of loss for Holly: She should have discovered this with someone who would leave her with happy memories. . . .
"And nobody else ever did that," Holly was saying. "Nobody else I ever met—"
"But you didn't give the boys at school a chance," Elizabeth murmured.
"Sleep with them?"
"You don't have to sleep with anyone, Holly."
"You did."
"Yes. But later I was sorry. Not just because Tony broke my heart— and I really thought he did, for a while—but mainly because I never got to know boys slowly, as friends first, and then as lovers. After Tony, I didn't know what I wanted from boys. They all seemed too young, after him, until I met your father—"
"But that's the whole point! They are too young! You kept telling me to go out with boys my own age and I did, but they don't care about music —Tony asked me to sing for him!—and most of them don't want to talk about anything serious; all they care about is sex—fumbling around in the back seats of cars, trying to get their hands inside my blouse or up my skirt and they're clumsy and in such a hurry. . . . They're babies! And Tony is a man. We talked and talked; he said lovely things; he told me I'd enchanted him ... oh. Did he say that to you, too?"
"Something like it. Holly, are you asking me to tell you it was all right to sleep with Tony because it's better to learn about sex from a man than a boy?"
Holly chewed the corner of her fingernail. "You don't think it was all right."
"No." Elizabeth shifted a little so the two of them could look at each other. "It's not hard to sleep with a man, Holly, and it doesn't make you grown up. Understanding yourself, learning to balance all the parts of your life, including a love affair . . . those are the things that make you grown up. Right now you
don't really understand yourself because you're going through so many changes; you don't know how to handle an affair; and you certainly don't understand Tony. You never did because he made sure you wouldn't. He took terrible advantage of—"
"He didn't! I wanted him to make love to me!"
"But you said it wasn't always what you dreamed it would be."
Holly dropped her eyes. "Sometimes I hated him. But other times I
loved him. Sometimes I loved him and hated him in the same afternoon ... or night." She looked at her mother. "But then, the last week, I felt . . . trapped. I didn't know what to do. I loved him—I love him!—but sometimes I wanted to get away from him because he was always here— he stayed in town—"
"When I was here?" Elizabeth asked.
Holly nodded. "He said he'd been given a few weeks off by his father and he stayed in Taos and drove in—we spent afternoons at the Taos Inn—"
"You told me you were in rehearsals."
"I was with Tony in Taos; I haven't been ... I haven't been singing very much. It's so hard, all of a sudden—can't I tell you about Tony?"
"Yes," Elizabeth said, hating it, but knowing they had to get through it.
"He was always around. And I loved it—I mean, Tony Rourke wanted to be with me all the time! That was a dream and I couldn't believe it, but then all of a sudden one day I felt trapped. We were in Taos, at the Inn, sitting in the courtyard outside our room—his room—and he told me I was going away with him. I did believe him when he said he'd make me famous, but I was afraid to leave everybody, but he wouldn't give me time to think about it, he kept talking and talking and then yesterday, when you went to New York, he took my suitcase down so I could look at it and get used to the idea and then he started packing my clothes and I couldn *t stop him! I wanted to ask you what to do, I've been wanting to ask you all this time, but I didn't know how and anyway, you were gone so much—"
Elizabeth winced, and Holly said quickly, "I didn't mean that."
"Yes, you did," Elizabeth said. "And you're right. I wasn't here. I was running around, not paying attention . . . Holly, it's all my fault; I'm so sorry—"
"No, don't do that, don't blame yourself. You can't say it's your fault as if I'm three or four or something; Vm grown up."
Holly began to cry again. She wasn't sobbing or anything; the tears just came. "I didn't need you," she said through her tears. "I mean, of course I needed you, but I didn't know it until later. And you were excited about the things you were doing, and people saying you were wonderful and that was very important to you—you needed that."
Elizabeth felt her own tears come. My lovely, loving daughter is comforting me. "I owed you some attention too," she said.
"I wanted you to leave me alone. I thought. Anyway, that's what I told you ... I can't exactly complain because you did what I wanted." Impatiently, Holly wiped her eyes. "I wouldn't have talked to you even if
you were here every minute of every day. That's the truth. I knew if I told you about Tony you'd tell me I couldn't see him anymore—and I was happy! At least I was happy until I started feeling trapped. And then he said I'd be on his show next month — April! —and why shouldn't I want that? What was wrong with my sleeping with him and letting him do things for me? I was afraid you'd stop all of it—"
"You're right; I would have. Holly, listen to me. Tony Rourke is forty-eight years old and you're seventeen. The two of you have nothing in common but a few fantasies that he recognized and took advantage of. And you're asking me what's wrong with your sleeping with him? Everything was wrong with it. And I think that's what you really want me to tell you: not that it was right to sleep with Tony, but that it was wrong. You want me to tell you never to get yourself in that kind of mess again. Well, that's what I'm telling you. If you can't find a man whom you care deeply about and wouldn't be ashamed to marry—then sleep alone. It's cleaner and in the long run a lot more satisfying."
After a moment, in a small voice, Holly asked, "Did you follow your own advice?"
"I tried to convince myself that I cared for Tony. It didn't work."
Holly met her eyes. "Did he really lie about putting me on his show?"
"I'm sure he did. A television critic in Los Angeles called to tell me his show had been canceled, but even if that story is wrong, you know he never features unknown people. And if that weren't enough, he'd have to clear you with Bo Boyle and Bo would never allow my daughter on the show."
"I asked Tony about that because I knew you'd quarreled with Bo. He said it's his show; it's called 'Anthony,' you know."
"It's his father's show. He and Bo control it. That was why I left; because Bo and Keegan have final approval on everything. And Tony wouldn't stand up with me, against that."
Holly was silent. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"
"I'm not sure. I think I didn't want to admit to you that my good friend Tony let me down. I should have; then you wouldn't have greeted him so warmly."
"Maybe I would have been even warmer. Thinking I'd show my mother the right way to handle him."
A small chuckle broke from the two of them. They put their arms around each other and sat quietly in the silent house. Two women, Elizabeth thought, finally open and honest with each other. My daughter is growing up. And so am I.
M
.att read a report on Cal Artner's story in Key Largo, where he and Nicole had docked for the night. While she browsed in a sportswear shop, he flipped through a Miami newspaper, his eye caught by a headline: "Columnist Accused of Conflict of Interest."
(AP) ALBUQUERQUE, NM, MARCH 19. Elizabeth Lovell, nationally syndicated columnist, has been accused of using her column, "Private Affairs," to advance her own interests by rousing public opposition to a state park and resort being developed in the mountains near Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The stoiy was a brief review of Artner's charges, picked up by the wire service and reprinted around the country. Matt read and re-read it, disbelieving and infuriated. Elizabeth! The most honest person he had ever known, stubbornly refusing to do anything unscrupulous from her first stories in high school and college, through all their work together, from the time they fired Cal Artner for—
Artner, for Christ's sake. Since when did he work at the Daily News? And who the hell let this trash go to press?
"Matt, good gracious," said Nicole, coming up to him. "Has someone accused you of murder? Piracy? Hijacking a plane to Majorca?"
"Worse." He ripped the page from the paper and stuffed it in his pocket. "I'll be right back; I'm going to call the office."
"Darling, it's eight o'clock; seven in Houston. No one will be there."
He paused. "I'd forgotten." Then he said, "But it's only six in Albuquerque. I'll be back in a few minutes."
In a telephone booth, he struggled to remember the name of the editor of the Daily News, and when it came to him he placed the call. "Just tell me," he said when the editor answered. "Who authorized that story on Elizabeth Lovell?"
"Oh, Christ, Matt, you didn't know about it? Shit. I thought it was kind of peculiar—in fact, tell the truth, I wanted to call you before we ran it, but Chet said you knew all about—"
"Chet?"
"Well, who else would I listen to except you? He said you knew about it and Mr. Rourke knew about it. He said both of you were hopping mad, worried about opposition to land development all over the southwest if people like Aragon were allowed to sway public opinion and ride roughshod over the will of legislatures—those were his words—I wrote down everything he said. You know, just in case."
"Send me a copy."
"I sure will. Always glad to—"
"Now tell me why you never called to check that story with me."
"Chet said you weren't available. He said you were off sailing somewhere and you'd put Artner on the story and then sent him—Chet—to tell us to run it, since it was the New Mexico legislature you wanted to reach. Of course, you knew the AP would pick up a local story—'course your wife's so fa
mous, we should have guessed . . . but it wouldn't matter if you already knew about it, except I guess you didn't . . . Christ, Matt, I'm sorry as hell, but Chet said you'd fire me, or Mr. Rourke would, if I didn't run it. What was I supposed to do?"
"Call me. How many times have I told you to call me any time you have the slightest doubt about a story?"
"That's what I told Chet! He said you were sailing!"
"Wherever I am, I call in for messages. You know that."
"He said there was a rush on it."
Matt nodded, though there was no one to see him. It wouldn't have made a difference, he thought; on this trip, for the first time, he hadn't
called in every day. Nicole had been like summer wine—heady, warm, lulling, so that he thought of nothing else. They'd gone swimming off the boat in waters as clear as shimmering sunlit air; they'd rented diving gear and photographed vivid fish and coral at inky depths; they'd lain naked on the teak deck of Rourke's sailboat, drinking margaritas, tasting the salt on each other's lips, mingling sex and seawater and sunlight. And whenever they felt like it, they ate from the lavish picnic baskets Nicole bought at every stop. They never cooked or prepared anything, but they always had food and drink: salmon bisque, Szechuan pasta, cold curried scallops, goose liver pate, salade Nigoise, dark sourdough and Russian rye breads with Normandy butter, French and Danish cheeses, white and red wines and Belgian chocolates with centers of mousse or liqueurs. It was the closest Matt ever had been to a fairyland where genies anticipated his wants before he was even aware of them and the days passed in a haze of sunlit sensuality.
Until he bought a newspaper: the first in a week. "I'm going to write a new version of that story," he told the editor. "As soon as you get it, I want it run."
"Uh . . . Matt, would you mind . . . would you talk to Mr. Rourke about that? Chet told me—"
"Print it when you get it," Matt said shortly. "I don't need to be told when to speak to Rourke." He hung up. Of course he was going to speak to Rourke. As soon as he could get a flight to Houston.
Private affairs : a novel Page 57