"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 t
hink 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
I
I could have written about Jock if I'd been living with the publisher of Rourke Enterprises? I was able to help you win because I'd made a name for myself—not as somebody's wife, but as me."
"True. All true."
"Well, then?"
"I was just wondering why you never worked like hell for a compromise, which is what you and I did, finally, for Nuevo."
Silently, Elizabeth brushed away some of the dust on her jeans.
"Well, think about it," Isabel said at last. "There's no rush; after all, he's only been gone for ten months."
"He has Nicole," Elizabeth said finally.
"You had Tony."
"But he was never more than—"
"A man to be close to, when you felt alone and rejected. Maybe Matt feels the same way about his lady friend. I know you weren't the one who did the rejecting, but you didn't go with him when he asked, either. And then you never fought to get back what the two of you once had. I don't know why. Do you?"
Elizabeth gazed across the valley at the dusty mountainside. "I think I was afraid to compete for him. I think I was afraid I'd lose because he was having such a wonderful time being a success. And I resented the whole idea. Why should I have to compete with other people, other women, for my own husband? I thought contests ended when we got married."
"In an ideal world," Isabel said dryly.
"But there were other things, too. I kept wondering what would make me feel good about myself if I had to concentrate on his dream instead of mine. If all I had to be proud of was famous, powerful Matt Lovell—as if I were telling everyone, Look at me! I'm important because an important man loves me!—I'd suffocate. I want to be proud because I'm me, not because I'm Man's companion."
She paused, then shrugged. "I don't know if those were good reasons for not going after him; they seemed good at the time."
"They still sound good. But you haven't said anything about love. Or building something together. Is that all gone? Because if it isn't, and you still divorce him, wouldn't that be like letting Nuevo drown without trying to build a new town in a safer place?"
Frowning, Elizabeth picked up her sweater. "It's something to think about. I have to get home, Isabel, but I really will think about it." Her frown deepened. "I don't understand ... I don't know why I never thought of Matt that way."
"You're too involved. It takes an observer."
Elizabeth pulled the sweater over her head. "I have to think about it. And I've got to go; I want to talk to Paul, and if I really am writing three columns a week again, I've got to start planning interviews. And you have to talk to the governor!" She put her arms around Isabel. "I'm so happy for all of you."
Isabel's arms encircled her. "Aren't we all. Mainly for having good friends. You'll help us move our town, won't you?"
"You couldn't keep me away." They heard the telephone ring. "The governor. I hope. I'll call later." With a quick kiss on Isabel's cheek, she ran to her car. It was true that she had work to do, but mainly she wanted to get away so she could think.
You fought harder for us than for your marriage. But I had reasons, she thought as she pulled onto the main road and drove away from the dirt and noise. All those reasons I gave Isabel. And Matt didn't fight for it either.
But maybe both of us were too busy going after the brass ring to think of anything else.
But I stopped. I got off that merry-go-round.
She had stopped everything but her writing. The day after she found Tony in Holly's room, Elizabeth canceled her scheduled speeches and television appearances. And she refused all the new requests that came in. She hesitated once: when her agent called with an offer from a television network to host a one-hour talk show one night a week. But she didn't hesitate long. She wanted to be home. Holly needed her—they needed each other—and Peter and Maya would be back for the summer, living wherever they decided to live, and she had her writing and her friends . . . and the hope that "Private Affairs" would be syndicated again. And that was enough.
There should be a time for all of us when we can say, This is enough for me; I know where I am; I've got what I want.
The road curved between mountainsides covered with pines and aspens bursting with the pale green leaves of spring. Elizabeth saw three pick-up trucks driving to Nuevo. A dam, a resort, a state park, wilderness areas, a new town. Because we compromised.
She drove down the sleepy main street of Pecos and made the turn toward Santa Fe. The road widened; she increased her speed and settled back. Maybe I left something out when I said, This is enough for me. Maybe all those reasons I gave for not fighting aren't important anymore. Maybe what's really important is what I do next.
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and want each other, I think if at least one part of my life was back to normal, if you and Daddy were the way you used to be and all of us were together, then everything else wouldn't seem so . . . big. Too big for me to manage all at once."
"I've thought about it, too, Holly."
"And?"
"And I got as far as thinking I'd go to Houston. Only no one is there for me to see."
"Well, how was Daddy supposed to know?" Holly gathered up the empty pea pods and wiped the counter with a sponge. "Everything seems so . . . gray. I just wish somebody would make everything seem bright again."
Well, don't look at me, Elizabeth thought, briefly impatient. I know it was silly to expect Matt to be sitting around waiting for me to call, but I did try. And whatever he's feeling, he isn't looking for me; he behaves like a man with his own life and his own plans. He probably thinks he did all he needed to do for me by sending his story to Paul and the AP.
It was pure luck that they had Nuevo, she thought the next afternoon. So much was happening, it was like a story, with a new chapter unfolding each time they visited. Eliz
abeth began picking Holly up at school every afternoon to drive out and see what had happened since the day before. "The place is jumping," Isabel would say with a grin. "Take a look."
There was activity everywhere. Dust swirled around the dam that grew higher each day; the yellow hats of construction workers moved about like small moons; trucks piled high with crushed rock made a steady procession to the dam, returning empty, leaving a trail of rocks that rolled off as they jounced along the road. One of them had knocked a porch off a house at the edge of town, another had taken a garden fence with it.
But the excitement was higher up, on the land Keegan Rourke had donated for a new town. It had begun a few days after the meeting at Las Cruces, when the governor's office sent in trailers as temporary housing for the townspeople. Overnight, a small city sprang up. And in the next week, volunteers began to appear, bringing their own trailers or tents strapped to the roofs of their cars. And another small city came to life beside the governor's trailer city.
Some of the volunteers were college students taking a break; some were men and women out of work who wanted to help and hoped to find permanent jobs at the resort or in town; some were shopkeepers, some were housewives, some were retired people who couldn't do heavy work and so brought charcoal grills and cooked for everyone, taking up a collection after each meal to buy groceries for the next.
Tables and aluminum chairs were set up beside the tents and trailers; blue smoke rose from firepits dug in the ground; the smell of roasting meat and potatoes drifted through the valley. With Isabel and Cesar supervising, the volunteers formed groups to help the townspeople move from their houses, to help Gaspar empty his general store and set up a new one in a trailer, to work with Roybal in moving the contents of his gasoline station to a trailer and connecting his hose directly to a gasoline truck.
Jock Olson, on his lunch hour, gave instructions to the largest group of volunteers, who would be moving the church and the three adobe houses, leaving only the wood houses behind. "Clear out the inside," he said at the door of the church. "Pews, altar, pulpit, the works. Then we'll take the stained glass windows out, frame and all if we can; if not, we'll have to take the glass out in sections. After that, we'll brace the building, jack it off its foundation, put supports and wheels under it, and tow it up the slope to the new foundation we'll be pouring. You can clean out the inside without me. The rest we'll do after four o'clock every day and on weekends."
Private affairs : a novel Page 65