Private affairs : a novel (70 page)

Then why are you calling him?

Because I want to hear what he has to say; and to tell him it's over. I'm getting a divorce.

But there was more to come. Artner's story had been aimed at the New Mexico legislature, but Polly Perritt knew a good scandal when she heard one, and the day after she heard about the story from her contact in Santa Fe, she had an item in her column.

And Saul was the one who showed it to Elizabeth, so she would be with a friend when she read it.

Nasty news for Elizabeth the Lovelly, whose splendid star seems to be sinking. The Private Affairs lady is accused of using her column to skyrocket her savings account. One wonders: If our clever columnist has been using tricks, was it beddie-bye bouncings with her handsome host that got her on "Anthony" . . . and the same with powerful Paul that climaxed a contract for 400 papers? After all, hubby got her started—and don't we know how helpful handsome he-men soon become a habit?

"Don't say anything," Saul cautioned. "Let me talk while you get your murderous emotions under control." He paced about her sunny living room, now and then glancing at Elizabeth's stony face and the rigid set of her shoulders. Sitting crosslegged on the couch, barefoot, in white jeans and a blue cotton sweater, she looked young and vulnerable, but he saw faint lines in her face that had not been there a year ago, and as he paced and talked he was silently cursing Matt and everything he had brought down on his house.

"Ignore Polly the parrot; she has a short attention span and tomorrow she'll be screwing somebody else. Don't even talk about Matt for a minute. Let's talk about Artner. First, we take his story seriously; it's damaging and we have to counter it. Second, most of it seems at least partially

true, except the rehearsing of Olson. I assume you did some preliminary get-acquainted stuff, right? And Artner probably bribed someone who was there. What I most want to know is, who the hell does Artner work for? That story didn't come from his minuscule brain; someone fed him the idea and the facts and then made it worth his while to write it. Are you calm enough to talk? I assume he's the helicopter boy-wonder you and Matt booted for sneaking Indian dancers onto the front page of the Chieftain "

Elizabeth nodded.

"What else do you know about him?"

She took long breaths, steadying herself against the onslaught of anger and frustration churning inside her. She'd thought she'd reached a height of anger the night she walked out on Boyle and Tony, but this time her emotions seemed to go in so many directions: at Polly Perritt, at Cal Artner and whoever it was who gave him small bits of information that added up to one big he, but mostly, and most devastatingly, at Matt, who must have approved Artners story, because no editor would commit professional suicide by printing an attack on his publisher's wife, unless given permission to do so.

What's happened to him that he could do this?

"I don't know much about Cal," she told Saul. "A long time ago I heard something about him and Chet Colfax at that Graham newspaper chain Matt bought. I remember telling Matt it seemed odd, and he said I was imagining conspiracies, or some such thing. That's all ... oh, no, at dinner one night Tony mentioned seeing Cal at the Houston Record Other than that, I haven't heard a word about him."

"Quietly nursing his grudge and biding his time. Colfax works for Rourke."

"Of course; that was why I told Matt about it."

"And Rourke owns the Houston Record "

"I know, Saul, but that's a coincidence. There's no reason for Keegan to be involved in this; he doesn't care about me; he never did. He only wanted Matt."

"And a resort at Nuevo?"

Elizabeth stared at him. "Did someone tell you that? Terry Ballenger is behind Nuevo."

"So he is^ the question is, who's behind Terry Ballenger?" Saul shrugged. "You're a journalist; you know how suspicious we get when we see lots of signposts; we figure they're probably pointing to something around the corner—maybe all the way to Houston. I'm t hinkin g of talking to Man about it."

There was a pause. "Are you asking me what I think of that?" Elizabeth asked.

"I guess I am."

"I'd rather you didn't. At least, until I've talked to him myself. Keegan may own those papers, Saul, but Matt runs them—"

"And nobody would smear the boss's wife unless the boss said okay. That's what you're thinking, right? But didn't Artner sneak a photograph past you once?"

"Oh." She thought about it, then shook her head. "If you knew he'd done it once, would you give orders to someone to keep a very close eye on him?"

"I would," Saul conceded.

"So would I. So would Matt. That's why I want to talk to him."

"To tell him what?"

"That I want a divorce." The word shook her like a gust of wind. "We've been living apart almost a year, and whatever I thought might happen to get us together again . . . isn't going to happen. I don't even care; I don't want it anymore; I don't want him anymore—"

"Hold on a minute." Saul sprawled in an armchair opposite her, trying to find the right words. She was lying to herself; all the wise women around him—Heather, Isabel, Maya—said she still cared for Matt. But he had no right quoting them to Elizabeth.

"—why should I be married to a man who doesn't give a damn about me? There's nothing left of what we had."

She paused, remembering a note she had read on an airplane. Olson is a hero . . . you 're the best there is. But then she dismissed it. The note was brief and impulsive: a momentary lapse. Artner's story was different; it had taken time and careful planning.

"If he can send a reporter to do a hatchet job on me, it means he doesn't care about people anymore; only about his newspapers and the power they give him to build and destroy, to make careers and break them, to—how did he put it?—change the shape of the land. None of that impresses me and he doesn't either, not anymore, and I don't want to have anything to do with him."

"Hold on," Saul said again. "I agree it looks rotten, but we don't really know what happened. In fact, a lot of peculiar things seem to be happening around that Olson interview. Have you heard anything about your friend Tony Rourke losing his show?"

Elizabeth's brows drew together. "Losing his show? He wouldn't lose it even if every sponsor pulled out. His father subsidizes it."

"He what?"

"Underwrites the sponsors; they don't pay full rates. He likes to have control, Saul, you know that, and that's one way of controlling Tony."

"Maybe he's controlling him into oblivion. There's a rumor going around LA about the show being canceled; I got a whiff of it from an editor out there; maybe I'll ask around. And I'd like to ask around about Artner's story, too, if you don't mind, to see if I can find out who assigned it and gave him his information."

"If you want. I don't really care, because however the story got its start, it ended up being approved by Matt, and he's going to hear from me about that. You do what you want, Saul, and later you can ask him about Keegan or anything else. But let me at him first."

The telegram from Paul Markham was curt: executive committee

MEETING FRIDAY 10 A.M. PLEASE ATTEND.

It arrived while Isabel was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking hot chocolate and telling Elizabeth her bill was dead for the current session. "And that means forever. The next session isn't until January; by then the dam will be built and we'll all be gone, with whatever money they give us. Some of the people have left already; they've gone to Pecos and Belen and Chama . . . it's like petals scattering when the flowers die in the fall." Her mouth drooped, her shoulders sagged. Then, remembering Elizabeth, she straightened up. "Well, what the hell. We put up a nice fight, made a few politicians lose some sleep, and then our time ran out. We don't have a right to be there: the land belongs to the state; our twelve months is up. Jock told me yesterday that right after my bill was killed, his boss told him to knock down anything in his way—that means the town—because part of it's on land they need for the base of the dam and anyway it costs extra to work around us."

"Not while you're living there!" Elizabeth exclaimed.

"He'll try not to, and we trust him—he's one hell of a guy—but we don't expect miracles anymore. We're renting places in Pecos, most of us, and pretty soon we'll move. Some of the men want to stay and force the sheriff to carry them out, but the rest of us ... I don't know why we're waiting, to tell you the truth; all I know is everybody's legs feel like stone when we talk about really moving."

"If it weren't for me, and Artner's story," Elizabeth said, "your bill would have passed."

"My God, that is not certain! You can't blame yourself; nobody did more than you to help us!" Isabel put her hand over Elizabeth's. "You were grand. You're our heroine, don't you know that? We wouldn't have had any chance at all if it weren't for your column on Jock. And I'll tell

you, something funny was going on, even before that Artner story came out: people were changing their minds right and left. One minute Thad-deus Bent was wavering; the next he was against us. And Horacio Mon-toya, too, and a bunch of others. It wasn't just Artner, although we were close; we might have pulled it off, because they were still talking about Olson, too . . . well, what the hell. I keep telling myself: no more postmortems."

She finished her chocolate and stood up, her hand on Elizabeth's shoulder. "Luz isn't unhappy; she'll be in college next fall. The other young ones are already looking to buy mobile homes downvalley and work in the restaurants and shops the bastards will build in the resort. Nobody's unhappy but eighty or ninety stubborn people who wanted to keep their town and have a share of the wealth their land will bring. And we don't count; we're not strong enough or rich enough to make people sit up and take notice. We'll vanish; Nuevo will become a posh resort next to a pretty state park that will probably get squeezed smaller and smaller and eventually disappear, and the only record of the story will be in old clippings of the Chieftain."

There were tears in her eyes as she bent to kiss Elizabeth's cheek. "I love you. And I'll see you later; I'm due back to vote on about forty bills that are supposed to make New Mexico a better place to live. Was the telegram you got a while ago something I should know about, to share a joy or a worry?"

"No, it's just a meeting in New York at Markham Features. I'll have to go, but probably only for a day."

There was more to it, but she kept it to herself. As long as Isabel had her own worries, she wouldn't add to them with her own . . . which included a curt telegram from a man who, until today, always telephoned, and invited her to lunch or dinner while she was there. So Paul was feeling pressured and was ordering her to New York to discuss Artner's story . . . and whatever he and his board had decided.

"Why don't you come with me?" she asked Holly that afternoon as she packed her overnight bag. "I'll be busy part of the time, but you can browse on your own, and then we can do some museums together, or shopping, and have dinner, and maybe get to Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. Or a show; I'd love to see the new Sondheim. You wouldn't miss much school."

Holly shook her head. "I can't."

"That time you wanted to come to Los Angeles you said you could miss anything to get out of town."

"Well, now I can't."

"Why not?"

Curled up in a rocking chair in her mother's bedroom, Holly examined her fingernails. "Mother, when you were in San Francisco, did you send Heather to spy on me?"

"No," Elizabeth said. "I asked her to telephone or come to the house to make sure you were all right. Do you call that spying?"

Holly flushed. "She snuck around and peered in the windows like I was a criminal or something!"

In the midst of folding a blouse, Elizabeth's hands grew still. "You saw her? And didn't talk to her?"

"I was in bed."

"But you could have called later, to say you were all right."

"I don't like being spied on!"

"Holly, you're not being very pleasant or easy to talk to."

"I'm sorry.*'

"Can you tell me what's wrong? If something serious is bothering you, couldn't we talk about it? I might be able to—"

"No!"

"Hey," Elizabeth said lightly, "don't jump down my throat. That was an offer, not an attack. Sometimes it helps to talk about problems, even to a mother—"

"NO!" Holly burst into tears. "Can't you leave me alone? I'm trying to handle things and I can't do it if you keep yelling at me all the time!"

"Yelling?" Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "Do I yell at you?"

Wiping her nose, Holly shook her head. "Not really. I just wish you'd leave me alone."

"Well, I can do that, if it's what you want. But I thought now that I'm home more, we'd talk and learn to be better friends."

"Were you good friends with Grandma?"

"Yes. Most of the time. And you and I were friends, too, until recently."

"It's probably just a stage," Holly said, tossing it off. She paused. "Mother—when you fell in love with Daddy, was it all wonderful? Or only parts of it? I mean, did you keep waiting for it to get better?"

"It was wonderful from the first day." Elizabeth looked closely at Holly, watching her lovely face close up in confusion and stubbornness. "We had more fun with each other than we'd ever had with anyone else; we couldn't wait for the times we'd be together; there was a glow in the world when we. . . ." She stopped, a sudden rush of tears flooding her throat, stinging her nose and eyes. "It was wonderful, Holly."

"You never talked to me about it."

"I should have. I'm sorry. For a long time it hurt ... I guess it still does. But we can, any time you want ... are you telling me you've fallen in love and that's why you're having problems?"

"I guess." Airily, Holly said, "All lovers have problems, you know; you and Daddy waited twenty years to have yours, but you really got a bundle when you did. I mean, you never talked before, and you don't now, very much, but the two of you certainly aren't a romantic novel, are you?"