Private affairs : a novel (72 page)

Holly stood in the middle of the room, her body as rigid as when Elizabeth had first arrived. Suddenly she went limp and began to cry, shaking silently, then breaking into great gulping sobs that wracked her slender body. "Oh, Mommy!" She put her arms around Elizabeth's waist and rested her forehead on Elizabeth's shoulder. "I'm glad you're here; I'm so glad I didn't. ..." The words came jerkily, between her sobs. "I wanted you ... but I didn't ... I got in your bed one night when you were gone ... but that wasn't what I. . - ." She drew a ragged breath. "/ didn 7 know what I wanted!"

Elizabeth put her arms around her. "Hush, sweetheart. My sweet Holly, I know it hurts. ..." Her murderous rage came back— that bastard! —but she pushed it away. "It will be all right, Holly; everything will be all right." She led her to a deep armchair and cradled her grown daughter on her lap. "We'll talk about it in a few minutes. Not now. Give yourself a little time."

"No, I want to. I have to!" Holly wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I don't know why I'm crying. . . ."

Elizabeth set a box of tissues in Holly's lap. "Use them up."

Holly pulled out a handful and held them to her eyes. A long sigh shuddered through her. "You're not mad at me?"

"I couldn't be mad at you. I love you. And we both fell for the same line." Holly shuddered again. Elizabeth kissed her forehead and held her slender form, remembering holding her as a baby, thinking how fragile

and strong she was, and what a remarkable thing Elizabeth Lovell had done to have such an amazingly perfect daughter. She ran her hand over Holly's head and the silken hair that looked exactly like her own when she was just Holly's age—and sleeping with Tony Rourke. "Let me tell you about Tony," she said, and told Holly the whole story, beginning with that long-ago summer, when she was almost eighteen.

"He was six years older than I, so sure of himself—at least he acted that way—and he made me feel grown up and free. Grandma and Grandpa were so afraid of taking risks—they were always making lists and schedules, worrying about all the things that could go wrong, planning far ahead—and then Tony came along and swooped me up and it was like a roller coaster ride: fast, exciting, dangerous, never planned, never scheduled, different from anything in my whole life. Of course there was more: I was crazy about him and I also felt tied to him because he'd taught me what it meant to be sensual, what kinds of feelings I could have, and what to do with them, and I thought he was the only one I could ever be with, in that way. . . ."

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."