Private affairs : a novel (84 page)

time his hand just brushed Isabel's. How wonderful, she thought, and saw Holly and Luz watching, too.

Olson finished his coffee. "Back to work. Isabel, I've been ordered once and for all to bulldoze the town."

"When?"

"Next week."

"When next week?"

"You tell me. How much more time do you need?"

"How about Friday or Saturday?"

He laughed. "You're pushing your luck. Friday morning. Best I can do." He gave a casual wave to the others at the table and walked down the slope to rejoin his crew.

Holly and Luz had been exchanging glances. "He's extremely nice," Luz said. "I told Mother it's fine with me if she wants to be friends with him."

"I was relieved to hear it," Isabel said dryly to Elizabeth. "But Luz is right; he's a very nice man. And I like working with him. I haven't worked with a man in a long time, and you know how good it can be."

Elizabeth smiled. "I do know. Isabel, it's wonderful; I never thought of you and Jock—"

"Wait! Don't put us together like that; I'm superstitious. Anyway, there are other problems. What if I decide to run for governor?"

"Mother!" cried Luz.

"I said What if. What else will I do with myself when you're in college and the town is rebuilt and all the battles are won?"

"Your ceramics; you haven't done any for a long time."

"And?"

"You're in the legislature."

"Two months a year. Not enough. I don't know what to do with all my energy. You wouldn't deny me a respectable goal, would you? Governor Isabel Aragon. I like the sound of it."

"I do, too," said Maya. "But why couldn't a man be part of that?"

"I don't know. It's been so long since I thought about a man when I looked ahead ... I assumed I'd never find another one and I'd leave romance to Luz and Holly; they seem to enjoy it."

Luz laughed, but Holly flushed deeply and looked away. "I'm like you, Isabel. I don't think about men when I look ahead."

"Well, I imagine that will change," Isabel said casually. "Whoever he was, the unworthy snake who made you think that, he is condemned to a life of peevish dissatisfaction under someone else's thumb. You're well rid of him."

"What makes you say that?" Elizabeth asked.

"My vast knowledge of men. A man who could make Holly unhappy and bitter is a man with no backbone, no strength of character, and no imagination. Therefore, he'll never find what he thinks he wants, so he'll be peeved and dissatisfied, and he'll be under someone's thumb because he won't be able to get anywhere on his own."

Holly was watching her with wide eyes. "You're amazing."

"Experience," said Isabel. "Do you think maybe I should aim higher than governor?"

They laughed and then Isabel said, "Well, as Jock said, back to work. If they're going to be knocking down houses next week we have to make sure everyone's out by Thursday." She looked at Elizabeth. "We have to call a meeting so everybody can vote on what to do about the town on Thursday night."

"What to do?" Maya repeated. "But everyone will be gone. The town will be empty."

"That's the idea," said Isabel. She and Elizabeth shared a smile. "We're going to burn the place down," she said.

When the wind shifted, Matt felt a light spray from the fountain and for no apparent reason thought of quick summer showers in Nuevo. He sat on the wrought-iron bench and contemplated a marble horse in a pool of water in the center of the fountain, so real he could almost hear it whinny in protest as a cherub tried to rein it in. Elizabeth had been here, too, contemplating the marble animals, gargoyles, and cherubs as he was. Holly and Peter had told Matt about her letter describing the Piazza Navona and its fountain. "She said the cherub trying to hold onto the horse reminded her of you with Mr. Rourke," Peter had said.

Seated alone in the middle of the sun-washed square, Matt smiled. I know what she meant by that. And she was right.

He wandered through the city, past museums, churches, and palaces, dodging the life-threatening Roman traffic, turning at random into private cobblestone lanes that were barely more than passages between old brick buildings shining apricot and gold in the sun, dark brown in the shade. Again he thought of Rourke, this time at their first meeting, in Aspen, when he had expressed amazement that Matt and Elizabeth had never been in Europe. He'd dangled Europe before them, just as he'd dangled a wallet before Matt, with two hundred million dollars for buying newspapers. But in all the time I was with him, I never got to Europe. I was always too busy.

He came out of a shadowed street into sudden brightness, and realized

he had made a full circle and was back at the fountain in the Piazza Navona. It was immediately familiar---just as every place had been, all day. This is the first time I've seen any of them, he thought, struck by it, but every one has been familiar.

He sat on the bench he had occupied that morning, absently gazing a group of American tourists clustering nearby. "The Fountain of the Four Rivers," their guide said. "Representing the four corners of the earth. . . ."

Genghis Gold had sketched portraits of tourists here, Matt thought, remembering Elizabeth's description of him. And then it came to him: he knew why the scenes of the day had been familiar. Without being aware he was doing it, he had visited every place that Elizabeth described in her "Private Affairs" stories from Rome.

"Designed by Bernini," the guide said. "And completed in 1651."

One of the tourists wandered restlessly from the group and stopped beside Matt. "Do you know how many dates I've heard on this trip?" he asked as if they were old friends. "If I never hear another one it'll be too soon for me."

Matt smiled and nodded.

"And my feet hurt," the tourist added, and sat down. After a moment he asked, "Are you an American?"

"Yes," Matt said.

"Where's your tour group?"

"I'm here alone," Matt replied.

"Seeing Europe alone? How come?"

Matt contemplated him. "Because that's what I want."

"Sorry," the man said hastily. "None of my business."

Silently Matt agreed. But he knew that even if he had wanted to reply, there was no simple answer. I'm here because I lost my balance, he thought wryly. I couldn't keep the things of my life in order. I didn't know when to say I'd had enough. I had a chance to find out what I could be, and I found out; I had a chance to see how far I could go, and I saw it. But once I'd started, I couldn't stop.

There ought to be a time when we trust ourselves enough to say, That's enough, if that's the only way we can balance the important parts of our life and not lose some of them.

The shadows were lengthening across the square. On an upper floor of one of the buildings facing him, a woman's white hand reached out to pull a shutter closed. Matt kept his eyes on the shutter long after the graceful curve of the wrist had disappeared.

I want to share it with Elizabeth, he thought. No one else. That's why I

went to all the places she wrote about; it was a way of sharing my first day in Rome with her. That was why I was always too busy when Nicole suggested coming to Europe. Thousands of sights and sounds around the world waiting to be discovered. And I want to discover them with Elizabeth.

He stood and absently said goodbye to the man beside him before walking across the plaza and finding his way to his hotel. He was going back to America. It's about time I asked my wife, for the second time, to be my traveling companion.

♦♦

c

hildren raced through the empty houses of Nuevo, making them echo with laughter for the last time. The townspeople followed more slowly, in each room recalling who had been born there and who had died, who had been married, who had carved or woven or painted, who had dreamed. As they left each room, they poured a thin stream of gasoline around the base of the walls, and soon the odor hovered over the whole town.

Elizabeth and Isabel stood in the empty street, listening to the excited children's voices rise above the murmuring of the adults. "Three hundred years," said Isabel, shaking her head. "There's been a town here for three hundred years. And now it's dead."

"Only the shell," Elizabeth said. "The people are still together; even the ones who moved away are coming back now that they know they can get jobs. Aren't they the real town?"

"My head says yes. My heart says I'm burning my town and whatever I build, up there, will never be the same."

"You don't want it to be the same. You want it to be better."

"True. And I want to burn this one to show it's still ours: we'll wipe it out before the bulldozers do. I know all that. But . . . look at it."

Everyone else had left; they were alone in the dusty street. Beneath heavy clouds, the rock wall of the dam loomed above the silent wooden houses. The laughter of the children drifted down from the trailers and tents above; the air was so still Elizabeth heard even the sounds of dishes and silverware being set out. "Dinner," she said, her arm around Isabel's waist. "A good way to end one story and begin another. Who's going to start the fire?"

"Padre." Isabel put her arm around Elizabeth's shoulders and they turned away from the town. "We used to walk here with our babies. And everyone called us opposite sisters. Hermanas contrarias. Remember?"

"Of course. We still are."

"That's probably the best of all," Isabel said. Briefly she tightened her clasp around Elizabeth's shoulders.

Elizabeth nodded; suddenly she didn't feel like talking anymore.

At the top of the slope, Holly, Luz, and Maya were helping set tables; Saul was unpacking boxes of cookies and cakes they'd brought from Santa Fe, while Heather helped Spencer and Lydia take cases of soft drinks from their car. Peter, who had arrived that morning, was taking pictures of the empty town below and the crowded clearing where dinner was being prepared; children played hide and seek in the cluster of tents and trailers; Jock Olson unreeled a long fuse that stretched from the last house below to a chair where Cesar sat, brooding.

"All ready," Jock said, and Luz banged a spoon against a pot.

Cesar stood as the crowd fell silent. "When I light this fuse, I want everybody quiet, thinking about Nuevo, because it has been good to us. And because it is good to remember what was our home, even when we leave it, even when it is gone." He waited a moment, then knelt and held a match to the fuse.

There was absolute silence until, half a minute later, the end house burst into flames, with a soft whoosh, as if a wind had come up. The children cheered. The second house caught the flames and was engulfed, and then, down the main road and the side roads, so quickly it seemed to happen all at once, the houses burned. Flames leaped to the sky.

A great sigh went through the crowd. "By God," said Cesar. "By God, that is one hell of a fire."

Everyone began to talk and mill about. Soon the cooking fires were once again being tended, the food stirred, the tables set. "And we go on," Elizabeth said to Isabel. She felt like crying, but there was something incredibly powerful about the fire below, as if its heat and light could create a world as well as destroy it.

" 'I would mould a world of fire and dew,' " Peter said, beside her. "A poem I read in school. Are you all right?"

She gave a small smile. "Yes, thank you. A little melancholy."

"I'm not surprised." He put his arm around her and when Maya joined them he held her with his other arm, and the three of them stood watching the fire, already feeling its heat.

"Look!" Maya cried, looking up. The leaping flames lit the low-hanging clouds. "It's like a sunset!"

"Or sunrise," Peter said, and smiled into her eyes, looking so much like Matt that Elizabeth's throat tightened and she swallowed, to hold back the tears. "Starting again," he added. "Fire and dew."

Everyone was looking at the sky: the firelight was like a river of gold and copper spreading across the low clouds, making them shimmer as if they, too, burned, and when Matt saw it from miles away as he drove toward Nuevo he thought it was a forest fire somewhere beyond the old iron mine. But then he knew it was much closer. My God, he thought, speeding up. It's the town.

Where the road once went straight, it now bore to the right, around the new dam, turning in a wide U as it climbed to higher ground. As Matt drove around the last curve, he saw, first, the roaring cauldron below, and, then, just ahead, a festive crowd—two hundred, he thought, maybe more—sitting at long tables beneath the trees. Small fires burned in pits, with cast iron pots suspended above them; the tables were covered with large bowls and platters of food; some distance away were trailers, tents, and parked cars. It was a town.

Matt pulled off the road and stopped the car. No one seemed to have heard him; everyone was talking and the fire was as loud as a windstorm. He left the car and walked toward the group. He saw Isabel first, standing beside a chair. "To the greatest lady I've ever known," he heard her say, her strong, warm voice filling the clearing. "Who fought hard for us and never gave up."

They were all there, seated around the table: Lydia and Spencer, Heather and Saul, Peter, Maya, Holly, Luz, Cesar. A stranger sat beside Isabel, never taking his eyes off her. And then Elizabeth stood up. Matt drew in his breath as a wave of love and longing swept over him.

Her beauty was like a beacon in the crowd. She wore a long white peasant skirt and an oversize sweater, bright yellow, its sleeves pushed to her elbows. Her hair was like honey; her face was flushed in the firelight. She was a golden flame. Matt had a brief memory of a stunning woman always in black and white, starkly dramatic, her skin cool even in passion, and wondered how he could have thought that was what he wanted.

"I think we should toast the people of Nuevo," Elizabeth was saying, her voice softer than Isabel's. "And all those who came to help: Jock Olson and the men who made such good use of the construction company's equipment"—the man at Isabel's side laughed, and with him a group of men at the next table, and all the rest, laughing together, then growing quiet—"and the people who have come from all over the country, helping in every way they can. We're like a family building a house, but instead of one house we're building many houses: a whole town. And I think you're all wonderful."