A ruling passion : a novel (17 page)

"Without pay."

"We don't need it. Don't think about it."

"Ifs all right, Nick. I'm doing what I want to do."

When Chad was two weeks old, she turned him over to the nanny and returned to the station and her usual fourteen-hour days. At the end of a month she was too tired even to go out to dinner.

"You weren't ready," Nick said. "Take a few months off, starting today." They were lying in bed on a Sunday morning, the radio playing softly, Chad asleep in a crib nearby. Now and then a shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds and reached across the room to touch their bed. Nick felt the beauty of the moment and put his arm around Sy-

bille. "I told you when Chad was born: we can afford it. Ted and I are getting clients faster than we can take care of them."

"No," she said.

He was silent. There was probably nothing he could say to convince her, but her exhaustion had alarmed him and so he tried once more. "It wouldn't hurt to take some time off; it wouldn't even slow you down. Enjoy Chad for a litde while; you don't have to have everything at once,"

"Why not?" she snapped. ^HTou want it all; why shouldn't I? You know how many things are happening for me, why should I give any of it up? What for? A baby who doesn't care who feeds him as long as somebody does?"

"You were the one who wanted a baby," Nick said, his voice puzzled. "I thought we should wait a couple of years more, but you wouldn't. Why not, if all you wanted to do was work?"

"I wanted both," Sybille retorted.

"Why?" he said again. "You're happier at work than you are with Chad."

She looked at him sharply. "Are you saying I don't love my own son?"

"I'd never say that. But you don't seem comfortable with him. You close up, somehow; you're not open—"

"Not loving," she said flatly.

"Of course you love him. I don't doubt that."

'Tou do," she insisted. "You think I don't love him, that I shut him out. Thafs what you said."

"Not quite." He pulled back to look at her. "Do you care about him? Do you want to be close to him? You've never made any secret of what you've wanted, and it sure as hell isn't a child." She was silent, but her rigid body told him how angry she was. "Sybille, look at me! You're not home enough to be anything of a mother. When you are here, you pay damn little attention to Chad; you even have trouble holding him for very long. You get tired, or bored, or you start thinking of all the other things you could be doing. You—"

"You're doing it again!" she said furiously. "Saying I don't love him!"

"Tell me I'm wrong!"

"Every mother loves her baby! You make me sound like a monster!"

The word struck Nick. "I don't mean to. But I'd like to hear you tell me you love Chad."

"God damn you, you know I do!"

"I wish I did. I don't know what I know. I watch you with him and there isn't any—" He stopped, then shrugged. "Even when you hold him it looks like you're keeping him at arm's length. It bothers me. He needs a mother, you know."

"He has a nanny!"

"He also has a mother, and he needs her."

"You're trying to make me feel guilty!"

"Not guilty, Sybille; loving! But that can't be forced, can it? He's part of you, but there's nothing in you reaching out to him." He saw the darkness of her face and would have stopped, but he was too angry. "I suppose I could understand that your work is more important to you than anything else—I'd have trouble understanding it, but I'd try—but what made you insist on having this baby? You're too self-centered to take care of him; you're an infant yourself, all wrapped up in yourself with not an inch of compassion or interest in anyone else What the hell got into you to have a baby when you don't—"

"Because Valerie doesn't have one!" she blurted out.

A shaft of sunlight brushed the bed, then vanished as clouds piled up. The baby sighed. The room was very still.

Nick pulled his arm from beneath Sybille's shoulders and sat up. The room seemed to shrink around him, like a prison.

"I didn't mean it!" She was sitting beside him, her eyes alarmed. "I mean she doesn't want one. Or she—oh, I don't know—we used to talk about having babies, we talked a lot, and she said she didn't want any... she didn't like them..." Her voice ran down. She and Valerie had never talked about having children. They had never talked about anything personal. "Anyway, it's not important... we have Chad and that's what counts, isn't it?" Her eyes filled with tears. 'Tou're right, I'm not very good with him, but I don't know what to do— I'm sure

I can learn, I want to, you know, but I've been so scared I can't

imagine how some people just pick up a baby and know what to do right away; don't they worry about smothering them or crushing them or something like that... ?"

Bitterness welled up in Nick. Of all that he had learned about his wife, he had never guessed that she harbored such envy. Who was she, this woman he had married, that she could be so deeply obsessed, and let it control so ftindamental a part of her life as the birth of a child? His bitterness became anger; he was ftirious at himself for not seeing what must have been there from the beginning. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he wanted to get out of there, before he could discover how

much else he did not know about her. But Chad slept on the other side of the room, and Nick could not move.

"Nick, listen to me." Sybille's hand was on his arm. "Are you listening? I don't know what to do!"

He heard the plea in her voice, and knew it was genuine. Tears trembled in it. He looked searchingly into her face, and she returned his look steadily. She had never been afraid, he thought; she always met trouble head on. "I'll learn; I promise I will," she said, her voice warm now, caressing, still a little unsteady. "I want you to be proud of me and I can learn anything if I try; remember you said that once?"

Slowly, he nodded. He took her hand and forced himself to pretend nothing had changed between them. And nothing had, he thought, except that now he saw more clearly. "I'm sure you'll learn," he said quietly. "You and Chad are going to get along wonderfrilly."

And neither of them observed that that was an odd way to describe a mother and her son.

The nanny was named Elena Garcia. She was thirty-one, round and rosy-cheeked; she had raised nine younger brothers and sisters, and, more than anything in the world, she longed for a bed all to herself. Suddenly, with her new job, she had not only a bed but a whole room, one of those on the second floor vacated by Ted Mcllvain, who had moved out when Omega Computing Services began making money. Ecstatically, Elena explored her room, Chad's room across the hall, and the bathroom, used by no one but herself From that moment, she loved Chad for making this possible, and she made him the center of her Ufe.

"Have a nice day together," Sybille said, handing Chad back to Elena. She still couldn't get the hang of holding him. It was easier now that he was seven months old and could hold himself straight—she'd been terrified of the way his head flopped around the first month— but seven months meant he was much heavier, a real burden now that she'd exercised and dieted back to ninety-five pounds. He squirmed a lot, too, and sometimes he would screw up his face and start to scream, for no reason in the world that Sybille could fathom, transformed in an instant from a pleasant baby to an inhuman creature in such agony that all she wanted to do was give him to someone who could solve whatever problems he had. And it seemed that Elena always could.

"I don't know what time I'll be back," Sybille said. She picked up

her car keys and briefcase and went to the door. "I left money on the kitchen counter for groceries; don't forget to ask Mr. Fielding if he wants something special for dinner before you go shopping."

She opened the door, but something—Elena's silence, perhaps— made her turn back. Chad was asleep, rosy and beautiftil, a tiny fist tucked under his chin. Sybille met Elena's eyes, then crossed the room and bent to rest her cheek briefly on Chad's. It was velvety and fragrant, like an opening flower; she was always amazed at the softness of his skin. "Don't let him get sunburned," she said, and touched her cheek to his once again before walking swifdy to the door, and out of the house.

From that moment she forget Chad and Elena; she forgot Nick; she forgot how much she hated their small house, shabby and crowded and in a poor neighborhood that she detested, with large families, roaming dogs and cats, and even a tethered goat a few houses down. She forgot it all, because this was the day her program was to be broadcast for the first time.

She had developed and produced it; she had convinced the station executives to allow her to make two pilot episodes, and the station had used the pilots to sign up sponsors for thirteen weeks. Then she had taped four more programs, and tonight, as one of the new shows premiering throughout September, "The Hot Seat" would be shown at six-thirty, following the local news.

There was nothing left for her to do: the program was on tape and her part was done. There was nothing to do but watch the hours crawl past. She sat in the control room during the noon news and tried to do her job while excitement churned inside her and she had to swallow through the dryness of her throat. Because it wasn't just excitement; it was fear too: that even though the pilot had gotten good reviews, no one would like tonight's program, critics would tear it to pieces, viewers would flick their remote controls to other channels. And she had other fears: that a devastating earthquake would strike just before six-thirty and her half hour would be given to news of the disaster. Or, if not an earthquake, the crash of a jumbo jet, terrorists in Miami, the death of the President, a nuclear war. Any of them would knock "The Hot Seat" out of its hard-won slot and she would have to go through another week of agonized waiting.

But of course nothing like that would happen. The show would go on at the proper time and it would be an instant success. Her name would become known; she would have something to show when she

went to bigger stations in bigger cities; she would step from here to more powerful positions. And she would have something with which to bargain when she demanded her own show, that she would produce and host. It all began tonight.

Tonight, she thought, my life really begins.

And then, at last, for the first time in months she left the station early and went home. "Come and watch something with me," she said to Nick, taking a pen from his hand and laying it down. He was standing at one of the long tables, writing notes on a spread sheet, one hand holding a Ping-Pong ball that his thumb rolled rhythmically across his palm. His body was tense with coiled energy, and his eyes, when he turned to her, were distant.

"Watch something?" he echoed. He brought her into focus. "What time is it?"

"After six. I want you to watch a new program on television." She tugged at his hand like a child with a reluctant parent. "It's mine, I wrote it and produced it, and it's starting tonight. And I want us to watch it together. Nick, are you listening?"

He frowned then. "Yours," he said slowly. "New programs take months. You haven't mentioned it."

"I couldn't, not until I knew it would really happen. I can't bear to talk about things that might not work out, you know that. Oh, Nick, don't start something; I'm telling you about it now, aren't I? I want us to share it." She looked up at him. "Nick, I can't watch it alone."

He saw the tension in her face. "Of course you can't. You shouldn't." He reminded himself that it took both of them to keep their marriage going. Sybille had been trying; he had watched her. She was better with Chad; she was making an effort to be caring and loving even though it was clear to Nick that she had trouble being a caring and loving person, with anyone, and probably always would.

Still, she had been trying to be closer to Chad and to him, ever since that terrible Sunday morning in bed. For days after that, they had barely spoken; it had been a kind of separation. Then, litde by little, it faded to the background. Living in the same house, it was hard not to talk, and soon they were talking about Chad and then the house and their jobs, and finally it was almost as if they had forgotten, and everything was the same as before.

He put his arm around her. "If you have a new show, it should be a family affair. Come on; we'll get Chad. For the first time, the Fieldings are going to watch television together. Maybe we'll make popcorn."

She looked at him to see if he were making fun of her, but his eyes and his smile were warm. "Thank you," she said huskily; her throat was dry with fear.

Nick brought Chad from his room upstairs and held him against his chest, while his other arm held Sybille. They watched the end of the local news and the commercials at the half hour. And then, in bold jagged letters, "The Hot Seat" splashed across the screen. Sybille's body clenched into a tense knot.

On the screen, two men and a woman sat in brown leather armchairs at a round table, notepads and pencils before them. In a red leather chair sat a balding young man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a somber tie that clutched a high, starched collar. A circle of white light pinpointed the red leather chair.

"The hot seat," murmured Nick.

Sybille smiled.

"The Hot Seat," said a deep voice as the camera moved in to the group at the table, then panned slowly around it, pausing at each of the three interrogators and the young man in the red leather chair. "The toughest place in San Jose. Where there's no hiding. No room for pretense. No escape." The camera pulled back, showing the whole group. "The Hot Seat. A discussion among equals where the truth will be found, because our questioners ask all the questions you, our audience, would ask if you were in their seats. No holds barred."

The announcer introduced the interrogators and the man in the hot seat. "Wilfred Broome, Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. We'll begin our discussion with Morton Case."

Case was short and round, with cheerful eyes and rosy cheeks. His voice was like syrup. "Mr. Broome, thirteen years ago you led several demonstrations at the University of California in Berkeley. Today you come down hard on demonstrators—"