Private affairs : a novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

I'll close up. I'll take you up on that drink some other time."
    "Hey, look, I wasn't poking fun. I just didn't know what to say. I really don't think about it much. You know, you get busy, you have good days and bad days, the kids are a pain in the ass or they do good in school and then you feel proud, like you're a good parent . . . Shit, Matt, I don't think about it." There was a long pause. "I wanted to be a baseball player. Outfield. I liked looking up at the sky, you know, and watching those long fly balls float right down into my glove, and if it was the third out I'd hear the cheers and run across the field to the dugout like I was king of the world." He turned to go. "I never found out if I was good enough. My girl was pregnant, so we got married and I got this job with your dad and that was that. I still like her, though, the wife, that is; that's one good thing. Be a real crock if we split after I gave up the outfield for her. Good night, Matt; see you tomorrow. I hope you feel better."
    Frowning slightly, Matt washed his hands, put on his tie, locked the front door, set the burglar alarm, and left through the back. It was after the rush hour and traffic on Cerrillos Road was light; he could be home in

    ten minutes. Speeding up, he thought of Frank, and the past three months since Zachary's death, and Elizabeth, who seemed to be having her own problems dealing with it, though they hadn't talked about it—actually, they weren't talking about very much these days; he couldn't remember when they'd last had a conversation about anything but the kids or the house or the printing company—and then he thought again about Frank, who'd wanted to play outfield, and that brought him back to Zachary.
    My father died and left me. It was almost a joke. Sixteen years ago Zachary had begged Matt not to leave him, and Matt hadn't, and now Zachary had left him.
    Sixteen years of guarding my father's dream, instead of my own.
    And that's what was running around in his head. He loved his father, he missed him—but every time he thought of him, it was as if those sixteen years were a dead weight around his neck. Sixteen years. Where the hell had they gone? What had they left him with?
    He thought of his wedding: all those predictions of a great future for Elizabeth and Matthew Lovell. Wrong. Instead, they'd put off their dreams—until Zachary was well enough to run the company again; until they had the money for a full-time manager to replace Matt; until Holly and Peter were older; until Holly and Peter were through college. And the years passed.
    You have good days and you have bad days and you don't think about it much.
    Sixteen years.
    But they were good years, he thought. Don't forget that.
    He didn't forget it. He had a wife he loved, two children, a home, his own business, friends, vacations . . . didn't he have everything he could want?
    Turning onto the Paseo de Peralta, his tires squealed; he was going too fast. No, damn it. He didn't have the life he'd given up when he was twenty-three. Instead, he was here, driving the route his father had taken for twenty-five years and he himself had taken for sixteen, going to the house on Camino Rancheros his father had bought in 1962 and they had enlarged to make room for all of them.
    Matthew Lovell was left without a father, but stuck in his father's dream.
    How did I end up almost forty — and nowhere?
    He barely slowed at the stop sign and turned onto Cordova Road, remembering again those predictions of success. He and Elizabeth had even won a prize. What was the name of it? He couldn't remember. And everyone said they could do anything they wanted.

    And they'd done a lot. But inside him was all this anger, boiling up after Zachary died. He remembered when it started: he was watching a plasterer repair a crumbling wall and he'd wondered how long the house would last and how they could afford another one . . . and suddenly he'd seen himself sitting in that chair for the rest of