A Tangled Web (17 page)

“I just said—”

“No, I mean, if you don't travel to those countries to make sales or negotiate contracts, and you don't type up
the contracts or go out and buy the tractors and forklifts yourself—at least I assume you don't—and you don't deliver them in person to your customers, what do you do?”

He chuckled. “Not much, it seems. Well, I do make sales and negotiate contracts, as it happens, usually by phone; I have local agents who take care of the details. But mostly I deal with government agencies. The poorer the country, it seems, the more devious and obstructionist the government is, and even the best governments are a hierarchy of agencies staffed by people committed only to holding on to their jobs. Usually they're someone's brother or cousin or nephew, and that gives them a certain confidence; those are the ones who get things done. The ones without connections are usually the smartest and most interesting ones, but they spend their time protecting themselves by tying knots in every step of every negotiation to a degree of complication so dense that no one but they can unravel it. I spend my time unraveling their knots.”

Stephanie was smiling. “I like that. I like listening to you; you make everything a story.”

His face changed and he reached for her hand. “I don't like leaving you. I'd take you, but I couldn't spend time with you.”

“What about Robert? He said you work together.”

“Robert has assigned himself the task of saving the youth of the world. He has a few cohorts, priests in various countries, and they go about educating and training and finding jobs for young people. I give him money; that's all I do; it's very simple.”

Simple, Stephanie thought, standing in his bedroom with her hand on the rolltop of his desk. Very simple. So why does he lock everything up?

She sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at her picture on the desk. “I love you,” Max said every night when he kissed her on the forehead and cheek and let her go to the small first-floor room she still made her own. The night before, he had embraced her, holding her tightly before giving her that chaste kiss on her cheek and forehead. And
when he had released her, Stephanie had felt, for the first time, a sense of loss, and had almost reached out to return to the warmth of his arms.

But she had not. Because nothing else had changed: she still believed he kept things from her. And she still could not trust him.

Sitting on his bed, she listened to the drumming of the rain. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the silence that she had treasured only a little while before. The air in the bedroom seemed heavy, stifling the sound of the rain; Stephanie clapped her hands, and the sound was muffled. She began to tremble. It was as if once again she was lost in the fog that had enveloped her when she was in the hospital.

“I don't want to be alone,” she said aloud. “I've never been alone and I don't want to be now.” She drew in her breath.
I've never been alone.
Was that really true? If it was, then she must have lived with her parents until she went to college
—if
she went to college—and then gone on living with them or gotten married right away
—if
she had gotten married; Max said she'd told him she hadn't been married—and then lived with her husband . . . and children? But Max said she didn't have children.

And then what? How did she get from there, wherever that was—parents, maybe college, maybe marriage—to being Max's wife, on a yacht off the coast of France?

The fog closed in, the silence wrapped itself around her.
Oh, please come back! My past—my own life—my self—please come back! I want to know who I am!

She jumped up and ran down the stairs. Her soft shoes made almost no sound on the polished wood, and in the crushing silence she ran faster, back to the kitchen. She turned on the faucet and listened to the splashing of water; she opened the freezer and dropped ice cubes into a glass, the clink loud and comforting. On the counter, her lunch waited for her. She took the platter of tomatoes and veal to the breakfast room and sat at the place set with blue-glazed Provencal dishes and a country wineglass, heavy and solid
in her hand. She served herself and poured a glass of wine, then sat still for a long time, holding the glass and looking at the heavy raindrops bouncing as they struck the terrace, splashing in pools of their own making, running like tears down the trunks of trees. “I don't want to be alone,” she said again, and looked at the empty chair to her right. She wanted Max.

In the afternoon she lit a fire in the library and curled up in a leather chair, leafing through a book of French paintings and sculpture. But when she heard Madame Besset return, she rushed to the kitchen for companionship. “Oh, how wet you are!” she cried.

“Like a duck, Madame Sabrina,” Madame Besset said cheerfully. “One would think the good Lord had turned the ocean upside down, just over Cavaillon. A strange thing for the Lord to do, but then, many things connected with the Lord frequently seem strange, do they not?” She dropped her raincoat on the tile floor and toweled her hair vigorously until it stood up like a black fringe above her round black eyes and high brows. Her face was round with full cheeks, her figure was round and ample, and her arms were muscled from working on her family's farm. “Perhaps, in the spring, I will grow tall, like our crops, from all this good rain.” She laughed as she began to put away her purchases.

“Let me help,” Stephanie said.

“Ah, no, madame, you sit there. Perhaps you would like a café au lait?”

“No, I want to do something; I want to help you put everything away.”

Madame Besset tilted her head to the side in thought. “No, madame. It is not right.”

“But I want it and that makes it right.”

“Madame, forgive me, but some things are correct and some are not. I was taught very thoroughly what was correct, and you must not ask me to forget all that I was taught.”

“What is correct on your farm may not be correct in this
house. While you work here, all you need to remember is that what monsieur and I say is correct. And I'm tired of sitting around and doing nothing, Madame Besset, and you will make me very happy if you move to one side so that I can work with you.”

It was the most authoritative speech Stephanie had made, and Madame Besset's eyes were wide with surprise. Until now she had felt she worked for the husband, since he was the only one who gave orders. Now she saw that there would be two people to please: a man of strong opinions and a woman who changed with the rain and wind. But the position was good and paid well and so of course Madame Besset would adapt; she came from a line of French farmers and vintners who had learned, through the bloody centuries of Provence's history, to adapt and adapt again, and survive. She smiled. “You are recovered, Madame Sabrina. I am pleased to see it. And I would find it pleasant to share this task.”

Madame Besset hummed a folk tune as they emptied the large woven baskets she carried to the market three times a week. The kitchen was cozy and cheerful, with a white tiled floor and white cabinets. The countertops were tiled in red, and so was the large island with a built-in grill, and Stephanie took pleasure in the colors as she and Madame Besset piled up the food they took from the baskets: shiny purple eggplants, oranges, lemons, leeks, russet potatoes, red cabbage, wrinkled black marinated olives, pale green endive, and dark green spinach and chard. All the lights were on, and the food and the copper-bottomed utensils and the jars of jam and vinegar shone brightly against the leaden windows streaming with rain. Stephanie felt a long, slow sense of comfort fill her as she and Madame Besset worked together. I wonder if I had many women friends, she thought as she put away green-gold olive oil and goat cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves. I'm sure I did. I'm sure I had a very close woman friend. Sometimes that's the best thing of all.

“Madame will have chicken stew for dinner,” Madame
Besset pronounced as she closely examined two pale chickens spread-eagled on the counter, searching for feathers the butcher had overlooked. “And endive salad. Is there anything else madame would like?”

Stephanie was piling tiny white potatoes in a basket. “I would like it if you would stop calling me madame.”

“But then what would I call you, madame?”

“I have a name.”

“Call you by your given name? Oh, madame, that would be very wrong. It is as I said: I was taught what is correct and what is not correct, and that is most definitely not correct. Your name would be a piece of glue on my tongue. No, madame, it is not possible.”

Stephanie sighed. “So many rules, so much formality . . .” Two of the potatoes fell to the floor and she bent to retrieve them. “You and Mrs. Thirkell, you're just the same: so strict with formality . . .”

“Who, madame?”

Stephanie stood up. Her eyes were bright. “Mrs. Thirkell,” she repeated.

“And who is that, madame?”

“Oh . . . someone I once knew.” She spoke casually, but inwardly she was filled with excitement.
Mrs. Thirkell. She must have been a housekeeper, like Madame Besset. Where was that? I don't know, but it doesn't matter for now, because I'm remembering. I'm remembering.

“It does not sound like a French name,” Madame Besset said dismissively. She found a feather and plucked it vehemently. “One cannot trust a butcher these days.”

Stephanie watched her. “I want to learn to drive,” she said.

Madame Besset looked up. “Yes, madame.”

“And I would like you to teach me.”

“Oh, madame, Monsieur Lacoste would be angry. He would say that that is his responsibility, not mine.”

Stephanie piled more potatoes into the basket. Max did not want her to leave the house. He found reasons for her to stay at home whenever she suggested an excursion to
Cavaillon or the surrounding countryside or even to the Auberge de la Colline, the small café at the far end of their street.

They had been there once for dinner, seated near the huge open fireplace with its grill jutting over the raised brick hearth, but that was all, only once. But Robert had said it was possible that she would remember more if she saw more. I need to see and hear, Stephanie thought; anything to jog my memory. I've got to see more than this house and these gardens; I've got to be part of the world. Then the world will come back to me. I've got to get away from here. So I have to be able to drive.

“Ask him, madame,” said Madame Besset gently. “All women drive now. Even the most backward men get used to it.”

Stephanie laughed. “I will ask him. But he's not here, and I don't know for sure how long he'll be gone, and I'm anxious to start. I want this very much,” she said strongly.

“Well. It is of course very difficult, living here, so far from town. One does need a car. Well, madame.” She pondered it. “We could begin, and then monsieur, as soon as he returns, would continue. You never drove, madame? At all?”

I must have driven a car; I must have cooked. Women do those things. But I don't remember . . . Oh, God, if I could only remember
 . . . “No,” she said to Madame Besset. “I never learned. But I want to. Right away. This afternoon.”

“But the rain, madame! It is not the best—”

“We'll go slowly. Just up here. Please; it's very important to me. We won't drive into Cavaillon today.”

“I should hope not,” Madame Besset said under her breath. She shrugged. “Well, then, if you will wait just a moment . . .” She dropped the chickens into an iron pot with chopped vegetables and water, threw in a handful of herbs, propped a lid halfway over the pot, and turned on a low flame beneath it. “Now, madame. The chickens cook and we drive.”

Max had taken the large Renault, leaving a small low-slung Alfa Romeo in the garage. Madame Besset shook her head as she and Stephanie walked past it. “Most definitely not that one.” She opened the garage door and the two of them, wearing slick raincoats and hoods, ran the few steps to Madame Besset's small Citroën.

Stephanie sat behind the wheel. “Now, madame,” said Madame Besset, and visibly began to swell with the importance of what she was doing. She sat straighter, her fingers emphatically jabbing. “The key. The clutch. The brake. The gas pedal. The gearshift. The radio. Ignore the radio, madame; you must not be distracted.” She named all the parts of the car, pointed out the five positions for the gearshift, then told Stephanie to turn the key. “Fortunately, I have backed into the driveway, so you have only to drive forward.”

For the next hour, in the pounding rain, the small Citroen lurched along the main street that circled the plateau above Cavaillon. Stephanie sat rigidly, her hands gripping the wheel, her face set with concentration, lifting her foot too fast or not fast enough, pressing too lightly or slamming the brake or releasing the clutch with a jerk that caused Madame Besset to cry out, turning too sharply on the curves or not sharply enough, yanking the steering wheel to left or right when a tree loomed ahead. But soon the drive became smoother, Stephanie's movements grew more sure, her body began to relax.

“Very good, madame,” said Madame Besset. “One would think you had done this before, you learn so quickly.”

“Yes,” Stephanie murmured, “it feels very comfortable.” In fact, it felt wonderful. The bulk of the car, its steady hum and enclosed warmth in the pouring rain made her feel strong and powerful, and exhilaration filled her as the Citroen obeyed her commands, spurting forward, stopping, turning to left or right or forging straight ahead. She sat tall and looked straight ahead. She was going ten miles an hour; the drenched stone walls and iron gates guarding
stone houses, the sodden gardens, heavy bushes and tall trees moved past in dignified slow motion, but Stephanie felt she was flying. I can go anywhere, she thought. To Cavaillon and all the other places Max and Madame Besset and Robert talk about: Aix-en-Provence, Roussillon, Aries, Saint-Rémy, Gordes, Avignon. I can go anywhere. I'm free.