A Tangled Web (25 page)

“Oh, not really.”

“Problems?”

“There are always problems. Just when I think I have Penny pretty much taken care of, there's Cliff.”

“Other than being a short-tempered and sullen twelve-year-old, what's wrong with Cliff?”

“He was never short-tempered and sullen before, Garth. He's not happy about your favorite student.”

“He's jealous. He'll get over it. I tried to talk to him but he wouldn't listen.”

“He'll listen if you get him in a quiet corner. He's unhappy and he needs you and all he sees is Lu Zhen getting your attention when he's here for dinner.”

“He's our guest. Cliff knows I haven't forgotten him just because I don't coddle him for one evening. My God, he's my son; he doesn't need proof every single day that I love him.”

“We all need proof every single day that we're loved.”

Garth gazed at her. “Do I give you that proof?”

“Yes, always, it's part of what is so wonderful between
us. And you give it to Cliff and Penny, too, but they don't always see it. I think you can't be subtle about love with children that age.”

“Well, I'll talk to him. I'm not sure what I'll say, other than to tell him again that I love him, but I'll try.”

“He wants you to think he's special.”

“I do. He must know that. I look at him sometimes and wonder how I was so blessed to have such wonderful kids. And not just to love them but to like them. In fact, I think it's the most special blessing of all: to like our children as companions.”

“Have you ever told him any of that?”

“Probably not in those words,” Garth said after a minute. “I assumed it showed in everything we did together.”

“A big assumption.”

“But they don't like to be slobbered over, you know. Twelve isn't a great age for expressing lots of emotion.”

“Do you think you could find a middle ground between praise and slobber?”

He chuckled. “I'll work on it. Anything else about Cliff?”

“He's picked up from his friends at school the idea that we should only be with our own kind.”

“Good God. Don't they teach kids about a shrinking world these days? And about getting fresh ideas and making a leap forward from being a melting pot and all that sort of thing?”

“I'm not sure what they're teaching; I guess I'll have to find out. It is dismaying; you might bring it up sometime. I mentioned Martians at the door and whether he'd let them in and so on; you could build on that.”

He chuckled again and kissed her. “A good place to start. Didn't you have lunch with Claudia today? How was that?”

“Wonderful. I like her so much. She needs someone to talk to; I hope I don't disappoint her in that.”

“Why would you?”

“I might not have good answers when she needs them. Right now she's worried about Congress, among other things.”

“University presidents always worry about Congress. Too many congressmen vote on whims and political fears, so they can't be reasoned with or predicted. That confuses anyone who believes in a life spent training minds to think clearly, and it worries the hell out of anyone who relies on them for funding. Is there anything special she's concerned about?”

“Oliver Leglind. And she thinks you ought to be aware of the dangers. Difficulties, she calls them.”

“Does she think I'm not?”

“She says she's sure you are. It's just one more thing, though, distracting you. And us.”

“It's not earthshaking, my love; it's part of the crazy political and academic climate I work in. You're not worried, are you?”

“A little. Claudia told me to be watchful; she had a reason for that. And she's worried; that was pretty clear.”

“Well, we're always watchful where government grants are concerned, and there are a lot of us keeping our eyes open: we'd lose too many projects if we lost that funding. But it's not something that has to invade our home; we have enough people demanding this or that from us without adding Oliver Leglind to the list.”

“Oh. That reminds me. People making demands of us. There seems to be a crisis at Ambassadors. Or at least Brian thinks there's one.”

“So you want to go to London.”

“I don't, really, but I think I'd better. I didn't go in February, you know, and—”

“My love, you don't have to explain it. Just don't stay away too long.”

“I can't; I have to work on the first spec sheets for Billy Koner, and Madeline and I are expecting a new shipment in about ten days. Oh, but why don't you come with me? We could make it a holiday.”

“Not this time. You'll be worrying about Brian and Nicholas and Billy Koner and I'd be thinking about Lu Zhen's research project and Cliff and maybe even Oliver Leglind. We'll go soon, though; I'd like some time in Europe with you. When we're both ready, just the two of us and no projects dangling like loose ends back home.”

He put his arms around Sabrina and brought her to lie back against him. They were quiet for a long time in the quiet house that drowsed in the late night hush when creaking floors were silent, the busy kitchen put to rest, the day's voices and laughter stilled; when the street in front was a clear black ribbon running straight through the sleeping town; when lampposts cast blue-white circles of light on deserted sidewalks and the houses across the way stood like dark sentinels against a cloudy sky faintly pink from the glow of Chicago's skyscrapers, just a few miles away.

“Isn't it amazing,” Garth murmured, “how every lover thinks he's invented love? People fall in love in the most unlikely times and places, and they wonder at the magic of it, and sing with the joy of it, and think no one else has ever known what they have discovered.” He held Sabrina close, one hand inside her robe holding her warm breast. “And everyone who thinks that is absolutely right. We've invented it, we've created the words for it; it's our love and no one else's. It becomes a mirror of the two of us, and no matter how many poets write about it, it can never be fully shared with anyone but the two people in the mirror.” He kissed her, his mouth opening hers. Sabrina turned within his arms and they fitted their bodies to each other like travelers coming home, knowing the door would always be open to them. When they pulled apart they were smiling, letting desire fill them, and they held it close, wondrous and wild and theirs alone.

“Whatever else happens in our life,” Garth said, “whatever the intrusions, we've created ourselves as we are to each other, part of each other, and nothing can diminish that. Nothing can ever take that from us.”

“Garth,” Sabrina said, her hand along his face, “it's time to go to bed.”

He stood, bringing her with him, and they walked to the foot of the stairs, their arms around each other.
You have a strong sense of who you are and how you want to direct your life.
Oh, yes, Sabrina thought, remembering what Claudia had said. Yes, with this man, in this place, and with no one else, ever.

They climbed the stairs, their steps in unison, and the lights of their house, the last to be illuminated on the street where they lived, went out one by one.

S
tephanie was making a life. Each day, each week, became part of a new past, and when she woke each morning with Max beside her and the sun streaming through uncurtained windows over the familiar contours of the bedroom, she no longer had the sinking feeling of being lost and alone in emptiness; now she had yesterday to remember and today to plan and tomorrow to anticipate.

She had a schedule. Five days a week, from nine to one, she worked at Jacqueline en Provence. One afternoon a week she cooked with Robert. The other afternoons were for Max, unless he was away, and then she worked on redesigning the rooms of the house or chatted with Madame Besset or lay on the chaise in the sitting room, reading books from Max's library.

She had found an illustrated copy of
Alice in Wonderland
on a high shelf, an old leather-bound copy in perfect condition, with a gold ribbon for a marker, and she opened it one day after lunch, when Madame Besset was at the market. She began to read and it was a moment before she
looked up, her heart pounding. She had read ten pages, in English, without hesitating or stumbling over a word.

But why would she be surprised? In the hospital they had discovered that she was fluent in three languages.

But it's so easy, she thought, and looked again at the page before her.

Alice took up the fan and gloves and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking. “Dear, dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think:
was
I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, ‘Who in the world am I?' Ah,
that's
the great puzzle!”

Stephanie drew in her breath.
I guess I'm not the only one who wonders that.
She read the book through, then turned back to the beginning and read it again, stopping for a long time at a page in the middle.

The Gryphon added, “Come, let's hear some of
your
adventures.”

“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Maybe there are a lot of ways we can lose ourselves, Stephanie thought, gazing at the picture of the Gryphon. And Alice finds herself at the end; she gets back to where she started. Maybe that's what Robert wanted me to discover when he talked about this book.

She put the book on the table in the library and kept it there, where she could pick it up and read it whenever she felt like it.
I wonder if I read this before. Maybe, if I just concentrate, it will remind me of something.

She was always trying to be reminded of something, straining to dredge up memories from associations. “House,” she would say aloud, and close her eyes, picturing a house, rooms, furniture, gardens . . . but the only rooms and gardens she could picture were her own. When she thought “house” she tried to picture a family, but no faces came to her and she felt a great sadness. But as the weeks went by, she stopped struggling to tear down the curtain that hid her past. The doctors at the hospital had said everything might come back to her someday; Robert had said the same thing. Until then she had a life, and that would have to be enough.

When Max was home, they spent the afternoons driving to nearby towns, exploring twisting streets and browsing in the shops and talking. As Stephanie built a new store of memories and worked and drove and felt her life building around her, she became bolder. “You don't really tell me anything about yourself,” she said one afternoon as they took shelter from an April rain in Les Deux Garçons in Aix-en-Provence. “You always put me off, as if I'm a child.”

“What do you want to know?” he asked. They were sitting just inside the cafe, facing the cours Mirabeau, and he watched Stephanie's profile as she gazed at the fanciful ironwork on the balconies of the buildings across the wide, tree-lined street. She was wearing white jeans and a black turtleneck sweater with a silver necklace and long earrings he had bought only an hour before; her scars were barely visible, her beauty almost as pure and striking as before, and Max felt a surge of pride. He had done this. He had saved Sabrina Longworth from death and the destruction of her beauty, and he had re-created her as Sabrina Lacoste, whose beauty and spirit were now truly his. Sitting in the cafe, he felt relaxed and expansive; everything was going so well he could almost believe it would always be this way. “I've told you about my mother's death and my wanderings with my father . . . you do remember all that?”

“Yes, of course,” she said impatiently, as if memory had never been a problem. “And Holland and Belgium and Germany and Spain . . . of course I remember. And then you went to London. But how did you feel when it was just you and your father? Did you love him?”

“I can't remember. We stayed together because we didn't have anyone else. I was afraid of him for a while; he had a bad temper and he hated staying in one place for long; a bad combination because he was always looking for excuses to move on and the excuse was usually a fight with someone. Once I got in the middle, I don't remember how, and was thoroughly beaten up. He took me to London, and when I recovered, I left him.”

“Such a cold listing of facts,” Stephanie said. “No feelings, nothing but facts. Wasn't there any love or fun in your life?”

“There was necessity. That's what gets most people through their days; how many do you think are fortunate enough to find love?” He took her hand. “When it comes, and comes late, it's all the better.”