A Tangled Web (29 page)

Besides, how can I think of not being with Max? I'm too afraid. I don't know how I'd manage without protection. She remembered feeling safe and protected in Max's car, driving back from Aix, as if she were the moon reflecting his sun, making his confidence and power her
own. And then she had wanted to stay in Jacqueline's embrace forever, soaking up her assurance and control.

When am I going to be myself, with my own strength? When am I going to be more adventurous?

She heard voices from the shop: two women talking animatedly about an eighteenth-century sofa, a man's voice saying something about a group of paintings, and Jacqueline saying, “Good, very good, we sold all the last ones so quickly, and I have customers waiting. They want especially the landscapes.”

The man chuckled. “Too bad. The new ones are abstracts. I've brought slides of them; if they're not right for your shop I can take them to Galerie Le Fèvre.”

“You will not! Léon, good heavens, I represent you; you agreed to that.”

Someone was standing in the door to the back room. “If you please, madame, this tablecloth, what is the price?”

Stephanie looked at the cloth draped over the woman's arm. “Fifteen hundred francs. That includes the napkins, of course.”

“Well, I adore it and I must have it. And I want one for a housewarming gift; which would you suggest? Something a little smaller. And definitely not as expensive.”

Stephanie suppressed a smile as she led the customer into the shop. “We have several on this rack; if you wish to look through them . . .”

“Oh, whatever you choose. She won't invite me to dinner so often that I'll have to look at it very much. Here, what about this? Yellow. A color I detest, but she'll probably like it.”

“Not just yellow; aureolin,” said a man's voice, “deep, luscious, lustrous, filled with sunlight and fresh breezes, youth, love, and the promise of good food and wine.”

Stephanie and the customer had turned around. He leaned against the wall, smiling easily, a small man barely taller than Stephanie and about her age, lean, broad-shouldered, blond and deeply tanned, wearing blue jeans and an open-necked white shirt. His face was thin, with
faintly hollowed cheeks; his eyes were green and they met Stephanie's with a look of amused conspiracy. His voice was the one she had heard in the shop, talking to Jacqueline about paintings.

They stood looking at each other while the customer said, “Aureolin? Aureolin? I never heard of it. I don't even know how to pronounce it. What is it?”

“Chrome yellow,” said Jacqueline, coming up to them. “A pigment painters often use. You wish to buy these two tablecloths, the red and the yellow?”

Stephanie took them from the customer. “I'll wrap them for you.”

“Unless there is something else madame wishes,” Jacqueline said.

Stephanie flushed. She was not concentrating; she still felt the man's eyes on her and she wanted to look at him. “Yes, please look around; I'll have these for you when you're ready.”

“Well, I will; I saw a vase I rather liked . . .” The customer drifted away.

“I'm sorry,” Stephanie said to Jacqueline.

“Oh, Léon has a way of derailing conversations. Sabrina Lacoste, Léon Dumas. You may have seen some of Léon's paintings in the shop, Sabrina; I think the last one sold just after you began to work here.”

“I did see it and we have one in our living room,” Stephanie said as she and Léon shook hands.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The Alpilles. The little house in it reminds me of van Gogh's painting of them.”

His eyes brightened. “I put it there in homage to him. Have you been there? Or climbed them?”

“No.” Stephanie was confused and she took a step back, and then another. “Excuse me, I have to take care of this; I have to wrap these . . .” She turned and fled to the back room.
I know about van Gogh. I know about his painting of the Alpilles. But in all the months I've lived with Max and looked at that painting, I never thought of
van Gogh. Maybe I'm beginning to remember. Maybe it's coming back.

Léon was in the doorway. “Was it something I said?”

“No.” She pulled out a length of wrapping paper and cut it off. “I just wanted to take care of this.”

“Not quite true, I think, but we'll let it go for now.” He watched her wrap the red tablecloth and napkins. In the silence, they could hear Jacqueline's voice in the shop. “You said, ‘
We
have one in
our
living room.' Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And who bought the painting? You or your husband?”

“My husband. Before we met.”

“I admire his good judgment.” He came into the room and held out his hand. “I'm happy we met. I hope to see you again.”

“Yes,” Stephanie said. Once again they shook hands, and their hands stayed clasped while their eyes met. He was not handsome, Stephanie thought, but she liked his looks; his face was alive with curiosity and intelligence and humor, and he looked at everything with intensity. Right now he was looking at her as if he wanted to know all about her, not just in a casual way with carelessly spoken social phrases—
I hope to see you again
—but in a way that took what he said and did seriously. And Max had said he was one of the finest young painters in the country. He held her hand too tightly, but then, she was not trying to pull away. They looked at each other steadily, as if they were speaking together, getting acquainted.

When am I going to be more adventurous?

Oh, Stephanie thought, perhaps beginning right now.

M
rs. Thirkell pushed forward the platter of roast chicken and potatoes she was holding at Lu Zhen's right hand. “Of course you'll have seconds,” she scolded. “A growing boy is an engine that needs a constant supply of petrol. Especially if he's also a student, and a skinny one at that. Come on, now, two or three slices, young man, you'll be the better for them. And more potatoes, too.”

“He doesn't want any more,” Cliff growled.

“Yes, he does,” Penny said, watching Lu. “He's just being polite. Can I have some more, Mrs. Thirkell? After Lu?”

Sabrina and Garth exchanged a smile. “Our diplomat,” Garth said. “Go on, Lu, dig in; you're outnumbered and Penny's made it accepted practice.”

Lu smiled his thin, cautious smile and heaped chicken and potatoes on his plate. Mrs. Thirkell sighed with exaggerated gratification and took the platter to Penny. “It's really delicious,” Penny said. “Is it different from the chicken in China?”

“Their eyes are different,” Cliff said.

“Cliff—” Garth began, but Sabrina forestalled him. “Not a good joke,” she said lightly.

“Do you know, I think they look exactly like your chickens,” Lu said seriously. “I lived in a village once and I saw them being slaughtered, and they seemed quite ordinary to me.”

“I thought you grew up in Beijing,” Sabrina said. “When did you live in a village?”

“When I was a child. There was a time when the government ordered people from cities to work in the fields and villages, and I went with my family to the west.”

“Masses of people uprooted,” Garth said, “whoever they were, whatever their profession. Including Lu's father, who's a physicist, and his mother, who teaches English.”

Lu smiled again, the smile that barely stretched his lips. “My father shoveled manure for five years; my mother did laundry.”

“Why?” Cliff asked, curiosity cutting through his sullenness.

“The government felt that intellectuals and professionals should return to the people because they'd forgotten who they were.”

“What does that mean?”

“The government said intellectuals and professionals thought of themselves as better than the peasants when really everybody should be the same.”

“But people aren't the same,” Penny said.

“The government said they were.”

“But they were wrong. Didn't anybody complain? People here complain about the government all the time.”

“That is not the way in China.”

“Well, I know you can't complain out loud; we learned about that at school. But don't you, when you're at home? You know, when you talk about things at the dinner table, the way we do.”

“Sometimes.”

“Does the government still think everybody's the same?” Cliff asked.

“Not so much, it seems.”

“So where are your parents now?”

“In Beijing. My father teaches at the university and my mother is in a middle school.”

“Did your mother teach you English?” Penny asked.

“Yes, but I also studied it in school. Everyone wants to learn English. Especially if you want to go into science. English is the language of science all over the world.”

“I'd like to learn Chinese,” Penny said. “It sounds sort of like singing.”

“I could teach you some words, if you like.”

“Really? Would you? That would be so neat; nobody at school knows any Chinese at all. Tell me a word now.”

“
Ma
.”

“What does that mean?”

“Mother.”

“But that's the same as English. Who cares about that? Tell me a
Chinese
word.”

“That is the Chinese word. But I will give you this one:
hen hao chi.
”

“What's that?”

“Tasty. That's what this dinner is. And here's another one:
youyi.
It means friendship.”

Penny repeated them. “Will you teach me lots more?”

“If you like.”

“Lots. So I can talk, you know, not just words and stuff, but a few sentences that really sound like I'm talking in Chinese. Then I can do it at school and everybody else will just be
totally out of it
.”

Sabrina looked at Penny thoughtfully, wondering which problems, old or new, were behind her vehemence. She'd bring it up when they were alone; right now she was enjoying the conversation, pleased that Cliff had joined in. There had been a swift moment of pain when Lu first arrived—it happened every time he entered their house—when, looking at him and hearing his accent, she was
swept back to China last September, China for two weeks with Stephanie, ending in Hong Kong when the two of them took the first step in the game they had decided to play and handed each other the keys to their front doors. China: the last place she had seen her sister alive.

The pain subsided when they sat at the table; it always did, when the conversation began and she was once again Stephanie Andersen, making a foreign student feel at home. “Does speaking English all the time make you feel different about yourself?” she asked Lu. “Language seems to me to be so deeply a part of our identity: the way we view the world, the way we see ourselves, the subtleties of words that can't ever be perfectly translated . . . Would any of us be the same person if we spoke another language all the time?”

“You did, Mom,” Cliff said. “You told us you and Aunt Sabrina talked French when you were in school in Switzerland.”

“Yes, but only in classes and whenever we were with the faculty. In our rooms we always went back to English. I think if I were living in Switzerland now, or France, and speaking only French, I might be confused about my identity. Lu, what do you think?”

“I speak Chinese to other Chinese students at school. It is very important to me; it makes me feel I am not drowning in America and the sloppiness of English.”

“Sloppy!” Cliff exclaimed.

“So it seems to me. It is very casual, very fluid, like the American people. Chinese is very specific, very rigid, very clear at all times.”

“English isn't sloppy,” Cliff insisted.

“ ‘Sloppy' probably isn't the best word,” Garth said. “I'd think ‘casual' is better. But whatever English is, I'm glad Lu learned it, because if his research comes out as we hope it will, he has a brilliant future as a scientist.”

Lu gazed fixedly at Garth. “Thank you.”

There was a silence. “Can you tell us about it?” Sabrina asked.

“I think you would not find it interesting.”

“Make it interesting,” Garth said. “The other day you told me you want to do research when you go home, and run an institute of genetic engineering and teach. The most successful teachers are those who make their subject interesting for everyone, even people who aren't in their field.”

Lu gave a barely perceptible shrug. “I am interested in problems in immunology. The lymphocytes—the white blood cells—are some of the best understood cells in the body and this is a field where some very advanced research is being done. For my postdoctoral project I am working on autoimmune disease. This is when the body's B and T cell-”