A Tangled Web (42 page)

“I suppose.”

“You suppose what?”

“That she thinks I could do it without her.”

“And did you?”

Cliff nodded.

“It sounds to me as if your mother thinks you're pretty special, the way I do. Look, Cliff . . .” Garth put his arm around his son. “Why don't we relax around here? We've got a wonderful family, one of the best, and we live in a good house in a good town, and we have a lot of fun together. I guess if we looked for problems hard enough we'd find some, but why should we? Let the scientists look for problems; they thrive on them. All the scientists in the world would vanish in a cloud of bewilderment if suddenly there weren't any problems. But right here, in our house, in our family, I love you and your mother loves you and what we all ought to be doing is enjoying each other, not growling about
maybes
and
what-ifs.
What do you think?”

Cliff sighed. He was resting against his father, still picking at the scab on his knuckle. “Sounds okay to me. Are you going to invite him to dinner again?”

Frustration rose in Garth. Cliff felt it in the tension of his body and he shrank into himself.

“Much too hot,” Sabrina said, coming in with Penny close behind her. “I do like being outside, but there's a limit, and we've passed it.” She made a swift survey of Garth's arm around Cliff, and of their faces. “Did I miss something?”

“Cliff wondered if we'd be inviting Lu to dinner again,” Garth said, his voice carefully neutral.

“Oh.” Stubborn Cliff, Sabrina thought. A long talk with your father, a good one, it looks like, but everything you heard will have to be absorbed over time, and meanwhile you have to push and prod, at least once more. “Well, I'm sure we will,” she said matter-of-factly. “We'll probably have a farewell dinner for him when he's ready to go back to China. We always do that for visitors, don't we?”

She smiled at Cliff. “We'll have to be very nice to him, so he'll know we wish him all the success he's hoping for.” She poured lemonade for herself and Penny and decided to do a little pushing and prodding of her own. “I think you might be especially nice to him, Cliff, since you haven't been in the past.”

Cliff scowled.

“You're a host here, too, you know; this is your house as much as ours, and hosts have responsibilities to their guests.”

“Yeh, but—”

“And it's always a good idea to be extra nice to someone when you're pretty sure you won't ever see him again.”

“Oh.” The scowl faded. “Well, yeah. Sure.”

The back door opened and Mrs. Thirkell came in, struggling with shopping bags. “Cliff, could you—”

“Sure.” He jumped up. His face was bright. He pried two bags from her grasp. “How come you don't drive? It'd be a lot easier.”

“Because in this country you drive on the wrong side of
the street and it's unnatural and I want no part of it.” The telephone rang and she swooped down on it. “Put everything on the counter, Cliff, if you please.”

Garth stood and put his arm around Sabrina. “Thank you. Maybe, between the two of us, we've taken care of it.”

“Mommy,” Penny said, “did you forget? You were going to ask Daddy about the party tonight.”

“Party?” Garth asked.

“Penny's been invited to Carla Shelton's house and she doesn't know who else is going.”

“Shelton? Is that a new name? I haven't heard it.”

“They're new in town.”

“It's Carla's birthday,” Penny said. “Can I go? She lives in that big house that we walked past, the huge one that was for sale for such a long time.”

“But you don't know who's been invited, Penny, and we talked about that, remember?”

“My lady,” Mrs. Thirkell said, “Princess Alexandra is on the telephone.”

Sabrina looked at her uncomprehendingly. Alexandra?

I am standing in a kitchen in Evanston, Illinois, talking to my molecular-scientist husband and our eleven-year-old daughter about a party that perhaps she shouldn't go to, while our twelve-year-old son unloads groceries. What place does Princess Alexandra Martova have here, even on the telephone?

“My lady?”

“Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Thirkell.” She took the telephone into the breakfast room. “Alexandra? Where are you?”

“Chicago, the Fairchild. Honey, I know this is unforgivable, but we're just here overnight, and would you and your husband come down and have dinner with me? Antonio's doing business from now to midnight and I'd love to see you. I didn't know we'd be here; we were flying from London to somewhere—Detroit? Pittsburgh?—where Antonio had people to see, and all of a sudden he
told our pilot to go to Chicago instead. So I thought . . . You know, I miss Sabrina, and I thought how nice it would be to be with you for a while. Do you mind my saying that?”

“No.” Sabrina closed her eyes and for a moment was Sabrina Longworth again, in London, talking to Alexandra about plans to go to a restaurant that night, talking about the next party, the next country weekend, the next cruise . . . the next cruise, Max's yacht, a cruise off Monaco, an explosion . . .

“Honey? If you're too busy—”

“No, I'd like to see you. But why don't you come here? We'll have dinner and talk as long as we want.”

“At your house? But you don't live in Chicago.”

“I don't live in the next county, either. It's about twenty minutes by taxi. Or . . . don't tell me Antonio hasn't hired a limousine; that was always the first thing—” She stopped.
Why do I do that? I slip back so easily; you'd think by now
 . . .

“It is amazing to me,” Alexandra said into the silence, “the little things Sabrina told you about us. Yes, we've got a limo, and I'd love to come to your house. Eight o'clock?”

Sabrina smiled, thinking how long it had been since eight o'clock was the earliest anyone would consider having dinner. “Fine. I'll see you then.”

“
Mommy
,” Penny said. She had come into the breakfast room. “Can I go? Barbara's going.”

Sabrina switched her attention. “You didn't tell me that before.”

“I forgot.”

Garth had joined them and he and Sabrina exchanged a glance. “It sounds all right,” he said. “Vivian wouldn't let Barbara go if she was worried.”

Sabrina nodded slowly. “Ten o'clock, Penny.”

“
Ten o'clock!
Mommy, it's Friday night!”

“You're right. Ten-thirty.”

“Mommy!”

“That's the deadline, Penny, and you know it. When you're twelve you can add half an hour.”

“Barbara has till midnight.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Well . . . when she's home and they're having a party . . .”

“But when she goes out?”

“Ten-thirty,” Penny said reluctantly, then impulsively threw her arms around Sabrina. “It's okay, I don't mind. Can I wear my new dress?”

“Yes, but it needs hemming. Ask Mrs. Thirkell.”

Penny ran to Mrs. Thirkell and Garth and Sabrina turned to each other. “You're wonderful with her,” Garth said. “She wants restraints—they all do, really, especially and mostly the indulged ones—and somehow you've always known that.”

Always. Since September. At first it was easy to be strict because it's always easier with another woman's children, but then it was because they were mine and I worried about them and feared for them and, mostly, loved them.

“I love her. I love Cliff. I love you.” She put her arms around him and kissed him.

“What did Alexandra want?”

“An evening of talk. She's coming to dinner—at eight o'clock, which shows that she has no children. I can't imagine her in this house, but it seems she wants to reminisce. You don't have to stay and listen.”

“I thought I'd go to my office. It would be a quiet time to go over Lu's paper. Would you mind?”

“Of course not. Can you pick up Penny at ten-thirty, or be home so I can?”

“I'll pick her up.”

They kissed again and stood in each other's arms as the sun streamed into the breakfast room and the bright voices of their children danced around Mrs. Thirkell's directions and words of advice. My home, my place, my love, Sabrina thought. The thought was sharper because she had slipped into her London self as soon as she heard Alexandra's
voice, and for a moment it had seemed as if she held both lives in her hands and then, without hesitation or regret, had opened the London hand and let that life slip away.

*  *  *

“No, I won't live there ever,” she said to Alexandra that night. They were alone in the library, a pot of coffee and the last of Mrs. Thirkell's apple pie on the table before them. “That was Sabrina Longworth's life, and my life is here.”

Alexandra contemplated her. “You look gorgeous; night and day from the way you looked in London last time I saw you. Of course that was a ghastly time, that funeral, and then everybody gorging themselves at her house as if they were afraid they might never eat again . . .”

“Or be alive,” Sabrina said quietly. “People eat after funerals to convince themselves they're still alive and healthy, everything functioning, death unthinkable.”

“God, you sound just like her; that's something she'd say, in just that voice.” Alexandra tilted her head and studied her. “You look like her and you don't. After the funeral, when the hordes were descending on the food, I kept watching you, and I thought I was crazy because I was sure you were Sabrina. I would have laid bets on it. But now I wouldn't be so sure. You're . . . oh, I don't know . . . softer than Sabrina was. No, that's not it. Quieter, not as much on edge.”

“Happier, maybe.”

“Oh, I don't know. Sabrina had some worries—didn't we all—but she was pretty happy, you know; we had a good time.”

“I know.” Sabrina smiled at her, glad to be with her. She was tall and willowy, with light blue eyes that turned up at the corners and pale blond hair falling sleekly down her back. She wore cream-colored silk pants and a matching short-sleeved blouse, and emeralds and diamonds at her neck and ears and wrists. Sabrina pictured herself in
her French cotton sundress, with a Katherine Hayward amber necklace and earrings, and ballet slippers on her bare feet, and knew she was as perfectly dressed as Alexandra, but she also knew that she had lost the sleekness that radiated from Alexandra: a final polish that had been part of her London life when she was always on display. And I don't miss it, she thought, smiling at Alexandra. “You look perfect. Are you as happy as you look?”

“Honey, I find this hard to believe, but I am. I like building towns in Brazil; it's the first time in my life I've really felt useful. And I've fallen in love with Antonio, which is a good thing to do with your husband. I have Sabrina to thank for that; he learned a lot from her before she sent him packing.”

“Antonio learned . . . ?” Sabrina was amazed; he had seemed impervious to any influences when she knew him. But it was Stephanie who broke with him, and she must have done it with a kind of innocent finality that Sabrina never had been able to muster. “What did he learn?”

“That other people, even women, have their own ideas and their own agendas that are as legitimate as his. I don't mean it's a heartfelt belief all the time, only sporadically, so I need to remind him, but he's doing better, and I've never had as much fun as I'm having now. I wish Sabrina could have known.”

“She would have been glad for both of you.”

“So what are you going to do about London? I thought you'd merged your shops, there and here.”

“I did, but it isn't what I really want. It's incredible how much energy a house and a family take—”

“You're just finding that out? How old are your kids?”

“Eleven and twelve. No, of course I knew it, but everything doubled or tripled when I tried to juggle all of it with London. And when I thought about it, I realized I didn't want to be a juggler.”

“No, I see that. Sabrina would have tried it; she probably could have made it work. But you're more focused here; you're really wrapped up in all this. I'm sorry Garth
couldn't stay tonight; I like his looks. Smart and sexy, and, my God, the way he looks at you . . . every woman's dream. And I thought we'd have your kids, too; are your nights always this quiet?”

Sabrina laughed. “Hardly. Penny's at a party; Cliff is upstairs with a friend, playing computer games.”

“And Garth's at work.”

“He thought we'd like some time alone.”

“He was right, actually; I like this.” There was a pause. “I have a question.”

“I thought so.”

“You
thought
so?”

“I thought there was a reason you came to Chicago. Straight from London.”

“You know, you're really unbelievable. Sabrina used to do that: just about read my mind. It's disconcerting, honey; it was then and it is now.”

“But you still have a question.”

“I do. Is Ambassadors for sale?”

“The only one who could have told you that is Sidney Jones, and I asked him not to tell anyone yet.”

“Well, some lawyers have generous hearts. I called him because I knew he was your solicitor and I told him it has been my lifelong dream to own Ambassadors and I would be crushed if you sold it—”

“Your lifelong dream?”

“A small exaggeration. I've been dreaming about it for the past couple of months. Honey, I could run it—I'm back and forth from Brazil all the time—and I want to do it. I want something of my own, apart from Antonio, and also . . . it would be like keeping Sabrina with me. I'll need some experts to help me until I learn a lot more than I know now, but London is crawling with experts. And wouldn't you rather sell to me than to a stranger?”