A Tangled Web (61 page)

“Yes?”

“We've never talked about children.”

“Of course not. We were getting acquainted. And you were married. I never felt it was urgent, did you?”

“But you've never even said you like children. Or that you want them. I still don't know if you want them.”

“I've always liked them. I find them baffling and secretive, and it's a little daunting the way they often make one feel extraneous, but they're really quite fascinating and likable, even lovable. Why are you laughing at me?”

“Because you're so solemn, as if you're analyzing aliens. Children are just like us; they're just more open about everything. Even when they're secretive, they're more honest about it than we are.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Oh, that they want to be found out.” She had moved closer to the row of paintings pinned to the wall, so engrossed in them she was almost talking to herself. “They leave clues so others will stop them from doing something they know is wrong. Cliff made sure I'd find that radio and those other things in his room; he didn't even try to hide—”

She turned slowly. She was pale, her eyes as startled as those of a sleeper awakened by sudden light.

“Who is Cliff?” Léon asked.

“I don't know. It sounds as if he's . . . my son.”

“Or a brother?”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose . . . But he would have to be much younger.”

“That would not be so unusual.” He drew her to him. Her face was against his neck; he could feel her quick short breaths, the trembling of her slender body. He held her until the trembling subsided and she drew back.

“What if he's my son?”

“Then we have a greatly complicated situation. And I think we will know, one way or another, before much more time passes; it seems to me you are remembering more these days, are you not?”

She made a gesture of frustration. “As I said: flashes. Bits and pieces.”

“But from them you will build a past; one day they will all fall into place, like the chips of marble an artist embeds into a mosaic. Each is valuable but meaningless; then suddenly it is part of a whole and tells a story. Do you believe this?”

“Yes.” And, hearing him say it, she did. One day she would know.

“But we will not let ghosts and fancies interfere,” he said, and kissed her again. “We are going to make our own life, and take what comes each day and conquer it. We will talk about having children, because of course I want them. I never did before, but now I do, and I think that must be why I made these paintings. Often I find my dreams on paper before I know I have dreamed them. What do you think?”

“Yes.” She felt herself curl up inside, as if she had told a lie, and she knew she should not do this; she had no right to take Léon into the emptiness that was always with her, no matter how happy and content she was. But she loved him and he was her whole world, and so she kissed him and said, “Yes, I want to have our children.”

“And Robert will marry us here, in Vézelay. My love?” His face was close to Stephanie's; he kissed her almost chastely. “Will you marry me? Do you know, I have never asked you that.”

“Yes,” Stephanie said once again: “Yes, yes, I want to marry you. But . . . not yet. We don't know what I'll remember. We could wait a few months, a year, even more; what difference does it make as long as we're living together?”

“I want to marry you,” he said quietly. “I don't want to wait. I don't want to live with you in a way that makes it impossible for us to build a family. I want everything with you, Sabrina, not just a living arrangement. I will not force you, but I feel strongly about this.”

And that was enough. Whatever lay ahead, they would
share it. “Then we should invite Robert to Vézelay,” she said.

“We'll call him tonight.”

He turned off the light switches and locked the door. They walked down the narrow stairway to the dark sidewalk, faintly lit, and made their way down the middle of the deserted street to their gate. Léon pushed it open and they walked into the courtyard, where one candle still burned on the olivewood table where they had eaten their dinner. Golden light spilled from the windows of their house, turning to gold the wisteria vines climbing around them, the bougainvillaea on the stone wall, the single rose on their dinner table, their faces as they turned to each other. “I love this house,” Stephanie said. “I love you. Thank you for giving me all this.”

He gave a small laugh. “I'm the one who is grateful. Once my only center was painting; everything else revolved on the periphery, casual, not essential. You've given me everything that is essential. You've made me complete.”

He unlocked the heavy wooden front door and they went inside and up the stairs. “The dishes,” Stephanie murmured.

“Terribly important,” Léon said dryly, his long thin fingers unbuttoning her white shirt. “I greatly fear they will wait for us.”

They lay on the bed and came together with a passion that had been growing since they left Cavaillon. Nothing they had known before was as powerful as the love they shared and the response of their bodies in their own home, together in a small town where no one knew them. When, much later, they lay side by side, smiling at each other in the lamplight, Stephanie kissed him and said, “I think I could be content with this and nothing else. If I never know any more about myself than I know now, it might be enough.”

“Not forever, I think. But it doesn't matter. Whatever you discover, I can't imagine it changing what we have.
Something this powerful can't be shattered easily. Or at all. Good heavens, is that the doorbell? No one in Vézelay is up this late.”

Stephanie felt a stab of fear. “Could someone have followed us?”

“No, no, there is no chance. You know that. Robert's friend has been watching your house; no stranger has been near it. And we left from my house in Goult, not from Cavaillon. Perhaps it is a peddler; shall we ignore it?”

“Yes.” But when the bell rang again and then again, Stephanie unaccountably began to tremble. “It's something else. Something . . . something . . . oh, what's wrong with me?”

Léon sat up. “You're afraid. I'll go.”

“No, I'm not afraid, that's not it. It's just . . .” She leaped out of bed. “I have to go. It's for me.”

His eyebrows rose. “How do you know that?”

“I don't know.” She pulled on a silk robe of peacock blue and green that Léon had bought for her in Avignon, and ran her fingers through her long hair. “I'll be right back.”

“I'm coming too. Wait for me. Where did I put my robe?”

“I think it's in the other closet. It's all right, Léon; don't bother. I'll only be a minute.”

She ran down the stairs. She heard Léon go into the other room and open the closet and pictured him fumbling through clothes they had not yet completely organized. At the bottom of the stairs she crossed the small foyer and opened the door. “Yes, what can I—”

She was looking at herself.

“Stephanie!” said the vision. “Oh, Stephanie, thank God—”

A long scream broke from her, shattering the quiet night. And then the world went black.

“S
abrina!”

Léon, at the bend in the stairs, heard Stephanie's scream and hurtled the rest of the way down and into the foyer. In the dim light he saw Stephanie on the floor and a woman bending over her, her long chestnut hair falling over her face.
Just like Sabrina's hair
 . . . The thought came and was gone as Léon shoved her aside. “Get away from her!” He took Stephanie into his arms and lifted her. He heard the woman say, “Léon, please, let me help,” and thought, as fleetingly as before.
How the hell does she know my name?
before he carried Stephanie into the living room and laid her on the couch.

“Sabrina, my love, my love.” He sat with her, cradling her against his chest. And then he looked up at the woman, who had followed him, and felt his body go rigid with shock. “My God. My God. Who the devil—” The woman reached out to touch Stephanie's hair. “Get away from her! Leave her alone!”

Leave
us
alone, he thought, because he was filled with fear. Sabrina in his arms; Sabrina standing beside him.
The room seemed to tilt; he could not think. And so he denied the other woman and bent over Stephanie, seeing only her, murmuring to her. “Wake up, Sabrina, wake up, my love; it will be all right. Whatever it is . . .” He breathed in the scent of her hair and brushed his lips across her cheek, watching her eyelids flutter. He felt he was holding his whole world in his arms, this woman who was the core of his life, and he was filled with terror because he knew her past had come into their home and could take her from him.

How lightly he had talked of it! How easily he had told her she would remember everything and then they would deal with it together. Fool, fool, fool, to be so naive. Now, at this moment, he knew that the past could never be so casually dismissed: it could always twist and shatter the present, and only a fool would think otherwise.

“My love, my love, it will be all right.” Like a child trying to ward off invisible dangers in the scary corners of his room, he repeated it. “You'll be all right.
We'll
be all right.” And, like a child, he added to himself,
We will, we will, we will.

“Léon, please, please let me . . .”

The woman was standing close by, reaching toward Stephanie,
yearning
toward her, Léon thought, and he could deny her no longer. He looked up. “You're her sister.”

“Yes.”

“She didn't know she had one. And a twin . . .” He stared at her, his artist's eye comparing them. “It's uncanny. I could have mistaken you for her.”

She nodded gravely. “Many people have.” Once again she reached out, and this time Léon did not stop her as she took Stephanie's hand in hers and bent to kiss her. And then, suddenly, as her lips touched the warmth of Stephanie's cheek, her legs buckled and she sank to her knees beside the couch and laid her cheek on Stephanie's.

Stephanie, Stephanie
 . . . She wept and it seemed she could not stop. She looked at Stephanie through her tears
and gently brushed her hair back from her face. I did that before, in the funeral home, a year ago.
I laid my head on the side of Stephanie's coffin and wept in that awful dark room until I thought I would tear apart. How can she be here now?

“I don't know, I don't know,” she murmured. She kissed Stephanie's forehead, her cheek, her closed eyes. “So wonderful . . . magical . . .” She looked at Léon. “I thought she was dead.”

Instinctively he had tightened his arms as if to keep Stephanie to himself, safe from even the touch of the past. But the past was here: the past was this woman, kneeling beside the couch, her hand on her sister's hair, her body leaning toward her as if desperate to take her from Léon into her own embrace.

“Is she married?” he burst out. “Does she have children?”

Sabrina froze. Her hand fell to her side; she swayed a little, away from him. Her mouth opened, then closed. The words would not come.

Stephanie stirred and Léon bent to her. “My love, my love . . .”

Her eyes opened. She saw only his face. “Léon? I thought Sabrina was here. I saw her and everything came back . . . it was like a flood . . . I couldn't stand it; it hurt. Isn't she here?”

“Sabrina? But, my love, you're Sabrina.”

“Stephanie,” Sabrina said.

Stephanie turned. A low cry broke from her. She wrenched free of Léon's embrace, and then she and Sabrina were in each other's arms.

Two identical faces, wet with tears, pressed together as they embraced so tightly it seemed they had merged into one. They held each other for a long time, not moving, silent tears falling softly in the silence of the house, the silence of the night.

Quietly Léon moved away, through an archway that led to a small library. He could see them sitting on the couch,
but he stayed in the shadows and watched them. He could not believe it even now: two stunning women, identical in every way, even to the curve of their arms and fingers as they embraced, the lashes on their closed eyes, their voices murmuring each other's names, saying they loved each other.

Stephanie, he thought. Her name is Stephanie. But Max called her Sabrina, and so we all did. And they were speaking English. American English, not British. Effortlessly, without an accent,
Sabrina—no,
her name is Stephanie—
was speaking to her sister in English. American, he thought. She's American. I never guessed.

“I love you,” Sabrina said. “I couldn't bear it that you were gone; I've missed you so much.”