A Tangled Web (77 page)

“How much has changed if you could lie to me for the past two weeks?” He heard himself fling the words at her and wondered why he could not let it go, why he kept harping on it.
I love you. I know you love me, I know you get trapped by Stephanie's demands. I need you; I don't want to live a life without you.
But still his anger fueled him and the harsh words poured out. He turned from the pain in Sabrina's eyes and looked at Stephanie. “You both think you can pick up wherever you want, whatever you've done, and go right on, like kids who break a window and then pretend it wasn't their fault. But this time you're not picking up where you left off; you can't blame someone else for what happened. I don't give a damn what you do with your life, but Penny and Cliff won't be part of it.”

“You can't say that! I'll fight you for them!”

“With what? Your passionate desire for a fling in London? A year away from them? They're staying with me. You won't see them again. Neither one of you will see them again.”

“Oh, don't keep going on like that,” Sabrina said angrily. “Be angry, hold on to your anger if that's all you can do, but you don't know the whole story and you can't even think rationally about what to do until you've heard it. Why did you ignore Stephanie when she told you she'd lost her memory? Didn't you believe her? Or don't you want to hear anything that might change your mind about us? All we're asking is that you listen to us. Will you do
that? If nothing else, it will satisfy your scientific curiosity.”

He smiled, then caught himself. He looked at his watch. A little after noon; his children were still being entertained by the magician. And by Alexandra. Our guardian angel, he thought.

“It won't take too much of your time,” Sabrina said coldly.

He nodded. “All right.”

“Let's sit out here.” Her voice had changed again. Now that she knew that the whole story would come out, she let herself feel Garth's sense of betrayal and vulnerability in the unstable world he had discovered when he came to their hotel room, and her voice shook with her love for him and her desire to protect him. “It's so beautiful; the terrace is so wonderful . . . and I'll get us something to eat; I think we need it.” She picked up the telephone and asked for wine and coffee. “And lunch,” she added, and ordered seafood salad for three. “I don't know if we'll eat it; probably not. Stephanie and I mostly send our food back these days: we haven't finished a meal in so long I can't remember it; I suppose if we were on a diet it would be . . . But we're not; we're just . . . Well, anyway, we can try.” She was talking too fast and too much, but she was so nervous she thought she would fly apart. Garth had slowly followed them to the terrace, and as he did, she felt she could barely grasp the fact that the three of them were together, their roles so oddly skewed, all the secrets exposed, the future still unknown.
Except that Garth may, at any time, tell me to leave so he and Stephanie can work out how they'll share their children.

Stephanie sat on the edge of a chair near Sabrina. Garth pushed a chair farther away from them before sitting down. “Well?”

“Max got me off the ship,” Stephanie said without preamble, and she told the whole story in a level voice, now and then looking at Sabrina, never at Garth, mostly gazing past both of them at the nearby steeple and at tall
thunderheads building on the horizon. Rain tonight, she thought absently even as she talked on, occasionally turning to Sabrina to ask her to take part, but for the most part speaking by herself for almost an hour.

When the waiter brought their order, Garth directed him to the terrace and, when he had left, closed and locked the door. That was their only distraction; the rest of the time Stephanie talked, and as she told her story, all the parts of her life came together: her years growing up with Sabrina, college, marriage to Garth, the birth of her children, her brief time in London pretending to be Sabrina, the months in France with Max, Robert, Jacqueline, and then Léon. And she saw herself standing outside the café, watching her children with Alexandra; she felt again the warm window beneath her palms, saw Penny and Cliff waver through her tears. It was the first time she had seen everything at once, and she began to realize that there were some parts of her that she could never recapture.

When she finished her story, they sat in silence. One of the bottles of wine was empty; the coffeepot on its warmer was half full. The seafood salad was untouched.

“But there's something else,” Stephanie said at last, looking at her hands, clasped in her lap. “I'm having trouble making sense of who I am. I used to know, when I lived in Evanston, but I didn't like myself very much; that was why I wanted Sabrina's life. I wanted to be her a lot more than she wanted to be me; I really believed that I could put on a new life like a new coat, and then I'd be everything I wanted to be.”

“And were you?” Garth asked. It was the first time he had spoken, and when Sabrina heard in his voice the curiosity of the scientist, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Stephanie's glance flickered toward him, then away. “It seemed that way. I knew I was only playing a part, but I was almost perfect because I'd been longing for it for so many years, and because Sabrina was inside me somehow, helping me without my realizing it.” For a brief moment she looked directly at Garth. “I know we did a
terrible thing, and I'm sorry, but for a little while I was so happy. I forgot how overwhelming the world had seemed every morning when I woke up; I felt I could do anything. But of course I knew, underneath, that I couldn't; I knew I was only playing a part, that I couldn't really be Sabrina because I'd left too much behind that I really cared about.” Her glance slid past Garth's eyes again. “I kept wanting more and more adventures because I thought that was the way to stay happy, to forget the person I'd been, the one I didn't like. So I held on to being Sabrina; I couldn't let go. But, underneath, I knew I couldn't ever really step into Sabrina's life because of everything I'd left behind. I'd had so much, much more than I'd realized, and then I'd abandoned it, but it was always there, whatever else I did.”

“You got what you wanted,” Garth said, still with the absorbed air of the scientist. “You wanted to forget who you were, and you did.”

Stephanie stared at him. “Yes, but I didn't plan to forget. The doctors told me I was repressing my life because I felt guilty about something I'd done. And they were right, but that didn't help me remember. But now, when I do remember, I don't seem to be anyone. I mean, I don't seem to fit in anywhere.”

Sabrina took her hand. “You will. You haven't had enough time to get used to remembering.”

“No, it's more than that.” She took her hand from Sabrina's and turned her empty glass between her fingers. “I told you the other day that you kept on being yourself all the time you were being me. This whole year, you've been both of us. You knew what you wanted, you knew where you belonged and you trusted yourself to shape your future. I guess most people know those things and don't wonder about them at all, as if they've built a house and furnished it and they can go from room to room with their eyes closed, they know it so well, and they know it belongs to them and no one else, so it becomes a reflection
of them and they see themselves every time they walk in the door.”

She looked again at Garth and saw an intense interest in his eyes. For the first time since their early years together, she felt the stirrings of pleasure that she had caught Garth Andersen's attention. “But when I was in London all I wanted was to be Sabrina: I kept pushing Stephanie Andersen away. And then, in France, I was Sabrina Lacoste, and I made a life there, as whole as I could make it. So many lives, so many feelings, all mixed up inside me and I've lost whoever I was and I don't know who I am now. Or where I belong.”

A wren flew down to the terrace wall, pecked at a stone, hopped a few exploratory feet, and then, with a rush of small wings, flew off.

“All I have are my children. Don't you see? You've got to understand this: they're all I'm really sure of! I think about them and everything seems clear. I know they could give me what I don't have: I'd be their mother, so I'd know who I am, and we'd make a life together, and I'd know where I belong.”

Sabrina leaned forward to pour from the second bottle of wine. She waited a moment to steady her hand before she refilled their glasses. “I thought it was the parents' job to help children find out who they are and where they belong.”

Stephanie flushed. “That's a cruel thing to say. I'm trying to be honest.”

“So am I. Penny and Cliff already have what you're looking for. They've learned a lot in the past year. Or haven't you noticed?”

“Yes, I've noticed! Damn you, damn you, you know I have!” She stared angrily at Sabrina through sudden tears. “They're so different; how could I miss it? They're . . . stronger than they were.” Her voice faltered. “Bolder. More adventurous.” And then she spoke aloud the words that had been gnawing at her since she had been with her children that morning. “Like you.”

“Like both of us,” Sabrina said quickly. “You brought them up for all those years before I got there.”

“No. You know what I mean. All those years I envied you, it wasn't just for the life you led, it was because you were the one who reached out for adventures. You helped me come along when we were young, you even led me, and I was grateful . . . but it isn't easy being grateful. And then when I was living in Evanston, I'd get angry with myself for holding back when I knew you would have gone out of your way to meet somebody new or handle a problem or face a crisis instead of running from it. That's what you've given to Penny and Cliff. They won't grow up feeling angry at themselves for being afraid of adventures. They'll forge ahead. Like you.”

For the first time, Garth felt a stab of pity for Stephanie. He knew she was right: in one year with Sabrina his children had grown more eager to rush forward and embrace whatever might lie ahead, more confident of their future. They were no smarter or nicer than they had been when they lived with Stephanie, but they were more able to take on the world. And Stephanie knew it.

Sabrina was conscious of Garth observing them. It was the first time, she thought, that an outsider had watched them work out the tensions and love and unfathomable closeness between them. But then she caught herself. An outsider? Her beloved Garth; Penny and Cliff's father. Sitting back in his chair, looking relaxed and casually interested, as Sabrina had seen him look many times when he was in fact intently listening, weighing new information, analyzing it and incorporating it into his world. There was nothing sloppy or careless about her beloved Garth: he was passionately curious about everything and, except when angry, willing to listen to anything, but it was facts he trusted; he relied on emotions only when they did not create havoc with an orderly world. He was not an outsider; he was part of whatever order she and Stephanie would create from the confusion they had wrought. He belonged with them; they were all part of each other now.

As if she were looking down from above, she saw the three of them held together as if by the strands of a spiderweb, invisible until the sun struck it at the right angle. Then, briefly, the connections and strength of the bonds became clear. Three of us, she thought, sitting together in Paris beneath a brilliant sun and a clear blue sky and a little wren who keeps swooping by to check us out: three people caught in a drama infinitesimally small on the world's stage but so enormous within the boundaries of our lives that it overwhelms us with its possibilities for happiness or despair. We are being very civilized about it all. But we are very frightened.

As the silence stretched out, Stephanie jumped up and stood a little distance away, leaning against the terrace wall, her arms folded protectively across her chest. “You've all changed, you know; it's obvious. You're not as hard as you used to be,” she said to Garth, “even with all the terrible things you've said today. The way I remember you, your face always looked so stern, as if you were about to give a lecture or scold somebody. And, it's funny, but you seem more sure of yourself, too, like Penny and Cliff. I don't know what that means: maybe it means you've discovered there's more to life than genetics.”

She saw him look at Sabrina; she saw their eyes meet and hold. “I guess,” she sighed. “I guess that's it. And you're in love,” she said to Sabrina. “I've never seen you when you really loved someone. I thought you loved Denton when you married him, but that was just excitement, wasn't it? You're different now. As if everything is in the right place and you can reach out beyond yourself and . . . soar.”

Sabrina smiled. “I like that. It's what I thought about you, in Vézelay.”

“Oh. I seemed that way to you? It seems like such a long time ago.”

She paced with short, nervous steps, trailing her hand along the stone wall. “Maybe I was that way. I think I felt
that way before I remembered everything. Then I got so confused . . .”

In the corner of the terrace she turned and faced them. “You've made a new family,” she said, almost accusingly. “You've all changed so much, especially Penny and Cliff; they're so . . . oh, God,
they're so happy.
And I don't know if . . . if it would be best for them . . . I'm not sure . . .” She closed her eyes. “I don't know if I can do this,” she whispered.

“Stephanie.” Sabrina began to stand up to go to her, but Garth leaned forward and put a hand on her arm. She turned and met his eyes again, and in that moment, with the warmth of his hand holding them together, she chose to stay with him and let Stephanie find her own way, alone.