Deceptions (20 page)

But it was a new day - Wednesday, her birthday, she suddenly remembered - a day when, in London, she might have felt melanchoiy at being thirty-two years old and alone, wondering what lay ahead. But today, in the midst of an adventure and a family, she was excited and full of energy. She sprang up, showered and was in the kitchen studying Stephanie's morning checklist when she heard the rest of the family beginning to stir.

But before she knew it they were in the kitchen, and her carefully planned procedures fell apart. Everything had to be done at once: fixing breakfast* making lunches, finding schoolbooks and lost pencils, quizzing Cliff for his daily spelling test, helping Penny sew on a button. Sabrina felt she was stumbling over herself, searching for dishes and utensils, forgetting to put jam on the table, leaving napkinsout of the lunch boxes.

'Didn't the paper come?' Garth asked.

•I don't know,' Sabrina said, spreading mustard on Penny's sandwich.

'Mommy! You know I hate mustard!' cried Penny. *I won't eat it!'

'You didn't look outside?' asked Garth.

'No.' / didn't know about the paper. Stephanie told me about the mustard, but I forgot. She tried to scrape the bread clean, then gave up and took a fresh slice.

Garth brought the paper from the front porch and began to read. Sabrina thought he was angry because she haii't waited up for him last night, but there was no time or privacy to bring it up. In a hectic half hour they were all gone-Garth with his briefcase. Penny and Cliff with books and lunches - and the house settled with a sigh into peaceful stillness.

Sabrina felt triumphant. She had done it: gotten them fed, organized and out of the house on schedule without arousing suspicion. She was bursting to tell someone: look what I did; I took care of a family, and I've never done it before. But there was no one to tell, not even Stephanie. 'You're proud of what?' Stephanie would ask. 'I do that every morning of the year without giving it a thought.'

But still Sabrina was proud of it. Even though no one in the family cared what she did. They hadn't even remembered her birthday. How could three people all forget a birthday? It doesn't matter, she thought. I'll make my own celebration. Sight-seeing in Chicago. And I'll buy myself a present.

She cleaned up the kitchen and decided with a glance at the downstairs rooms that they could wait a day for dusting. Upstairs, she made the beds. In the study. Garth had folded his bed back into a couch. Sabrina opened it. The sheets and blanket were neatly tucked in. He plans to sleep here again,

she thought, and felt a flash of pique; didn't he find her desirable at all? She laughed at herself. Evidently not. For whatever reason - that quarrel Stephanie assured her they'd settled? - he didn't want her. And a good thing, too.

Ignoring the mess in Cliffs room, she dressed to go out. She put on a navy linen skirt, rummaged through the closet until she found a bright yellow silk blouse and then chose from Stephanie's jewelry box a stunning necklace of opaque amber glass in large, roughcut chunks, so different from the rest of Stephanie's jewelxy that she wondered where it came from. It was the kind of necklace she would buy for herself, and against the silk bloiise it glowed like an autumn day. Pulling on a cream-colored linen blazer, she left the house.

In the glove compartment of the car she found a map and followed it to Lake Shore Drive and south to Chicago. She drove slowly, admiring the gardens of Lincoln Park on her right and the wide beaches and blue-green water of Lake Michigan on her left. The skyscrapers of the city appeared ahead, stark against the blue sky, and when she pulled into a parking lot they loomed above her, a mixture of the sculptured facades of the past and the sleek glass and steel of the present.

More than a thousand years younger than London, Chicago was loud and brash, everywhere selling itself. Sabrina felt homesick for London's privacy, its secretive closed-in mews and quiet storefronts, the careful distance maintained by people on the street.

But she liked Chicago for the aggressiveness that forced itself on visitors, insisting, 'If you don't like me now, I'll make you like me.' London welcomed visitors with civility and friendliness but also said clearly, 'If you like me, fine; if not, I'll survive nicely, thank you.'

I like them both, Sabrina thought. And I feel comfortable here. But why not? I live in Evanston. She walked on until she came to Grant Park and the Art Institute, where she climbed the broad steps between the two great lions guarding the glass entrance, to look for the exhibits Stephanie had urged her to see.

'Stephanie! What good luck to meet you here! I didn't know you were back from China!'

A tall woman* slouching, probably from trying to look shorter, with chestnut hair, large brown eyes behind round tortoisesheil glasses, pale lips. Wearing a plain brown suit and brown lizard shoes. Too much brown, Sabrina thought. She should wear red. At least a touch of red. She gave a friendly half-smile. 'I got back Monday night.*

*You look marvelous! Was it a great trip?'

'Wonderful.' She paused. 'How are you?'

'Better than when you last saw me. I've had a reprieve; they postponed the execution.' Sabrina looked blank. 'Sony. Ghoulish humor; I use it to stave off despair. I meant I'm still on the faculty. Didn't Garth tell you? After he went over Webster's head, the vice president decided my case needed study, so I can stay for another year.'

'I'm glad,' Sabrina said. Another year? Why would they fire her? And why did Garth go over Webster's head, whoever Webster was?

'Glad is one word. Ecstatic is another. Hans just quit his job, which means I'm the only breadwinner on the premises. Still, to be safe,' I'm applying at other schools for next fall.' Her voice suddenly dipped on the last two words. 'I don't want to leave, you know. We just bought the house, the children are settled in school and I 've been so happy teaching here—'

Impulsively, Sabrina put her hand on the woman's arm. 'Why don't we have lunch together? You can talk about—'

'No, no. I'm trying not to talk. I'll become a bore and my friends will run the other way when I appear. Anyway, I'm due back for a meeting at four. I'll call; may I? Perhaps we will have lunch one day. I've always wanted to know you better.'

•I'd like that.'

'Then I will.' She turned to go, a brown, drooping figure. 'One thing,' she said, turning back. 'I don't need to tell you, because of course you know, but I want to anyway, how wonderful Garth is. He's supportive and encouraging, and he listens in a way that makes others feel special. I don't know where I'd be without him. Will you tell him how grateful I am? Whenever I try he cuts me off. I'll call soon about lunch. You're a lot like Garth: a good listener.'

Wandering through the exhibits, Sabrina thought about Garth. He listens in a way that makes others feel special.

On the ground floor she found a room of Early American quilts; some of them had a small but distinct initial in a comer of the design. She smiled, remembering her S on the floor of Alexandra's house, and thought of Garth. Supportive, the woman had said, and encouraging.

In the Art Institute store, she bought herself a birthday present, a lavishly illustrated book on Venice. Then, still thinking about Garth, she drove home, stopping on the way to pick up the pictures she had taken in China.

Garth. Three Garths: the indifferent husband Stephanie had described, a professional who would go over someone's head for a colleague, and the warm, humorous, companionable man Sabrina had hved with since Monday night. Which Garth was real? She didn't know. And she wouldn't have time to find out.

At home. Penny and Cliff buzzed conspiratorially while she made hamburgers and french fries for their dinner before she and Garth went to the Goldners'. Garth came home carrying a white box, which he placed like a mysterious centerpiece on the breakfast-room table. When he kissed Sabrina's cheek he touched her necklace, smiling with pleasure.

They all sat together as Penny and Cliff ate. 'You haven't talked to Mrs Casey,* Penny said to Sabrina.

'I'll make an appointment,' Sabrina promised.

Garth put up his hand for silence, and, more or less together, he and Penny and Cliff broke into a lusty, off-key 'Happy Birthday'. Sabrina felt a rush of happiness: they hadn't forgotten. She felt the family close about her. It was a new feeling. When she was growing up, her father's career had fragmented the family; later, Denton had refused to settle into one. On Cadogan Square she lived alone, luxuriously but without the embrace of people loving her, being part of her. Her face flushed and she was smiling. Until an inner voice whipped across her thoughts. They're singing to Stephanie, not you.

'Open the box!' cried Penny, bouncing in her chair.

Untying the ribbon, Sabrina found three boxes inside the

outer one. The largest held a cake with an elaborately flowered heart surrounding a rosy S. The second, imperfectly wrapped, contained two round, smooth stones, one painted with her portrait, the other with a baggy clown.

She held the cool stones in her hands. The portrait was remarkably fine, the clown a rough caricature, both lovingly painted, varnished, wrapped in tissue paper and tied with gold cord. I wish they were for me, Sabrina thought.

'They're paperweights,* said Cliff worriedly. 'Don't you like them?'

Sabrina pulled the children to her and held them close. They're wonderful and I thank you. I'm going to show them off to everyone.'

Penny beamed. *I could make more, if people wanted them. Like at your ofQce.'

'So could I,' Cliff said. 'But Penny's is better.'

'It's more artistic,' Sabrina agreed. 'But yours would be a fine gift for puffed-up lords and ladies who don't know what silly clowns they often seem to the rest of us.*

Penny and Cliff laughed.

'Lords and ladies?' Garth asked.

'Aren't you going to open Dad's present?' asked Cliff.

Thinking quickly as she unwrapped the slender box, Sabrina said, 'Some of the rich people I met when I was ddng estate sales reminded me of those lords and ladies we met in England at - at Sabrina*s wedding. Not all of them; just the ones who think money makes them better than other people.' Opening the box, she lifted out a porcelain bluejay about five inches high. She stared at It. Meissen. But how could Garth afford—? She turned it over and saw the mark on the underside: one of Meissen's own copies of his eighteenth-century originals.

'It's for your collection!' Permy said. 'To go with the ones Aunt Sabrina sent you. Isn't it beautiful? We helped pick it out.*

'Very beautiful,' Sabrina said to Garth. 'And very special. Thank you.' No one could know that a porcelain bird reminded her of problems waiting to be solved; they were Sabrina Longworth's problems, not Stephanie Andersen's, and for Stephanie, Garth, like the children, had chosen a gift

with love. I wish it were really for me. she thought again, and then it was time to go to the Goldners' for dinner.

On the white leather couch in the Goldners' living room, Sabrina handed around her Chinese photographs and ulked about her trip. She was wound as tightly as a spring, trying to act at home with the Goldners and Martin and Linda Talvia - Stephanie and Garth's friends for twelve years- who had hugged her and welcomed her back and wished her a happy birthday, and who were closer than many families. She had given Dolores and Linda the silk scarves Stephanie had bought for them in Shanghai, and now she watched herself as she talked, and she watched the others watching her. As if she were at a play.

And that's just what it is, she thought, hearing herself describe porcelain factories and the jagged mountains of Guilin, shrouded in mist. It had been a play from her first stage fright in the airport. But now, strangely, though she was still on stage, she was also in the audience.

She was both Stephanie and Sabrina. One, sitting with her husband and friends in the Goldners' starkly modem living room, all leather, chrome and glass; the other, coolly, critically observing from a distance everything the other woman did.

•Wonderful pictures,' Martin Talvia said, leaning forward, reminding her, as he had done at that long-ago backyard barbecue, of a tall, thin, pipe-smoking crane. 'Did you take them all yourself?'

'We too^L turns,' she murmured, leafing through the ones in her hand.

'Who took turns?' asked Linda.

'Oh, a few of us,' Sabrina said quickly, but then she firoze as she came upon three pictures Nicholas Blackford had taken in Hong Kong of her and Stephanie in their matching Shanghai silk dresses. Identical faces, identical figures. If Garth found out they had been together, how long would it be before he began to wonder about her mistakes and come to an obvious conclusion?

'What else?' cried Linda gaily, and reached for the pictures

in her hand. Sabrina snatched them back. 'HeyV Linda said. She laughed uncomfortably. 'What did 1 do?'

Sabrina's knuckles were white from clenching the pictures, and her face grew hot with embarrassment.'I'm sorry. These are... they're pictures I tookthat aren't any good. I'm ashamed of them, I guess.'

'You're too sensitive, Stephanie,' Dolores said. 'We could forgive you a bad photograph or two.'

'But there were three,' Sabrina said, making her voice light. 'Linda, I'm sorry. Sometime when I'm feeling less sensitive, I'll show you my failures.' But you just saw one, she thought. She was trembling. She had to think faster, be better prepared, never let herself relax; there were too many ways she could be caught - and ruin everything.

'Let's eat,' said Dolores, and led the way to the dining room, ablaze with flowers from her garden. Sabrina stood in the doorway, overwhelmed by the magnificence of the displays, each a work of art, from the delicate centerpiece of frail branches of mountain ash heavy with orange berries to huge baskets on the floor and sideboard bursting with chrysanthemums, late snapdragons and sprays of glossy red maple leaves. Olivia Chasson had always boasted of her flower arranger; she'd fire him in a minute and steal Dolores if she saw these, Sabrina turned to her. 'They're the most incredible—'