Deceptions (64 page)

Garth nodded. 'That's what scientists say.'

'Dad.' Cliff squirmed in his chair. 'Dad, you want her to come back, don't you?'

'It's ... complicated. Cliff. I can't give you a simple answer.'

Cliff squeezed his eyes shut. 'Bullshit.'

'Now, that's enough! I don't talk to you that way. and I expect the same courtesy from you. Do you think I like this? Damn it, things are happening that I can't help. Can you begin to understand that? If you're old enough to tell your father he's talking bullshit, you're old enough to listen when I tell you that I can't control everything that happens to me.'

'Well, you can't blame us if you screw up your life!' Shocked at his own words, Cliff diew back. 'I'm sorry, Dad I'm sorry, i didn't mean it.'

Garth felt the ground pull out from beneath him. His children never spoke to him like this; Stephanie wouldn't allow it. Stephanie held them all together. Now things fell apart - the center did not hold. He started to say something, then let it go. He pushed back his chair, wanting a drink.

'Dad?'

'Yes, Cliif.'

'Do you love Mom?'

In the silence they could hear the humming of the electric clock and the refrigerator. 'Doyou know,' Garth said, 'when we were married, your mother was so beautiful everyone stared at her; they thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. And when we moved here and you were bom—'

'Why won't you answer?' Cliff shouted. 'We love her; how come you don't? She loves you too. What's wrong with you? Oh, shit.' He rubbed his eyes. 'I guess I don't want to talk about it. I'm going to write to Mom. I suppose you don't like that, either.'

We're going to cut her out of our lives. Garth thought. That means no conununication. He kept his voice even. 'Maybe we should leave her alone, let her have some time without any contact from us. Maybe that's what she wants.'

'How do you know? You don't care what she wants. Anyway, you told me scientists shouldn't make decisions until they have as many facts as possible. Shouldn't Mom have facts, too?'

•What facts?'

'That we love her,' Cliff said reprovingly. 'And we want her to come back. And,' he added in a burst of inspiration, 'if she doesn't come back, we'll go to London and get her!'

Crushed between his anger and love for his children. Garth tried to speak, and no words came out.

'Well,' Cliff said, emboldened by his father's silence. 'I don't get this whole thing, but I'm writing to Mom. Penny and 1 can mail our letters together. I might even call her one of these days. Out of my allowance.'

'We'll talk about it again tomorrow. Cliff. All right?'

'Yeah, but we're still going to write to her tonight.'

Garth nodded. 'I'll be up to say good night to both of you later.'

Bitch, he thought, and repeated it, the vicious word like a hammer blow as he sat alone and poured himself a drink. Look what you've done to them. They'd be betteroff if they knew you were dead.

If who was dead? he asked himself. And answered unclearly: I don't know.

Nat called him in his office the next day. 'Just heard you were back. Good meeting?'

'I didn't go. A change in schedule.'

'And Stephanie? Did her schedule change, too?'

'No'.

'So she's in London now?'

'Yes.'

'When does she get back?'

'She doesn't.'

'She—^What does that mean?'

'She's staying there. Nat, I don't want to talk about it.'

'So I gather. Dolores will ask me questions.'

'If you'll forgive my saying it, Dolores's questions are your problem, not mine.'

'An indisputable fact. I have a couple of days off next week; we could go ice-fishing.'

'You are inventing a couple of days off.'

'So I am. But my patients will survive. Shall we take some time in the wilds and perhaps get a new perspective on the world?'

'I don't want to leave Penny and Cliff.'

'For a day or two?'

'Nat, let me get used to being a single parent.'

There was a pause. 'Right. Then how about dinner with us? Dolores will ask that, too.'

'You come here. I'll cook something in a wok. Did you know that almost any idiot can make an acceptable meal in a wok?'

'Dolores would prefer cooking for you.'

'And I prefer cooking for her. Tell her I'll call soon. And Nat-thank you.'

Others called as the days passed, asking when Stephanie would be home, and they asked, too, in the faculty club, the library, even in the grocery store. 'She must feel lost in London,' said Linda, inviting Garth and the children to dinner. 'And I'm lost without her. We have an estate sale coming up just after the first of the year and I need her. She'll be home soon, won't she? After all, it's getting close to Christmas.'

To everyone, he answered that he did not know.

Liar, he lashed out at himself at night, in the silence of his bedroom. Coward. Perpetuating the lie. How much longer will you keep it up? Who are you to talk about deception when you're as guilty of it as they were?

He heard Penny and Cliff talking in ClifTs room as they wrote another letter to London.

The three of us - Sabrina, Stephanie and I - caught in their danmed deception, entangled in it as the days pass, until there seems no way to end it without inflicting pain on those we would protect.

He understood that now.

At night he lay alone in the four-poster bed in a room filled with ghosts: the fragrance of her clothes, the sound of her laughter, memories of a woman who had become his light and hfe. He held himself carefully still along the edge of the bed, for every movement sent ripples of longing through his muscles and set his blood pounding until he forgot his anger and reached out unthinkingly to pull her warm body to his. He could feel her against him, hear himself tell her he loved her and feel the warm whisper of her breath as she answered him, again and again: I love you.

But his arm found empty space, the sheets cold and taut, and with a cry of fiiiy he flung the blanket away and left the

bed, pulled on a robe and sat for hours before the dead coals in the living room fireplace. He would read until a memory touched him: the two of them sitting here, reading, looking up to share a glance in a quiet so deep it seemed they were the only two people alive in the world. Then, sick with loneliness, he would close his book and stare at the gray landscape of the cold fireplace, brooding and growing fearful of something that was happening to him.

He was having trouble separating his wife from the woman who had hved with him for the past three months.

His wife of twelve years was dead, but how did he mourn her when he had only lost her a few days ago?

Who are you mourning? he asked his reflection in the dark living room window a week after his return. My dead wife. Who died twice. Once off the Mediterranean coast and once in a hotel in New York.

Two separate women. One left him; the other casually took her place, toyed with their lives and kept her secret long past the time when she should have revealed it.

But she had said she wanted to end the deception. All the deceptions, she had said.

Then why hadn't she?

Garth stood at his fi-ont window, gazing at the ghostly sphere of the Victorian streetlight through his transparent reflection. He was not able to tell his children the trudi. Had she faced the same indecision, trying and failing, saying, as he did, 'Later, when the time is right?'

He didn't know. But one thing he now believed. His wife of twelve years had wanted more than a brief trip to the Orient. Oh, yes, he believed that now. She had wanted to be on her own, loose and fi-ee, shed of her husband and family. For as long as it pleased her. There was no rush to return. After all, her sister was filling in.

Why hadn't she come to him, to talk, to see what they could salvage together instead of planting her sister and taking off on an experiment that shut him out completely?

Because he would have chalked it up as another example of her dissatisfaction - with him, with his job and salary, with Evanston, with the life she led, especially when

compared with the glittering star of Sabrina's London life. He would have accused her of wanting to be Sabrina.

And he would have been right. Because that was exactly what she did want. And finally got. Sabrina's life, ready-made, a home, wealth, social life, status, friends - and lovers.

His mourning for her was subtly shifting to anger, and at the same time his thoughts were turning to Sabrina. It had been Stephanie's idea to change places. Did Sabrina come to Evanston as a game - or as a favour to Stephanie? It was the first time he had asked that question.

On Monday, he came home from the university just as Penny and Cliff arrived, and together they all saw the strange-shaped package firom London on the porch. He watched as they excitedly untied knots, ripped off heavy tape and tore open the layers of protective wrapping paper.

'Oh, Dad,' Cliff breathed as he lifted the shield. He studied it from all angles, then slipped it on his arm, positioning it to cover his body. 'I'll hang it on the wall in my room, okay?*

'Look, look,' Penny bubbled, setting out the packages of colored papers in a circle around her, with the box of oil paints in the center beside a bundle of Japanese brushes and ink sticks. 'Mommy knew, she knew exactly what I wanted, I never told her I wanted the ink sticks, but she knew, oh. Daddy, look how many kinds of paper, here, feel the edges of these... Oh, look, this is for you.'

Garth touched the envelope. His name was on it. Penny pushed it into his fingers and slowly he opened it and read the brief message.

' ... Please let me keep my promise. It is the last favor I will ask of you.'

The words wavered before his eyes. He could hear her voice and see her mouth; he could see the light in her eyes when she looked at the children.

She loves them.

Chapter 25

Alexandra flew in from Rio and came for tea, unashamedly curious. 'I heard you were here for good, that you dealt smartly with Nicholas and are now doing business with him and that you have had dinner twice in a row with a handsome, unknown male of distinguished bearing.'

Sabrina laughed with a delight that cut through the numbness of the past two weeks. She may have thought her life lay in pieces, but some things stayed the same; here was Alexandra to prove it. 'His name is Dmitri Karras and he hid me in a cellar when I was eleven.'

Alexandra's eyes gleamed. Tou told part of that story at your birthday party. Do I get the rest of it some time? Or will it be like the one you never finished the day Scotland Yard intruded?'

'This one I promise to finish. How long will you be in London?'

'Long enough to close Antonio's flat, catch up on gossip—'

'Which you are doing admirably.'

'And buy out Harrods, Zandra Rhodes and Fortnum and Mason.'

'Are there no stores in Rio?*

'Honey, you wouldn't believe the stores in Rio. Everything anyone could want. But 1 want London, and London it isn't. I suppose I'll get used to it after awhile, but until then, if I can buy out a few stores and ship everything across the ocean, why not? Do you have time to shop with me, or are you too busy marrying off Gaby and Brooks?'

'Is there anything about me you haven't heard?*

'I haven't heard how you feel about leaving a couple of kids back in the States with their father.'

Sabrina put down her cup with a shaking hand. Everyone mentioned it, obliquely or carefully - you must miss them, my dear; it must be difficult for you ~ but no one spoke out

with Alexandra's bluntness; no one had challenged her to a direct answer. And no one knew that Penny's and ClifTs letters lay on her bedside table, read and reread each night and answered in her thoughts but never on paper, not until Garth gave her permission to write to them. 'I don't discuss my feelings,' she said.

'I know, honey, or I would have heard about it. But I thought you might like a sympathetic ear. Sabrina and I never talked about feelings much, but when we said goodbye, just before that danmed cruise, she kissed me. Surprised me - it wasn't like her, and I pulled away. I think it hurt her; she was being honest about her feelings and I didn't let her. I thought about that after she died. That's why I'm keeping my house for when we visit London. Antonio wanted to keep his apartment, but I won't sell my house; it's Sabrina's, too. Which reminds me - while I'm here I could introduce you to some people for business and pleasure, get you started, help take your mind off your kids.'

'I really just want to be quiet and alone.'

'Brooding. An unhealthy pastime. Are you going to see them soon?'

'You don't give up, do you?'

'Come on, lady, you must miss them. And also your handsome if slightly stu^ husband. Don't you want to unburden?'

'I can't. It hurts to talk. It hurts all the time, I miss them so much, and if I had any tears left I'd walk around in a pool of my own making. What good does it do to talk? I want them close to me, I want the feel of a place with people who love me and need me ... oh, danm, look what I've done, I've started and now I can't stop. Have some more tea; I'll be back in a minute.'

*No, stay. My God, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was that bad. But then why did you leave?'

'I had to.'

'He kicked you out?'

'I had to leave. I had no choice. I can't go back, and I can't talk about it.'

A shudder swept her, like the trembling of a leaf, and Alexandra said quickly, 'Honey, I didn't know. I won't bring

it up again. I don't know anybody who feels that way about famihes; most of them leave it all to servants and boarding schools. 1 find it pretty scary, if you want to know. I'm not sure I want a family of my own if there's so much... emotion involved.'

In spite of herself, Sabrina laughed. 'There is if you want it.'

They sat together in fiiendly silence. 'Well,* Alexandra said, 'what about Dmitri of the cellar? How do you have dinners with him and still be quiet and alone?'

'Dmitri is a friend.*

'So am I.*

'Then I'll have dinner with you, too.'