Deceptions (66 page)

'No,' said Sabrina beside her, wearing coral velvet. 'You look lovely. As if you're standing at the beginning of the world.'

'But that's exactly how I feel! How on earth did you—Oh, how stupid, forgive me, Stephanie. You shouldn't have to listen to my sentimental ravings when your own marriage

'Gaby, I'll listen to your ravings if you promise not to talk about my marriage.'

'That's fair. But now I feel guilty about raving.'

'Then I'll run downstairs for a word with MrsThirkell. We should start in about five minutes, I think.'

In the drawing room. Brooks stood before the fireplace with its bower of white and lilac, calmly surveying the room; a firiend from Paris stood at his side. Alexandra sat in the first row; she was leaving the next day to join Antonio in Rio, and three days later, on Christmas Eve, they would be married.

I am surrounded by romance, Sabrina thought. For years no one got married; everyone was getting divorced. Now my house is filled with love and marriage. The words echoed within her and she wanted to send everyone home, to curl up in the silence of her room and spread out her memories, one by one, like photographs that could not be taken away. Soon enough. They'll all be gone soon enough.

She stood beside Gabrielle during the ceremony, listening to the traditional words and responses and thinking of Garth. I took this from you, she said to him silently. The ceremony, its dignity and mystery and faith, I took from you. I made it a joke in your eyos, TTiat was one of the worst things I did to you. And I never knew it until now. I wish you and I were standing here, saying these words. I would promise you that what I would build with you is marriage - not a game, not a diversion, not a brief adventure. I would pledge to you my heart and my hand and my love, but you are so far and so angry—

'Stephanie,' Alexandra said. * Are you all right?'

She turned. Brooks and Gabrielle, arm in arm, married, were greeting their guests. She apologized. *I seem to have let my thoughts get the better of me.'

Alexandra put her arm around her. 'You're so pale. What can I do?'

'Help me feed everyone and keep the gossip light and pleasant.'

*I meant, what can I do to make you happier?'

For the briefest of moments, Sabrina rested her forehead on Alexandra's shoulder. Then she stood straight and smiled. 'Come back to London often. It will be good to have that to look forward to.'

And they went downstairs to supervise the wedding feast.

Chapter 24

Garth was in the university library when the headline of the December 17 New York Times caught his eye. Snatching it from the librarian's neat arrangement, he took it to an armchair in a comer of the periodical room and sped through the story, then went back to the beginning and read more slowly. His heart was pounding. Here in Michel Bernard's precise words was the whole story of the conniving and maneuvering, the rivalries and vast sums of money, the art

thefts and forgeries that had led to the murder of Max Stuyvesant.

And of his wife.

He went through it a third time, and still it did not seem real. He was reading about the death of his wife, but her name was not mentioned. He was learning about her lover, who had not even known her true identity. He was reading about the life and death of a woman he was no longer sure he knew.

The other night he had told Cliff how she had looked at their wedding. That was clear in his mind. And he remembered their early years when the children were young and they were becoming a family. But when he tried to recall the last year, everything slid away from him. The only image in his mind was of the woman he had known for the past three months.

And he could not ignore the truth about that woman any longer. He loved her with a passion he could not eradicate or contain, though he still fought to destroy it, night after night, pacing alone and exhausted in his cold living room.

Which woman was he mourning? Both. Both. He no longer tried to deny it.

But he tried to forget. So many people were asking when Stephanie would return that he withdrew from the social contacts she had so carefully built and buried himself in work and activities with his children. He was supervising three new research projects in the laboratory, meeting daily with architects and contractors for the Genetics Institute, making preliminary plans with Lloyd Strauss for the groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for March, teaching an extra graduate seminar and gathering material for his paper on an immortal immune system in humans. He drove himself through the hours of each day, barely pausing to eat, never allowing himself to think about anything but the work he was doing.

And at home he drove himself with Penny and Cliff: cross-country skiing in the lakefront parks in Evanston and Chicago, going to movies and hockey games, playing word games at the dining room table, helping them with homework and working together on projects around the house that

had been neglected for years. He refused to talk about their mother. 'We'll talk about her soon. It isn't time yet. I'm soriy; I'm not any happier than you are; you'll just have to trust me on this.'

What was he waiting for? He didn't know. But as each day passed and he did not expose the deception, he knew that the deeper its roots, the more real it became.

Which, he now understood, was exactly what Sabrina had discovered.

An air of quiet sadness clung to Penny and Cliff, even when they were praised at school or brought home a paper with a high grade. Even their squabbling was subdued. They fell into it automatically now and then but always stopped quickly, as if afraid of losing each other as they had lost their mother. They no longer rushed to see each day's mail in the hopes of finding a letter from her, but Garth knew they had written to her at least twice and he was not surprised when, at dinner on the same day he had seen the story in the New York Times, Cliff told him they were going shopping the next day for presents. 'If we mail them tomorrow, will they be in London in time for Christmas?'

'It's possible. If they're small we can send them airmail and a week might be enough. But it will be close.'

'Why didn't you tell us earlier how long it would take?* Penny demanded. 'You know more about it than we do! You don't want us to buy presents for her!'

'Maybe not,' he said, tiying to be honest before their accusing eyes. 'Maybe I think we should only have Christmas here.'

'That's mean,' Penny said flatly. 'I think you're awful.*

But,later, when he came to say good night and found Cliff in her room, they both put their arms around him. 'We don't think you're awful,' Penny said. 'We think you're crying inside just like us. Daddy?'

'Yes, sweetheart.'

'Cliff said we shouldn't bug you, but why won't Monmiy write to us? Or come home?'

'She's doing what we both think is best. Penny.'

'But if you think that, too, why are you crying inside?'

'Because often we can't have what we want.'

'If you want it bad enough, you can,' Cliff said.

*Look, both of you—' Garth heard the angry impatience in his voice and stopped. Leave me alone, he pleaded silently to his two children, who had done nothing wrong and needed reassurance as much as he did. I can't talk about it, I can hardly bear to think about it. I love her, I love her; not a moment goes by that I don't cry out for her. But more than an ocean Ues between us, and I don't see any way in the world that we can cross it.

But he could say none of that aloud. 'Listen, now,' he said gently. 'Your mother and I have problems that I still can't talk about. You have a right to know, as soon as I sort things out, but for now, all I can tell you is that they keep us apart, like a broken bridge. How we feel isn't as important as the destruction between us. Can you understand that?'

'No,' they said together.

Garth sighed. 'I'm not surprised.' He put his arms around them and held them close, feeling them burrow against him as if looking for a hiding place. He bent his head and his voice was low and strained. 'I know I'm not doing a very good job at this, and I'm sorry for the mistakes I make, and for the times I seem cruel but, my dear ones, I don't know what to do. I know I make it harder for you by not telling you everything, but I can't do it, not yet. Can you trust me on that? Can you beUeve that I'll tell you as much as I can, as soon as I can? Please believe that, please believe in me. I need that. And I need your love. Because I love you, you know. More than anyone in the world—'

'More than Mom?' Cliff demanded.

*0h. Cliff,' Penny scolded, and put her hand on Garth's cheek, for a brief moment becoming a woman, comforting a man. 'Don't cry. Daddy. We'll wait until you cell us. But—' And she was a little girl again. *I just wish Monmiy would come home.'

Garth kissed them and stood up. 'Get to sleep now, it's late. I love you both.'

The next day Penny and Cliff went shopping, and when Garth got home they handed him two small wrapped packages, asking him to mail them right away. He did not ask. what was in them and they did not tell him.

Un the last day of school Penny's puppet show was presented in the lunchroom and Garth left the university early so he could be there. In the front of the room, students from other classes sat cross-legged on the floor; in the back, parents sat on folding chairs. Garth and Vivian among them. Penny and Barbara Goodman were behind the stage with Mrs Casey, supervising the puppets before their classmates put them in action. Afterward, while Cliff stocked up on punch and cookies served by the sixth-grade food committee. Penny stood beside Garth, gravely accepting comphments from the audience. 'My mother can't be here,' she said to everyone. 'Her twin sister died in London and she has to be there to take care of the grave and things hke that. She wanted to be here, but she couldn't. She helped me with the costumes. I didn't do them myself. She helped me.'

Vivian brought Garth a paper cup of punch. *It tastes awful, but it's wet. Is Stephanie coming back?'

'No.'

Silently she looked at Penny, in earnest conversation with another parent about her mother's twin sister.

'It's not enough,' Garth said angrily. 'You can't rebuild a ruined marriage just because your children are unhappy.'

'Is it a ruined marriage?' Vivian asked. *I never saw any signs of it, or got any clues.'

'It isn't even a marriage.' He looked at her worried face. 'I'm sorry, Vivian; I can't talk about it. Thank you for the punch.'

He counted the passage of each day, not knowing what he was waiting for. He and the children bought a. Christmas tree, smaller than usual - 'since our family is smaller this year,' Penny said - and decorated it, putting their wrapped packages beneath it. Dolores invited them to their country house for cross-country skiing, but Penny and Cliff refused to go. 'I won't do it again without Mom,' Cliff declared. When school and the university closed for the holidays, the three of them spent a day painting the upstairs bedrooms. 'Won't Mpnmiy be amazed?' Penny exclaimed again and again. 'Everything looks so bright. Won't she be amazed?'

And finally, though he had turned down every other invitation to holiday parties. Garth gave in to Nat and

Dolores's insistence that he join their annual gathering three days before Christmas. He sat with Penny and Cliff while they ate dinner, saw them settled in the living room with books, television and popcorn and walked alone to the Goldners' house.

It was always a large party. Dolores was determined to combine the university and the town into one happy community, and when Garth arrived he saw her steering local lawyers, insurance agents, store owners and physicians to small groups of faculty members. They complain they have notlung to say to each other,' she confided to Garth as she brought him a glass of wine. 'But after half an hour they're all talking about sewage problems and schools and Dutch elm disease. They have a wonderful time, thank me for introducing them to everyone and then go their own ways and never cross paths again until next year in this room. Can you explain it?'

Garth laughed with her. 'How often do most of us want to be in unpredictable situations? Once a year is plenty. The rest of the time we stay with comfortable places and people. Fewer surprises.'

'Surprises are lovely,' she protested.

'Only when they don't shatter everything that is familiar,' he said with such gravity that she stared, for once speechless.

Nat appeared. 'I've enlarged my library. Come have a look.*

Garth turned to apologize to Dolores for leaving, but as she exchanged a look with Nat he realized they had planned this: Nat was to have a talk with him. The conspiracies of happily married couples, he thought, to solve problems of their friends.

'You're in one of those unpredictable situations, aren't you?' Nat said, switching on the light in his upstairs library. 'But uncommunicative as a double agent. Is she or is she not coming back?'

'She's not.'

'So you said. So others have said. I didn't believe it.' He pulled two leather armchairs together. 'Have a seat. There's wine and Scotch in that cabinet. You two were closer than

I've ever seen you the last couple of months. So what happened so suddenly?'

'I thought we came here to see your enlarged libraiy.'

'So we did. You're looking at it. What happened so suddenly?'

'Nat, do I ask you about your marriage?'

'No. You're more polite than I am. Also, you aren't a doctor. I am; therefore, I am accustomed to prying.'

'Into bones and Ugaments, not—'

'Despair.'

'Do I seem to be in despair?'

'Why the hell do you think rm.piying? I'm worried about you; we're all worried about you. For God's sake, Garth, what happened between you and Stephanie?'

'! found out she wasn't the woman I thought she was."

'Well, what does that mean? If you're saying that after twelve years you've discovered things about your wife you hadn't suspected, I wouldn't be surprised. Stephanie is in many ways a private person. I would be surprised if you had discovered depravity or criminal behavior, but, knowing Stephanie as a friend and patient, I'd say the chances of that are nonexistent. So is it what you have discovered, or simply the fact that there was somethingyou hadn't known that has hurt you?'