A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  “No, but nobody would buy my paintings if they were ugly, either.”

  “I think it’s different with art. Artists give us their visions of the world and we look at them to find whatever we can in their paintings or sculptures and books. Every work of art probably has as many meanings as it has people looking at it, because each of us sees it in our own way. Sometimes what we see helps us understand the world a little better, or maybe understand ourselves better, know who we are and what we want . . .”

  Penny was watching her intently, trying to grasp it all. “It’s more complicated than antiques,” Sabrina finished. “One of these days we’ll talk about it again.” She spooned a few strawberries from a glass bowl to her plate. “But I did want to talk about antiques, and maybe this is a good time.”

  “Gonna watch television,” Cliff said and pushed back his chair.

  “No, I want you here,” Sabrina said. “And you don’t watch television in the morning, ever, you know that.”

  “Yeh, but, Mom, antiques.”

  “I know they’re not your thing, but I want you to stay because what I really want to talk about is my shops.”

  “Collectibles,” Penny said.

  “She said shops,” said Cliff.

  Sabrina nodded. “Collectibles and Ambassadors and Blackford’s.”

  “Yeh, but those other ones are in London,” Cliff said. “You don’t work in them; you work in Collectibles.”

  “But I own half of each of them. So I have to keep track of what we buy and sell, and how much money we make, all that sort of thing. And it isn’t enough to do it on the telephone; owners have to check out what they own in person, at least once in a while.”

  The breakfast room was silent. Then Penny cried out, “You can’t! You can’t go there!”

  “You’re going to London?” Cliff demanded. “You can’t; you have to stay here!”

  Penny burst into tears. “Mommy, don’t go! Please don’t go! Please stay here!”

  Garth and Sabrina exchanged a look. We should have expected this, they told each other silently. “Hey, you two,” Garth said firmly, “listen for a minute. Your mother is going to London for a few days, three or four, that’s all, and then she’ll be back.”

  “Last time you went to London you didn’t come back,” Cliff said loudly. “You sent presents, but you didn’t come back. You didn’t even write to us.”

  “I did come back,” Sabrina said quietly.

  “Well, yeh, finally, but it took forever and Dad had to go over there to get you.”

  “He won’t this time,” Sabrina said.

  “Dad, are you going to let her go?” Cliff demanded.

  “I won’t try to stop her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’d stop her if she was my wife!”

  “You couldn’t!” Penny wailed. “Husbands can’t stop wives from doing things anymore.”

  “Then ask her!” Cliff cried to Garth. He glared at Sabrina. “If you really loved us, you wouldn’t go. Nobody else has a mother who goes to London; they all stay home.”

  “You sent me those paints and things,” Penny said through her tears, “and I loved them but I didn’t want them, I mean, I didn’t want them if that was all I could have, I mean, I wanted you and you were gone and you didn’t even call us!”

  Because your father thought you should forget me, Sabrina told her silently. Because I was the interloper, taking the place of the mother you did not even know was dead, and I had no right to be here. . . . until he came to understand how I loved you, how I loved him, and that the three of you had become my whole life. And then he came to bring me home.

  “—few days,” Garth was saying. “I told you: three or four, that’s all. It’s a business trip; it’s the same as when I go to conferences. I always come back, right? And your mother will come back.”

  “There’s no scientific proof of that,” Cliff said flatly.

  “Listen to me.” Sabrina held her hands toward them. In a minute Penny and Cliff each put a hand in hers. “You and your dad are the most important people in the world to me. My work is important and that’s why I’m going on this very short trip and that’s why I’ll go again, a few times a year, probably, but I promise you this—are you listening?” She waited until they nodded. Their eyes were fixed on hers, Penny’s filled with tears, Cliff’s intent and somber. “I promise you I will always come back to you. I will never leave you for good. You are my whole life and nothing could ever make me give you up. I love you, I love you, and nothing will ever change that.”

  Penny jumped up and threw her arms around Sabrina. “I love you, Mommy.”

  Over Penny’s head, Sabrina met Garth’s eyes again. “I love you,” she said quietly.

  “Hey, Mom, listen, are you in trouble or something?” Cliff asked. “I mean, are your shops losing money? ’Cause we could help, like maybe work after school at Collectibles and you wouldn’t have to pay us as much as somebody who isn’t in your family, and if you save money, maybe you wouldn’t have to go over there.”

  “Oh, Cliff, you’re wonderful.” My sweet, mercurial son, she thought: one moment a child, the next so close to being a man. “No, I’m not in trouble, but I appreciate your offer, and if things get bad, we’ll talk about it. All right?”

  “Right.” Cliff jumped up. “I’ve got an idea. We’ll go with you!”

  Sabrina laughed, marveling at his stubbornness. “It’s a wonderful idea and one of these days you will, and we’ll see a lot of London and maybe other places, too. That’s another promise.”

  “When are you going?” Penny asked, still anxious.

  “In a few days. But something wonderful is going to happen before that. I was going to keep it a secret, but I’ve changed my mind; I’d rather you knew about it now. We’re getting a present for our house named Mrs. Thirkell.”

  “She doesn’t belong here,” Cliff declared, automatically opposed to anything that had to do with London. “She lives over there and she takes care of Aunt Sabrina’s house. We don’t need her here.”

  “Will she make our beds?” Penny asked.

  Cliff wheeled in place. “Will she? And set the table and do the dishes?”

  Sabrina smiled. “She’ll help us as much as we want her to, but I think she’d be very unhappy if she thought she was taking away all your jobs.”

  “No, she wouldn’t; she doesn’t have to know we do those things.”

  “Let’s talk about it when she gets here,” Garth said. “Right now, since she’s not here, you have to clean up your rooms by yourselves and if you get going we can go to the aquarium.”

  “Yeh, but—”

  “Now, Cliff. No more talk.”

  Cliff gave an exaggerated shrug and he and Penny turned to go. Sabrina and Garth watched them run up the stairs. “I should clean up the kitchen.”

  “They’ll do it before we leave. You were wonderful with them. It’s astonishing how much reassurance children need. Did I need that much? I can’t remember. Did you, do you think?”

  “Probably, because we moved around so much we never felt we belonged anywhere. Until Juliette; four years of high school in one place. But we made most of our own reassurance: we always had each—” The words caught in her throat.

  Garth drew her out of her chair and onto his lap, and held her like a child. His love for her was so deep and encompassing that he could not imagine life without her, but he did not know how that had happened. Two women, he thought, two halves of one woman, and now somehow both of them are here, part of me in a way Stephanie never was when we were married. There is a mystery to this: to what they were individually, and to what Sabrina is now that Stephanie is dead, and to what Sabrina and I have forged. And though it is hard for me, a scientist, to say this, perhaps this is a mystery that we will never understand. This is a mystery we will live with, and in our more fanciful moments we will call it magic.

  “I’m all right,” Sabrina said, her face against his shoulder. “Th
ank you, my darling. Thank you for everything.” She sat up. “We really should plan a trip to Europe for all of us: London and Paris, maybe Provence. Do you know, I’ve never been to Avignon or Arles or Cavaillon . . . Oh, Garth, let’s plan a trip.”

  Garth smiled. “All those places in one trip?”

  “No, we can’t; you’re right. But let’s think about it. Maybe spring vacation? Or this summer?”

  “One of the above. Or October; I have a conference in The Hague. We could keep the kids out of school . . . except that I want some time for the two of us.”

  “Oh, so do I. But we can’t just go off after I’ve promised . . .”

  “We’ll do both. We’ll figure it out.” They smiled at each other. So many plans; so much time for so many wonderful plans.

  She was still thinking about that two weeks later as she drove to Chicago: that once she had thought she was only borrowing this family, but now she knew she would have them always. And stay with them, she thought, amused, because she had put off her trip to London again and again and finally had abandoned it for the foreseeable future. She had too much to do here, and London no longer seemed urgent or attractive, especially since Mrs. Thirkell had arrived and had plunged into organizing their house and their family.

  The great organizer, she thought, smiling, as she walked into the Koner Building and saw a man leaning against a pillar, waiting for her. “Koner,” he said, and held out his hand. He was short and square, with a flat, pugilist’s nose, black eyes constantly darting back and forth, heavy whiskers, and a custom suit and shirt that he wore with dark blue suede shoes. A gold watch chain stretched across his generous paunch.

  Sabrina shook hands with him. They had talked on the telephone, but she had never met him, and now they looked at each other for a long moment, to see if they liked what they saw enough to take the next step to working together.

  William Koner had bought the abandoned ten-story warehouse in Chicago’s Printer’s Row neighborhood a few months earlier. It had been renovated once in its long history by Ethan Chatham but then had fallen into disrepair, and Koner had hired Vernon Stern, an architect, to design the renovation, with shops on the ground floor and loft apartments above, and he had asked Sabrina, in a telephone call, to do the interiors. This was the first time Sabrina would meet both of them and walk through the building.

  Koner paced, waiting for Stern, anxious to start. Sabrina, wearing faded jeans, a black turtleneck sweater and a tan corduroy blazer, perched on a windowsill littered with paint and plaster chips. “Why do you want me for this job, Mr. Koner? I’ve never done a building of this size; I haven’t worked with loft apartments at all.”

  “Right, I know all that.” He pulled out a pipe and stuck it between his teeth. “Madeline Kane took me to the house you’re doing in Lake Forest. Good job. Old on the outside, old and new all mixed up on the inside. I liked it. My wife liked it. And Madeline says you’re the best.”

  “And you’d give me this job because of one home I’ve designed and Madeline’s recommendation?”

  “Why not? My first two wives bought a lot from her; they said she knew her stuff. My wife, my current wife, says you’ve made that shop world class and you’ve got some kind of deal with a couple of shops in London, so you know Europe, too. I’d say you’re ambitious and smart and you’ve got class; I don’t need a wife to tell me that. So why shouldn’t you do this job?”

  Sabrina laughed. “I think I should.”

  They smiled at each other. “And cut out this ‘Mr. Koner’ business,” he said. “My friends call me Billy. And I call you Stephanie, unless you have a problem with that.”

  “I have no problem with that.”

  The door swung open and Vernon Stern arrived. He was tall, blond, tanned, as perfectly handsome as if he had stepped from the pages of a magazine. His hair was carefully tousled, he wore jeans and cowboy boots and a tweed jacket over a purple silk shirt open at the neck; he was impeccably casual. Sabrina found herself smiling. He had designed some of Chicago’s most striking buildings, but it seemed that his most loving creation was himself.

  His eyes widened when they were introduced, as men’s eyes always did when they met her; she barely noticed it anymore. But he also made their handshake last longer than necessary and studied her as if he were evaluating a painting. “Beautiful,” he said. “It’s rare these days to find beauty that hasn’t been carved out by a plastic surgeon or layered on with cosmetics. A pleasure to meet you, Stephanie.”

  “I admire your buildings,” Sabrina said and slipped her hand from his.

  He nodded, still gazing at her, then unhurriedly unrolled the set of plans he carried. Sabrina took out her clipboard and pencil and a steel tape measure and they began to walk through the building. Koner’s secretary had arrived and trailed invisibly behind them, taking notes. When they reached the ninth floor, Sabrina stopped at a window. “What an amazing view of the city. We ought to do something spectacular up here. May I see the plans for this floor?”

  Stern spread them on the floor and the three of them knelt in the dust and littered plaster to bend over them. “But it’s the same as the other floors,” Sabrina said.

  “Your job is to make it spectacular,” Koner said.

  “What did you have in mind?” Stern asked Sabrina.

  She looked again at the vast space. “I was thinking of two apartments instead of four. It’s hard to find five- or six-thousand-square-foot apartments in the city.” She looked at the high ceiling. “Or you could get the same size apartments by making them two stories, with a two-story living room, the windows extended all the way, and—maybe a winding staircase? Then you’d get the full impact of the view, and incredible light.”

  “Good idea,” Stern said dryly.

  Sabrina drew back. “I’m sorry. This is your field, not mine.”

  “You’d be good in it. I presented both of those ideas to Billy and he vetoed them.”

  “I want the most apartments I can get,” Koner said. “Two thousand square feet is plenty big enough for a city apartment, and there’s more money in four on a floor than two.”

  “Not necessarily,” Stern said. “We talked, if you recall, about how much of a premium you could get for larger apartments on the top two floors. In fact, I brought those plans, just in case.” He flipped through the plans to the last few pages.

  Sabrina leaned over them. “Oh, I like this; you found a way to combine them. But how would they share a central foyer and elevator?”

  “This way.” Stern took out his pencil, and he and Sabrina bent closer to the drawing. “We’d enlarge the foyer here and add an elevator behind the existing one . . .”

  She nodded as he talked and sketched in bold, swift lines. After a moment she made a tentative sketch of her own in a corner of the sheet. Stern frowned, changed it, changed it again, then smiled. Their voices were murmurs, their pencils busy. Sabrina forgot everything except the joy of creating a space, envisioning it, and manipulating it with her pencil and her imagination. She followed Stern’s lead, but whenever she offered a suggestion, he treated it seriously and once flashed her a smile that made her flush with pride. But then Koner, standing above them, broke in. “I told you: four apartments to a floor.”

  “Which is exactly what you’ll get if you insist,” Stern said, clipping his words. He stood and slapped dust off the knees of his jeans. “But Stephanie has some fine ideas and I think you should consider them very seriously.”

  “You think they’re fine because they agree with you.”

  Stern grinned. “I inevitably admire people who agree with me.”

  Sabrina stood with them, holding the plans. “The Koner Building could get a lot of attention with this design. And Billy Koner would be called a visionary.”

  “That doesn’t buy groceries,” Koner said.

  Sabrina met Stern’s eyes and saw an impatience and frustration that matched her own. All designers and architects probably wish they could do without clients, sh
e thought; at least some of the time. “Well, maybe you’re right,” she said at last. “Maybe ordinary apartments sell more easily than dramatic ones.”

  “Ordinary is exactly what people want,” Koner said. “They don’t want surprises; they want things they’re comfortable with.” He watched Sabrina roll up the plans. “I can get three hundred thousand for a twenty-five-hundred-square-foot loft apartment in this neighborhood; it’s hot now; young couples like lofts and they like the city.”

  “I imagine they’re adventurous, too,” Sabrina said casually. “Maybe they like surprises instead of always being comfortable. Maybe they’d choose your building over another one if it was exciting: something that’s fun to furnish and to show off to their friends.”

  Koner contemplated the empty space. He stood for a long time, his head bent in thought. Sabrina met Stern’s eyes, and they waited, willing Koner to change his mind. “Well, maybe,” he said at last. “The right people, if you can find them, pay for prestige. They don’t enjoy paying for ordinary. I’ll give it some thought; massage some numbers in my office. I’m not promising anything, but maybe.”

  Sabrina and Stern exchanged a smile. “Well done,” Stern murmured. Then he said to Koner, “We’ll put together ideas for the lower floors while you play with your numbers, but let us know as soon as you can.”

  Koner nodded. “Right. Absolutely. No time to lose.”

  “I have to finish the house in Lake Forest,” Sabrina said quietly.

  He frowned. “How long?”

  “Two to three weeks.”

  “But that’s finishing up a job; it’s not full time, right? You could be meeting with Vern at the same time.”

  “Finishing a job is often the busiest time. I’ll do what I can, but I won’t have much time until April.”

  “This is a big job, Stephanie. People make time for big jobs.”

  She took a breath. “I have a family. I run Collectibles with Madeline; I have a project in Lake Forest that I intend to finish in the best way I can. I’ll do my best, Billy; that’s all I can promise.”