A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  “Oh. That reminds me. People making demands of us. There seems to be a crisis at Ambassadors. Or at least Brian thinks there’s one.”

  “So you want to go to London.”

  “I don’t, really, but I think I’d better. I didn’t go in February, you know, and—”

  “My love, you don’t have to explain it. Just don’t stay away too long.”

  “I can’t; I have to work on the first spec sheets for Billy Koner, and Madeline and I are expecting a new shipment in about ten days. Oh, but why don’t you come with me? We could make it a holiday.”

  “Not this time. You’ll be worrying about Brian and Nicholas and Billy Koner and I’d be thinking about Lu Zhen’s research project and Cliff and maybe even Oliver Leglind. We’ll go soon, though; I’d like some time in Europe with you. When we’re both ready, just the two of us and no projects dangling like loose ends back home.”

  He put his arms around Sabrina and brought her to lie back against him. They were quiet for a long time in the quiet house that drowsed in the late night hush when creaking floors were silent, the busy kitchen put to rest, the day’s voices and laughter stilled; when the street in front was a clear black ribbon running straight through the sleeping town; when lampposts cast blue-white circles of light on deserted sidewalks and the houses across the way stood like dark sentinels against a cloudy sky faintly pink from the glow of Chicago’s skyscrapers, just a few miles away.

  “Isn’t it amazing,” Garth murmured, “how every lover thinks he’s invented love? People fall in love in the most unlikely times and places, and they wonder at the magic of it, and sing with the joy of it, and think no one else has ever known what they have discovered.” He held Sabrina close, one hand inside her robe holding her warm breast. “And everyone who thinks that is absolutely right. We’ve invented it, we’ve created the words for it; it’s our love and no one else’s. It becomes a mirror of the two of us, and no matter how many poets write about it, it can never be fully shared with anyone but the two people in the mirror.” He kissed her, his mouth opening hers. Sabrina turned within his arms and they fitted their bodies to each other like travelers coming home, knowing the door would always be open to them. When they pulled apart they were smiling, letting desire fill them, and they held it close, wondrous and wild and theirs alone.

  “Whatever else happens in our life,” Garth said, “whatever the intrusions, we’ve created ourselves as we are to each other, part of each other, and nothing can diminish that. Nothing can ever take that from us.”

  “Garth,” Sabrina said, her hand along his face, “it’s time to go to bed.”

  He stood, bringing her with him, and they walked to the foot of the stairs, their arms around each other. You have a strong sense of who you are and how you want to direct your life. Oh, yes, Sabrina thought, remembering what Claudia had said. Yes, with this man, in this place, and with no one else, ever.

  They climbed the stairs, their steps in unison, and the lights of their house, the last to be illuminated on the street where they lived, went out one by one.

  CHAPTER 10

  Stephanie was making a life. Each day, each week, became part of a new past, and when she woke each morning with Max beside her and the sun streaming through uncurtained windows over the familiar contours of the bedroom, she no longer had the sinking feeling of being lost and alone in emptiness; now she had yesterday to remember and today to plan and tomorrow to anticipate.

  She had a schedule. Five days a week, from nine to one, she worked at Jacqueline en Provence. One afternoon a week she cooked with Robert. The other afternoons were for Max, unless he was away, and then she worked on redesigning the rooms of the house or chatted with Madame Besset or lay on the chaise in the sitting room, reading books from Max’s library.

  She had found an illustrated copy of Alice in Wonderland on a high shelf, an old leather-bound copy in perfect condition, with a gold ribbon for a marker, and she opened it one day after lunch, when Madame Besset was at the market. She began to read and it was a moment before she looked up, her heart pounding. She had read ten pages, in English, without hesitating or stumbling over a word.

  But why would she be surprised? In the hospital they had discovered that she was fluent in three languages.

  But it’s so easy, she thought, and looked again at the page before her.

  Alice took up the fan and gloves and, as the hall was very hot, she kept fanning herself all the time she went on talking. “Dear, dear! How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”

  Stephanie drew in her breath. I guess I’m not the only one who wonders that. She read the book through, then turned back to the beginning and read it again, stopping for a long time at a page in the middle.

  The Gryphon added, “Come, let’s hear some of your adventures.”

  “I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly; “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

  Maybe there are a lot of ways we can lose ourselves, Stephanie thought, gazing at the picture of the Gryphon. And Alice finds herself at the end; she gets back to where she started. Maybe that’s what Robert wanted me to discover when he talked about this book.

  She put the book on the table in the library and kept it there, where she could pick it up and read it whenever she felt like it. I wonder if I read this before. Maybe, if I just concentrate, it will remind me of something.

  She was always trying to be reminded of something, straining to dredge up memories from associations. “House,” she would say aloud, and close her eyes, picturing a house, rooms, furniture, gardens . . . but the only rooms and gardens she could picture were her own. When she thought “house” she tried to picture a family, but no faces came to her and she felt a great sadness. But as the weeks went by, she stopped struggling to tear down the curtain that hid her past. The doctors at the hospital had said everything might come back to her someday; Robert had said the same thing. Until then she had a life, and that would have to be enough.

  When Max was home, they spent the afternoons driving to nearby towns, exploring twisting streets and browsing in the shops and talking. As Stephanie built a new store of memories and worked and drove and felt her life building around her, she became bolder. “You don’t really tell me anything about yourself,” she said one afternoon as they took shelter from an April rain in Les Deux Garçons in Aix-en-Provence. “You always put me off, as if I’m a child.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asked. They were sitting just inside the cafe, facing the cours Mirabeau, and he watched Stephanie’s profile as she gazed at the fanciful ironwork on the balconies of the buildings across the wide, tree-lined street. She was wearing white jeans and a black turtleneck sweater with a silver necklace and long earrings he had bought only an hour before; her scars were barely visible, her beauty almost as pure and striking as before, and Max felt a surge of pride. He had done this. He had saved Sabrina Longworth from death and the destruction of her beauty, and he had re-created her as Sabrina Lacoste, whose beauty and spirit were now truly his. Sitting in the cafe, he felt relaxed and expansive; everything was going so well he could almost believe it would always be this way. “I’ve told you about my mother’s death and my wanderings with my father . . . you do remember all that?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said impatiently, as if memory had never been a problem. “And Holland and Belgium and Germany and Spain . . . of course I remember. And then you went to London. But how did you feel when it was just you and your father? Did you love him?”

  “I can’t remember. We stayed together because we didn’t have anyone else. I was afraid of him for a while; he had a bad temper and
he hated staying in one place for long; a bad combination because he was always looking for excuses to move on and the excuse was usually a fight with someone. Once I got in the middle, I don’t remember how, and was thoroughly beaten up. He took me to London, and when I recovered, I left him.”

  “Such a cold listing of facts,” Stephanie said. “No feelings, nothing but facts. Wasn’t there any love or fun in your life?”

  “There was necessity. That’s what gets most people through their days; how many do you think are fortunate enough to find love?” He took her hand. “When it comes, and comes late, it’s all the better.”

  “And the fun?”

  “I’ve never been sure what that is. I don’t ask myself if I’m having fun. I take great pleasure in what I do; is that good enough?”

  “What do you do?”

  “I live with you and introduce you to Provence; I spend time with Robert and business associates in Marseilles—”

  “I meant, what do you do for a living?”

  “I told you. I export farm and construction equipment to developing countries.”

  “Did you tell me that before I lost my memory?”

  “I don’t remember. It’s possible, but as I told you, we talked mostly about the future.”

  “Well, I think you do more than export equipment.”

  “Do you indeed. And why do you think that?”

  “Because you take great pleasure in what you do. And you’re not a dull man; you like challenges. So I think you do something more interesting than exporting machinery, and I’d like to know what it is.”

  The waiter brought their coffee and Max waited until he left. “Do you know, Sabrina, that is the first compliment you have paid me since you were injured.”

  She looked startled. “Is it? I’m sorry; you’ve been very good to me.”

  “There is a difference between compliments and gratitude.”

  “You mean you want me to admire the person you are. I do, from what I know. Robert says you’re a man of your word. I admire that. But how do I know whether there is more to admire, or less?”

  Max was growing bored. He loved her, he was obsessed with her, but not even she would know any more about him than he was willing to share. He had never been open with anyone; he had no intention of starting now. But what would she say, he wondered idly, if he told her what he did? My dear Sabrina, I own a small printing job shop in Marseilles where we print party invitations and letterhead stationery and thousands of other innocuous jobs, but our main job is to print money. We ship the equivalent of hundreds of millions of francs’ worth of counterfeit money to customers all over the world, packed neatly and efficiently inside farm and construction equipment . . . He had no idea how she would react.

  But it was only an idle thought. He would not tell her; he would not tell anyone, because he trusted no one but the few men who worked with him. And it would have no effect on their life together; they would be happy and she would love him, knowing exactly as much as she knew and no more. It was as much as she needed to know.

  But for now he was not interested in playing games; he would not waste time dancing around her questions. “I’ll try to make sure you find more to admire, the longer we’re together. Now tell me about your work; what did you do this morning?”

  “Oh, stop it!” Stephanie cried. “I’m not a child; I won’t be treated like one. You build a wall of secrets around yourself; do you expect me to admire that? I hate secrets—my whole past is a secret—and, I refuse to live with them now.”

  She pulled on her raincoat and rushed out of the cafe. The rain had stopped, and she made her way between the few soggy tourists sitting doggedly at the rows of tables and chairs lined up as if in a theater. On the broad sidewalk that ran the length of the street she turned toward the main square, walking rapidly, pulling on her rain hat as protection against the drops falling from the trees. When she reached the main square with its enormous fountain, gray-green with wet moss, she sat on the broad stone edge, looking away from the direction Max would come when he followed her.

  Her back was rigid, her hands clenched, and it was a moment before she realized that what she felt was not aloneness or anxiety, as so often before, but a cold, hard anger. She sat in the windswept square, the gray plumes of water behind her splashing invisibly into the gray sky, wet stones gleaming faintly beneath dripping trees, and let her anger grow, knowing that it was important to her: that anger at being treated like a child was the beginning of standing alone in this new life she was making. She remembered that she had felt like a child the day she met Robert, as she sat between him and Max at lunch; she remembered feeling like a child when she first began to cook in the kitchen, when she first sat behind the wheel of the car, when she first moved into Max’s arms and grew panic-stricken at the thought of making love to him.

  But I’m growing up, she thought; I’m learning my way around. And Max and everyone else will have to treat me like an adult, like one of them.

  In front of her, three women led a long line of schoolchildren across the square. The children, wearing yellow slickers, were strung together like beads, holding on to a bright red rope that trailed on the wet stones behind the last child. Their high-pitched voices rang excitedly through the square above the sound of the splashing fountain. Stephanie watched them, and suddenly she was swept by a wave of longing so powerful she stood up and started toward them, following them partway across the square before she realized what she was doing and came to a stop. What a crazy thing to do; why am I doing this? She watched them file into a narrow street and disappear around a bend. I wonder how old they are. Eight? Nine? Such a lovely age, so open and full of love.

  A child ran past her, one child alone, wearing a yellow slicker, tears streaming down her face. Without thinking, Stephanie reached out and stopped her, and knelt down to hold her close. “It’s all right, I’ll help you, don’t cry. Tell me what happened. Did you lose your friends?”

  The child nodded, gulping through her tears. “I saw a puppy and I stopped to pet it . . . I wasn’t supposed to . . . they said hold on to the rope . . . and now I don’t know where they are!”

  “I saw them go past. We’ll find them.” Stephanie smoothed the child’s hair from her wet face and kissed her forehead and her cheeks. Through the bulky slicker she felt the trembling of the small, wiry body and she tightened her arms and felt that the child had become part of her. She could not hold her close enough; she never wanted to let her go.

  “But where are they?” the child cried. “They will be so angry . . . and my mama and papa will punish me if they find out . . .”

  Reluctantly Stephanie stood up and took her hand. “What is your name?”

  “Lisa Vernet.”

  “Well, Lisa, let’s find your class and perhaps no one will tell your mama and papa that this happened.”

  Lisa looked up, her eyes wide. “Is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll try.” They set off, walking rapidly toward the street where the class had gone. The buildings here were of old mottled stucco with shutters streaked and faded from rain and sun, the heavy wooden doors deeply grained and scarred with age. The street was barely wide enough for a small car and there was no sidewalk. Stephanie and Lisa walked down the center on wet cobblestones until they came to a tiny square with three streets leading from it. Lisa looked up, waiting for Stephanie to show her which way to go. Stephanie had no idea. “This way,” she said firmly, and took the street to the left, in every way identical to the one they had just been on.

  “—and we always go somewhere on Thursday,” Lisa chattered as they walked. “Madame Frontenac, she’s our teacher, you’ll like her, she’s very pretty, like you, and she has a daughter of her own, so she is very kind to the girls, very understanding, you know, and then she was one, too, when she was growing up and she remembers what it was like, but with the boys she is much more firm, but then that is proper, they need it, they are very rough—some of them are
bullies—and they need to be told—”

  Stephanie was walking as fast as she could with Lisa clutching her hand. There was no sign of the class. How far ahead could they be? It had only been a few minutes . . . Her heart was pounding; she could have guessed wrong, she could have gotten them both lost. Lisa would stop her cheerful chattering and become frightened again, and it would be Stephanie’s fault for pretending she was grown up and could take care of a child.

  The street bent to the right and they followed it and then, above Lisa’s chattering, Stephanie thought she heard the babble of young voices.

  “Hush, Penny, just a minute,” she said. “I want to listen.”

  “What?” Lisa asked.

  “Wait,” Stephanie said, and they stood still and heard the sound of voices and laughter.

  “Oh, we found them!” Lisa cried and ran on ahead, around another corner. Stephanie followed and found the class clustered around Lisa, everyone talking at once.

  One of the teachers stepped forward. “Are you the good person who found our naughty girl?”

  “Oh, but she isn’t naughty at all,” Stephanie said. She held out her hand. “Sabrina Lacoste.”

  “Marie Frontenac,” the teacher said.

  Stephanie smiled. “And you have a daughter, so you are very understanding with the young girls and very firm with the boys, especially the bullies.”

  “Ah, Lisa is a chatterbox. But how interesting that she thinks that I am gentler with the girls because of my daughter. Do they all, I wonder? Probably, if Lisa talks of it. And perhaps I am. Well, but now we must do something.” She looked at Lisa, surrounded by her friends, all of them talking at a high pitch of excitement. “We cannot let our young people wander off; she must be punished.”

  “She was terrified,” Stephanie said. “She felt alone and lost, and the square seemed strange to her, like a world she didn’t know. Isn’t that punishment enough?”