A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  “No.” She pulled out a length of wrapping paper and cut it off. “I just wanted to take care of this.”

  “Not quite true, I think, but we’ll let it go for now.” He watched her wrap the red tablecloth and napkins. In the silence, they could hear Jacqueline’s voice in the shop. “You said, ‘We have one in our living room.’ Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who bought the painting? You or your husband?”

  “My husband. Before we met.”

  “I admire his good judgment.” He came into the room and held out his hand. “I’m happy we met. I hope to see you again.”

  “Yes,” Stephanie said. Once again they shook hands, and their hands stayed clasped while their eyes met. He was not handsome, Stephanie thought, but she liked his looks; his face was alive with curiosity and intelligence and humor, and he looked at everything with intensity. Right now he was looking at her as if he wanted to know all about her, not just in a casual way with carelessly spoken social phrases—I hope to see you again—but in a way that took what he said and did seriously. And Max had said he was one of the finest young painters in the country. He held her hand too tightly, but then, she was not trying to pull away. They looked at each other steadily, as if they were speaking together, getting acquainted.

  When am I going to be more adventurous?

  Oh, Stephanie thought, perhaps beginning right now.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mrs. Thirkell pushed forward the platter of roast chicken and potatoes she was holding at Lu Zhen’s right hand. “Of course you’ll have seconds,” she scolded. “A growing boy is an engine that needs a constant supply of petrol. Especially if he’s also a student, and a skinny one at that. Come on, now, two or three slices, young man, you’ll be the better for them. And more potatoes, too.”

  “He doesn’t want any more,” Cliff growled.

  “Yes, he does,” Penny said, watching Lu. “He’s just being polite. Can I have some more, Mrs. Thirkell? After Lu?”

  Sabrina and Garth exchanged a smile. “Our diplomat,” Garth said. “Go on, Lu, dig in; you’re outnumbered and Penny’s made it accepted practice.”

  Lu smiled his thin, cautious smile and heaped chicken and potatoes on his plate. Mrs. Thirkell sighed with exaggerated gratification and took the platter to Penny. “It’s really delicious,” Penny said. “Is it different from the chicken in China?”

  “Their eyes are different,” Cliff said.

  “Cliff—” Garth began, but Sabrina forestalled him. “Not a good joke,” she said lightly.

  “Do you know, I think they look exactly like your chickens,” Lu said seriously. “I lived in a village once and I saw them being slaughtered, and they seemed quite ordinary to me.”

  “I thought you grew up in Beijing,” Sabrina said. “When did you live in a village?”

  “When I was a child. There was a time when the government ordered people from cities to work in the fields and villages, and I went with my family to the west.”

  “Masses of people uprooted,” Garth said, “whoever they were, whatever their profession. Including Lu’s father, who’s a physicist, and his mother, who teaches English.”

  Lu smiled again, the smile that barely stretched his lips. “My father shoveled manure for five years; my mother did laundry.”

  “Why?” Cliff asked, curiosity cutting through his sullenness.

  “The government felt that intellectuals and professionals should return to the people because they’d forgotten who they were.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The government said intellectuals and professionals thought of themselves as better than the peasants when really everybody should be the same.”

  “But people aren’t the same,” Penny said.

  “The government said they were.”

  “But they were wrong. Didn’t anybody complain? People here complain about the government all the time.”

  “That is not the way in China.”

  “Well, I know you can’t complain out loud; we learned about that at school. But don’t you, when you’re at home? You know, when you talk about things at the dinner table, the way we do.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Does the government still think everybody’s the same?” Cliff asked.

  “Not so much, it seems.”

  “So where are your parents now?”

  “In Beijing. My father teaches at the university and my mother is in a middle school.”

  “Did your mother teach you English?” Penny asked.

  “Yes, but I also studied it in school. Everyone wants to learn English. Especially if you want to go into science. English is the language of science all over the world.”

  “I’d like to learn Chinese,” Penny said. “It sounds sort of like singing.”

  “I could teach you some words, if you like.”

  “Really? Would you? That would be so neat; nobody at school knows any Chinese at all. Tell me a word now.”

  “Ma.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mother.”

  “But that’s the same as English. Who cares about that? Tell me a Chinese word.”

  “That is the Chinese word. But I will give you this one: hen hao chi.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Tasty. That’s what this dinner is. And here’s another one: youyi. It means friendship.”

  Penny repeated them. “Will you teach me lots more?”

  “If you like.”

  “Lots. So I can talk, you know, not just words and stuff, but a few sentences that really sound like I’m talking in Chinese. Then I can do it at school and everybody else will just be totally out of it.”

  Sabrina looked at Penny thoughtfully, wondering which problems, old or new, were behind her vehemence. She’d bring it up when they were alone; right now she was enjoying the conversation, pleased that Cliff had joined in. There had been a swift moment of pain when Lu first arrived—it happened every time he entered their house—when, looking at him and hearing his accent, she was swept back to China last September, China for two weeks with Stephanie, ending in Hong Kong when the two of them took the first step in the game they had decided to play and handed each other the keys to their front doors. China: the last place she had seen her sister alive.

  The pain subsided when they sat at the table; it always did, when the conversation began and she was once again Stephanie Andersen, making a foreign student feel at home. “Does speaking English all the time make you feel different about yourself?” she asked Lu. “Language seems to me to be so deeply a part of our identity: the way we view the world, the way we see ourselves, the subtleties of words that can’t ever be perfectly translated . . . Would any of us be the same person if we spoke another language all the time?”

  “You did, Mom,” Cliff said. “You told us you and Aunt Sabrina talked French when you were in school in Switzerland.”

  “Yes, but only in classes and whenever we were with the faculty. In our rooms we always went back to English. I think if I were living in Switzerland now, or France, and speaking only French, I might be confused about my identity. Lu, what do you think?”

  “I speak Chinese to other Chinese students at school. It is very important to me; it makes me feel I am not drowning in America and the sloppiness of English.”

  “Sloppy!” Cliff exclaimed.

  “So it seems to me. It is very casual, very fluid, like the American people. Chinese is very specific, very rigid, very clear at all times.”

  “English isn’t sloppy,” Cliff insisted.

  “ ‘Sloppy’ probably isn’t the best word,” Garth said. “I’d think ‘casual’ is better. But whatever English is, I’m glad Lu learned it, because if his research comes out as we hope it will, he has a brilliant future as a scientist.”

  Lu gazed fixedly at Garth. “Thank you.”

  There was a silence. “Can you tell us about it?” Sabrina asked.

  “I think y
ou would not find it interesting.”

  “Make it interesting,” Garth said. “The other day you told me you want to do research when you go home, and run an institute of genetic engineering and teach. The most successful teachers are those who make their subject interesting for everyone, even people who aren’t in their field.”

  Lu gave a barely perceptible shrug. “I am interested in problems in immunology. The lymphocytes—the white blood cells—are some of the best understood cells in the body and this is a field where some very advanced research is being done. For my postdoctoral project I am working on autoimmune disease. This is when the body’s B and T cell-”

  “The what?” Penny asked.

  “I’m sorry. B and T cells are the names of lymphocytes that recognize foreign cells in our bodies and destroy them. It is because of them that we recover from a cold or the flu—that is, when they do what they are supposed to do. But it is a very complex system and it can fail if certain genetic defects exist, and then the system turns against the body.”

  “Turns against the body?” Sabrina repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “The B and T cells can no longer tell the difference between foreign cells that invade our body, and our body itself.” Penny was frowning, and Lu said, “I mean, the lymphocytes that are supposed to save us by attacking invading cells turn on us and start attacking us. Then we get diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes mellitus, multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, and Addison’s disease. These are all autoimmune diseases. The one I am working on is rheumatoid arthritis; I am trying to find out if we can replace the defective gene that controls the growth of lymphocytes with a healthy one so that the body can produce new lymphocytes that won’t attack joint tissue.”

  “Could you cure AIDS that way?” Cliff asked.

  “No, AIDS is caused by HIV. Anyway, I am not working on AIDS.”

  “Why not? AIDS is killing people.”

  “And rheumatoid arthritis is crippling millions . . . including my mother. I promised her I would bring back to China a cure for her and so many others.”

  “It would be a medical revolution,” Garth said. “There’s tremendous excitement in the department; this is the frontier of research in how genes specify the immune system, and Lu is doing the kind of work that will push it even further ahead. We’re very proud of him; his research program is excellent and he has good ideas about the nature of the problem and ways to attack it. If his experiments pan out, it will be a very big feather in the cap of our new institute.”

  Sabrina saw Lu’s face close up. He wants the glory for himself, she thought—not for the department, not for the institute, certainly not for Garth Andersen, just for Lu. He probably thinks he’s going to get the Nobel Prize. And from what Garth says, maybe he could. “But others must be working on this, too,” she said to Garth.

  “At least a dozen, but I don’t think they’re as close as we are. Farver Labs in San Francisco is probably the closest; I talked to Bill Farver a couple of weeks ago and he sounded about as excited as we are. Of course they don’t have Lu, which puts them at a distinct disadvantage.”

  Cliff made a retching sound. “Oh, Cliff,” Sabrina sighed, but at the same time she felt a rush of pity for him. She met Garth’s eyes and shook her head slightly. She didn’t know why he always seemed to go overboard about Lu, as if he had to make him feel loved and admired over and over again, as if it weren’t enough to tell him once that he was on his way to being a fine scientist and leave it there.

  Well, if he has to, for whatever reason, he can do it on campus, she thought; he doesn’t have to do it at home, especially in front of Cliff. We just talked about this; I guess we’ll have to do it again.

  “I did want to ask you, Professor,” Lu said, “about the polymorphisms within the peptide-binding cleft: how much of the variation in individuals is determined by the ability of the MHC protein to bind different antigens . . .”

  They slipped into their own language, their own world. Smiling, Sabrina watched them, feeling a great tenderness for Garth, a man driven by so many passions, and for Lu, never capable, perhaps, of passions as intense as Garth’s, but somehow understanding how rare and wonderful they were. His face was absorbed and even adoring, she thought, as he kept his eyes locked on Garth’s face.

  She looked around the table, set by Mrs. Thirkell with a patterned Provenèal cloth, yellow candles, white and yellow daffodils, and bright blue and yellow Provençal pottery that Sabrina had found years before at the marché aux puces outside Paris. It was as if the sun shone within the room, bringing a brightness to the faces around the table, and Sabrina felt a tenderness for all of them—her husband, her children, Mrs. Thirkell, Lu—and for the place where she was: the dining room with its furniture rubbed golden and satiny from centuries of loving hands, the house that enclosed her in well-worn comfort, the town where she greeted friends as she walked down the street.

  Oh, everything is so good, she thought. The good things in her life piled up ever higher, never erasing the sadness inside her but dulling it, keeping it out of sight except for the quiet times of very early morning, when she often woke and ached for Stephanie. But at times like this, with her family around her in their bright dining room, she felt herself stretching inside, like a cat in a warm circle of sunlight, and thinking, Oh, everything is so good.

  It struck her that she thought that more and more often lately, so often that it had become a refrain beneath everything she did. It was almost as if she were cataloguing and memorizing the glories of autumn, knowing they would be snatched away in the cold sweep of winter. But that was a foolish fantasy, and she brushed it aside. I’m happy, she thought, and I’m grateful for happiness, and I thank goodness for that. The riskiest thing one can do with happiness is to take it for granted.

  But Garth and Lu had talked long enough in their private jargon; Cliff’s face had tightened and Penny was fidgeting. “We’re feeling a little left out, here,” Sabrina said lightly. “The conversation has gotten a trifle technical.”

  “More than a trifle,” Garth said ruefully. “I’m sorry. The problem is that I’m so busy with the new institute I don’t get much time with Lu. In fact, I haven’t been paying much attention to him at all. So it was fun to catch up.” Then, as if going back over their dinner and hearing himself praise Lu and withdraw with him into a scientific discussion, he turned to Cliff. “We haven’t heard much about your work lately; what are you doing in your lab course these days?”

  “Nothing much. It’s pretty boring.”

  “I thought you liked it.”

  Cliff shrugged, then threw a glance at Sabrina and hunched his shoulders. “Can I be excused?”

  “Before dessert?” Garth asked. “That’s a first. I think you should hang around, Cliff. We have a guest and it would be nice if we could finish dinner together.”

  “I know we have a guest!”

  Mrs. Thirkell came in and began to clear the dishes. “Cliff, how about helping out?”

  “Do I have to stay?” Cliff asked Sabrina.

  She nodded. “I agree with your father.”

  “Jeez,” he muttered, and began to stack plates.

  “Not too high,” said Mrs. Thirkell, and the two of them went into the kitchen.

  “Cliff does not like me,” Lu said. “Have I done something to offend him?”

  “A lot of ideas and feelings get stirred up in a twelve-year-old,” Sabrina replied. “Cliff will work them out. Didn’t you have a lot of mixed-up feelings when you were twelve?”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have time for things like that. We owe our country all our energy and attention. It is making it possible for us to be educated so we can lead productive lives, and we have no right to fritter away any of our time.”

  “What?” Penny asked.

  “Well, we feel honored that you took time out for dinner,” Sabrina said, amused, and then was ashamed as she saw confusion on Lu’s face.

  “I take it v
ery seriously. My government and my family expect me to bring great credit to our country, and then to come home to help all of China.”

  “Quite a burden for anyone, much less a young man of twenty-two,” Garth said. “I hope you don’t feel that all of China will condemn you if you do less than brilliantly.”

  “But why would I do less? You told me I have a brilliant future.”

  “If everything goes well, I think you do. But I’m sure that your government will support you, and your family will always be behind you whatever—” Garth saw the confusion deepen on Lu’s face, and he cut his sentence off. “That’s enough shop talk for tonight, I think. Let’s have coffee. Lu?”

  “Yes, thank you.” His voice was muted, and then he was silent as Garth poured coffee and talked about plans for the groundbreaking ceremony for the Institute of Genetic Engineering.

  “A little over three weeks away and Claudia and I haven’t written our speeches,” he said as Mrs. Thirkell and Cliff finished clearing the table and brought in a cake. “The hope is that the longer we wait the shorter they’ll be. Do you know, if we could find the gene for brevity we could create universal happiness by shortening ceremonies all over the world.”

  Sabrina smiled. She cut the cake and handed around the dessert plates, and as they talked of other things, Lu’s face relaxed, though he remained quiet. But when he stood up to leave, he stopped beside Cliff’s chair. “I guess you don’t want to learn Chinese, but I played soccer in China and we could talk about some things I learned from my coach. I mean, if you want to. They’re a little different from the stuff you’re doing.”

  Sabrina heard the plea in his voice and held her breath, watching Cliff struggle between jealousy and his love of soccer. “I guess,” he said at last; then, as if he was ashamed of his grudging reply, he added, “Sure. Thanks.” Sabrina breathed a sigh of relief. She met Garth’s eyes. He needs our help, she thought, and then, as they stood and went with Lu to the front door, she wondered which young man, Lu or Cliff, she had meant.

  Garth watched Lu walk down the porch steps. A light May rain was falling; there was no breeze and the warm air was soft on their skin. Lu put up an umbrella and turned to wave goodbye, and then Garth closed the door and put his arm around Sabrina as they went back to the dining room. “Thank you. It is a joy to watch you keep a conversation going.”