“Yes. For me, too.” Stephanie’s hand shook as she hung up. Max was going to Marseilles on Thursday. She had made a date with Léon for a day when Max would be away.
“You’re very quiet,” Jacqueline said later that morning as they unpacked and arranged a display of china. “Is something troubling you?”
Stephanie nodded. “But it’s something I have to work out; it’s complicated.”
“Then it involves love. And it is probably less complicated than you think. Love always seems to create so many tangles, but in fact there is usually a single thread that can be pulled to make everything clear. Though I admit that finding the thread is sometimes difficult and painful.”
“And have you found it, with your friend?”
“Certainly, but he and I have no tangle. The thread is friendship. Are you worried about finding it with Max?”
“I don’t know what it would be. I couldn’t give it a name.”
Jacqueline looked at her thoughtfully. “Perhaps because you don’t know what you have: marriage, friendship, companionship, a living arrangement, a business relationship—”
“Business!”
“Well, because he offers you his home and his name and his protection and you offer him eight months of memory, and affection but not love. I don’t know how many men would consider that satisfactory for a marriage, though for a business transaction it would do.”
“I think he likes it that I have no memory.”
“Indeed? Why?”
“I don’t know. But he doesn’t urge me to make connections, to try to reach back, the way Robert does.”
“And you do not . . . when you are making love, at that time when we are most open and most receptive to stimuli, you do not recall anything?”
Stephanie concentrated on aligning pearl-handled knives and forks with the china. “I’m . . . not open then.”
“Ah. And what keeps you guarded?”
“What I told you before. I can’t believe what he says. I can’t trust him.”
“Yes, but just for the pleasure of it . . . Well I see that that is not enough for you. You need more. I hope you find it with someone, my dear. Or . . . perhaps you have found it and that is the tangle that bothers you now?” She waited, but Stephanie did not answer. “You know you can always talk to me, Sabrina.”
“I know. I love talking to you. And I will, but I have too much to sort out.”
The doorbell rang as a customer came into the shop, and Stephanie went to greet her with relief. She did not know why she was uncomfortable; she could always talk to Jacqueline. But today the words stayed inside her.
“And what have you planned while I’m gone?” Max asked that night at dinner.
“To work on this room,” Stephanie said. “If you don’t mind, I want to get rid of most of the furniture; it’s too heavy for a dining room, especially this one. We’ve got a table in the shop that I’d like to try, and Jacqueline told me about some places that may have chairs and a sideboard.”
He did not want to hear about her plans for the house. “And what else?”
“A chandelier—”
“No, I mean what else will you be doing?”
“Max, we go through this every time you leave. I haven’t planned every minute of every day, and even if I had, I don’t see why I’d give you an itinerary. You don’t give me one for your time in Marseilles.”
“More bicycling?”
“I may ride to Roussillon with Robert.”
“And what else?”
“And I’m going to hike. I haven’t done that yet.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“If madame will forgive me for intruding,” Madame Besset said, bringing the cheese tray, “there is an excellent hike above Saint-Saturnin. That is the town, if you remember, we will move to after we sell the farm to our son. I know it well. If you park in the square and walk behind the church, you will find a stairway of Roman steps. I think you will be very pleased with what is at the top.”
“What is at the top?” Max asked.
“A medieval town now in ruins. Collapsed castles, homes, an old roadway.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Stephanie said. “That’s where I’ll go.”
“Take a camera,” Max said. “I’d like to see pictures.”
“Yes.”
I am deceiving Max. I’m doing it very easily. I wonder if I ever deceived anyone before.
She began to tremble and could not stop. Something is wrong; what is wrong with me?
“Sabrina, what is it?”
“Madame!”
Max helped her to her feet, waving Madame Besset away. “We’ll be in the library; you can bring our coffee there.”
He led Stephanie to a couch and held her so she would not collapse while she sat down. “Can you tell me what it is?”
“No.” She was breathless, as if she had been running.
He sat beside her. “Close your eyes. Lie back. Shall I call the doctor?”
“No.”
“Do you feel ill?”
“No. I don’t know how I feel.” She lay against him, her eyes closed. Gradually her trembling eased. She opened her eyes. Alice in Wonderland lay open on the table in front of her.
“I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice . . . “but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
That has something to do with the way I feel. But I don’t know what.
I was a different person then.
Yes, of course. I knew who I was; I had a name, memories, a past, a future.
But is that really what it means?
I don’t know. I have to think, I have to try to understand—
“Feeling better?” Max asked.
“Yes. Thank you.” She sat up. Later. When I’m alone. Madame Besset brought in a tray with coffee and slices of tarte tatin. “Tell me what you’ll be doing in Marseilles.”
She poured coffee, they talked quietly in the library, and it became an evening like any other. And then it faded from her mind, more quickly than she would have thought possible. She was busy with Jacqueline; she and Max drove to Saint-Rémy where she shopped for clothes; she drew plans for the redesign of the dining room. And she thought about Thursday. And then Max was gone. And Thursday had come.
“Your Madame Besset is wonderful,” Léon said. “I’ve never been here.”
They were walking on a wide, rocky path, the remains of a Roman road far above the town of Saint-Saturnin. On either side was a tumbled stone wall, here and there intact: black stones carefully set atop each other almost a thousand years earlier to mark the main road of the fortified town. The road began at a ruined castle overlooking the fertile valley far below, and stretched for more than two miles, past dozens of bories where families had lived, now little more than heaps of mute black stones.
“I wish I could bring the people back,” Stephanie said, “and watch them farm and go shopping and play and . . . Where did they get water?”
“There may have been a river down there.” They peered over the cliff into the valley below. “Dried up now, but we know that without water there could have been no town.”
“So many people, so many stories.” They walked slowly, beneath the blazing sun. They wore shorts, lightweight T-shirts and billed caps, and small backpacks. Léon had a sketch pad in his pocket and Stephanie’s camera was hooked to her belt. “Did anyone write their stories? Is there a history of Saint-Saturnin?”
“I don’t know of one. But I have histories of Provence in my library; I’ll see what I can find.”
“All gone,” Stephanie murmured. “We should write everything down, everything, every day. We don’t think about it, but otherwise it can vanish so completely . . .”
“Nothing vanishes.” Léon’s voice was casual, but he was being careful, searching for the words that would allow her to talk about herself. “Everything is here surrounding us, w
herever we are. It’s what I try to show in my paintings: the other lives and memories that are part of us even though they’re voiceless and invisible. They haven’t vanished; it’s just that we haven’t figured out how to find the key that will open all those locked doors.”
They were alone in the ruined village. Bushes and flowers grew out of walls, clinging to bits of earth between the stones, lizards whipped across the road and into the shade of shrubs, birds flew protectively about their nests in the crevices of shattered homes, and the genêt bushes were in bloom, perfuming the air.
“My life has vanished,” Stephanie said. She did not look at Léon. “You’re right, of course, it’s somewhere, in letters I wrote or work I accomplished or in people’s memories. But not in mine. Not in my memory. I have none.”
Thank you, Léon breathed silently, and knew then how desperately he had wanted her to be open to him, and knew, too, in that moment that he loved her. But, my God, he thought, my God, to live without memory: such terrible loneliness . . . “And Max?” he asked.
“He says he can’t help me.”
“Tell me all of it—can you?—from the beginning.”
“The beginning,” Stephanie said wryly. “A very recent one. Eight months ago. October.”
They walked a little apart from each other, drinking from their water bottles as the sun moved higher, and she told him everything, even her faintness of three nights earlier, and the passage from Alice in Wonderland. By the time she finished, they had left the ruined village behind and were in open fields of tall wild grass, hot and dry, dotted with low scrub bushes. A small farm was in a hollow on their right, with a donkey in a small fenced enclosure and a child throwing a ball against white sheets swaying on a clothesline. Ahead was the edge of a forest.
Léon took Stephanie’s hand. “We’ll find a place to sit and have our picnic.”
Stephanie felt his firm clasp and the rhythm of their matched steps. She was relaxed now, and happy, and there was a singing inside her. She had told him more than she had told Robert; more than she had told Jacqueline. She had talked to him as if she had been talking to herself.
The path led into the forest and they gave a small gasp at the sudden coolness. In a few minutes Léon stopped. “Grass, leaves, a small room. A place for lunch.” He ducked into a grove of trees near the path and when Stephanie followed, she found herself in a small green space with walls of leafy branches and a ceiling of cloudless sky. Pale forest grasses covered the ground, drooping over the fallen leaves of many seasons, black and weathered to pliant softness.
Léon took from his backpack cheeses, saucisson, a container of wrinkled black olives in herbs, and a round loaf of roughly shaped bread. “Wine,” he murmured, finding a flat place for the bottle, “glasses, knives, napkins. And grapes. Whenever we’re ready. Now?”
“Not yet. It’s so cool and quiet; I’d just like to sit for a while.”
“Well, then.” He pulled from his pocket his sketch pad and a crayon and with swift, easy strokes began drawing her. She sat a few feet away, her back against a tree, her legs stretched out, her head turned to watch him.
“As you will see when you visit my studio,” he said, his eyes on his paper, “I have painted little else but you since our bicycle trip. If that displeases you, you must tell me.”
“It pleases me.”
He looked up quickly. “Why?”
“Because people in paintings have a life of their own. I know they’re frozen in time, but they reflect what they were and hint at what they will be. If you paint me, I think it will be me and . . . not me. It might be the person I was. I’d like to see what she looks like.”
He nodded, as if to himself. “An interesting idea. But is that the only reason you are pleased?”
“No. I like knowing that you think about me.”
He laughed. “Most of the time, it seems. And do you think of me?”
“Yes. I shouldn’t. I have a husband, a home . . . I shouldn’t be . . . I have responsibilities and obligations—”
“But you see I have not asked you about them—nothing about your marriage or your home—nor have I told you about my own involvements. And you have not asked me. None of that has any place here.”
“Why not?”
“Because there is too much we don’t know yet.”
“You mean I’m hurrying things along.”
“I mean you are not joining me in holding them back. Come,” he said, seeing the confusion on her face, “we’ll have our lunch. And I want to talk to you about memory.”
“What about it?”
He filled their wineglasses, then broke off a piece of bread and spread it with cheese and handed it to her. “Often, when I’m in the middle of a painting, I stand back from the canvas and look at what I’ve done and see something very good—an arrangement of shapes or colors, an altered landscape, a portrait—and I have no idea where that good thing came from. I didn’t think about it before I painted it; I hadn’t done it before. It just appeared.”
Stephanie nodded. “From all your experiences for—how many years? How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“All your experiences for thirty-six years, stored in your memory, waiting for you. Because you remember everything, back to the time you were four years old.”
“I don’t remember everything; no one does. You’re right that the experiences are waiting for me, but that’s what I’m saying: they’re waiting for all of us. Yours are waiting for you. And you’ll find them. They’ll come unbidden, as mine do when I paint, or you’ll make connections with things you see and hear and read. In fact, some already have come to you, when you called the little girl Penny and mentioned Mrs. Thirkell. And you said you told Max that you’d moved around a lot, and you told me my painting reminded you of van Gogh. It’s all there, Sabrina, everything you’ve ever done, your thoughts, your loves, your hates and fears and the wonders of your—how many years? How old are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. Of course. Well, we will declare your age. What do you think? I think thirty-one, perhaps thirty-two. Would one of those suit you?”
She was smiling. “And when is my birthday?”
“Oh, today. Why not? What better way to celebrate than this? Today, June thirtieth, you are thirty-one years old and this is a celebration.” He refilled their wineglasses. “So you have thirty-one years of loves and hates and fears and wonders and maybe a few things you’d like to forget permanently, all inside you, waiting for you, like an attic in an old house, dusty and whispering of secrets. Everything from the past is piled up, stacked away, pushed back to make room for more. But a wind comes, a hurricane, an earthquake, and things in the attic shift: some reach the top and come to us with no rhyme or reason, or we reach in and pluck something out—”
“I can’t do that! Don’t you understand? I can’t reach in—
“I know that. I’m sorry; I do understand that. But I believe that you will.”
“Why?”
“Because you are young and strong. Because you try very hard and don’t accept what has happened with tears or resignation. Because you have already remembered some things.”
“And because you believe in gnomes and elves.”
“And magic.”
They shared a smile. The grove where they sat was hushed and still. The leaves drooped; the birds slept in the afternoon heat. No voice, no sounds from farm or city broke the silence. Stephanie bit into the earthy crust of the bread; the cool, smooth cheese melted on her tongue; the cold Chablis flowed to the back of her throat, and it all had the slow grace of a dream. She watched Léon begin drawing again, his crayon making a faint swish on the heavy paper. She liked the way he looked: his short blond hair almost white against his deep tan; his lean, muscular body a little tensed as he drew, as if every nerve was concentrating, as if all his energy nourished the fingers that moved so swiftly and surely over the paper. His blue shirt was streaked with perspiration, hi
s mouth was faintly smiling, his green eyes were looking down—
He looked up and met her gaze and their eyes held. And that was like a dream, too, Stephanie thought, because it did not need logic to be natural and right that he was all she saw, or wanted to see.
He did not move, but it was as if he reached out to her. “I would like to help you find your past if you will let me.”
“Yes.” She stretched out her hand, and he took it. This is where I belong; here and nowhere else.
They sat that way for a long time, their hands clasped. Léon’s sketchbook lay at his side. The hot, still air held them suspended, the grass and leaves felt moist beneath Stephanie’s bare legs, a trickle of perspiration ran down the side of her face. Within her, the turmoil of the past months stilled. Her thoughts drifted, her breathing was light, a small pulse beat in her palm where Léon held it clasped to his.
After a time he stirred. “I was wrong. I do need to know about your marriage.”
Stephanie’s heart took a small lurch, as if she had been walking on level ground but had fallen suddenly down a step she had not seen. My life is full of beginnings, and this is one of them.
But she did not know how to begin, and the silence stretched out.
“You don’t remember anything about marrying him,” Léon said finally. “Or talking about a future with him. Or being in a motorboat after the explosion. But you do remember some of the things the doctors told you in the hospital. Did you talk to them about Max? Or your marriage?”
“I don’t remember. Max bought all my clothes, I remember that; and they were always perfect, the right colors, the right size. And he stayed with me until he knew I would recover; then he went back to his company, and came and went. Then Robert found the house in Cavaillon and Max furnished it with pieces he’d had in storage somewhere, and his art collection. He’d owned your painting of the Alpilles for ten years, he said; he’d bought it at Galeries de Rohan in Paris.”
“That was when I painted it. It was in my first show at the gallery. I’ve shown there ever since.”
“In Paris? But we have your paintings at Jacqueline en Provence.”
A Tangled Web Page 28
