A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

“We spend our time putting out fires? It sounds awful. And frenetic.”

  “Call it problem-solving. It sounds better.”

  They laughed quietly, then sat, relaxed, gazing at the street, drinking the ice-cold tea, their clasped hands a little sweaty, their bodies languid in the heat. “We could go inside where it’s cool,” Garth said.

  Sabrina shook her head. “Not yet. I like the idea of sitting with my husband on a front-porch swing in the middle of the afternoon; it feels very peaceful and old-fashioned.”

  “Like courting.” They smiled and kissed lightly, then sat again in silence, watching cars pass and neighbors come and go and the smudged shadows of trees lengthen across the pavement. Then the summer camp buses pulled up at the corner and children ran from them, backpacks bulging, hands full of trophies and projects. Penny was one of the first, and she was sitting on the steps near Sabrina and Garth when Cliff dragged his feet up the walk, scowling.

  “I didn’t think you’d be home,” he said to them.

  Garth’s eyebrows rose. “That’s our greeting?”

  “Sorry. Hi. Why are you sitting out here? It’s too hot.”

  “It seemed like a good idea, for a while,” Sabrina said. “Did the heat get to you?”

  Cliff squinted as he looked at her from under the thatch of hair falling over his forehead. “Why?”

  “You look pretty grim for someone who’s just come from camp. I thought you liked it.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It was fantastic two days ago,” Garth said.

  Cliff shrugged, then shot a glance at Sabrina. He leaned against the step railing, kicking at small stones on the front walk.

  “Lu Zhen was there,” said Penny. “He said he came to watch Cliff play.”

  “I didn’t think he ever took time off,” Garth said. “But he did say he’d talk about soccer in China; has he been doing that, Cliff?”

  “A few times.”

  “He said he finished his paper,” Penny said. “Does that mean he’s going back to China?”

  “Soon,” Garth replied. “He’s finished his postdoctoral work with me, and he’s said he’ll go back as soon as his paper is accepted for publication.”

  “Did you send it to Newsweek or Time or People or what?” Penny asked.

  Garth smiled. “None of the above. Papers like Lu’s go to professional journals, in this case Science. But I haven’t sent it in yet. I’ll do it next week, after I go over it.”

  “Again?” Sabrina asked. “I thought it was finished.”

  “It probably is, but I’ve only read it in pieces; I haven’t had time to read the whole thing, start to finish. If it hangs together as Lu’s described it, it will be a major breakthrough, something to make us all very proud of him.”

  Cliff kicked a stone and banged his shin against the porch railing. “Fuck it!” he cried and sat down, rubbing his leg.

  Sabrina met Garth’s eyes. “Why don’t you and Cliff go inside where it’s cool?” she said. “Maybe you’ll make us a pitcher of lemonade; we seem to be out of iced tea.”

  “Good idea. Come on, Cliff, let’s resupply the family with cooling beverages. I’m sorry,” he said to Sabrina in a low voice. “I got carried away. It is an amazing project, you know; I’ll tell you about it later.”

  He kissed her and stood up. “Cliff?”

  “Yeh.” He slouched through the door as Garth held it, then followed his father into the kitchen. The air in the house was cool and dry, and spontaneously they grinned at each other as they felt it buoy them up. “Crazy to sit out there,” Cliff said.

  Garth took lemons from the refrigerator. “I’ll cut and you squeeze. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  They worked in silence, Cliff pulling down on the juicer’s handle with such vigor that lemon juice splashed on the counter and on his shirt. Garth made no comment. He finished slicing the lemons, then scooped sugar into a tall glass pitcher. In a few minutes Cliff poured lemon juice and water into the pitcher. Garth stirred with a long spoon. They stood side by side, gazing intently at the sugar dissolving in the pale yellow liquid and at the small bits of lemon swirling wildly, chased by Garth’s spoon.

  Cliff went to the freezer, filled his cupped hands at the ice maker, and dumped the cubes into the pitcher, splashing lemonade on the counter. He looked at Garth, waiting for comments about the messy counter, about the splashes on his shirt, about his unwashed hands putting ice in the lemonade.

  “Let’s sit in here,” Garth said. “I imagine your mother and Penny will be along soon.”

  Cliff did not move. “I’ve got some stuff to do in my room.”

  “In a while. I want to talk to you. It’s important, Cliff.”

  Cliff shrugged and walked to the couch. Garth took glasses and the lemonade pitcher and followed him. “I thought we’d talk about Lu Zhen, since he seems to be a sore point in our house.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why not?”

  “You said he was going back.”

  “Of course he is; that’s been the idea from the beginning.”

  “I mean, like next week or something.”

  “I’m pretty sure it won’t be that soon. I think he’ll wait to hear if his paper is accepted for publication, and that usually takes a few weeks.”

  “You said it would be faster this time.”

  “It may be; I hope it is. But what difference does it make, Cliff? Lu is a student of mine and a guest in this house and no more than that; why can’t we talk about him and even have him to dinner without your behaving as if war’s been declared?”

  Cliff shrugged.

  “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  “I don’t like him!”

  “Well, that’s something we’ve all noticed. The question is, why?” Garth poured lemonade, letting a few ice cubes slip into each glass. He looked at the tight muscles of his son’s face and the disconsolate look in his eyes, and he ached for him, twelve years old, trying to find his place in the world, afraid of losing the place he had and that, until recently, he had never doubted. “I’ll tell you something about Lu,” Garth said reflectively. “Most of the time he’s afraid. Some of my students are driven by ambition, some by a desire to do good, a few by greed. Lu is driven by fear. Everyone at home seems to have laid the most appalling expectations on him; it’s a little like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale where the prince is sent out to slay the dragon, defeat the trolls, find the treasure, win the princess and get back to the palace in time for dinner.”

  Cliff gave a reluctant laugh. “He could just tell them to leave him alone; he’s not their slave.”

  “I don’t think he can tell them that. The government is paying his tuition and his rent, and his parents scrape up whatever they can spare for his food and clothes. The point is, he’s a good scientist driven by fear, and I’m his advisor, and I want to help him. But that has nothing to do with how I feel about my own son.”

  “Yeh, it does,” Cliff said after a moment. “ ’Cause you get all excited when things happen in the lab; you talk about lymphocytes and all that stuff like they’re people, I mean, you know, like you think they’re terrific, and him, too, and you sit and talk and use words I never heard of, and I’m not smart enough to do any of that and I never will be—”

  “Hold on.” Garth set down his glass and turned to face Cliff on the couch. Why haven’t we ever had this talk? he wondered. Is there something wrong with me, have I been too absorbed in my work and, lately, with my wife, or do other fathers and sons go along the same way for years without talking about their feelings, taking love for granted and assuming everything is fine? “You don’t know how smart you are or how smart you will be. You’re still trying things out and discovering things about yourself. I expect you to do that for a lot of years. If you pointed to something tomorrow and said, ‘That’s the kind of person I am and that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life,’ I’d be disappointed. I don’t want—”

/>   “You’d be disappointed?”

  “Very disappointed. I don’t want you to be like Lu, Cliff; I want you to be young for a while and not lock yourself into a room that may not be right for you. Even if it is right, I don’t want you to settle into it too soon. You know”—he sat back, looking at Cliff with a smile—“you already have more confidence in yourself than I had at your age, and you’re more balanced. All I ever wanted was to be a scientist; I was absolutely convinced that nothing else was interesting or worth my time. Then, later, I realized how many empty spaces there were in my life and I started spending time on history and literature and art, and having a good time with them. You’re ahead of me in that.”

  Cliff shook his head. “I’m no good in school.”

  “You’re okay. You’re not giving it your full attention yet. We don’t know what kind of a student you’ll be when you decide that school deserves as much attention as soccer. But there’s no hurry; you’re giving yourself a chance to try everything. I admire that.”

  “Admire . . .” Cliff’s voice trailed off. He was eyeing his father as if weighing his seriousness.

  “Because it means you’re curious, open to new ideas, ready to take on the whole world. I’m trying to tell you, Cliff: that makes me prouder of you than anything, even winning at soccer. I’d always love you, but on top of that I admire you for the kind of person you are. And I like you. I like to be with you. I’m grateful for that. I think it’s the most special blessing of all: to like our children as companions.”

  Cliff was staring at him intently. The muscles in his face had relaxed; the disconsolate look was gone. He was absorbed in everything Garth said, reorganizing the way he thought about their relationship. “What about Lu?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well, you could say all that about him: you like him and you like to be with him and he’s like a companion ‘cause he’s smart and he can talk about the things you want to talk about . . .”

  “Cliff, I have a son. I love you and I like you and you’re the only son I want. You’re one of my three favorite people in the whole world and I want to talk to you about whatever you’re interested in and I want you to listen to me when I talk about whatever I’m interested in. That sounds like a good deal to me; in fact, it makes me feel pretty lucky whenever I think about it.”

  There was a long silence. “You don’t care what grades I get?”

  Garth smiled to himself at his son’s pushing to find the boundaries of his father’s love. “I’d rather you didn’t fail any courses.”

  “But if I did?”

  “I’d be sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m unhappy when you’re unhappy and I think you would be: you don’t like to fail at anything. And then it would mess up your soccer; they don’t let you play, do they, if you fail a course?”

  “Uh . . . no.” He picked at a scab on his knuckle. “Mom said that stuff once; she said I was curious about the world and I could learn a lot if I tried.”

  “Well, sometimes if we hear something twice it’s easier to believe it. Maybe you’ll believe it now.”

  “But when I asked her to go to the principal, you know, tell him something for me, she wouldn’t do it. She said it was my problem, like she didn’t care.”

  “She didn’t tell me that. Was it your problem?”

  “Well, yeh, but, you know, she used to go to school and explain things . . .”

  “And now she doesn’t. Do you really think that means she doesn’t care about you and love you? Or just that she thinks you’re so smart and grown up you can handle a lot of things without your mother running interference for you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose what?”

  “That she thinks I could do it without her.”

  “And did you?”

  Cliff nodded.

  “It sounds to me as if your mother thinks you’re pretty special, the way I do. Look, Cliff . . .” Garth put his arm around his son. “Why don’t we relax around here? We’ve got a wonderful family, one of the best, and we live in a good house in a good town, and we have a lot of fun together. I guess if we looked for problems hard enough we’d find some, but why should we? Let the scientists look for problems; they thrive on them. All the scientists in the world would vanish in a cloud of bewilderment if suddenly there weren’t any problems. But right here, in our house, in our family, I love you and your mother loves you and what we all ought to be doing is enjoying each other, not growling about maybes and what-ifs. What do you think?”

  Cliff sighed. He was resting against his father, still picking at the scab on his knuckle. “Sounds okay to me. Are you going to invite him to dinner again?”

  Frustration rose in Garth. Cliff felt it in the tension of his body and he shrank into himself.

  “Much too hot,” Sabrina said, coming in with Penny close behind her. “I do like being outside, but there’s a limit, and we’ve passed it.” She made a swift survey of Garth’s arm around Cliff, and of their faces. “Did I miss something?”

  “Cliff wondered if we’d be inviting Lu to dinner again,” Garth said, his voice carefully neutral.

  “Oh.” Stubborn Cliff, Sabrina thought. A long talk with your father, a good one, it looks like, but everything you heard will have to be absorbed over time, and meanwhile you have to push and prod, at least once more. “Well, I’m sure we will,” she said matter-of-factly. “We’ll probably have a farewell dinner for him when he’s ready to go back to China. We always do that for visitors, don’t we?”

  She smiled at Cliff. “We’ll have to be very nice to him, so he’ll know we wish him all the success he’s hoping for.” She poured lemonade for herself and Penny and decided to do a little pushing and prodding of her own. “I think you might be especially nice to him, Cliff, since you haven’t been in the past.”

  Cliff scowled.

  “You’re a host here, too, you know; this is your house as much as ours, and hosts have responsibilities to their guests.”

  “Yeh, but—”

  “And it’s always a good idea to be extra nice to someone when you’re pretty sure you won’t ever see him again.”

  “Oh.” The scowl faded. “Well, yeah. Sure.”

  The back door opened and Mrs. Thirkell came in, struggling with shopping bags. “Cliff, could you—”

  “Sure.” He jumped up. His face was bright. He pried two bags from her grasp. “How come you don’t drive? It’d be a lot easier.”

  “Because in this country you drive on the wrong side of the street and it’s unnatural and I want no part of it.” The telephone rang and she swooped down on it. “Put everything on the counter, Cliff, if you please.”

  Garth stood and put his arm around Sabrina. “Thank you. Maybe, between the two of us, we’ve taken care of it.”

  “Mommy,” Penny said, “did you forget? You were going to ask Daddy about the party tonight.”

  “Party?” Garth asked.

  “Penny’s been invited to Carla Shelton’s house and she doesn’t know who else is going.”

  “Shelton? Is that a new name? I haven’t heard it.”

  “They’re new in town.”

  “It’s Carla’s birthday,” Penny said. “Can I go? She lives in that big house that we walked past, the huge one that was for sale for such a long time.”

  “But you don’t know who’s been invited, Penny, and we talked about that, remember?”

  “My lady,” Mrs. Thirkell said, “Princess Alexandra is on the telephone.”

  Sabrina looked at her uncomprehendingly. Alexandra?

  I am standing in a kitchen in Evanston, Illinois, talking to my molecular-scientist husband and our eleven-year-old daughter about a party that perhaps she shouldn’t go to, while our twelve-year-old son unloads groceries. What place does Princess Alexandra Martova have here, even on the telephone?

  “My lady?”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Thirkell.” She took the telephone i
nto the breakfast room. “Alexandra? Where are you?”

  “Chicago, the Fairchild. Honey, I know this is unforgivable, but we’re just here overnight, and would you and your husband come down and have dinner with me? Antonio’s doing business from now to midnight and I’d love to see you. I didn’t know we’d be here; we were flying from London to somewhere—Detroit? Pittsburgh?—where Antonio had people to see, and all of a sudden he told our pilot to go to Chicago instead. So I thought . . . You know, I miss Sabrina, and I thought how nice it would be to be with you for a while. Do you mind my saying that?”

  “No.” Sabrina closed her eyes and for a moment was Sabrina Longworth again, in London, talking to Alexandra about plans to go to a restaurant that night, talking about the next party, the next country weekend, the next cruise . . . the next cruise, Max’s yacht, a cruise off Monaco, an explosion . . .

  “Honey? If you’re too busy—”

  “No, I’d like to see you. But why don’t you come here? We’ll have dinner and talk as long as we want.”

  “At your house? But you don’t live in Chicago.”

  “I don’t live in the next county, either. It’s about twenty minutes by taxi. Or . . . don’t tell me Antonio hasn’t hired a limousine; that was always the first thing—” She stopped. Why do I do that? I slip back so easily; you’d think by now . . .

  “It is amazing to me,” Alexandra said into the silence, “the little things Sabrina told you about us. Yes, we’ve got a limo, and I’d love to come to your house. Eight o’clock?”

  Sabrina smiled, thinking how long it had been since eight o’clock was the earliest anyone would consider having dinner. “Fine. I’ll see you then.”

  “Mommy,” Penny said. She had come into the breakfast room. “Can I go? Barbara’s going.”

  Sabrina switched her attention. “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I forgot.”

  Garth had joined them and he and Sabrina exchanged a glance. “It sounds all right,” he said. “Vivian wouldn’t let Barbara go if she was worried.”

  Sabrina nodded slowly. “Ten o’clock, Penny.”

  “Ten o’clock! Mommy, it’s Friday night!”

  “You’re right. Ten-thirty.”