A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  “Forty-one,” he said promptly. “Forty-two next month.”

  “You look younger.”

  “I feel younger. Probably from bicycling up Mont Ventoux once a week. Perhaps you’ll do it with me one day.”

  “I don’t know if I know how to ride a bicycle.”

  “The easiest way to find out is to start pedaling. If you find you can’t do it, I’ll gladly teach you.”

  Stephanie looked at Max. “I’d like to try. Is it all right? May I buy a bicycle?”

  “Of course, if that’s what you want. We’ll wait,” he said to Robert, “until she’s stronger.”

  “She’s strong enough now for many rides around here. The postal roads that circle the vineyards and cherry orchards—empty except once a day when the postman comes in his car—even you could do them.”

  Max smiled. “I thought you’d given up trying to turn me into an athlete. But if Sabrina wants it, of course she’ll have it.”

  Stephanie felt like a child between two grown-ups. They knew everything, and she knew nothing. She imagined curling up between them, letting them take care of her. Then, perversely, she felt stirrings of anger. Don’t treat me like a child.

  But in a powerful way, she really was like a child. She had no history, no framework of experience in which to maneuver and hold her own and make decisions about the future.

  Then I’ll pretend, she thought, and said to Robert, “You were going to tell me your story.”

  “And so I will.” He wiped his plate with his bread, finished his wine, and sat back. “My father was a pirate.” He smiled at Stephanie’s expression. “It amuses me to say that, and in fact, when I was growing up, that was what he told me and my brothers: he was a pirate on the high seas. But he was something less dramatic: a clever and rather lucky thief who worked as a steward on a very posh cruise line. He was quite short, but extraordinarily handsome and well-muscled, and he charmed everyone; I never knew a man before or since who was so loved—adored, really—by everyone. Including, of course, his wife and six sons.”

  “That I hadn’t known,” Max said. “Six boys. No girls?”

  “My mother often said her character was forged by having to hold her own against seven men. And she was indeed a woman of admirable fortitude. She was a maid in the Hôtel Fouchard, an elegant place with a restaurant that Michelin gave three stars every year. That was my favorite place in the world, that kitchen.”

  “What did your father steal?” Stephanie was leaning forward, her chin on her folded hands, for the first time happily absorbed in someone else.

  “Whatever he could. Small amounts of money that were not likely to be missed; jewelry, always from women who had brought such an enormous cache of gold and jewels on board that a bracelet or brooch or jeweled hair clip might not be missed until they were back on shore. It was highly risky and stupid, because his tips were extremely generous, and of course it was immoral, but he was convinced he could not support his family in fine style in any other way. And then, you see, he had so many successful years that it all began to seem quite normal. After a while he saw himself as an entrepreneur, his business, with regular routines and accounting systems and steady hours, was piracy.”

  Stephanie laughed. Max and Robert looked at her as if she had been transformed. And in a way she had: her face was alight as it had not been before. For Max, it was as if the woman he had known in London had come back to him, exuberant, vivid, living life as if everything she found was new and wonderful. For Robert, the moment when Stephanie laughed was the moment when he began to love her with the protective love of an adult for a child caught in a world filled with dangers.

  Of course her world is filled with dangers, he thought. Why else would Max pretend to be dead? From whom was he fleeing? What if these people, whoever they are, found out that he was still alive? Where could this child-woman go? To whom could she run for help? She would come to me, Robert thought. And I would take care of her.

  It was a promise.

  “Where is your father now?” Stephanie asked.

  “Dead, for many years. It becomes a sad story. You see, for all his legendary charm, my father was a man of vicious temper. My mother kept him under control at home, but away from his family he was a coiled spring, waiting to explode at any provocation. It did not happen often, but it happened a few times that I knew about before the last time, when I was sixteen. Some man tried to blackmail my father into sharing his loot. They had a fight. The man had a knife, and my father was killed.”

  Stephanie was staring at him, wide-eyed. “He was very young. And your mother was left with six boys to bring up.”

  “Spoken like a mother,” Robert said, smiling.

  Stephanie gave a small gasp, and Max said, “Sabrina has no children.”

  “How do you know?” Stephanie demanded.

  “You told me you’d never been married. I assume you had no children. You never mentioned any. I got the impression you didn’t want any.”

  There was a pause. “You never told me that. What else did I say that you haven’t told me?”

  “A few things, nothing that would help us fill in your background. I was waiting until you were better to tell you all of them; I thought if they triggered some memories, you would handle them more easily if you were stronger.”

  “Max, I’m strong now.”

  “You’re still recovering. We’ll go over everything, Sabrina, at the right time. You said you would trust me; I expect you to do that.” He refilled their wineglasses. “Robert, finish your story.”

  Robert looked from Max to Stephanie. He saw Stephanie clasp her hands—in despair? he wondered, or resignation?—and he pulled his chair closer to the table to drink the coffee Madame Besset had served. “Well, then, my mother was left with six boys. I was the oldest and by then I was earning a little money, so I could help her.”

  “But you were in school,” Stephanie said.

  “No, I left school when I was twelve. I made a fuss and my mother did not argue. I was not a good student; what I really wanted was to be in the kitchen of the Hôtel Fouchard. So I would go to work with my mother, and while she cleaned the rooms, I hung around the kitchen. I washed dishes, I folded napkins and polished cutlery, I ran errands, and then one day the sous chef said I could help cut up vegetables. I did that for all of my fourteenth year. When I was fifteen I was allowed to help make salads. By the time I was sixteen, when my father was killed, I was assistant to the pastry chef and they were paying me, not much, but something.”

  “And then?” Stephanie asked.

  “Well, eventually I became a chef with my own three-star restaurant. I had a reputation equal to that of the Troigrois brothers, Paul Bocuse, Michel Guérard . . . all the masters of French cuisine. We were all good friends, compatriots, dedicated to our art. And after a while I had a wife and a child.”

  “Oh. But then . . .”

  “But then, one day, just ten years ago, I was working late and someone came to rob the restaurant. And my life changed.”

  He paused, and Stephanie murmured, “Another thief.”

  Robert gazed at her with pleasure. “You understand how curious it is that my life was shaped by two thieves. Well, yes, another thief. He broke in a side door while I was at my desk off the kitchen. I heard a sound—he was breaking open the safe in the maître d’s office—and when I confronted him we fought. And I killed him.”

  Stephanie gasped. “You had a knife. From the kitchen.”

  “Ah, my dear, you are quick. Yes, this time I was the one with the knife. But he had a gun, and though he had no chance to use it, everyone agreed that I had been defending myself and therefore should not be convicted. So I was free and my restaurant had a souçon more publicity, and all should have been well. But it was not. Because, you see, when I fought with that man I discovered in myself a fury I did not know I had, and a great joy in the attack. I became my father, exploding into murderous rage, and nothing, nothing could have stopped me from kill
ing. When it was over, I understood my father and I understood that I was indeed his son.”

  There was a silence. Robert was looking at his hands, clasped on the edge of the table. “I understood, too, that all of us harbor some seed within us that is fundamental to our being even though we have no suspicion it is there, something so deeply a part of us that even when we claim, in our arrogance, that we can predict how we will behave in this circumstance or that, and can control our actions, in truth we do not have the proper eyes to see that seed, nor do we have the self-knowledge that would allow us to plumb deep enough to reach it. And so we know only a part of ourselves and often cannot control even that part. I did not know the man who killed that thief. His name was Robert Chalon and he inhabited my body, but he was unknown to me. That terrified me. And I thought then that it was essential to learn who I was, and to use my knowledge to help others know truly who they are, to help them understand their fundamental nature and use it for good.”

  “You’ve upset her,” Max said, and Robert looked up to see tears glistening on Stephanie’s face.

  “Ah, Sabrina, forgive me.” Robert held her hand between his. “I did not realize . . . Of course, that is your loss, too: you do not know the person who inhabits your body. Well, then, let me help you, let us try together to bring back your past and return to you your true self.”

  “I don’t know how,” Stephanie said.

  “Nor do I, but perhaps we can learn together. And do you know what else? I will teach you to cook. Shall I? I would make a bet that you knew how in the past, and it may come back and help us find the rest of you. What do you say to that?”

  “Madame Besset will not be happy,” Max said, and Stephanie knew that though he said it lightly he was not pleased with the discussion.

  “I’d like that,” she said firmly to Robert, not looking at Max. “I’d like that very much.”

  “Then we’ll do it. Perhaps two mornings a week? Would that be all right?”

  She smiled ruefully. “I’m not busy; that would be wonderful. But I don’t want Madame Besset to find out that I have no memory.”

  “Can you give her the day off?”

  “Oh, yes, that would be perfect; I’ll tell her she can have two mornings—Oh.” She turned to Max. “I’m sorry. Is it all right? We could give Madame Besset two mornings a week off, couldn’t we?”

  “If it would make you happy.”

  “Thank you,” Stephanie said, and no one commented on the fact that twice, during lunch, she had asked Max’s permission as if, indeed, she were a child.

  Robert stood up. “I must leave. I thank you for lunch; it was excellent. We should decide on which mornings—”

  “Why didn’t you say anything about God?” Stephanie asked abruptly. “If you wanted to help people find themselves, you could have become a psychologist or a psychiatrist; you didn’t have to become a priest.”

  He sat down again. “You know about psychologists and psychiatrists.”

  “From the hospital.”

  “And you know much more than that, I’m sure. Well, you want to know about God. Long ago, in ancient times, when men tried to map the world, they would draw as much as they knew from sailing along the coastlines of countries, but without airplanes, they could not know all there was. And so the rest of the map was left blank. In that blank space they drew dragons and other fire-breathing creatures, and wrote, ‘Where you know nothing, place terrors.’ After I killed that man, when I knew that I knew nothing, my world was filled with terrors. And the only way I could live with my ignorance and those terrors was to acknowledge that there are mysteries that pervade our lives and we will probably never understand them. People like to think they can understand everything, given enough time and money, but of course that is not true. So I accepted the great mystery in what makes us human and unique, and, like others throughout history, I gave it the name of God. And within that name lie all the unknowns and powers and potentials that make us what we are; the fears and dreams and terrors that visit us; the love we give and the love we are so grateful to receive; the spirit that lets us soar—unless we fail to nurture it, and so we sink. I could not look inside myself or help others to do the same without acknowledging the dominance of that mystery in my life. Psychiatrists and psychologists seem able to do it; I know many of them are sensitive and superb in their helping professions. But I cannot. Does that answer your question?”

  “What happened to your wife and child?”

  “My wife died two years ago. My child lives with a family in Roussillon. Sometimes we count our gains in losses. We will talk about that sometime. Now I will say goodbye, my dear Sabrina. And I will see you . . . day after tomorrow? At nine in the morning?”

  Stephanie looked at Max. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll see you out, Robert.”

  She watched them go. She heard the shutters creak and the house groan beneath the onslaught of the wind and she saw the trees whip wildly, like dancers gone mad. Sometimes we count our gains in losses. She had lost her past, but the house sheltered her, and within it Max and Madame Besset cared for her. She was alive; her body grew stronger each day; she remembered someone named Laura and the smell of roses, and a silver scissors, and moving around a lot, and she knew about psychiatrists and psychologists.

  And now she had a friend who would help her remember the rest.

  CHAPTER 6

  Sabrina and Garth stood in the round, dimly lit main room of the Shedd Aquarium, greeting their guests. It was February, almost four months after Stephanie’s funeral, and by now Sabrina found it so natural to be with Garth, to stand beside him hosting a university function, that she no longer wondered at her life, or her sureness in making it her own. Her grief over Stephanie’s death was a permanent part of her, clutching her at unexpected moments, but her love for Garth and the children was more powerful, always new and wondrous, a kind of magic she had never known.

  In the aquarium, she and Garth stood close together, smiling and greeting everyone by name. On the circular wall around them large windows looked into the bright underwater worlds of exotic fish, crustaceans, corals, and undulating plants that made the aquarium on Chicago’s lakefront famous. Garth had chosen it as a unique place for a reception to honor major donors to the Institute for Genetic Engineering, and to welcome potential ones, and now he watched the guests move from window to window, murmuring through their sophisticated veneer at the wondrous iridescent colors of rare fish and the fantastic shapes of crustaceans from all the oceans of the world. He and Sabrina shared a smile. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Even with the fish, it would have been as dull as every other reception, without you.”

  “It wouldn’t be dull for me,” Sabrina said. “I love to watch you work a crowd and make speeches, and I love you, and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”

  Their guests commented on what a striking couple they were, Garth in his tuxedo and Sabrina in a gold sweater and long white satin skirt she had brought from her closet in London, and when Claudia Beyer, the president of the university, arrived, she eyed them with approval. “Stephanie, Garth, you do us proud. Do we have a goal for tonight?”

  Garth shook his head. “We’re just making everyone feel wanted and loved. We’ll go after them in the next six weeks, the end of the campaign, I hope. February and March are good times to ask for money; by then most people have forgotten how much they spent on Christmas.”

  Claudia smiled. She was tall and very thin, curved like an archer’s bow, with slicked-back gray hair and oversize tortoiseshell glasses. She wore a black pants suit with a ruffled white blouse and was almost a twin to her tall, thin husband, a professor of French history. “And the goal for the end of the campaign?” she asked.

  “Three million four,” Garth said patiently, knowing that she knew exactly how much everyone in the university was seeking at every moment of the year. “That will bring us up to fifteen million and we won’t have to ask for any more until we decide to expand.
”

  “It’s taken a lot of entertaining,” Claudia mused.

  “All of it in the budget. We haven’t gone over.”

  “I know. It’s a very big budget. But tonight looks like a good evening; I like your idea of the aquarium.”

  “I can’t take credit for that,” Garth said, glancing at Sabrina.

  “Ah.” Claudia nodded. “I always did like Stephanie’s ideas. I’ll call you about another lunch, Stephanie; there’s something I’d like to talk to you about. Shall I call you at your shop?”

  “Yes. If I’m not there, Madeline will be. I’d like lunch; I enjoyed our last one.”

  “Good.” She left as abruptly as she had arrived, moving purposefully to a group of guests watching a school of anglerfish glide through the darkened water, their bands of color as luminous as neon.

  “What did she mean about a very big budget?” Sabrina asked.

  “That we’re spending a lot to raise a lot and she’d rather spend a little to raise the same amount. I’d do it if I could, but I haven’t found a good way to get someone to write a six- or seven-figure check without some socializing to smooth the way.”

  “Claudia ought to do it. You should be thinking about science and running an institute, not going around with your hat in your hand.”

  “She does do it, and she’s one of the best, but people who write checks with lots of zeroes usually want to see the person who’s going to spend them. I can understand that. You look extraordinarily beautiful tonight. You look wonderful in gold, and I like your hair; you’ve cut it, haven’t you? It looks shorter.”