A Tangled Web

by Judith Michael

  Penny’s lips were parted; she had not taken her eyes from Sabrina’s face.

  “So if I find out that you’ve gone to anybody’s house, even your girlfriends’ houses, without my permission; if I find out you’ve been doing drugs or drinking or having sex—and I’m very good at finding things out, Penny, you know that—I’m grounding you for a year. Not a week or a month; a year. No more art classes or art supplies, no more friends over to spend the night, no more movies on Saturday afternoons or trips to the Art Institute or the planetarium or the aquarium or the Field Museum with Daddy and Cliff and me. Is that clear?”

  “That’s not fair,” Penny said, but it came out weakly: not a cry of defiance but a standard complaint so intrinsic to adolescence that young people could utter it in their sleep. Penny’s rigid muscles, Sabrina saw, had relaxed; she was no longer quivering.

  “I think it’s fair because I think it’s right. And I think it’s important for your growing up. When you’re ready to leave home you’ll make your own decisions about what’s fair and right and important, and your father and I won’t be a part of it, but until then—”

  “I don’t want to leave home!” Penny flung herself into Sabrina’s lap. “I want to stay here forever, with you and Daddy and Cliff and our house and everything just the same!”

  Sabrina laid her cheek on Penny’s hair. “You’ll grow up, my sweet Penny, and you’ll create your own life; you’ll believe in yourself and trust your decisions, and you’ll know who you want to be and how you’re going to become that person. But for now we’re all here, we’re together in our family and our house, and it’s going to stay that way for a long time. I promise you that.”

  She looked up. Garth was standing in the doorway, carrying his raincoat and briefcase, watching her. He raised his eyebrows in a question, and Sabrina shook her head. “No, you’re not interrupting; we’ve had a good talk and we’ve just about covered everything. Haven’t we, Penny?”

  Penny sat up. “I guess.”

  “But?” Sabrina asked.

  “I don’t know what to say when they . . . you know.”

  “Say your mother told you you’d be grounded for a year if you go with them. I did that with Cliff last fall and it worked like a charm.”

  “With Cliff? You did? Why? What did he do?”

  “Well, that’s between Cliff and me. But it worked for him and I’m sure it will work for you. In fact, now that I think about it, it’s amazing how a few basic ideas can be used in dozens of situations, like ingredients in recipes. It makes being a parent a lot easier than one would think.”

  Garth chuckled. “It’s only easier when you’re smart enough to figure out how to use the ingredients. Penny, I saw two of your puppets in a display in Kroch’s window today; you didn’t tell us they’d be there.”

  Penny leaped up, everything else forgotten. “In the window? My puppets? Why?”

  “There was a precariously balanced tower of books on arts and crafts, and in front of it were two extremely beautiful puppets and a sign saying they were made by Penny Andersen. I told everyone who was walking by that that was my daughter. They were very impressed.”

  Penny was jumping from one foot to the other. “Can we go see them? Mrs. Casey must have loaned them, but she never told me. Can we go? Please? Right now? Please?”

  Garth and Sabrina exchanged a quick look. Five o’clock was their time, a quiet hour for a glass of wine and talk about their day. “Okay,” Garth said, “a very quick trip to Kroch’s, and then your mother and I want some time together.”

  “Okay, but can we go now?”

  Sabrina watched them go, Garth tall and lean, his hair a little too long, his jacket patched at the elbows, his shoes scuffed. We have plenty of money for him to buy a new everything, she thought, but we don’t do that because he’s still worried about comments from his colleagues. Peer pressure. Not so different from what Penny faces. Maybe we never escape it: wondering what others see when they look at us, what they want to see, what we want to show them. Poor Penny, to have to deal with all of that at her age. But when Penny and Garth returned, Penny was talking only about the display and the manager who had complimented her on her artistic skill. “I’m famous! They’re going to put my picture in the paper! I have to tell Cliff!”

  When she had run upstairs, Garth sat with Sabrina on the couch. Mrs. Thirkell appeared, and set a bottle of wine and two glasses and a gold-rimmed platter of hors d’oeuvres on the table before them. “There were a number of calls today, my lady; the messages are on your desk. I would have told you earlier, but I didn’t want to interrupt you and Penny.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Thirkell. Seven-thirty for dinner, please; we’re running a little late. And would you make sure that Cliff really washes his hands? He seems determined to keep part of the soccer field with him at all times.”

  Mrs. Thirkell smiled. “I have a photo of England’s top cricket player accepting an award with impeccably clean hands. I’ll show it to Cliff.” She made minute adjustments to the placement of the wine bottle and the platter, made a swift survey of the living room to see that nothing else required her attention, and then was gone.

  Garth poured the wine. “Does she lie in wait like a cat, watching for the perfect moment to pounce?”

  “She probably timed it to Penny’s going upstairs.” Sabrina contemplated him. “Are you really annoyed? I know she hasn’t been here long, Garth, but she’s settled in so completely and it’s so wonderful to have her, I can’t believe you’re upset.”

  “It doesn’t bother you that she stands around and chatters when we ought to be having our own time?”

  “She chattered, as you call it, for a little less than one minute.”

  “And why the hell does she hang on to her royalist ‘my lady’? It doesn’t belong in this country and the kids don’t understand it.”

  “The kids find it vastly amusing. She’s always called me that, Garth, and it seems to give her pleasure to go on doing it.”

  “She has never called Stephanie Andersen ‘my lady.’ ”

  “No, but she looks at me and thinks I look exactly like Lady Sabrina Longworth, and maybe she doesn’t want to think of that woman as being dead. Maybe she’ll get over it after she’s been here awhile, but if she doesn’t, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. What is it that really bothers you? Is it being waited on?” She gazed at him. “That is it, isn’t it? Deep inside, the Minnesota farm boy feels guilty because he’s living like a capitalist and therefore he must be exploiting labor. Good heavens, Garth, Mrs. Thirkell is doing a job she loves and does superbly; her job is no different, really, from yours at the university or mine at the Koner Building. Why not let her enjoy it and let yourself enjoy the fruits of it?”

  “The Koner Building. I meant to ask you about that as soon as I got home. Was it a good day?”

  “Yes.” Sabrina felt a spurt of anger. “Damn it, it was a wonderful day, and I couldn’t wait to tell you about it—”

  “I’m sorry.” Garth put his arm around her. “You were right about there being too much going on, and I’m more wound up than I think. But I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

  Sabrina slid her hand to the back of his head and brought his lips to hers, and they kissed with an intensity and passion that was the greater for the tensions that sprang up between them. “I love you,” Garth said. “I never want to hurt you; what we’re building is so good, if I thought I was destroying it—”

  “You couldn’t do that. All the way home this afternoon I kept thinking that nothing I did was complete until I’d shared it with you; I felt I’d explode with all the things I had to tell you. And I want to hear about your day, everybody you talked to, and I want to know when what’s-his-name from the congressman’s office is coming—”

  “Dinner, my lady,” said Mrs. Thirkell from the doorway.

  Sabrina felt Garth’s muscles tense. She stayed still; he would have to handle this himself. “Good timing,” he sa
id after a moment, with an irony that only Sabrina caught. He put his lips beside her ear. “And you and I, my lady, my dearest lady, will sit before the fire later on, just the two of us, while the rest of our world sleeps, and whatever we need we will give to each other with no one’s help.”

  Sabrina gave a low laugh. She turned her head and kissed him lightly. “You are a most wonderful man, and I love you, and I am so very glad that I have a lifetime to share with you.”

  Turning back to the kitchen, Mrs. Thirkell nodded with approval. It was a wonderful thing how love grew. She had reason to know it: already she loved Mrs. Andersen fully as much as she had loved Lady Longworth. And in fact it was as if Mrs. Andersen was, in a strange way, her sister. Mrs. Thirkell was not a mystic; she prided herself in seeing clearly what was what, but the truth was that she saw both sisters in Mrs. Andersen and if that was strange and impossible to understand, then that was the way it was. And thank goodness, Mrs. Thirkell thought, carrying the soup tureen to the sideboard in the dining room. This family is better for it, and heaven knows, so am I. “Penny,” she said, “how about helping me serve the soup?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Stephanie was alone. Max was in Marseilles, Madame Besset was at the market, and the house was silent, except for the drumming of a hard early March rain on the tile roof. “I’ll only be a couple of days,” Max had said that morning as he packed a small bag, and after he left, Stephanie wandered through the rooms, trailing her fingers along the furniture, catching glimpses, through the rain-streaked windows, of the misty hills in the distance. “My house,” she said aloud. “This is my house.”

  She liked the silence. It was the first time she had been alone since she and Max had arrived, a month earlier, the first time she could listen to her own thoughts for a whole day, without interruption. “I live here. Even if I don’t know anything about myself, I have these rooms where I belong, and a name—Sabrina Lacoste, even if it feels somehow wrong—and a housekeeper, a gardener, a maintenance man, and . . . a husband.”

  In the kitchen, Madame Besset had left a platter of baked Provencal tomatoes and sliced roast veal for Stephanie’s lunch; the table in the breakfast room was set for one, with a bottle of wine and an espresso maker ready to be switched on. The kitchen was immaculate, the house was clean, the laundry folded and put away, the plants watered. There was nothing left to be done.

  Stephanie walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the large bedroom Max had been using, alone, for a month. Madame Besset had been here, too: the bed was made, the clothes put away, the bathroom scrubbed. But Max’s presence hung in the room, in the book on his bedside table, his hairbrush and a tray of tie tacks and cuff links on the dresser, a pile of coins on the rolltop desk—he never carried loose change, Stephanie had learned—besides an embossed pen rising from a heavy gold penholder and Stephanie’s picture, snapped by Robert in front of the fire in the living room, framed in silver.

  Idly, Stephanie pulled up on the handle of the closed rolltop. It was locked. How odd, she thought; I guess he doesn’t trust me. Or Madame Besset. She tried the drawers; they were all locked. Maybe he doesn’t trust anybody.

  When, at breakfast, he had told her he would be taking a trip, on business, she had asked, “What business?” “Exports,” he had said briefly, and changed the subject. “No, but I really want to know,” Stephanie had insisted. “You said once that you and Robert work together, but when I asked him about it, he said you meant that you give money to some of his causes. You’re both so secretive; I hate that.”

  “Not secretive; I thought you’d find it boring. I export farm and construction equipment to developing countries. Tractors, forklifts, backhoes, whatever they need and can pay for.”

  “Do you go there, to all those countries?”

  “Sometimes. Usually not. I use my office and warehouse in Marseilles, and I work from here.”

  “But what do you do?”

  “I just said—”

  “No, I mean, if you don’t travel to those countries to make sales or negotiate contracts, and you don’t type up the contracts or go out and buy the tractors and forklifts yourself—at least I assume you don’t—and you don’t deliver them in person to your customers, what do you do?”

  He chuckled. “Not much, it seems. Well, I do make sales and negotiate contracts, as it happens, usually by phone; I have local agents who take care of the details. But mostly I deal with government agencies. The poorer the country, it seems, the more devious and obstructionist the government is, and even the best governments are a hierarchy of agencies staffed by people committed only to holding on to their jobs. Usually they’re someone’s brother or cousin or nephew, and that gives them a certain confidence; those are the ones who get things done. The ones without connections are usually the smartest and most interesting ones, but they spend their time protecting themselves by tying knots in every step of every negotiation to a degree of complication so dense that no one but they can unravel it. I spend my time unraveling their knots.”

  Stephanie was smiling. “I like that. I like listening to you; you make everything a story.”

  His face changed and he reached for her hand. “I don’t like leaving you. I’d take you, but I couldn’t spend time with you.”

  “What about Robert? He said you work together.”

  “Robert has assigned himself the task of saving the youth of the world. He has a few cohorts, priests in various countries, and they go about educating and training and finding jobs for young people. I give him money; that’s all I do; it’s very simple.”

  Simple, Stephanie thought, standing in his bedroom with her hand on the rolltop of his desk. Very simple. So why does he lock everything up?

  She sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at her picture on the desk. “I love you,” Max said every night when he kissed her on the forehead and cheek and let her go to the small first-floor room she still made her own. The night before, he had embraced her, holding her tightly before giving her that chaste kiss on her cheek and forehead. And when he had released her, Stephanie had felt, for the first time, a sense of loss, and had almost reached out to return to the warmth of his arms.

  But she had not. Because nothing else had changed: she still believed he kept things from her. And she still could not trust him.

  Sitting on his bed, she listened to the drumming of the rain. She was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the silence that she had treasured only a little while before. The air in the bedroom seemed heavy, stifling the sound of the rain; Stephanie clapped her hands, and the sound was muffled. She began to tremble. It was as if once again she was lost in the fog that had enveloped her when she was in the hospital.

  “I don’t want to be alone,” she said aloud. “I’ve never been alone and I don’t want to be now.” She drew in her breath. I’ve never been alone. Was that really true? If it was, then she must have lived with her parents until she went to college—if she went to college—and then gone on living with them or gotten married right away—if she had gotten married; Max said she’d told him she hadn’t been married—and then lived with her husband . . . and children? But Max said she didn’t have children.

  And then what? How did she get from there, wherever that was—parents, maybe college, maybe marriage—to being Max’s wife, on a yacht off the coast of France?

  The fog closed in, the silence wrapped itself around her. Oh, please come back! My past—my own life—my self—please come back! I want to know who I am!

  She jumped up and ran down the stairs. Her soft shoes made almost no sound on the polished wood, and in the crushing silence she ran faster, back to the kitchen. She turned on the faucet and listened to the splashing of water; she opened the freezer and dropped ice cubes into a glass, the clink loud and comforting. On the counter, her lunch waited for her. She took the platter of tomatoes and veal to the breakfast room and sat at the place set with blue-glazed Provencal dishes and a country wineglass, heavy and solid in her hand. She se
rved herself and poured a glass of wine, then sat still for a long time, holding the glass and looking at the heavy raindrops bouncing as they struck the terrace, splashing in pools of their own making, running like tears down the trunks of trees. “I don’t want to be alone,” she said again, and looked at the empty chair to her right. She wanted Max.

  In the afternoon she lit a fire in the library and curled up in a leather chair, leafing through a book of French paintings and sculpture. But when she heard Madame Besset return, she rushed to the kitchen for companionship. “Oh, how wet you are!” she cried.

  “Like a duck, Madame Sabrina,” Madame Besset said cheerfully. “One would think the good Lord had turned the ocean upside down, just over Cavaillon. A strange thing for the Lord to do, but then, many things connected with the Lord frequently seem strange, do they not?” She dropped her raincoat on the tile floor and toweled her hair vigorously until it stood up like a black fringe above her round black eyes and high brows. Her face was round with full cheeks, her figure was round and ample, and her arms were muscled from working on her family’s farm. “Perhaps, in the spring, I will grow tall, like our crops, from all this good rain.” She laughed as she began to put away her purchases.

  “Let me help,” Stephanie said.

  “Ah, no, madame, you sit there. Perhaps you would like a café au lait?”

  “No, I want to do something; I want to help you put everything away.”

  Madame Besset tilted her head to the side in thought. “No, madame. It is not right.”

  “But I want it and that makes it right.”

  “Madame, forgive me, but some things are correct and some are not. I was taught very thoroughly what was correct, and you must not ask me to forget all that I was taught.”