A Tangled Web (19 page)

M
adame Besset was away, and Robert and Stephanie had the bright kitchen to themselves. A March wind rattled the windows, but the sun shone, flowers were thrusting up through newly raked gardens, and tiny buds had appeared on the short stumps of plane tree branches, pruned back in the fall and ready now to grow again, and spread out. In Provence, summer was almost here. Robert stood before the stove, Stephanie beside him, and he dipped a spoon into the pot of simmering sauce and blew on it lightly. “Now, Sabrina, let us see what we have wrought.” He took a small sip. “Ah, yes. It is a miracle, how a few ingredients can blend to such sublime harmony. What a pity people and their governments cannot learn to do the same.”

“If it's a miracle, how can they learn it?” Stephanie asked.

He chuckled. “You have me there. They can only pray. But that seems an inadequate solution for the problems of the world.”

“Robert, you must believe in prayer.”

“And so I do. But I do not trust prayer on its own strength and fervor to bring about the great changes the world needs. People must take action if there is to be progress and hope. Now, taste this and tell me if there is some way we can improve it.”

Stephanie took the spoon and sipped from it. “Oh, wonderful. But . . . perhaps a little flat?”

“Good. Very good. What a pleasure to have such a quick student. We shall add a souçon of lemon juice”—he was slicing a lemon as he spoke—“and then a touch more salt and pepper . . .”

“Robert, don't you ever measure anything? It's always a handful of sugar or a touch of cayenne or a souçon of lemon juice or a few capers . . . How can I follow recipes like that?”

“You will not follow recipes; you will create by understanding the relationship of one ingredient to the other. Cooking is like life, you know: you do not strive for rigidity and absolutism; you seek variety, flexibility, freedom. Without them, you cook insipid dishes and live a narrow life. You are already learning this in our lessons. I think, my dear, that you have done a considerable amount of cooking in your life, probably not haute cuisine, but simple everyday meals that were most likely very good, because you are comfortable in a kitchen. Do you not feel this?”

“No. Everything is new.” She picked up a lemon zester. “You had to tell me what to do with this, and I thought the poultry shears were just an odd kind of scissors, and I didn't know how to use a boning knife, and”—her voice caught—“
I couldn't even peel a potato until you showed me how to hold—
”

“Hush, now, hush, my dear Sabrina.” He took the zester from her and put his arms around her, holding her gently. “I know this is terrible for you, and worrisome, but you are doing well. This is only our second lesson, and look how much you've learned. As for your past, I don't think you can force it or command it to return to you; it
will come in its own way, in its own time. You must have patience. Do not try so hard. Relax and enjoy this lovely home and the people who care for you.” He moved away from her in a way that made it seem they had simultaneously stepped apart. “So. Max will be here in two hours and we have not finished our dinner. Now that we have the sauce for the coquilles Saint-Jacques, we will make coq au vin, and then marquise au chocolat for dessert. You understand, I do not eat this way every day; if I did I would have a paunch that would be memorable, even in Provence. But for a small party, to welcome Max home and to celebrate your second very successful cooking lesson, it is a good menu. Now, my dear, we first reduce the chicken stock, and while it is cooking we prepare the pearl onions.”

I love Robert, Stephanie thought. And I love Madame Besset and I love this room, all white and red and shining, and I love the sun after a week of rain. She felt light and happy, moving purposefully about the kitchen, using her hands, thinking, planning, creating. She found it incomprehensible and frightening that her moods swung so wildly from fear and depression to happiness and then back again without warning, as just now, when the full weight of what she did not know about a kitchen had struck her, but as soon as Robert comforted her, she swung again to joy. She felt now just as she had the week before, driving Madame Besset's car: she was a real person, a whole person, thinking about now and not about a past that was lost to her.

She watched Robert's hands move surely and swiftly, with perfect economy of movement, and she tried to match him. As he worked, he described each step, and even told her the history of the foods and spices they were using and anecdotes about them. “It was Lewis Carroll, you know, in
Alice in Wonderland,
who had the walrus say that a loaf of bread and pepper and vinegar would—”

“Alice in wonderland? What is that? A story? About a
talking walrus? How strange; do you have it? I'd like to read it.”

Robert was sliding a covered dish into the oven and he waited until he turned around to answer. He was filled with pity for this woman, so strikingly beautiful, so full of life and curiosity, her mind quick and open . . . but with nothing to cling to but the things of here and now. How much we take the past for granted, he thought; without being aware of it, each day we stand on top of yesterday, reaching back a week, a month, years, perhaps, to pluck out memories that give us assurance of our place in the world and a foundation for tomorrow. How would it be to awaken and have nothing to reach back and grasp, not even my own name? I cannot imagine it; it seems it would be a form of death.

But this lovely woman was not dead: she was young and vibrant and she was making a life. With our help, Robert thought. We must all be very good to her, and very careful; she is dependent on us for all of the todays that will become her yesterdays, for the foundation she is building for the future. We can give her security and time to become a new Sabrina Lacoste. We can give her love. And if we are steadfast in that, she will remake herself with the grace and style that are hers, even if she never recovers her past.

His thoughts had been swift, and he was speaking even as he turned back from the oven. “I think I have a copy of
Alice in Wonderland;
I'll look for it. It is a fantasy filled with wisdom, written by a British mathematician who knew a great deal about human foibles, including his own. If you have questions when you read it, you must ask me. Or Max, of course. Now, my dear, everything has been prepared, and I am going to clean the kitchen while you change into something festive. We'll have drinks in the library as soon as Max arrives.”

“Madame Besset will clean up tomorrow,” Stephanie said.

He smiled. “I'm sure she would. But I have invaded
her kitchen, and the only way to ensure a pleasant encounter the next time is to leave it as I found it. Better, if possible, though with Madame Besset that is very difficult. Go on, now, get ready; Max said six o'clock and he is always punctual.”

“You like him, don't you?” Stephanie asked. She was reluctant to leave.

“Very much. He is a man of his word.”

“Do you know . . .” She hesitated. “Do you know what he does on his business trips?”

“He tells me he exports farm and construction equipment.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I have no reason not to. Do you?”

“I don't know. He keeps a wall around himself; I never know what he's thinking.”

“He loves you. You know that.”

Stephanie was silent. After a moment she said, “I think you don't really believe him when he tells you what his business is.”

“Sabrina, I do not call my good friend a liar.”

“But you said, ‘He
tells
me he exports equipment.' ”

“Ah. You have a quick mind; you hear subtleties. Well, he does tell me that and I do not doubt it, but I think Max is a man who would not be content with that, and so it seems possible to me, even likely, that he also is involved in other endeavors that challenge his wits more than construction equipment.”

“He said he gives money to you and other priests around the world.”

“He does. We have some programs that are very important to us and Max helps fund them. In fact, I rely on him greatly for the money he contributes; it is substantial.”

“Programs of education and job training.”

“Yes, for young people. And finding housing for them, helping them help their parents and younger brothers and
sisters, teaching them to be involved in the political system, if there is one.”

“If there is one?”

“Many countries have only a dictatorship.”

“So you don't teach them about politics in those countries?”

“Well, we do, in a different way. My dear Sabrina, if you do not get cleaned up, Max will find you looking like the chef instead of the mistress of this house. He might even confuse you with Madame Besset.”

Stephanie did not return his smile; she was looking at him closely. “All right, I will, but I'm not through asking you questions. It seems to me you go into the tiniest details when you talk about food and cooking, but as soon as I ask you about yourself, you get very vague.”

“Go on, now,” Robert said gently. “This has been a good day, filled with many lessons.”

“Oh.” Stephanie made a gesture of frustration. “You and Max, so mysterious sometimes.”

But when she was taking her bath she forgot Robert and thought only of Max. He had been gone for eight days, and the house had seemed to grow larger and more silent with each day. Well, I got used to him, Stephanie thought, stepping out of the tub and reaching for her bath sheet. He's a big man; he takes up a lot of space. And he's interesting to talk to.

She dressed in an ivory silk sweater and wide ivory silk pants that Max had bought one day in a boutique in Aix-en-Provence while she was in the hospital. It was the first time she had worn them, and the cool, clinging smoothness of the sweater and the swirl of the pants felt so good that she spun about in a brief whirl of pleasure. Very sexy clothes, she thought, fastening a gold necklace that Max had given her just before he left for Marseilles. Whatever that means: sexy clothes.

She ran a comb through her hair; it was beginning to grow long. Max had mentioned it a few times after she had asked him about it—how magnificent it had been—and
she had known it would please him if she wore it long, but that was not the reason she was letting it grow. She wanted to see the other person she was, the one she could not reach or even imagine.

She lifted her hair to look at her forehead. The scar was long, but tight and neat, and it was fading; the doctor had said it would become silvery in a few months and then almost disappear. Her cheeks and neck and the area around her eyes were still scarred, but each week the lines grew fainter; by now, from a distance, they were barely visible. Pretty soon I'll look as good as new, Stephanie thought, stepping into ivory silk shoes. All patched up. The only thing missing will be my real self.

She looked at her image in the mirror and knew that she was beautiful and that she had dressed to make the most of her slender figure. She picked up a heavy gold link belt and threaded it through the loops on her pants. It fastened intricately in front, with a cluster of pearls. “Smashing,” she said aloud, in English, and saw her eyes in the mirror grow wide with surprise. “Smashing,” she repeated. “Where was I that people said ‘
smashing
'?”

The glare of headlights swept across her window; she heard a car stop and a door slam. I'll think about it later, she thought. Max is here. She ran from her room and was in the foyer when the front door opened and he walked in. She was in his arms before the door had swung shut. “Too long,” he said, his mouth on hers. “Much too long away from you.”

Stephanie's body awoke. Within her, small flames flickered, reached higher, then caught in a burst of heat and light. They danced wildly inside her; her fingers dug into Max's back, and she gave herself to the crush of his arms, feeling herself dissolve into wanting him.

“My God,” he muttered and swept her off the floor. “You're back, my magnificent Sabrina . . .”

He turned to the stairs, cradling Stephanie in his arms, her face buried against his neck. But just then, faintly, came the sound of a casserole lid being replaced and an
oven door closing. Stephanie's head came up; her body tightened. “Oh, Max, I forgot. Wait. Robert is in the kitchen—”

“The hell with him.”

“No, you don't understand; he and I made dinner. He's waiting for us.”

“Let him wait.”

“
No!
” She was struggling to stand up.

He let her go. “Well, what the hell do you want, then?”

“Robert and I made dinner. It's very special, he cared very much about making a special meal for you, to welcome you home, and I want us to eat it together. And then, when Robert goes . . .”

“Dinner. One fucking dinner is so goddam important you put it ahead of—”

“Don't talk like that!” She was trembling with wanting him, but angry at him for not caring about Robert. “This is important to Robert and he's the best friend we've got, and we are not going to keep him sitting in the kitchen like a servant after he spent a whole day teaching me and cooking for you and telling me how much he likes you. Dinner will take two or three hours, and if you can't wait that long to go to bed with me, then we won't go to bed at all.”

Max stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at her through narrowed eyes. Stephanie gazed back at him steadily. After a minute he smiled and lifted her hand to his lips. “My fiery Sabrina. You've come back to me. What happened this week to wake you up?”

So I was like this before, Stephanie thought. Standing up for things; saying what I think, even if it isn't convenient. I'm glad. I hated feeling helpless all these months.

“I learned to drive,” she said, and turned her hand within Max's to twine her fingers in his and lead him to the kitchen.