A Tangled Web Read online

  He peered at her. “Maybe you’re not hungry enough. Maybe I need somebody who’s willing to toss everything else over to do my job.”

  “Maybe you do,” she said, her voice turning cold. “I’ve never let anyone down, I’ve never had a project run over in cost or time unless my clients made too many changes, but I can’t guarantee any of that unless I have control over when I start a new job. If that isn’t good enough for you, I suggest you find someone else.”

  Scowling, he tried to stare her down, then nodded, as if to himself, and stuck out his hand. “I don’t want anybody else. Vern? You okay working with Stephanie?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Well, so okay.” They shook hands. “So that’s done.”

  “I’ll send you my contract,” Sabrina said. “You’ll want your lawyer to look at it.”

  “Shouldn’t be too complicated, should it? You’re not the architect, after all; you’re doing the simple part: paint and carpets. That shouldn’t take more than a simple contract. Fixed price, too; we talked about that.”

  “And I said I didn’t work that way.” Sabrina walked to the center of the vast open space. The painted brick walls were flaking, long cracks ran like lightning through the plaster, electrical conduit hung from steel beams in the exposed ceiling, the window frames were splintered and most of the windows were broken, the lavatories had been vandalized, the painted steel columns that marched from one end of the building to the other were pitted and peeling, the floor was a wild mosaic of linoleum, carpet strips, paint, and the original wood planks.

  “The simple part,” she repeated thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you what, Billy. I’ll send you my contract, which is probably pretty standard, and when I’ve gone over Vern’s plans I’ll give you an estimate of the number of hours I’ll spend on it—an estimate, not a fixed-price bid—and when we’re finished, if you think I’ve made the job overcomplicated or billed you for too many hours, I’ll refund ten percent of my total charge.”

  “You mean you’re making a bet?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Who decides how complicated it was or how many hours it should have taken?”

  “You do.”

  “How about that. Well, it’s a deal. You’re okay, Stephanie. You believe in yourself. I like that.”

  “So do I,” Stern said. He shook Sabrina’s hand. “I’m looking forward to working with you.”

  She drove home in a haze of euphoria. Oh, Garth, I can’t wait to tell you . . . That was the core of her life now: that at the end of a wonderful day, or any kind of day, what she wanted most of all was to share it with her husband. I’ll always need this: to tell you all of it so we can make it ours, not just mine.

  She treasured her excitement as she drove home and pulled into the driveway, but as she came to a stop she saw Penny flying toward her, sobbing. Oh, not now. Later, but not now; I really want this time just to be happy with Garth . . . But she saw that his car was not in the garage, and then, the minute she opened the car door, Penny was in her arms, so she pushed her exhilaration aside and knelt on the driveway, holding Penny close. “Hush, hush, sweet Penny. We’ll take care of it, whatever it is.”

  After a moment, Penny’s shudders eased and her breathing slowed. “Let’s go inside,” Sabrina said. “Otherwise, we’ll freeze to the driveway and Daddy will have to chisel us loose. I’d like a cup of tea; how about hot chocolate for you?”

  Penny nodded. “She wanted me to have tea.”

  “You mean Mrs. Thirkell? Well, she’s only been here for a few days and I guess nobody told her that the best thing in a crisis is hot chocolate. Come on, love, then we’ll talk.”

  Sabrina made hot chocolate while Mrs. Thirkell made fresh tea and then Penny and Sabrina carried their mugs to the living room and curled up in one of the deep couches near the bay window. The wind had risen and tree branches whipped against the house as low clouds gathered. “Doesn’t Chicago have springtime in March?” Sabrina murmured. “Well, I ought to be used to it; London doesn’t, either.”

  “What?” Penny asked.

  “Nothing important, sweetheart. Now tell me what happened.”

  But Penny, clutching her mug, was suddenly unable to talk. Her face grew flushed, she huddled in the corner of the couch, and then she was crying again.

  “Penny,” Sabrina said sharply. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what it is. Is it about school? Or . . .” She looked at Penny’s drooping figure and remembered their dinner conversation two weeks earlier. Like, if nobody talked to you, you could look at the fish and they’d keep you company. “Is it your friends?”

  “They’re not my friends! They don’t want me!”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me about that?”

  “I can’t. They just, well, you know, they get together and talk and look at you, you know, like they’re talking about you and they laugh but you don’t know why, or what they’re saying . . .”

  “Where, Penny?”

  “Oh, all over, but mainly the playground, at recess. They stand real close together, you know, sort of bunched up, all the girls, and the boys, too, and they smoke, you know, they roll these cigarettes, grass, and they say these things . . . like they’re going to some kid’s house after school and do I want to come, and I can’t—I mean, I want to but I’m scared, so I say I have to go shopping with you or something and the girls call me a baby and say I’m not their friend and then . . .”

  Through her anger, Sabrina said quietly, “Then what? What happened today, Penny?”

  Penny struggled with it and then the words poured out. “Greg, he’s one of the boys, gave me his cigarette, there was just a little piece left, and I took it because . . . you know . . . I didn’t want them to laugh at me, but I couldn’t put it in my mouth, it smelled and it was soggy and I couldn’t do it, so he grabbed it back and said in this disgusted voice, ‘oh, shit’—I’m sorry, Mommy, but that’s what he said, and then he pushed me backwards until I was against the fence and he rubbed against me, you know, down here, and he said I need a lot of teaching and he called me Henny Penny and then everybody called me that and they were laughing and pointing and I started to run away but Greg grabbed me and he put his hand here and said how flat I am and then he . . . he sort of threw me to Wally and Wally pushed me to Cal and they all did that, like I was a . . . a football or something, and I got dizzy and I was crying and then the girls said they should leave me alone and then I ran away.”

  Sabrina was cradling her, so enraged she could not speak. She kissed Penny’s forehead and her wet, closed eyes and rocked with her.

  “So I went to the bathroom and washed my face, I didn’t know what else to do, I was so hot, Mommy, but I was cold, too, and my teeth kept chattering, and then in math Mrs. Thorne asked me if I was sick and I said no and in history Miss Daley said I looked sick but I said I was okay and then when, I came home you weren’t here and Mrs. Thirkell said I should have cookies and some tea, but I just wanted you.”

  Sabrina held her, rocking gently, sick with anger and fear. What can we do, she thought: how can we protect her? Every day she leaves this house and the people who love her and try to make her feel good about herself, and she goes into the world and it’s so big and harsh, and there are only the two of us, Garth and me, trying to protect her. How can we do it?

  Penny’s tears had stopped; now and then she hiccuped. Sabrina brushed her heavy black hair back from her forehead and saw, as if for the first time, how beautiful she was, her face a perfect oval, her deep blue eyes wide spaced over high cheekbones, her hair a mass of black curls. Her body was wiry and tough; she was a strong swimmer and was becoming a fine tennis player, but all Sabrina saw was a fragile child who needed protection.

  “Penny, do you want to be friends with those girls?”

  “Well, sure. I mean, everybody does.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re the best.” Penny looked up at her earnestly. “They know more than
anybody else about everything, and they’re so grown up and they decide who gets first in line at lunch and who goes inside first when it’s raining . . . you know, all those things. If you’re their friend you always get the best and you have the most fun, ’cause they have the most fun of anybody.”

  “Do they get the best grades?”

  “No, but that isn’t . . . I mean, I get good grades, but I’m not popular the way they are.”

  “But they don’t sound very nice.”

  There was a pause. “They’re nice if they like you.”

  “Well, anybody can do that. It’s harder to be nice to people you don’t like a lot. The people who can do that are the people I admire and want to be friends with.”

  Penny sighed and was silent.

  “How many boys and girls are we talking about?” Sabrina asked.

  Penny closed her eyes and counted. “Six boys and five girls.”

  “That’s not very many. What about all the others in your class? Don’t you want to be friends with them?”

  “They’re okay. They’re just not . . . exciting.”

  “What about Barbara Goodman? She was your best friend a couple of months ago.”

  “We still are, sort of. She kind of hangs around them sometimes, and then she says she just wants to be with me . . . it’s sort of confusing. I don’t think she knows what she wants.”

  “Have you talked to her about it?”

  Penny shook her head. “I mean, how can I tell her I want her to like me better than them when I . . . sort of . . . want to like them better than her?”

  “It sounds as if neither one of you is sure of what you want.”

  Penny nibbled on a fingernail.

  “Well, let’s talk about the rest of it.” Sabrina moved back a little so she could watch Penny’s face. “They use drugs at school and also, I’m sure, after school, and that’s what they’re asking you to do when they ask you to come with them to somebody’s house. Is that right?”

  “I guess. I’ve never gone, but they talk about it.”

  “And they drink, too?”

  “Mostly beer. At least that’s what they say. And Scotch sometimes.”

  “And what else do they do after school?”

  There was a long pause. Penny reached for her mug of hot chocolate and drained it. “They have sex,” she said.

  Sabrina drew in her breath. These are eleven-year-old children. What has happened to speed up their lives so that they’ve become children who have no childhood?

  She and Penny had talked about this in October, on another day when Penny had come home from school embarrassed and afraid that her classmates would think she was a baby “because,” she had said, “in the gym locker room they whisper and giggle and talk about . . . you know . . . fucking and screwing . . . and I don’t want to do it! Ever!”

  Sabrina had let pass for the moment the words Penny used. There were more important things to talk about. “You will, Penny,” she had said. “But wait for it. Don’t turn lovemaking into fucking; don’t make it as ordinary as a handshake. Wait until someone is so important in your life that you want to share the things you feel in this one way that is like no other.”

  And Penny had seemed to accept it, to understand that she could have her own ideas and feelings about lovemaking and not be ashamed if they were different from those of her classmates.

  But when they had had that talk, in October, Penny had been worried about what the others in her class were talking about, not what they were doing. Now, it seemed, they were doing it.

  Sabrina looked through the window at the sedate street where they lived. Tall, serene elms and maples formed a long tunnel of bare branches with the first spring buds just beginning to push their way to the sun; solid houses were lined up on both sides, all of them exactly the same distance from the street, all of them neatly painted, roofs tight against rain and snow, windows hung with shades or drapes, lawns free of weeds, sidewalks free of cracks. Everything looked snug, settled, secure, protected. But the children of those houses, and of other houses on streets that looked just like this one, were making their own way in a world that was not settled or protected, and who could predict what way that would be? What was I doing when I was eleven?

  Oh, we were so insulated, she thought. There must have been drugs at Juliette, but no one that we knew used them, at least not openly; Stephanie and I didn’t know anyone who drank more than a daring glass of champagne at school dances; we didn’t know anyone who had any serious plans for sex, at least before we graduated. Somehow we thought we wouldn’t be grown up until we graduated from high school. Penny’s classmates think they’re grown up at eleven.

  “Mommy?” Penny was looking at Sabrina, her eyes wide with worry. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, sweetheart, of course not. I’m thinking about those boys and girls in your class. If you don’t want to do those things—”

  “I don’t! I told you a long time ago—remember?—only now they’re always talking about it and if you don’t do what they do, they make fun of you and it hurts, and they don’t talk to you and they walk right into you, you know, like you’re not even there, you’re just nobody . . .”

  “Or they throw you around,” Sabrina said when Penny fell silent. “Why didn’t you come home when they did that to you?”

  “I couldn’t. They would have laughed at me and called me a baby and told everybody.”

  “Yes,” Sabrina murmured. Power plays and mocking peer pressure had been a fact of life even at exclusive Juliette. “But, Penny, you said you wanted to go with them after school, but you were scared. Does that mean you’re thinking about doing the things they do?”

  There was a long silence. Penny twisted a strand of hair around her finger, frowning fiercely in concentration.

  “Penny?”

  “No,” she said at last.

  Sabrina sighed. “Have you ever lied to me, Penny?”

  Tears filled Penny’s eyes. She shook her head.

  “How about now?”

  Penny twisted her hair and looked at her lap and was silent.

  Sabrina finished her tea but held on to the mug, as if for support. I’ve never had a daughter; I’ve never helped anyone grow up. What if I say the wrong things? She saw herself earlier that day, with Vernon Stern, excited by her own competence, proud of her ability. Now she was filled with anxiety. It’s easier to design a building than to help a young person grow up, she thought ruefully. She looked at Penny’s lowered head and nervous fingers, the tense line of her neck, the slim body curled tightly in the corner of the couch. What does Penny want me to say?

  The back door slammed and Cliff came in, pulling off his backpack. One sleeve of his soccer shirt hung loose, ripped at the shoulder. “Mom, can you fix this? I need it for tomorrow.”

  “You could say hi,” Sabrina said over her shoulder.

  “Oh, yeah, hi. Hi, Penny. Are you guys having a private talk?”

  “Yes,” Sabrina said.

  “Can you fix my shirt?”

  “Later. Do you have much homework?”

  Cliff shrugged.

  “What does that mean?”

  “A little bit. It won’t take long.”

  “Even in science?”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll do it. Shall I leave my shirt?”

  “Put it in the washing machine. I can’t sew through mud.”

  “Okay. What’s for dinner?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Mrs. Thirkell?”

  “How come you don’t cook anymore?”

  “Because I’m having a private talk.”

  “Okay.” He turned to go. “Wash the shirt,” he mumbled, “talk to Mrs. Thirkell, do my homework . . . God, they really keep me busy around here.”

  Sabrina stifled a laugh. She turned back to Penny and took in her doleful face and tense posture. Still waiting. But Cliff had provided a respite and Sabrina’s anxiety had faded. She was Penny and Cliff’s mother and they trusted he
r and loved her, and the best she could do was tell them what she felt was right and important. And if she made mistakes, she hoped they would someday forgive her.

  “Penny, I think you aren’t telling me the truth. I think you want this group to like you so much that you’re on the way to joining them even if it’s scary.” Penny sat still, the muscles in her neck and arms taut and quivering. Sabrina took a breath. “Well, you’re not going to do that.”

  Penny’s head shot up; her eyes were wide.

  “It’s illegal for young people to use drugs and alcohol, but besides that, it’s incredibly stupid. You’ve got good bodies and clear minds, but you can mess them up before you’ve even begun to know who you are and how you can be part of all the worlds that are waiting for you. Everything is waiting for you—friendship and learning and adventures and love—but you have to come to them gradually, making discoveries all along the way and learning how to fit them into your life. But those kids in your school are willing to put all that at risk because they think it’s cool to pretend to be grown up. And they don’t even know what that means.”

  Penny was staring at her, and Sabrina realized how intensely she had been speaking. “Sex isn’t for eleven-year-olds, Penny,” she said quietly. “They can brag about it from here to the next county, but they don’t know the first thing about it. They’re too young. I told you last time we talked about this that intercourse isn’t an after-school sport or a way of scratching an itch; intercourse is a language, it’s using your body to say, ‘I love you.’ You remember that, don’t you, Penny? Well, those kids in your school haven’t the vaguest idea how to do that; they’re like Tinkertoys that somebody put together with a few gears that turn, but they have nothing inside—”

  A giggle broke from Penny, but Sabrina was in full flight and barely noticed.

  “They’re not all put together yet, their hearts and their heads, their emotions and their understanding of themselves and the world; they have no insight into the value of their bodies. They’re going through motions and thinking they’re pretty great, but they’re not finding out how to make intercourse loving and joyful and fun. And I am not going to let you mess up the wonders of sex and everything else that’s waiting for you just because a bunch of kids talk big and laugh at you. They may talk big, but they’re babies. In fact, I’ll bet they’re laughing because they’re just as scared as you are, but they’ve gotten in too deep to admit it.”