Family Album

by Danielle Steel

  “Well, she doesn't have to be anymore.” The Steins took her under their wing, and Anne basked in the warmth of the love they gave. She was like a little flower in full bloom, and Bill loved to watch her play with Gail. They did homework together sometimes, or just sat and talked, and sometimes they dove into the pool, and giggled for hours at some private joke. He loved to buy them both pretty things, and make them smile. Life was short, he had learned that when his wife died, and he was thinking of her one day, as he sat by the pool with Anne. It was a warm autumn day, and Gail had just gone inside to get them something to eat.

  “You look so serious sometimes, Anne.” She was comfortable with him now, and she didn't look frightened at what he said, although she had sometimes at first, although she was afraid he would ask her something she didn't want to tell anyone. “What do you think about then?”

  “Different things …” My brother's friend who died … the baby I gave up … already at fifteen, there were ghosts that haunted her, but she didn't tell him any of that.

  “Your days in the Haight?” He had wondered about that and she didn't run away from him. Her eyes met his, and he saw something there that broke his heart. There was a pain in her which no one could reach, and he hoped he would one day. She was like another daughter to him, and he was surprised at how much she had come to mean to them in a few months. They were deeply attached to her, and she to them. Other than Lionel and John, they were the first people who had ever taken care of her, or given a damn, or so she thought.

  “Sort of …” And then, she surprised herself, by opening up more than she'd planned to him. “I gave up something once that I cared about very much … sometimes I think of it, even though it doesn't change anything.” There were tears in her eyes and he reached out and touched her hand, with tears in his own.

  “I didn't give up something, but I lost someone I loved very much. Maybe that's a little bit the same thing. A kind of loss. Maybe it's even worse if you give it up willingly.” He thought she was referring to someone she had loved, and wondered how someone so young could have cared so much. It never crossed his mind that she had given up a child. She and Gail still seemed so innocent to him, and he cherished that. But her eyes reached out to him now with wisdom far beyond her years.

  “It must have been terrible for you when she died.”

  “It was.” It surprised him that he could say the words so easily to her. But she seemed so understanding as they sat holding hands by the pool, like old friends. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

  “That's like what happened to me.” She had a sudden urge to tell him about the baby she'd given up, but she was afraid he would never let Gail near her again. There were things better left unsaid, and she stopped herself now.

  “Was it terrible, sweetheart?”

  “Worse than that.” And every day she wondered where he was, if she had done the right thing. Maybe he was sick, or he had died, or the drugs she had taken had affected him after all, although there was no sign of it at the birth, they said…. Her eyes met Bill's now, and he looked so sadly at her.

  “I'm so sorry, Anne.” He held her hand tight, and she felt warm and safe, and in a little while Gail came out with lunch for all three of them. She thought Anne slightly subdued, but she got that way sometimes. It was just the way she was, and she didn't see anything different in her father's eyes that day. But he seemed to watch Anne a lot after that, Anne noticed it sometimes, as he sat looking at her, and one day when they were alone, waiting for Gail to come back from a friend's, she got a chance to talk to him again. She had arrived a little bit before the time she had arranged with Gail, and Bill had just come out of the shower and was wearing a robe. He told her to make herself at home, and she stretched out in the den with a magazine, but then she saw him watching her, and she put the magazine down and felt everything she had held back for so long. Without saying a word, she stood up and walked to him. He took her in his arms, and kissed her hard, and then he forced himself to pull away from her. “Oh God, Anne, I'm so sorry … I don't know what …” But she silenced him as she kissed him again, and he was stunned. He knew instinctively that she was no novice at this, and as her hands sought him beneath the robe, he knew that there were secrets about Anne that no one knew. He gently took her hands away and kissed her fingertips. His body was straining for her, and she had stroked him so enticingly, he felt half mad, but not so crazed that he would let her get hurt or do something insane. She was just a child, in his eyes. And he knew this was wrong. She was a fifteen-year-old girl, almost sixteen, but still … “We have to talk about this.” He sat down on the couch next to her, turned toward her, pulling the robe tight, and looked into her eyes. “I don't know what happened to me.”

  “I do.” She spoke the words so gently that he thought he had dreamed what she said. “I'm in love with you, Bill.” It was the truth, she was, and he was in love with her. It was madness for them. He was forty-nine years old and she was fifteen. It was wrong … wasn't it? He had to remind himself of that as he looked at her, and he couldn't help himself. He kissed her again. He felt tortured by the waves of passion that he felt and he took her hand in his.

  “I love you too, but I won't let this happen to us.” He sounded anguished as he spoke, and there were tears in Anne's eyes. She was terrified he would send her away. Maybe even for good. And she couldn't have lived through that. She had already lost too much in her life.

  “Why not? What's wrong with it? It happens to other people too.”

  “But not at your age and mine.” They were thirty-three years apart, and she wasn't even of age. Maybe if she had been twenty-two and he fifty-five and not the father of her best friend, but Anne was shaking her head frantically. She wouldn't lose him now. She refused. She had already lost too much in her short life, and she wouldn't lose him too, no matter what he said.

  “That's not true. It happens to other people just like us.”

  He smiled at her. She was so earnest and so sweet, and he loved her so much. He realized that now. “I wouldn't care if you were a hundred years old. I love you. That's all. I won't give you up.” The melodrama of it made him smile again, and he kissed her lips to silence her. They were so sweet, and her skin in his hands was like velvet to the touch. But this was wrong. Technically, it was statutory rape, even with her consent. He knew that, and he looked at her now.

  “Have you ever done this before, Anne? Honestly. I won't be angry at you.” He had a gentle way of bringing out the truth, and it was always easy for her to be honest with him.

  She knew what he meant, more or less. And they were both grateful Gail was late. “Not like this. When I was … in the Haight …” It would be so difficult to explain to him, but she wanted to now. “I …” She sighed horribly and he was sorry he had asked.

  “You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to, Anne.”

  “I want you to know.” She tried to make it brief and clinical, but it still sounded terrible to her. “I lived in a commune, and I took LSD. I took other things too, but mostly that, some peyote … a lot of dope, but mostly acid. And the group I lived with had strange practices….”

  He looked horrified. “You were raped?”

  Slowly, she shook her head, her eyes never leaving his, she had to be honest with him at all costs. “I did it because I wanted to … and I did it with all of them, I think. I don't remember much anymore. It was like being in a trance and I don't know what's memory and what's dream … but I was five months pregnant when my parents brought me back. I had a baby thirteen months ago.” She knew now that she would remember the date for the rest of her life. She could have told Bill how many days past thirteen months. Five to be exact. “And my parents made me give him up. It was a boy, but I never saw him. It was the worst thing I ever went through.” There was no way to describe to him what she had been through. “And giving him up was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I'll never forgive myself. Every day, I ask myself whe
re he is, if he's all right.”

  “It would have ruined your life, sweetheart.” Gently, with one hand he stroked her face, so desperately sorry for her and the pain she had been through. She was so different from Gail. She had seen so much of life. Too much, at her age.

  “That's what my parents said,” she sighed. “I don't think they were right.”

  “What would you do with a baby now?”

  “Take care of him … just like his other mother does….” Her eyes filled with tears and he held her close. “I should never have given him up.” He wanted to tell her he'd give her another baby one day, but it seemed an outrageous thing to say, and then they heard Gail's key in the lock. Bill moved quietly away from her, with a last look, a last touch, an ache of desire, as he pulled his robe close, and they both smiled for Gail.

  And for the next two months, Anne met him whenever she could, just to talk to him, to go for walks, to share her thoughts with him. Gail knew nothing of it, and Anne hoped she never would. It was forbidden fruit for both of them, and yet they couldn't stop. They needed each other too much now. He confided in her too. The relationship was chaste, but they couldn't hold out for much longer, and when Gail's grandmother invited her for the Christmas holidays, they made a plan. Anne would tell her parents that she was going to stay with them. And from Christmas Day until Gail returned, Anne would stay with him. It was thought out ahead of time and planned. Almost like a honeymoon.

  CHAPTER 31

  Louise had long since figured out what was going on between her roommate and the man on the second floor. She didn't disapprove, although she thought he was too old for Van. Twenty-four was already a man. And she was sorry she didn't see more of Vanessa now, but she had her own friends too, and Barnard kept them more than busy enough with assignments and projects and homework and exams. The months flew by and it was hard to believe that Christmas vacation had already rolled around. The weather was cold and crisp, and just after Thanksgiving, they had had their first snow.

  Vanessa was enchanted with it and she and Jason had thrown snowballs at each other in Riverside Park. There was always so much for them to do, the Cloisters, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the opera, the ballet, concerts at Carnegie Hall, and always the lure of Off Broadway for him. Jason led a full cultural life, and now he always took Vanessa along. She hadn't seen a movie with him since she'd arrived, except some old ones at a festival at the Museum of Modern Art. He continued to disapprove of all that, and he worked on his thesis while she studied for exams. Somehow she loved his seriousness, and his purism about his philosophies. To her, it made him not rigid, but more lovable.

  'I'm going to miss you a lot over the holidays.” She was lying on his couch with a book on her lap, as she looked at him. He looked terribly serious with his glasses on, and he peered over them with a smile.

  “It'll probably be a relief to get back to Plastic Land,” which was what he called L.A., “you can go to the movies with your friends every day, and eat tacos and french fries,” he had a horror of those things too, “before you have to come back here again.” She laughed at his visions of Los Angeles. According to him, people were running everywhere, with hamburgers and tacos and pizzas in their hands, wearing curlers in their hair, dancing to rock, and going to trashy films. It made her laugh even more to think of what he would have thought of Val. She was making another horror film, and in this one she was covered in green slime, hardly his idea of what fine cinema should be. But it would be fun to see them all again too. Sometimes she thought Jason took himself too seriously, but she was enjoying their affair, and she had told the truth. She would miss him over the holidays.

  “What are you going to do?” He still hadn't decided the last time they'd talked about it. She thought he should go home, but he didn't seem keen on the idea. She noticed that his parents never called, and that he rarely mentioned them. She didn't call home that often either, but she still considered herself close to all of them. But as Vanessa looked up, she saw Jason smiling at her. There was a tender side of him that she really loved and she could see it now. She reached out a hand to where he sat at his desk, and he kissed it and smiled.

  “I'm going to miss you too, you know. And it'll probably take me weeks to straighten you out again.”

  “One of these days, you'll have to come to California with me.” But neither of them was ready for that. Her family sounded terrifying to him, and the prospect of bringing him home frightened her too. That would mean that it was serious, or so her parents would think, and it was not. It was just a lovely first affair. She expected nothing more of it than that or so she told herself. “I'll call you, Jase.”

  She repeated exactly the same words to him as they stood at the airport on December 23. He had decided not to go home, but to work on his thesis instead, which sounded like a lonely way to spend the holidays to her. But he said he'd be fine, and she promised to call every day. He kissed her long and hard before she boarded the plane, and then she was gone in the huge silver bird in the air, and he dug his hands into his pockets, and wrapped his scarf around his neck, and went back out into the cold air. It was snowing again. And it frightened him to realize how much he had fallen in love with her. He had wanted it to be a casual affair, even the convenience of living in the same building appealed to him. And that had nothing to do with it now. He liked everything about her, she was serious, intelligent, beautiful, kind, and wonderful in bed, and his apartment seemed like a tomb as he unlocked the door, and sat down at his desk and stared. Maybe he should have gone home after all. But it was so depressing for him. Life in their small town was so limited, and his parents always smothered him, he couldn't stand it anymore. As much as he loved them, he wanted to be free. And his father drank too much. His mother had gotten so old, he knew it would depress the hell out of him, and he was happier in New York alone. It had been almost impossible to explain to Vanessa before she left, her family was so different from his. She had actually been happy to go back. And he could hear it in her voice when she called him that night. She called almost as soon as she got off the plane.

  “Well, how's Plastic Land?” He tried to sound less glum than he was and she laughed.

  “Still the same. Except you're not here, and that's what's wrong with it.” She loved L.A., but now she had come to love New York too. Because of him. “Next time you have to come out.” He almost shuddered at the thought. He couldn't face a family like that, high-powered, shiny, totally involved in the movie world. He could imagine Faye cooking breakfast in gold lame high heels, and the image of it made him laugh as he talked to Van.

  “How's your twin?”

  “I haven't seen her yet. I thought I'd drop by tonight. It's only eight o'clock here.”

  “That's because they don't know how to tell time,” he teased, and his face looked youthful and sad as he did. He missed her so much. The next two weeks were going to be unbearable. “Give her my best.” They had talked to each other on the phone several times, and she sounded like fun, although totally different from Van.

  “I will.”

  “Let me know if she's turned green.” She had told him about the movie in green slime, and he had teased her about it mercilessly, telling her that that was typical Hollywood and probably the best they could do. Except Vanessa had taken umbrage at that. Her mother had made some beautiful films in her life, and one day they'd probably be in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art too. She was still eighteen, and they were her family, and he went easy on it after that. But he would have been horrified, Vanessa thought, if he could have seen the place where Val lived.

  She had borrowed her father's car and driven to the place Val shared with at least a dozen other girls. And Vanessa thought she'd never seen such chaos and filth in her entire life. There was stale food left on plates in the living room from God knew when, and unmade beds in every room, some even without sheets, an empty tequila bottle lay on the floor, there were stockings hung in the bathrooms in
all shapes and hues, and everywhere hung the rancid smell of too many perfumes. And in the midst of it all sat Val, happily doing her nails and telling Vanessa about her part in the film.

  “And then I come out of this swamp … I hold out my arms like this” she did so, almost knocking over a lamp, “and I scream …” She demonstrated that too, and Vanessa covered her ears. It seemed to go on for hours, and she was actually impressed, as she grinned at her twin. It was good to see her again, even here.

  “You've developed quite a range with that in the last few months.”

  Val laughed. “I get plenty of practice every day.”

  Vanessa looked around again. “How do you stand this place?” Between the smell, the filth, the disorder, and the girls, Vanessa knew she would have gone mad in two days, but Valerie seemed oblivious to it all, in fact she seemed happy there, happier than she had been at home by far, and she said as much to her twin.

  “I can do whatever I want here.”

  “And what does that include?” Vanessa was curious about what she'd been up to in the last three months. Val knew about Jason, although Vanessa hadn't gone into details about her affair, and she didn't intend to now. “Any big new heart throbs since I left?”

  Valerie shrugged. There were a number of men in her life, one she cared about, and three she was sleeping with, but she knew her sister would be shocked so she didn't say anything. It didn't mean that much to her. A little dope, a little booze, a terrific piece of ass in some boy's apartment or rented room. There was so much going on in Hollywood that it didn't seem so terrible to be a part of it, and all of them in her apartment passed the pill around like after-dinner mints. There was always an open box somewhere in the house, and someone had told her not to mix brands, but they seemed to work anyway. And if there was a slip, she could always get rid of it. She wasn't as dumb as her little sister, Anne. “What about you?” Valerie turned the tables on her, as she started on the nails on the other hand. “What's that guy like you're with all the time?”