Remembrance

by Danielle Steel

  But Teddy sounded jubilant as he reported. “No, she was just terrific. You've never seen anyone go through it better. And she looked just beautiful.” He almost cried again. “Wait until you see the baby!”

  “I can't wait to see him. What's his name?”

  “Bradford, for your father. It was Linda's idea. We'll call him Brad, I guess.”

  At her end Vanessa smiled. “You've got yourself one terrific lady, Teddy.”

  “I know.” He sounded as though he could barely believe his good fortune. “She was so great, Vanessa. You should have seen her!”

  “I'll see her tomorrow, first thing.”

  “Good. Why don't you bring your friend John Henry? Maybe he'd like to see the baby too.” Teddy was curious about him, and he was dying to show off the baby. Vanessa understood and chuckled at him.

  “I'll see if he's free.” But she knew that he wouldn't be able to go. There were some things that still upset him, and going to a hospital to see a newborn was one of them. He had already told her that he wouldn't do it. He had told her that he'd see the baby later, at home. And she understood. “I'll probably come alone, Teddy. I don't want to share the baby with anybody anyway, not even with you!” He had laughed, but when she arrived the next morning at the hospital to see them, she looked very pale as she got off the elevator on the maternity floor.

  As Teddy watched her get off the elevator, she seemed disoriented. He started to walk toward her with a smile, but then he stopped. She looked almost gray. He wanted to say something to Linda, but there wasn't time. Vanessa stood next to him in a moment, her eyes very big and gray, and she looked frightened.

  “You okay, sweetheart?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, but I think I have a headache or something. I worked in the darkroom late last night, and I think that did it.” She smiled but it didn't look real, and then she forced herself to look more cheerful still. “Where's my nephew? I'm dying to see him.”

  “In his mother's room.” Teddy looked at her with a smile, but he was still worried as he followed her inside. Linda was sitting on the bed, nursing the baby. Vanessa stopped for a moment, she had snuck in her camera, and clicked several frames, before she put the camera down again and came toward them. There was something terribly serious in her face as she looked at Linda, and then without saying a word, her eyes went to the baby. She couldn't take her eyes off of him. She just stood there staring, her eyes big, her face pale, and her hands trembling.

  “Do you want to hold him?” She heard Linda's voice as though from very far away, and without saying a word she nodded and reached out and Linda gave him to her. She sat down in a chair with a look of awe, holding the tiny bundle. The baby had gone back to sleep at his mother's breast, and now he lay round and content in Vanessa's arms as she looked down at him. She said nothing for long moments, as Teddy and Linda exchanged a smile, then suddenly Linda looked at Vanessa. There were tears running down Vanessa's face in steady streams, and a look of pain on her face that tore at Teddy. But before he could say anything at all, Vanessa had begun to speak softly.

  “She's so beautiful … she looks just like you, Mommy …” She didn't look up at Linda as she spoke, and Linda sat very still, worried about both Vanessa and the baby. “What'll we call her?” And then softly, she began to croon her name. “Charlotte … Charlie. I want to call her Charlie.” She looked up at Linda then, but her eyes were blind to the people around her. She cradled the baby gently and began to sing softly, as Teddy and Linda watched her. Some deep-seated maternal instinct told Linda to take back the baby, but another sense knew that it was important that she leave him with Vanessa.

  “Isn't she pretty, Vanessa?” Linda's voice was like a whisper in the quiet room, and Teddy watched with awe what was happening. “Do you like her?”

  “I love her.” Vanessa looked straight at Linda, and saw her mother. “She's mine, isn't she, Mommy? She doesn't have to be his. She's ours. He doesn't deserve her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he's so mean to you, and … and those things he does … the drugs … and when he didn't come back … and … Uncle Teddy said you could have died. But you didn't.” She looked at once agonized and relieved, as they watched her relive it. “You didn't because Uncle Teddy came and got the baby out.” She winced then, remembering how she had seen her mother, near death, her legs in stirrups, strapped helplessly to the table. “Why did they do that to you? Why?” Instinctively Linda knew.

  “So I could have the baby. That was all. They didn't mean to hurt me.”

  “But they did, and they almost let you die … and he wasn't there …”

  “Where was he?”

  “I don't know. I hope he's gone for good. I hate him.”

  “Does he hate you?'

  “I don't know …” Vanessa started to cry. “I don't care …” She continued to cradle die baby, and then, as though she'd had enough, she held him out to Linda. “Here, I think she wants you.” Linda nodded, took the sleeping infant from her, and handed him to Teddy, nodding toward the door. Teddy left with him immediately, and returned a moment later, alone, to watch the drama unfurl. He was terrified at what was happening to Vanessa, but he had always known that it would have to come one day, and it was best if it came now, all at once, with Linda there to guide her.

  “Does he hate you, Vanessa?”

  “I don't know … I don't know …” She jumped out of the chair and went to the window, staring out of it blindly. And then she wheeled around and looked at Linda. “He hates you … he hates you … he hit you … oh, Mommy … we have to go away … back to New York, to Uncle Teddy.” And then suddenly her face clouded again and she seemed to stare into space with a look of horror. “Back to Uncle Teddy …” It became almost a chant. “Back to New York … oh, no … oh, no …” She looked around frantically, from Linda to Teddy, and he wondered for an instant if she would ever be the same again, if she would ever be sane. “Oh, no! Oh, no! …” And then a wail. “He killed her! That man … he killed my mommy!” She began to sob and reached out to Linda. “He killed you … he killed you … he killed you …” She looked up then as though for the first time she really saw Linda, and it was not the face of a child that Teddy and Linda saw as they looked at her, but the face of a ravaged young woman. “That man”—it was a hoarse whisper, she had come back—”the one I saw in the newspaper that day … he killed my mother.” She stared at Teddy, seeing him too, and then she went on, as though waking from a dream and trying to remember. “And then … the police came and they took him away, and I was”—she looked at them, puzzled—”I was holding a baby.” She closed her eyes then and trembled. “Charlie. Her name was Charlie … the baby Mama had in London … and they took her away from me in a courtroom.” She began to cry great gulping sobs then. “And they made me live with Greg and Pattie …” She looked at Teddy and held her arms out to him. “And then I came to live with you … but I never knew … I never remembered, until”—she looked at Linda in shock and despair—”until I saw that baby … and I thought …” She looked up at her uncle and his wife. “I don't know what I thought …”

  Linda helped her at last. “You thought it was Charlie.”

  She looked at Linda then. “Is all of this true? I feel like I dreamed it.”

  Linda looked at Teddy. “It's true. You repressed it all after it happened, and it's been waiting to come out for years.”

  She looked frightened then. “Is there more? Did something else happen?”

  Linda was quick to answer. “Nothing else. You remembered it all. It's all over now, Vanessa. It's out.” Now all she had to do was learn to live with it, which Linda knew wouldn't be easy either. She watched the girl closely. She had had a tremendous shock. “How do you feel?”

  She looked blank for a minute. “Scared … empty … sad.” And then two huge tears rolled down her face. “I miss my mother.” She hung her head down and began to sob again. “He killed my mother …” She was shaking all over.
“When I came into the room, she was … she was lying there … her eyes open, his hands were on her neck and I knew she was dead … I knew …” She couldn't go on, and with tears streaming down his face, Teddy took her in his arms.

  “Oh, baby … I'm so sorry.”

  “Why? Why did he do it?” The questions were sixteen years later.

  “Because he was crazy. And maybe because he was into drugs, I don't know. I think he loved her, but he was terribly disturbed. She left him, and he thought he couldn't live without her.”

  “So he killed her.” For the first time she sounded bitter, and then she looked up at her uncle with a look of shock. “What happened to Charlie? Did they give her to him?”

  “No, they put him away in an institution. For a while at least. Your sister was given to Vasili's brother. He was a decent man, I think. He was as distraught as I was at the time, and he wanted Charlotte.” Teddy smiled sadly. “He was very fond of you too. Do you remember him at all?” She shook her head.

  “Have you stayed in touch with him over the years?”

  Teddy sighed. “No, I haven't. The judge discouraged us from having contact with each other. He said that you and Charlie had gone to separate lives. I don't know how Arbus felt about it, but I was nervous about you, because you had repressed it all. I didn't want anyone coming along to surprise you over the years.” She nodded slowly in understanding and spoke softly after a little while.

  “She would be almost sixteen now. I wonder what she looks like.” Her lips trembled again. “When she was a baby, she used to look just like Mommy.”

  Teddy began to think of something but he thought it was too soon to suggest it. Perhaps in time, when Vanessa had absorbed it all, they could all go to Greece and look up Andreas Arbus. Vasili, he knew from the article, two years before, was dead now. It was, of course, that article and Vanessa's subsequent nightmares that had led him to Linda. He smiled at his wife. She had handled it all so beautifully.

  “I'm sorry I spoiled everything, Linda. I came to see the baby and to be happy for you, and instead I went crazy.” She looked rueful and blew her nose. She felt very strange, as though she had just run ten miles or climbed a mountain, it wasn't so much a feeling of exhilaration but of being drained.

  Linda reached out to her and put an arm around her in maternal fashion. “You didn't go crazy. You did something very healthy. You finally reached back into the past and opened a door that's been locked for years. And the reason your psyche let you do it is because you were ready. You can handle it now, and your mind knows that. What you did took sixteen years to do, and it wasn't easy. We all know that.”

  Vanessa nodded, unable to speak for the tears, and Linda looked cryptically at Teddy and he understood.

  “I'm going to take you home now, sweetheart, so you can get some rest.” He took her gently from Linda. “Want to come home with me?”

  She looked at him sadly and tried to smile. “I'd like that. But don't you want to be here with Linda?”

  “I'll come back later.”

  “I need some rest anyway.” Linda smiled at them both, and there was a special smile in her eyes for her husband. She had loved him even more than before since they had shared the birth of their baby. The baby created a bond between them that they could already feel. “You two take it easy today. Brad and I will be home in a few days. That'll be plenty of time for all of us to be together.” She kissed Vanessa again and told her that everything she was feeling was normal and healthy and she should go with it and just let it flow, let the memories come, cry with the sadness, feel the grief and the pain and the loss, and then it would finally be done with once and for all. And then she said gently, “I think your friend John could tell you something about that.”

  But Vanessa looked shocked. “How can I tell him? He'll think I'm crazy.”

  “No, he won't. Try him. From what you've told me, I don't think you'll be disappointed.”

  “What? And just tell him that sixteen years later I remember that my mother was murdered. It sounds nuts to me.” She sounded bitter again but Linda was firm with her.

  “Well, it isn't nuts, so you'd better understand that. What has just happened to you is the most normal thing that's happened to you in twenty-five years. And the fact that your mother was murdered isn't your fault, Vanessa. You couldn't help that. It's not a reflection on you, or even on her. It happened. Her husband was obviously crazy when he did it. And you couldn't have stopped him.”

  “He was crazy long before that.” Vanessa remembered him clearly now, and hated him all over again, and then she turned to Teddy.

  “Did my mother love you?” It was a blunt and painful question for him. Serena had loved him, he knew, but never as he had loved her.

  He nodded slowly. “Yes. I was someone she could depend on. I was like a brother to her, or a very special friend.” He looked at his wife now. It was the first time he had told her that, and he wanted her to know it too. And there was something gentle and loving in her face as she looked at him.

  “Why didn't they let you keep Charlie?” That had been bothering her for the past half hour.

  “Because she was no blood relation to me, and you were. Her uncle wanted her, and he had a claim to her.”

  “Would you have taken her?” Vanessa needed to know that. Suddenly she wanted to know everything about what had severed her from her sister. It was as though she had to know all the whys.

  “I would have taken her. I wanted to very much.” Vanessa nodded, and a moment later they left. Teddy took her back to his apartment, and she lay down on the couch and they talked for over an hour, about her mother, about the first time he'd seen her, about when he delivered Charlie in London, about Vasili and how Serena had fallen in love with him, and then, as though she had all she could take for the moment, Vanessa closed her eyes and fell asleep on the couch. Teddy stayed near her all day and called Linda several times. He was worried about Vanessa, but she assured him that she felt things had gone very well. He suggested that he stay with her, and when she woke up four hours later, he could see that she felt better than she had. There was a terrible aura of sadness about her, as though she mourned now in a way she hadn't dared when her mother had died. He remembered now that frozen little face, those blank eyes, and in the woman she had become he could see the grief that she had carried hidden for so many years.

  At five o'clock she decided to go back to her own apartment. She had a date with John Henry, and she suddenly felt a longing to see him.

  “I'm going to be lousy company tonight, but I don't really want to call it off.” She looked at her uncle. “Thank you, Uncle Teddy.” Her eyes filled with tears. “For everything …”She choked on a sob. “For so many years.” They held tightly to each other, and Teddy cried softly too. It was as though, that day, they had finally buried Serena together, and the pain of it, even remembered, was almost more than he could bear too.

  53

  Linda and the baby came home from the hospital three days later, and when Vanessa came to see them, she looked a great deal better than she had a few days before. Her eyes looked bright and she wasn't so pale, but she still looked worn and tired as she held Brad for the first time. But this time there was no trauma, no ugly memories to haunt her. The ugly memories were out in the open now, along with the good ones, and she felt sharply the loss of Charlie as though it had happened to her only the week before. But this was a different baby, and she knew it. She held him and crooned to him, and laughed when she thought he was smiling. She adored him, and Teddy and Linda were thrilled. On the whole she seemed to have recovered very well from her trauma, but it was clear to Linda as the summer wore on that the pain of it hadn't really left her.

  “What's happening with John?” She finally dared to ask her in August. She hadn't wanted to press her before. “Nothing much.” She sounded vague. “We still see each other.” “Oh, has it cooled?” He had come to see the baby once or twice with Vanessa, and Linda and Teddy both liked him.
Vanessa's appraisal of him had been correct, he was handsome and intelligent, gentle and kind, and mature well beyond his years. He had declined to hold the baby, but had stood playing with him over his crib. It was obvious that there were still too many memories for him, wrapped up with the infant. He was more comfortable talking to Teddy, or Linda, in the other room. In truth it was a malaise that he and Vanessa shared. There were times when the baby still reminded her of Charlie, but nonetheless she came to see him almost all the time. She had come to visit the baby again on the day when Linda was asking her about John Henry.

  “I don't know. Maybe we're just destined to be friends.”

  “Any special reason?” But Linda already knew what it was, as Vanessa turned to her almost with defiance.

  “Yeah, despite what you said, I seem to be frigid. I just don't want to go to bed with a man.”

  Linda sighed as she watched her. “I think you're being premature again, Vanessa. You had an enormous shock two months ago. You have to give yourself time.”

  “How much time? I'm almost twenty-five years old.” She sounded angry at Linda, but they both knew that she was angry at herself.

  “You told me that when John's baby died it took him two years before he wanted to make love again.”

  “How long's it been for me? Sixteen?” She was sick to death of her own problems, of trying to live with them, overcome them, forget them. It was all she had thought of for two months.

  “How long have you known? Only two months. You're being very unfair with yourself.”

  “Maybe I am.” But she stopped seeing him entirely a month later. She said that she couldn't handle a relationship until she sorted things out in her head, and he was very understanding. He told her simply that he loved her, that he wanted to stand by her, to help her work it out, but if she needed to be alone, he would respect that. He asked only that she try to stay in touch and let him know from time to time how she felt. The day he left her apartment for the last time he stood in the doorway with a look of sorrow in his eyes as he looked at her.