“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.”