“And go back to the States?” Andreas looked crushed. He was fond of her and the child, and yet another part of him wanted them free of the nightmare.
“I think so. There's no reason for me to stay here.” Having got pregnant so soon, she had never really established herself in London as a model. And now she had two children to support, instead of one. “I can go back to work in New York.”
He spoke slowly and sadly. “You won't have to.” Serena didn't answer. “Serena, if he cleans up again, will you give him one more chance?”
“Why, what would be different this time? According to him, he's been doing this for the last ten years.”
“But it's different now. He has you and the baby.” Andreas had been awed by the beautiful little baby girl. But Serena suspected that Vasili was going to be less impressed than Andreas.
“He's had us for the past year. Me anyway, and Vanessa. It hasn't changed a thing.”
“But now he'll have the baby.” He smiled then. “What will you call her?”
“Charlotte.” And then she smiled at him. “Charlotte Andrea.” He looked as though he would burst into tears, he was so pleased, and leaned down and kissed Serena.
“You're a beautiful girl.” And then with a tone of sorrow, “I shouldn't let you waste yourself on my brother. But… I hate to see him lose you and the child.” He stood up slowly then, and she saw that he was really a very attractive man. In his own way he was better looking than Vasili. He had none of the dissipation, or the mischief, or the boyish good looks. What he had instead was an air of distinction, the same handsome face, and an aura about him that was all man. “Do what seems best for you. I know that you will, and if you go, let me know where I can find you, Serena. One day I will come to New York to visit my namesake.” Serena inquired for his wife, and he avoided her gaze. He didn't want to face what was coming. Instead he kissed her gently on the cheek and left her to her own thoughts. She had as yet heard nothing from Vasili. But the day before she was to leave the hospital, she was walking slowly down the hall on the arm of a nurse, and she suddenly saw him. He looked clean, handsome, and very much like himself, but also desperately frightened, and for a moment when she saw him, she wondered if he would run away. She stopped walking and stood there, leaning heavily on the nurse's arm and wishing that she could run away quickly, but she couldn't, and he walked slowly toward her, and then he stood very still.
“Hello, Serena.”
“Hello.” She felt her knees turn to jelly beneath her. Part of her wanted to see him, and part of her wanted him to go away, perhaps forever this time.
“Are you all right?” She nodded, and the nurse began to squirm, sensing that this was an awkward meeting. “The baby?”
“She's fine. Have you seen her?”
“Not yet. I wanted to see you first. I just… I… uh …” He glanced at the nurse. “I just got back to town today.” She noticed how pale he looked. The detox was always quick, but it took him a long time to look decent, and this time he had a slight cast of yellow to his skin. She knew what it was, but she also knew that the hepatitis one caught from needles was not contagious. But she was sorry as hell he had come. She didn't want to see him.
“Do you think we could talk?” She motioned toward her room, and the nurse led her back there slowly. When she got there, she lay down on her bed and she looked exhausted. Vasili was looking. at her strangely, and then he hung his head and she saw that he was trying not to cry. “I don't know what to say to you, Serena.”
“I don't think there's anything left to say, Vasili.” For the first time in a long time, when she looked at him, she felt nothing. No disgust, no anger, no sorrow, no love. In her heart there was silence.
His head shot up and the black eyes met her green. “What do you mean, there's nothing left to say?”
“Just that. What can one say after all we've been through? I'm sorry? Good luck? Good-bye?”
“We could try again.” His voice was sad and soft. But to her he still looked like a junkie. To her he always would. She would never forgive him.
“Could we? Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“That's what you said before.” She looked at him accusingly then. “If you'd been around and sober, I might not have almost died having this baby. Did you know that I almost died and we almost lost the baby? If Vanessa hadn't come to find me and called Teddy, we'd both be dead now.”
“I know.” The tears crept slowly out of his eyes. “Andreas told me.”
“Could you have lived with that?” He shook his head, and then looked up at her again.
“I can't forgive myself for anything I've done, and I will understand if you can't forgive me either. But I'm different now, I came so close to losing everything, both you and the baby, and even myself. If we tried again, I know that this time everything will be different.”
“I don't believe that anymore. How can you even say it?”
“I can't be sure. But I can tell you that I'll try with my whole soul. I can't give you more than that.” He approached the bed slowly and reached for her hand and gently kissed it. “I love you. It sounds like very little, but it's the best I've got. I'll do anything to keep you. I'll beg you … I'll crawl … Serena, you don't know how much I love you.” Her eyes filled with tears and spilled over as she listened. She bowed her head, and stricken, he reached out to hold her. “Oh, darling, please—”
“Go away … don't touch me.” She didn't want to want him again. She couldn't let herself go through that.
He forced her face up to his then. “Do you still love me?” She shook her head, but her eyes said she did, and when he looked at her, he could see all that she had suffered at his hands and at the birth of their child, and he hated himself for it. “What have I done?” He began to cry, and then suddenly he took her into his arms, and the only sound in the room was that of Serena sobbing. He begged her for another chance, but she was too overcome to answer. And then at last she asked him if he wanted to see the baby.
“I'd love to.” And then he remembered something. “Are you going home from the hospital tomorrow?”
“I'm leaving here.” Serena blew her nose and avoided his eyes. “But I'm not sure yet if I'm going to the house or a hotel.” She was thinking of staying at the same hotel as Teddy, the Connaught, before she made up her mind. He wasn't leaving for the States for a few more days.
“I see.” Vasili offered her an arm, and laboriously she took it, making her way slowly out of her room again and down the hall to where they could see the baby through the window. The nurse smiled when she saw Serena, and looked with interest at the man at her side, and then she remembered him from his pictures in the paper, but he looked very different. Nonetheless she recognized him and she was impressed, as she picked up his baby girl and held her up for him to see for the first time. He stood mesmerized by the tiny child with Serena's face and his shining black hair, and tears filled his eyes again as he watched her and silently put an arm around Serena.
“She's so beautiful, and so small.”
Serena smiled. “She looks big to me. Eight and a half pounds is big for a baby.”
“Is it?” He grinned down at his wife with pride. “She's so perfect.”
“Wait until you hold her.”
“Does she cry a lot?”
Serena shook her head and for a few minutes she told him about the baby, and then he took her back to her room and they looked at each other. “Serena, can't we try it again? I don't want to lose you. Not now … not ever.”
Trembling, she closed her eyes, and then she opened them again. She still loved him, and she owed the baby something, at least to try one more time, but she was afraid that if he used drugs again the horror of it would destroy her. But she felt so torn between what she owed herself and what she thought she owed the baby. “All right. We'll try it once more.” It was barely a whisper. “But if you do it again, it's over. Do you understand?” She knew she should take her childr
en and go now, but his magic still worked on her. He was still dug deep under her skin.
“I understand.” He came to her then and kissed her, and in the kiss was all the ache that he felt over the pain he had caused her. He promised to pick her up to bring her home the next day, and as he left the room, with a sigh she reached for the phone to call Teddy, wondering how to explain this new madness to him. She knew it was wrong, and yet she wanted to think it was right. And she couldn't, and now she had to justify it to Teddy.
45
When Serena came home from the hospital with the baby, the house looked as though it had been redone. There was still the striking white and chrome modern decor, with the enormous pastel paintings. But Vasili had been busy. There were flowers everywhere for her, mountains of gifts and equipment and goodies for the baby, a stack of dolls and new toys for Vanessa. He had bought them everything he could think of, including an incredible diamond bracelet for Serena. As before when they had tried again, he couldn't do enough for them, and the first time he held the baby, his face looked like a male Madonna. He was totally enthralled by the tiny creature, and completely enamored with her mother. He couldn't be with them enough, and he could hardly wait until Serena could get out with him a little. After two weeks at home she was allowed to go for walks nearby. And after another week he took the baby and Vanessa out with the pram for their first outing. By then it was early September, the weather was balmy, and Vanessa had gone back to school. She was in fourth grade now, and her ninth birthday was approaching.
“Happy, darling?” He looked at her proudly as they strolled along, his camera around his neck. He had already taken hundreds of pictures of the baby.
“Very much so.” But there was something subdued about Serena now, as though she was never happy anymore as she had once been. He sensed it and at times it made him very nervous. He was always afraid now that one day she would leave him. It was as though the days in the Garden of Eden were truly over.
They went back to the house that afternoon and played with the baby. He had still not gone back to work after his own stint in the hospital to recover from his addiction. Now he wanted time with Serena and the baby, and Serena began to wonder if his constant absences weren't beginning to affect his career. But Vasili didn't seem to care, and a few days later he said he was going to attend to some business in Paris. He left in great spirits and told her that he would call her from over there, but he didn't. When she tried to reach him at the apartment, she couldn't, and eventually she gave up, and assumed that she would hear from him, but once again the worries set in. She didn't know for sure until he walked back into the house in London a week later, and she felt her heart sink to her feet as she saw him. It was all over. He had lost the battle again, and the signs of heroin were all over him. She looked at him, feeling as though the end of the world had finally come, but she said not a word to him. She went upstairs, packed her bags, called Teddy, and made reservations on the next plane. And then, trembling from head to foot, she set her bags on the floor just as Vasili walked into the room.
“What exactly do you think you are doing?”
“I'm leaving you, Vasili. I made it perfectly clear in the hospital. If you used again, I left. You're using. I'm leaving. I have nothing to say. It's all over.” She felt tired more than anything else, exhausted to her very soul, and a little bit frightened of what he would do or say. He was always so erratic when he was on drugs. But she didn't care what he did now. It was over.
“I am not using, you're crazy.” Just hearing him say it made her angry.
“No.” She looked at him in white fury. “You're crazy, and I'm getting the hell out while I can. Nothing matters to you except that shit you put in your arm. I don't understand why you do it, you have every reason not to, but since none of that makes a damn bit of difference to you, I'm leaving.” She spat the words at him. “Good-bye.”
“And you think you can take my baby?”
“Yes, I can. Try to stop me and I'll have it in every newspaper in the world that you're a junkie.” She looked at him with raw hatred, and even in his drugged state he knew she meant it.
“Blackmail, Serena?” He raised an eyebrow and she nodded.
“That's right, and don't think I won't do it. Your career will be over then and there.”
“You think I give a damn about that? You're crazy. What do I care about some lousy pictures for an ad or a magazine?”
“I guess not much or you wouldn't be using. Not to mention me and the baby. I don't suppose we weighed much with you either.”
He looked at her strangely for a moment. “I don't suppose you did.”
He disappeared again that night, and when she left the house with the children the next morning, he hadn't returned yet. She got to the airport with Vanessa and the baby and the suitcases she had brought and the things she needed for the baby, and they got on the plane with no problem. Ten hours later they landed in New York, exactly thirteen months after they had left it. Serena looked around her at the airport after they had landed, and wondered if she was in a dream. For the first time in her life leaving had not been painful. She was totally numb. She moved as though in a daze, with the baby in her arms and Vanessa clinging to her hand. For an odd moment she had the same feeling she had had arriving with the nuns and other children during the war, and as the thought crossed her mind the tears began to slide down her face, and she began to sob when she saw Teddy, as if seeing him unleashed the feelings in her.
He led them all gently out to his car and then drove them to the furnished apartment he had rented for a month. Serena looked around at the stark little room, clutching the baby to her. There was only one bedroom, but she didn't care. All she wanted was to be three thousand miles away from Vasili. She had almost no money with her, but she had brought the diamond bracelet he'd given her last month and she was going to sell it. With luck it would give her enough funds to subsist until her modeling picked up again. She had already asked Teddy to call Dorothea.
“Well, how does it feel to be back?” Teddy smiled at her, but there was concern in his eyes. Serena looked worn out and Vanessa looked scarcely better.
“I think I'm still numb” was Serena's only answer as she looked around her. The walls were bare and white, and the furniture was Danish modern.
“The Ritz it ain't,” he apologized with a smile, and for the first time she laughed.
“Teddy, my love, I couldn't care less. It's a roof over our heads, and we're not in London.” Vanessa smiled too, and Teddy reached out for the baby.
“How's my little friend?”
“Hungry all the time.” Serena smiled.
“Unlike her mother who looks like she never eats.” She had lost all the weight she'd gained while she was pregnant, along with an additional fifteen pounds. And all in the six weeks, since the birth of the baby.
“If I'm going to model again, it's just as well. What did Dorothea say, by the way?”
“That she awaits you with bated breath, as does every photographer in New York.” Serena looked pleased.
“Well, that's good news.” But the best news of all, to her, was that she had escaped Vasili. There had been a time when she thought she never would, that she would be trapped with him forever. It had been like escaping from a jungle. But it was all over now, and Vasili knew it. She had told Andreas too. And she hoped that she never saw Vasili again. She had listened to enough lies and suffered enough trauma to last her for a lifetime.
“Do you think he'll follow you over here?” Teddy asked when Vanessa had gone to bed.
“It won't do him any good. I won't see him.”
“And the baby?”
“I don't think he'll really care. He's too involved in himself and his drugs.”
“Don't be so sure. From what you said he was crazy about her.”
“Not enough to stop using heroin though.”
“I still can't believe it.”
“Neither can I. Sometimes I wonder if I'll e
ver be the same again.”
“You will. Give it time.” She had survived so much in her life that he felt sure she would survive this too. And he thanked God she had left Vasili.
She sighed and closed her eyes before facing him again. “I don't know, Teddy. I guess you're right, but it's been such a nightmare, it's hard to understand what happened. You know … I think that stuff makes him crazy.”
“It's pathetic.” She changed the subject then and they discussed a school for Vanessa. The poor child had been through a great deal in the past six weeks. Serena was almost inclined to give her some time off from school while she readjusted, and all Vanessa wanted to do anyway was take care of the baby. She was totally enamored of her baby sister, whom she called Charlie, instead of Charlotte. Serena could hardly get the baby away from Vanessa when it was time to go to bed, and Vanessa was marvelous with her. “She's a great kid.” Teddy spoke of his niece with obvious pride and Serena laughed.
“Yes, she is.”
He left them alone then to settle into the apartment, and Serena fell into bed after feeding the baby. She slept a deep dreamless sleep and woke up feeling slightly less exhausted.
She went to the Kerr Agency a few days later, and Dorothea looked at her pointedly with a hand on one hip.
“I told you, didn't I?” She grinned at Serena. “But I sure am happy to have you back.”
“Not as happy as I am to be here.” They had a cup of coffee, and Dorothea gave her the latest gossip around New York. There was a new girl in town who had been the rage since the summer. She was German and looked a little like Serena, but Dorothea felt certain that there was still room for “The Princess” too. “They've missed you, there's no doubt about it.” She could also see that there was something new and interesting in her face since she'd had the baby. She was even thinner than she had been, and there was something wiser and more serious about her eyes. It was that that told Dorothea she had been through an ordeal with Vasili.
“And what about Vasili? It's all over?”
Remembrance Page 40