Remembrance

by Danielle Steel

  “I'll get dressed.”

  He disappeared into his own bedroom and loosened his tie. He had led two lives for years, that of a sedate, successful surgeon at Columbia Presbyterian, in dark pin-striped suits, white shirts, and dark ties, and then a whole other life with Vanessa. A life of ice skating and pony rides and the zoo and father's days at camp, and hockey games and ice cream parlors. A life of blue jeans and sweat shirts and pink cheeks and windblown hair. She had kept him even younger than his forty-five years and he hardly looked more than thirty. His own blond good looks had held up well, and he actually looked a great deal like her. They had the same lanky frames, the same shoulders, the same smile, it was perfectly conceivable that she could have been his daughter. Once in a while when she was little, she had introduced him as her “Daddy,” but she still called him Teddy, and most of the time she told friends that he was her uncle. She remembered in every glorious detail the day she had been finally awarded to him in court, but of the ugliness of the past, she still remembered nothing.

  He had consulted several psychiatrists over the years and they had eventually convinced him not to worry. It was disturbing that none of that had ever surfaced, but it was possible now, they all felt, that she would never remember. She was happy, well adjusted, there was no reason for any of the past to come leaping out. And they also suggested that if he wanted to, once she was an adult, he might want to tell her. He had decided not to do that, she was happy as she was, and the burden of knowing her mother had been murdered by her husband might have been too great for Vanessa. The only possibility that could be of concern was if she suffered some major trauma. In that case, perhaps, some of the memories could be dislodged. When she had been little, she had had frequent nightmares, but she hadn't even had those in years, and eventually Teddy had stopped worrying about it completely. She was just like any other child, happy, easygoing, better natured than most, they had never had any teen-age problems. She was just a terrific kid and he loved her as though she were his own child. And now that she was almost twenty-three, he couldn't believe how quickly the years had flown past them.

  He returned to the darkroom twenty minutes later, in blue jeans and a dark brown cashmere jacket with a beige turtleneck sweater. She shopped for him sometimes at Bloomingdale's, and came back with things he would never have bought for himself, but he had to admit that once he had them he liked them.

  “Are you ever coming out of there, Mrs. Cartier-Bresson?”

  The door opened just as he said it, and she stood before him in all of her towering beauty, her hair flowing around her shoulders like a wheat field, and a huge smile on her face. “I just developed some truly great pictures.”

  “Of what?” He looked into her eyes with pleasure. It seemed for all her twenty-three years she had been the hub of his existence.

  “I took pictures of some kids in the park the other day, and they're just stupendous. Want to see?” She looked at Teddy with pleasure and he followed her back to the darkroom. She switched the light on, and he looked at the prints. She was right. They were fantastic.

  “You going to sell these?” They were really lovely.

  “I don't know.” She cocked her head to one side, and the blond mane fell over her shoulder. “There's a gallery downtown that wants my work. I was thinking I might let them show them.”

  “They're beautiful, darling. You've done some lovely work in the last few weeks.”

  She pinched his cheek and kissed him. “That's just because I have an uncle who buys me great cameras.” He had bought her a Leica for Christmas, and another Nikon for her graduation. She had got her first one for her eighteenth birthday, which was what had got her started.

  They walked out of the apartment arm in arm, and they got in a cab that took them to P.J.'s. They went out often in the evening together now that she was back from college. He liked taking her out and going to fun places with her, and she liked being with him, even though sometimes Teddy felt guilty about that. She hadn't had a lot of friends when she was in school. She was kind of a solitary child, and she had always clung to him. At Vassar she had made some friends, but she seemed happier alone with her camera. And with her twenty-third birthday looking at her in a matter of weeks, she was still a virgin. There had been no important men in her life and she seemed to shy away from them. A touch on the hand, a hand on her arm, almost always made her shudder. It was something that worried Teddy a great deal. As the first psychiatrist had said in the courtroom many years before, all of the buried horror she had seen would leave a mark on her life, if it never surfaced. It hadn't, and Teddy wondered if unconsciously she remembered seeing Vasili kill her mother and was afraid because of it. Or was it buried so deep that it didn't affect her? Like shrapnel left over from a long-forgotten war?

  “You're awfully serious tonight, Uncle Doctor. Why so quiet? Something wrong?” She was always very straightforward with him.

  “I was just thinking.”

  “What about?” She was munching on an enormous hamburger and looked about fourteen. He smiled at her.

  “About you. How come you're such a good kid? It's not normal.”

  “I'm retarded.” She grinned at him and set down the hamburger. “Would you rather if I got into drugs?” She grinned, knowing how he felt about the drug epidemic. Though she didn't know what a deep-seated horror Teddy felt or why.

  “Please. I'm eating.”

  “Okay, so just be grateful I'm boring.” She knew what he was working toward. She should be going out with some nice young man and not her old uncle. She had already heard the speech ten thousand times, and she always told him in answer that he should be married.

  “Who said you were boring?”

  “You were about to start picking on me again for being a virgin.”

  “Was I?” He looked amused. “You know me awfully well, Vanessa.”

  “Hell, I ought to,” she chuckled, “we've been living together for thirteen years.” She said it too loud and several people turned around to stare at them, in particular two women who glared at them in obvious disapproval.

  Teddy leaned toward them with his most charming smile. “My niece,” he said sweetly.

  “I've heard that one before,” snapped the woman and she turned around at her table as Vanessa burst into laughter.

  “You're more outrageous than I am, do you know that?”

  The trouble was that they liked each other so much and were so comfortable with each other that neither of them was highly motivated to go looking for anyone else, which wasn't good for either one of them. Teddy had never really got over Serena, and his years of single parenthood had kept him busy enough that he could use it as an excuse not to look seriously for another woman. There had been women now and then, but they never meant very much to him. And in Vanessa's case, she just seemed to shy away from any kind of serious involvement with a man. She grew oddly shy and uncomfortable around them. Teddy had seen her do it. So instead she hid behind her camera, saw all, and felt as though no one saw her.

  “It's a damn waste, kid.” He looked at her with a grin as he paid the check.

  “What is?”

  “You hanging out with me all the time. Besides, I'll never get you off my hands like this. Don't you want to get married?” But whenever he mentioned marriage, there was always terror in her eyes.

  “No, never. That's not for me.” It was then that he could see the bits of shrapnel surface. It was always there. She just didn't know it.

  The next morning they sat peacefully over scrambled eggs and bacon. They alternated making breakfast every morning. On her days they had scrambled eggs, on his they had French toast. They had it down to a science. They read the paper in sections, with perfectly harmonized rotations. Watching them in the morning was like watching two people perform a ballet. It was all perfectly synchronized, and no one spoke a single word until after the second cup of coffee.

  But this morning, when he held out his cup, nothing happened. Instead she sat
staring at the paper, with a blank look on her face, and sensing something, Teddy watched her.

  “Something wrong?” She shook her head, but she didn't answer. He got up and came around behind her then, and what he saw gave him a jolt. It was a photograph of Vasili Arbus. She was reading the article, but her eyes kept straying back to the picture. The article was brief and said only that he was dead of a drug overdose at fifty-four. It said also that he had spent five years of his life in a mental hospital for having committed murder, and he had been married six times. But for once none of his wives were listed. Not even Serena. Teddy wanted to say something as he watched her look at the picture, but he knew he shouldn't do it. He had to let happen what would happen. It wasn't fair to help her repress it all again. He said absolutely nothing, and she went on looking at the picture for another ten minutes, and then suddenly she looked up at Teddy with a troubled smile.

  “I'm sorry. That's crazy. It's just… I can't explain it…I feel as though I've seen that man somewhere before, and it's bothering me.” Teddy said nothing and she shrugged. “Hell, he's been married six times, maybe he has some kind of hypnotic power over women. Looking at that picture was like going into a trance.” Teddy almost shuddered. After all those years here it finally was. But she seemed to have cast the mood off. She poured his second cup of coffee and went on reading the paper, but he saw a few minutes later that she had turned back to Vasili's picture again. It was interesting also that they didn't say whom he had murdered. He was grateful for mat. That would have been a terrible shock for her. This way her own memory had to do the work, but it was like trying to stir Rip Van Winkle.

  Teddy watched her closely that morning, but when he left for work, she seemed herself. He took the paper with him, just as a precaution, so she wouldn't fixate on it while she was alone. He was nervous about all of that coming to the surface when she was by herself somewhere. And after twenty minutes of trying to concentrate on his patients at his office, he gave up and called Vanessa's last psychiatrist, but it had been eight years since she'd seen him. It turned out that he had retired, and a woman had taken over his practice. Teddy explained the case, and she went to get the file. She was back on the line a moment later, pensive as she glanced through it.

  “What do you think? Do you think I should tell her now?” He sounded very nervous, and the woman was annoyingly calm when she answered.

  “Why not let her work through it? She'll only remember as much as she can handle. That's the whole point of that kind of repression. It's the mind's way of protecting itself. As long as she couldn't handle it, she didn't remember. When she can, if she can, it'll come back to her. Probably in little pieces, and as she digests each one the next one will come to her.”

  “It sounds like a long process.” Also depressing, he thought.

  “Not necessarily. The whole thing could be over in a day, or it may take weeks, or months, or even years.”

  “Terrific. And I just sit there watching her ruminate, is that it?”

  “That's right, Doctor. You asked me. So I told you.”

  “Thanks.” Her name was Linda Evans and he wasn't sure he liked her.

  “You know, there's another thing you might want to be aware of, Doctor. She may have nightmares. That would be fairly normal, while things push their way up to the surface.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Be there for her. Talk to her if she wants to talk. It may come out very quickly that way.” And then she thought about it for a minute. “If you need me, Doctor, call me. I'll leave word with my service. This is kind of a special case. I'd be happy to come over, no matter what time.”

  “Thank you.” It was the first really nice thing she had said. “I appreciate that.” And then he chuckled. “And if you ever need your spleen removed, I'd be happy to take care of that for you too.” She laughed, amused at the bad joke. Doctors seemed to be famous for them, but he had a nice voice, and she felt genuinely sorry for his niece. Besides, it was a case that had always intrigued her. She remembered studying the file when she'd taken over the practice.

  They hung up and Teddy went back to work, not feeling greatly encouraged, but when he went home that night, Vanessa was busy in the darkroom again and seemed in good spirits. The maid had left them a pot roast and they ate dinner at home, they both talked about work, she went back to the darkroom for a while, and he went to bed early. And when he awoke with a start, he saw from the clock on his night table that it was two thirty in the morning. He knew instantly that it was Vanessa who had woken him. In the distance he could hear her screaming. He jumped out of his bed and ran to her bedroom. And he found her sitting there, staring into space, muttering darkly. She was still asleep, and it was obvious that she had been crying. He sat beside her for the next hour, and she muttered and whimpered and cried softly for a while, but she never woke up, and she didn't scream again. He called Dr. Evans back in the morning and reported to her. She urged him to relax and just see what happened, and the same thing happened again the next night, and the night after that. It went on for weeks, but nothing really surfaced. In the daytime Vanessa was cheerful and busy and entirely herself, and at night she lay in bed and moaned and cried softly. It was as though deep down some part of her knew, but the rest of her didn't want her to know it. It was agonizing watching her that way every night, and at the end of three weeks he went to see Dr. Evans.

  He waited in the waiting room for fifteen minutes, and then the nurse told him that she was ready to see him. He was expecting, he had decided, a short, heavyset, serious-looking woman with thick legs and glasses. What greeted him instead was a statuesque brunette, with a radiant smile, big green eyes, and her hair pulled back in a chignon like a ballet dancer. She was wearing a silk shirt and a pair of slacks, and she looked at the same time both relaxed and intelligent. As he walked into her office Teddy felt surprised as well as unnerved.

  “Something wrong, Doctor?” He saw from a quick glance at the degree on her wall that she had gone to Harvard, and he calculated quickly that she had to be about thirty-nine, but she didn't look it.

  “No …I … I'm sorry.” He smiled at her then and looked more himself. “You're not at all what I expected.”

  “And what was that?” She was very much in control of the situation and he felt silly.

  “Someone … well… different.…” He burst out laughing. “Hell, I thought you'd be ugly as sin and about two feet tall.”

  “With a beard? Just like Freud? Right?” She laughed at him, and then blushed faintly. “You're not what I expected either.”

  “Oh?” He looked amused.

  “I thought you'd be very stuffy, Doctor. Pin-striped suit, horn-rimmed glasses”—she looked at the attractive blond mane —”no hair.”

  “Why, thank you. As a matter of fact, I do usually wear pin-striped suits. But I took the afternoon off to come and see you. So I came in my civvies.” He smiled at her. He was wearing gray gabardine slacks and a blazer. And he looked very handsome. “May I make a suggestion? Could we possibly stop calling each other Doctor? It's an awful lot of Doctoring.” He grinned and she smiled and nodded agreement.

  “Call me Linda.”

  “I'm Teddy.”

  “All right.” She sat back in her comfortable black leather chair and looked at him directly. “Tell me about your niece. In detail.” He told her everything that had been happening, and she nodded. And when he had finished his recital, she told him gently, “Do you remember? I told you it could take months, or even years. There was a possibility, with the initial shock, that she might have been jolted into remembering the whole story. What seems to be happening instead is that it's leaking slowly into her subconscious. It could take a very long time, or it may all subside again. It's unlikely that anything would happen to shock her again the way that photograph did. That was kind of a fluke.”

  He agreed. “But it was amazing how it struck her. She stared at it for about half an hour.”

  Linda Evans nodded s
lowly. “She must have some awful memories of that man. It's not surprising that the photograph haunted her.”

  “You don't think we should just tell her and get it over with?”

  “No, I don't.”

  “Do you think she ought to come to you?”

  Linda thought about it for a moment and then shook her head. “On what grounds? Why would you be suggesting such a thing? You see, she has no idea what's happening yet. If she wakes up one day and wants to see a therapist, that's one thing, but if you suggest it, it may put her on edge. I think we just have to let her be for the moment.” Teddy nodded, chatted with Linda for a moment, and then shook her hand and departed. But a week later he was back to talk to her again, and eventually he became a regular visitor to her office. He no longer took the afternoon off to come to see her, he arranged it during his lunchtime instead.

  “See, I told you. Pin-striped suits.” She laughed with him. There really wasn't that much to say about Vanessa, and after a month or two she began having fewer and fewer nightmares, but Teddy had come to enjoy talking to Linda Evans. They seemed to share a myriad common views and opinions, common interests and likings for many of the same things. Eventually he suggested that they spend the lunch hour in a restaurant instead of her office, and from there it was only a step to dinner. Normally she had stringent views about not going out with patients, but Teddy wasn't really a patient. He was the uncle of a patient she had never even met, but whose file she had inherited with the practice, and he was a fellow doctor. Besides, she was amazed at how much she enjoyed him. And Teddy was equally amazed at his feelings—lie wondered once or twice if, in speaking of Vanessa's past to Linda, he was somehow healing the ghosts of his own. For the first time in a long time he could speak of Serena without a stab of pain and it dawned on him slowly that he was falling in love with Linda. They went to dinner two or three times a week, occasionally went to the opera or the theater. He even took her to a hockey game with Vanessa, and was pleased at how well the two women got along. It also gave Linda her first look at Vanessa. She found her a delightful girl and saw no sign of inner torment.