Remembrance (44 page)

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 ever 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?”

“Finished.”

“Forever?” Serena nodded and said nothing. “Want to tell me why?”

But she only shook her head and patted her old friend's hand. “No, love, I don't. And you don't want to know. It was like going to a place I thought I would never come back from. And now that I'm here, I don't want to remember or reminisce, or even think about going back. My only pleasant memory of the past year is Charlie, and she's here with me.”

“Thank God.” Dorothea looked impressed. Serena's year with Vasili had apparently been worse than she had suspected.

By the end of the week Vasili had started calling the agency, and Dorothea thought she was going to go nuts. He wanted to know where Serena was, where he could find her, how he could call her. Serena had given out strict instructions not to tell him. It was only when one of the models happened to answer the phone for someone, as a favor, that Vasili struck pay dirt. She looked up Serena's number and address among the file cards, and gave it to him without a second thought, having no idea of what she had just done.

The next day he flew to New York to find her, and when he reached her apartment, he found her about to go out. “Serena …”She opened the door and heard her name and almost jumped out of her skin when she saw him. She could tell by his eyes that he was still using and obviously half out of his mind and she backed slowly into the apartment. The children were in the living room with the baby-sitter and she wanted to slam the door but he shoved his way past her, muttering darkly that he had to see his baby and that she couldn't do this to him, and she slammed down her portfolio and watched him look down at Charlie, as she felt the old fear and anger well up inside her. All the ugliness of the past year seemed to dance before her eyes as he turned to face her, his eyes cloudy and wild.

“How the hell did you find me?” Her voice was sharp and her eyes were blazing. She had come three thousand miles to escape him and now here he was again.

“I had to.” He stared at her blankly. “You're my wife.” The baby-sitter sat there staring at him, looking frightened, and Vanessa instinctively reached over and took the baby protectively into her arms. She was watching her mother grow angrier by the moment and Vasili looked as though he were totally crazed. “Why didn't you come back?”

“I'm not ever coming back. And I don't want to discuss this here.” She glanced worriedly at the children. Vanessa had seen enough of this in the past, and she didn't want her seeing more now.

“Then, let's go in there.” He pointed to the bedroom, and Serena followed him into it with long angry strides. “I want you to come home!” He turned to face her, and she shook her head from side to side.

“No. Do you understand? No! I am never coming back to you, Vasili. Now get out of my house and get out of my life.”

“I won't!” He was shrieking. “You took my baby, and you're my wife, you have to come home to me if I tell you.”

“I don't have to do a damn thing. You're a bloody junkie and you almost destroyed me and my children—”

“But I didn't, I didn't …” he interrupted her. “I love you … I love you … I love you.…” And as he said the words he advanced on her, his maddened black eyes flashing into hers, his hands instinctively closing on her throat and squeezing harder and harder and harder, and she suddenly began to choke and then turned purple as he shouted, “I love you! … I love you! … I love you!” In the room beyond, Vanessa heard him, but after a few minutes she didn't hear her mother, and suddenly terrified, sensing that something was amiss, she burst through the door, with the baby still in her arms. What she saw in the bedroom was Vasili, kneeling, sobbing, on the floor, his hands still around Serena's neck, as she lay with her head twisted at an odd angle, her eyes open, her portfolio spilled out on the floor.