Remembrance (31 page)

30

“Serena?” He came up softly behind her as she sat in the fog in the garden, listening to the foghorns. In the past week she had become a kind of ghost—a haunted person. It was painful to see, as if she were slipping away.

“Yes?”

“You've got to be all right, Serena. You have to.”

“Why?” She looked at him blankly.

“For me, for yourself, for Vanessa …” His own eyes filled with tears. “For Brad.”

“Why?”

“Because you have to, dammit.” He wanted to shake her. “If you fall apart, what will happen to that child?”

“You'll take care of her, won't you?” She looked suddenly desperate, and with a sigh he nodded.

“Yes, but that's not the point. She needs you.”

“But will you?” Her eyes searched his face and they both remembered the paper. “If I die, will you take care of her?”

“You won't die.”

“I want to.”

He shook her then. “You can't.” And with that, they both heard a little voice from the doorway.

“Mommy, I need you.” She had had a bad dream, and at the sound of her voice Serena began to awake from hers. The following week Teddy helped Serena find an apartment, and she packed up all of their beautiful things and moved to Pacific Heights. It was a two-bedroom flat with a view of the bay, which she could just manage on her pension, and if they wanted to eat too, she realized that she was going to have to get a job.

“Maybe I should go downtown and start selling my body?” She looked cynically at Teddy and he did not look amused. But the thought, however sarcastic, sparked an idea for Serena, and the next day she went downtown and inquired at all the large department stores. By noon the next day she had been hired, and she returned to tell Teddy that she was employed. “I got a job today.”

“Doing what?” He worried about her all the time. She had been through so much, the loss of her husband, her baby, her home. How much could she stand? He asked himself that question often.

“As a model for seventy-five dollars a week.”

“And who will take care of your daughter?”

“I'll find someone.” There was a look of determination on her face as she said it. She refused to be beaten by life, no matter how hard it tried to defeat her. She had survived the loss of her parents, and the war. Now Brad. But she was determined to get through it. For Vanessa.

He shook his head. “I don't want you to do that. I want you to let me help you.” But she wouldn't. She had found a job, and she was going to support them. If it killed her, she was going to make it. She owed that much to Brad. It had been only three weeks since he had been killed in Korea, and now the United States was at war —it was as if her private war was becoming public.

She looked at Teddy now in sudden fear. “How soon are you going back to New York?” She knew he was due to start his internship in August and it was almost July. But he was shaking his head slowly.

“I'm not.”

“You're staying?” For a moment she looked thrilled.

“No.” He took a deep breath. He had been dreading telling her. “I enlisted in the Navy. I want to go to Korea.”

“What?” She screamed the word at him and unconsciously grabbed his shirt. “You can't do that! Not you too …” She began to sob quietly as she clutched him and he pulled her into his arms with tears in his own eyes.

“I have to. For him.” And for her, he thought to himself. To get away from the feelings he had that threatened to spill over at any moment.

“When do you leave?”

“A few days. A few weeks. Whenever they call me.”

“And what about us?” She looked suddenly terrified.

“You'll be all right.” He smiled at her through his tears. “Hell, you have a job.”

“Oh, Teddy, don't go.” She held him close to her, and nothing more was said, as they stood there, holding on to the last shreds of what was no more, and would never be again. Just as her childhood had ended as Mussolini's bullets had ripped into her parents long ago, now another era was over. She would never again be Brad's wife, never feel his arms around her. And now there wouldn't even be Teddy. They had all grown up. In three short weeks. The early days were over.

31

At six o'clock in the morning, on a foggy day in late July, Serena stood at the pier in Oakland, hugging Teddy for the last time. The weeks had flown by so quickly, she couldn't believe that he was already leaving. She had begged him to change his mind at first, and then finally she had accepted his decision. And it was obvious from the way things were going in Korea that sooner or later he would have to go. He had got a commission in the Navy, and would get his training as an intern somewhere in Korea. It certainly wasn't what they had been planning. But then again, ever since Brad's death what was?

For Serena the whole world had turned upside down in less than two months. Now she was a widow, alone with Vanessa, working. And as she looked at Teddy in his uniform she realized that the last human being she could depend on was going to be gone. She clung to him for a long moment, fighting back tears as she closed her eyes.

“Oh, God, Teddy … I wish you weren't going.”

“So do I.”

And then, trying to be a brave sister she smiled gamely. “But be a good kid and wear your galoshes, write to me on Sundays.…” And then in a hoarse whisper, “Don't forget us.…”

“Oh, Serena … don't say that!” He pressed her tightly against him, and anyone watching would have thought that she was saying good-bye to her husband, not her husband's brother, as he wiped the tears from her cheeks, hugged her again, and then stood back to look at her for a last time.

“I'll be back. Soon too. So you take care of yourself and Vanessa for me.” She nodded, the tears streaming from her eyes, as others hurried past them to board the ship that was to sail in an hour. God, how he wanted to stay with her, he thought to himself as he looked at her. Yet he knew that he had to go. It was something that he had to do for himself and his brother, no matter what anyone said. His mother had flown out from New York in a fury, threatening to pull strings, use connections, and get him kicked out of the service. But he was so vehement about his decision that in the end even she capitulated. One had to respect his motives and his way of thinking. What was terrifying was the possibility that he might be killed.

Serena tried not to think about it as she reached out to touch him just one last time. They had an extraordinary bond between them, had had from the beginning, and it had strengthened when he had delivered Vanessa. But in the past two months there had been something more, being with Teddy was like holding on to a part of Brad. It allowed her to hold on to him in some distant, melancholy way. And now she was losing Teddy too. But hopefully not forever.

“Serena …” He started to say something, and then stopped as the boat horn sounded, blotting out everything else that anyone said. It bleated three more times, and a gong sounded. It was time to go, and Serena felt a rush of panic, as he grabbed her, pulled her toward him, and held her tight. “I'll be back. Just know that.”

“I love you.” Her eyes filled with tears and she shouted it in his ear as she clung to him. He nodded, picked up his bag, and moved onto the ship with the others. It was several minutes before she saw him again, standing high above her, on the deck, waving slowly, and she couldn't fight back the tears. They streamed down her face unrestrained, until at last the horns bleated again, in concert with the foghorns in the distance, and the ship began to pull out slowly. She felt as though it were pulling her heart with it, and when the ship was swallowed up entirely by the fog, she turned away slowly and went back to her car with her head down, and tears still pouring from her eyes.

When she returned to San Francisco, Vanessa was waiting with a baby-sitter and she wanted to know how soon Uncle Teddy was coming home. It took all of the strength that Serena could muster to explain to her again that Teddy would be gone for a long time, but he would come back to them as soon as he could. They had a lot of nice things to do together, Serena encouraged, like going to the zoo, and the rose gardens in the park, the Japanese tea garden, the circus when it came to town … but before she could finish, there were tears in her eyes again and she was holding her daughter and squeezing her tight.

“Will he be like Daddy and never come back?” Vanessa's eyes were huge in her grief-filled face and Serena shuddered at the thought.

“No! Uncle Teddy will be back! I told you that.” She wanted to shout at the child for voicing the terrors she was wrestling with herself. But Serena's voice trembled as she said it, and as she had a thousand times in the past weeks, she found herself longing to turn back the clock. If only she could close her eyes and go back to the days she had shared with Brad, of knowing that he would protect her, that he would be there for her… back to the golden days they had shared at the Presidio … or in Paris … or the first days in Rome. Weeks ago she had written to Marcella, to tell her the news. And the answer, dictated to one of the new maids who worked under her, had been desolate. She offered Serena her sympathy as well as her prayers. But she needed more than that now. She needed someone there to hold her hand, to reassure her that she would make it.

There were times in the ensuing months when she really wondered if she would survive. Months when she could barely pay the rent, when bills were overdue, when they ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or only eggs. She had never known this kind of poverty before. During the war the nuns had kept her safe, and at the palazzo in Rome after that, she and Marcella had been well provided for, but now there was no one to turn to, no one to help her, no one to lend her money when she only had two dollars left and wouldn't get paid for another three days. Time and again she thought of the agreement she had signed with Margaret Fullerton. If she had never been forced to sign that damned piece of paper, at least she and Vanessa would have been able to eat. Vanessa would have had pretty clothes to wear and more than just one beat-up pair of little shoes. Once, in desperation, she almost turned to them for help, but she couldn't, and in her heart of hearts she knew it wouldn't have done any good. Margaret Fullerton was so vehement and irrational in her hatred of Serena that there was nothing Serena could say or do to change her mind. It was a hatred so broad and deep that it even reached out to envelop Vanessa, her only grandchild. Margaret didn't give a damn if they did starve. Serena suspected that she probably hoped they would.

Only the joy of finding Vanessa at the end of a day kept her going. Only the letters from Teddy warmed her heart. Only the money from her modeling at the department store kept them alive. There were days when she thought she would drop from exhaustion and when she wanted to cry with despair. But day after day, six days a week, she went downtown to model, to wander around the floors in the latest creations, to hand out perfume samples, to stand near the front door in a striking fur coat, to model in the fashion shows when they had them. It wasn't until the second year that she was promoted to the designer salon. And then she modeled for special customers, or in the big shows. She wore only their finest designer dresses from New York or Paris, and she was rapidly learning the tricks of her trade, how to do her hair in half a dozen flattering styles, how to do her makeup to perfection, how to move, how to smile, how to sell the clothes just by weaving a kind of spell. And whereas she was beautiful before, with the new skills she was learning, she was even more remarkable looking than she had been before. People talked about her in the store, and often people stared at her. The women customers looked at her in envy, but more often with a kind of fascination, as though she were a work of art. Their husbands stared at Serena, utterly awed by her beauty, and it wasn't long before the store's advertising agency saw her, and they made her their main model for the store. Every week her photograph was in the papers, and by the end of her second year at the store people began to recognize her around town. Men asked her out. She got invited to parties by relative strangers, but her answer was always the same. Without exception she declined. Her only interest was in returning home to Vanessa, to play with the little golden-haired child who looked so much like B.J., to sing silly songs with her at the little piano Serena had bought at an auction, to read her stories, and to share their dreams. Serena told her that one day she would be a beautiful, famous lady.…

“Like you, Mommy?”

Serena smiled. “No, much prettier than I am, silly. Everyone will stop to stare at you in the street, and you will be successful and happy.” Serena would stare into space for a moment, thinking of her own dreams. Was that what she wanted? To be stared at? To be successful? For her, modeling had been the only answer, but it was a strange life, making her living by how she looked, and often she felt foolish and unimportant, like the mannequin she literally was. But none of that mattered—she couldn't afford to have doubts about it. She had to survive.

It was a painfully empty life. She had the child, and her work, and their apartment. But other than that, she had nothing at all. No man, no friends, no one to talk to or to turn to. There seemed to be no room in her life for anyone but the child. And at night she would sit and read, or write letters to Teddy. They took weeks to reach him in the distant outposts of Korea. He was a resident now, and wrote to her long sorrowful letters about what he thought of the war. To him, it all seemed a senseless carnage, a war they couldn't win and didn't belong in, and he longed to come home or be transferred to Japan. There were times when she would read his letters over and over, holding them in her hand, and then staring out at the bay, remembering his face the day she had met him … the way he had looked in his cutaway at Greg's wedding … the day he had delivered Vanessa … at his graduation at Stanford. It was odd how often now, in her mind, she confused his face with her husband's. It was as though over the past two and a half years they had got confused in her mind.

And on their third Christmas alone Serena and Vanessa went to church and prayed for his safety, as they did each Sunday, and that night Serena lay in her bed and cried. She was aching with loneliness and exhaustion, from the years alone, the endless hours of hard work at the store, and all that she poured out to Vanessa. It was as though she had to give it all, and there was no one to replenish her strength for her. Week after week she waited anxiously for Teddy's letters. They were what kept her going. It was in writing to him that she poured out her own soul. In a sense it was her only real contact with a grown-up, and her only contact with a man.

At work she spoke to almost no one. Word had got out at one point that she had been an Italian princess before her marriage to an American soldier, and everyone decided that she was arrogant and aloof, and they were frightened by her beauty. After a while no one even tried to make friends with her. They had no way of knowing how lonely she was behind the cool facade of the princess. Only Teddy knew when he read her letters, her pain and loneliness and the still-fresh grief for her husband were obvious between the lines.

“It's amazing to see,” she wrote to him after Christmas, “how they all misunderstand me. They think me cold and snobbish, I suppose, and I let them. It's easier, and safer perhaps, than allowing them to know how much I hurt inside.” She still missed Brad, but it was more than that now. She missed someone. Someone to talk to and to share with and to laugh with, and go for walks on the beach with. She couldn't bear to do the things she had done with Brad, or even with Teddy, they only made her feel more lonely, and reminded her of how alone she was. “I feel at times as though this will go on forever. I will always be alone, here, with Vanessa, night after night and year after year, in this apartment, working at the store, and no one will ever know me. It frightens me sometimes, Teddy. It is as though you are the only one left who has truly known me.…”

There was of course Marcella, but it had been years since she had seen her, and Marcella was part of another life now. The letters that she dictated to someone else to be sent to Serena were always stilted and awkward, and left an empty chasm there too. In effect there was only Teddy, thousands of miles away in Korea, and it was only in the last few months of the war that they both began to realize what had happened. After two and a half years of writing letters, baring their souls to each other, holding each other up across the miles, she finally understood why there had been no one in almost three years. She was waiting for him.

The morning that she heard the news that the war was over, she was working at the store, and wearing a black velvet evening suit with a stiff white organdy collar, and she stood in the middle of the designer salon with tears streaming down her face.

A saleswoman smiled at her, and others chattered excitedly among them. The war in Korea was over! And Serena wanted to give a whoop of joy. “He's coming home,” she whispered, but someone overheard her. “He's coming home!”

“Your husband?” someone asked.

“No.” She shook her head slowly, with a look of amazement on her face. “His brother.” The woman looked at her strangely and Serena suddenly knew that an important question was about to be answered. When the years of letters suddenly ended, what would Teddy be to her?