Remembrance (42 page)

“Really. Where?”

“None of your goddamn business. Why don't you go lie down?”

“Because I just got up.”

“So what? Aren't you supposed to rest? Don't you care about the baby?” As though, in attacking her, he could free himself. In spite of her haranguing and nagging he left the house five minutes later and he didn't come back until after midnight. She had spent the day pacing and wondering and hating him, and in spite of her threats the night before, she didn't call her lawyer. She ended up screaming at Vanessa, bursting into tears, and having contractions that almost made her call the doctor. And when Vasili came in at last, she saw that he had once again been using drugs.

“How long is this going to go on?” Her voice was near hysterical and he nodded out as he pretended to listen to her.

“As long as I want to, if it's any of your business.”

“Last time I looked I was your wife, and we were having a baby. It's my business.”

He smiled evilly at her. “Such a little square lady.”

She felt her stomach churn with horror as she watched him. “Why don't you get yourself put on one of the state heroin programs then, list yourself as an addict and do it that way?” What a thought. As she listened to herself she almost shuddered, but maybe then it would regulate him to a dose he could live with and they wouldn't have to go through quite the same hell.

But he was sneering at her. “What? And lose all my work? That would be interesting.”

“Can you work like this?” They both knew he could not. Whenever he went on a binge, his assistants covered for him.

“Mind your own fucking business, bitch.” This time she didn't get up to slap him, she only turned her back to him and lay there in bed, wondering why she hadn't moved out that morning. It was as though she were unable to move, unable to function, as though she thought that if she stayed with him long enough he'd straighten out again. But he didn't. The nightmare only grew worse every day, as Serena helplessly sat by and watched it, feeling herself sink into a quagmire of despair. At the end of the first week every day he promised her that he would get help, and every day he went out and used again. He was always going to get help the next morning, she was always going to call her lawyer and leave for the States at a moment's notice. It was a merry-go-round of threats and promises and fear. But she realized in the first few days that, other than a hotel, she could go nowhere. She couldn't get on a plane to the States, she was much too pregnant. And at last her due date was only days away and she had sat in the same quicksand for almost four weeks, as Vanessa watched her. The child was almost as wide-eyed and pale as her mother.

“Are you all right?” Teddy called them from Long Island on her due date, and he was even more worried than he had been before. There had been more press of late about Vasili—shots of him at night spots, alone, with speculations that his marriage to “The Princess” was on the rocks. “How is he?”

“Worse and worse. Oh, Teddy …” She had started to cry.

“Do you want me to fly over?”

“No. He'd have a fit and it would just be worse.” Although that was hard to imagine. How could it be much worse?

“If you need me, I'll come.”

“I'll call you.” But as she hung up she realized how isolated she felt from him. She felt isolated from everyone, adrift in this nightmare of Vasili's creation, as she waited to give birth to their child. She was afraid all the time and worried and she felt ill. But she had said nothing to her doctor. She couldn't stand the shame of admitting to anyone, except Teddy, what she was going through.

Teddy called her back a few hours later. He couldn't stand it any longer. He was flying over in a few days.

Five minutes later Serena went to Vanessa's room and found her staring sadly out the window. “You okay, sweetheart?” Serena was horrified when she saw her. The whole tale of the last month's grim scene was written all over the child.

“I'm all right, Mom. How's the baby?”

“The baby's okay, but I'm more worried about you.”

“You are?” Vanessa's little face brightened. “I worry about you all the time.”

“You don't have to. Everything's going to be fine. I guess Vasili will eventually get himself straightened out, but meanwhile Uncle Teddy is coming day after tomorrow.”

“He is?” The child looked as though Christmas had been announced four months early. “How come?”

“I told him what was happening here, and he wants to come over to keep you company while I have the baby.”

Vanessa nodded slowly, and then looked into her mother's eyes with eight-year-old eyes filled with confusion and pain. She had seen her mother slapped, pushed, ignored, terrified, worried, deserted, neglected. It was something that no child should ever see and that Serena prayed she would never see again. She hoped most of all that it wouldn't mark her forever. “Mommy, why does he do it? Why does he get like that?” She knew he took drugs. “Why does he want to?”

“I don't know, sweetheart. I don't understand it either.”

“Does he really hate us?”

“No,” Serena sighed, “I think he probably hates himself. I don't understand what makes him do it, but I don't think it has anything to do with us.”

“I heard him say he was afraid of the baby.”

Serena looked at her. She had heard so much, and absorbed even more than Serena thought. “Maybe the responsibility of it scares him.”

“Does it scare you?”

“No. I love you with all my heart, and I'm sure that we're going to love the baby.”

“I'm going to love the baby a lot.” Vanessa looked at her mother proudly, and Serena marveled that all that she had seen hadn't also made her hate the baby. Instead all of her bad feelings were for Vasili. “It's going to be my baby, Mommy. And I'm going to be a terrific sister.” She looked at her mother and kissed her cheek. “Do you think it'll come soon?”

“I don't know.”

“Sometimes I get tired of waiting.”

Serena smiled. “Sometimes so do I. But it'll be soon.” She could tell from all the contractions she'd been having in the past few days that it could come at any moment. “Maybe it'll wait for Uncle Teddy.” Vanessa nodded, and they hugged each other close for a minute, and then Serena went upstairs to call Andreas and tell him what was happening to Vasili. Andreas was horrified when she told him, and sympathetic to her.

“Poor girl, he's doing that at a time like this? He should be shot!” He sounded very Greek and Serena smiled.

“Do you want to come and try and talk him into the hospital, Andreas? I have no effect on him anymore.”

“I'll try. But I can't come for a few days. Alecca is sick, and I can't leave her.” His wife had been ill for several months, Serena knew, and everyone was beginning to suspect it was cancer.

“I understand. I just thought that maybe you could influence him.”

“I'll do my best. I'll be there by the end of the week, Serena. And you take care of yourself, and little Vanessa. No baby yet?” He smiled gently and she felt sad. She hardly had time to think about the baby. Vasili's addiction was the only thing on her mind.

“No, not yet, but soon. I'll let you know.”

“I'll try to come before you have it.”

That night she felt calmer than she had in weeks, knowing that Teddy and Andreas were both coming. She knew that Vanessa would be cared for, and with any luck at all Vasili would be put away for a while. Now all she had to do was try not to have the baby before they got to London. She lay thinking about it all night and Vasili did not come home, and as she began to doze off just before dawn she felt something damp and warm on her legs, as though she were swimming in very warm water. She tried to fall asleep in spite of the impression, not wanting to know what it was, and then suddenly she felt her whole belly seized as though in a giant vise, and she awoke with a start, knowing instantly what she was feeling.

“Damn …” she muttered softly. All the women she knew went into labor gently. They had mild pains for hours and wondered if what they were feeling was even labor, instead she leaped into it with both feet. But as she sat up in bed she remembered what both Teddy and her English doctor had told her. She knew she had to hurry if she didn't want to have another baby in her bed, and this time there was no one to help her. She got out of bed as quickly as she could, but she suddenly felt very awkward, the baby had dropped even lower in the past few hours, and she felt severely encumbered as she walked to the bathroom for some towels. As soon as she got there she had another pain, and she had to pant softly in order to bear it. She straightened up then, grabbed a dress off a hanger, pulled off her nightgown, slipped on the cotton dress, slipped her feet into sandals, and grabbed her handbag. She began to laugh softly to herself, feeling excited as she had almost nine years before. To hell with Vasili. She would leave him as soon as she had the baby. All she had to do now was wake Vanessa and get to the hospital. It was the maid's night out, and she couldn't leave Vanessa alone in the house with no one there with her. Particularly not with Vasili drifting in and out. She would never leave her alone with him.

She made her way gingerly down the stairs and walked into Vanessa's room. She shook her gently by the shoulder, bent to kiss her, smoothed her hair, and then gasped suddenly as she knelt beside the bed, but when Vanessa woke up, the pain was over.

“Come on, sweetheart, it's time to go.”

“Time to go where?”

“To the hospital to have the baby.”

“Now?” Vanessa looked startled and when she glanced out the window, she saw that it was still dark outside. Serena only wished that she could have waited until the arrival of the two uncles. Vanessa would just have to come to the hospital with her. They would set up a cot for her in another room if they had to. And she knew that Teddy would be there by Tuesday.

“Come on, love, get up. Just hop into some clothes and take a nightie. And a book,” she added as an afterthought, and then she gasped as a horrifying pain ripped through her.

“Oh, Mommy!” Vanessa leaped out of bed, unprepared for the agony she saw on her mother's face. “Mommy, are you all right? Mommy!”

“Shhhhh … darling, I'm fine.” Serena gritted her teeth and tried to smile. “Be a big girl and call a taxi … and hurry!”

Vanessa ran downstairs in her nightgown, carrying blue jeans and a T-shirt with her. She dressed while she waited for the cab company to answer, and when they did, she explained that it was an emergency, her mother was having a baby.

The taxi was at the front door less than five minutes later, and Vanessa helped Serena into it. She felt very grown-up as she helped her mother, and less frightened than she had been when she had seen the first pain, but she winced when her mother had another.

“Do they hurt that much?”

“They're just strong so they can push the baby out.” Vanessa nodded, but she still looked worried. The pains seemed to get harder as they approached the hospital, and when they arrived, Vanessa took the money out of her mother's bag and paid the driver. He smiled at them both and wished Serena luck, and two nurses came out to help Serena into a wheelchair. She was smiling wanly at Vanessa and waving one hand as they wheeled her away, and Vanessa settled down in a corner of the waiting room, assuming that her little brother or sister would be born a few minutes later.

When nothing had happened an hour later, she asked a nurse, but they brushed her off, and by midafternoon she was panicked. Where was her mother? What had happened? Why hadn't the baby come? “These things take time,” a nurse told her. When the shift changed at four o'clock, the nurses were kinder to Vanessa. No one understood why she was in the waiting room all alone, but finally someone realized that no one was coming for her and the poor child hadn't even eaten. She had complained to no one for fourteen long hours, and when finally one of the nurses brought her a sandwich, she burst into tears.

“Where's my mother? What happened? Why didn't she have the baby?” And then with huge eyes, “Is she going to die?” But when they smiled and told her that that was nonsense, she didn't believe them. When they left her alone again, she wandered off and began to drift down the halls, until she came to an ominous room with a smoky glass door marked LABOR. As though she sensed what she would find within, she straightened her shoulders and slipped inside, and what she saw there made her gasp sharply. It was her mother, lying on a white table, her legs strapped onto what looked like boards high in the air, her face contorted with pain, her hands restrained, her blond hair matted, and her mouth open in a scream.

“Mommy!” Vanessa was instantly in tears as she came toward her, and there was no one in the room with Serena. “Mommy!” She instinctively began to free her hands and Serena looked at her blindly. It took her a moment to recognize her own child and then she began to cry as hard as Vanessa.

“Oh, my baby … my baby …”As her hands were freed she touched the long golden blond hair, and then suddenly she clutched Vanessa's shoulder. The child nearly screamed out with the pain, and sensing it, Serena freed her, but she was unable to restrain a horrible groan.

“What's wrong … oh, Mommy, what's wrong?” Vanessa's eyes were huge with terror. Her mother was drenched with sweat and she was a ghostly color.

“The baby's … turned … around …” And then, as though she suddenly had a thought. “Vanessa … ask them for … my bag … I have money … call Teddy. Do you know … the number?” Vanessa nodded, still desperately afraid. “Tell him—” But she couldn't go on then, the pain was too ferocious. It was several minutes before she could start again. “Tell him the baby's breech …
breech.
Understand?” Vanessa nodded. “They tried to turn him and they couldn't. They're giving me a few more hours and they'll keep trying … go on …” Her eyes looked desperately at her daughter. “Tell him … tell him to come now, today. And hurry.” Vanessa nodded again, and hesitated, but after the next pain her mother begged her to get her bag, find a phone, and call Teddy without waiting another minute.

Vanessa had a difficult time getting the nurses to let her have her mother's handbag, but when they realized that she didn't even have money to eat, they finally relented. She then stealthily went to a phone booth down the hall, closed the door, and put the money in to call the operator and make a collect call to Teddy. It was seven o'clock at night in London by then, but in New York it was only one in the afternoon and she knew that she would find him at his office.