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.”