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.”