Teddy.” And then suddenly her face clouded again and she seemed to stare into space with a look of horror. “Back to Uncle Teddy …” It became almost a chant. “Back to New York … oh, no … oh, no …” She looked around frantically, from Linda to Teddy, and he wondered for an instant if she would ever be the same again, if she would ever be sane. “Oh, no! Oh, no! …” And then a wail. “He killed her! That man … he killed my mommy!” She began to sob and reached out to Linda. “He killed you … he killed you … he killed you …” She looked up then as though for the first time she really saw Linda, and it was not the face of a child that Teddy and Linda saw as they looked at her, but the face of a ravaged young woman. “That man”—it was a hoarse whisper, she had come back—”the one I saw in the newspaper that day … he killed my mother.” She stared at Teddy, seeing him too, and then she went on, as though waking from a dream and trying to remember. “And then … the police came and they took him away, and I was”—she looked at them, puzzled—”I was holding a baby.” She closed her eyes then and trembled. “Charlie. Her name was Charlie … the baby Mama had in London … and they took her away from me in a courtroom.” She began to cry great gulping sobs then. “And they made me live with Greg and Pattie …” She looked at Teddy and held her arms out to him. “And then I came to live with you … but I never knew … I never remembered, until”—she looked at Linda in shock and despair—”until I saw that baby … and I thought …” She looked up at her uncle and his wife. “I don't know what I thought …”
Linda helped her at last. “You thought it was Charlie.”
She looked at Linda then. “Is all of this true? I feel like I dreamed it.”
Linda looked at Teddy. “It's true. You repressed it all after it happened, and it's been waiting to come out for years.”
She looked frightened then. “Is there more? Did something else happen?”
Linda was quick to answer. “Nothing else. You remembered it all. It's all over now, Vanessa. It's out.” Now all she had to do was learn to live with it, which Linda knew wouldn't be easy either. She watched the girl closely. She had had a tremendous shock. “How do you feel?”
She looked blank for a minute. “Scared … empty … sad.” And then two huge tears rolled down her face. “I miss my mother.” She hung her head down and began to sob again. “He killed my mother …” She was shaking all over. “When I came into the room, she was … she was lying there … her eyes open, his hands were on her neck and I knew she was dead … I knew …” She couldn't go on, and with tears streaming down his face, Teddy took her in his arms.
“Oh, baby … I'm so sorry.”
“Why? Why did he do it?” The questions were sixteen years later.
“Because he was crazy. And maybe because he was into drugs, I don't know. I think he loved her, but he was terribly disturbed. She left him, and he thought he couldn't live without her.”
“So he killed her.” For the first time she sounded bitter, and then she looked up at her uncle with a look of shock. “What happened to Charlie? Did they give her to him?”
“No, they put him away in an institution. For a while at least. Your sister was given to Vasili's brother. He was a decent man, I think. He was as distraught as I was at the time, and he wanted Charlotte.” Teddy smiled sadly. “He was very fond of you too. Do you remember him at all?” She shook her head.
“Have you stayed in touch with him over the years?”
Teddy sighed. “No, I haven't. The judge discouraged us from having contact with each other. He said that you and Charlie had gone to separate lives. I don't know how Arbus felt about it, but I was nervous about you, because you had repressed it all. I didn't want anyone coming along to surprise you over the years.” She nodded slowly in understanding and spoke softly after a little while.
“She would be almost sixteen