Danielle Steel - Remembrance

The headline that night read SOCIALITE SURGEON BECOMES BACHELOR FATHER, and it went on to reiterate for the thousandth time about his month in jail, the kidnapping charges Pattie had tried to make stick that had become contempt of court, and again all the details about the custody case. The papers had been strictly kept from Vanessa all along, and Teddy hoped that they would all get lost somewhere over the years. He didn't want any of that coming back to haunt Vanessa. She still remembered nothing of Vasili, or the baby, or her mother's murder, but she seemed much more herself now. It was just a matter of time.

50

“Vanessa? Vanessa? Are you home?” Teddy walked sedately through the front door, put his hat on the hall table, took off his coat, and peeked into the study. She wasn't there, but as he wandered through the house he suspected that she was in the darkroom. For the past four years she had spent most of her time there. He had had to give up the guest bedroom on her behalf when she discovered photography in her freshman year at Vassar, but she was so good at what she did that it was actually a pleasure.

During the thirteen years she had lived with him almost everything had been a pleasure. They had grown up together, hand in hand, learning and growing, and occasionally fighting like cats and dogs, but there was an enormous respect between them. His mother had died when Vanessa had been twelve, but that was no particular loss to Vanessa. Her grandmother had never accepted the child, and that never changed right up until her death. She left Vanessa none of her vast fortune. She left it all, equally divided, between her two sons. Two years later Greg had died, predictably of cirrhosis, and Pattie had eventually moved to London and married “someone terribly important.” From the rumors he occasionally heard, Teddy assumed she was happy, but he didn't really care if he never saw her again. Once she lost custody of Vanessa, she had entirely lost interest in the girl, and they never saw her. So over the years Teddy and Vanessa had been alone. He had never married, and he had devoted himself wholeheartedly to the task of being a bachelor father. It had its moments of absolute despair, there were moments that were hysterical beyond words, and moments that were worth an entire lifetime. When she had graduated from Vassar the previous spring, it had been a moment that he knew he would always cherish. In some ways she was as lovely as her mother had been, but it was more a similarity of spirit. She had grown up to look exactly like Brad, and sometimes it amused Teddy to see how much she was like him. She had his same long lanky blond good looks, her sense of humor was much the same, her eyes were the same gray-blue, and when she laughed, it was as though he had come back for another life, as a woman. It was extraordinary to watch her, and be with her, she was so dynamic and so alive. It was her energy and her drive that she got from her mother. And she wanted to be not a model but a photographer. She had studied fine arts at Vassar and done very nicely, but all she cared about was what she saw in her camera lens, and after that what she did with it.

Teddy knocked softly on the door, and Vanessa answered.

“Yeah? Who is it?”

“The big bad wolf.”

“Don't come in, I'm developing.”

“Will you be through soon?”

“In a few minutes. Why?” It seemed to him that most of then-conversations were through that door.

“Want to go to dinner?”

“Wouldn't you rather play with kids your own age?” She was always teasing him that he should get married.

“Mind your own business, smartass.”

“You'd better be nice to me, I could sell that picture I took of you last week to the papers. Famous surgeon seen dressed as a bunch of grapes.” He roared with laughter at the memory. She and half a dozen friends had gone as the Fruit of the Loom insignia to a Halloween party, and at the last minute the guy who was supposed to be the grapes couldn't come, and she had pressed Teddy into service. He had been a good sport, but they had also won the prize, so Vanessa had had someone take pictures of them. “How would that look in the medical journal?”

“That's blackmail.”

“You'd better be nice to me. I just sold another picture to Esquire.” She had been free-lancing for five months now, and she was doing very nicely.

“You're moving up in the world.” He was still standing in the hallway, talking to the door. “Are you ever coming out of there?”

“No, never,” she shouted back.

“What about dinner?”

“Sounds good. Where are we going?”

“How does P.J. Clarke sound to you?”

“Terrific. I'm wearing jeans and I don't want to change.”

“So what's new?” He was teasing. She was always in jeans, with her incredible blond hair swinging, and assorted army surplus jackets and vests, which made up the rest of her wardrobe. She wanted to be comfortable enough to take pictures at all times. She was in no way preoccupied with her wardrobe.

“I'll get dressed.”

He disappeared into his own bedroom and loosened his tie. He had led two lives for years, that of a sedate, successful surgeon at Columbia Presbyterian, in dark pin-striped suits, white shirts, and dark ties, and then a whole other life with Vanessa. A life of ice skating and pony rides and the zoo and father's days at camp, and hockey games and ice cream parlors. A life of blue jeans and sweat shirts and pink cheeks and windblown hair. She had kept him even younger than his forty-five years and he hardly looked more than thirty. His own blond good looks had held up well, and he actually looked a great deal like her. They had the same lanky frames, the same shoulders, the same smile, it was perfectly conceivable that she could have been his daughter. Once in a while when she was little, she had introduced him as her “Daddy,” but she still called him Teddy, and most of the time she told friends that he was her uncle. She remembered in every glorious detail the day she had been finally awarded to him in court, but of the ugliness of the past, she still remembered nothing.

He had consulted several psychiatrists over the years and they had eventually convinced him not to worry. It was disturbing that none of that had ever surfaced, but it was possible now, they all felt, that she would never remember. She was happy, well adjusted, there was no reason for any of the past to come leaping out. And they also suggested that if he wanted to, once she was an adult, he might want to tell her. He had decided not to do that, she was happy as she was, and the burden of knowing her mother had been murdered by her husband might have been too great for Vanessa. The only possibility that could be of concern was if she suffered some major trauma. In that case, perhaps, some of the memories could be dislodged. When she had been little, she had had frequent nightmares, but she hadn't even had those in years, and eventually Teddy had stopped worrying about it completely. She was just like any other child, happy, easygoing, better natured than most, they had never had any teen-age problems. She was just a terrific kid and he loved her as though she were his own child. And now that she was almost twenty-three, he couldn't believe how quickly the years had flown past them.

He returned to the darkroom twenty minutes later, in blue jeans and a dark brown cashmere jacket with a beige turtleneck sweater. She shopped for him sometimes at Bloomingdale's, and came back with things he would never have bought for himself, but he had to admit that once he had them he liked them.