Vanished

“And now?” His eyes were furious and his face was right next to hers, as Teddy watched in terror. In a minute, he was going to scream, if he could, if only to protect her. “Is it unfair?” Charles asked again, this time louder, seeming very drunk now. But she was calm, and in total control. She had Teddy with her, and she was not going to let Charles hurt them. No matter what had happened in the past, he no longer scared her. She could not let him.

“I don't think we should discuss this now.” She pulled Teddy closer to her, and gently touched his face so he wouldn't be afraid. But it only seemed to make Charles more angry. He was still such a striking-looking man, and she still felt weak in the knees when she looked at him, but he seemed so out of control now.

“Why do you have a child?” He shouted at her as she tried not to flinch, so she wouldn't frighten Teddy. “What do I have?”

“I don't know …your battles in Spain …your beliefs …your friends …your writing …if you have nothing else, perhaps that's a choice you made.” She was desperate not to discuss it in front of Teddy, but she was afraid just to walk away and make Charles even more angry. She held tightly to the child's hand, trying to give him courage with her pressure.

“That's a choice you made, seven years ago when you left me,” Charles shot at her. “You made that choice for me. We could have had more children.”

“We have to go now.” She began to cry as she said the words and Teddy stared at them, wondering what it all meant as she spoke to Charles again, this time more softly. “What kind of life could we have had? You hated me, and you were right then, I hated myself too …maybe I always will …but Charles, I couldn't have stood it. I couldn't have looked you in the eye, knowing how you felt about me.” She had told him all that seven years ago, before she left Europe.

“I told you I wanted you back,” he said stubbornly.

“It was too late then.” She took a breath and wiped her eyes, forgetting Teddy for an instant. “I think you'd always have blamed me, just as I blamed myself.”

She had still loved him in some ways, but she could never have stayed with him, not after what happened.

Charles looked down at Teddy then, as though he still could not believe he even existed. He was a beautiful child, in some ways, even more beautiful than Andre. And then Charles looked at Marielle again, wanting desperately to hurt her. “You don't deserve this,” he raised his voice to her, and for an insane moment, he wanted to slap her. Why had she married again? Why did she have this child? Why in God's name had she left him? But they both knew why, and perhaps it could never have been any different. “You don't deserve him,” he said with the cruelty she still remembered. It was the other side of their great love, the side that had battered her before she left him.

“Perhaps not.”

“You shouldn't have left me.”

“I had no choice. If I'd stayed, it would have killed me.” And he knew that was true too. They had both gone more than a little crazy. She with attempted suicides, he with his wild attack on her the night it happened. But they had both been so mortally wounded by what had happened.

“Perhaps we would all have been better off dead. …” There were tears in his eyes now too, as Teddy drew even closer to his mother.

“That's a terrible thing to say.'

“For you, maybe …you have a life now … a husband … a child. And why should you? Why should you, dammit, when I still wake up every day thinking of him …and of you …wishing I had died with him. Do you ever think of him? Do you ever remember … or is it all forgotten?” But as he said the words, fury suddenly raged in her eyes. Fury born of years of pain and anguish, about which Charles knew nothing.

“How dare you? There isn't a day that I don't remember, that I don't think about him …that I don't see his face if I close my eyes … or even yours. …” Just as she had seen them the night before as she lay sleepless, remembering, fighting herself not to call him. “But nothing is going to bring him back, no matter how badly we destroy our lives now, or each other. He's gone …he's at peace …perhaps it's time for us to be at peace too.”

“I will never be at peace without you.” He raged at her, looking young again, and this time she smiled at him, and shook her head. In some ways, despite the fact that he was older, he seemed even more childish. He hadn't gone on, hadn't grown, hadn't healed, he had just stayed there, doing the same crazy things he had done as a boy, playing the expatriate, fighting other people's wars, and in some ways, hiding from being a grown-up.