Antonia's Choice

by Nancy Rue

  “I connected with Lindsay and all the kids at the church, like, right away,” Wyndham said. “I knew they were what Reverend Michaels said—they were God people.”

  “Lutheran?” I said—for no apparent reason.

  “We’re nondenominational,” Lindsay put in.

  I didn’t ask if the guy with the square glasses did strange things with snakes or anything. I just nodded for Wyndham to go on.

  “I don’t know how it happened exactly. It was just a God-thing. We were all in this circle praying last night—it was so cool—I didn’t think anybody but my youth group in Richmond did that—anyway, I just started crying and everybody was, like, right there, and I just started talking.” Wyndham’s eyes were filling up even as she spoke. “I told them there was something I needed to tell you. And they heard it and then they called Hale.”

  And then Hale, Hale, the gang was all there, I thought. I was grasping none of this. I wanted her to get on with it.

  “That’s where I came on the scene,” Hale said, drawing out every word like he was pulling it out of himself with a string. “They’re real good about not handling heavy issues on their own. That can get real dangerous—”

  “Okay, so what heavy issue are we talking about?” I said.

  Wyndham stared down at her hands. Hale and the gang notwithstanding, she was struggling again. I leaned across the counter and put my hands on top of hers.

  “I don’t care what it is, Wyndham,” I said. “I’m not going to blame you or yell at you or whatever else it is that you’re so afraid of. Just tell me. I obviously need to know or you wouldn’t have brought in the intervention team!”

  She looked at me tearfully. “When Ben stayed with us last fall—three times—Sid took pictures of him. Naked.”

  I went numb.

  The one piece of confetti that had swirled time and again in my head—the one piece I had refused to pick up and try to piece together with the others—had just blown into my face. But I felt nothing—nothing except the world suddenly becoming a different place around me.

  “He took pictures of little boys, too?” I knew I sounded as if I had just been told there was no Tooth Fairy, but I didn’t care how naive I was coming off.

  “Oh, yeah,” Wyndham said. “Emil, Ben, lots of other little boys.”

  “Oh, dear God,” I said.

  “Amen to that,” Hale said.

  No one else spoke. I had no idea where Hale and Lindsay were. I could only see Wyndham, sobbing in front of me. It was clear there was more inside her, wanting to rush out now that the floodgates had been opened.

  “What else?” I said.

  “Every time Sid took pictures of him, he told Ben he would come after him—with a knife—and cut him—if he ever told anybody.”

  “Sid said that to my son?”

  Wyndham nodded miserably. I found myself leaning toward her until our noses almost touched.

  “Wyndham,” I said, “you have to tell me, because this is my child we’re talking about. Do you know all this for a fact?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know it?”

  She floundered again, looking at Hale as if only he could save her.

  “You’re doing great,” he said.

  Wyndham grabbed for his hand and clung to it. I waited in agony.

  “I know it’s a fact.” Her voice was barely audible. “I know it is, because when he was done photographing Ben, he would call me and I had to take Ben away. I heard him say that stuff to Ben—and then he would say, ‘Make him shut up.’”

  “What do you mean, ‘make him shut up’?” I said.

  “Ben was screaming so hard—just like he does now—maybe even worse.”

  “And did you make him shut up?” My voice was accusatory. I couldn’t help it. My fingers had a homicidal grip on the countertop.

  Wyndham shook her head. “I didn’t want to be part of it. I just took him to… her.”

  “To Bobbi.”

  She nodded. She was so racked with sobs, words were now obviously impossible.

  There were no words to explain what I had just heard. That my son had been violated by his uncle with a camera. That he had been threatened. That my own sister had known—and done nothing.

  “Please don’t be mad at me for not telling you before,” Wyndham said. She was wringing Hale’s hand.

  “I’m not mad at you. You’re not to blame for this. Why would you be afraid of me?”

  She couldn’t answer.

  “Because you thought I wouldn’t believe you?”

  “No!”

  “Then why—”

  “Because Sid said he would kill me! He said he would drown me in the bathtub the next time—”

  “The next time?”

  “Don’t make me say it, please! Tell her, Hale. I can’t!”

  I looked helplessly at Hale. He was a man in pain.

  “The next time he took pictures of her. Nude,” he said.

  My gaze shifted to Wyndham. She was covering her face with both hands, her shoulders drawn together in shame.

  I rounded the counter and swung her chair to face me. I tore her hands down and took hold of her chin.

  “Now you listen to me,” I said. “Not one single part of this is your fault. You are not to blame—and you have nothing to be ashamed of. There will be none of that here.”

  “But men are looking at those pictures on the Internet! They’re seeing me naked.”

  “I know—and we’re going to get them, every last one of them. I’m going to get on the phone with Uncle Chris tonight—”

  “I don’t think he’ll believe me!”

  “You leave that to me. We’ll make sure no one ever sees those pictures again. We’ll make sure they all go down.”

  “I just want Sid to go down,” she said.

  She leaned back against Lindsay, who was suddenly behind her, rubbing her shoulders. I had forgotten she was even in the room.

  I had, in fact, forgotten everything except what had just unfolded in front of me. I left Wyndham in Lindsay’s hands and paced, fingers on my temples.

  “Miz Wells,” Hale said. “You know anything you need for what you have ahead of you, we’re here for you.”

  I gave an automatic nod in his direction. And then I stopped. Nothing could be on autopilot anymore. There were no learned responses for any of this. No one had taught me how to react when I found out my son was the victim of pornography—at the hands of his own family.

  I studied Hale, who was quietly watching me, his fingers, square like the rest of him, folded on the counter. The eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were as saddened as if this had happened to one of his own.

  “Okay,” I said to him. “Is that a genuine offer? Because I don’t have time at this point to follow up on something that’s not the real thing.” I glanced at Wyndham, who was now deep in conversation with Lindsay, and I lowered my voice. “I am so at a loss right now.”

  Hale nodded and got up to cross the kitchen. He leaned one hand near the top of the refrigerator and talked with the other one. As bulky and square as he was, his gestures were gentle. I found myself wanting to cry.

  “We have resources we can connect you with,” he said. “We can take care of things around here while you deal with whatever you have to deal with. We can certainly pray with you.”

  “But I don’t even belong to your church.”

  “You think that makes a difference to God?”

  “It might,” I said. “I haven’t been to church in so long.

  “This isn’t some kind of club where you have to keep your dues up.

  Hale smiled at me. The poor thing had a face that looked vaguely like the front of a Mack truck—and yet it was so kind. I didn’t like the fact that I felt so vulnerable there with him, back slouched against the refrigerator door, lost and grasping and—ungelled. But there was no condescension in the look he gave me. It was as if he thought I knew where I needed to go, and he was willing to hel
p me get there. He did know about teenagers. Ben was one thing—he was my own child. Wyndham, though, was something else altogether.

  “I need to know what to do for her,” I said. “You don’t pose naked at fifteen and get over it just because you’ve spilled your guts. I know that much.”

  “Yes, ma’am—there are some issues. Big ones.” He shook his head, ponytail brushing his shoulder. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just trained to spot problems and get kids where they need to be.”

  “Are we talking therapy?” I said.

  He gave the girls a nervous glance. “Why don’t you call me tomorrow? You’ve had to absorb a lot tonight.”

  I nodded as he fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  “I’m sorry about your little boy, Miz Wells,” he said. “I’m real sorry about that.”

  I couldn’t even say thank you. I suddenly wanted all of them—Hale, Lindsay, Wyndham—to go away.

  “Lindsay,” Hale said, “let’s you and me head out. It’s gettin’ late.”

  “Can we pray before you go?” Wyndham said.

  Hale looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Somehow I got myself into our bedraggled little circle and let Wyndham cling to my hand on one side and Hale put his paw in mine on the other. I had no idea what Hale drawled out to God. I only knew his voice made my throat ache with held-back tears.

  When they left, Lindsay making Wyndham promise to let her pick her up for school in the morning, Wyndham suddenly deflated like a bicycle tire. She said she wanted to go straight to bed.

  “You going to be all right sleeping alone?” I said.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “I always lock my door so he can’t get me.”

  I made a conscious choice not to put my hand over my mouth in horror. It surprised me that anything else could shock me now.

  “Good night, hon,” I said as she squeezed me tightly. She had obviously been taking hugging lessons from Lindsay.

  “Thank you for not being mad at me, Aunt Toni. Because if you didn’t want me, I don’t know where else I would go.”

  I sat at the bottom of the steps for a while after she went upstairs, the brass chandelier and the Maxfield Parish Limited Edition print and the brocade drapes all hanging heavily around me like relics of some time that no longer mattered. With them hung the loneliness—the suffocating sense that I was suddenly a stranger in the same place I used to control.

  I have nowhere to go either, Wyndham, I thought. We’re adrift here—you and me. And Ben.

  Ben.

  It shuddered through me—the thought that I hadn’t even been upstairs, hadn’t gone to him since I’d found out.

  I don’t want to see him, I thought. Why don’t I want to see him?

  The answer was clear and cruel.

  Because now you know what you’ve been avoiding all along—and now you have to remember every time you look at him.

  I got up, went up to the master bathroom, and threw up. Then I went to my son.

  Only his paintbrush cowlick was sticking out above the covers when I tiptoed to his bed. The rest of him was burrowed in like a frightened animal in hiding. I sank to my knees on the floor.

  “Oh, Pal,” I whispered. “I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

  He didn’t stir, and I was glad. If he woke up and felt somebody in the room, he would scream in terror—sure it was Sid come to “get him.” Or Wyndham, there to take him to Bobbi.

  I grabbed a handful of my own hair and squeezed. “Dear God,” I said. “No wonder he’s so terrified of her. Dear God.”

  I rocked on my knees and said it—Dear God—over and over, until I fell asleep with my head on my arms on the side of Ben’s bed. I woke up with a start when the first weak light cracked through the blinds, and I scurried away before Ben could open his eyes and find me there.

  I understand now, Ben, I wanted to tell him. And it’s laying right here in my chest.

  I understood something else, too. There was no way I could make Ben live night after night in this house with Wyndham unless we had some kind of intervention. Hale came to mind. I went downstairs in search of his card, which I’d left on the counter, and only by sheer willpower refrained from calling him that minute. It was, after all, 5 A.M.

  I went through all the motions of getting ready for work, though I couldn’t imagine concentrating on some Nashville music baron’s stock portfolio. I waited until Lindsay picked up Wyndham, as promised, before I got Ben out of bed. Wyndham seemed better, more hopeful, as she kissed me on the cheek and went out in her freshly starched shirt and her newly painted fingernails. The pain in my chest went so deep, I could barely breathe.

  But if getting all of that held-back horror out made that kind of difference in Wyndham, I was optimistic that it would work for Ben, too. It was already somewhat easier to tolerate his croaky little, “I hate getting up! I hate going to school!” because I knew where it came from. Still, it went through me like a broadsword.

  He went straight for the TV when he was dressed, but I steered him firmly to the breakfast nook where I had Mickey Mouse-shaped toaster waffles, swimming in butter and syrup, ready for his dining pleasure. I didn’t give him a chance to express his hatred for those.

  “I want to talk to you while you have breakfast, Pal,” I said.

  I sat across from him at the table, and he blinked his wide brown eyes at me.

  “Don’t you gotta get ready?” he said.

  “I’m ready.”

  “No—don’t you gotta get stuff in your office and get stuff in your bedroom and call that Reggie lady? Don’t you gotta do all that?”

  It was my turn to blink. “Do I usually do all that?”

  He nodded. Then he stabbed Mickey Mouse in the left ear with his fork. “But don’t talk. I hate talking.”

  “I know. And I know why.” My heart was pounding so hard, I could feel it in my throat.

  His brow puckered. “You don’t know.”

  “I do know. I know what happened to you at Aunt Bobbi’s.”

  Almost without hesitation, the plate flew across the table, and Mickey landed with a smack to the floor. Ben planted both hands over his ears and went straight to screams. I pulled his hands down and held them tight, shouting over him.

  “It’s all right, Ben! Uncle Sid is in jail! He can’t hurt you!”

  Ben squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in that way I was always sure was going to cause brain damage. But I kept shouting.

  “Listen to me! Wyndham isn’t going to hurt you either. She’s sorry about all of that. She didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

  I stopped. It was pointless to go on. Ben had slipped into a frantic state, clutching at the place mat and screaming into another dimension.

  “All right—all right—I’ll stop,” I said. “No more talk. I promise. No more talk.”

  He stopped screaming, but the instant I let go of his hands, he ripped himself away from the table and ran out of the room as if Sid were indeed on his heels. I got up and scooped the waffle into the trashcan and leaned my forehead against the refrigerator door.

  At that point, I only knew one thing. I knew unequivocally that there is no guilt like the guilt of a mother who has watched her child disintegrate before her eyes, and hasn’t faced up to what was happening.

  Work was out of the question. The bluebloods could rest in Ginny’s hands for another day. I didn’t even care that she was the one who answered the phone when I called to say I wouldn’t be in. As soon as I hung up on her smug good-bye, I called Hale Isaksen and made an appointment. Then I tugged Ben out of the armoire and took him to school, and for once he seemed eager to escape from me—and into the classroom where no one would ask him to remember.

  Hale’s office was in the west wing of the two-block complex that made up Green Hills Community Church. A rolling lawn as manicured as a golf course and banks of blazing pink azaleas against every wall made the
campus look polished and perfect—not at all the kind of place where the people inside would know anything about exploited children.

  A receptionist in an Evan-Picone suit directed me down a hall whose walls were alive with pictures crayoned by kids. After the first few happily lopsided drawings of “Mommy Daddy and Me,” I couldn’t look at them anymore. Still, they taunted me as I hurried past—“We’re normal. Your kid’s not. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah…” By the time I got to Hale’s office, the pounding I gave the door must have sounded as if I were about to make an arrest.

  Hale looked unruffled, though, as he let me in and gave me the four-syllable greeting and offered me coffee. I declined. I’d already thrown up again that morning, and I didn’t want to take any chances with the off-white Berber at my feet.

  While Hale poured himself a cup, I scanned the walls. He had all ages covered. There was a poster of everything from Veggie Tales to the Newsboys, which I assumed was a Christian rock group. I didn’t see anything about Papa Roach.

  I did see several framed diplomas, though I could only read the two closest to me. Our pony-tailed pastor had a master’s degree in psychology from Duke University and a master’s of divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary. The landscaping notwithstanding, maybe I had come to the right place after all.

  “You want to lead the way?” Hale said to me. He didn’t sit behind his desk—which was cluttered with enough gadgets to fill the toy aisle at Wal-Mart—but settled into the overstuffed armchair identical to the one I was sitting in. Both were snuggled up cozily to the corner window. If I hadn’t had such a critical agenda, I might have asked him how he rated the corner office.

  “First of all,” I said, “I want to thank you for getting Wyndham to open up to me. That was a quantum leap last night—I doubt she ever would have disclosed all of that to me if it weren’t for you.”

  I could see protest in his eyes, but I didn’t have time for false modesty and pushed past it.

  “But it’s a mixed blessing. Now that I know, I understand my son’s reaction to Wyndham—and a lot of his behavior the past several months. At the same time, I now see that I can’t possibly keep the two of them in the same house unless I can make him—Ben—understand that nothing is going to hurt him—or her—anymore.” I glanced up at the masters degree certificate on the wall. “I think maybe you can help us with that.”