Antonia's Choice

by Nancy Rue

  “You still with me, Mr. Marshall?” I said.

  “Yes, but I’m beginning to wonder why. You were recommended to me by one of your clients who thinks you hung the financial moon, but so far I’m not impressed.”

  How would you not be impressed? I wanted to say to him. We’ve only been on the phone for twenty seconds!

  “Have we let you down in some way, Mr. Marshall?” I was coming up with no Marshall, Charles R. on the screen. Reggie returned, a blank look on her face.

  “Nothing in my files,” she whispered. “Let me check another place.”

  She hurried out again. Charles R. Marshall cleared his throat gruffly.

  “Do you normally not return phone calls?” he said.

  My brain was so fried, I couldn’t untangle that sentence enough to know whether to say yes or no.

  “Have I not returned a call from you, sir?” I said.

  “Try five of them. And don’t tell me you didn’t get the messages because your assistant assured me she put them right into your hand. She was actually rather appalled that you left town without getting back to me, and she said if I called today she could probably help me herself.”

  I bet she did, I thought.

  “There’s obviously a problem in our communication system here, Mr. Marshall,” I said smoothly. “I’m going to have to remedy that, but in the meantime, please accept my apology. What can I do for you?”

  “I don’t know now. You haven’t exactly instilled confidence in me.

  “Then it sounds like we need to meet face-to-face so I can fix that. Would you like to come in to the office? What’s convenient for your

  I yanked open my bag and pawed for my Day-Timer.

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Three o’clock.”

  I was still groping around in the depths of my bag but I wasn’t coming up with my date book. “Tomorrow at three,” I said, pretending to check my schedule. “Perfect.”

  “And your office is where in the building?”

  “I’ll be waiting for you at the reception desk.”

  That seemed to settle his neck hairs down a little. He agreed, gruffly, and hung up. I turned my bag upside down on my desk and was tearing through every item of its contents for the Day-Timer when Reggie blew in, waving something printed off the Internet.

  “I looked in Jeffrey’s ‘To Pursue’ file,” she said. “Charles R. Marshall—entrepreneur—independent music videos. There’s a note here, says, ‘Court him.’” She wrinkled her nose. “Jeffrey wants to date this man?”

  “No, that means Jeffrey planned to hunt him down and do whatever it took to get his business—wine him and dine him and all that.”

  “I know. It’s just the thought of Jeffrey courting anybody makes me want to lose my lunch. Speaking of lunch—did you finish that soup, honey?”

  “Oh, man!” I’d found my Day-Timer.

  “What? Did you spill it?”

  “No, I told Marshall I’d meet him at three tomorrow and I’m going to Trinity with Hale at one.” I reached for the phone, and then I sat back.

  “What?” Reggie said.

  “It isn’t going to look good if I reschedule. He already thinks I’m a flake.” I glared toward Ginny’s empty office. “Two bits she was setting this up so she could take care of the client herself. She never gave me any of his phone messages.”

  “You oughta a tell Jeffrey.”

  “Right, and get a lecture on how if I had been here that wouldn’t have happened. I’ll just be back by three o’clock, that’s all. I’m only going to look the place over. If I leave there by two-thirty I’ll be back in plenty of time. I’ll ask Yancy Bancroft to take Ben to soccer. Just don’t let Ginny get ahold of Charles R. Marshall if he gets here before I do.”

  “You sure you don’t just want to call him and make it three-thirty?”

  I shook my head. “I already feel like Sid and Bobbi are running my personal life. I’ve got to try to keep them out of my job.”

  I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes, which felt like they were being marinated in hot sauce.

  “You got any Visine or anything?” I said.

  “What you need is a good nights sleep.”

  “Soon. After Thursday, this is all going to be almost over.”

  Nine

  I GOT ON THE PHONE TO Faith Anne Newlin to make sure she could have the guardianship papers ready to fax to Trinity House by five. She was still upbeat in that adolescent way she had, but there was something guarded about her voice when she said, “I’m almost positive I can make that happen. I’m waiting for one more phone call.”

  “From who?” I said. “I thought this was a slam dunk.”

  “From your mother.” Faith Anne seemed to be measuring her words by the teaspoonful. “She wanted to try to talk to Roberta before she gave the final okay.”

  “Doesn’t my mother have guardianship at this point?”

  “She does, but she seemed bent on consulting the biological mother before she signed it away. I wouldn’t worry about it,” Faith Anne added hurriedly. “The FBI isn’t allowing anyone access to your sister until she’s a little more cooperative.”

  “Unbelievable,” I said. “No, I believe it. There’s very little I wouldn’t believe at this point.”

  Faith Anne purred sympathetically and promised to call me the minute Mama got back to her. I told her Mama was lucky it wasn’t me she was going to be talking to.

  When I hung up I reached for the printout on Charles R. Marshall, but the words only screamed out Mama’s name, in vain, as it were. I’d given Reggie what I thought was a plausible explanation for Mama’s attachment to Bobbi, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. My mother might be disillusioned, but she wasn’t a complete idiot by any means. She’d always been sharp enough to catch me at every sly trick I’d tried to get by with as a kid.

  But that was where I always got hung up. Bobbi had been just as determined to have her own way as I was, she just didn’t have to sneak because Mama explained it all away. Mama had even stood up to Daddy on her behalf, which was something none of us did, not even me.

  I let the Marshall papers drop to the desktop and leaned back in my leather chair. If I could just close my eyes for a few minutes, I might be able to concentrate.

  It wasn’t Charles R. Marshall’s voice that formed in my head, though. It was Daddy’s, barking at Mama in the hallway outside my bedroom door where Mama had dragged him after he’d exploded outside Bobbi’s and sent the girl into hysterics. I was thirteen. Bobbi was fifteen.

  “I am not going to let this slide, Eileen,” he said, loud enough to be heard over Bobbi’s sobs.

  “Let what slide?”

  Mama was talking through gritted teeth, the way she talked to me in clothing stores when I was arguing for tighter jeans. A Southern lady did not yell at her children. Nor did she talk back to her husband, a fact that sent me scurrying to my door so I could press my ear against it. I didn’t want to miss a word, especially if Bobbi was finally going to get what was coming to her. I was clueless as to what she’d actually done, but as far as I was concerned, she deserved punishment just to make up for all the times she’d gotten off scot-free.

  “There is no excuse this time!” Daddy shouted. “No psychiatrist, no physician, no blaming it on Toni’s influence.”

  I grinned into my doorknob.

  “All right, then, I’ll speak to her,” Mama said, teeth still clenched.

  “No! I will speak to her. I’ll do more than speak. I’m going to slap some sense into her.”

  “Do you want to drive her straight into a mental institution?”

  “If they’ll set her straight, yes! I’ve had it with her crying and her simpering and her running behind your skirts. I’ve had it since she was a baby. Now I’m going to do something about it!”

  “No,” Mama said.

  No? I thought. Did you just tell him no?

  It was all I could do not to open the door at least a crack so I coul
d catch this action. It promised to be something to see.

  “You have never shown her the love she’s entitled to,” Mama said. “You have always pushed her away.”

  “God’s teeth!” Daddy roared.

  I remembered him thundering down the stairs and slamming out the front door. Mama didn’t go after him. She headed straight for Bobbi’s room. I sagged back to my bed, disappointed. I’d really hoped for once that Daddy would take off his belt.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  It was a new voice in the milieu, and it took my eyes springing open before I realized it was Ginny, standing in my doorway.

  “I’ll come back later,” she said. “I didn’t know you were taking a nap.”

  “I wasn’t taking a nap.” I picked up the printout. “I was contemplating how I am going to make amends with Charles R. Marshall tomorrow.”

  Ginny’s already Gothic-white face paled. “Maybe I could—” she started to say.

  But I waved her off. “I’ve got it handled,” I said.

  She didn’t move, as if she were expecting a tirade that would burn her skin. But I just didn’t have the energy. Besides, the phone rang. Ginny dove for it, but I put my hand over the receiver and motioned for her to leave.

  “Close the door behind you,” I said.

  I waited to hear her pad across the carpet to her desk, but there wasn’t a sound. Ten to one she was listening at the door. You did that when you were desperate for information.

  It was Faith Anne on the line. She cut right to the chase: Mama had signed the papers.

  “She just had to wag me around some first,” I said.

  “It’s a pretty hard wag,” Faith Anne said. “She’s only giving you temporary guardianship. Six weeks, or until Roberta is released. She says she can’t betray her daughter any more than that.”

  “Excuse me while I throw up,” I said. “Fax those babies to Trinity. I want my niece as far away from those psychos as I can get her.”

  Ridgetop was only about twenty miles from Nashville, and gave Hale and me a drive full of rolling hills and gracious plantation houses and fruit trees in early bloom. Mid-April was showing off for us, Hale told me.

  Actually, I only noticed after he mentioned it. I was noticing very little that didn’t directly relate to my family craziness. But when he pointed it out, I did see that the cherry trees were bending over with clumps of blossoms, and that every self-respecting garden was alive with tulips, waving yellow and purple flower-hands as we drove past in his Jeep Wrangler. The plastic windows rattled in the April breeze.

  “Sorry about the noise,” he shouted to me.

  “What?” I shouted back, and then I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. This car fits you.”

  Hale grinned. “No frills—and you can always hear it coming.”

  “And square,” I said. “I mean, you know, not like ‘a square’—just very much ‘there.’”

  “Nah, you were right the first time. Itíwa square. But don’t tell the kids. They’ve somehow come up with this idea that I’m cool.”

  “Wyndham’s convinced. She thinks you walk on water.”

  “Nuh-unh.”

  “She asked me again this morning why you couldn’t just counsel her.”

  The ponytail swayed back and forth across his shoulders. “I haven’t got 24/7 to devote to her for the next however long.”

  “My mother’s giving me six weeks. You really think she’s going to need more than that?”

  He shot me a look. “Look what we’ve got going right now—somebody at her elbow 24/7. And does she look like she’s ready to snap out of it anytime soon?”

  I shook my head grimly. I’d taken my shift from midnight to 4 A.M., and during most of that Wyndham had been crying in dry sobs and telling me she hated herself. The grade of sandpaper lining my eyelids was getting coarser.

  “I’m not going to drop her, though,” Hale said. “How fast she gets healed is going to depend on how much support she gets. I’ll be over there to see her at least once a week.”

  “Where did you come from, anyway?” I said.

  Not long after that, he pulled the Jeep abruptly onto a dirt road which led through a tunnel of trees and over a hill just sprouting its first wildflowers like an adolescent chin. Over the other side was a stone arch, and swinging from it was a simple sign that read Trinity House.

  The buildings that came into view as we passed under the arch didn’t look much different from the pictures in the brochure, but the starkness I’d seen there didn’t exist “in the flesh.” Even before I unzipped the window, I could sense a welcoming quiet a camera couldn’t capture.

  Hale turned off the ignition and leaned back until the seat creaked. “I think they should’ve called it Tranquility Base. That’s what comes to me every time I come here.”

  I suspected from the sudden smoothness in his face that he came here more often than he had let on.

  It was the equivalent of a two-city-block walk from the parking lot to the main building’s entrance, which Hale said was done by design to preserve the peacefulness. It gave me a chance to notice what I’d picked up on in the photos, that though the grounds were beautiful, they were only landscaped in the most general sense. Belle Meade’s manicured flower beds and meticulously trimmed holly hedges were missing, and in their place were sycamore trees with solitary swings hanging from their branches and benches ringing their trunks. A stand of birch trees with ferns about their feet was left to its own natural, bushy beauty, and ivy ran wild up the sides of the stone building. Kevin Pollert’s gardener would be reaching for his Valium if he saw this. It didn’t look unkempt, merely untamed. There was probably something symbolic in that, but I didn’t try to figure it out. What I did need to figure out was why my palms were sweating.

  I wiped them furtively on the back of my skirt while Hale introduced us to the elfin receptionist, who offered us coffee before she went off to find Betty Stires. I passed up the caffeine and watched Hale dump three packets of sugar into his cup.

  “You aren’t a health freak, are you?” I said as he plowed a spoon through it.

  “Nope. Too bad they don’t have any half-and-half.”

  “This is making me nauseous. What is wrong with me? You’d think I was the one who was about to be locked up in here.”

  Hale stopped stirring to look at me. “Is that the way you feel—like you’re locking Wyndham up?”

  “Aren’t I? I mean, I’m not exactly giving her a choice.”

  “Yeah, but I think it’s more like you’re setting her free.”

  I shrugged. “I wish I felt that way.”

  The sound of heels clicking on Mexican tile diverted us both to the receptionist returning with a tall woman in turquoise raw silk. I was reassured that this was nothing like a state psychiatric hospital. No wonder it cost $100 a day.

  “I’m Betty Stires,” the woman said, graciously extending her hand to me. Her fingers were warm around mine, and she didn’t respond to the fact that my palms were once again oozing sweat. Very blue eyes crinkled shut as she smiled. “You’re Toni Wells, I assume. Welcome to Trinity House.”

  I was glad she turned at once to Hale, because I couldn’t think of a thing to say. What was wrong with me? I didn’t freak out like this normally.

  But, of course, nothing about this was normal. I was checking out a residential mental health facility for my niece who was suicidal because my sister had allowed her to be photographed nude by her father—

  “Why don’t I start by showing you around,” Betty was saying as I jerked myself back to her. “That way we can talk as we go.”

  I was grateful. I couldn’t imagine trying to sit in a chair and focus without fidgeting myself into a froth. I was also glad that Hale already knew her and could keep the conversation going, though I was fast coming to the conclusion that Hale could carry on a dialogue with a gas pump. I needed a few minutes to repackage all this unexpected emotional stuff that was suddenly showing up.

&
nbsp; Pearl-and-turquoise earrings bobbing gracefully from her lobes, Betty led us at a fast clip through the main building, which consisted of a number of airy rooms with large windows, any one of which looked more inviting than the living room at Kevin Pollert’s. His decorator would probably have shuddered, too, right along with the gardener, and written the decor off as dismally minimalist. At least the clean lines and uncluttered tabletops didn’t add to my rattled mental state. Betty explained that Wyndham would attend her group therapy sessions there, and that her individual tutoring would take place there as well. Her schooling, she told us, would be secondary to her healing. Education she could catch up on; her mental and emotional state had to be dealt with right away.

  We left the main building, Hale and Betty still chattering and me nodding my head as if I were actually following what they were saying, and crossed to what looked like a cloister. A two-story U-shaped building created a courtyard bordered by covered walkways. Vines sheltered the court, some of them already bearing thick bunches of wisteria blossoms that hung like grapes over the benches and ponds. Tufts of wild strawberries worked their way up between the stones.

  “This is the residential section,” Betty was saying. “The living quarters are on the second floor, and the common areas and healing rooms are on the first. Wyndham will, of course, have a great deal of individual therapy in the healing rooms—our staff-to-patient ratio is excellent. Most of the rooms are in use right now, but I can give you a peek at one, and then we’ll stick our heads into Wyndham’s room.”

  “Did you get the fax from my attorney yesterday?” I said.

  “Yes.” Betty’s smile was patient. “We can look at all of that back in my office.”

  “Relax,” Hale whispered to me as Betty led the way under the arched walkway to our right. “Wyndham’s in, or she wouldn’t be doing all this.”

  “I am relaxed,” I lied.

  I could feel my heart beating up into my throat. I swiped my hands across the back of my skirt again and straightened my shoulders.

  Don’t be an idiot, I told myself. This woman’s going to think you’re the one she’s booking.