Antonia's Choice

by Nancy Rue

  At the moment, I wished He would simply scoop me up out of the hole I could feel myself sinking into. Despite the infinitesimal forward movement, I felt like I was backing up. I wished for anger again. At least the anger had kept me moving. This sadness made me want to curl up in a fetal position, the way I was doing that very minute. I would have cried if there had been any tears left.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Dominica kept telling me to get more rest. She also told me to eat, but I’d managed to force down only a few bites of pasta salad over at Yancy’s.

  “So what are You doing?” I whispered into the dark. “I’m so alone. I don’t feel You. I don’t feel anything.”

  And then I did feel something—an onslaught of panic that brought me straight up in the bed. Fear with no way out, no exit, no reason, and no escape from my own slamming heart.

  “Oh, God,” I said out loud. “This is a three—this is a two—”

  Covering my mouth to keep from throwing up, I groped for the phone and the switch on the lamp at the same time. In a pool of stark, unfriendly light I managed to locate Dominica’s after-hours number and rumbled to punch it out on the phone. My fingers were sweaty.

  “Please be there,” I whispered, “Please be there—”

  “This is Dominica.”

  “This is Toni. Dominica, I’m so scared. I’m losing it.”

  Her voice was immediately matter-of-fact. “No, you aren’t, or you wouldn’t have called me. Good job. Take a couple of relaxed breaths for me—breathe from your diaphragm…”

  It didn’t take more than five minutes for her to calm me down. It was the longest five minutes of my life. I asked her to hang on while I went and threw up. After that, I was better, steady enough to listen to her.

  “You’re being bombarded with stress and betrayal and rage,” she said. “There isn’t a person in this world who wouldn’t panic in the face of that.”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Nobody does—which is why God’s there.”

  “I’m having my doubts.”

  “Then let me reassure you. You calling me, you being honest about what you’re feeling, you knowing you couldn’t get through that alone—those are all things God would want you to do. So who’s to say He didn’t prompt you?”

  “I didn’t hear anything—except my own self telling me to pick up the phone.”

  “I’ve never had God come to me in a vision and speak to me in some deep voice from heaven,” Dominica said. “What I get is my own thoughts—ones that make such perfect sense they couldn’t possibly belong to me.”

  “You always make sense.”

  “That’s just God talking through me. You’ll get the hang of this. Just keep paying attention.”

  We talked until I felt sleepy, though she made me promise to call her back if I felt that kind of panic again. She said it was okay if I did, because anxiety was keeping me from giving up completely. Panic, she said, was the fight in me.

  “Just keep telling God that you trust Him to carry you through the next thing.”

  “I hope there is no ‘next thing,’” I said. “I’ve had enough.”

  When we hung up, I lay there in the dark, too exhausted to do anything but whisper, “Okay, I trust You. Whatever it takes, I’ll try to do it, but You’ve got to help me.”

  There was no more panic. There was no sound from Ben’s room. There was only a phone call just a half hour after I finally drifted off to sleep.

  It ripped me from the edge of a dream, and my head was still halfway in it when I said, “Hello?”

  “Toni?” said a female voice. “Toni…it’s Bobbi.”

  “What?”

  “I just want to know: Why are you doing this to me?”

  Fifteen

  BOBBI’S VOICE WAS SHRILL. “Toni, are you there?” she said.

  “Yeah.” I groped for the light switch and covered my eyes ineffectively with my hand, fingers wide open to let the invasive light right in.

  “Then talk to me. Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Where are you?” I said. “Are you calling from jail?”

  There was a sharp laugh, so unlike Bobbi I held out the receiver and looked at it, as if I could see her and make sure this was really my older sister. Controlled, child-oriented Bobbi Vyne didn’t laugh like a witch having an attack of jocularity.

  “No,” Bobbi said, “they let me go. They can’t prove I knew what Sid was doing, and they know it.”

  I had to shake myself into replying. How did a person carry on a conversation this surreal? “So—where are you?” I said.

  “I’m at a hotel, with Mama. They won’t let me see my babies. Toni, why are you doing this to me?”

  Her voice shot up so high I had to pull the phone away from my ear again. Hysteria was in our near future, something else that hadn’t erupted from Bobbi since her psychiatric therapy days. I grasped at the idea that if I kept my own voice low and calm, she might come down a few notches.

  “Where is Mama right now?” I said

  “Oh, she’s right here. She’s not allowed to let me out of her sight.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Bobbi laughed again, this time with a bitterness that set my teeth on edge. “The FBI said they could change their minds if new evidence comes up, so I’m not allowed to leave the city. I was released under Mama’s recognizance.”

  “And you can’t see the kids?”

  “No, Toni, I can’t.” The accusation was clear.

  “Did the state take them?”

  “Not a chance! I would die first before I would let that happen!”

  It seemed to me as she raved on that even her voluntary demise wasn’t going to stand in the way of the legal system. She was clearly operating in another dimension, and it was frightening to me.

  “Stephanie has them, at Mama’s,” she was saying. “We’re going to decide what to do tomorrow.” Her voice contracted down to a point, and she stabbed it into me. “Don’t you try to get in touch with them, Toni. I don’t want you talking to them. And I don’t want you talking to Wyndham anymore either.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “I’m her guardian! I’m involved in her therapy.”

  “Mama and I are going to get that changed.”

  I shouldn’t have been stunned, but I was. I climbed out of bed and wriggled an oversized, long-sleeved shirt over the T-shirt I was sleeping in. I wrapped it around me as I tiptoed into the hallway and closed Ben’s door. He was going to scream if he woke up and found it that way, but I couldn’t have him hearing this conversation either. I went to the kitchen, as far from his room as I could get, and began to talk in hoarse whispers.

  “Wyndham is right where she needs to be with exactly who she needs to be with,” I said. “And Emil and Techla ought be getting similar care. I have Ben in therapy.”

  “Ben?”

  Her question hit my jaw like a left hook. “Oh, don’t give me that I-didn’t-know-anything-about-it crap, Bobbi! It might have worked on the FBI, but it won’t work on me.”

  “I have no idea who framed Sid like this!”

  “What?” I slammed my hand flat on the table. The matchbook that was balancing on it shot across the kitchen floor, and the table rocked beneath me. “Are you out of your mind? Do you actually refuse to believe that Sid did this? They found the stuff right in your house! Wyndham has disclosed in detail!” I snorted out a laugh. “Either you’ve completely lost it, or you are the biggest liar on the face of this earth. In either case—you dad-gum well shouldn’t be seeing your children!”

  “Wyndham is the one who’s lying, Toni.”

  Bobbi’s voice was now flat, toneless. It was more disturbing than her former histrionics.

  “Give me a break,” I said.

  “She made this whole thing up. I don’t doubt that she planted that stuff in Sid’s studio, too.”

  I wanted to laugh again, although I knew if I did I would carry myself off the proverbial deep end. �
�And she would do this why?” I said.

  “Because she’s a rebellious teenager.”

  I closed my eyes. “You haven’t got a clue about your own daughter. In the first place, she has given up absolutely everything she has ever known to come forward with this. She’s in a residential treatment facility where she has no freedom because she’s suicidal.”

  “Is she giving you that story, too?”

  “Complete with illustrations, carved on her arms and legs.”

  “Where is she, Toni? I want to talk to her.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “You can’t keep me from my child!”

  “Is the FBI keeping you from the twins?”

  “Yes—”

  “Then don’t even try to go there with me.” I got up and paced, my bare feet slapping Ethel’s linoleum. “Stop trying to put this on everybody else, and start looking at yourself. Don’t you think you’ve turned your head long enough? It happened, right under your nose, and your kids are suffering for it, and so is mine. That’s what you need to be looking at right now.”

  There was a venomous silence.

  “I hate you,” she said finally. “And I am never going to forgive you for tearing my family apart.”

  The phone went dead in my hand.

  “Dear God,” I whispered. “Oh, dear God.”

  I didn’t go back to sleep. It was all I could do to wait until 7 A.M. to call Hale and Yancy and Reggie. I didn’t ask any of them to come over, but they all showed up within fifteen minutes of each other. Reggie had a hash brown casserole with her. One look at me and she grabbed a fork and started hand-feeding it to me.

  “The only bad thing about you leaving Faustman is there’s nobody around you to make you eat,” she said. “Look at your cheekbones stickin’ out. That is just tragic.”

  Yancy’s husband, Scott, came with her and brought Troy. They rousted Ben out of bed and hauled him off to McDonald’s for breakfast. Ben was a little torn because Saturday morning was the only time I let him have Fruit Loops instead of something healthy, and because his Reggie was there. But she promised him she’d take him to the zoo later, so he finally trailed off after Troy.

  I could let down my guard then and start pacing again. Hale, Reggie, and Yancy watched me from the couch, Reggie reaching out with a forkful of hash browns every time I passed her.

  “I’m supposed to use my words,” I said. “That’s what Doc Opie tells Ben when he gets ready to pitch a fit—use your words.” I glanced at the three Christians on the sidelines. “If I use the words I want to use, you’ll all get up and leave.”

  “You want to pitch a fit, go ahead,” Reggie said. “Just eat something first.”

  “And let me clear away the breakables,” Yancy said. “We’ve about bought everything useable from the Goodwill.”

  I shook my head. “I just don’t know what to do. She can’t take Wyndham, can she?”

  “Only way to know is to go to the source,” Hale said. “You want me to call the FBI? Or better yet, what about Faith Anne Newlin?”

  “Who’s Faith Anne Newlin?” Yancy said.

  “My lawyer,” I said. “It sounds like Mama is going to try to get guardianship of Wyndham back and haul her out of Trinity.” I had a chilling thought. “She only gave me six weeks…”

  “Let me try to get Faith on the phone,” Hale said.

  “At 8 A.M. on a Saturday? That’s going to cost me.” Then I shook my head again. “Doesn’t matter. Go for it.”

  “Toni, honey, sit down,” Yancy said as Hale went into the bedroom in search of the telephone. “You’re making me seasick.”

  “I’m just sick, period,” Reggie said. “Does that woman care at all about her kids, or is she just into herself?”

  “She’s into Sid,” I said. “He’s always been totally controlling—just like my father, only to the hundredth power. I think she married him because she could never get my father to love her. They say people do that. She doesn’t believe she can exist without Sid. Their pictures are next to the term codependent the psychological dictionary.”

  “I get it,” Yancy said. “If she believes he’s a twisted monster, she has to believe she is, too.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, she is,” Reggie said.

  “I don’t know what she is,” I said. “And at this point, I don’t think it matters. What’s important is whether she can get her hands on Wyndham and turn that poor girl inside out.”

  Hale came in and set the phone on the coffee table, his square jaw set.

  “What?” I said. “Bad news? Come on, spit it out. I have to know everything.”

  “Faith’s going to get back to you. She says she can make a few calls and hopefully get at least an extension on your guardianship, given the fact that Bobbi’s been released. A judge isn’t going to be blind to the fact that more than likely your mother will drag Wyndham right back to Bobbi, court order or no court order.”

  “That sounds like good news to me,” Reggie said. She was nodding so hard at me her ponytail was bobbing. “Don’t you think so, honey?”

  But I was watching Hale’s eyes. “What are you holding back?” I said to him.

  He pressed his lips together before he spoke. “There is one way you can make sure Bobbi goes back to jail—or at least can’t get to Wyndham. Faith Anne’s idea.”

  I shoved several magazines off the coffee table onto the floor with one arm and sat down so I could face him dead on.

  “What?” I said. “What’s the deal?”

  Hale still seemed to be having trouble looking at me.

  “You’re scarin’ me here,” I said.

  “She asked me if Ben himself had disclosed anything yet. I told her I didn’t think so.”

  I shook my head. “Where’s this going?”

  “If Ben could corroborate Wyndham’s story—”

  “You mean testify to the F.B.I.?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

  I got up and resumed the pacing at a stiff march. “No. There is no way I’m putting my baby through that.”

  “They’re not going to put him under a naked light bulb, Toni,” Hale said. “They have people who know how to handle children.”

  “Would I be able to be there?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then forget it.”

  No one said anything. I stopped in front of the window, nausea rising up in my throat. Below, Ethel’s hydrangeas were blooming in blossoms bigger than my head. Somewhere in the yard, squirrels were putting up an obnoxious chatter. I wanted to scream at the world to stop pretending to be normal when it wasn’t—when nothing was normal anymore.

  “This has to be hard,” Hale said. “It’s like having to choose between Wyndham and Ben.”

  “Ugh,” Reggie said. “I can’t—I’m gonna go make some coffee.”

  “Make it strong.” Yancy patted the couch next to her, and I fell into it. She covered my lap with a throw we’d picked up on sale at Target. I was still running around in my two shirts, legs exposed.

  “This is not just ‘take it or leave it,’” I said. “I don’t know what to do.” I looked at Hale, whose eyes were closed. “You’re praying, aren’t you?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then why the Sam Hill aren’t you doing it out loud? Let’s go—I’m drowning here.”

  Hale managed to grin and stuck out both boxy hands to Yancy and me. Yancy put her diamond-decked fingers into one of them, and Reggie appeared from the kitchen to tuck hers into the other—nails the color of an abalone shell brushing his palm. I put my own clammy paws into those of my two girlfriends and felt myself moving toward tears. And Hale hadn’t even started yet.

  He prayed as he always did, as if we’d all just happened in on a conversation he was already having with God. The Presence was real—but the answer still wasn’t clear. I only knew one thing when I raised my head.

  “I have to call Doc Opie,” I said. “I think it’s a God-thing.”
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  I was able to chat with him that afternoon on the phone, while Ben was off watching Milo and Otis in Reggie’s living room and probably stuffing himself with Reggie’s homemade caramel corn. The very thought made me nauseous, but then, just about everything was making me nauseous.

  “I know I don’t want to push him,” Doc Opie said when I’d explained the latest developments. “That would set us back immeasurably.”

  “I don’t want that,” I said.

  “But I can tell you I think we may be getting closer to some kind of disclosure. In fact, I wanted to ask you at our next meeting, were there other people involved in this pornography ring?”

  “What do you mean?” I put my hand up to my throat to keep from gagging.

  “You’ve only mentioned your brother-in-law actually taking the pictures. Could there have been anyone else on the immediate scene?”

  “I don’t think so. Wyndham hasn’t mentioned that. You’re not thinking my sister was actually in on the picture-taking? Wyndham hasn’t ever said that.”

  “I’m not thinking anything. I’m just exploring the possibility, because Ben’s view of the world as a dangerous place is indicative of multiple abusers. He’s having trouble believing that safe adults do exist. And his latest drawings have shown more than one person with an ugly face.”

  I tightened my hold on the phone. “Ugly face?”

  “That’s how he indicates the bad guys—they all have distorted faces.”

  “I know I’m not supposed to ask questions like this, but do I have an ugly face in those drawings?”

  “No, Toni. You never do.”

  He went on to suggest that we wait until Ben was naturally ready to talk and then decide whether to broach the subject of his chatting with the FBI.

  “You know, if you’re going to press charges on Ben’s behalf, or help put this man behind bars, it’s going to be necessary for them to question Ben. That’s another decision you’ll have to make.”

  “I don’t like these kinds of decisions,” I said. “Give me one that doesn’t really give me a choice.”

  There were still plenty of those to make in the weeks that followed, weeks in which Ben continued to make progress in tiny increments but didn’t talk to Doc Opie about Sid or what had happened to him. Weeks in which I had to wait in agony while the Virginia court decided whether to give me complete custody of Wyndham until Sid’s case was resolved.