Antonia's Choice (30 page)

“Gee, let's see. He's got about a foot of height and maybe a hundred pounds on you, not to mention he's your father, which gave him a certain amount of authority.”

“I could have turned
her
in sooner, though. She's such a wimp. What was she going to do to me if I told?”

I forced myself not to get up and pace the room—or go running for Dominica. I tried to remember what Dominica had told me to say to Wyndham in situations like this. A couple of phrases came to the rescue.

“Look, honey,” I said, “you have to honor what God gave you to survive with.”

“Like what?” she said.

The defiance in her eyes surprised me. This wasn't little Wyndham of milquetoast fame. I definitely preferred this to the ducking of the head and the oh-I'm-so-sorry.

“I don't know,” I said. “I wasn't there. But you must have—”

“One time I said I was going to tell.”

I looked at her sharply. Her voice dipped.

“You said that to him?” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And what happened?”

Wyndham sank her chin into the pillow and seemed to grow small before my eyes.

“He held my head under the water. I thought he was going to drown me.”

“Water? What water?”

“In the bathtub. That's where he took a lot of the pictures.”

My mind left her—went off to the countless scenes with Ben in the bathroom, to visions of me forcing him into the tub, listening to him scream while I told him there was nothing to be afraid of.

Of course. She'd said that before, but it hadn't connected—until now. Now I wanted to throw myself from the window. Wyndham brought me back with a sob.

“Honey—I'm sorry,” I said.

I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my hand along her arm. She stiffened like a steel rod.

“I didn't want to remember that,” she said. “'Cause now I know.”

“Now you know what?”

“That he didn't really love me and think I was beautiful like he always said when he was—He didn't love me. He tried to kill me!”

Her face contorted, drawing her neck muscles up as her mouth writhed. I had never seen sheer self-loathing until then.

“I'm so stupid!” she said. “Why did I ever believe that?”

“Because that's what fathers are supposed to think about their daughters,” I said. “But he isn't a father—he's a monster. This isn't about you being stupid or a coward, it's about him being completely evil.”

“I hate him,” Wyndham said.

“I know.” And I could see it eating her alive, because she had no idea what to do with that kind of anger. Why would she? She had never even been allowed to feel it.

“Sometimes I still want to die,” she said.

I glanced involuntarily at her arms. The scars were growing more faint, and there were no new ones.

“I'm not going to kill myself,” Wyndham said. “But it's only because of God. Jesus wouldn't take what doesn't really belong to
Him and neither can I take a life that doesn't really belong to me. It belongs to God.”

“Sounds like a pretty good reason to me,” I said. Actually, any reason would have sounded good. My chest was ready to crack open with grief for her.

“Dominica says the Father has a purpose for me, and dying right now isn't it.”

“I can go along with that.”

“She told me to look at the good stuff in my life.” Wyndham rolled her eyes toward me. “I had to look pretty hard.”

“Did you come up with anything?”

“Some. I've got friends. Lindsay writes me every day.”

“No kidding?”

“And Hale—he comes every week and brings me all this cool stuff from the youth group. And you.”

“I know you're mad at me for bringing you here.”

Wyndham shrugged. “I'm not that mad anymore. Dominica told me I have to focus my anger where it should really go—at them.”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

“And I have Techla and Emil. I thought I'd never see them again, but Dominica says that's not true.” I could see her neck tightening again, straining against the grief. “I really miss them. I really do.”

“They miss you, too,” I said. “Aunt Stephanie says they talk about you all the time. I'll tell them anything you want me to—or Aunt Stephanie will.”

She swallowed hard. “Tell them—tell them I haven't run out on them. I'm just taking a time-out right now so I can learn to be a better sister to them than I was before. Tell them that.”

“Okay,” I said. Although just then, I couldn't have told anybody anything. I couldn't speak a word.

I stood now looking down at my sleeping son. Maybe I should look at the “good stuff” in
my
life. Dominica had said God was in the details.

Right now the best thing was that Ben had conked out without a fight. We were getting closer to the end of the school year, and there
was a lot happening during the day to wear him out, including the last of the soccer season and the beginning of T-ball practice. I tiptoed away and into my own bedroom and lay down on the apple-green comforter that still smelled like Reggie's grandmother's basement.

Ben and I were safe. He was getting help. Although I was having to juggle his therapy and mine and my involvement in Wyndham's, we'd fallen into a routine that was still more peaceful than the frenzied one we'd lived before. We actually had the occasional conversation that didn't end up in a screaming match. He hadn't said he hated me all week. I was beginning to develop my own clientele at La Belle Meunière. Just the day before, Martina McBride's stage manager had left me a $100 tip. The only time I even got angry was when I talked to Stephanie a few times a week and could hear my mother prompting her on what to say to me: “We're still working on getting your sister out on bail. We aren't going to betray her.”

I'd started calling Stephanie at her office so I didn't have to listen to Mama in the background.

“You're moving forward,” Dominica would tell me. “That's God. Be aware of that. See what else He'll do.”

And every time, I would tell her, “I want to hear Him. You and Reggie and Hale—you all seem to know what He's saying to you. When am I going to get that?”

“You're getting it—through them, through—”

“I want to hear it myself,” I'd say.

“Then keep listening. And read the Gospels. See how He speaks to Jesus. That's the kind of relationship He wants with you.”

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?”

B
OBBI'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!”