Antonia's Choice (12 page)

“Just an accident,” I said.

She nodded knowingly at the pj's swimming in the sink. “I've done this a few times.”

“The twins are bed-wetters?”

“Just Emil. Most of the time she got up with him, but I did sometimes.”

“She?”

“Yeah, you know, her.”

“Your mother?”

Wyndham winced. “Do I have to say she's my mother? If I have to talk about her, can't I just call her Bobbi?”

I dried my hands slowly on a towel, gathering my once-again-scattered brain parts.

“You're really angry with her, aren't you?”

“Yes,” she said. Then she went back to bed.

Yeah
, I thought,
I have really got to do something soon.

Reggie suggested the Union Station Hotel.

She was in my office, collating a new package I'd designed for my clients, which Jeffrey had begrudgingly approved. Ginny would normally have been doing the compiling, but she was currently in a closed-door meeting with Jeffrey.

“You're not worried about what they might be talking about in there, honey?” Reggie said, tapping her lips with a peach-hued nail.

I grunted. “No. That woman can't hold a candle to me and I know it. What I don't know is how I'm going to handle this with Wyndham. You sure the going-to-tea thing is my best option?”

“Well, honey, after you told me what she's like, I think it's perfect.”

“Tell me again what I told you.”

I knew perfectly well, but I was having more and more trouble keeping my thoughts together when it came to the home situation. They were constantly strewn in my head like pieces of confetti.

“You said she isn't the kind of teenager who paints her bedroom black and beats her head against the wall while she listens to Papa Roach.”

“I know I didn't say Papa Roach. I don't even know who that is.”

“It's one of those angry rock groups.” She gave me a sly grin. “Honey, you're gonna have to get hip if you're gonna be raisin' a teenager.”

“How did
you
know about them?”

“That child that lives next door has his music blarin' day and night. I watched MTV till I saw the guys.”

“What the heck did you do that for?”

“I like to know who I'm prayin for—and honey, that boy needs some serious prayer.”

This wasn't helping my case of confetti head.

“Anyway, honey,” she went on, “you said Wyndham doesn't fit
the profile you drew from all those teen magazines.”

“That's for sure. She's conservative right down to her underwear. There wasn't a thong to be found in the laundry I sent out.”

Reggie shook her ponytail. “I don't see how anybody wears those things anyway. I'd feel like I had a permanent wedgie going on.”

“What's really atypical is that she's all about the fact that I have my cotton blouses done up at the cleaners. I told her she could add hers to the pile and she showed more enthusiasm over that than anything I've tried to do for her since she's been here.”

“That's an easy one.” Reggie straightened a stack of papers with a hearty smack on the table. “She wants to be like you.”

“No way. Poor kid.”

“Well, she sure doesn't want to be like her mama, now, does she?”

Reggie and I exchanged looks. I shivered.

“Okay, so—the tea thing…” I said.

“Four o'clock Saturday. The woman that took the reservation said there would be china teapots and damask napkins and sterlin' silver spoons. I'm thinkin pure class—probably D.A.R. and Junior Leaguers all over the place.” Reggie leaned across the stack of packets and squeezed my hand. “Darlin—you are a brilliant woman. You can do this. And besides, I got you covered in prayer.”

I actually said a little prayer myself when Wyndham and I walked into the Union Station Hotel on Saturday. She lit up, eyes like birthday candle flames, when she saw everything Reggie had promised. I felt a pang of guilt and let her savor the salmon croquettes and the cucumber sandwiches before I broached the subject of Ben.

As we chatted first about the choice of teas and her well-understated passion for Jane Austen, I noticed that she had painted her nubby fingernails for the occasion, in a shade pretty close to mine.
Reggie was right again,
I thought.

I decided to abandon my planned lame attempt to work it into the conversation and just go for it. She deserved at least that much respect.

“I have to ask you something,” I said.

“Not about Bobbi.”

“No, I made a promise to you. This is about Ben.”

She drew her linen napkin across her lips, and her eyes, searching my face, became guarded.

“It really is about him, not you,” I said. “You and I have been walking around Ben's behavior like it's that elephant on the living room floor I was talking about, and I just think we need to address it.”

“He hates me and you want me to go because I make him act like a little gorilla.”

I couldn't contain the laugh that burst out of me. “A gorilla?”

“I didn't mean to be rude.”

“No—I love it! That's exactly what he acts like! It really is that bad, isn't it?”

She was still watching me warily.

“I don't want you to go,” I said. “He's been like this for a long time, since right before we left Virginia. It isn't you.”

Wyndham nodded stiffly.

“However, it's intensified since you came. He seems very frightened of you, which I can't understand. You are the sweetest, nicest—”

“I'm not! Aunt Toni, I'm so not!”

She clapped the napkin over her mouth, eyes darting in all directions. I forced myself not to glance around to see how many Daughters of the American Revolution were bolting for the door.

“Okay,” I said. “Let's don't go there. If you can tell me why Ben's so terrified of you, do, and I'll drop it.”

She dove on that. “I can't help you. I wish I could but I can't.”

“All right,” I said cheerily, “then let's order dessert. That cherry torte is calling my name.”

I don't do “cheerily” very effectively, especially when I've just blown it. The pall of dishonesty was on our little tea party, in spite of my best efforts to dispel it. Wyndham didn't say much after that, until we were on the way back to the house, where I would drop her off before backtracking to pick up Ben.

“Aunt Toni?” she said. “There's something I need to do.”

Make a total disclosure, I hope!
was my first thought.

“Tell me what you need,” I said.

“I need to go to church.”

“Oh. Well-okay.”

“See, ever since I started going to church in Richmond with Michelle—she's my friend—everything has started changing. I mean, it's better, you know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My youth group—they're the ones I trusted when I couldn't hold it in anymore about my parents. And they went with me when I told the pastor and when I went to the police. There were like three people holding my hands when I went in to make my statement.” A shadow crossed her face. “She wouldn't let them be with me when I had to talk to the FBI.”

“Which ‘she' are we referring to this time?” I said.

“Your mother.”

I bit back a laugh. We were finally getting somewhere, so I didn't think this was the time to chortle in her face.

“So go on,” I said.

“The only bad thing about coming here was that I had to leave all of them. But Reverend Michaels, he told me that no matter where I was there would always be other people on their Christian journeys who would help me.” Her voice was getting thick. “I really need that.”

“Then we'll make it happen. Lord knows, I've had plenty of offers.” I went through my mental file—Reggie, Yancy—and found the perfect one. “You know what, Wyndham? I think it's time you met my friend Lindsay.”

I called Lindsay before I left to pick up Ben. She was so tickled to hear from me, I could almost feel her giving me one of those rib-breaking hugs through the phone.

“My niece is here from Richmond,” I said. “She's fifteen and she's had a rough time and she wants to go to church. I wondered—”

“Put her on!” Lindsay said. “Let me talk to her!”

Wyndham took the phone rather gingerly and gave a tentative hello. I left to fetch Ben.

He greeted me in the Bancrofts' well-stocked playroom, looking quietly satisfied with his booty—a bagful of “Army guys,” a miniature soccer ball he'd won playing “Pin the Ball on the Goal,” and a half-eaten piece of cake wrapped in a napkin.

Yancy was calmly orchestrating everyone's departure. It dawned on me that this was the first time I'd seen her without sunglasses and a visor. Her eyes bulged slightly, as if she had some kind of thyroid condition, and her cut-short hair was a nondescript color. Reggie would have been all over it with a make-over, but the serenity with which Yancy watched little boys smear their frosting fingers on her woodwork was a look I knew I could never achieve. Her eyebrows gave a happy lift when she saw me.

“Was he okay?” I whispered to her.

“Perfect. He and Troy are like old buddies now.” She gave the playroom a flourish with the diamond hand. “It's Disneyland over here—you should let Ben come and play.”

“I would love to, but I never know how he's going to—”

“Been there, done that,” she whispered back. “Now go home and enjoy him while he's still in a good mood.”

I was liking this woman more all the time.

Ben did stay in his mellow state all the way home, carefully scrutinizing each plastic figure he drew out of the bag. I watched him sadly in the rearview mirror.

This is the way he used to be all the time,
I thought.
He never tore around screaming like a banshee.

That wasn't just a figment of a wishful imagination. Ben had always been a quiet, thought-filled little boy, even as a baby. He was so much more like Chris than me that way. He had preferred puzzles and Legos and massive dirt cities in the sandbox to climbing trees and leaping over tall buildings with a single bound any day. One rainy afternoon when he was four I suggested he play Superman or something. He and Chris had both looked at me like I was nuts—Ben from the fort he was constructing out of Tupperware, Chris from over the top of
The Wall Street Journal.
In fact, the only mischief Ben had ever really gotten into was things like dismantling the clock radio and using all the baking potatoes
for astronauts in his toilet-paper-roll space station.

That,
I thought, looking once again into the rearview,
that is my little boy back there.

But that child disappeared when we pulled into the garage and Ben said, “Is she still here?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Where is she?”

I turned to face him. His little dark brows were furrowed, and a tiny line had appeared between his eyes.

“You want me to go check it out, Pal?” I said.

He nodded.

“I will. But sooner or later we're going to have to work this out with Wyndham, okay?”

“Not okay,” he said.

I let it drop and went in the house. Wyndham had vacated the kitchen, and so had the phone. I followed the sound of her voice up to her room, where the door was uncharacteristically wide open, and she was sitting up in the middle of the bed, phone in hand, eyes alive.

Okay, who are you and what have you done with my niece?
I thought.

She waved to me and put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Lindsay wants me to come over tonight. If that's not okay.

“It's fine!” I said. “As long as you aren't going to get drunk and chase boys.”

Her eyes went round.

“I'm kidding. Of course you can go.”

It put Ben back into some semblance of normalcy—whatever that was anymore—when he watched Lindsay pull away an hour later with Wyndham in her front seat. He actually sat at the counter with me and ate half a bowl of macaroni and cheese before something I said sent him skittering back to the television set.

He was already asleep on the couch—the little party animal—at 8 P.M. when Wyndham called and asked if she could spend the night at Lindsay's and go to church with her in the morning. I could hear other young voices in the background.

“Is Lindsay throwing you a welcome bash or something?” I wouldn't have been surprised. That was Lindsay's MO.

“We're having pizza,” Wyndham said. “These guys are so nice here.”

“Guys?”

“Guys—like boys
and
girls.”

“Oh.”

“They're being so great to me. Reverend Michaels was right—I just feel so much better already. Not that you aren't wonderful, Aunt Toni—

“Hey, whatever it takes. Have a good time.”

Lindsay's party went on all of the next day and into the evening. There was a series of phone calls, keeping me updated on the hamburgers Lindsay's father was cooking in the backyard for lunch, the youth group meeting at four, the worship service at six. I had Ben in bed, reassured that Wyndham was not in the building, when she came home—she and Lindsay and a young man in his early thirties with square shoulders and a square head and square wire-rimmed glasses.

“Aunt Toni,” Wyndham said, “this is Hale—he's the youth pastor.”

Only then did I see that her eyes were red and puffy, as if she'd spent most of the weekend blowout sobbing.

“Nice to meet you,” I said in Hale's general direction. “Wyndham, what's wrong?”

Wyndham looked from Hale to Lindsay as if they were in charge of the lifeboats. Hale nodded at her. Lindsay squeezed her hand.

“I have something to tell you, Aunt Toni,” Wyndham said. “And they're going to help me.”

“Why do you need help?”