Antonia's Choice (19 page)

“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
could 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.

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.

After looking in on a low-ceilinged meeting room that opened out onto a stone patio and a gentle slope of Japanese cherry trees, we went up a set of wide stone steps to an inner hallway where the polished oak floor was crisscrossed with light from beneath the doors of the rooms on either side of it.

Betty opened one near the end, overlooking the courtyard below. Just as the brochure had shown, it was small and white and had a rounded window through which sunlight poured as if on demand. It seemed less cell-like than in the picture as I stood there, imagining Wyndham moving in with her starched blouses and her nail polish. My heartbeat was up around my neck. It was a far cry from the room she was sleeping in right now, and it bore no resemblance to the room Bobbi had decorated for her.

She was going to hate me.

“Any questions yet?”

I looked at Betty, who appeared to have been watching me for a good minute. I could feel my face going hot.

“You okay, Toni?” Hale said.

“Who is under these circumstances?” Betty said. “Why don't we go down to my office and look over that paperwork?”

I breathed. That I could do.

This time, Betty fell into step beside me, leaving Hale to make his way behind us.

“I want to reassure you that we won't just leave her in that room by herself the first night,” she said. “Down here we have our newcomers' room where she'll sleep for probably the first three or four nights, or until we feel like she's relatively comfortable.”

She pushed open a door and nodded for me to peek in. There were two beds there, each equipped with a down comforter about five inches thick and a pile of pillows. Between them was a padded rocking chair.

“There will be someone observing her all night,” Betty whispered, as if Wyndham were at that moment ensconced in down. I felt a little better, though not much.

On our way back to the main building, Betty stayed at my elbow, pointing out the dining area, the movie room, which rivaled
any home theatre I'd been privy to, and the wing that housed the healing rooms.