Antonia's Choice (39 page)

“I don't want to make him. I think he'll want to go—the way things are going with us.”

“Chris, you've been here twenty-four hours. What can that possibly tell you? That he likes to play baseball with you?”

“I know there's more to it than that.”

“You bet your life there is. There's his therapy. There are all the people he trusts. How do I know I can find someone as good as Parkins in Richmond? Or people who understand our situation, people like Reggie and Yancy and his little friends?”

“You made all that happen, Toni.”

He hadn't moved from the window except to turn toward me, but I still stepped back, as if he were crowding me into a corner. The backs of my legs hit the chair.

“We could create the same things for him in Richmond—together,” he said.

“I didn't make it happen. My focus here is on God—Ben and I are surrounded by people who get that. That's the first thing. And what evidence do I have that you aren't going to do what you've always done and leave it all to me? If I'm going to do it all, then I'd rather do it here where it's already in place.”

Chris sat on the edge of the windowsill as if it were a cliff. “You
don't know this yet, but something's happened to me.”

“What?” My voice was testy. “Are you sick?”

“No—nothing like that.”

“Look, Chris, I'm going to say this again, and I'll say it as many times as I have to until you get it: All of this is about Ben. It's not about me or you. I'm trying to follow what I can figure out God is showing me for Ben. It just doesn't look to me like that means Richmond.”

“What about what I'm figuring out?” Chris said. “One of the things Doc Opie told me this afternoon was that I could do a lot to replace Ben's memories of Sid with a healthy male image. It's the same as the way you've replaced Bobbi in his mind—he's starting to trust women.”

I cupped my jaws in my hands. My ears were throbbing.

“I can see him warming up to you,” I said, “and even though there are moments when that infuriates me to no end, I know he needs you. But do we have to disrupt his life right now—just when he's doing so well?”

“Then there's a chance?”

“I don't know!” I stopped, got control of my tone. “Don't push this, Chris. When you try to make it happen, it screws everything up. Just don't push me.”

“Toni, I'm sorry.”

“Good night.”

He said my name again, but I was already closing my bedroom door. I fell back on the bed and lay there, staring at a water mark on the ceiling, head spinning out my frantic prayers.

Dear God
—
dear God
—
please
—
we have to take care of my baby
—
that's all.

I flopped a fist against the comforter. Why couldn't God just give me a straight answer, a little reassurance out loud? Dominica had told me it was okay if my answers seemed to come from other people, but there were no other people standing around my bed giving me clarification, and I needed it now.

Since none seemed to be forthcoming, I dragged myself up and pulled my door open so I could hear Ben if he woke up. It was
Chris's voice that drifted in, a stream of words I couldn't hear, spoken with intent, as if he were making a case.

Is he talking to himself?
I thought.

I turned to get the shorts and T-shirt I slept in from the hook on the back of the door, but Chris's monologue continued, and something in its urgency made me stop and listen. He seemed to be trying to keep his volume low, so I crept just outside the doorway and strained in the shadow to hear.

“If I file for custody,” he was saying, “the judge will order that Ben be returned to Virginia while the suit's going on. If she wants to be with him, she'll have to come, too.”

There was a silence, as if he too were listening, and I realized he must be talking on his cell phone. I pressed my hand against my mouth to stifle both nausea and screams.

“All I've got going for me are the legal guns,” Chris was saying. “This is what I know how to do.”

I
told him to do that!
I thought frantically.
But this wasn't what I meant!

I wanted him to fight for Ben—but not against me. This wasn't a battle between the two of us… There was a sudden, startled cry from Ben's room. I went straight for him, anxiety pumping on a number of levels, not the least of which was fear that Ben, too, had heard.

He was sitting straight up in bed, his eyes wide but unfocused.

“Ben? What is it, Pal?”

He mumbled something about Lamb, who had somehow made his way down to the bottom of the bed, under the blanket, probably to avoid being squeezed to death. I retrieved him and tucked him into Ben's arms. He was still staring, unfocused, ahead of him. Thank God he had never been awake. All it would have taken was for him to hear Chris saying what he'd just said and we'd be up all night—from now until he went to college.

I coaxed him to lie down and let me pull the covers up around his ears the way he liked them.

“Wrap me up like a burrito,” he mumbled.

I tucked the blankets around him, tortilla style.

“Do you want me to stay?” I said.

“I'm all right.” And he was deep asleep again, like a normal little boy who had just misplaced his stuffed animal friend.

I went directly to the living room, marching like the gestapo. Chris was on the couch, studying the cell phone.

He looked up, guilt smeared all over his face. “Everything okay?” he said.

“I don't know. That depends on you.” I punched myself down on the arm of the couch, feet on the cushions, so I could face him squarely. “I heard you on the phone. Chris, don't do this. Don't turn this into a legal battle over Ben. I'll fight beside you for his life, but I don't want to have to fight against you. I'm already fighting against enough.”

Chris was shaking his head. “What you heard me saying—forget that.”

“How can I forget it? You're going to try to take my son away from me!”

“No, I'm not. That was just a wild-hare idea. I was desperate and I called—a friend of mine—to process it. It's a stupid idea. I'm not going to do it.”

I stiffened straight up. A friend. Wonder if she's anybody I know this time?

I dragged both of my hands through my hair. “Can I really trust that?”

“You can now. You're not the only one who can change, Toni.”

I slapped both palms to my knees. “I wish this were a Hobson's choice.”

Chris frowned. “A Hobson's choice?”

“Yeah, it's when—”

“I'm familiar with it. Why would you wish for that?”

“Because it's easier when you have no choice. You just do what you have to do.” I shook my head. “I thought I had given up absolutely everything I could possibly give up. I don't know what to do now.”

I could see Chris sagging. “Would coming back to me be such a sacrifice?”

“It could be. I've found out who I am, and I don't know if you could live the kind of life that fits me.” I shook my head again, harder. “But that really isn't the point. All this time, I've been able to sacrifice whatever I had to for Ben's healing. If I move Ben back to Richmond so you can be with him, what if I'm then sacrificing Ben? What if that isn't what's best for him?”

“Why wouldn't it be?”

“I've already told you why! The therapy—the church—the friends—our support—and Ben's associations with Richmond. If he's still too vulnerable, I don't want to take him backward.”

“How will you ever know that unless you at least try it?” Chris said.

“This isn't like changing to a different line of questioning, trying to cop a different plea. Doc Opie told me in the very beginning that I had to create the safest, most secure environment I could for Ben. I just can't take a risk that would put that into jeopardy.”

“On the other hand, it could be even safer and more secure with the three of us together—or at least closer together. You can't know that without giving it a chance. Can you take that risk?”

“No.”

Chris looked stunned. “No? Just like that?”

“With every other choice I've had to make on Ben's behalf, I've known there was no other way I could do it, not and live with myself.” I leaned forward as far as I could without falling headlong into his arms. “Chris, please let God do what's right for our son. Whatever that is, that's what I'll do. I'm begging you to do the same. Do you hear me? For the first time in my life, I am begging you.”

And then, because there didn't seem to be anything else I could say, I went to bed. I lay there in the dark, certain I wasn't going to be able to close an eye, unabashedly begging some more.

God, please, please
—
show me, tell me, make this clear
—
what else can I possibly give up?

You've done all you can, Toni. Now give up control.

I stiffened against the mattress. Where had that thought come from? It was the sound of my mind-voice, but the words were none that would ever come from my stock responses.

Give up control
, I thought.
And give it to Me.

Even as the thought slid away, I knew it hadn't been mine. It was God's. Clearly God's.

“I don't know how to do that,” I whispered. “I'll do anything you want—anything—but You're going to have to help me. If You really want me to let go, then please help me do it.”

The next thing I knew I was blinking my eyes against the slashes of sunlight coming through the blinds. It took me several bad-breath yawns and dekinking stretches to realize that I had slept through the night, for the first time in months.

Good thing it's Saturday,
I thought.
I'll bet Ben's ready for Fruit Loops.

I expected to hear the TV murmuring cartoons, but the living room was empty and the television sat dark and mute. Even Chris's bag appeared to be gone.

And when I went into Ben's room, so was my son.

I
WENT THROUGH A FRENZY
of ridiculous motions. Ripping back Ben's covers to discover neither him nor Lamb there. Peering under the bed. Calling out his name in shrill tones as I whipped back the shower curtain, searched the closets, ran down the steps to scour the yard. It was there I realized that Chris's BMW was missing, too. Large pieces of my sanity began to tear away.

Ethel poked her head out the back door of her screened porch.

“Somethin' wrong, honey?” she said. “You are just a-screechin' out here.”

“They're gone!” I cried. “He's taken Ben!”

“In that little fancy car? I saw them leave about twenty minutes ago.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“Thatta way,” she said, pointing.

Of course. We were on a cul-de-sac; there was only one way
to
go. With a twenty-minute lead, there was no chance I could catch them. But I had to try.

“You all right, Toni?” Ethel called after me.

I didn't answer as I tore back up the steps and hoped to heaven I knew where I'd put my keys. I was ransacking my purse when I heard two things. One was the now pointless admonition,
Let go of control, Toni. Give it to Me.
The other was the sound of tires on gravel below.

I skidded to the window, one hand still clawing at the bottom of my purse, and saw the Beamer. Ben was in the front seat next to Chris, still in his pajamas.

You had better have an explanation for this, Christopher Wells, or so help me God
—

Then listen to it before you explode.

It may have been the most impossible thing God had asked me to do yet.

But I turned from the window, closed my eyes, and took several deep breaths. The amount of torque in my jaw was excruciating.

“Mommy!” Ben cried out from the stairwell. “Look what we got.”

He pranced through the still-open door, carrying a Krispy Kreme box bigger than he was and beaming as if he were bearing the crown jewels. “Donuts!” he said.

“That is just wonderful,” I said through clenched teeth. “Where's Daddy?”

“Miss Ethel's down there yellin' at him,” Ben said matter-of factly. “Can I have a chocolate one? I'll eat it 'stead of Fruit Loops. I told Daddy you won't let me have that much sugar.”

“You can have two, as long as you stay in here while I talk to Daddy in the kitchen.”

Ben looked as if he had just been given a governor's pardon and chomped into an oozy chocolate donut as though the pardon were about to be rescinded. I turned on my bare heel and headed Chris off at the door.

“Donut holes,” he said, holding up a bag that smelled of 100 percent sugar. “I know you like them.”

“In the kitchen,” I said between my teeth. “And you better have a good explanation or those are going right up your nostrils.”

Chris looked a little bewildered as he backed into the kitchen still holding up the bag as if he were making a delivery for Ed McMahon.

“Didn't you see my note?” he said.

“What note?”

“That one.”

He nodded toward the kitchen table, where there was nothing but a bowl of apples.

“I don't see a note,” I said. “Suppose you tell me what it could possibly have said that wouldn't have driven me off the deep end.”

Chris leaned over and picked up a piece of paper which lay facedown on the linoleum. “Must have fallen off. ‘Mommy: Daddy took me to get donuts while they're hot.' See—he wrote his own name.”

I smacked the note aside and sank to a chair at the table. My
hands were shaking so badly, I couldn't have held onto it anyway.

“I thought you took him,” I said.