Chapter 13

As soon as it was decided Anton would live with Eric and Andrea — even if it turned out to be temporary — Eric called to give her the good news. By the time they arrived at her house that evening, everything was ready for them.

Anton’s room was all prepared. He had a double-size bed with a night stand, a small desk with a swivel chair, a four-drawer bureau, and a twenty-four inch flat-screen television hanging on the wall. She’d dug up an old MacBook and cleaned up the hard drive for his personal use.

In an alcove off the living room, there was an ancient Wurlitzer upright piano that belonged to her grandmother. It came with the house and it probably needed tuning, but she’d let Anton’s musical ear decide that. She had high hopes he would soon fill the house with music.

In her bedroom, (now her and Eric’s bedroom) she cleaned out a drawer in her bureau for Eric’s underwear and socks, another for his shirts and jeans, and she made space in her closet for whatever hang-up clothes he was bringing. She even cleared the second shelf of her medicine cabinet for his shaving stuff. Andrea was ready to cohabit!

Her boys arrived right behind the pizza delivery girl. She grabbed Anton as he stepped in the door and put a big squeeze on him, saying, “Oh sweetheart, I’m so excited you’re gonna be living with us! And you know what? You and Eric and I are gonna make damn sure it’s for a lot longer than one measly month!”

Anton hugged her back, perhaps growing a little wood at the feel and aroma of her body. “I hope this will always be my home. Dr. Widener is very good person, but I am not happy to live at the home. I will try very hard to please you and Eric.”

She held him by the shoulders at arm’s length. “Anton, honey, don’t let that be your only goal. It’s not your job to please us; we just want you to be yourself and to be comfortable. That’s all we want. Now let me show you guys where to drop your stuff, then we’ll eat. We’ll get you settled into you new digs after pizza. I ordered an extra large sausage with onions, green peppers and black olives, so I hope your appetites are up to the task.”

When Ken arrived with Rhonda at Dr. Widener’s office door the next morning, she greeted them with a smile and came around her desk to take the girl’s hands. “Oh thank heavens you’re safe, dear! We were so worried about you.”

She asked Ken, “Where did you find her?”

“She found me. She showed up at the cabin last night looking for Anton. I’ll let her tell her own story, but before I leave you two to work out your issues, I wanted to ask your permission to continue living in the trailer for a while. I’m loving the peace and quiet and I’m getting a lot of work done up there. I promise to take good care of everything and I can keep an eye on the place for you. Oh, and I’ll pay the electric bill and I’ll get your propane tank topped off when I leave.”

“Nonsense! You’re welcome to stay as long as you like and you will most certainly not pay for the utilities. Now I want both of you to sit down and tell me everything, but let me begin by saying this: Rhonda, I know you’re upset about not being asked to go with Eric and Anton last Friday, but running away was hardly the best way to deal with that anger. You know very well that I would have listened to your concerns once you got over your little display of temper.”

The girl wouldn’t meet Widener’s eyes. She looked down at her hands and mumbled, “I guess. I just got real pissed is all. It don’t seem fair nobody asked me.”

“Look,” the doctor commiserated, “I can understand why you think it wasn’t fair, but there are some things you need to consider, things you don’t understand. For instance, haven’t you noticed any change in Anton’s behavior since I brought the two of you back to the home?”

Rhonda shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess he was gettin’ real quiet again like he was before, only not as bad. Seemed to me like he was stayin’ in his room a lot.”

“So you did notice. Why do you think he was behaving like that?”

Again with the shrug, “I don’t know. I figured he got all sad and shit over his sister’s funeral. But if I could’ve gone with him and Eric, I would’ve been able to help him through that like I did with her dying.”

“My dear, your heart is in the right place, but your understanding and appreciation of Anton’s fragile state is not. He was sinking into a depression; dangerously so because his mind wasn’t yet ready to absorb the full impact of Sophia’s death. Yes, for a few days he seemed to be making progress, but then he went into a tailspin. You made him admit to himself that she had died, but he couldn’t deal with the pain and terrible guilt that came with that admission.

“Anton likes you, Rhonda, but I sent him with Eric because he needed to be away from here and he needed to be away from you to give his mind some rest and allow him to absorb everything that’s happened. As it is, it may take years for him to completely recover. The good news is that this last weekend with Eric and Andrea seems to have turned him back onto that road to recovery. I don’t know what they did to affect his turnaround, but it seems to have done the trick.

“So this is what’s going to happen: As of today, Anton and Eric will be living at Andrea’s house. It’s a trial run for a month, but if it goes as well as we hope and expect, it will become permanent. He’ll come into town every weekday morning with Eric to attend classes and to have his music lessons with Raul, so you’ll be able to spend some time with him — but as his friend, not as his mother.”

Rhonda missed her meaning. “What’chu mean by that, ‘not as his mother’?”

“My dear, you probably weren’t even aware of it, but you’d taken over thinking and speaking for him. You pushed and maneuvered Anton to take your viewpoint. I know you were trying to protect him, but it was driving him even further into his depression. By the time we came back to the home, you probably thought he was recovered, out of the woods, but that isn’t the case at all. While Anton is making some progress, he still has a lot of mending to do, and I’m confident Andrea and Eric will be a positive force in guiding him through it.”

Rhonda was on the verge of tears. “You sayin’ I made him worse by tellin’ him his sister was dead?”

Widener knew she had to tread carefully here. “My dear, I’m saying it wasn’t helpful when you disobeyed my instructions. I don’t doubt for a minute that you meant well, but people like Anton who are hiding terrible things are hiding them for a reason. He had, and still has, an awful lot to work through. That’s going to take time and it has to be done very carefully. You must understand that at this stage of his recovery, he is still very, very vulnerable.

“Rhonda, you had to become strong, tough, and street-smart to survive what happened to you, and that’s made you aggressive in the way you deal with life’s problems. For you that’s a good thing, but Anton hasn’t developed that toughness yet, and he’s going to need some time as well as the right environment for that to happen. I feel confident he’ll have those things living with Eric and Andrea. Do you understand everything that I’ve said, dear?”

There were tears running down Rhonda’s face as she nodded.

“Good. Now I want you to go to your room, get yourself cleaned up and get to class. Anton is having a lesson with Raul right now, but I’m sure he’ll be happy to know you’ve come back. I have no problem with the two of you spending time together during the day, but at four o’clock, he’ll be leaving with Eric to go to his new home. Now please excuse Ken and me because we have a few things to discuss.”

Without another word, Rhonda pushed herself up off the couch and rushed from the office wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

Widener turned her attention to Ken, and said, “That may have seemed harsh, but it had to be said; and you were already right in the middle of it, which is the reason I didn’t ask you to wait outside. Now, am I correct in assuming you still want to do that story on Anton?”

“Of course! In fact that’s what I’ve been working on. All I’m waiting for now is your permission to do some in-depth interviews with him, but I’m guessing that might be some time yet, judging by what you just said to Rhonda. And as far as that’s concerned, hell, I wish my parents had cared enough to explain things to me like that. Their explanations were usually in the form of a smack up side the head.”

She leaned back in her squeaky chair. “That’s unfortunate and all too common. As for that interview with Anton, it may not be as far off as you’re thinking. Now, I asked you to stay because I have a proposition for you.”

“I’m listening.”