My name is anton, p.1
My Name is Anton, page 1
Also by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Brave Girl, Quiet Girl
Stay
Have You Seen Luis Velez?
Just After Midnight
Heaven Adjacent
The Wake Up
Allie and Bea
Say Goodbye for Now
Leaving Blythe River
Ask Him Why
Worthy
The Language of Hoofbeats
Pay It Forward: Young Readers Edition
Take Me with You
Paw It Forward
365 Days of Gratitude: Photos from a Beautiful World
Where We Belong
Subway Dancer and Other Stories
Walk Me Home
Always Chloe and Other Stories
The Long, Steep Path: Everyday Inspiration from the Author of Pay It Forward
How to Be a Writer in the E-Age: A Self-Help Guide
When You Were Older
Don’t Let Me Go
Jumpstart the World
Second Hand Heart
When I Found You
Diary of a Witness
The Day I Killed James
Chasing Windmills
The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance
Love in the Present Tense
Becoming Chloe
Walter’s Purple Heart
Electric God/The Hardest Part of Love
Pay It Forward
Earthquake Weather and Other Stories
Funerals for Horses
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Catherine Ryan Hyde, Trustee, or Successor Trustee, of the Catherine Ryan Hyde Revocable Trust created under that certain declaration dated September 27, 1999.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542014342 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1542014344 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781542023481 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1542023483 (hardcover)
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
CONTENTS
WINTER OF 1965 ANTON’S FEDORA
Chapter One Merry False Christmas
Chapter Two Third Window from the Left
Chapter Three Who Are You?
Chapter Four Foreigner
Chapter Five The Ghost and the Fedora
Chapter Six A Story of Hell
Chapter Seven Where?
Chapter Eight Include Me
Chapter Nine Actual Christmas, Fake Merry
Chapter Ten The Man in the Moon, Really
Chapter Eleven He Thinks He Broke
Chapter Twelve The Win
WINTER OF 1980 MY NAME IS ANTON
Chapter Thirteen I’m Sorry. Have We Met?
Chapter Fourteen I Think I Went by It
Chapter Fifteen Here’s the Thing
Chapter Sixteen Jumping into Fear
Chapter Seventeen The Canary Eater
Chapter Eighteen Flush
SPRING OF 1981 HEART CONNECTION
Chapter Nineteen Rash
Chapter Twenty The Last Ally
SUMMER OF 1981 WHY IS THIS?
Chapter Twenty-One Why Is This?
WINTER OF 1981 THE SECOND SHOE
Chapter Twenty-Two Hero
Chapter Twenty-Three Include Us
Chapter Twenty-Four Hard Sometimes
SPRING OF 1983 THE LOCKET
Chapter Twenty-Five Secret
SUMMER OF 1995 WE ALL GOT OLDER
Chapter Twenty-Six Older
WINTER OF 2020 EVERYTHING
Chapter Twenty-Seven The Whole Universe
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WINTER OF 1965
ANTON’S FEDORA
Chapter One
Merry False Christmas
It was December 10, an odd day to celebrate the Christmas holiday. It was not even quite six in the morning, and Anton “Anthony” Addison-Rice was fast asleep and dreaming about his right hand.
He dreamed he was swimming in the Olympic-sized pool off his high school gym, which, suddenly and for no apparent reason, turned into the open Atlantic Ocean. He raised his right arm in a powerful stroke, breaking the surface of the water. Then he raised his head to look, which his coach would have disciplined him for doing, and his right hand surprised him . . . by being there. It was backlit by a hazy sun, and appeared completely real. Whole and perfect. As though nothing had ever happened to it.
He allowed himself to bob upright in the dream swells, treading water, just staring at the hand. It struck him as an unexpected visitor. It felt similar to the way his late grandpa Anton had come into his dreams a few months earlier. It had the same too-vivid, sharply defined feeling to it—an image that would be slow to fade.
So he spoke to the hand, much the way he had spoken in his dream to Grandpa Anton.
He said, “There you are. I thought you were gone. Why was I so sure you were gone?”
Then the dream let him go and he opened his eyes. It might have been a sound that knocked the dream away. It might have been his mother opening his bedroom door. Because, now that his eyes were open, he could see that she had.
He was holding his right arm aloft, the way he had done in the dream. But the background to the scene was not a hazy sun, but his mother, standing in his half-open bedroom doorway. And the hand was not there after all. That most important factor had only been true in the dream.
He sighed deeply and shifted his focus to his mother. She was watching him silently. Watching him stare at the stump of his right wrist. She had a taut look of disapproval on her face, as if she preferred he ignore the situation. Well, she did prefer that. He knew it from experience. Ignoring situations was her number one life skill.
“You have to get up,” she said.
“It’s awfully early.” His eyes narrowed as he attempted to focus on the clock beside his bed. “Can’t I just say goodbye to you from here?”
“We have to celebrate Christmas.”
“We can’t celebrate Christmas.”
“Why on earth can’t we?”
“Because it’s only . . .”
But he was too close to asleep to grasp the date.
“It’s the tenth of December,” she said.
“Right. I knew that. Who celebrates Christmas on the tenth of December?”
“We do, this year. Now listen. Your father went to great lengths to buy you a present he knew you would like. And you will come out to the living room and open it and show some appreciation for his troubles. You get me, Anton?”
“Anthony,” he said.
He should have known better. He should have given it up long ago, at least at home.
She crossed the room, taking his chin in the right hand she was fortunate enough to have—and probably didn’t even appreciate. Her fingernails dug into the skin of his face, hurting him.
He did not say “Ouch,” though it would have been easy and natural to do so.
“Now you listen to me, young man. Your father lost his own father not even a year ago, and you will not dishonor the memory of your grandfather by suggesting that his name is not good enough for you. I won’t have it. Now get dressed and get out to the living room, pronto. Your father and I have a plane to catch.”
His father was on the phone, its long cord stretched into the living room. His mother was in the kitchen, making a pot of coffee. She looked at Anthony’s face, then down at his pajamas and robe, her own face darkening.
“I told you to get dressed.”
“You also told me you had a plane to catch. Do you have any idea how long it takes me to get dressed?”
“Never mind. Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
“Abel!” she shouted. “Get off the phone. We’re having Christmas.”
“I’m on hold with the airline,” he shouted back. “I can’t just hang up!”
She sighed a loud, theatrical sigh.
Anthony sat at the breakfast counter between the living room and kitchen, and watched her pour him a mug of coffee.
She had first offered him coffee nine days earlier, on his eighteenth birthday. Before that he had poured himself many cups of coffee, and she had not outright prevented him from doing so. Did she think it would have been contributing to his delinquency to offer coffee even one day before he reached that magical age of adulthood?
She set cream and sugar in front of him, followed by the mug of fresh coffee. The cream and sugar seemed odd to him, because she should have known by then that he took neither.
“Your grandma Marion will look in on you.” It was a statement that didn’t seem to leave room for discussion.
“I don’t need anyone to look in on me,” he said.
“You like your grandma Marion. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I love Grandma Marion.”
“Then don’t argue. Think of them as visits. And in her presence t
He nodded vaguely and sipped at his coffee. She had brewed it too weak.
“I want to hear it out loud from your lips. Am I understood?”
“Yes,” he said, enunciating clearly. “You are understood.”
He looked around to see his father standing beside him, beefy arms across his chest. Tapping one upper arm with the fingers of his opposite hand. Which meant everybody had better hurry up for him.
“They will not be delaying the flight again,” his father said. More to Anthony’s mother than to Anthony. “A word to the wise. We need to leave in five minutes, tops, or we’re going to miss our plane.”
Anthony sat in the living room, alone on the couch. A dizzying mountain of suitcases sat stacked in front of the door. Anthony’s mother sat in the print wing chair, watching him. His father paced. Now and then his mother shot her husband a withering glance, but each one slid off him unnoticed.
The coffee table in front of Anthony had been cleared. On it sat two wrapped gifts. Nicely large. He already knew what was in them. The telescope was not boxed, and its shape was evident through the candy-cane-printed paper. The second gift was a long rectangular box which Anthony assumed would be the telescope’s tripod.
It was a gift he had hinted at relentlessly. He would have been surprised had it been anything else.
He reached out and began to tear away the paper with his left hand.
Apparently he was too slow for his father, who dove in and began to tear with him.
“I’ll just help you open this,” he mumbled.
“Abel!” his mother shouted. It actually hurt one of Anthony’s eardrums. “Sit!”
It was fairly unusual for her to speak to her husband that way, but not unheard of. On the occasions when she did, he would not mount a defense.
Abel sat.
“It’s just that there’s a cab waiting downstairs,” Abel said, sounding almost meek. “And the meter is running.”
“So let it run. We’re having Christmas.”
Abel only sighed.
Anthony continued to tear at the paper one-handed until the telescope emerged. It was more impressive in person than it had appeared in the catalogue. It looked bigger and more technical. More expensive. More desirable even than he had imagined.
“It’s just what I wanted.”
“Well, of course it’s what you wanted,” his father said, his voice hurried and gruff. “Like you didn’t make it clear a hundred times exactly what you wanted.”
Anthony’s mother shot her husband a stern glance. He fell silent.
“We figured this way you’ll have something to play with while we’re gone,” she said.
“He’s not going to play with it,” his father shot back. “Stop treating him like a boy. He’s going to learn. Explore. Enrich himself. He doesn’t play anymore. He’s a grown man.”
“He’s not a grown man.”
“He’s legally an adult.”
“Legally an adult does not make you a grown man.”
“Well, he’s certainly not the child you—”
“Could you guys please not fight over me?” Anthony asked, interrupting.
“Fine,” his father said. “There’s no time, anyway. We have a plane to catch. We have to go. There’s a cab waiting downstairs, and the meter is running. Or did I say that already? The other package is the tripod. You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. Now come on, Vera. We don’t want to miss that flight.”
“How are we getting all of these bags downstairs?” Anthony’s mother asked, a sentence that felt like it wanted to be the start of another fight.
“I can help,” Anthony said.
Although, he noted, none of the bags had shoulder straps. So he could take only one at a time.
“Nonsense,” his father said. “I asked the super to come up.”
As if this scene were only a stage play, and as if the super had heard the line of dialogue that was to be his entrance cue, there was a knock at the door.
Anthony’s mother swooped across the room and kissed Anthony on the head, blocking out most of the world with her large and solid self.
“Be a good boy,” she said. “Well . . . a good man, if your father has anything to say about what I call you. Then again, this time he might be right. For a change.”
She stepped away, and Anthony looked up to see the apartment door standing open. No bags. No super. No father. They were all gone.
“Have fun in South America,” he said to her.
But she only smiled in reply, and the smile looked tight and sad.
Then his mother stepped out, closing the apartment door behind her, leaving Anthony entirely alone.
For weeks.
For the first time in his life.
He was fast asleep when the knock came at the door, but had been dreaming of nothing as far as he could remember. He stumbled out of bed and shrugged awkwardly into his robe on the way to the door.
“Grandma Marion . . . ,” he called out. Then he began the tedious job of undoing the locks one-handed. “You know I love you, but they’ve only been gone a few hours. I mean, really.”
A deep male voice boomed through the door. “If I see Marion, I’ll pass your message along.”
Anthony swung the door wide. Standing on the welcome mat was his uncle Gregor. Or, at least, the man he had always called Uncle Gregor, despite his being a great-uncle—the late grandpa Anton’s brother.
“Oh, hey, Uncle Gregor.”
Uncle Gregor was a stooped man in his late seventies with wire-rim glasses and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore an expensive camel-hair coat, and looked Anthony up and down as he spoke, rubbing his beard with the heel of one hand.
“You were asleep, Anton?”
“I . . . actually was.”
“It’s almost one thirty in the afternoon.”
“Is it?”
They stood awkwardly, all four of their eyes trained onto the doormat. As if it would have something weighty or amusing to say. As if it had said “Welcome” every time before, but might say something surprising just this once.
Then Uncle Gregor—who was, inconveniently, a psychiatrist—said, “This is a thing we associate with depression—changes in sleep patterns. I’m guessing you must know it, at least on some level.”
“No. It’s not that.”
“You’re not depressed? After the year you had, that would be a miracle.”
“I’m not saying I’m not depressed. I don’t know what I am. But I mostly haven’t been sleeping all day. I just did it today for a completely different reason. My parents gave me that telescope I’ve been wanting. I want to try it out when it gets dark tonight. So I thought I’d sleep as much as I could today. You know. So I can stay up.”
“It’s in there somewhere, Anton.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Trauma and grief. It’s in there somewhere. I worry about you.”
He felt a deep, sickening flutter down in his gut, as he often did when Uncle Gregor challenged him about his feelings. But he talked around it until it settled again. Behind the wall he’d built to contain it.
“What’s wrong with sleeping during the day so you can stay up late?”
“It’s the dead of winter, Anton. It gets dark around five p.m.”
They stood without talking for a time.
Then, much to Anthony’s surprise, his great-uncle turned as if to go.
“Well, I’ll leave you to that,” Gregor said.
“Wait. You’re not coming in?”
“Not if you’re trying to sleep.”
“But you came all this way.”
“Ten minutes on the subway.” He raised his hands, turning them palms up for reasons Anthony did not understand.
“You should come in. You’d be doing me a favor. I need help with that telescope. It needs some assembly . . . getting it properly on the tripod and everything. It’s a job that takes more than one hand.”
“Let’s set it up on the balcony,” Anthony said. “It’s heavy. Once we get it all together it might be hard to move it.”
Anthony rolled back the heavy glass balcony door and they stepped out into the winter cold together.
Uncle Gregor frowned at Anthony’s bare ankles, and his slide-on slippers with no heels. “Go inside and get yourself dressed properly for the weather, son.”
“I don’t know. It takes me forever.”
“No matter. I’ll be right here. Where did you think I would go?”
