Rosalie Van Antwerp
33 Orange Lane
Goshen, CT 06756
August 10, 2012
Dear Rosalie,
I haven’t heard from you. Waiting for your response to my last, but cannot wait forever. I own your life is busier than my quiet one, so I’m humbling myself and writing again. Did Paul’s new wheelchair arrive? And how is Lars holding up?
Listen to the latest from my own thankless offspring. You remember I mentioned I was in a little car accident. Well, it’s all sorted and I was due for an upgraded vehicle, so now I’m driving a modern Volkswagen Beetle (looks like something out of the future, a lovely red) but nearly a month after the fact I receive an e-mail from my daughter. She happens to be not in London but in Sydney, Australia, so the e-mail arrives in my inbox at four in the morning, and the meat of it is that FROM HALFWAY ACROSS THE EARTH she has heard from her brother that I was in a wreck and she has plenty of advice to give me, not the least of which is that I ought to sell my house (which she deems old, out of date) and move into a nursing home. Makes a suggestion about my financial security (and that is PRECISELY why I’ve never told the children what I’m worth, dollars and cents). Apparently it’s something they’ve been discussing behind my back. As a matter of fact, Guy and I heard a case in oh, I don’t know, the late eighties, and it was a woman just a touch older than myself SUING her CHILDREN because they’d duped her into selling her house and installed her into a place that was more like a prison or an insane asylum than a home for old people. Rats in the toilets, that sort of thing. Real hell for this woman. I can still picture her. Elizabeth Franklin was her name, teensy little thing sitting up on the stand and holding up her handbag, which had been chewed by rats atnight. Vile. Never in twenty lifetimes would I have thought it would be me, my own children. Now I’m sure you’re wondering how I replied: I did not. She is back from Sydney, rang me last week—I saw her calling and let the thing go straight to the machine. That child is brazen as brass, I’ll give her that. Nerve enough to sink the Titanic. Can you imagine? She has not one single thing to do with my life, might as well live on another planet, sees me once a year if I’m lucky, and thinks it’s time for me to move into a brand new nursing home in Falls Church! Well. I will do no such thing.
Pivoting. I wrote to Ann Patchett when I finished readingState of Wonder, and yesterday morning there was a reply in my mailbox! An adorable little postcard with a dog. I always love to get a note back. I am readingCutting for Stoneby Abraham Verghese (I had to look how to spell that one). It’s very long. What are you reading?
Love,
Sybil
The Honorable Judge James Landy
98 Dumbarton St. NW
Washington, DC 20007
September 3, 2012 (Labor Day)
Dear James,
First things first. How is Harry doing? In his last letter I did think he seemed awfully melancholy. It’s good you finally got the child a dog, but I think you also need to get him a different therapist than this Dr. Oliver. The man sounds dreadful. Are you certain he’s not a pedophile? And as a matter of fact, as long as we’re on the matter, you know I really don’t even think Harry needs a psychotherapist. Leave it to your generation to take someone who is absolutely brilliant and turn it into a problem.
Now I’m sure you heard, but in case you hadn’t, and in case you’ve gone down the toilet like the rest and are failing to maintain a proper newspaper subscription (IN PRINT, adequately edited, without the muck of advertisements blinking away) and only saw it on the internet, I’ve included the obituary. (Guy died over the weekend.) The article is a bit bland, watered down, evidently striving for the neutral language that won’t stir up one political spat or another, but the photo is nice with the courthouse in the background. I think it’s the same photo the papers ran when he retired. He looks very distinguished. Imagine, I thought him decrepit back then, HA, and now I’m almost the age he was.
I’d gone to see him oh, I don’t know, maybe a few months ago now. You know, I don’t typically travel. I go out to a few places, but I don’t journey. Bruce gave me a GPS system for my car last year and it even speaks to you. Do you have one of these? It’s very clever. You plug in an address and adhere the device to the windshield by suction cup, and the map moves along with you and the English voice says ‘turn left here, turn right in one hundred feet,’ so it would be easy for me to use it, but I don’t. I’m not sure why Idon’t, but anyway the point is that I’d gone to visit him. (Guy, I’m talking about. He has been exclusively at his house on the bay there the last few years.) Had to drive across the Bay Bridge. I’ll say I hate to drive across the Bay Bridge. I always have. Four miles, so high up it makes you sick, I was gripping the wheel. Oh, my sons used to find it so funny, if we’d drive over for the day, how I couldn’t speak on that bridge. Anyway, he sat with me for about a half hour before he was tired out, and honestly most of his mind was already gone. It’s a hell of a thing, to lose one’s mental faculties. Guy never forgot a case, not ever, but then this series of strokes and a heart attack last year. You think of all the years, all the cases between us, this memory we shared. Honestly, I hated to go, it was very disturbing. When I first got to the house he was trying to hit on me like I was some call girl, although eventually the mists did seem to clear. He said something about the courthouse, so I knew he’d found his way back there in his mind. I was really going for Liz. I haven’t spoken to her since, but it was obvious he wouldn’t last much longer. Dear God, if I hope I don’t live to be ninety-three. A nightmare.
The Sun did a big spread about him yesterday and you’ll never believe it, but Alex Toole featured ME in her What Ever Happened To column (you cannot believe this): ‘What Ever Happened to Sybil Van Antwerp?’ You know I saw it there in print and I gasped. Honestly, the absurdity of it. Can you imagine? (I couldn’t have. Not in a million years. Absolutely absurd.) Journalist said she tried to contact me; she most certainly did not, but even if she had I would not have dignified it with a response. The thing is foolishness, but I bought a few extra copies of the paper to be able to send the obituary, et al., to the children, Felix, etc., so it’s enclosed here with the obit because I knew YOU would get a kick out of it.
How’s Marly? How are the girls? Harry said you’ll be traveling to Africa. You’ll need to make sure you have your propervaccinations. How’s Washington? (Honestly, from my angle Washington is looking like a carnival on fire, but what else is new? I will say, it surprises me how much I like President Obama. He’s a wonderful speaker, I could listen to him read the phone book.) I’m fine. It’s been a nice summer. My dahlias are splendid, I am very pleased. And look, this is what I’ve been reduced to, an old woman writing with gardening reports while you crack on at the center of the world trying to keep the ship right.
It’ll be fine to see you, presuming you will be at the funeral. The paper says they are postponing the ceremony, which is, frankly, gauche. To leave the dead in limbo like that, but nobody is consulting my opinion.
Warm regards,
Sybil
Enclosure
What Ever Happened to Sybil Van Antwerp?
Baltimore SunOpinion/Editorial
by Alex Toole, Columnist
The honorable Judge Guy D. Donnelly of Frederick, Maryland, and St. Michaels, Maryland, has died. Judge Donnelly will be well known to many after his twenty-eight-year service to the Circuit Court of Maryland in Frederick County (1971–1999), a sober, thoughtful man of very few words who ruled with a crystal-clear justice, respected by both sides of the line, a renowned feminist. In other words, a unicorn in modern times. He died in his home with two women at his side: his wife, Elizabeth, and hisdaughter, Nancy Louise (married name Young), but what ever became of the other woman in his life?
In all of my research into Donnelly and his history as a judge, there she is again and again, her name spoken in every interview; her initials on documents; her face there in sketches of the courtroom; her small frame, glasses, neat pumps, even, in a photo of the judge leaving the courtroom after the explosive case of theState of Maryland v. James Ross, a murder case that ascended to the national stage in 1982. Sybil Van Antwerp was well known to have served as Judge Donnelly’s chief clerk for almost thirty years. They retired on the same day in 1999, and there is very little information about who she was, outside of her position in relationship to the judge. She seems, as a matter of fact, to have disappeared into thin air.
Details known include: Van Antwerp graduated from law school at the University of Virginia (UVA), top of her class, in 1967, the year after the conclusion of the grueling, publicThackery Materials v. Harold Boynecase in which Guy Donnelly (then attorney in private practice) represented the victims. For reference, this was a case pertaining to asbestos used in naval ships as a fire retardant and the resulting asbestosis in hundreds of navy men decades after the conclusion of their service. Donnelly, now highly sought-after, with more work than he could manage, was looking for a partner, and a close friend of his, a former attorney and faculty at UVA Law, contacted Donnelly to suggest he bring on Sybil Van Antwerp with her acuity, disposition, and dogged work ethic.
