Love Anthony Part 17

Beth thinks. She doesn't know what to think. She'd like to think that he leaves Salt alone now, that he goes straight to his friend Harry's apartment, sleeps alone in Harry's extra bedroom until noon, spends the afternoon feeling bad about what he's done, then goes to work again.

But she's at Salt. Beth thinks about the two of them there. She imagines a smile, a laugh, a touch, her hand on his arm, a kiss. Those pictures in Beth's head are easier to envision, more vivid and real than imagining Jimmy alone in some apartment she's never seen. She pictures Angela's necklace dangling between her big b.o.o.bs and breathes in a powerful whiff of dead squirrel and something else. Cat pee? She feels physically sick.

"I don't know what to believe. They spend every night together."

"We don't 'spend' the night together. We work at the same place."

"Fine. She works where he bartends. I don't know if I can trust him again."

"I promise, it's over."

"Yeah, well, clearly you don't always keep your promises."

Dr. Campbell lowers his Starbucks mug and c.o.c.ks his head. Everyone waits.

"Did you hear that?"

Beth shakes her head. Jimmy says nothing.

"Listen," Dr. Campbell says.

Beth hears Jimmy sniffling and a car drive by outside.

"Excuse me, I'll be back in a second," says Dr. Campbell, and he rushes out of the room.

Beth and Jimmy sit in silence, staring straight ahead, expecting Dr. Campbell to return within a few seconds. When this doesn't happen, Jimmy starts to fidget. He clears his throat, much louder than he would if Dr. Campbell were still in the room. Beth picks at her cuticles. Jimmy checks his phone. She checks hers.

She didn't hear any noise. Maybe this is some kind of test, some kind of time-out for misbehaving couples. Maybe the "listen" was meant for them.

Well, it's not working. They don't know how to talk to each other. They don't know how to listen. This is why they're here. In addition to feeling ridiculously wedged in Dr. Campbell's couch, stalked by a falcon, angry at Jimmy for betraying her, embarra.s.sed that she cries when she's angry, and sick at the thought of Jimmy and Angela still seeing each other, she now feels abandoned and manipulated. This therapist doesn't know what he's doing.

Dr. Campbell doesn't come back, and the silence between Jimmy and her expands. Dr. Campbell is gone, and the silence develops, forming itself into an actual presence in the room as real and as predatory as the falcon. It has its own evil eyes, pursuing them, uncaged in Dr. Campbell's absence, licking its chops, waiting for the right moment to attack. The silence between Jimmy and her would like nothing more than to devour them, as it's been aiming to do for years.

Finally, after what seems like their entire session but was probably only a few minutes, Dr. Campbell returns to the room, sits in his leather chair, and sighs.

"My apologies. The dogs got out. Now, let's go over where we're at. Jimmy, you need to feel wanted and that you make Beth happy. Beth, you need to be able to trust that if Jimmy is feeling unhappy, he'll come and talk to you about it and that he'll never be unfaithful again. Yes? Does this sound fair?"

"I don't think it's fair to say that Jimmy's the only one who feels unwanted. He cheated on me. That's not exactly wanting me. I didn't go out and 'want' another man."

"Yes. True. Okay, let's add that in. You both want to feel wanted, happy, secure, and loved, yes? Fair to say?"

"Yes," says Beth.

"Yes," says Jimmy.

"Then this is what we're going to work on," says Dr. Campbell, slapping his thighs.

"But shouldn't those things come naturally if you're right for each other?" asks Beth.

"Some of it does, and some of it requires communication and effort."

Jimmy sneezes. Beth says, Bless you, in her head and offers Dr. Campbell a tight-lipped, timid smile.

"Okay," says Dr. Campbell, checking his watch. "Here's your homework. I want you each to get out four pieces of paper, one for wanted, one for happy, one for secure, and one for loved, and I want you to write down specific actions and words that you need to see and hear in order to feel each of these things. Come up with as many as you can. Don't hold anything back."

"Uh, like, what do you mean?" asks Jimmy.

"Well, these four feelings are necessary to both of you, but they probably mean different things when actualized. For example, feeling loved to you might mean a hug and kiss from Beth every time you come home from work. It might mean cigars and slippers. It might mean s.e.x. For Beth, it might mean the same things, probably not the cigar and slippers, but it also might mean something else. Love for Beth might show up as doing the laundry or taking her out to dinner."

Beth nods.

"Love, happiness, security, feeling wanted-these are the basics, yes? And because they're so basic, people often a.s.sume that they should happen automatically. But what floats your boat might not float hers. We're all different. Unless you communicate the specific and quirky ways that make you feel loved and happy, your partner can miss the mark. And then we feel unloved and unhappy. Yes?"

Jimmy nods.

"Okay, that's it for today. Good work," says Dr. Campbell.

Jimmy pops up like a boy who just heard the recess bell. He pays Dr. Campbell in cash for the session, minus the twenty dollars for the fresh roadkill, while Beth rocks herself up and out of her hole. Beth thanks Dr. Campbell and smiles with her hands in her pockets, and she and Jimmy walk out to the driveway.

"What did you think?" she asks once she's sure they're out of earshot.

"I think that guy is really odd."

Beth laughs.

"He probably needs therapy more than we do," Jimmy says, smiling.

"Really though?" she asks, needing something more from him than a laugh.

"Therapy's not really my thing."

She nods.

"But it's worth it if it works, right?" he asks.

She nods.

"All right. I gotta go do my homework," he says, smiling. "See ya."

"See ya," she echoes.

She gets into her car and laughs, more a nervous release than over anything funny. That whole experience was odd. The living room, that couch, the roadkill copay, the falcon's black eyes, the cats, the "noisy" dogs.

She thinks about her homework a.s.signment as she drives back to the library, already itching to begin the next chapter. Wanted, happy, secure, loved. What does she need to feel wanted? What does she need to feel loved? What will Jimmy's four pages look like? What does the boy in her book need to feel these things?

Her mind wanders through their therapy session, replaying it as she drives.

Trust. Anger. Silence. Communication. The falcon. That couch. The smell. The cats and dogs.

Her thoughts then shift to the brown-eyed boy in the book she's writing, wandering through the chapters she's already written.

No spoken words. The blue sky. Repet.i.tion. His mother.

Wanted. Happiness. Security. Love.

Dr. Campbell might be odd, but he's also brilliant.

CHAPTER 24.

I am lining up some of my rocks in the living room. This line is made up of rocks that I've collected in the past week. It is a line of new rocks. The line stretches from the coffee table to the wall. It will be a line of 128 rocks when I am done. I'm picturing the line of 128 rocks in my head before I get to the wall, and I'm already excited.

This is why I stopped lining up plastic animals and dinosaurs. I never had enough. I could line them up by type or size or color or in order of what animal could get eaten by another or by who can run the fastest, but the line never stretched all the way from the coffee table to the wall. I always needed more animals and dinosaurs.

I had to wait for my mother or father to buy more plastic animals and dinosaurs from the store, but they never bought enough, and sometimes they wouldn't buy any at all. Even if I went to the store with them, and I begged them for more, they didn't always get me the animals and dinosaurs that I needed: No. You have enough elephants. Not today. You don't need any more dinosaurs.

But they were wrong. I didn't have enough elephants and I did need more dinosaurs. And their No s and Not today s would make me feel like exploding, to leave those animals and dinosaurs I needed at the store when I had lines of animals and dinosaurs at home that didn't even reach the wall.

So I decided to stop needing those animals and dinosaurs. The rocks are much better. My mother takes me to the beach almost every day, and I can always find more of the rocks I need there. My mother can even forget to bring my green bucket and that's okay because I can fit twenty-one Big rocks in one pants pocket and forty-eight Small rocks in the other. And if it's cold, and I'm wearing a coat, I can fit twenty-seven Big rocks in one coat pocket and fifty-four Small rocks in the other.

My mother never says No or Not today at the beach. The rocks at the beach are free. I can collect and bring home as many rocks as I need.

There are rules for collecting rocks. They have to be mostly white and mostly smooth and mostly round. I am the judge of what is mostly.

Sometimes I collect a candy-corn-shaped rock, which really isn't round. It's really a triangle. But if it's very smooth and very white, I will collect it. If a rock is really good at being round, but it's a little too yellow or has a few b.u.mps or cracks, I will collect it. My mother would call these exceptions to the rule, but I just call them part of the rule, and that makes it okay.

At home, I like to count them, organize them, and arrange them into lines that stretch across my bedroom floor, the living-room floor, the kitchen, or, if it's warm outside and not too cold or snowing or raining, the deck. The kitchen floor is difficult because of the tiles. I have to think and plan ahead to make sure the entire line will s.p.a.ce out so no rocks fall into the grooves in between the tiles. Every rock has to be on a tile, and I can't break the line with a big s.p.a.ce to jump over a groove, because then I've really made two lines and not one. And I don't like that number two.

The kitchen is also a difficult place to make my rock lines because my mother is usually walking around in there, but I don't notice her until it's too late. She sometimes walks through my line of rocks and kicks some of them out of place, or she tells me to Clean this up and get these rocks out of the way, and in either case the line gets ruined. And if my rock line gets ruined, I get ruined. So I like to line up my rocks somewhere where they and I won't be disturbed or kicked or cleaned up or ruined.

Once I get to know my rocks, they can be lined up in all kinds of ways. They can go by size, from smaller than a pea (these are also usually my roundest and whitest) to the size of my hand (always oval). They can go by smoothness, from no cracks or b.u.mps to cracked and b.u.mpy. They can go by roundness, from perfect sphere through every egg and glob and candy corn to perfect oval.

They can line up by whiteness. People call my rocks Anthony's white rocks, but this isn't fair to call them Anthony's white rocks because it's not the whole truth. A few of my rocks are only white, but most of my rocks are mostly white, which means that there are other colors, like yellow and gray and pink, living inside. If you take the time to get close to them and really see them, you will understand that most of my rocks have more inside them than only white.

I was so excited the day I learned the names for the different mostly whites. On Sunday, August 22, my mother and father were getting ready to paint the wood around the windows and doors, and my mother spread out a bunch of paper tickets across the kitchen table. Each ticket had six rectangles on them, all different mostly whites! Just like my rocks! I was so thrilled to see all those mostly whites!

My mother saw my excitement about the colored rectangles on the tickets, so she pointed to each one and told me their names. Super White. Decorator's White (white with gray). White Dove (white with yellow). Atrium White (white with orange). Antique White (white with yellow and orange).

More yellows: Linen White. Navajo White. Cameo White. Ivory White. Seash.e.l.l. Grays: Bone White. China White. Oxford White. Paper White. Cloud White. Dune White. Blues: Fanfare. Blue Veil. Pinks: White Opulence. Alabaster. White Zinfandel.

I spent the rest of August 22 in my Memory Room, and I memorized the names of all the mostly whites. This made me so happy because now I have names for the colors of my rocks. So I can line up all the Alabaster rocks. Or I can line up all the yellow-white rocks by name. White Dove comes first. Seash.e.l.l comes last.

Today the sky is cloudy. I have made a line of Super White, Cloud White, and Dune White rocks to match the color of the clouds in the sky. The line begins with the smallest pebble rocks at the coffee table and ends with the biggest rocks at the wall. There are 128 rocks in the line. There are 11 Super White rocks, 78 Cloud White rocks, and 39 Dune White rocks; 36 are Small, 80 are Medium, and 12 are Big.

Eleven are Super White and Small, 0 are Super White and Medium, and 0 are Super White and Big. Twenty are Cloud White and Small, 50 are Cloud White and Medium, 8 are Cloud White and Big. Five are Dune White and Small, 30 are Dune White and Medium, and 4 are Dune White and Big.

I lie down with my head on the cold wooden floor at the corner of the coffee table and look down my line of rocks. It's so beautiful. My fingers fill with happy.

My mother sometimes looks at my rock lines and has something to say about them: That one looks like the bones of a dinosaur tail.

That one looks like my pearl necklace.

That one could be a row of clouds in the sky.

I don't know why she says these things about my rock lines. They are rock lines. Sometimes I organize them according to a certain rule. Sometimes I make a line that is all oval or all White Dove (the color painted around our windows and doors) or all Medium. But they are always rock lines. And they are always beautiful.

My mother also says my rocks are very old and came from volcanoes. She says the energy from the ocean water is what made them so smooth. But I think she's making up a funny story because volcanoes make something called lava, which is orange, hot liquid that turns into rock that is black and not white. And I've taken some of the b.u.mpy rocks into the sink and turned the water on them for a long time, and they're not any smoother. So I don't think volcanoes or water made these rocks. I think my mostly white rocks were just born this way.

I move from the corner of the coffee table to the middle of the line. I get down with my eyes on the ground again and look across my line of rocks. It's perfect. I smile and let my eyes go blurry, so the rocks go on forever.

But in the edges of forever, something is happening. Another rock line is forming. I rub my eyes because I think they might be tricking me, making another line of rocks inside my head and not really on the living-room floor. Then I notice a hand. The hand is adding more rocks. I know that hand. That's my mother's hand!

My mother's hand is adding more rocks in a straight line next to my line. Her line contains rocks that are Ivory White, Cameo White, and Linen White and are all Small and mostly round. Her hand stops. The line stops growing. My mother's hand is done. There are 21 rocks in this yellow-white, small, mostly round line.

As I am admiring this new line of rocks, I see my mother's nose and mouth and chin on the floor behind the rocks. I quick look and see my mother's eyes. I put them together and see my mother's face. My mother's face is on the ground just like mine.

Your line of rocks is beautiful, Mom! Does it make you calm and happy, too? Do you love lining up rocks, too?

I wish my voice weren't broken, so I could ask her. But then I look more closely at her mouth, and I see my mother's face is smiling, and I don't need a voice to know her answer.

CHAPTER 25.

It's the beginning of October, a new page on the calendar and the first real chilly day of fall, but the change in season, the shift from summer life to something markedly different, felt as if it happened a month ago. The summer families with school-age children evacuated the island in a ma.s.s exodus immediately after Labor Day. On that Monday holiday, the island was mobbed and bustling as usual, but by Tuesday afternoon, it was eerily empty and quiet, as if the island itself could be heard exhaling. Olivia can now relax again, go to Stop & Shop any day of the week, turn left without waiting several minutes, and walk on the beaches alone; but strangely, just as the influx of summer people had required a large and conscious adjustment, so did their abrupt absence.

A full month after Labor Day, Olivia still finds herself trapped in a funk. She enjoys solitude, prefers it even, but for some reason, when everyone left Nantucket in September, she felt abandoned, like she literally missed the boat. She has no more beach portraits scheduled. The pages of her calendar for October, November, and December are unmarked. She has plenty of photo editing still to do, work that should keep her busy for at least the next month, but she wakes up each morning feeling as if she has nothing to do. No routine. No purpose.

She thinks about Anthony all the time, experiencing vivid sensory flashes of him in unantic.i.p.ated moments. She closes her eyes, and she sees the curl of his hair against his neck, his small hands and fingers that looked exactly like hers, his k.n.o.bby shoulders, the peaceful stillness of his face asleep. She listens to the crickets in the evening, and she hears the sound of his bare feet running across the floor, the melody of his laugh, his eeya-eeya-eeya. She inhales the crisp fall air, and she smells his skin the way it smelled after a day in the sun or after a sudsy bath.

She's still trying to understand the why of it all, praying, still trying to listen for answers from G.o.d with her spirit, still completely unsure of how to do this. She feels like she's trying to smell with her eyes or hear with her nose, or even more impossible, like she's trying to cajole some part of her anatomy or being she's not even sure exists into becoming an antenna, a satellite dish capable of receiving wisdom from heaven. It feels unproductive and more than a little crazy.

Today is a good day though, a distraction from unanswered prayers and aimless solitude. Today she is the a.s.sistant photographer to Roger Kelly at a wedding at the Blue Oyster. Roger is the sought-after wedding photographer on island. His a.s.sistant had some kind of family emergency off-island that left Roger scrambling. Olivia shot the Morgan family beach portrait in July, and Mrs. Morgan is the bride's maid of honor's mother's best friend, and through this last-minute, word-of-mouth reference, Olivia got the job. It's a long day and doesn't pay much, barely more than a portrait session, but she won't have to edit anything, and she's grateful to have something to do.

Roger has asked her to capture the more doc.u.mentary-style, photojournalism shots that are trendy these days, while he makes sure to get the posed, more formal and traditional pictures. He's in charge of the Veggies, she's in charge of Dessert. She scrolls through some of the images already in her camera, pausing and nodding at her favorites. The father of the bride kissing his daughter's cheek. The bride laughing. The groom whispering in his bride's ear. The preschool-age flower girl lifting up the tulle of her dress to see her patent leather Mary Janes.