Love Anthony Part 2

It's predawn and still dark out. Not pitch-black the way it is on Nantucket nights that are moonless and starless, when she can't see her hand in front of her nose. The world around her is colored like a photographic blueprint, an antic.i.p.ation-of-morning shade of blue-gray. But it's also foggy, which is typical at this early hour, especially near the sh.o.r.e, and the lack of visibility makes it seem darker than it really is. Even with the headlights of her Jeep on and the windshield wipers flapping as fast as they can, Olivia is having a hard time seeing where she's going. She drives slowly, carefully. She's in no hurry.

The Wauwinet Gatehouse is empty. She parks the Jeep, gets out, and releases air from all four tires to 12 psi. She climbs back in and continues, the road changing now from pavement to sand. The sand turns soft, and her Jeep dips, bounces, and sways as she inches along. The fog is even thicker here. She can see nothing to either side and only a few feet in front of her.

Maybe a little over four miles into this drive-she can't be sure, not having seen any landmarks along the way-the path is blocked by fencing. Vehicles are restricted from further progress down the beach, an effort to protect the endangered piping plovers who might unwittingly nest in the tire tracks. She parks her Jeep at the fence and gets out.

She hikes through deep, smooth, wind-caressed sand along the ocean that she can hear and smell but not see, the fog still obscuring everything. It can't be far now. She pulls a flashlight from her coat pocket and aims it in front of her, but the beam of light scatters, diffusing among the water molecules suspended in the air, proving useless. She presses on. She knows where she's going.

When the soft give of the sand changes to firm ground, wet from an earlier high tide, she exhales with relief. Each step is finally easy to take. Despite the cold, she's sweating, and her leg muscles burn. She licks her lips, enjoying the taste of sea salt. Still unable to see the water, she knows it's directly in front of her now and is disappointed that she can't see the lighthouse, which must be only a few feet from her path, hidden behind the wall of fog.

Great Point Light has been destroyed twice, once by fire and once by storm, rebuilt both times. A seventy-foot, cylindrical tower of white stone, it stands resilient and majestic on this fragile pile of sand, where the Atlantic Ocean meets Nantucket Sound, its existence continually threatened by erosion and gale-force winds. Surviving.

Aside from the gulls and maybe a few piping plovers, she expects to be alone here. From May to September, she imagines this seven-mile stretch of beach is probably crawling with four-wheel-drive vehicles, hikers, families led on natural-history tours, people on vacation. But on March seventeenth, no one is here. She's alone, thirty miles of water separating her from Cape Cod to the north and about thirty-five hundred miles of ocean between where she stands and Spain to the east. It's the closest place to nowhere that she can think of. And nowhere is exactly where she wants to be today.

In the past, not that long ago, being this far away from anyone or anything else would not have been appealing to her. More than that, it would've scared her. A woman alone on a secluded beach, miles from anyone who might hear her if she needed help-like most girls, she'd been taught to avoid this kind of situation. But now, she's not only unafraid, she prefers it. She's not worried for a second about being raped or murdered out here alone on Great Point. Walking through safe, suburban Hingham, surrounded by ordinary people doing everyday things-that was what had been killing her.

The chips-and-snacks aisle in the grocery store. A Little League baseball game in progress. St. Christopher's Church. Escalators at the mall. Her old friends blessed with typical children, one innocently bragging about her daughter in the school play, another una.s.sumingly complaining that third-grade math isn't challenging enough for her son. She avoids them all.

All of those places and people and things are charged, filled with memories of Anthony or the Anthony she prayed for or the Anthony that might have been. And they all have the potential to turn her inside out in an instant, to make her cry, hide, scream, curse G.o.d, stop breathing, go insane. Any and sometimes all of the above.

She would drive many blocks out of her way to the bank or the gas station so she wouldn't have to lay eyes on her church. She stopped answering the phone. Last summer at the grocery store, she noticed a boy she guessed was about Anthony's age walking alongside his mother. Olivia was fine until the chips-and-snacks aisle, when the boy asked, Mom, can we get these? He was holding up a can of salt-and-vinegar Pringles, Anthony's favorite. Without warning, all of the oxygen vanished from the store. She was paralyzed, gulping for air, drowning in panic. As soon as she could move, she ran from the store, abandoning her cart full of food, and cried in her car for almost an hour before she could collect herself enough to drive home. She hasn't stepped foot in the chips-and-snacks aisle since. It isn't safe there.

The world is littered with traps like salt-and-vinegar Pringles that swallow her whole, which would be fine with her except that they eventually spit her back out and say, Carry on, now. Everyone wants her to carry on now. Carry on. Move on. She doesn't want to. She wants to be here, alone on Great Point, far away from all the traps. Standing still, moving nowhere.

She squats down and writes Happy Birthday Anthony with her index finger in the wet sand. He would've been ten today.

She remembers the day he was born. His birth was uncomplicated but long. She'd wanted a natural childbirth, but after twenty hours of painful and unproductive labor, she surrendered and asked for an epidural. Two hours, a hint of Pitocin, and six pushes later, Anthony was born. Pinkish purple, the color of petunias, calm and wide-eyed. She loved him instantly. He was beautiful and full of promise, her baby boy who would someday play Little League baseball, star in the school play, and be good at math. She didn't know then that she should've had much simpler dreams for her beautiful son, that she should've looked upon her newborn baby boy and thought, I hope you learn to talk and use the bathroom by the time you're seven.

His first couple of birthdays were normal-cakes she chose and bought at the bakery, candles that Olivia blew out, presents that she and David opened and acted overly delighted and animated about. But he was only one and two years old, so this was to be expected. After two, birthdays began deviating further and further away from normal.

Anthony stopped getting invited to other kids' birthday parties when he was four, and when he turned five, she and David followed in turn, hosting private celebrations, family only. It was easier this way. Anthony didn't partic.i.p.ate in the party games or pay attention to the birthday clown anyway. It still broke her heart.

And while the maturing interests of other little boys his age were reflected in the party themes with each pa.s.sing year-from Elmo to Bob the Builder to Spider-Man to Star Wars-Anthony had and was perfectly pleased with a Barney birthday year after year. Sure, she could've gone with another character. But there was no point in pretending that he loved superheroes or robots or ninjas. He loved Barney, and there wouldn't be any other little boys at his parties to tease him for loving a purple dinosaur.

So each year, Olivia and David lit the candles on his Barney cake and sang "Happy Birthday." Then she'd say, Come on, Anthony! Make a wish and blow out your candles! And then he wouldn't, so she'd blow them out for him. She always made a wish, the same one every year.

Please don't get older. You have to talk before you get any older. You have to say "Mom" and "Dad" and "I'm six years old" and "I want to go to the playground today" and "I love you, Mom" before we put another d.a.m.n Barney cake on the kitchen table. Please stop getting older. We're running out of time.

She never stopped wishing.

They went through the motions every year, but his birthday was not a fun day for her or David. Instead of celebrating like other parents whom she imagined and so pa.s.sionately envied and sometimes hated, instead of marveling over the past year and how much her child had changed and grown, she and David felt only unspoken dread and desperation on Anthony's birthday. March seventeenth was the one day each year when they were forced to stare the severity of Anthony's autism straight in the eye, to be fully cognizant of how much progress he hadn't made. When she shopped for his present and considered toys for age five-plus or ages five and up, she would be forced to admit to herself that these toys would hold no interest for him, that he couldn't possibly play with any of them. There it was, printed on too many Fisher-Price boxes-Anthony was impossibly behind for his age.

So she would buy him an educational toy recommended by Carlin, his applied-behavioral-a.n.a.lysis therapist, or a new Barney video, or one year she wrapped a can of salt-and-vinegar Pringles. Pringles always made him happy. But the gift he loved the most each year was the card.

When he was four, she bought him the first of countless musical greeting cards. This one was a Hoops & Yoyo. She showed him first. He watched, pretending not to look. She opened the card. A song played and the characters sang. She shut the card. The music and the singing stopped.

To this day, she remembers his face, wondrous and joyful with the unexpected discovery of a new fascination, like when he found light switches. He opened the card. Music. He shut it. No music. Open. Music. Shut. No music. These cards were heaven to Anthony. The same song every time it's opened, the same music; everything the card did was predictable and entirely under his control.

He'd spend the rest of the day smiling and squealing and flapping his hands as he opened, shut, opened, shut, opened, shut. That's all he wanted every year. Unlimited time alone with his card. So this is what she and David gave to him.

She wonders how David is doing, if he's awake yet, realizing the date, thinking about Anthony. She hopes he finds comfort today. Her heart aches thinking this, wishing she could be this to him. But she can't. Comfort doesn't exist within her, and she can't offer what she doesn't have. He doesn't have it either. They know this.

Olivia sits on the beach, waiting for sunrise, listening to a gull squawking above her, sounding like laughter. The tide is coming in. With each pulse of waves, she watches as a little more of Happy Birthday Anthony washes away, until it's pulled into the sea entirely. Wiped clean, as if it never existed. If she still believed in G.o.d, she would ask Him to send her birthday note written in sand to her son in heaven. But she doesn't ask for this. These are only words scratched in sand with her finger, swallowed by the ocean.

In front of her feet, she writes I love you and waits. The water comes, steady and sure, pooling and bubbling into each letter. The words wash away, reaching no one.

The fog has started to lift, and the day begins to lighten. The metallic-gray ocean tumbles out in front of her. The lighthouse materializes to her left. The next wave crashes, dissolving into a bed of fizzing foam, and deposits a single white, round rock at her feet. Her heart stalls, then quickens. She squats down, picks up the beautiful, smooth stone, and rolls it inside her hand.

Anthony.

I miss you, my sweet boy.

The sun rises, glowing pink on the horizon over the ocean, the color of petunias, beautiful and full of promise.

CHAPTER 5.

Beth and Petra are sitting in Jill's living room, waiting for Courtney and Georgia. It's book club night, but Courtney teaches yoga on Thursday evenings, and her cla.s.s doesn't get over until six thirty, so they know she'll be running a bit late. And Georgia is always late. Jill knows this, but she's still irritated. She's holding them in the living room until everyone arrives because she wants the entire group to see the dining room at the same time. She's imagining a grand entrance.

Beth is growing antsy, too. Petra's planning on outing her tonight, and Beth is feeling less and less certain about this decision each time Jill sighs. It's not that she doesn't want her girlfriends to know that Jimmy's having an affair and has moved out. She doesn't want the whole island to know. And they will-Len, the school princ.i.p.al; Patty, the checkout woman at Stop & Shop; Lisa, Beth's hairdresser; Jessica's basketball coach.

But Petra's right. Beth needs to stand tall in her truth, draw strength from the collective love of her friends, and something else. Another plat.i.tude from Petra's pep talk earlier today sounded good at the time. Beth can't remember it now. Petra reads a lot of inspirational books. She also reads tarot cards and sees a shaman once a month instead of a regular therapist. A lot of people on the island think Petra's a little cuckoo. While Beth agrees that Petra can lean a bit eccentric, she also believes Petra possesses an inner wisdom that most people never know, a spiritual center that Beth admires and is drawn to and is certain that she herself lacks.

Plus, honesty, friendship, and New Age mumbo jumbo aside, it's nothing short of a miracle that Jimmy's affair isn't public knowledge already anyway. Beth knows. Petra knows. Jimmy and Angela know that Beth knows, so they're probably less careful now. Someone from the restaurant must know. And that someone will sooner or later tell someone who will tell Jill or Courtney or Jessica's basketball coach.

And the girls now know that he's moved out. Sophie was the first to notice that Dad wasn't inhabiting any of his usual spots-the bed, the couch, his cigar chair. Where's Dad? turned out to be a harder question to answer than What's s.e.x? or Have you ever smoked pot? Beth teetered her way through her answer, purposefully keeping the explanation short and vague (and honest-she doesn't know exactly where he is either), a vain attempt to protect them from having the kind of father who would cheat on their mother. So the girls know that he's not living at home, but they don't know the ugly reason. Yet. Sadly, their father is, in fact, cheating on their mother, and it's only a matter of time before everyone on Nantucket, including his three beautiful daughters, knows it.

Beth picks up the copy of Nantucket Life from Jill's coffee table and thumbs through it, hoping for distraction while Jill frets about how late it's getting. Beth agrees. It's taking too long to get started. She feels like she's in the waiting room at her dentist's office, knowing that she needs to get her teeth cleaned and that they'll look and feel great when she's done, but the waiting around gives her anxiety and her memory too much time to play together. She'll begin to fixate on the antic.i.p.ated sound of the metal instruments sc.r.a.ping against her teeth, the throbbing soreness in her gums, the shame she feels when the hygienist scolds her for not flossing enough, the taste of latex and blood in her mouth. If she has to wait more than ten minutes for the hygienist to call out her name, it takes every ounce of self-control she possesses not to leave for another six months.

Her hygienist and dentist are going to know that Jimmy is cheating on her.

Beth tries to forget about Jimmy and her dentist and what she and Petra talked about earlier and focus on Jill. She's telling them a story about Mickey's latest transplant project. Jill's husband, Mickey, runs his own construction company. The most incredible jobs he contracts aren't new construction or elaborate additions, but the moving of existing homes a few critical feet. The historic cottages and mansions positioned on the cliffs in 'Sconset are all in imminent danger of tumbling over with the eroding edge, as if each home were sitting on a piece of pie, and every year Mother Nature carves out another bite with her fork. Mickey's crew can miraculously move an entire house back, one hundred feet, four hundred feet, but eventually the owner will run out of frontage. The front door will be at the road. There'll be nothing left but crust, and Mother Nature will still be hungry.

Mickey's now transplanting a seven-bedroom monstrosity on Baxter Road, but this one's different. The owners recently bought the house directly across the street. Mickey's crew razed it, and now they're moving the cliff house to the other side of Baxter, to an entirely new piece of pie. Only on Nantucket.

"Crazy, huh? Mickey says if he lives long enough, he'll move that house again," says Jill.

"This is why I live mid-island," says Petra, who lives mid-island because that's where she grew up and because she can't afford to live closer to the ocean.

It's a good story, but Beth is now busy testing out the believability of different exit strategies in her head and can barely keep her b.u.t.t on the couch. I forgot my book. Gracie's not feeling well. I'm not feeling well.

Petra, who is sitting next to Beth and somehow senses her approaching flight, reaches over and discreetly slides Beth's hand between their laps. She squeezes it, firmly but not too hard, offering both comfort and an anchor. I love you, and you're not going anywhere.

They hear a perfunctory knock at the door, and then Courtney and Georgia enter at the same time, a study in contrasts. Courtney's round, makeup-less face is flushed pink, her hair is loosely gathered into a ponytail high on her head, her hairline is wet with sweat. She's wearing a lavender tank top under an unzipped thrift-shop winter coat, black cotton yoga pants, and flip-flops. She has her book in hand. Bright and smiling, she takes a seat on the couch on the other side of Beth, her energy floating into the room along with her, landing softly, like an airy, white dandelion puff blown in on a gentle breeze. She smells of patchouli.

Georgia, on the other hand, is hurried and harried, wearing smoky evening eye shadow, lipstick, and bold, dangling gold earrings, clomping in on her black business heels, struggling against the weight of the stuffed leather laptop bag on her shoulder, cursing the latest bridezilla who kept her on the phone for forty-five minutes agonizing over aisle runner choices, peeling off hat and gloves and scarf and coat as she apologizes for being late. If Courtney is a wispy seed sailing in on a warm breeze, Georgia is a tree limb snapped by a hurricane wind, crashing to the earth. It's hard to imagine from the sight of them that Courtney and Georgia are best friends, but they are.

Relieved and now called to action, Jill excuses herself and runs into her kitchen. Before Georgia can sit down, Jill returns, claps her hands twice like a schoolteacher demanding her cla.s.s's attention, and ushers the group into her dining room. Georgia is the first to gasp, then they all do. Jill beams, delighting in all the oohs and aahs, gratified to have elicited the exact reaction she'd imagined.

The book this month takes place in postWorld War II j.a.pan, and clearly Jill was inspired by this setting. An origami animal sits on the center of each plate-a purple crane, a white swan, an orange tiger, a green turtle, a gray elephant. A gob of green wasabi and a neat pile of fleshy, pink ginger are placed to the right of each paper animal, and each plate is flanked by a pair of chopsticks and a tiny bowl filled with soy sauce. White tea lights are scattered around the room, and two bottles of sake are on the table. California, salmon, and tuna rolls are displayed on an oval platter at the center of it all.

"Wow, Jill. Tell me you didn't roll these yourself," says Courtney.

"Of course she did," says Georgia.

"I did," admits Jill.

"And did you make these, too?" asks Courtney, holding up a purple paper crane.

"It wasn't hard. They have simple directions on the Internet," says Jill.

"It wasn't hard for you. You're amazing," says Courtney. "You must've been preparing all day."

"It didn't take that long," says Jill, taking great pleasure in all the fuss.

"You could do this for a living," says Beth.

Jill's been a stay-at-home mom for sixteen years, and she certainly doesn't need to work as long as Mickey keeps moving houses, but it's not a bad idea. She could hire herself out to the wealthy summer residents, hosting lavish book club parties. They'd love her.

"Okay, now everyone choose a seat. Each place card has the name of one of the characters, so you'll-"

"We're not talking about the book tonight," says Petra.

Beth's stomach tightens. She wishes she could at least down a gla.s.s of sake before they dive into this.

"What?" Jill smiles nervously. "Of course we are."

"No, we're not," says Petra.

Petra is five years younger than the youngest of them, but she's without question the alpha male of the group. The oldest of seven children, daughter of Polish immigrants, and owner of Dish, one of Nantucket's most beloved restaurants, Petra is tough and bossy and will say with a shameless, crooked smile that she comes by it naturally. But she's also fair-minded, and there's not a nasty bone in her tall body. If anyone can derail Jill's book club extravaganza without tears or a friendship-ending argument, it's Petra.

"And we need something stronger than sake. You have any vodka?" asks Petra.

"But that's not j.a.panese," says Jill, still trying to resist the suggestion of deviating in any way from the book's theme.

"Jimmy's cheating on Beth with the hostess at Salt, and he moved out," says Petra.

Again, Georgia is the first to gasp. Jill turns to Beth and absorbs the fear and apology in Beth's eyes. Without another word about j.a.pan, she walks into her kitchen and returns to the table with a bottle of Triple Eight vodka in one hand and a bottle of Ocean Spray cranberry juice in the other.

"Will this do?" she asks as she sits down.

"Perfect," says Petra, and she begins pouring vodka into winegla.s.ses, leaving little room for juice. "Show them the card."

Beth pulls the card and envelope out from her book and obediently pa.s.ses them to Georgia.

"Oh, Beth," says Georgia after reading the card and pa.s.sing it along to Courtney. "This is from the hostess at Salt? Who is she?"

"Angela Melo," says Beth.

"I don't know her," says Jill, skeptical of there being anyone on Nantucket whom she doesn't know.

"She's only been here a couple of years. She's from Brazil. Came over with her sister as summer help," says Petra. "They applied for jobs at Dish, but I couldn't use them."

"I don't know her either," says Courtney. "How long has this been going on?"

"Since July," says Beth.

"Oh my G.o.d, Beth," says Jill.

"I know," says Beth.

She takes a big gulp of vodka from her winegla.s.s. It's warm, it doesn't have enough cranberry juice, and it scorches the back of her throat. The sake would've been better. Talking about the book would've been better. She tips down another big gulp.

"I told you not to let him work at Salt," says Georgia. "That place is too s.e.xy. The music, those martinis. Even I want to have s.e.x with someone after I've spent an hour in that place."

Jimmy used to scallop from October to March and bartend a few shifts here and there over the summers when scalloping is prohibited. But he never actually needed to bartend. Nantucket scallopers used to make great money. He bartended mostly to stay busy, not because he had to. Jimmy made a proud and reliable living over the years, and Beth enjoyed having him around for summer vacations with the kids.

But the scallops started disappearing from the harbor a few years ago. Then, in a frighteningly short amount of time, they were essentially gone, and Jimmy was essentially out of a job. He blames the McMansion owners with their lush, green carpet lawns laced with fertilizers that leach into the harbor, poisoning the aquatic infrastructure, killing the scallops and G.o.d knows what else.

He continued to bartend part-time in the summer, but he had no work in the winter, and for a while they had a hard time paying their bills. Jimmy moped around the house, frustrated and in denial, still hoping for the scallops to make an unlikely comeback. Then, a little over two years ago, Salt asked him to work there full-time, year-round. Year-round work of any kind is a rare and precious gem on Nantucket, and they desperately needed the money, so Jimmy the scalloper became a bartender at Salt.

"How long have you known?" asks Georgia.

"About a month," says Beth.

The longest month of her life. She's seen Jimmy three times since he'd moved out, all unannounced visits. He came by once in the morning, after the girls were already in school but before she'd had a chance to shower, to retrieve a pair of work shoes. The other two times, he came over in the evening. He milled around in the kitchen, talked to the girls, never sat down, asked if he had any phone messages. He never has any phone messages.

Each time he showed up, her heart lifted, hoping, almost a.s.suming that he was there to tell her that he was sorry, that he'd been crazy, that he didn't want to live without her and the girls, that he wanted to come home. But he never said any of this, so her heart felt stupid and betrayed all over again. She faked indifference toward him, acting nonchalant as she peeled potatoes at the sink while he chatted with Jessica, pretending to be absorbed in a book while he b.u.mped around the house searching for his shoes (not a chance in h.e.l.l that she was going to fetch them for him, and she knew exactly where they were).

Whenever she's home now, she finds herself glancing out the windows, listening for noise in the driveway, straining her vision and her hearing, holding her breath, even checking herself out in the mirrors, making sure she looks okay, just in case. She hates not knowing when he's going to show up next. Even more, she hates that he a.s.sumes he can simply walk through the front door whenever he wants, day or night. What if she's busy? What if it's not a good time? What if she starts having an affair, too? He can't just waltz in anymore. He moved out. She hates him for moving out. But what undoes her the most, when she allows an unguarded and honest moment to settle over her while she's peeling potatoes or looking out the window, is the thought that at some point he might never walk through the front door again.

"Do you know her?" asks Jill.

"No," says Beth.

"You haven't been to Salt yet to check her out?" asks Georgia.

"G.o.d no!" says Beth.

"I'd be dying to know who she is. You don't want to be in line with her at the bank and not know it. We should all go together and give her the evil eye. Petra, you and your witch doctor should put some kind of curse on her," says Georgia.