Love Anthony (26 page)

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

I
t’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 mass 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 unanticipated 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 knobby 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 God 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 assistant photographer to Roger Kelly at a wedding at the Blue Oyster. Roger is
the
sought-after wedding photographer on island. His assistant 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 documentary-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.

The ceremony took place on the Blue Oyster’s modest, man-made beach overlooking the harbor, and the reception is now in full swing on the hotel’s terrace. It’s evening now, and the sky is lit with a bright moon and twinkling stars. A blazing fire in the stone fire pit and outdoor heaters positioned like lampposts among the tables keep the nippy night air from penetrating the edges of the elaborate white tent. Olivia shoots the moon over the harbor, the tea lights and glass bowls filled with cranberries on the white linen tablecloths, the bride’s white-rose bouquet next to a glass of champagne.

The action is now taking place on the dance floor, but Olivia’s attention is drawn to a boy sitting alone at his table for six. He looks to be seven or eight, he has long, surfer-shaggy, blond hair, and he’s dressed in a white shirt, khakis, and boat shoes. He’s adorable. His index fingers are plugged into his ears, his elbows jut out sideways, and he’s rocking back and forth in his seat. Click, click, click. Olivia looks at the LCD display of her camera. His gaze is far-off, unfocused.

The band finishes playing “Love Shack,” and the boy’s mother returns to his table to check on him. She kisses the top of his head. Click. Click. Click. She returns to the dance floor. He continues rocking with his fingers in his ears.

The band is loud. People have to yell to talk. The singer’s voice amplified over the microphone, the thumping bass, a hundred people yelling to be heard, the dancing, the lights, the smell of the fire—it’s all too much. This little boy is fighting
against an onslaught of stimuli, doing his best to block it all out, rocking to create his own stimulus to zone in on, a soothing back-and-forth rhythm, a cradle.

The father comes to the table and sits down next to his boy. Click. Click. Click. The father finishes his drink and stays for another song. The mother returns to the table, sweaty and happy. She says something to her boy. He rocks and doesn’t look at her. She pulls the father by his hand. He smiles. Click. Click. They return to the dance floor.

Olivia feels her stomach tighten and realizes that she’s been holding her breath. She exhales. She’s been here. She’s lived this. That sweet little boy is only going to be able to cope for so long. What is celebration to everyone else is misery to him. None of this is fun for him, and Olivia wishes that his parents had left him home with a babysitter or that they’d call it a night and leave early. But she also understands their desire to include him, to dress him up like any other boy invited to the wedding and bring him along, to risk one more song, to enjoy themselves, to be a whole family here together.

She and David eventually stopped going to weddings and birthdays and holiday parties with Anthony because it was easier and safer to leave him home than to risk what might happen in public. Autism and noisy parties do not mix well, and if this boy’s parents stay too long, it’s not going to end well. At some point, rocking in his seat with his fingers in his ears won’t be enough, and his nervous system is going to freak out, unable to tolerate one more second of this madness. He’ll either melt down or bolt. Fight or flight.

Olivia assumes his parents well know the dice they’re rolling, and while she’s holding her breath again, worried about their boy, she’s also rooting for them, hoping they manage to get through at least one more dance as husband and wife before the fuse on this invisible time bomb detonates, before
their entire world transforms from a lovely evening at a wedding reception to a harrowing escape mission. But for now, they dance, seemingly oblivious to the hissing fuse. Olivia checks her watch, knowing it’s getting late.

The band changes the mood with a slow song. The boy’s father gathers his wife into him, and she snuggles her head into the nook of his neck. The two sway back and forth, pivoting in a small circle, and although they’re surrounded by a crowded dance floor, they appear totally focused on each other, on the singular rhythm they’ve created together, as if no one else exists but them. Click. Click. Click.

Olivia lowers her camera and observes the couple without the mask of her lens between them. A wave of emotion swells in her throat, and she swallows several times to push it back down.

David.

Why couldn’t they do that? Why couldn’t they hold on to each other and block out the world? Why couldn’t they surrender to what they couldn’t control? Why weren’t they brave enough to celebrate a life that included autism? She wanted to, and she thinks she eventually got there, but it took her too long. Just as she was ready to dance, the music stopped playing.

She glances back over at the boy’s table. He’s gone. Panic floods her every cell, paralyzing her for a second, but then a powerful and well-trained instinct kicks in.

Where are the exits? She eyes the door to the hotel that leads to the parking lot. He wants to go home, and the car is how to get there. The car is familiar and safe. Or maybe they’re staying at the hotel. Either way, he’d have to worm through the crowds of people going in and out to use the restrooms, milling around in the loud lobby, by the concierge and the front desk.

She looks the other way, away from the people and the tent
and all the noise, down the lawn, to the windy path that leads to stairs, to the beach, to the harbor. To the water. If Anthony were here and bolted, that’s where he’d go.

Olivia forgets everything and runs. Her heels sink and stick with each step into the soft earth beneath the Blue Oyster lawn, slowing her down. She kicks them off and races barefoot down the cold stone stairs, praying to God that he’ll be there when she rounds the corner and sees the beach.

CHAPTER 26

B
eth is peeking out the kitchen window, watching Jimmy and the girls drive away, feeling left behind. It’s late Saturday afternoon, and Jimmy popped by about an hour ago, said he had the night off, and offered to take the girls for a hike at Bartlett’s Farm and then dinner. She hesitated to allow it at first, not because she had other burning plans for her and the girls, but because she wasn’t included.

When in past months an unannounced Jimmy visit would’ve unnerved or angered her, today she quite enjoyed his company. He wiped his feet on the doormat before coming in the house, he changed the burned-out bulb in the overhead living-room light, he told her he’d line up the chimney sweep, and he asked the girls all kinds of questions about school. And he asked Beth lots of questions about autism and the book she’s writing. He was considerate, useful, and sincerely engaged in conversation.

Before they left, he made a proud point of telling Beth that he’d finished Dr. Campbell’s homework and looked more than a little crushed when she admitted she hadn’t started hers yet. She needs to do the assignment. She knows
she’s been avoiding it. She’s also been avoiding asking herself why she’s avoiding it.

She finds a sheet of printer paper and sits down at the kitchen table. She draws a cross, dividing the paper into four squares, and writes one word at the top of each quadrant:
Wanted. Happy. Safe. Loved
. Her eyes go unfocused as she stares at the page. She taps her teeth with her pen and daydreams for several minutes. She snaps out of it and returns to the task.
Wanted. Happy. Safe. Loved
. Blank. Blank. Blank. Blank.