Love Anthony Part 25

Beth is sitting in her seat at the table in the library with Sophie's laptop opened to the last page of her book. She's rereading the ending. She likes it. It works, but she begrudgingly admits that it doesn't knock her socks off.

But how else would she end it? She taps her teeth with the chewed nail of her index finger and reads it again. She leans back and stares vaguely at the stage and the oil paintings of Th.o.r.eau, Emerson, and Melville on the wall behind it.

You don't have the right ending.

Why should she listen to Olivia? Endings are so subjective. She reads the last chapter again. It's a perfectly reasonable way to end this story.

What purpose did Anthony's life serve?

It is a powerful question, and if Beth is being honest, she can see how she skirted around answering it, how readers might be left wondering after turning the final page. But what's wrong with leaving them wondering? Isn't that a good thing? Leave the reader with something to think about. Resonance.

Beth sighs and pushes the laptop aside. She pulls out a brand-new notebook from her bag and opens it to the first blank page. She taps her teeth with her pen and stares out the window. No one else is here today except for Mary Crawford, who is sitting behind the circulation desk.

The library is hot and quiet and still. The clock ticks. She looks down at her notebook.

Blank.

She doesn't need to write any more. The ending she chose is good enough. Even if she does write another ending, it might not provide Olivia with the answer she wants. Beth can't guarantee that. She caps her pen and closes the notebook, but she doesn't leave. She stares out the window, debating with herself, listening to the ticking clock.

You don't have the right ending yet.

The ending you wrote is fine.

What was the purpose of Anthony's life?

Maybe there's a lesson in the story for you.

Jimmy.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

She stretches her arms up over her head and arches her back. She plants her feet on the floor, sits in her seat a little straighter, opens her notebook, and uncaps her pen. She stares down at the blank page.

Blank.

She hasn't b.u.mped up against this kind of resistance since she first started writing here all those months ago. But here it is again, feeling bigger than ever, a fifty-foot brick wall standing between her and the possibility of a new ending. Maybe there is nothing left to write.

What was the purpose of Anthony's life?

Tick. Tick. Tick.

"Hey, Anthony. Do you have anything more to say here?" she whispers.

She holds her breath and listens.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

No voice from another dimension. She exhales, feeling relieved. But then something does come to her, a question asked in her own voice.

What's the purpose of my life?

And then a thought barrels through her mind, big and full of confidence, not composed of sound or an image in her mind's eye, but knowing, ethereal, yet as real and sure as the chair she's sitting in-the answer to her question.

They are one and the same.

She closes her eyes and breathes. She breathes to the rhythm of the ticking clock, and soon both seem to slow down and stretch out. She pictures the fifty-foot brick wall of resistance towering over her in her mind's eye, but instead of trying to scale it or knock it down, she imagines walking along it. She smiles as she a.s.sesses the wall from this new perspective. That impossibly tall wall is only a few feet wide. She strolls around it, and standing there before her in front of a pure blue sky, looking straight into her eyes and smiling, is Anthony. She mirrors his smile and nods.

She opens her eyes and picks up her pen, feeling suddenly and powerfully inspired as her hand flies across the page.

CHAPTER 38.

Olivia awakens still tired to yet another dark gray morning, not thinking yet, not realizing what day it is. She lingers in a steaming-hot shower, gets dressed, and then sits at the kitchen table with a book and a cup of coffee, like any other morning. Not until she drains the last sip does today's date slap her across the face.

January tenth. And any semblance of a normal day evaporates in that realization.

Like today, January tenth two years ago started as a typical morning. It was a Sunday. Anthony got up first, and Olivia followed him downstairs. He parked himself on the couch in front of Barney while she got coffee and breakfast started, and David took a shower.

She toasted three French Toast sticks and served them with maple syrup on Anthony's blue plate. She arranged his plate, his grape juice, a napkin, and a fork on the kitchen table at Anthony's seat and went back upstairs to take a shower while David was still home. By the time she dressed and came back downstairs, Anthony had eaten his breakfast and David had downed his coffee. David said good-bye and left for an open house at least a couple of hours before he really needed to go, part of his daily practice of avoiding her.

Anthony was now upstairs in the master bathroom, playing with water in the sink. It was their typical weekend routine. After breakfast, Anthony played with water in the sink while Olivia cleaned up the dishes, drank a cup of coffee, and read some of the Globe. She'd long ago stopped chaperoning him in the bathroom while he played. He knew not to use the tub without her there. Tubby time was at night, and he understood that rule. He liked rules.

And he was finally potty-trained. He typically peed before breakfast, and he normally didn't need to go again until after lunch. So while he played in the bathroom in the mornings, she didn't worry about his using the toilet or p.o.o.p and all the unsavory adventures that often came with p.o.o.p.

This was what they did every weekend. She drank her coffee and read the paper, and Anthony played in the sink. He loved to run the cold water over his hands. He loved to fill a large plastic cup and dump the water down the drain over and over and over. He also loved to close the stopper and fill the sink. Then he'd scoop some water into his cup and pour it back in, water into water.

He also loved shampoo. She bought lots of travel-size bottles of shampoo for him and made sure to keep her expensive bottles hidden and out of reach. He'd take off his s.h.i.+rt first. He liked to empty the entire bottle into the sink and make bubbles. He also liked to rub the shampoo on his arms and body. He liked the feel of his skin wet and slippery with liquid soap.

When she was done with her cup of coffee, she'd go upstairs to his room, grab his clothes, go into the bathroom, hand Anthony a dry towel, and tell him that it was time to get dressed. Then they'd go to the bottom step, and she'd help him get into his clothes.

On January tenth, two years ago, she drank her morning cup of coffee and read the paper while Anthony played with water in the bathroom and David hid from her at work. Maybe if she'd drunk her coffee faster. Maybe if David had stayed home longer. Maybe if she hadn't been absorbed in reading the paper.

The taste of this morning's coffee still lingers in her mouth, a taste she loves, but it's suddenly too bitter, foul, nauseating. She rushes to the bathroom and retches over the sink. She brushes her teeth, rinses her mouth with mouthwash, then sits on the cold bathroom floor.

She drank that cup of coffee two years ago in complete peace and quiet. She was reading the Arts section when something about the silence radiating from upstairs crawled under her skin and screamed. She put the paper down and listened. She heard nothing out of the ordinary, just the sound of water running in the pipes.

He's fine, she thought, then the second she finished thinking it, she heard a thud.

THUD. Too big, too heavy, too loud to be a travel bottle of shampoo or a plastic cup full of water. She doesn't remember anything between the kitchen chair and the bathroom. She remembers THUD, then instantly there was Anthony, lying on the tile floor, seizing.

She now peels herself up off the bathroom floor. She gets bundled in her winter coat, hat, and boots and heads outside for a walk, trying to evade the memory of what happened next. Maybe if she keeps moving, maybe if she's not sitting in one easily found, stationary spot, maybe the memories from the rest of that morning won't invade her.

It works at first. She focuses on walking, on bracing herself against the painful cold, leaning into the biting wind. But soon she is literally numb to the weather, and everything she walks past is gray-the houses, the streets, the trees, the sky. Walking becomes one long, familiar, gray, numb blur, not enough to keep her mind and body distracted. And the memories begin marching through her.

Anthony lying on the bathroom floor. Anthony's eyes rolled back in his head. His toes curled. Every muscle in his small, s.h.i.+rtless, pajama-bottomed body squeezing him, shaking him, distorting him.

She'd seen him like that once before when he was four. Just before it happened, he had an odd, blank look on his face. He was staring off at nothing, more so than usual, and he looked sort of washed-out. Then he dropped to the floor, unconscious, his whole body gripped tight and shuddering. It lasted about a minute, a completely terrifying, hour-long minute. Then it released him, and he came to about a minute later, drained but okay.

She and David were both there when it happened. David called 911, and she rode in the ambulance with Anthony while David followed in his car to Children's Hospital. Anthony had an EEG and some other tests she doesn't remember. The neurologist said Anthony had a seizure. He said that seizures are common with autism, that about a third of kids with autism also have epilepsy. He said that seizures are usually controlled well by medication and that Anthony might never have another one.

She watched him like a nervous hawk for a long time after that, but Anthony didn't have another episode. She relaxed and convinced herself that the seizing was gone for good, that it was a onetime fluke. Finally, they were lucky.

The experience of that first seizure when Anthony was four did nothing to prepare her for the sight of this one. This seizure was different. It kept going. One rolled into the next, each one gripping him tighter, shaking him harder. As if someone were adding kindling to a fire, the blaze kept growing bigger, hotter, brighter.

She tucked a towel under his head, unaware that he'd already banged it against the porcelain tile floor with way too much force, and watched in helpless horror. Then it released him. The seizing stopped, and he just lay there. His eyes were still rolled back. His feet were splayed. His lips weren't pink enough. His lips were purple. Purple turning blue.

Anthony!

As she wrapped her arms around him, she felt his limp wrists and his neck with her fingers. She couldn't feel anything. She put her ear on his slippery, wet chest. She thinks that's when she started screaming.

She called 911. She doesn't remember what she told them. She doesn't remember what they said to do.

She pinched his nose and began breathing into him.

Breathe!

She pressed on his small, naked chest with her hands the way she'd first been taught as a teenager on a lifeless doll named Annie.

Anthony, breathe!

Then there were two men. The firefighters. They took over. A bag on Anthony's mouth, a large man repeatedly pus.h.i.+ng the heels of his large hands down on Anthony's chest. She remembers thinking, Stop! You're hurting him!

Then two more people. Anthony on a board. Anthony down the stairs. Anthony on a stretcher. Another man, bigger than David, straddled over Anthony, sitting on his knees, pumping Anthony's chest over and over with his hands. Violent. Unrelenting. A bag squeezed over Anthony's mouth. All while they were moving. Two men carrying Anthony and the big man on the stretcher out the front door to the ambulance in the driveway.

The images are surreal and all too vivid. Even as she's remembering each moment now, reliving that morning and crying as she walks, it still feels unbelievable, as if it couldn't have happened. She walks faster.

She sat in the front of the ambulance, facing backward, trying to see Anthony, to see what they were doing to him, trying to will him to breathe, to open his eyes.

Anthony, look at me.

She doesn't remember calling David, but she must've. Or someone did. He was there, standing next to her in the ER hallway when a short, balding, bird-nosed man, replaced in her mind's eye with the image of her grandfather who was similarly small and bald, approached them.

I'm sorry is all she remembers before the sound of her own voice screaming. The sound of her own voice screaming is the last thing she remembers with any clarity for the rest of January tenth.

She's on her third loop through her neighborhood, circling the same gray, empty houses and gray, barren fields, with no intention of altering her route or going home. She pauses only once each time around, in front of Beth Ellis's house.

The black truck and blue minivan are both in the driveway, and the lights are on. Beth's home. Olivia stands in the street in front of the house, desperate to ring the doorbell. She hasn't seen or heard from Beth since that morning in her living room. But each time she pa.s.ses by, she talks herself out of it. She's in no condition to talk sensibly to anyone.

Not today.

She walks the loop three more times and stops. She's freezing and exhausted. She checks her watch.

My G.o.d, it's only noon.

Twelve more hours of January tenth. She can't walk anymore. She has to go home.

On her way, she takes a quick detour over to her mailbox. She pulls out a couple of bills, a catalog, and a manila envelope with only her first name on it and no postage. She shoves the other mail back into the box, and with a scared and hopeful heart she opens the envelope.

In her hands, she holds a thin stack of printer paper, stapled together at the top left corner. The top piece of paper is blank, but a pink Post-it note is stuck to the middle of the page.

Olivia- For you and for me.

Thank you, Beth She pulls the sticky note off the page, revealing a single word.

Epilogue.

CHAPTER 39.

Today is a Sunday-brunch book club at Jill's house. It was Beth's turn, but Jill insisted on hosting. Beth is early, the first to arrive. Jill walks her into the dining room.

"What do you think?" asks Jill, beaming, antic.i.p.ating Beth's reaction.

Beth surveys the room. Blue dinner plates on blue-and-white gingham place mats. A white bookmark lying on the center of each plate. A single, large, smooth, white rock placed on top of each folded blue linen napkin. A large gla.s.s-vase centerpiece packed with purple tulips sitting in the middle of a round metal tray covered with small, white stones. Skinny champagne flutes. A gla.s.s pitcher of orange juice and a pot of coffee. The food on the side table-a bowl of mixed berries, bagels and cream cheese, some kind of egg ca.s.serole, bacon, and French Toast sticks.

"It's spectacular," says Beth. "You're amazing. Thank you for doing this."

Jill waves off the compliment and excuses herself to tend to something still cooking in the kitchen. Beth chooses a seat and picks up the homemade bookmark on her plate.

Reading Group Guide followed by ten questions created by Jill, printed in an elegant calligraphy font. Beth smiles.

They were here in Jill's dining room for book club this time last year. This time last year, they talked about Jimmy's affair and her separation instead of the book. She remembers that night as if it were yesterday and a million years ago. She remembers feeling terrified, humiliated, sick with worry, and drunk on vodka. She thought that night was the beginning of the end of everything.

What a difference a year makes.

The front door opens.

"h.e.l.lo?" someone calls.

"Come in!" hollers Jill from the kitchen.

A few seconds later, Courtney and Georgia come into the dining room. They pause for the slightest moment, taking in the spread and Beth. They look ready to burst, like children absorbing the sight of presents beneath the tree on Christmas morning.