She nods and wipes the tears from her face. “And now Anthony is gone, and his father and I are getting divorced, and there’s nothing left. There’s nothing.”
“There is you, and there is God.”
“So where is He then? Where has He been for the past ten years?”
“I know it can be difficult to keep faith. These kinds of hardships can either strengthen our faith or destroy it. Even Jesus on the cross said, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ As difficult as it can be for us human beings to comprehend, He is always present.”
“I feel completely alone.”
“You’re not alone. God is with you.”
“I don’t hear any answers to my questions.”
“You won’t hear Him with your ears. You have to listen with your heart, with your spirit. His answers are there, within you.”
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head.
“Keep asking your questions. Keep communing with God and try listening with your spirit.”
She nods, but she’s skeptical and unsure of what exactly she’s agreeing to. She thanks Father Doyle for his time and tells him that she has to leave. He puts his hand on her shoulder and tells her to come and see him anytime.
She walks past the altar, past her three lit candles, and back outside. The bright sunlit day assaults her vision, forcing her to squint her eyes shut and wait. And in those few seconds with her eyes closed, she pictures Anthony—his uncut brown hair, his deep brown eyes, the joy in his smile. She smiles, loving him.
Then, before she descends the church steps, she thinks. If she can see Anthony without her eyes, maybe she can hear God without her ears.
God, why was Anthony here? Why did he have autism?
She opens her eyes and tries to listen with her spirit as she walks onto the crowded sidewalk below her.
CHAPTER 17
Beth showers and dresses and makes pancakes for breakfast. She packs three lunches, washes the table and the dishes, and waters the plants. She drops the girls off at the community center, drives downtown, and finds a parking space on India Street without a problem, grateful as she always is that tourists sleep late. Everything about this morning is typical until she enters the library. And then everything is different.
Someone is sitting in her seat.
The offender is an older woman, at least seventy, with short, brilliant white hair and thick glasses attached to a beaded chain looped around her neck. Pencil in hand, she’s working on what appears to be a Sudoku puzzle. Balls of yarn, knitting needles, and a paperback peek out from the top of a quilted bag on the floor next to her. Good God, this woman could be parked here all day. Here in Beth’s seat.
Of course, Beth understands that the chair doesn’t belong to her. It’s not “her seat.” But she’s sat in this chair every morning since she began coming here to write at the beginning of the summer. She likes sitting with her back against the stacks of books, facing the window, able to see the clock. She likes the left corner of the table, with plenty of room to her right to spread out her notebooks and papers and laptop. And if she’s being honest, she believes in the magical powers of that seat. In that particular seat she’s been writing page after page without second-guessing her prose, without ridiculing her dialogue, without becoming seized with fear, without stopping. As long as she sits in that wooden chair at that wooden table facing east, the boy’s story keeps coming, and she keeps writing it down.
And now some elderly woman with bad vision is using up its magical powers for solving Sudoku puzzles.
She considers her options. She could sit in the chair next to the woman, slide it too close, blow her nose, clear her throat, chew gum, and tap her pen on her teeth until the woman is annoyed into finding a new location. She could ask the woman in a polite and nonthreatening voice if she would kindly move to another chair. She could go home and clean. Or she could be a mature adult and find another place to sit.
She picks a chair on the other side of the table, a respectful distance but close enough that she could gather her things in a heartbeat and regain her rightful spot should the woman decide to leave. She opens Sophie’s laptop, which Sophie is now begrudgingly sharing with her mother, and stares at the screen. She’s facing west, and her chair wobbles. She taps her teeth with her fingernail and sighs, resigned to the obvious truth. There’s nothing magical about this seat.
After a while, she twists around and looks up at the clock. She’s now been here for an hour and has done nothing but read what she’s already written. And as she feared, the woman is now knitting. Maybe Beth should go home. She stares at the cursor, willing it to produce something as if it were a planchette on a Ouija board. No words appear, but a reflection of a woman emerges within the screen. She spins around in her ordinary chair. Courtney is standing behind her, smiling.
“Hey, have a seat,” says Beth, relieved to have a distraction. “What are you doing here?”
“Had to come into Town for something. Thought I’d stop by and see how you’re doing. How’s it coming?” Courtney points to the blank, white nothing on Beth’s computer screen.
“Good, good, I think. We’ll see when it’s done.”
“Do you have a title yet?”
“Not yet.”
“We should all read it for book club when you’re done. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Beth smiles and nods, loving the idea if her book actually turns out to be “good,” imagining her unbearable humiliation if it sucks.
“This is for you.” Courtney hands Beth a book.
Mending Your Marriage by Johanna Hamill. As Beth flips through the pages, she notices passages underlined in pen, handwriting in the margins. Courtney’s handwriting. She looks over at her friend, confused, wondering.
“It’s my copy. I thought it was pretty good, better than most of the crap out there on how to save your marriage.”
“But, so, you read this? Why?”
“Steve cheated on me.”
“He did?”
The old woman looks up from her knitting.
“When?” asks Beth, lowering her voice.
“Four years ago.”
“What? My God, I thought you were going to say ‘last week.’”
Beth stares without focus down at the cover of the book and shakes her head, unable to decide whether she’s more stunned by Steve’s infidelity or that Courtney has kept it a secret for four years.
“Who?”
“Some rich-bitch divorcée. He was working with Mickey’s crew over in Madaket, remodeling her bedroom and master bath. He said she came on to him, which I believe. You know how some of those wealthy summer biddies act like they’re entitled to everything. He said they only did it once.”
“So you’re okay? You’ve forgiven him?”
“Well, not at first. I wanted to kill him. That lasted awhile. Then I stopped wanting him dead, but I couldn’t forgive him. I read all these books, and that one might help you, but none of them helped me. I couldn’t forgive him. I couldn’t trust him. The power balance was all wrong. He had all of it, and I had none.”
Beth nods, following her, empathizing.
“So I cheated on him.”
“You did?”
The old woman looks up from her knitting again, this time really meaning it, down her nose, disapproving. Good. Maybe either the subject or the volume of their conversation will drive her out of here. Courtney nods and smiles.
“With who?”
“Some twentysomething, young thing. His name was Henry. I picked him up at 21 Federal. It was just a one-nighter.” Courtney grins, knowing she’s blowing Beth’s mind. “The next day, I told Steve. And I said, ‘Now we’re even. No more.’ And we promised that was the end of it, and we moved on.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know. It was, but it was the only way I could stay with him, and I wanted to stay with him. I love Steve and our life here. I didn’t want to lose him. So I’m just saying, if you wan
t to take Jimmy back, read the book, and if that doesn’t do it for you, I say, go have your own Henry.”
“But Jimmy cheated on me for a whole year, I don’t think—”
“You only have to do it once. Once makes it even.”
“Is that in the book?”
“I’m just saying. Marriage isn’t only about whether you love each other. You have to have mutual power, mutual trust. Do you trust Jimmy?”
“No. But sleeping with someone else is going to help?”
“It worked for me.”
Beth shakes her head, struggling with the math of this adultery equation, to imagine that cheating on Jimmy would accomplish anything but giving them both reputations for being unfaithful scoundrels who should never be trusted. “I keep thinking, ‘Once a cheater, always a cheater.’ Who said that, Oprah? Dr. Phil?”
“I don’t know. Not the case with me and Steve.”
“So you guys were just a onetime thing.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re happy.”
“Yeah, we really are.”
“And you trust each other.”
“Enough. You’re always at the mercy of the people you’re in a relationship with, right? Anything can happen. But I trust him enough.”
“What if he cheats again?” asks Beth.
“I’d kill him.”
“No, really.”
“I don’t know, maybe another Henry.”
“I don’t know, Courtney. I don’t think I could.”
“Do you want it to work out for you and Jimmy?”
Beth used to think that Jimmy and she were soul mates. They had so much in common when they first met. They’re both only children, raised by single parents. His father died of lung cancer the year after her mother’s death. Independent and somewhat fearless, they both held a fierce determination to follow their dreams, to do something they loved for a living. For Beth, that was writing. For Jimmy, it was scalloping.
Jimmy grew up in Maine. His father was a lobsterman who saved every penny so Jimmy might go to college, hoping for his son to discover a more reliable, less backbreaking way to earn a living. Jimmy attended the University of Maine and after graduating got the desk job of his father’s dreams at a small software company. But Jimmy hated his desk and his cubicle, and he hated being trapped indoors, and he admired his father’s life as a fisherman.
He went to Nantucket the following summer, after he’d been at his “soulless” job for a year. It was supposed to be a long weekend, a vacation with friends. Like Beth, he fell in love with the place. He decided to stay, but instead of lobstering, which he knew, he learned how to scallop, which was where the big money was at the time.
They loved the same music, the same food, Nantucket. They loved each other. And now, here they are. Jimmy gave up scalloping, and until recently she forgot about writing, and Jimmy’s been sleeping with another woman, and she doesn’t know what they both love anymore.
She looks over at the old woman. Beth’s still young. She could start over, and not necessarily with another man. She could regroup, redefine her life as a single mother. She could finish this book, maybe move off-island, get a job at a newspaper or a magazine, maybe somewhere with mountains or a city, maybe back to Portland. Somewhere with no sand or fog or tourists. Somewhere with no Angela Melo.
The possibilities, even contemplating the words I could, feel exhilarating. She could do anything she wants. But what does she want? She’s happy that Jimmy wants her back, but she doesn’t entirely trust her own motivation for feeling good about this. He picked her. She wins. She beat Angela. So maybe she feels more victorious than happy.
And who’s to say that he won’t change his mind in a week, in a month, next year, that he won’t someday show up in Angela’s kitchen at three in the morning with a card in his hands and his pants around his knees? No, she has no desire to be strung to that yo-yo.
Maybe there are no soul mates. Maybe husbands are simply men women eventually put up with so someone is there to haul air conditioners in and out of the attic, to love their children, to keep them company. But Beth can haul the air conditioners herself, her friends provide her with plenty of company, and he can still love their kids even if she doesn’t love him. But there’s the thing. She might still love him.
“I don’t know.”
“Look, Jimmy’s got all the power now. It’s not just about whether you can love each other again or trust each other again, it’s about evening out the power.”
As Beth thinks about these ingredients of marriage, about love and trust and power, her mind wanders over to truth and takes an east-facing seat. A marriage should have truth.
“I had sex with Jimmy the other night.”
“I know, Petra told me. That’s why I brought you the book.”
For a second, Beth feels indignant at Petra for betraying her confidence, but she shrugs it off. “That didn’t even out anything, did it?”
“Right idea, wrong guy.”
“He wants to talk.”
“That’s impressive for Jimmy.”
“I know.”
“You could try counseling.”
Beth wonders if Jimmy would agree to go.
“If you do, go to Dr. Campbell.”
“The guy with the falcon?”
“I know, but the only other option is Nancy Gardener.”
Nancy Gardener is a twice-divorced marriage counselor whose sister is Gracie’s fourth-grade teacher.
“I don’t know,” says Beth.
“He’s good. Jill and Mickey go to him.”
“They do?”
Courtney nods, eyebrows raised knowingly.
“Why? What’s going on with them?”
Courtney shrugs. “Everyone has stuff, Beth.”
Courtney looks over at the clock on the wall and gets up. “I’ve got to run. Read the book, go see Dr. Campbell, go find your own Henry. Or be done with him. That’s a fine choice, too.”
Courtney leaves, and Beth is alone again in her wobbly chair staring at her blank computer screen. She looks over at the old woman whose knitting is fast taking the shape of a mitten. Magic seat.
She sighs and shuts off Sophie’s laptop. She packs her notebooks and pens into her bag, holding on to Courtney’s book for an extra second, considering it, before she tosses it into her bag, too. As she’s leaving the library, feeling defeated, she thinks about love and trust and power. And truth. As she walks down the front steps, she thinks about what is true in her life, and four simple, honest thoughts jump up and raise their hands.
1. She’s not going to read Mending Your Marriage.
2. She’s not going to go have her own Henry and call things even.
3. She’ll make an appointment with Dr. Campbell if Jimmy is willing to go, and she hopes he is.
4. That old woman had better not be in her seat tomorrow, or she’s going to lose it.
CHAPTER 18
Beth didn’t write anything yesterday, and the words she didn’t write have been gathering and growing louder inside her, building to a crescendo, feeling full and urgent, like floodwaters pressing against a failing dam. She woke up this morning at dawn with this boy’s words already in motion, rushing at her, through her, insistent, dogging her everyday, routine thoughts until each and every one of them surrendered. She can now think of nothing else.
She arrives at the library only seconds after it opens, hurries upstairs, and is relieved to see no one there. No one sitting in her seat. She sits down, opens her notebook, uncaps her pen, and writes.
I wake up, and it is daytime. I get out of bed and say Good Morning to the tree outside the window, to my box of rocks, and to the calendar on the wall. Yesterday was Sunday, and today is Monday. Danyel comes after lunch on Tuesdays.
I stand on every step with both feet until I do all twelve, and I’m downstairs. I walk into the kitchen and sit down on my seat at the kitchen table. My Barney cup is filled with purple juice, and my fork and white napk
in are on the table, but there are only two French Toast sticks with maple syrup on my blue plate, and there are always three.
I can’t eat two French Toast sticks because breakfast is three French Toast sticks. I can’t eat two because three is finished, and two is stopping in the middle, and stopping in the middle hurts too much. I can’t eat two French Toast sticks because then I won’t ever be done with breakfast. And if I don’t finish breakfast, then I can’t brush my teeth in the bathroom and play with water in the sink. And then I can’t get dressed in dry clothes on the bottom step. And then I can’t go outside and swing. And I can’t have lunch if I haven’t finished breakfast. And Danyel won’t come because she comes after lunch.
If I don’t have two plus one equals three French Toast sticks for breakfast, I’m going to be stuck at this table forever.
I NEED ANOTHER FRENCH TOAST STICK!
I run over to the freezer and open it. The French Toast sticks box is gone. There is always a yellow box of French Toast sticks in the freezer. And now there isn’t. Something terrible has happened. I’m getting tingly shivers in my hands, and I’m racing around in my head trying to think about how to make the French Toast sticks box come back into the freezer, but I’m breathing too fast, and my hands are too tingly, and I can’t think.
My mother is now standing between me and the freezer, showing me an empty French Toast box. Empty is zero, and zero French Toast sticks is a disaster. I flap my tingly hands and moan.
My mother walks me back over to the table and says something in a loud and pretend happy voice, but I can’t hear what she said because I’m looking at my blue plate. One of the two French Toast sticks has been cut in half, so now there are two Medium-size sticks and one Big stick, which is even worse than before because two is in the middle and one is the beginning, and none of this can be eaten because this is not breakfast. Breakfast is three of the SAME French Toast sticks. I cannot eat this.
The French Toast box has zero, and my blue plate has one Big stick and two Medium sticks, and nothing has three. Everything is zero or the beginning or the middle, and I can’t eat breakfast because it can’t be finished if it doesn’t have three. I can’t get dressed and go outside and swing because getting dressed and going outside and swinging happens AFTER breakfast and I can’t have breakfast until I have three French Toast sticks.