Oh, my beautiful Anthony, why were you here?
The penetrating, hollow ache that usually follows this question doesn’t come. Instead, a calm energy fills her heart with the assurance of a truth already known, more an intangible feeling, though, than a fact that can be verbalized. She sits still and listens but not with her ears.
She feels her attention being nudged elsewhere. She considers the new books on the table next to the fireplace. She gets up and squats in front of them, contemplating the spines, mysteries and memoirs and novels she’s excited to get lost in. She lays her hand on the book at the top of the pile. Not these.
She walks into the kitchen, finds a red pen, and returns to her living-room chair carrying a thick stack of paper bound with red-and-white bakery string.
Untitled by Elizabeth Ellis.
She looks up at her photograph of Anthony on the wall and smiles at him with her eyes. She places the white rock back in the glass bowl, wraps a blanket around her lap, unties the bakery string, and begins to read.
CHAPTER 33
“Man, it’s nasty out there,” says Jimmy, parking his boots at the door before taking a seat on the couch across from Beth.
He blows into his hands, pink and wet from the cold rain, then rubs them together. The wind howls, sounding determined, as if the big bad wolf were roaming the neighborhood, bent on blowing every house down. One of the shutters rattles, and Beth feels a breeze whisper across her face, a current of uninvited air sailing into the living room through the many cracks around the old, warped windows. She cups her hands around her mug of cocoa, absorbing its comforting heat.
It occurs to her that this is exactly how everything started. A winter storm, a mug of cocoa, a fire in the fireplace, Grover asleep on the rug. Everything feels familiar, as if she’s done this before, yet she has the sensation of standing tiptoe at the edge of a precipice, leaning out, about to free-fall into the unknown.
“You look good,” says Jimmy.
She allows a self-conscious smile and picks a fleck of white lint off the front of her red shirt. “Thanks. You do, too.”
The beard is gone, but he left the sideburns long, which she likes, and his face looks smooth and young. He smells nice, like citrus, an aftershave or cologne she doesn’t recognize. He holds a piece of notebook paper folded into the size of a playing card in his hand.
“I’m glad we’re finally doing this,” he says, smiling, exuding excited anticipation, like a child about to unwrap a Christmas present, sure that it’s the very thing he asked for.
Beth’s paper, folded once, lies on the couch cushion next to her.
“How do you want to do this?” asks Jimmy.
“I don’t know.”
“You want to go first?”
“How about we just swap and read?”
“Okay.”
Beth passes her homework to him, and he hands her his wadded piece of paper. Oily and worn on the folds, it’s probably been in his pocket for two months. She unwraps it and reads.
WANTED
Wait up for me every now and then and sleep late with me
Come to the bar for dinner some nights
Initiate sex
HAPPY
Be happy to see me
Stop being mad at me all the time
Don’t talk to me like I’m one of the kids
SECURE
Be proud of me
LOVED
Tell me you love me
His list is short and reasonable, straightforward and simple. It’s almost too simple, yet she believes him. His list is sincere, and she feels unexpectedly ashamed. This is all he needs from her, and she’s been unwilling to give it to him, even before he began cheating on her.
Her list is similarly uncomplicated. She’s not asking for diamonds and luxury vacations. She doesn’t need roses and chocolates on her pillow. She’s not asking for the moon. It should be easy. Love, happiness, security, feeling wanted, the most basic elements, like air, water, earth, and fire—missing for both of them. No wonder they’re both sitting here with sorry pieces of paper in their laps, husband and wife, strangers.
When and why did they start withholding these basic needs? For her, was it in response to the changes in him after he stopped scalloping, before he started working at Salt? Was it a subconscious reaction to his affair? Did she unknowingly sense his infidelity and withdraw? Or did she maybe set aside too much of her creative and passionate self years ago, storing it in a box in the attic, not leaving her with enough love and happiness to share with Jimmy? Did she deprive him first, and he reacted in kind? It’s a chicken-and-egg question, probably unanswerable.
She rereads his list, afraid to look up at him. On paper, it all looks so achievable, with the obvious exception of going to the bar for dinner. Not with Angela there. Not a chance. But it also confirms what she’s suspected for too long. She looks over his piece of notebook paper and sees words that should’ve been spoken aloud, chatted about on this couch, whispered in bed, needs that could’ve been conveyed through a look, a note, a tap on the shoulder—all in uncharged, day-to-day moments. But none of that ever happened. They don’t know how to communicate.
And even if they did, even if they worked on it and learned the tools, there is one item on her list, one nonnegotiable need as essential as the drafty air she breathes and that Jimmy can’t give her.
She looks up, and Jimmy is done reading, waiting and grinning at her, and a heavy, hollow pit plants itself in the middle of her stomach.
“This is great, Beth. I can do this, all of it. And I want to. I want to get back together and give you these things. I’ve missed you so much.”
He’s still smiling, ready to celebrate, high atop the opposite end of her seesaw.
“We can’t.”
“What? I can, Beth, really. This won’t be hard.”
“Then why couldn’t we do it in the first place?”
“I don’t know, but we will now, we—”
“I can’t, Jimmy.”
His smile collapses, and the pit in her stomach expands. He stares at her and blinks.
“What are you saying?”
She swallows and tries to take a deep breath, but the pit in her stomach now feels like it’s taking up all the space inside her where air goes. She looks at Jimmy, at that face she still adores, afraid of saying what she’s about to say. But it’s the truth, and she knows it. She leans forward and falls.
“I want a divorce.”
“No. Beth, please. We can do this.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. What part of that can’t you do?” he asks, pointing to the piece of paper she holds.
“It’s not your list, Jimmy. It’s mine. I can’t get past the cheating. I need to believe that you’d never do it again, and I can’t. The kind of man I thought you were, the kind of husband I need, would never cheat on his wife.”
“It was a mistake.”
“Thinking it’s Wednesday when it’s only Monday is a mistake. Sleeping with her once, in the heat of the moment, I could even call that a mistake. But—”
“I’m sorry. It was stupid and wrong, and I swear, I promise it’ll never, ever happen again.”
“I can’t believe you. I don’t trust you anymore.”
“Let’s start over, and you’ll trust me again because I won’t give you any reason not to. Let me earn it back.”
She shakes her head. Trust shouldn’t be something he needs to earn. It should be a given. And he shouldn’t need instructions on a piece of homework paper to remind him, DON’T CHEAT ON YOUR WIFE.
“I have something for you.” He pulls a small, white cardboard box out from the front pocket of his jeans.
“What’s that?” asks Beth, not wanting whatever it is.
“It’s a gift.”
“Jimmy—”
“Here, open it,” he says, handing it to her.
Beth stares at him for an uncomfortably long moment. She lifts the lid and the square
piece of tissue paper, revealing a necklace. A single, large, round moonstone hanging on a silver chain. She holds the gem in her hand, a shimmering, smooth, almost translucent bluish-white stone. It’s beautiful.
“Jimmy—”
“When I saw you wearing the other necklace at the bar, I started thinking about when I gave it to you. It was the year we got married. That locket reminds me of our beginning and the commitment we made to each other. It reminds me of how much we loved each other. I know I ruined that. I’m so desperately sorry for what I’ve done, Beth. I want to start over with you, and I thought you should have a new necklace, something to symbolize a new beginning and a new commitment.”
She clenches her teeth, swallowing down the urge to cry. Not now.
“Jimmy, it’s beautiful.”
“I noticed the ring you’ve been wearing and thought they’d look good together.”
“And it’s a beautiful thought. But I can’t accept it.”
She dangles the necklace back into the box, lays the tissue paper over it, closes the lid, and places the box on the coffee table. She looks up at Jimmy. All color and expression have drained out of his face. She suspects she looks the same way.
“Please,” he says.
“I’m sorry.”
“What about the girls? Don’t they deserve their parents to be together?”
“Were you thinking about what they deserve when you were sleeping with that woman?”
“No.” He looks down at his socks. “I wasn’t thinking about anything I should’ve been. But I wish I had. Come on, Beth. We have to at least try to make it work.”
“I have been trying this whole time, but I don’t trust you anymore, and if I don’t trust you first, then none of this other stuff can happen,” she says, waving Jimmy’s homework in the air.
“See, I think the opposite. I think if you have all the other stuff, then the trust will come. I can give you what you need, Beth. I love you. Let me earn it back. You can trust me.”
She remembers attending a reception at one of the art galleries downtown with Jimmy when they were dating. They were there for the wine and to see some of Courtney’s husband’s oil paintings. Beth fell in love with one of his more abstract representations of a woman standing on the shore. The unexpected colors and strange lines captivated her interest and awe. She remembers the look of puzzled disgust screwed onto Jimmy’s face as he studied the same canvas. She wanted to buy it, and Jimmy said, Looks like something some kid did in kindergarten class. She remembers feeling disheartened, that they could look at the exact same thing and experience something so completely opposite. And here they are again.
“I’m sorry, Jimmy.”
“I can’t believe you won’t even try.”
“I did.”
“How?”
She says nothing.
“I think we should go back to Dr. Campbell.”
“I’m done, Jimmy.”
He reads her piece of paper again, shaking his head.
“You still love me, Beth. I know you do.”
“This changed who you are to me.”
She sees her words piercing him, his face pinching in pain, and she can’t stand to be the cause of it. She looks away, over to the fireplace mantel, the piece of driftwood he knew would be theirs. The starfish and the nautilus shell are still there, but the old pictures are gone, replaced by a single framed photo of Beth and the girls in mismatched tank tops, arms around each other, laughing.
“I still love you, but it’s not enough.”
“It is. It has to be. I love you. If you still love me, that’s everything. Please, Beth. Please forgive me. I know we can do this.”
She looks down at her hands in her lap, at her diamond ring and wedding band she still wears.
I promise to be true to you.
A belief shattered into pieces too jagged and sharp, leaving her now holding what feels more like a weapon than a vow. She looks up at Jimmy, at the vulnerable desperation and love in his eyes, and unexpectedly, instinctively maybe, her guard drops and she mirrors his emotions with her own, with the reciprocal love and desperation she still has for him. An uncertainty niggles at her throat. She coughs and drinks a gulp of cocoa.
“I’m sorry. I can’t.”
She watches his eyes change, retreating into a familiar fortress.
“So this is it?”
The brutal enormity of what is about to happen hits her full on. This feels nothing like that morning last March when she found out about Angela and told him to leave, not truly wanting him to go, lost in crazed disbelief that he actually did. Today is different. This is their ending. She’s losing Jimmy, and a deep and aching sadness fills her heart, but like witnessing death after a prolonged and ugly illness, there is also relief and peace.
“This is it.”
He rakes his fingers through his hair and shakes his head.
“This is wrong, Beth. We should be together. We love each other. We deserve a second chance,” he says, his words struggling against the oncoming force of unstoppable tears.
He gets up and rushes out of the room. She hears him putting on his boots, zipping up his coat. The front door opens and closes. She listens to his truck start and pull away. Her heart is pounding. She did it. It’s over.
She walks into the kitchen, pulls a bottle of Triple Eight vodka from the cabinet, fills her mug of lukewarm cocoa to the rim, and returns to the couch. She listens to the storm, the fire, the radiator, the silence. She takes a sip of cocoa and notices that her hands are shaking. She stares at the white cardboard box left on the coffee table, afraid to pick it up.
The doorbell rings, and she startles, splashing cocoa onto her lap. She wipes her jeans with her hand and eyes his homework page, left on the couch. Maybe he came back for it. Or maybe he has more to say. She takes an apprehensive breath and heads for the mudroom.
She opens the front door, and she startles again, this time spilling cocoa down the front of her red shirt. It’s not Jimmy. It takes her emotionally exhausted brain a few seconds to adjust her expectation and identify who is standing in front of her.
It’s Olivia, soaking wet, holding a white cardboard box in her hands, looking as if she’s just seen a ghost.
CHAPTER 34
“Olivia, you’re soaked through,” Beth says. “Come in.”
“Sorry to stop by unannounced,” Olivia says, hoping to sound casual. She doesn’t pull it off. Her voice sounds wired, tight, too high.
“That’s okay, come in.”
Olivia steps inside. She’s in a mudroom—gray-tiled floor, a braided green-and-blue rug, girls’ shoes and boots arranged in a tidy row under a long wooden bench, coats hung on hooks on the wall. The house is warm. It smells like cookies.
Beth hesitates before shutting the front door, looking out at the empty road. She appears distracted, shaken even. Maybe now isn’t a good time.
There is no other time.
“I have your book,” says Olivia, clutching the box she holds tight to her chest, protecting what’s inside like it’s a precious gift, a sacred offering, a beloved baby.
“Oh, great!” Beth’s face lights up. “Let me take your coat. Come into the living room, and we can sit by the fire.”
Beth hangs Olivia’s drenched coat on an empty hook. Olivia removes her shoes and follows Beth into the living room.
“Sorry about the mess.”
Olivia looks around the room, her senses heightened, raw and wide-open, trying to take in every possible detail. White walls, cream-colored Roman shades on the windows, a faded blue area rug on the hardwood floor, a modest TV set inside a white wall unit, all cabinets closed, firewood piled high in an iron trolley, a candle and a small, white gift box on the coffee table, two brown couches facing each other opposite a traditional brick fireplace, a single framed photograph taken by Olivia of Beth and her daughters sitting at the center of the mantel, leaning against the wall, flanked by a large shell on one side and a starfish on the other.
A blue plastic laundry basket full of unfolded clothes sits on the floor next to one of the couches, but otherwise, the room is immaculate.
Olivia sits on the couch opposite Beth.
“There’s one of your photos,” Beth says, smiling and pointing to the mantel. “We have eight more framed in the hallway upstairs. We love them. I’ll show you before you go.”
“Sure. Glad you like them,” says Olivia, trying to sound breezy, not knowing how much longer she can maintain normal, polite chitchat.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Uh, okay. Whatever you’re having,” she says, noting the blue mug in Beth’s hands, assuming it’s coffee.
But caffeine is the last thing she needs right now. When she starting reading Beth’s manuscript last night, she began underlining and marking up words and phrases that reminded her of Anthony in red pen. She smiled as she read those first few pages, admiring Beth’s depiction of a boy with autism, so similar to Anthony. She marveled at the coincidence, that Beth’s book was about a subject so close to Olivia’s heart. She applauded Beth’s choice to tell the story from the boy’s point of view, in his voice.
By the third chapter, the words she read and the voice she heard began to feel uncanny, surreal, impossible. Her hands trembled, and her heart pounded. Goose bumps spread across her skin and stayed there. She switched to a highlighter, highlighting whole passages she felt could only be about Anthony and no one else. By the time she reached Chapter 4, she was highlighting every word of every sentence on every page.
She devoured the words, finishing the book just after midnight, breathless, stunned, her heart racing, tears streaming down her face. She sat still for a long while, staring at the last page, crying and smiling, believing and disbelieving.
Finally, she turned over the last page, gathered the rest of the manuscript, and held the pages in her lap, feeling the weight of it, believing. These words written by Beth are Anthony’s words. The voice of this boy is the voice of my voiceless son. The boy in this book is Anthony.
She went back to the beginning and read it straight through twice more. She’s been up all night, and yet she’s never been more awake, every cell in her being on high alert, wide-eyed, plump full of adrenaline, ripe to the point of bursting.