Love Anthony Read Online Free PDF

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 participate in theparty 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 passing 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 damn 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