Love Anthony Read Online Free PDF Page B

her or David. Instead of celebrating like other parents whom she imagined and so passionately envied and sometimes hated, instead of marveling over the past year and how much her child had changed and grown, she and David felt only unspoken dread and desperation on Anthony’s birthday. March seventeenth was the one day each year when they were forced to stare the severity of Anthony’s autism straight in the eye, to be fully cognizant of how much progress he hadn’t made. When she shopped for his present and considered toys for age five-plus or ages five and up, she would be forced to admit to herself that these toys would holdno interest for him, that he couldn’t possibly play with any of them. There it was, printed on too many Fisher-Price boxes—Anthony was impossibly behind for his age.
    So she would buy him an educational toy recommended by Carlin, his applied-behavioral-analysis therapist, or a new Barney video, or one year she wrapped a can of salt-and-vinegar Pringles. Pringles always made him happy. But the gift he loved the most each year was the card.
    When he was four, she bought him the first of countless musical greeting cards. This one was a Hoops & Yoyo. She showed him first. He watched, pretending not to look. She opened the card. A song played and the characters sang. She shut the card. The music and the singing stopped.
    To this day, she remembers his face, wondrous and joyful with the unexpected discovery of a new fascination, like when he found light switches. He opened the card. Music. He shut it. No music. Open. Music. Shut. No music. These cards were heaven to Anthony. The same song every time it’s opened, the same music; everything the card did was predictable and entirely under his control.
    He’d spend the rest of the day smiling and squealing and flapping his hands as he opened, shut, opened, shut, opened, shut. That’s all he wanted every year. Unlimited time alone with his card. So this is what she and David gave to him.
    She wonders how David is doing, if he’s awake yet, realizing the date, thinking about Anthony. She hopes he finds comfort today. Her heart aches thinking this, wishing she could be this to him. But she can’t. Comfort doesn’t exist within her, and she can’t offer what she doesn’t have. He doesn’t have it either. They know this.
    Olivia sits on the beach, waiting for sunrise, listening to a gull squawking above her, sounding like laughter. The tide is coming in. With each pulse of waves, she watches as a little more of Happy Birthday Anthony washes away, until it’s pulledinto the sea entirely. Wiped clean, as if it never existed. If she still believed in God, she would ask Him to send her birthday note written in sand to her son in heaven. But she doesn’t ask for this. These are only words scratched in sand with her finger, swallowed by the ocean.
    In front of her feet, she writes I love you and waits. The water comes, steady and sure, pooling and bubbling into each letter. The words wash away, reaching no one.
    The fog has started to lift, and the day begins to lighten. The metallic-gray ocean tumbles out in front of her. The lighthouse materializes to her left. The next wave crashes, dissolving into a bed of fizzing foam, and deposits a single white, round rock at her feet. Her heart stalls, then quickens. She squats down, picks up the beautiful, smooth stone, and rolls it inside her hand.
    Anthony.
    I miss you, my sweet boy.
    The sun rises, glowing pink on the horizon over the ocean, the color of petunias, beautiful and full of promise.

CHAPTER 5

    B eth and Petra are sitting in Jill’s living room, waiting for Courtney and Georgia. It’s book club night, but Courtney teaches yoga on Thursday evenings, and her class doesn’t get over until six thirty, so they know she’ll be running a bit late. And Georgia is always late. Jill knows this, but she’s still irritated. She’s holding them in the living room until everyone arrives because she wants