Lisa Genova - Love Anthony. A novel

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For Tracey
In memory of Larry

I ts Columbus Day weekend, and they lucked out with gorgeous weather, an Indian-summer day in October. She sits in her beach chair with the seat upright and digs her heels into the hot sand. The ocean in front of her sparkles white and silver in the sunlight. There are no fishing boats or yachts in the distance, no kite surfers or swimmers near the shore, nothing but a pure ocean view today. She inhales and exhales.

Soak it up.

Her three daughters are busy building a sand castle. Theyre too close to the water. Itll be flooded and destroyed within an hour, but they wouldnt heed their mothers warning.

Her oldest daughter, almost eight, is the architect and foreman. More sand here. A feather there. Go get some shells for the windows. Dig this hole deeper. The younger two are her loyal construction workers.

More water!

The youngest, barely four, loves this job. She skips off with her pail, charges knee-deep into the ocean, fills her bucket, and returns, struggling with the weight of it, sloshing at least half of the water out as she walks a drunken line back to her sisters, smiling, delighted with her contribution to the project.

She loves to watch her daughters like this, absorbed in playing, unaware of her. She admires their young bodies, all in little-girl bikinis, skin still deeply tanned from a summer spent outside, skipping, squatting, bending, sitting, utterly unself-conscious.

The weather and the holiday combined have invited a lot of tourists to the island. Compared to the last many weeks since Labor Day, the beach today feels crowded with walkers and a few sunbathers. Just yesterday she walked on this same stretch of sand for an hour and saw only one other person. But that was a Friday morning, and it was foggy and cold.

Her attention becomes drawn to a woman sitting in a similar beach chair at the waters edge and her boy, who is playing by himself next to her. The boy is a skinny little thing, shirtless in blue bathing trunks, probably a year younger than her youngest daughter. Hes creating a line of white rocks on the sand.

Each time the water rushes in, momentarily drowning his line of rocks in white foam, he jumps up and down and squeals. He then runs into the water as if hes chasing it, and runs back, a huge smile stretched across his face.

She continues to watch him, for some reason mesmerized, as he methodically adds more and more rocks to his line.

Gracie, go see if that little boy wants to help you build the castle.

Outgoing and used to taking orders, Gracie bounces over to the little boy. She watches her daughter, hands on her hips, talking to him, but theyre too far away for her to hear what her daughters saying. The boy doesnt seem to acknowledge her. His mother looks over her shoulder for a moment.

Gracie runs back to their beach blanket alone.

He doesnt want to.

Okay.

Soon, the ocean begins to invade the castle, and the girls grow bored of building it anyway, and they start grumbling about being hungry. Its lunchtime, and she didnt bring any food. Time to go.

She closes her eyes and draws in one last warm, clean, salty breath, then exhales and gets up. She gathers a handful of stray shovels and castle molds and carries them to the water to rinse them off. She lets the water roll over her feet. Its numbingly cold. As she rinses her daughters beach toys, she scans the sand for seashells or sea glass, something beautiful to bring home.

She doesnt see anything worth collecting, but she does spot a single, brilliant white rock peeking out of the sand. She picks it up. Its oval, tumbled perfectly smooth. She walks over to the little boy, bends down, and carefully places her rock at one end of his line.

He glances at her so quickly, it wouldve been easy to miss them altogetherstunning brown eyes, twinkling in the sun at her, delighted with her contribution to his project. He jumps and squeals and flaps his hands, a happy dance.

She smiles at the boys mother, who mirrors a smile in return, but its guarded and weary, one that doesnt invite anything further. Shes sure she doesnt know this woman or her little boy and has no particular reason to think shell ever see them again, but as she turns to leave, she waves and says with total conviction, See you later.

B eth is alone in her house, listening to the storm, wondering what to do next. To be fair, shes not really alone. Jimmy is upstairs sleeping. But she feels alone. Its ten in the morning, and the girls are at school, and Jimmy will sleep until at least noon. Shes curled up on the couch, sipping hot cocoa from her favorite blue mug, watching the fire in the fireplace, and listening.

Rain and sand spray against the windows like an enemy attacking. Wind chimes gong repetitive, raving-mad music, riding gusts from some distant neighbors yard. The wind howls like a desperately mournful animal. A desperately mournful wild animal. Winter storms on Nantucket are wild. Wild and violent. They used to scare her, but that was years ago when she was new to this place.

The radiator hisses. Jimmy snores.

She has already done the laundry, the girls wont be home for several hours, and its too early yet to start dinner. Shes grateful she did the grocery shopping yesterday. The whole house needs to be vacuumed, but shell wait until after Jimmy is up. He didnt get home from work until after 2:00 a.m.

She wishes she had the book for next months book club. She keeps forgetting to stop by the library to check it out. This months book was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. It was a quick read, a murder mystery narrated by an autistic teenage boy. She liked it and was especially fascinated by the main characters strange inner world, but she hopes the next one will be a bit lighter. They typically choose more serious literature for book club, but she could use a pleasant escape into a hot summer romance right about now. They all could.

A loud bang against the back of the house startles her. Grover, their black Lab, lifts his head from where hes been sleeping on the braided rug.

Its okay, Grove. Its just Daddys chair.

Knowing a big storm was on its way, she told Jimmy to take his chair in last night before he left for work. Its his cigar-smoking chair. One of the summer residents left it on the side of the road in September with a sign taped to it that read FREE, and Jimmy couldnt resist it. The thing is trash. Its a cedar Adirondack chair. In most places on Earth, that chair could weather a lifetime, but on Nantucket, the salty, humid air eventually degrades everything but the densest man-made composite materials. Everything needs to be extraordinarily tough to survive here. And probably more than a little dense.

Jimmys moldy, corroded chair belongs at the dump or at least in the garage, as Beth wisely suggested last night. But instead, the wind has just lifted it off the ground and heaved it against the house. She thinks about getting up and hauling the chair into the garage herself, but then she thinks better of it. Maybe the storm will smash it to pieces. Of course, even if this happens, Jimmy will just find some other chair to sit in while he smokes his smelly cigars.