His mother retrieves the pinwheel and spins it, holding it up to his face, trying to lure him back into its magic spell, but he won't open his eyes. She tries to soothe him with her voice, straining to remain calm, rea.s.suring him that they'll be home soon, but his thumb-stoppered ears are unavailable to logic or lies. She doesn't attempt to touch him. Olivia knows this would probably make everything worse. A lot worse.

Then it appears as though she's doing nothing. She's ignoring him.

Olivia sees the looks and hears the murmured judgments being pa.s.sed around like mints among people in line.

He's too old to be acting like that.

My children would never be allowed to behave that way.

Spoiled.

What kind of mother?

They don't get it. Olivia does. Shy of picking him up and carrying him out of here, that mother is doing what any mother of a child with autism and a cart full of groceries would do. She's breathing, holding on white-knuckle tight to her cart and her courage, and praying to G.o.d.

G.o.d, please help him calm down.

G.o.d, please, before I lose it, too, get us out of here.

G.o.d, please.

"I don't blame him," says the woman in the yoga clothes. "If this line doesn't start to move a little faster, I'm going to start screaming, too."

"Not very Yogi of you," says her blond friend, the one who needs the pictures.

"True. But it sure would release all the negative energy I've been absorbing in this place. Stop & Shop is totally clogging up my fourth chakra."

The blonde laughs. Olivia smiles. The blonde stares at the boy and his mother while they wait in line. The expression on the blonde's face as she watches them doesn't seem to carry a trace of judgment, but rather an intense interest, even wonder. Olivia would love to know what she's thinking but says nothing.

At long last, Olivia reaches the checkout. She greets the cashier with a friendly h.e.l.lo, bags her own groceries, carries her canvas tote to her Jeep, and drives home.

Thirty minutes later, she is there.

AT HOME, OLIVIA boils two eggs. She slices the tomatoes, cuc.u.mbers, and a red pepper. She shreds the lettuce and tosses it all into a large bowl. She adds olives, Vidalia onions, Parmesan cheese, croutons, and, when they're done, the eggs. She drizzles on a touch of olive oil and red-wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and pepper. A gla.s.s of cold sauvignon blanc, a slice from the ciabatta loaf, and she's done.

She carries her dinner, a citronella candle, and one of her journals out onto her backyard deck. She sits with her well-earned feast, opens her journal, and begins to read where she last left off.

July 5, 2003 My life right now is all about communication, or rather, the lack of it. I spend all my waking hours demanding communication from Anthony. Anthony, say JUICE. JUICE. JUUUUICE. Say the word. Tell me what you want. Say I WANT JUICE. Say SWING. Say I WANT TO GO OUTSIDE AND SWING ON THE SWING. Please. Look at me, Anthony, and tell me what you want. Tell me what you're feeling. Tell me why you're screaming. I can usually tell if it's happy-excited screaming or frustrated-panicked screaming, but right now, I'm too tired, and I can't figure it out. Why are you screaming? How can I help you if you won't tell me what you want?

And then there's me and David. We don't know how to communicate either. We don't look at each other anymore. I can't stand to look into his eyes and see his despair, his exhaustion, sometimes the blame, and too often the wish that he'd stayed at the office another hour. Maybe I'd be in bed by then, and he wouldn't have to deal with me and what's in my eyes.

We don't talk to each other anymore. Not really. We say plenty about what has to be done. Did you buy Anthony's JUICE? I'm going to the grocery store, do we need JUICE? Will you push Anthony on the SWING? He's screaming because he wants to go outside and swing on the SWING. Will you take out the trash, go to the store, do the laundry, pay the bills? The bills, the bills, the bills.

We say all these words, but we don't talk about anything. It's all meaningless. Blah, blah, blah.

I don't tell David what I'm thinking, that we're the parents of a permanently disabled child and our marriage is crippled. I think this every day, but I never say the words. I don't tell David.

We don't have s.e.x anymore, and I don't want s.e.x anymore, but I miss the part of me that used to feel connected to David, that felt h.o.r.n.y and wanted s.e.x. We don't talk about this.

And who would want s.e.x after the days I have? I'm exhausted from worry and the physical job of taking care of Anthony. I have bruises from his pinches and kicks, and bite marks all over me. I look abused. I feel abused, but I don't tell David.

I don't really feel abused by Anthony, I feel abused by this life. What happened to my life? My life is all about autism. If I'm not living it, I'm reading about it or talking about it, and I'm just so d.a.m.n sick of it, I could puke. I'm scared that this is all it's ever going to be. Anthony has autism, and he won't say JUICE or SWING or why he is screaming, and David and I aren't speaking, roommates in the same prison cell.

Or at best we're colleagues, self-trained therapists working on the same patient, a beautiful boy named Anthony, trying to fix him. Only we're failing. We're not fixing him. His autism isn't going anywhere, and it's this huge pink elephant in our living room, and we're not talking about what's real, that we're going to be living with autism for the rest of our lives, and we need to accept this. As much as I want to scream and cry and break everything in this world, as much as I want to resist and fight and beg, we need to accept Anthony with autism.

Why can't we talk about this? Why don't we tell each other how we feel, what we want, what we're afraid of, that we still love each other? Do we? Do we even still love each other?

What great role models we are for Anthony, huh? Hey, Anthony, TALK. See how Mommy and Daddy DON'T do it. We have Anthony in therapy for thirty-five hours a week to learn to communicate. I wonder how many hours a week David and I would need....

SHE AND DAVID never went to couples counseling. Maybe they should have. But between all the occupational and behavioral and speech therapists for Anthony, the parent support groups, and then the grief counseling, none of it effective, they weren't exactly jumping at the idea of inviting yet another counselor, and another expense, into their already therapy-saturated lives.

Olivia closes her journal and thinks with her eyes shut. She's been going through her entries a little each day, reading her past, trying to come to terms with it all, looking for peace. She opens her eyes. Not today.

She sighs and returns to the kitchen for another gla.s.s of wine. As she opens the refrigerator door, she hears a shrill ding. She pauses, trying to decipher what it was. She's always hearing things in this house, eerie, unexplained noises that used to spook her when she first moved here, but now she's grown more curious than afraid.

The fog that often settles over the island usually insulates sound, m.u.f.fling it. The silence of a thick fog on Nantucket can be palpable. But sometimes, and she has no idea why, the fog amplifies, warps, and scatters sound, sending it miles away from its source. She swears she's heard fishermen talking on their boats from her bedroom. And she sometimes hears a creepy, melodic moaning that she likes to think is the sound of seals barking offsh.o.r.e.

A fog is rolling in tonight, so the ding might've been a neighbor's wind chime, a kid's bicycle bell from around the block, an ice cream truck at the beach. But the ding sounded louder, more immediate. More here. She pulls the wine bottle from the refrigerator, and there it is again. Is it the doorbell?

She sets the bottle of wine down on the counter, wipes her wet hand on her shorts, walks to the front door, and opens it.

"Hi, Liv."

She gasps. She didn't actually expect to find anyone there. And she certainly didn't expect it to be him.

"David."

CHAPTER 11.

It's nine fifteen, and Beth has already dropped the girls off at the community center. Gracie and Jessica love it there, but Sophie hates it. She showed signs of outgrowing the games and crafts and activities toward the end of last summer when she was twelve, complaining that camp was "boring." Well, if last year was boring, this year is pure agony. But it's where all the other kids who are still too young for summer jobs go for camp, and Beth would rather she be in agony at the community center than skulking around the house all day, bored and in agony at home.

When Beth pulled into the community center parking lot, she said to all three, "Have fun!" Jessica and Gracie smiled and waved, but Sophie replied, "Don't worry, I won't!"-and slammed the car door. Ah, thirteen.

Camp runs until two. Jimmy has the night off and offered to pick them up, spend the afternoon with them, and then take them to dinner at the Brotherhood. He said he'd have them home by eight.

Beth has the next almost eleven hours stretched out in front of her to do whatever she pleases. A completely free day. A week ago, she would've used that time to clean, a big project such as washing all the windows, or bleaching the mold and mildew off the deck furniture, or weeding. But she's been rereading Writing Down the Bones and going through her notebooks, her old poems, her short stories, her many unfinished vignettes, enjoying them all. And she's started dreaming again.

So she's letting the mold and mildew and the pollen spots and pesky weeds be. Instead, she's gone to the library for a quiet place to write, free of distraction. Today, she feels ready to dust off that creative part of her that she boxed up years ago and see if it still works. She's finally giving herself the s.p.a.ce and the time to explore that expressive voice inside her that became unconsciously stifled, lost first to the demands of young motherhood, then seduced into ennui by her daily routine.

She walks up to the second floor and sits in an armless Shaker-style wooden chair at a substantial wooden table, much larger than the one in her own dining room, facing a window that is also oversized, at least eight feet tall. The window is open, and a fresh-smelling morning breeze fills the air in the room. Nine other matching chairs surround the table, all unoccupied.

She pulls out her blank spiral notebook, the one she bought years ago, and opens it to the first blank page. It's been a long time since she's written anything other than checks to pay the bills. She feels excited, nervous. She pulls out her favorite pen and stares at the page, trying to think of how to begin. Beginnings have always been difficult for her. She taps her teeth with her pen, a habit she developed as a teenager whenever she was stuck on a homework problem, and she can hear her mother's voice in her head saying, Stop that, Elizabeth, and so she does.

She looks up at the clock on the wall. It's nine twenty-five. Like the window and the table, the clock is larger than most. It's oak with Roman numerals on an ivory face. The wood has elaborate scrolls carved into it that look like curled ocean waves. The clock appears old and probably is, and it probably has a story and historical significance, but Beth doesn't know what. It's quiet in the library today, so quiet that she can hear the clock ticking.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Why is the library so empty today? She looks out the window. Blue sky, no clouds, a gentle and steady breeze. It's a perfect beach day. That's what she could do with her free day. She could go to the beach! She slides her chair out, but before she caps her pen, she recognizes the real motivation behind this impetuous idea. Fear. Fear of this blank page in front of her. Plus, it's a stupid impetuous idea, going to the beach in the middle of the day in July, fighting the summer people for a square of sand. That's where everyone is. She knows better than to put herself through that madness.

She slides her chair back in, tucking her legs under the table, and tries to get comfortable. Okay. Begin. But begin what? Does she want to expand on one of her unfinished short stories? She should've brought those with her. Should it take place on Nantucket? Maybe New York? The questions keep coming, echoing in her head, paralyzing her hand.

She looks up at the clock. Nine forty-five.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Maybe she should do one of the exercises in Writing Down the Bones, get the pen moving, the ink flowing, grease the rusty wheels a bit. She remembers now that this is how she used to begin.

She unzips her purse, a big, bulky, worn, black nylon bag. Someone gave it to her. Was it Georgia? It's so long ago now, she can't remember. It was a baby-shower gift. Her purse is really a diaper bag. Jill thinks it's really a disgrace.

Beth admits that it's not the prettiest thing, and, yes, the girls have now been potty-trained for some time, but she likes the wide shoulder strap, that it's water resistant and wipes clean of pretty much anything, that it has tons of useful pockets. The pocket for the baby bottle is now where she keeps her water bottle. The wipes pocket now contains her wallet. The zipped compartment she used for pacifiers is now where she keeps her cell phone. The middle compartment is where she dumps everything else.

Everything else, it seems, but Writing Down the Bones. It's not in there. She forgot to bring it. d.a.m.n. Maybe she should go home and get it. She looks down at her notebook.

Blank.

She has to go get it. But if she leaves, she knows she won't come back. If she leaves, she'll be wearing yellow latex gloves and carrying a bucket of bleach in twenty minutes. She plants her feet flat and heavy on the floor as if they were two anchors and breathes. She's staying.

She thinks she wants to expand on the short story she wrote about a boy who found comfort and meaning inside an imagined world where colors had emotions, water could sing, and the boy could become invisible. But then she remembers the boy she once saw on the beach, the curious intensity and joy he showed, even for a child, as he created a line of white rocks, and the briefest moment they shared that felt like an exquisite secret between them. She feels compelled and captivated by both boys. Maybe she can combine them. But how?

She taps her teeth and thinks of the saying Write what you know. What does she know? She looks down at her blank page.

She looks up at the clock and sighs. Ten twenty-five. Maybe she should go to the The Bean, get a coffee and a snack. Maybe that's what she needs, some caffeine, some food, and a change of scenery. Maybe the atmosphere here is all wrong. She looks around her-the many bookcases painted creamy white, packed with hardcovers; the Persian rugs; the oil paintings of famous writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Th.o.r.eau, and Herman Melville on the walls; that d.a.m.n clock. It's all too serious, too scholarly, too intimidating. Too much pressure.

She has enough reasons to leave, excuses absurd to valid, and yet she stays. She wants to write. She looks around her, at the books on the shelves. Hundreds of books, each one written by somebody. She chooses to feel inspired instead of intimidated. Why not somebody like her?

Her eyes settle upon a book positioned face out on the bookcase closest to the window, second shelf from the top. The Siege. The cover is gray and white and has a black-and-white photograph of a young girl on it. The girl maybe looks a bit like Sophie when she was a toddler, but that slight resemblance isn't what's catching her attention. None of it-not the t.i.tle, the cover, not even the picture of the girl-feels remarkable or particularly interesting to her, yet she feels drawn to it, oddly pulled by it.

She forces herself to look away, browsing the other bookcases from her seat. She finds no other books facing out on any of the shelves. Not one. She returns to The Siege, feeling again as if she can't look away, not because it's a distraction like the clock or her purse, not to avoid looking at her blank page, but because she feels strangely compelled to look at it.

It's the same feeling she had when she met Jimmy. It was a late night at the Chicken Box, Nantucket's legendary dive bar. She couldn't stop looking at him. It wasn't because he was attractive, although he was. Plenty of attractive single guys were all over Nantucket that summer, everywhere she looked. And it wasn't because she was drunk on beer and Jell-O shots, although she was. That night, there was only Jimmy. The whole bar was static, and Jimmy was a clear channel. She felt almost spellbound by him, as if he were a magnet pulling her to him.

Now this book on the shelf feels the same way. She stares at it, mesmerized by its nonmesmerizing, simple cover, and wonders what it's about. With considerable willpower, she shakes off its spell and returns to her blank page.

Blank. Blank. Blankety-blank.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

She looks up at the book, now feeling as if the girl on the cover were staring at her.

Oh, for G.o.d's sakes.

She walks over to the bookcase and brings the book back to her seat. The Siege by Clara Claiborne Park. She reads the front and back covers. It's a true story, written by a mother about her autistic daughter. Beth enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but autism isn't a subject she would normally read about on her own. But she's obviously not going to begin writing the great American novel today. And she's not going back and cleaning the house. She caps her pen, opens the book, and begins to read.

HOURS LATER, SOMEONE taps her on the shoulder, startling her. She looks up. It's Mary Crawford, the librarian.

"Sorry, Beth, I didn't mean to startle you, but we're closing in five minutes."

Beth looks up at the clock. It says four fifty-five. She looks out the window. The light coming in is softer, more diffuse, suggesting longer shadows and evening. She looks at her watch. Four fifty-five. How did that happen?

She looks down at her notebook.

Blank.

"I'm sorry, I got completely caught up in this book."

"Would you like to borrow it?"

"Yes, please."

Beth didn't write anything, and she didn't clean anything, but at least she found a good book to read.

BACK AT HOME, she still has plenty of time left in her free day before the girls come home. She could clean something or eat something. She chooses the second. She's famished. She hasn't had a thing to eat today since breakfast.

She fixes herself a ham-and-cheese sandwich and, in celebration of her free day, decides to make herself a real drink. She pours vodka, lime juice, cranberry juice, and a splash of ginger beer into Gracie's lunch thermos because she doesn't have a martini shaker. She adds ice, shakes, then pours some into a winegla.s.s. She takes a sip and smiles. It's good. See? She doesn't need Jimmy. She can make her own pa.s.sion.

The air in the house is hot and stale. No one was home today to turn on the air conditioners or open the windows. Beth takes her meal and drink and her library book out onto the deck, and she sits in one of the mildewed chairs.

The moldiest chair of them all, Jimmy's cigar-smoking chair, is pushed off to the side, facing the corner of the deck, as if it'd been sent there for misbehaving. Beth asked Jimmy to get it out of here, once and for all, weeks ago. It was bad enough before, but she's certainly not going to keep his cigar chair here while he shacks up with another woman. She angles her own chair so that his disappears from view. She eats her dinner and reads.

She's still absorbed in reading and on her third Pa.s.sion a la Beth c.o.c.ktail, which she feels she's now perfected (less lime, more vodka), when she hears the front door open and shut.

"h.e.l.lo?" she yells.

Sophie and Jessica appear on the deck.

"Where's Gracie?" asks Beth.

"In the kitchen, working on a project for camp," says Jessica.

"Oh, what project?" asks Beth.

"I dunno," says Jessica.

"What did you have for dinner?"

"Hot dog," says Jessica.

"Hamburger," says Sophie.

It frustrates Beth that they live on an island and none of her children will eat fish. She loves seafood but can't cook it in the house without the girls pinching their noses and complaining about the smell.