The Forms of Water (10 page)

Mirella was chatting with Brendan now, but Henry ignored her.
We dressed up,
his mother had said.
We wore black; we knew we had to move by June.
They had walked quietly, in twos and threes, to the Nipmuck Town Hall where the firemen were hosting the ball. A thousand people came, maybe more, and they danced in dazed circles and drank. When midnight came, the band played “Auld Lang Syne” and the people wept. The towns were dissolved a minute after midnight, by order of the governor, but people danced on in that ghostly place.

Your father was so handsome,
his mother had said.
So strong.
She'd told him how many of the men, Henry's father among them, had worked clearing brush or digging up graves or driving trucks and dozers for the Commission. It was the Depression, his mother had said. No one had blamed them for taking the work. Henry had been two when his father was called up, and he couldn't remember that—his first memories of his father came from after the war, when he'd returned to them pale and bony and shaken. He tried to picture his father strong-armed, gathering brush and burning it for the engineers. He tried to picture his tanned face, his bold eyes, the way he'd walked up to Margaret Kelso at the Farewell Ball and whispered into her ear.

The old people had gathered in corners and grown sentimental—that was the part Da and Gran remembered, the part they'd always told him about, but he was more interested in the secret part his mother hinted at.
Your father took me outside,
she'd said.
All the people our age were having a party of their own.
In the woods beyond the common they'd built a fire; they'd burned their high-school diplomas, their report cards, the programs and certificates their parents had saved. They drank whiskey the older boys had brought—his father had told him that. They danced their own dances.
We made you that night,
his mother had said, although it had been years before he'd understood what she'd meant and he'd had to imagine the details for himself after she was dead. How they went into the bushes in pairs and emerged owl-eyed, hours later; how they went somewhere, and his mother got pregnant, and later she and his father married.

A few weeks after the ball, Da and Gran had left the valley and headed for Coreopsis. Frank junior had stayed behind with Margaret and built a cabin on a hill just outside the reservoir, on the piece of land Da had bought years ago for timber. The engineers went to work like ants, razing the remaining buildings so that nothing would contaminate the reservoir.
The water had to be clean,
his mother had said.
For the people in Boston.
That was why they'd dug up the cemeteries and moved the bodies; that was why they'd crushed the houses and carted the pieces away, why they'd burned the stubble in the fields. When the hurricane came in September, the wind found nothing to take but trees; afterward, his mother said, the valley looked as if it had been bombed. His father had helped bulldoze the remaining trees and had stripped the hills until they were bare except for the green crests that were supposed to turn into islands. Below these crests, which marked the waterline, the valley was shaved like a skull.

Henry couldn't remember that sight, but he remembered the waters rising after his father had left for the war. His mother had brought him and Wiloma down the hill weekly, pointing out the slow, inexorable spread of water building up behind the dam. She'd meant, Henry knew, for them to see the horror of it, but he'd been five then, six, seven, and he'd never seen the valley when it had held people and buildings. He'd seen scarred land, rubble, desolation, and the water that rose over the ugliness had seemed like a benediction. It had spread, smooth and pure and serene, until it reached the line where the trees still grew. Then it stopped. It looked like a lake. He had wanted to swim in it, but swimming was forbidden.

He shook his head, wanting to clear it. He hardly ever thought about those times or about his parents, and he wondered how much more of this his journey with Brendan would stir up. Mirella was still talking to Brendan, and he tried to focus on her but found that his vision of her trailer had gone cold. She was telling Brendan about her kids—she had three of them, he'd been right. She said, “My oldest, Angeline, she wants to be a dancer. I made her this tutu last month, for her recital …. You have kids?”

Brendan blinked at her. “Me? I'm a bachelor.”

She turned to Henry. “What about you?”

He thought of Lise and Delia and his heart skipped a beat. “Six,” he said evenly, as if the extras were insurance.

“Hell,” she said, and then laughed.
“Six
—why didn't you just shoot yourself and get it over with?”

Henry rose and stood behind Brendan's chair. “Nice meeting you. We have to go.”

“Stop by again if you're passing through. What's your name?”

“Jack Pomeroy,” Henry said, adopting the name of his parents' hometown. “This is my father.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Ambrose,” Brendan said, which Henry admired. Not quite a lie, nothing so flamboyant as his own, yet good enough to keep her from knowing them. He wasn't sure why he'd lied to her, or why Brendan had played along.

They left her touching her red curls and returned to the van, where they found Bongo standing in the driver's seat with his face mashed against the window. Henry settled Brendan and Bongo in the back and then watched as Brendan took a napkin out of his pocket and slipped something from it to Bongo. Bongo gobbled it hastily.

“A little pie,” Brendan explained. “I saved him a bit, for a treat. He's probably hungry.”

Henry was pretty sure the napkin had held the whole piece of pie, square piled on sticky square. He moved the box holding the things he'd taken from Kitty's from the back of the van to the empty seat beside him, and he shifted the picture of his parents from the side to the top of the box, where he could see it. Then Brendan hiccuped and they drove off.

“
S
IT DOWN,” WALDO SAID, “TELL ME AGAIN.”

And Wiloma, after a cleansing breath, did. She explained what the administrator from St. Benedict's had said, she explained her theories. Theory, now—the set of possibilities she'd explored over the phone with Wendy had shrunk to one when Waldo had appeared at her door. “Wendy called me at work,” he'd said. “Wendy was all upset.”

Which could mean only one thing, as far as Wiloma was concerned: Wendy was too sensible to worry without a reason, and so her own darkest fears about Henry and Brendan must be true.

Change the belief, she told herself, and you change the situation. Her Manual was explicit—error is created by wrong thought, error
is
wrong thought. She had never said to herself, “My uncle has cancer,” but now she said, out loud to Waldo, “Henry has kidnapped him.” The words came out like a sneeze, with a similar sense of relief, and were immediately followed by waves of guilt. She'd said it; she'd thought it. If it was true, it was partly her fault.

“I don't know,” said Waldo. He paced across the smooth blue carpet, looking sleek and prosperous. His pants were neatly cuffed and his feet were shod in expensive walking shoes. His hair looked perfect from a distance. Only when he drew very close could she see the delicate grid of plugs across the top of his scalp. “That doesn't sound like Brendan,” he said. “Brendan's no pushover.”

Wiloma told him what the administrator had said the second time he called. “Someone saw them in Brendan's room. Putting some stuff in a plastic bag. Someone else saw them leave the building together. And after the alert went out, a policeman radioed in from Irondequoit and said he'd seen a St. Benedict's van earlier at the 7-Eleven.”

“Irondequoit?”

“That's what he told me.”

Waldo adjusted the cuff of his shirt. “So maybe they
did
borrow the van. But maybe they're just headed for the lake, or the park—I don't know. Did you call Kitty?”

“Why would I call her?”

“Irondequoit,” Waldo said. “Maybe Brendan wanted to see her, and he asked Henry to take him over there for a visit. Brendan was always fond of her. And I don't think he's seen her in years.”

“Oh,
please,
” Wiloma said. She'd come to dislike her sister-in-law immensely since Kitty's transformation. Acting all of a sudden as if the years she'd stayed at home raising her daughters had been hateful, worthless; as if she thought Wiloma wouldn't remember the lazy, laughing afternoons the two of them had shared with all four children. Kitty had been terrific with Lise and Delia and with Wendy and Win as well. But now she said those years had been like being in jail. She'd given up doing “women's work,” she said. No more cooking, cleaning, making of parties, no sending of birthday cards or presents. No visiting her husband's aged uncle when her husband was too busy to go himself. That was what had annoyed Wiloma most: that Kitty had stopped visiting Brendan.

“Why would he go see her?” Wiloma asked. “When he could come here?”

Waldo shrugged and picked up the phone. “I'll just check.”

Wiloma listened as Waldo casually asked Kitty if she'd seen Henry recently. Something about the apartment, he said, lying smoothly. The ceiling was leaking, he'd scheduled a carpenter, he needed to let Henry know and hadn't been able to reach him. She
had
seen him? Wiloma watched the color seep from Waldo's even tan as he responded to something Kitty was saying.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” Waldo said. “I know …. Uh-huh. I understand.” This went on for minutes; apparently Kitty was angry. Waldo turned his back and Wiloma studied the neat curves of his legs. He looked wonderful again, his ex-football player's body only slightly softened. He worked out, Wendy had told her. He went to the gym three times a week. He did this, Wiloma knew, for Sarah, who was only thirty-four—this, and the clothes and the funky shoes, the hair transplants, the sunlamp tan. He'd been balding and overweight when he'd belonged to Wiloma.

“Shit,” Waldo said when he hung up the phone. “That
was
them in that van—they showed up at Kitty's a couple of hours ago. She says Henry's in some kind of weird mood—he took a bunch of old stuff from their closet, and he tried to borrow some money from her. She says he said he was bringing Brendan over here for dinner.”

“Not likely.”

“No,” Waldo agreed. “Kitty says they took her dog when they left. Bongo.”

“Bongo's his dog, really. Not hers.”

Waldo waved his hands in the air. “His dog, her dog—but if they went to see Kitty, maybe there's nothing more to this than a day trip. A little jaunt. Maybe Brendan just wanted a few hours off. Or maybe Henry got it into his head to see Kitty, and he used Brendan as some sort of shield—you know how screwed up they are. She won't even talk to Henry half the time. Not that I blame her—I'm surprised his girls are even speaking to him.”

“They're not,” Wiloma said. “At least that's what I hear from Wendy.”

“Serves him right,” Waldo said, but then he winced as if thinking how narrowly he'd escaped the same fate. The difference was money, Wiloma thought: money, which Waldo had by the generous handful and Henry had lost. Waldo's money—and my own weakness, she thought, remembering the months before her Healing—had been enough to reconstitute his doubled family into a workable shape. She tried not to think about what her breakdown and absence had done to her children, or what their lives had been like while they lived with Waldo. Waldo had changed them, in ways she didn't always like, but he'd held the surface of their lives together and thought he was a hero because of that. He shared many of Henry's faults but found Henry contemptible.

“Did Kitty call St. Benedict's?” she asked.

“No. She thought they had permission to take the van. I didn't tell her anything different.”

Wiloma stared at the andromeda outside and mulled over a vision of Brendan and Henry at Kitty's house. They had gone there at Brendan's request, they had had tea; they were going to take a drive by the lake and then head back to the Home. Could that be true? she wondered. No. Henry was trying to keep Brendan away from her and the Church. She turned to Waldo, who was watching her closely.

“I don't know why they went to Kitty's,” she said carefully. “Some sort of detour, maybe. Or maybe they meant to confuse us. But I know they're headed for Massachusetts. I can feel it. Henry's so desperate, that's just what he'd do. He ruined Da's place in Coreopsis, and now he wants to ruin this.”

She paused. Waldo knew she'd been planning to bring Brendan home but he didn't know why, and she wondered for a minute if she should tell him about Christine. She decided against it. Waldo said, “I think you're right. Henry may have talked him into the trip somehow—he's so greedy, he wants that land so bad. I know what he's thinking. He wants your half, too.”

Not like you, she thought. Not much. She was aware that Waldo's presence, and his apparent concern, had more to do with Brendan's land than with worry over either her or Brendan. She didn't care what happened to the land; it was only land, and no concern of hers. But she didn't mind using it as a lever to move Waldo. “You think?” she said.

“I wouldn't put it past him.”

And then Wiloma said what had come into her mind just that minute, which she recognized immediately as right. “I'm going to go after them. They've only got a couple of hours start, maybe less—I could be there in six or seven hours.”

“That's crazy,” Waldo said, as she had known he would. “You'll never find them. You don't know where they're headed, and you'll have to stay overnight somewhere.”

“I'll find them,” she said serenely. If I can think it, she told herself, it must be so. If I need help, help will appear. She looked at Waldo steadily, willing him to step into her silence and offer what was needed. Waldo said, “Hang on a minute. I think I have something in the car.”

He strode off, leaving her to think about her uncle. Brendan had meant nothing to her when she was a child; she would have sworn that on her parents' graves, had she known where to find them. He'd been sick and crippled and useless and quiet, a bag of bones with a big head and wispy hair, another old person brought into a house already tilted so far toward old that Wiloma had felt like a fern struggling to grow in a forest of ancient oaks. Someone else to look after. Someone else to wait on. His hands had been covered with blue veins and his reminiscences of China had been as dull as Da's reservoir tales. She couldn't believe Henry had listened to him. She'd never believed Henry's affection for him was sincere.

But then Gran had died, and Brendan had moved to St. Benedict's, and Henry had run off with Kitty and left her alone with Da. And during Da's long illness, when she'd been so isolated, she'd begun to realize how she'd leaned on her uncle without knowing it. The tray she'd fixed for him each afternoon, when she'd returned from the school where she still felt like an outsider—that had anchored her, given her a point around which her days had revolved. Herbal tea, three arrowroot biscuits, a teaspoonful of jam. While she helped him hold his cup and dab jam on his biscuits, he had asked her to describe her day to him.

He was bored, he said. He was stuck in the house and never saw anything. She'd be helping if she told him the details of her day: anything, any small stories. What the weather was like, what her teachers had said, what had happened on the bus. She had sighed but described these things dutifully, shaping each day's events into anecdotes that filled an hour, always thinking she was doing him a favor and wishing she could spend that hour somewhere else, never understanding how much the knowledge that she had to pay attention enough to fill that hour had helped make her days bearable.

Only after her marriage and Wendy's birth had she started to visit him at the nursing home. She'd gone out of a sense of duty, and from a desire to show off her child:
Here,
she'd wanted to say.
Look at this. I did this.
His hands were too twisted to hold Wendy properly, but he'd found a way to rest his elbows on his lap and bend his arms until he could cradle Wendy between his forearms and his chest. “She's beautiful,” he'd said. “A regular princess. When your father was born, his eyes looked just like that.”

His pleasure had been so genuine that she'd begun to visit him regularly. Before long, she'd found herself storing up the events of her weeks to tell him each Sunday. He had listened to all her ups and downs—Win's and Wendy's childhood illnesses, money problems, broken plumbing; then Waldo's defection, her own struggles, her salvation by the Church. He never passed judgment on anything. He was always glad to see her. He was the only person left in the world who could link her children to her dead parents, and it was impossible to let him go.

Waldo returned with a sheaf of maps; the same ones, she suspected, that he'd shown Wendy and Win. “Where would they go?” he asked. “If they were going someplace in particular.”

“Hard to say,” she answered. “The land Uncle Brendan told me about, where our cabin used to be—that's outside the watershed altogether, it's in a different town now. But there were some dirt roads that led from there into the reservoir lands, and there was a point that my mother used to bring me and Henry to.”

She paused; she hadn't thought about this in years. “The East Pomeroy Common. Or what was left of it—a road lined with cellar holes, some old stone walls, paths that broke off at the water's edge. The reservoir was almost filled by the time my father came back from the war, and he used to take me and Henry down there and try to get us to imagine what his village had looked like. Then he'd start drinking. Then he'd cry.”

Waldo touched her elbow with his hand. “How old were you?”

“Five,” she said. “Maybe six. Something like that.” His fingers sent sharp jets of warmth up her arms and she moved her elbow away.

“Is that a place your uncle would know?”

“I don't think so. I remember Da telling me how they were just beginning to build the dam when Uncle Brendan left for China. He was gone for five or six years before they began to fill the reservoir. And then—I don't know, this is so hard to piece together. We left after the accident, and then Uncle Brendan came back from China a few years later, but he didn't come home—he went to Canada, to some other abbey there. I think that's what he told us. I don't think he ever saw the water.”

Waldo unrolled one of his maps. “Where are you talking about?”

Wiloma studied the long, mulberry-leaf shape of the reservoir, and then she brought her finger down on a point on the northeast shore. “Somewhere around here,” she said. “This point—you see how they have the old dirt roads still marked, and the gates leading into the state land? We used to go through one of them, maybe this one.” She traced a tentative path with her finger around a knob that dented the water's boundary. “Here?” She hesitated and looked at the map again. The edges of the reservoir were so pocked with points and coves that she wasn't sure she could tell one from another.

Waldo unrolled another map, slick and shiny and gray: some kind of photocopy. It was dated 1940, two years before her birth. “Does this help?” he said.

She looked at it and then looked again; a map from a dream. There was no reservoir on this map, no water at all but a few small ponds and the branches of the Paradise River, winding through Winsor and Nipmuck and Stillwater and Pomeroy, East Pomeroy and Lizzie Springs. Her father, and then her grandfather, had drilled those lost names into her head.

Waldo stared blandly back at her. She wondered where he had gotten that map, and she found it unpleasant that he should know more than she did about the place of her birth. She reminded herself that her dealings with him had always required a caution foreign to her. “I can't tell,” she said, although she thought she recognized the point on this older map.