The Forms of Water

by Andrea Barrett

  “Where to?” Kitty said mockingly. “Lise was able to find me an apartment in her complex. Two stories, a little patio with a bit of grass all my own. I’m sure I’ll be very comfortable.”

  “Twin Oaks?” Henry said. “You’re moving there?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Let’s go in the kitchen,” Henry said. “Please? We need to talk.”

  He strode off, hoping Kitty would follow. Behind him Brendan said, “Henry? You know we ought to get going,” and then, as Henry turned the corner, “We can go in a minute, I guess. I’ll just sit here and talk to Lise …”

  Kitty followed Henry. “What are you doing here?” she said. “I asked you not to come … and what in the world are you doing with Brendan?”

  Her voice was so biting that he realized he couldn’t safely tell her the truth about anything. She twisted his words; she twisted his every move. She hates me, he thought with surprise. He couldn’t remember anyone ever hating him before.

  “I’m bringing him over to Wiloma’s,” he lied. “She and the kids wanted to see him. Then we’re all going out to dinner. The Home loaned us the van.” He hoped Kitty wouldn’t remember that he wasn’t supposed to be driving. She glared at him, waiting for something more. “I thought I’d just swing by here, since I was out,” he said lamely. “I need to pick up a couple of things, some extra blankets, some clothes I forgot …”

  Kitty wrapped glasses silently. She had always been able to wait him out, wait until his nervous voice filled the silence and he hung himself. He forced himself to change the subject: “How are the girls?”

  “Like you care.”

  “You know I do—you know this is killing me. You think I like seeing you forced out of our house?”

  “Your house,” Kitty said bitterly. “Your house, your development, your stupid, stupid projects—when was any of it ever ours? When did you ever think about what the girls and I might want?”

  This was so manifestly unjust that Henry stared at her. He had always, always, done everything for her and the girls—all his work, all his buildings and projects and plans and dreams. “That’s not fair,” he said. “If Coreopsis Heights hadn’t failed—I was trying to make something for all of us, make enough money so that you and the girls would be really secure, so you could do whatever you wanted.” He had said this before, he thought. Or something like this—he had told his sister, years ago, that he couldn’t stay in Coreopsis while Da was sick because he had to go make enough money to save them all.

  “And Anita?” Kitty said. “What was that?”

  “A mistake. I made some mistakes. Can’t a man make a mistake now and then?”

  “I heard you’re working at a box factory. Another mistake?”

  “It’s just temporary. It’s what the employment agency had. It’s just until I get back on my feet and we get all of this straightened out.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Kitty said, whacking silverware into a box. “We—we aren’t straightening anything out. We aren’t a we anymore. I’m moving Wednesday, and once I get out of this place and the lawyers finish up, we aren’t going to see each other again. Not if I can help it.”

  Henry backed away from her, wondering when she’d gotten so mean. “I’ll just go get what I need,” he said.

  “You do that.” Kitty tore open another cabinet and began stacking dishes furiously. Henry tried to imagine her in one of the apartments at Twin Oaks: shoddy construction, low ceilings, flimsy stairs and walls. The closets were shallow and all the windows jammed. He knew the man who had built that complex: Dominic, who had skimped on every phase of the construction. Kitty’s belongings—our belongings, he thought with a pang of loss—would be hopelessly out of place.

  In the living room Lise was listening absently to Brendan. “I’m fine,” Brendan told her. “Fine, never been better.” Lise glared at Henry as he passed her and fled up the stairs. More boxes, more disarray. His shirt felt heavy on his shoulders and he started to sweat. Without thinking, hardly seeing, he pawed through the closet he had once shared with Kitty. Blankets—fine, he thought. Two. A short-sleeved shirt and his long-billed Red Wings cap. Sneakers—I thought I had those. I thought they were at the apartment. The briefcase Da had given him when he’d left Coreopsis, with the sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings and papers inside; the framed picture of his parents at the Farewell Ball, where, his mother swore, he had been conceived—don’t look at that; a stack of ties the girls had given him, which he had never worn but always saved. He crammed these things into an empty box he found lying near the bed. He hadn’t taken much when Kitty had thrown him out—it hadn’t seemed necessary, he’d thought he had plenty of time. But now he was seized by the fear that Kitty might get rid of everything.

  When he came downstairs, Brendan said, “Things you need?” Kitty came into the living room and said, “Good. Get that junk out of here.”

  “We ought to go,” Henry said to his uncle, who nodded. Lise wheeled Brendan out the door and then stood by him near the van, saying something that Henry couldn’t hear from the living room. He touched Kitty’s elbow, the elbow of this woman who had once been his wife.

  “I’ll call you Monday,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “Don’t bother. We don’t.”

  Henry cleared his throat. “Listen. I know this is a little strange—but do you have any cash you could spare?” He had to ask, although it tore at his stomach; he and Brendan had fifty bucks between them. “I get paid next week, I’ll pay you right back ….”

  Kitty laughed at him. She called Lise to her and eased Henry out the door; as he passed Lise, she looked over his shoulder as if he were nothing to her. He thought of the time he’d lost her at Midtown Plaza, when she’d been three or four and small enough to blend into the forest of knees and thighs. He still didn’t know how it had happened. He had taken his eyes from her for just a minute, just long enough to examine the posters filling the travel agent’s window with palm trees and blue water and stretches of white sand, and when he looked back for her she was gone. The plaza was packed that week before Christmas, a sea of dark coats and scarves and jumbled legs and lines of children waiting to sit in Santa’s lap and ride the mechanical reindeer. Lise hadn’t made her way to the other children or the tree hung with gifts or the tired men costumed as elves. She wasn’t at the candy counter or the ice cream stand. He had climbed up on the concrete planter ringing one of the potted trees and looked down on the crowd, but still he hadn’t been able to see her. For the next half hour he’d run around in a fog of panic and guilt.

  She turned up in the arms of a security guard at the information desk, and when she caught sight of him she burst into angry tears. “You left!” she shrieked. And while he knew he hadn’t, that he had stood unmoving in front of the window while she trotted away, her accusation had stung him. He’d forgotten her for a minute and it came to the same thing.

  Kitty closed the door behind Lise, shutting out Henry and Brendan and also Bongo, who had slipped out behind Brendan’s wheelchair and was chasing a squirrel around the yard. Henry walked slowly toward the van, carrying his box of useless objects. When he opened the van door, Bongo leapt inside before Henry could finish raising Brendan’s chair. Henry looked at his dog, flop-legged and pink-tongued and uncomplaining and eager, and he said, “Fine. You want to come, you come.”

  “Henry,” Brendan said from his perch behind the driver’s seat. “This maybe isn’t a great idea.”

  Henry closed his door and started the engine. “He’s my dog,” he said, and the three of them drove off.

  9

  ANYTHING WE CAN CONCEIVE OF DOING, WE CAN DO, WILOMA READ. In our dreams we can do anything, and the same is true of our waking lives.

  Wiloma was sitting at her kitchen table eating cottage cheese, although she would have preferred a tuna sandwich. She’d eaten tuna for several years after she stopped eating meat, but then she’d read about the dolphins; now she ate bland white cur
ds doused with tamari and sprinkled with sunflower seeds. In between bites she tested her new filling with her tongue and felt guilty about her visit to her dentist.

  Her tooth felt smooth and whole again. She knew that if she’d been able to visualize it strong and healthy it would have healed itself, but each time she’d closed her eyes and called up a picture of it she’d seen it cratered and crumbling, the dark interior leading to a ribbon of pain. She had failed; she could admit that. She found it harder to admit that she had looked forward to seeing her dentist and enjoyed her visit to him.

  Her dentist had a warm, burred voice and a lovely neck. The chair in which she lay tilted so far back that her head was under his chin, and when she looked up, she saw the beard beneath his white mask and his shaved neck and the soft skin behind his ears. His hands were gentle and strong, and the way he cradled her head with them made her wonder how he’d hold the rest of her. While she lay there, her mouth stretched open and filled with a rubber dam and a drain and thin metal bands, she took her mind off the pain by staring at his eyes and his skin. She told herself that the fantasies she wove in that chair were not so terrible—she hadn’t made love to anyone since Waldo had left her, and it was natural, normal, that she should be attracted to this man. What was not so normal—what went, really, against the grain of everything she believed—was that her teeth acted up more these days than they ever had before, and that she couldn’t put the energy into healing them that she knew she should. And that was, she suspected, because she didn’t really want them healed; healing them would mean missing those gentle hands.

  It was ridiculous, embarrassing. She was forty-eight and knew she ought to know better. She turned back to her Manual, which she’d propped on the table behind her cottage cheese, and she read both to prepare herself for Brendan’s arrival and to stiffen her resolve not to let her mouth rule her mind.

  Heal the Spirit and the body will heal itself, she read, from the chapter on nutrition and healing.

  Drugs are a diversion and a distraction and work only by suggestion; how can that which is material, and thus unreal, influence that which is Spiritual and real? Healing occurs only through strengthening of the Spirit. However, certain foods can aid healing, through transmission of qualities of Spirit which are diminished in the Subject. These foods are curative not through any corporeal property, but because of the Spirit manifested in all things which grow from the earth.

  Spiritual nutrition is an art, which we discuss in detail elsewhere; it requires the full collaboration of the Subject and a trained neuro-nutritionist for the best results. However, even an unwilling Subject (one who has not accepted the omnipotence of the Spirit, or who has lost all will to command the Spirit) may be aided by a neuro-nutritionist who designs a diet based on the following guidelines:

  • Roots (e.g., potatoes, onions, beets, turnips) nourish the muscles and are useful in cases of muscle wasting, paralysis, sprain, strain, or spasm.

  • Leaves (e.g., lettuce, spinach, cabbage, dandelions) cool inappropriate passions and heat and are useful in cases of fever, sleeplessness, mania, and consumption.

  • Shoots (e.g., asparagus, fiddleheads, green onions) stimulate circulation and brain activity and are useful in cases of excess fluid, depression, and coma.

  • Flowers (e.g., broccoli, cauliflower, nasturtiums) have an affinity for the eyes and ears and are useful in cases of blindness, infection, and in certain disorders of emotion and behavior, which are actually disorders of perception.

  • Fruits (e.g., apples, oranges, melons; also such vegetables as eggplants, peppers, tomatoes) soothe and regulate all disorders of the skin and upper digestive tract.

  • Barks (e.g., cinnamon, birch, slippery elm) purge and purify the bowels and liver and are useful in cases of constipation, diarrhea, gallstones, liver congestion, and tumors of the digestive tract below the stomach.

  • Seeds (e.g., grains, peas, beans, nuts, sesame, poppy) stimulate and cleanse the generative organs and are useful in cases of barrenness, impotence, disordered menses, enlarged prostate or prostatic tumor, ovarian cyst or tumor, difficult pregnancy, and both lapsed and excessive desire.

  There was more, much more, but Wiloma skipped to the end of the list and read the last paragraph: Keep in mind that these are only guidelines. The neuro-nutritionist will modify them as needed, based on the dialogue of his or her Spirit with the Spirit of the Subject.

  How, Wiloma wondered, was Christine, her neuro-nutritionist, going to establish a dialogue with Brendan’s Spirit, which he kept hidden and caged? Although he’d left his Order when Wiloma was still a child, although he hadn’t set foot in a church since Second Vatican, she suspected he wouldn’t relinquish his Spirit to anyone but a priest. But Christine was cunning, and if anyone could break through to Brendan it would be her.

  Wiloma had known Christine since her return from the Healing Center in Boston. She hadn’t introduced Christine to Wendy and Win, but she’d seen her often, surreptitiously, for the minor ailments that continued to plague her despite her efforts to drive them out. These ailments shamed her, but Christine was very pragmatic about Wiloma’s lapses. The Spirit Scale was just that, Christine said—a scale, along which we proceed by steps. It takes time to shed our old thoughts and old habits, and even when we move along the Scale a few degrees, some backsliding is inevitable in times of weakness or inattention. And although Wiloma should not, she said, ever resort to drugs, the proper foods and herbs and minerals could aid the flow of energy along the body’s channels.

  Christine had given Wiloma extracts of bryophyllum leaves for her anxiety attacks and infusions of yarrow and silver for her insomnia. For her migraines, she’d concocted a mixture of iron, sulfur, myrtle, and honey. She gave Wiloma infusions of young birch leaves when her eczema broke out, and nasal sprays of lemon juice and mucilage of quince for her allergies. All these things had been comforting and some of them had helped; certainly none of them had harmed her.

  She was sure that Christine could help Brendan in similar ways. The plan she’d worked out for Brendan included blackthorn and stinging nettles and strawberry leaves, colloidal flint and lily of the valley, turmeric rhizomes and horsetail and infusions of elder blossoms. These were meant to strengthen his worn organs, but the heart of the treatment, Christine said, was mistletoe, which was known to be helpful in cancer and other catastrophes of form. And if it was too late for a cure—as, Wiloma had to admit to herself, it almost surely was—still, mistletoe given in the context of a full Healing Ceremony was guaranteed to help Brendan’s Spirit detach from his body fully, painlessly, and quickly. He’d merge into the Light like an arrow, Christine had said. Like a bird winging free from the earth.

  Wiloma was pondering this, and wondering how she could pry Brendan’s Spirit free from the guilt and dogma that bound him, when the phone rang and scattered her thoughts. The administrator from St. Benedict’s announced himself and asked if Brendan was with her.

  “Of course he isn’t.” Wiloma thought of Brendan’s room, clean and almost ready for him, and she reminded herself to vacuum the screens so the sun could flood the bed. “We arranged that I’d pick him up tomorrow.”

  The administrator drew a deep breath. “That’s what I thought. But we were hoping—you know, your brother visited your uncle this morning.”

  “It’s Saturday. That’s the day he always visits.”

  “Your uncle’s gone,” the administrator said. “So’s your brother. So is one of our transport vans. We were hoping there had been some confusion and that maybe they were with you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wiloma said. “Say that again?”

  The administrator repeated himself. “They were both with your uncle’s physical therapist earlier,” he added. “Someone else saw them leave the building and assumed your brother was just taking your uncle out for some air. But then your uncle wasn’t back in his room when the lunch trays were delivered, and one of the janitors discovered the missing van, and another on
e said your uncle was seen in the vicinity of the key case. And we’re afraid they took off together.”

  Wiloma focused the full power of her detoxified intelligence through space toward him, marveling at the way a grown man could allow his thinking to be so clouded by fear and confusion. “That’s ridiculous. There must be some mistake. They’re probably on the grounds somewhere, enjoying this beautiful weather. Couldn’t one of your own people have taken the van? Maybe someone forgot to sign it out. Henry would never do something like that. And my uncle—he was all set to come here. Surely you can see that there are other explanations?”

  “I hope you’re right.” The administrator’s voice sounded sour, as if his stomach were troubling him, and she wanted to encourage him to eat some fresh fruit. Something sweet, something cleansing. “But I’m afraid we may have a serious incident here. If you see either of them, if you have any news at all, would you call us?”

  “Of course. But I’m sure you’re mistaken—they’ll probably walk in any minute.”

  There is no pleasure in evil or error, she reminded herself as she hung up the phone. All Spirit ultimately acts for the good. She took six cleansing breaths through her nose, closed her eyes, and focused on the spark of serenity centered between her ears. It was not possible, she told herself, it could not be possible that Henry had kidnapped Brendan. No matter how depressed and disturbed he was, he could not have stolen Brendan away without telling her—not now, when keeping Brendan away from Christine for even a few more days might mean the loss of his Spirit.

  And yet she could picture Henry stealing into the Home, luring Brendan out, maybe drugging him or binding and gagging him, stuffing him into a stolen van. Henry was lost, he was past salvation. There was nothing he wouldn’t do.