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.
“But if you saw it, wouldn’t you recognize it? And don’t you think Henry might remember it?”
“He might,” she agreed. “Better than I do—he was older. He might bring Uncle Brendan there.”
He might; he might do anything. And the more she thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. He’d bring Brendan right to that spit of land, and there—her imagination failed her, but she didn’t care. Henry had stolen Brendan and she was off to rescue him, and with these maps she knew she could track them down.
“Can I take these?” she said. “I’ll bring them back.”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t you let me come with you? I could help with the driving—we could take my Saab, instead of your old clunker. And if Henry gives you a hard time, I’d be there to help.”
Waldo’s face was smooth as a hazelnut. She knew he was interested in her uncle’s land, not in her uncle, not in her, but despite that she felt a great surge of exhilaration and hope. Overnight, she thought. Just me and Waldo; no Sarah, no kids. He might think he was joining her for one reason but that reason might change into another: if they were alone together all day and all night, and if she thought clearly and didn’t nag about money or harp about her church, and if he left just a crack in his mind open, a channel through which she might seep—anything might happen. Anything. And even if nothing changed, even if he was only civil, only kind, he was good with maps and directions and he had a nose like a bloodhound’s. He thought like Henry; he’d be able to shadow Henry’s trail and that would lead her to Brendan.
“That would be lovely,” she said. “If you wouldn’t mind.” He smiled and she smiled back, letting him think he had tricked her.
15
THE NOTE WAS STUCK TO THE REFRIGERATOR WITH A MAGNET shaped like a butterfly.
“Your father and I,” Wendy read—your father and I? When was the last time her parents had linked themselves like that?—”have gone to Massachusetts. We think that’s where Henry took Uncle Brendan. We’ll be home sometime tomorrow. Make sure Win takes a shower when he gets back from soccer. There’s broccoli casserole in the fridge for your dinner. I want you both to stay in tonight—I know I said Win could go to that party, but I don’t want him out while I’m away. You take care of him and be a good girl. I’ll call.”
Wendy looked at her watch. Five-thirty—they couldn’t have been gone for more than an hour. How could they have gone without calling her first? She kicked the corner of the refrigerator and swore under her breath, cursing not only her parents but herself. If she hadn’t called her father, if she’d kept her worries to herself and gritted her teeth and told her mother not to worry, this never would have happened.
Her mother’s car was still in the driveway, which must mean they’d gone off in her father’s fancy Saab. The two of them trapped in there for hours, sniping at each other—it was ridiculous, it was bizarre. They couldn’t have coffee together without fighting. They were still in and out of court all the time: Wiloma wanted the deed to the house and Waldo refused, claiming she’d only donate it to the Church. Wiloma wanted more child support and money for college tuition; Waldo said she’d give away whatever he sent. Which was true, Wendy knew: her mother gave half of whatever she had to the Church, and the family-court judge always ended up agreeing with her father. He paid the mortgage and their medical bills, bought them clothes and books and bikes, but he never sent money and they had to ask him, item by item, for the things they needed. He never said no, but Wendy found the process humiliating. Why should her mother have to ask for gutters, or Win ask for running shoes? Why should she have to ask for a pin or a purse? The best thing about her job was the privacy it bought; she had fifty dollars in her pocket right now, which no one knew about.
Somewhere along the Thruway, she knew, her mother would be accusing her father of being stingy, as if she’d never given him reason to t
hink she did odd things with his money. Her father would be accusing her mother of being obsessed with the Church, as if he’d never abandoned her and driven her to it. They’d be arguing as if all the years they’d spent together had never existed, and there was nothing she could do about any of it except wonder why her father had bought into her mother’s delusions, and why Sarah had let him go, and why none of them could seem to see that whatever Grunkie was up to was his own business. She picked up the phone and called her cousin Delia.
She didn’t call Delia at her dorm in Syracuse, where Delia was supposed to be; she knew that, although Delia was enrolled in summer school there, she secretly took the bus back to Rochester almost every weekend. Delia had a boyfriend named Roy, whom she’d been seeing since her senior year in high school and whom her family hated. Roy worked in a furniture warehouse, loading delivery trucks; he’d been on his own since he was seventeen. He had a beat-up car and a ponytail, an Irish setter and a worn mattress tossed on a floor littered with cans and clothes. Delia had told her family that she and Roy split up when she left for college.
Only Wendy, who had bumped into the two of them at the lake one Sunday afternoon, knew that Delia had managed to keep seeing Roy these past two years. In the cottage Roy shared with his friends, on a street behind the row of shops and bars that fronted on the beach, Delia and Roy had taken Wendy into their confidence. Their secret affair seemed romantic to her, and sometimes, when her own life seemed particularly empty, she visited them just to remind herself of what might be possible if she ever escaped.
Roy answered the phone and said that Delia was in the shower. Wendy imagined that rusty metal stall with the tattered curtain and the stained walls and was impressed by Delia’s devotion. “You want me to have her call you back?” Roy asked.
“I’ll hang on,” she said, and they chatted for a few minutes. Roy’s parents had, like Wendy’s, been divorced for years. When Delia had raged and cried over her family’s disintegration, Wendy and Roy had comforted Delia together and smiled at each other ruefully. Wendy had thought, but not said, that Delia was acting like a child.
“Here she is,” Roy said, and then Wendy heard her cousin’s voice.
“What’s up?” Delia asked. “You want to come over here tonight? We can go out, maybe hear a little music …”
“I can’t. My mother went away overnight and I have to watch Win.” Wendy didn’t explain what had happened; she could hardly sort it out herself and figured she’d tell Delia the details later. “I was wondering if maybe you guys wanted to come over here. I can’t stand sitting around all night by myself.”
“No problem,” Delia said.
Wendy hung up and then went to change her clothes. She hated the neat things her father and Sarah had bought her, but she knew why she wore them: these were the clothes that had said, I won’t cause any more trouble, I promise, when her mother had returned from the Healing Center. They’d said, Dad and Sarah don’t have to guard me anymore. I can make a new life, I can behave, but what they said to her now was, asleep. She was seized with a craving for the outfits she used to patch together during the years when she’d run wild. Men’s suit jackets and overcoats, rhinestone pins and feathered hats, black high-tops and torn long underwear flirting beneath skirts so short they were almost belts—she wanted her old clothes back. She wanted her old life. She wanted the time before her mother had caught them at their party and then cracked, and the minute before she’d made the mistake of calling her father this afternoon.
She dug out a pair of jeans, a clean shirt, and the list of rules she’d folded between her sweaters. The list began:
1. I will stop stealing
2. I will stop lying
3. I will learn something useful
4. I will make some friends
But there was no point in reading on, she’d already broken the first two rules. On her way out of her basement office, her hands had almost absentmindedly brushed the two rag dolls on her desk into the embroidered sack she used as a purse. She was furious that she’d taken them, and she dreaded the lies she’d have to tell to protect herself. She comforted herself with the thought that the rules were for her other life, her real life, which could not begin until she got away.
Everything was spoiled, she thought, as she dressed and then tucked the list back into her closet. Grunkie was missing, her mother was crazy, her father was involved. Her father was involved because of her. She flopped down on the bed her father had made her, a raised, carpeted platform with a hollow in which her mattress rested. The surface of the mattress was level with the surface of the platform; sleeping there was as safe as sleeping on the floor. Her father had made this for her because, years ago, she had so much feared falling out of bed that she sometimes fell. She’d never had the heart to tell him that now she longed for a proper bed with legs.
Below her she heard the kitchen door crash, and when she went downstairs she found Win bouncing up and down on his toes in front of the refrigerator, reading their mother’s note as the yellow plugs of his radio poured music into his ears. “Hey,” she said, but he couldn’t hear her. “Win!” she said more loudly.
He plucked the note from the refrigerator and turned to her, slipping the headset down until it hung like a collar around his neck. “Take care of Win?” he said. “What is this? You think I’m ten? What’s going on?”
Wendy tried to bring him up to date. “Grunkie took off. Or something.” She explained about the phone calls—the administrator’s to their mother, their mother’s to her, hers to their father—and watched as Win’s face changed from disbelief to disgust. They hardly talked at all anymore. Since their father and Sarah had cleaned them up and remade them, they’d been strangers to each other. They never discussed what they used to do; they never spent time alone together. Win was wrapped in a web of lies at least as dense as hers, and when he looked at her now his eyes shot off to the sides.
“So they went chasing after him? Why don’t they give the old guy a break?”
“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “Mom’s real worried about him—you know that healer of hers is supposed to start on him tomorrow. She sounded like she was losing it again. I shouldn’t have called Dad, but I thought he’d just talk to her or something—calm her down. You know. I didn’t expect him to come over here. And I don’t know how she talked him into driving her to Massachusetts.”
Win opened the refrigerator door and stuck his head inside. “She threw a fit,” he said. His voice was muffled by the metal. “That’s how. Just like she always does. Except she did it in front of him instead of us.”
Wendy came up behind him and peered into the coolness. Low-fat milk, some old pears, bread, cottage cheese, carrots. Broccoli casserole as promised, the stems swimming milkily under a scattering of whole-wheat crumbs. Their mother skimped on the groceries; that was one of the ways she tricked their father. She sent his food allowance to the Church and fed them all on the slim checks she got from teaching workshops to the new recruits. “Mom thinks Uncle Henry kidnapped Grunkie,” Wendy said over Win’s shoulder.
“Mom thinks the world is out to get her,” Win said. “Mom thinks everyone is as crazy as her, and that if she doesn’t watch everyone all the time, they’ll nut out on her when her back is turned. She makes people crazy.”
He slammed the refrigerator door. “There’s nothing to eat. You want to order a pizza?” He had a girlfriend, Wendy knew. When their mother went out, he slid a dark-eyed girl a year younger than him into his room. She was almost sure they were sleeping together. Win and his girl, like Delia and Roy, meeting secretly but at least meeting. Whereas she—and Lise, Lise was always lonely and always complaining about it—had been left with no one. She wondered if this meant that she and Lise were somehow alike. It was Delia she wanted to mimic, Delia with her thick, red-gold hair and her arm draped around Roy’s waist.
“Pepperoni,” Wendy said. “And sausage.” At least she could eat.
“Great. Then you
can make sure I take a shower. Then you can watch me.”
“She didn’t mean it that way.”
“The hell she didn’t. She wants you to sit in a chair and stare at me all goggle-eyed, the way she does—Are you happy? Are you well?” The way he mimicked their mother’s voice was uncanny. “I swear. I swear—I’m going to that party.”
“Don’t,” Wendy said before she thought about it. “Couldn’t you stay in tonight? Keep me company? Delia’s coming over later with a friend of hers—you could have some people over too, if you want. I’d feel better if you were around.”
Win made a face. “Guilt, guilt, guilt—you sound just like Mom. Oh, take care of me, I need you.”
“I’m sorry. Do what you want. But I know she’ll call, and if you’re not here, I’ll have to lie.”
“And we wouldn’t want that,” Win said. “Would we? Not from us, the truthful twosome.”
Wendy laughed despite herself and Win looked into her eyes for the first time in ages. “You’ll be out of here in three months. I’m stuck for another year and a half. You want to take me with you?”
“I would if I could.” Their shared past hung in the room like a mist. “When we’re twenty-five,” she said, “this will all seem funny. We’ll be able to laugh about it.”
Win picked up the phone and dialed the pizza parlor. “I won’t remember it by then,” he said. “I’m not planning on remembering any of this. When I’m twenty-five, I’m going to be in another country.”
16
The Forms of Water Page 11
