The Forms of Water

by Andrea Barrett

  After that, Wendy had given up hope of finding anyone and had begun to wish only that they’d somehow find their way back to Roy’s car. Roy had ignored her; all his energy had been taken up with Delia, who had collapsed on a tussock of bent grass and refused to go any farther until Roy promised they’d head home in an hour or two. Lise had cursed Wendy for being fool enough to bring her bag along, and Win had grown so pale and tight-lipped that he’d frightened Wendy. And yet here they were, separated from their mother only by a sheet of smooth water, separated from Grunkie only by another, larger sheet. Those sheets seemed, at first, like nothing.

  “Wendy?” her mother called across the water. “Win? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Christine sent us,” Wendy called back, unable to think of another explanation.

  “What?”

  “Christine,” Wendy said again, and then, “Where’s Dad?”

  Wiloma pointed toward the wooded land behind her. “Up there. With your uncle Henry.”

  Lise dragged Delia a few feet forward. “Can you see him? Where is he?”

  “I can’t see anything,” Delia said. “No, wait—there’s someone in a blue shirt up there. Is that Dad? Or Uncle Waldo?”

  Win came up to Wendy and rested his arm on her shoulder. “We found them,” he said. “I don’t believe it.” His voice was tired and puzzled.

  “You found them,” Wendy said. “We never would have gotten here without you.”

  Win shrugged as if his navigation had been nothing, but she could tell that he was pleased. “So we found them,” he said. “Now what?”

  She didn’t know. Her mother and father and Grunkie and Uncle Henry were all here, and all of them appeared to be safe, and she couldn’t think of a single thing to do. Her mother called, “How did you get here?” and she called back, “Roy!”

  Roy, Wiloma thought. Who was Roy? On the shore across from her she saw Lise and Delia, who must have come with Wendy and Win; a fifth person stood near Delia, a boy with long hair and legs in black jeans. Was that Roy? She dimly remembered Kitty complaining about some hoodlum Delia had been seeing, but this boy didn’t look so bad and it seemed a miracle that they were here at all. Last night Christine had said they were sleeping—except that, Wiloma remembered now, those had not been Christine’s words exactly. When she’d asked for Wendy, Christine had said it was very late and that she could talk to Wendy in the morning. Not a lie exactly, but a deception all the same. Wiloma felt a prickle of anger at Christine, but she pushed it down and concentrated on her delight at finding the children here. Between them and Waldo, Henry wouldn’t stand a chance; whatever strange plan Henry had in mind was doomed.

  Win called, “Mom? Are you all right?” and she heard the fear in his voice. He and Wendy worried so—they acted as if she were always on the verge of breaking down again, as if they didn’t understand how the Church buoyed her up and kept her safe. “I’m fine,” she called, and on the opposite shore Win turned to Wendy and said, “I guess she’s okay.”

  “She’s all right,” Lise said impatiently. “But can’t you hear Dad? I don’t know who he’s yelling at.”

  “Probably our father,” Wendy said. “Mom must have sent him up there after Uncle Henry.”

  “Wonderful,” Lise said bitterly. “Thanksgiving all over again.” Wendy remembered the two men fighting at a holiday dinner years ago; something about the one development they’d worked on together. She and Lise had been children then, and the fight had terrified them.

  “I wish we had one of those boats,” Win said, pointing to the row on the opposite shore. “There’s no way for us to get over to Mom, except to walk back into the woods and see if we can find the mouth of the cove and cross over there.”

  Wendy looked down the cove, which cut back so deeply that she couldn’t see its end. The shore of the point where their mother stood ran parallel to them. “This must be the mouth of a river. A stream must come through those trees.”

  Win followed her gaze. “I guess.”

  Wendy looked again at the sheet of water separating them from their mother. “It’s so narrow. And it’s so warm out—we could just swim it.”

  Roy left Delia’s side and came over to Wendy and said, “No,” even as Win’s eyes lit up. “Why not?” Win said. “It’s so shallow—it’s nothing.”

  “It’s a bad idea,” Roy said. For a second, Wendy let herself think that he was protecting her. Then he said, “Delia and Lise won’t go for it—Delia hates the water. And we ought to stick together. It won’t take that long if we walk.”

  Win ignored him. He had already stepped out of his sneakers when Delia walked to the edge of the water and began shouting toward the boat. “Grunkie!” she called, waving her arms. “Grunkie! Hi! It’s me!”

  Lise joined her. “Grunkie! Come back!”

  Brendan had kept his back toward Wiloma and the sounds Henry was making in the distance, but when he heard his nickname he craned his head over his shoulder and saw Lise there, and Delia and Wendy and Win, lined up on the shore and waving at him. For a minute he thought he might be dreaming. He hadn’t seen them all together in years; Wendy and Win took turns coming to visit him with their mother, and although he’d seen Lise only yesterday, before that he hadn’t seen her or Delia since Delia had left for college.

  Years ago, Kitty and Wiloma had sometimes dressed up all four children and brought them to St. Benedict’s for Christmas. They’d crowded into his room, squirming and squealing and restless, holding cards they’d made from red and green construction paper. All up and down his floor, his friends had strained for glimpses of them; all year long he’d held the vision of their last visit in his mind. And now here they were, as tall and straight as young poplars on the shore. It was wonderful, wonderful; Wiloma must have brought them with her as a surprise to him, and he was grateful to her and then embarrassed that he’d left her behind. Somehow she’d understood that he wanted his whole family here with him; she hadn’t been chasing him, she’d come to join him. He leaned over the side of the boat and waved to his family with both arms, and just then, just when Marcus, looking alarmed, pulled in his oars and said, “Be careful!” Bongo recognized Delia’s voice and leapt to his feet and barked.

  He was a big dog, and his toenails hadn’t been clipped in a long time. His feet spun on the aluminum and he fell heavily, rocking the boat; Brendan, unbalanced and twisted toward the shore, slipped over the side and into the water so quickly that his greeting was still on his lips. His head rose above the water once, but his glasses fell off and he could see only colored shapes. The water wasn’t cold. His family was all around him, and Marcus had rowed him just to the spot overlying his abbey, and he sank easily, gratefully, down into the silky water, past a school of minnows that scattered, past a pair of trout who eyed him kindly, past the waving weeds and toward the glimmering stones. Surely that was the chapel below him? And the cloister, the garden, the great wall against which he’d leaned as a child, listening to the monks within? And there were the fields and the grazing cows and his family’s farm in the distance; and the sky was blue and his brothers were chanting and his family spoke softly to him.

  He thought of Roxanne, the one person at St. Benedict’s he’d failed to say good-bye to; he felt her warm hands on his legs. Then he thought of all the kind people who’d leaned from their cars and spoken to him as he sat on his lonely corner. He heard Bongo barking above him, fish breathing water below him, and he thought of the tale his abbot had told him before he’d sailed for China, of a man who heard a voice in a dream that told him to set out on a journey. The man obeyed the voice; he traveled far and had many adventures. But when he reached his destination, he found only a stranger who told him the treasure he sought was hidden back in his own house. That’s the way it works, his abbot had said; he’d said that only a journey to distant lands could reveal what lay buried at home.

  In the water, which was warm and pleasant, his hands shaped the words for his abbot and then
for his brother and Jackson and Marcus and the little boy in Henry’s half-built house. Then they fluttered and snapped as the water made its way inside him. Horrible, to lose the air; horrible to be sinking from the light the way the families on the Saipan cliffs had sunk into the rocks and waves. The darkness was overwhelming, but against it he saw plums—fleshy, succulent, sweet—arcing over a wall and into his hands. His limbs felt weightless and liquid, all their pains dissolved. Finally, he thought. Finally, I have come home.

  Henry, so oblivious that he hadn’t seen the boat leave the shore nor heard his daughters and his niece and nephew calling to Wiloma and Brendan, suddenly became aware of the shouting below him and saw that his uncle’s wheelchair was empty. He looked away from Waldo, with whom he had been arguing, and he said, “What’s going on down there?”

  Waldo took his hand off Henry’s arm. “Those are our kids. On that point across from Wiloma. How the hell did they get there?”

  Henry looked at the four children, all of them, along with a stranger, facing the water and shouting something he couldn’t understand. He saw Win step out of his clothes and hurl himself into the water, swimming toward a small boat in which sat a man—Marcus?—and a dog that looked like Bongo. The boat was rocking from side to side, although the water was glassy. Wiloma, he saw, was standing with her arm on Brendan’s wheelchair. Her mouth was open in a circle.

  “Where’s my uncle?” he asked Waldo. Waldo had accused him of kidnapping Brendan, and the idea had made him so furious—kidnapping, when he’d gone so far out of his way to help his uncle, when he’d done everything his uncle had asked—that he’d accused Waldo of ruining Wiloma’s life. And then Waldo had brought up Coreopsis, taunting him again with his failure, and Henry had retaliated by telling him what he planned for this land, and the two of them, once again, had almost come to blows. But now, in the light of Brendan’s disappearance, they stood quietly and tried to figure out what had happened.

  “Maybe he’s in the shed,” Waldo said. “This sun—maybe he wanted to get some shade.”

  “Without his chair?”

  “We better go down.”

  “There’s a path here. A shortcut.” Without thinking, Henry found his way to a trail he’d known as a child, which led down the face of the ridge and cut directly toward the shore. As they descended they vanished from sight among the trees, and when Wiloma turned around to cry for help, they were gone.

  Bongo stood with his front paws on the side of the boat, barking loudly at the water that had swallowed Brendan. Wiloma closed her eyes and then opened them, thinking Brendan might somehow miraculously reappear if she willed it strongly enough. When he didn’t, when she saw only the barking dog and the rocking boat and Marcus stabbing his oars into the water as if he could fish Brendan out, she bent her head over the wheelchair and threw up. She couldn’t swim and neither could Henry; Da had never let them near the water and had refused even to let them wade in their shallow pond. Her own children swam like fish, she had made them take lessons very young, but she had never been able to learn herself and all she could do now was wipe her mouth and then listen as a strange wail, which seemed to come from outside her, filled the air.

  Her son splashed through the water, as naked as a fish, but she watched him without either hope or fear. There was no chance that he’d get to Brendan in time, she thought, and no chance that he’d drown trying—the sun was warm, the water was calm, and Win was very strong. He’d swim out and back and nothing would change; he’d continue drifting away from her, growing more and more distant each year until he was gone entirely. He was gone and Brendan was gone and Wendy was leaving; Henry and Waldo had vanished. She had nothing and had brought this on herself.

  She had allowed herself to believe that her uncle was dying and that Henry had kidnapped him; she had let her panic overwhelm her and push her into a corner where this was the only possible outcome. She recalled the words of her Manual: We see what we believe as surely as we believe what we see. All the thoughts we have ever had exist even when we do not think of them, just as rain exists on a cloudless day.

  She made herself think of Brendan’s Spirit floating up from the reservoir and merging into the Light. He was transiting without her or Christine or the Healing Ceremony, but he was only lost if she believed he was. She saw her son swimming toward the boat, as if he still believed he might help. She watched him hang on the boat, catching his breath, and then dive once, twice, three times, returning empty-handed. The old man in the boat reached down and helped her son from the water, nearly tipping the boat over in the process. She saw Win rest his head on the old man’s knees, as if he were crying.

  She could not spare a glance for the children on the opposite shore, who stood as if they’d taken root. Wendy meant to swim out with Win, but the looping, wordless wail that had poured from her mother’s throat paralyzed her. Even Delia’s voice, when she finally heard it, seemed to come from far away. “I shouldn’t have called him,” Wendy thought she heard Delia say to Lise. Delia’s face seemed to have shattered into unrelated parts, which Wendy could focus on only separately. A swollen eye against glinting water, a nose against a background of trees, a mouth among the rocks. A pair of sandpipers hopped behind a pair of knees, and in the shallows Wendy saw a set of shimmering shapes that resolved into a school of minnows. The minnows were lined up with Lise’s eyes, which were fixed upon the water.

  “I called him, too,” Wendy heard Lise say woodenly, and then Delia wailed, “Bongo!” as if Bongo were something more than a dog, as if they could blame a dog. Delia fell to the ground in a tangle of hair and tears and arms and legs and cried so hard that Lise sat down and twined Delia in her bony arms until no one could see where Lise ended and Delia began.

  Roy stood near Wendy with his hands over his eyes; he said nothing when Wendy stepped out of her shoes and began walking toward her mother. The water looked like a broken mirror, the edges facing the sun lit up and the trailing surfaces shadowed. It rose to her ankles, then to her knees, and then her thighs. Perhaps Roy never noticed that she’d moved. The water rose to her waist and then to her chest and she leaned into it, ready to lift her feet from the bottom and swim. But Win had been right, after all—the water in the narrow cove never rose over her head, and at its deepest point she was able, by stretching her neck and her legs, to keep her toes on the bottom and the water below her chin as she parted the glittering fragments with her hands.

  29

  FROM THE “LETTERS TO THE EDITOR” OF THE PARADISE VALLEY Daily Transcript:

  March 29, 1938

  Dear Sirs:

  Yesterday, when our towns formally ceased to exist and the Commission took over our valley by eminent domain, marked the end of our twenty-year struggle to preserve our homes. We have all received notices asking us to vacate our properties. Our train has ceased to run; our churches have ceased to hold services; our fields lie fallow and those buildings already abandoned have been razed before our eyes. Meanwhile the embankment rises higher each day, and the politicians in Boston gleefully anticipate the completion of the dam and the filling of the reservoir.

  And so it appears that, after all, we must go. A few more town meetings, the closing of our schools and post offices and clubs, and then those of us remaining must leave. Who can calculate the damage done to us? Ten years from now, when the people of Boston turn on their taps, who among them will sense the lives that were destroyed to provide them with water? Who among them will even know that such a place as the Stillwater Reservoir exists? They will drink thoughtlessly, perhaps imagining that their water comes from a source closer to home, and if they should look at a map, they will not connect the great blot in the center of the state with the liquid filling their glasses. In a decade or so the blot will seem to have been there always, and no one will remember that beneath it once lay a community.

  Newspaper reporters from other parts of the state swarm here now, suddenly perceiving what they choose to call “the tragedy of the vall
ey residents.” They ask us for interviews. They photograph our abandoned buildings. Where were they, one wonders, when this tragedy might still have been prevented? Where were they during the hearings that decided our fate? I would urge you to send these vultures away with the contempt they deserve.

  Frank B. Auberon, Sr.

  Pomeroy

  Part V Old Men’s Tales

  30

  “THE NIECE,” THE OLD MEN SAY, AS THEY DO EACH WEEK WHEN Wiloma swishes through the pneumatic doors. She brushes the snow from her jacket and boots and sets down her carton of books. In the common room the windows are dressed with sprays of spruce and holly and a large artificial tree bristles in a corner. “The niece is here,” the old men say, and they sit straighter in their chairs.

  They never call Wiloma by her name; she is “the niece” as Henry is “the nephew” and Wendy and Delia and Lise and Win are “the children.” A legend as florid as any saint’s life has grown up in the six months since Brendan’s journey, and in it Wiloma and her family have been reduced to nameless characters. Roy doesn’t exist in the legend; Waldo surfaces only rarely. Brendan, as Wiloma once foresaw, has become a hero to his old companions.

  Spencer, Charlie, Kevin, and Ben; Wallace with his clouded eyes; even Parker with the electronic box in his throat where his larynx used to be—they’re glad for the food and books she brings, glad for all her help, but what they really want is to talk to her about Brendan. They want to tell her how they were present the day he broke out, and how they knew he was planning something outrageous.

  “Brendan was cunning,” they whisper in their shattered voices. “He bided his time.”

  “He stole the keys,” they say, holding up their own twisted hands in imitation of his. “He tricked Fred Johannson and stole the keys and convinced his nephew to drive the van, and then he took off on this journey ….”