Andrea Barrett - The Forms of Water

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.

“SIT 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.