Andrea Barrett - The Forms of Water

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.”

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

July 6, 1927

Dear Sirs:

Our fate has been sealed with the passage of the Paradise River Acts. Although we have been left up in the air as to when we must leave our beloved valley, and what parts of the valley we must leave, and how we shall be compensated for the loss of our land, our homes, our livelihoods, and everything we hold dear — leave we surely must. But we need not leave yet.

Already, many residents have requested real estate appraisals from the field offices of the Commission. Many, in fact, have left the valley; at the last Nipmuck town meeting, it was reported that 200 residents had already departed, and that those remaining were finding the tax burden intolerable. Twoof the summer camps in Pomeroy have closed. The Merriweather School and the Sweet Hill Hotel have shut their doors. Stores are leaving all of our valley towns.

Can we not maintain at least some semblance of dignity, some shadow of our former lives? The Commission assures us that it will be some years before the start of serious construction, and many more years before construction is complete. By leaving now, by collapsing and admitting defeat, we only aid and abet the destructive plans of our occupiers. Should we not stay here as long as we can, and live what remains of our cherished lives here as fully and richly as we can? Each family that leaves now tears a permanent hole in the web of our community life. No new neighbors will come to replace those lost: we are the last people who will live here, and we must band together. Let us leave only when we must. Let us leave together, at the end — not piecemeal, in panic and terror, at the beginning.