Andrea Barrett - The Forms of Water

Win, who had finally agreed to stay home, had been playing with the Nintendo paraphernalia Waldo had loaned him. The television bleeped and flickered as a helicopter exploded again and again and was miraculously resurrected. Now he set down the controls and drifted toward Delia. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem,” Delia said, “the problem is …” Without warning, and with considerable grace, she hurled her glass of grapefruit juice and vodka into the fireplace. “I’m so sick of this family,” Delia said more calmly. “I’m so sick of my father I could puke. This is all his fault, I know it is — I don’t even have to know what’s going on to know he did it. He’s like a bulldozer without a driver out there, crashing through the world and wrecking up everything. He’s such a child.”

With her flushed face and her curly hair, Delia looked like a child herself. Win bent over the fireplace and began picking up the shards of glass. “What’s the big deal?” he said. “Your father, my mother — they’re both crazy. It’s not like this is news. What’s the point of getting all upset?”

“You’re sixteen,” Delia said scornfully. “What do you know?”

“More than you do. I know there isn’t any point in worrying about whatever they’re doing. They’re all out there on the road somewhere, buzzing around each other, and you watch, whatever’s going on, they’ll all be back tomorrow acting like nothing ever happened. And that’s because probably nothing is happening. You can’t take them seriously.”

Delia rose unsteadily and headed for the kitchen. “I have to call Lise,” she said, as if Lise had ever been any help to her. She shook off Wendy’s hand when Wendy reached out to stop her. “Don’t touch me. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this was going on.”

“I did tell you,” Wendy said. “I just did.”

“Now. After letting me sit here all night, thinking everything was fine.” Delia vanished into the kitchen and Roy touched Wendy’s forearm gently.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “She always overreacts when she hears anything about her father. She can’t stand to side with him, but she still feels sorry for him and she gets herself all tangled up.”

When Delia returned from the kitchen she looked grimly satisfied. “You won’t believe this,” she announced. “Lise is over at Mom’s helping her pack up, and when I told her what was going on, she said that Dad and Grunkie had been there around lunchtime, in a van no less, and that Dad was in this really strange mood and he and Mom had one of their fights. Lise said she heard Dad tell Mom that he was bringing Grunkie over here for dinner.”

She said she heard him tell her, Wendy thought. “Not for dinner,” she admitted. “To stay.”

“What?” Delia said. “What else aren’t you telling me?”

Win frowned across the room at Wendy, but Wendy kept on talking. Somehow, even without the dolls in her hands, her words didn’t seem to matter anymore. All the words that had sprung from everyone’s lips all day had fused and mutated and taken on a life of their own, which seemed bound to sprout strangely no matter what she did. She said, “Grunkie was supposed to stay here. Until — you know.”

“Until he dies,” Win said firmly. He came and stood next to Wendy and picked up the dolls she’d set against the pizza boxes. “Where did you get these?” he asked Wendy quietly. “Did you take them?”

“I borrowed them.”

“I don’t get it,” Delia said, while Win scanned Wendy’s guilty face. “Why would Grunkie come here?”

“Because,” Wendy said. “Mom wanted — he was due for some chemotherapy, and Mom said it wasn’t going to do any good, and she wanted him to come stay here so someone from her stupid church could try some sort of diet on him.” She rose and beckoned to Delia and Roy and then led them into the spare room her mother had readied for Grunkie.

“Look at this,” she said. She showed them the Manual, the bookcase filled with Church literature, and the cross-stitched sampler bearing the Church motto. Nothing exists external to our minds, she read for the second time that day. Things are thoughts. The world is made up of our ideas. She made a mental note to add another item to the list in her closet: I will remember that the world is real. Ideas had gotten them nowhere, she thought. Ideas had brought her mother to this.

“He was supposed to come tomorrow,” she said. “Mom was going to pick him up. And then somehow she was going to take care of him. Except she can’t even take care of herself half the time.”

Delia laughed bitterly. “Look at this crap.”

Wendy drew a deep breath. She and Win used to try to hide their mother’s strangeness from Delia and Lise, but Henry’s crash had offered them a peculiar relief — since Delia had started confiding in them, they’d started confiding back. Sometimes, caught in a long exchange of “my mother said” and “my father did,” they had actually laughed. She had nothing to lose by saying what came next. “Mom said Grunkie must have told Uncle Henry about the neuro-nutritionist who’s supposed to come.”

“The what?” Delia asked.

“This nurse, this lady from the Church who’s supposed to help him. Grunkie wasn’t all that thrilled about the idea, I guess. And Mom said Grunkie must have told your father, and your father maybe took him away so he wouldn’t have to come here. You know how he hates Mom’s Church stuff. He thinks it’s crazy.”

“It is,” Delia said. “You told me so yourself.”

“Your father isn’t?”

They stared at each other until the doorbell rang.

“That’s probably Lise,” Delia said. “I told her to come over.”

Wendy groaned. “Now? You know she’ll just make things worse.” Lise knew everyone’s weak spots and hit them unerringly, and Wendy had always wondered if Lise noticed the way her words drove everyone away. The way she had of acting forty instead of twenty-three, as if she were decades older than the rest of them — Wendy felt a stiffness creeping up on her already, an echo of Lise’s rigid posture. Delia had, she knew, long since stopped telling Lise about anything important, and as they moved to the door she whispered to Delia, “Did you make up something?”

“About what?”

“Why you’re home. What you’re doing here. Roy?”

“Shit. I forgot all about that. Tell her I’m visiting you, okay?”

“Okay. But she’s going to remember Roy.”

Delia rolled her eyes and then pulled Roy to her and whispered something to him. Roy laughed. Delia said to Wendy, “Tell her Roy’s with you now. That you two hooked up after I left.”

She gave Wendy the same conspiratorial grin they’d shared as children, whenever they’d banded together to protect themselves from Use’s prying. Before Wendy could say anything, Roy left Delia’s side and moved to hers. “My darling,” he said in a joking voice. “My own true love.”

Her whole arm grew warm as he took her hand and held it. “My prince,” she said, trying to keep her voice as light as his.

Win, who had been watching all this, said, “Are we ready?” His voice was sarcastic. “Everyone got everything sorted out?”

Wendy and Roy and Delia nodded, and Win threw open the door. A woman stood there, not Lise, a woman older than Wiloma with short white hair and very white skin and a face so creased and lined and scored that it resembled a cotton shirt someone had washed and then forgotten to iron. Her gauzy printed skirt sagged almost to her ankles and was topped by a blue blouse. A large wicker basket was strapped to her back.