Andrea Barrett - The Forms of Water

“Hello?” Wendy said. “Can I help you?”

“You must be Wendy,” the woman said. Wendy felt a prickle of fear. “Is your mother here?”

Win pushed himself in front of Wendy. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“I’m Christine. From the Healing Center. Your mother asked me to come.”

“Tomorrow,” Wendy protested as Christine walked past them and into the living room. “You’re supposed to be here tomorrow.”

“I always come the night before, to make sure the treatment area is properly arranged.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” Win asked. “Barging in here like this.”

“I come where I’m called,” Christine said.

Delia laughed. “This is a joke, right?”

Christine gazed at the filthy living room and the dolls on the table and the spray of juice on the fireplace. “Nice,” she said. “Does your mother know about this?”

“Our mother’s away for the evening,” said Win.

“Why?” asked Christine. She wandered toward the kitchen before Wendy could answer, with her hands out before her like a blind woman’s. She touched the walls and the doorframes and the chairs and the drapes, as if she were trying to read them with her hands. As Wendy and Win and Roy and Delia followed her, she touched the stove, the sink, the dishwasher, and the refrigerator. Then she turned to Wendy expectantly. “On the counter,” Wendy blurted. “Under the phone.” She couldn’t understand what had made her speak.

Christine picked up the note Wendy had placed there earlier and read it. “But this is serious. Explain.”

Wendy told her the same story she’d told her father and then Win and then Delia, aware that it sounded worse with each repetition and afraid that she’d twisted, somehow, the already twisted tale her mother had told her. He said, she said, we said, she thought. They said, you said, I said. I said. She closed her eyes and felt the world chipped into bits around her, made up of the same small squares that formed the creatures and obstacles of Win’s video games. Nothing smooth and blended, everything sharp-edged and discrete, every word and act and person separate from every other, and the illusion that they formed a whole just that, just an illusion, visible only from a distance that blurred everything. Her voice trailed off and she opened her eyes to find Christine staring at her. “I mean,” she said faintly, “I mean that’s what my mother thinks. I don’t know what my father thinks. I don’t know why he went with her.”

“Your mother has good instincts,” Christine said. “Her hypothesis may be correct. Your great-uncle’s been a little resistant to the idea of being Healed. And if your uncle feels the same way …”

“He’s my father,” Delia said impatiently.

Christine turned toward Delia, her gray eyes shining like lamps. “Your father?” Wendy noticed that her eyebrows were almost invisible. “You’re the niece?”

“Wiloma’s niece,” Delia snapped. “Henry’s daughter. Grunkie’s grandniece. And my father feels the same way Grunkie does. He thinks you’re all crazy.”

Christine nodded gravely. “That would be consistent. Your father is the one who lost the farm in Coreopsis?”

“That’s him,” Delia said, while Wendy wondered what else this woman knew. “The one who loses everything.”

Christine moved to the stove and started heating a kettle of water. “But he doesn’t just lose things,” she said. “Does he? He takes things all the time, to make up for everything he’s lost. Other people’s land, other people’s love …”

Delia’s face turned a strange color, and Wendy felt her own face flush as she thought of the dolls in the living room. It was sickening, what this woman knew. Her mother must have told her everything.

Christine had kept her basket on her back, but now she leaned against the counter and slipped her arms from the straps. Quietly, she unloaded a bundle of branches with waxy leaves and shiny white berries, and then an assortment of small paper sacks that were folded, stapled, and labeled. She said to Wendy, “Where are the cups?”

Wendy gestured toward the cabinet over the sink, and when Christine reached in for the mugs, Wendy’s arm stole out and plucked a branch from the bundle and slipped it into her pocket. Win and Roy and Delia were all watching her but she couldn’t stop herself. She had to see if this woman knew everything. Christine looked back over her shoulder and said, “Are you very drunk?”

Wendy, suddenly speechless, turned to Win. “No,” he said. “We haven’t been drinking.”

“Not you two, the others.”

“What business is it of yours?” Roy asked.

“None,” Christine said. If she’d seen the branch disappear, she apparently wasn’t going to mention it. Wendy pulled her shirt over her pocket. “But I have some tea here, it’s sassafras. It’ll clear your heads.”

She measured out something brown and dusty from one of the sacks and then poured water into the teapot that stood near the toaster. Wendy watched her helplessly, wondering if there was a way to push her out into the night, and then she followed her to the table and sat down. The four of them sipped at their tea as if Christine had cast a spell on them. Her mouth was too small, Wendy decided. Or maybe it was her eyes that were too big, or the way her eyebrows vanished unless the light hit them just right. Whatever the reason, her eyes seemed to take up half her face.

“The question,” Christine said, “the question is …,” but before she could finish Lise walked in and Delia burst into tears. Roy, as if Lise were a gust of wind, leaned away from Delia and toward Wendy. Lise had shoes on, Wendy saw. Not sneakers or flip-flops, but shiny hard shoes with pointed toes. And stockings. And she carried a purse. She had cut her hair and she looked like Henry in drag. She squared her bony shoulders and said, “Does someone want to tell me what’s going on?”

“You would be …?” Christine asked.

“Lise. Delia’s sister. Who are you?” But before Christine could answer, Delia rose and took Lise’s arm and led her out of the room. Wendy could hear Delia’s voice behind the wall, rising, falling, crying — Delia, she realized, was drunker than she looked. Roy covered Wendy’s hand with his. “Let her get it out,” he whispered. “I usually just let her cry for a while.”

Win slapped his palms against the table. “I don’t suppose,” he said to Christine, “there’s any chance you’d pack up your stuff and get out of here.”

“I have to go where I’m called. That’s my job. I’m sorry you feel I’m infringing on your space.”

Win rolled his eyes at Wendy. Roy said, “This seems like sort of a family thing. Maybe I ought to get going.”

“Stay,” Wendy said. “Please.” She was so tired that she wanted to rest her head on the table and sleep, but she knew something dreadful would happen if she closed her eyes in Christine’s presence. She’d go to sleep as one person, wake up as another; she’d wake up believing everything her mother believed she believed. She’d wake up on Christine’s side, sure the world could be fixed by faith in a simple set of rules. Christine had power; Wendy could feel it flowing across the table from those clear eyes. Something in her was so calm and strong, or so calmly mad, that Wendy could almost imagine what had lured her mother into the Church.

Christine leaned over and fixed her gaze on Wendy. “Your great-uncle’s Spirit is getting ready to transit. If I don’t help him soon, he’s going to be lost.”

Win snorted into his tea. “Lost where?” he said. “Mom told us you were going to cure Grunkie. Keep him alive.”