Free The Forms of Water by Andrea Barrett

dishes furiously. Henry tried to imagine her in one of the apartments at Twin Oaks: shoddy construction, low ceilings, flimsy stairs and walls. The closets were shallow and all the windows jammed. He knew the man who had built that complex: Dominic, who had skimped on every phase of the construction. Kitty’s belongings—
our belongings,
he thought with a pang of loss—would be hopelessly out of place.
    In the living room Lise was listening absently to Brendan. “I’m fine,” Brendan told her. “Fine, never been better.” Lise glared at Henry as he passed her and fled up the stairs. More boxes, more disarray. His shirt felt heavy on his shoulders and he started to sweat. Without thinking, hardly seeing, he pawed through the closet he had once shared with Kitty. Blankets—fine, he thought. Two. A short-sleeved shirt and his long-billed Red Wings cap. Sneakers—I thought I had those. I thought they were at the apartment. The briefcase Da had given him when he’d left Coreopsis, with the sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings and papers inside; the framed picture of his parents at the Farewell Ball, where, his mother swore, he had been conceived—don’t look at that; a stack of ties the girls had given him, which he had never worn but always saved. He crammed these things into an empty box he found lying near the bed. He hadn’t taken much when Kitty had thrown him out—it hadn’t seemed necessary, he’d thought he had plenty of time. But now he was seized by the fear that Kitty might get rid of everything.
    When he came downstairs, Brendan said, “Things you need?” Kitty came into the living room and said, “Good. Get that junk out of here.”
    â€œWe ought to go,” Henry said to his uncle, who nodded. Lise wheeled Brendan out the door and then stood by him near the van, saying something that Henry couldn’t hear from the living room. He touched Kitty’s elbow, the elbow of this woman who had once been his wife.
    â€œI’ll call you Monday,” he said. “We need to talk.”
    â€œDon’t bother. We don’t.”
    Henry cleared his throat. “Listen. I know this is a little strange—but do you have any cash you could spare?” He had to ask, although it tore at his stomach; he and Brendan had fifty bucks between them. “I get paid next week, I’ll pay you right back ….”
    Kitty laughed at him. She called Lise to her and eased Henry out the door; as he passed Lise, she looked over his shoulder as if he were nothing to her. He thought of the time he’d lost her at Midtown Plaza, when she’d been three or four and small enough to blend into the forest of knees and thighs. He still didn’t know how it had happened. He had taken his eyes from her for just a minute, just long enough to examine the posters filling the travel agent’s window with palm trees and blue water and stretches of white sand, and when he looked back for her she was gone. The plaza was packed that week before Christmas, a sea of dark coats and scarves and jumbled legs and lines of children waiting to sit in Santa’s lap and ride the mechanical reindeer. Lise hadn’t made her way to the other children or the tree hung with gifts or the tired men costumed as elves. She wasn’t at the candy counter or the ice cream stand. He had climbed up on the concrete planter ringing one of the potted trees and looked down on the crowd, but still he hadn’t been able to see her. For the next half hour he’d run around in a fog of panic and guilt.
    She turned up in the arms of a security guard at the information desk, and when she caught sight of him she burst into angry tears. “You
left!”
she shrieked. And while he knew he hadn’t, that he had stood unmoving in front of the window while she trotted away, her accusation had stung him. He’d forgotten her for a minute and it came