We Are Water by Wally Lamb Read Free Book Online

disappeared.” He had never said much about his father’s absence from his life, and until then I’d assumed he just accepted it. “The only thing I ever got from him was his last name,” he said. “And it’s different. I know it is. I had my mother a hell of a lot longer than you had yours, but . . .” He broke down in sobs then, and I ached as I witnessed the pain he was in. I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder. Pulled tissues from the box on the table and handed them to him. Watched him wipe his eyes, blow his nose. For the next several seconds, none of us spoke. Suzanne kept looking at me. Waiting for me to say something. And in the middle of that uncomfortable silence, I almost risked telling him my truths. My secrets were on the tip of my tongue. But then Suzanne glanced at her clock and said we had to wind up. That we’d gone a little bit over and her two o’clock would be waiting.
    I don’t know. Maybe if we had kept going to those sessions, I would have told him. But we didn’t. Things were better between Orion and me—more like they’d been in the beginning. The closeness, the way he could get me to laugh. Like that time he took me to Boston—Haymarket Square—and taught me how to slurp oysters from the half-shell. Took me that first time to the Gardner Museum. . . . And being a mom had started getting a little easier by then. The twins were growing out of the “terrible twos.” They had begun to amuse each other, catching bugs out in the backyard or going down to the stream out back to capture tadpoles and crayfish. That bond they’d developed gave me a reprieve. I could sit near them. Keep an eye on them while I was sketching out new ideas for pieces I wanted to make. And thanks to those counseling sessions, Orion had become more supportive of what I was doing. What I was trying to do. He began spelling me on the weekends so that I could do my work, go on my hunts for new materials. When I won that “best in show” prize? It was Orion who had urged me to enter the competition.
    And then, in the middle of this better time, I got a little careless about birth control and along came Marissa. Our unplanned child.
    He had kept promising he was going to get a vasectomy but never followed through with it. I was furious when I realized I was pregnant again, but only at first. I calmed down, just like I had with the twins. Accepted it. But my work suffered. I had to make all kinds of sacrifices because I put them first. Because I was a damned good mother. . . .
    Most of the time. But then there were those times when I wasn’t. When Andrew would make me so mad that . . . Because he was always goading me. Challenging me. Wasn’t that why he took the brunt of it? Or was it because, of the three kids, he has the most O’Day in him? The reddish hair, the Irish eyes. He resembles my father around the eyes. And he has my father’s walk.
    And who else does Andrew resemble? Go ahead. Say it.
    “Miz Anna?”
    “Hmm?” I look up, startled. Our housekeeper is standing there. “Yes? What is it, Minnie?”
    “I axed you if you got anything else needs washing?”
    “Washing? Uh, no. Just the stuff that’s in the basket. Thanks.”
    “Did I scare you just now, Miz Anna?”
    “What? Oh, no. I was just thinking about something else.”
    Minnie doesn’t say so, of course, but I get the feeling she doesn’t really approve of two wealthy women marrying each other. Or maybe she just doesn’t get why we’d want to. . . . Our housekeeper: I feel guilty even thinking it, let alone saying it out loud, which I did to Hector yesterday when he showed me the umbrella he’d found leaning against the wall downstairs in the lobby. “This isn’t yours, is it, Miss Oh?” he asked me.
    “No, but I’ll take it. It’s our housekeeper’s. Thanks, Hector.” I reached into my purse, took a twenty from my wallet, and held it out to him.
    “No, no, that’s okay. This thing don’t look like it cost