We Are Water. Wally Lamb

       Chapter Five

       Annie Oh

      Viveca has left the prenup on her desk in the study: six legal-size pages with little cellophane flags to indicate the places where my signature’s supposed to go. She’s signed it already in her deliberate, forward-slanting penmanship. I haven’t signed it yet and may not. What’s she or her father’s lawyer going to do if I don’t? Stop the wedding? No, she wouldn’t do that. I’m not powerless in this relationship. Gallery owners need artists more than artists needs gallery owners … But that’s not fair. I mean more to Viveca than those commissions. She loves me. I know she does. But I also know that she envies me my creativity, my treacherous rides inside the cyclone. “Other agents have approached you. Haven’t they, Anna? You can tell me,” she’s said more than once. That’s where my power comes from. I know what her professional insecurities are, and also her personal secrets: that she terminated a pregnancy by a former lover, a man who refused to leave his wife; that she was not an only child like she tells everyone but had a mentally retarded brother who was hidden away at some training school. Profoundly retarded, she told me. She used to hate it when her parents made her go with them on those visits and she had to look at him, drooling and wearing a dirty helmet, banging his head against the wall. I’ve made it my business to know these things but have told Viveca very little about my own history. I hold my cards close to the vest, the way I did all those years with Orion. I may have been powerless against those floodwaters. Powerless against Kent’s secret visits to my room. But I learned about power the day that I got on that Greyhound bus and the driver pulled out of the depot and carried me away from the black hole that had almost sucked me in. The black hole that my life was about to become with Albie Wignall …

      I’m seventeen again, stuck in Sterling because that’s where my foster family lives. I’m dating Albie, not because I like him very much, but because one thing has led to another. Two of those snooty girls from my high school, Holly Grandjean and Kathy Fontaine, finally have noticed me—well, not me so much as what we sell at Jo-Jo’s Nut Shack. “Oh, wook. Gummy bears! I wuv Gummy bears,” Kathy says, and Holly says she “wuvs” them, too. I’m not sure why they’re talking baby talk. Are they making fun of me? But then, I decide they aren’t because Holly looks up from my merchandise to me and says I look familiar. “Don’t you go to Plainfield High?” she says, and I nod and tell them that all three of us were in the same gym class freshman year. I’m so grateful that they’re acknowledging my existence, these girls I thought I hated, that I shovel scoop after scoop of gummy bears into an open bag and tell them to just take them instead of paying for them. And then, at the end of my shift, my boss, Leland, points up at the surveillance camera mounted over the entrance to Jordan Marsh. It’s aimed right at my kiosk. Leland tells me to take off my Jo-Jo’s apron and not come back because I’m fired.

      But a week later, I get another, better job waitressing at Friendly’s. My manager, Winona Wignall, assigns me to the take-out window, which the newest waitress always gets. But within two weeks, Priscilla is the new girl, and I’m serving people at the counter and making tips. Over the next weeks, Priscilla and I become friends, bonded by the fact that, out of all the Friendly’s waitresses, Winona likes us two the least.

      Winona’s son, Albie, is twenty-three but he acts younger. He works at the Midas Mufflers down the road. After work, he comes over to Friendly’s to eat and hang around. He starts picking my section to sit at every time, and it’s kind of flattering, although he’s not much of a tipper. One time all he leaves me is eleven stacked pennies. Albie’s over six feet tall, and he’s blond and broad but not really fat, which is a miracle because when he comes in, he’ll eat a Big Beef with fries and a Fribble, and sometimes after that, will have dessert, too—a sundae, usually, which, when he orders it, he always calls it the Albie Special. The Albie Special is four scoops of chocolate almond chip ice cream, strawberry sauce and hot fudge, and chopped peanuts, the whole thing topped with whipped cream, jimmies, and cherries (three instead of the usual one). Sometimes when I put those sundaes in front of him, our other customers look over at it, and they’re probably thinking, wow, how does that guy rate? This one Holy Roller couple who comes in all the time? (They asked Winona once if they could leave their religious pamphlets for our other customers to take and she said no.) They always stare over at Albie’s sundae while he’s eating it, and I feel like going: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. (My foster family sent me to parochial school, and I can still recite all the Commandments.) Instead of reminding them about the tenth commandment, though, I told the Holy Rollers that Albie pays extra for his sundae. He doesn’t really. He gets all that extra stuff for the price of a regular hot fudge, plus you have to give him his mother’s employee discount besides. Winona calls Albie “Big Boy,” which fits him size-wise but also is pretty funny because Albie acts childish, especially around his mother, who he still calls “Mommy.” He’s not all that much younger than my brother Donald, except Donald is already married and acts like a grown-up, which he is. So is Albie, technically, but he lives in his parents’ basement and still gets an Easter basket, which I know because all during Lent, Winona kept buying stuff for Albie’s Easter basket and hiding it in our break room. One time, Priscilla stole two Almond Joys from one of the bags. She snuck me one, and whenever we looked at each other during that shift, we couldn’t help laughing.

      One night, while Albie’s holding up his elbows because I’m wiping down the counter where he sits, he asks me out. I didn’t expect it, and I don’t know what to say at first, so I say, “Let me think about it.” Then later on I tell him yes, okay, I’ll go. Because, hey, I’m not stupid. He’s my boss’s son.

      For our date, Albie takes me to the drive-in. It’s a double feature: the first and second Planet of the Apes movies. (I’ve already seen the first one and thought it was stupid, but Albie picked the movie.) At intermission, he asks me do I want anything from the snack bar. I tell him yes please, a box of Good & Plenty. When he gets back in the car, he’s got my candy plus, for himself, three foil-wrapped hot dogs and a big soda. In between eating my Good & Plenty, I keep shaking the box, which is partly just this habit I’ve had since I was little but also partly because I like the sound. It comforts me.

      Albie keeps looking over at me while he’s eating and I can smell that he has liquor breath. “Did you put something in your Coke?” I ask him.

      “It’s not Coke. It’s root beer.”

      “Yeah, but did you?” He nods, smiles, and pulls a half-empty bottle out of his back pocket. When he hands it to me, I squint and read the label. LONG JOHN’S GINGER BRANDY, it says. Eighty proof.

      “You know something?” Albie says. “You’re pretty.”

      “No, I’m not,” I tell him. I’m thinking about what I heard someone call liquor once: “Dutch courage.” I don’t know why. What’s so Dutch about getting drunk?

      “Yes, you are, and you know you are, too,” Albie says. Ha! I think. He’s either drunk or blind. But then I think, well, maybe in Albie’s eyes, I’m like those girls at the mall who I