The Memory of Water Page 4

  “Good—I hope it hurt. You should cry. You should feel so sorry for what you’ve done that you cry every day of your life.”

  I stared at her, not understanding. What had I done? I swallowed back the tears and searched for the words from one of our grandfather’s sermons. I wasn’t yet sure of what turn the other cheek was all about, but I did get that I was supposed to forgive those who trespassed against me. I looked at my sister, at the face and hair my mother had chosen to put in so many of her paintings, and wiped my eyes. “I forgive you, Diana.”

  She turned to me, her eyes dark and hateful, and I cringed. I didn’t know this Diana—this girl who looked so much like the other half of my soul but had somehow become the stranger you’d cross the street to get away from.

  “You forgive me? That’s really rich, Marnie. That you would be forgiving me.” She laughed, a sickening, hollow sound that melted my resolve of giving her my cheek to slap. I was afraid of Diana. I think it was because I’d seen that wild look before many times, but never on Diana. It was our mother’s face I saw—the face she’d wear as she approached one of her episodes, like a horse galloping toward a cliff and moving too swiftly to stop before hurtling off into nothingness. It was the last memory I had of my mother’s face.

  I turned without speaking and attempted to leave the room but Diana pulled me back, her fingernails cutting into the bare skin of my arm. “I don’t want your forgiveness, and I sure as hell don’t need it.” She grinned, knowing we weren’t allowed to cuss in our grandfather’s house. “So get the hell out of here and don’t mention forgiveness to me ever again. Not ever. Do you hear me?” Her voice had risen to a shriek and I hated her then. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped.

  I yanked my arm away. “Go to hell,” I said, showing her that I was just as capable of cussing as she was.

  She laughed again, but her face began melting like a watercolor left out in the rain. For a moment I saw the old Diana as she stared at me from her ruined face and I lifted my hand to touch her.

  Diana turned her back to me, her shoulders hunched forward. “I’m already there, Marnie. I already am.”

  I fled from the room and hid in my closet, wrapping my arms around my knees and praying that she wouldn’t find me. It was my grandfather who pulled me out three hours later and patted my head with large, shaking hands while I sat there, trembling.

  I stood before the closed closet door and tapped gently with my fingernails. “Gil? Are you all right?”

  Silence.

  I tapped again. “Gil? Can I come in? Just me—I’m by myself.” And then, unbidden, I said the words I’d always hoped to hear on my sister’s lips. “I’m lonely without you. Can’t I come in?” I placed my forehead against the cool wood of the door and pressed my eyes shut. “Please.”

  The doorknob turned with a slight squeal, and the door was pushed open a few inches, revealing complete darkness within. The triangle of light landed on Gil’s golden head, and for a moment Diana’s eyes looked back at me before he ducked his head, his attention focused on the object he was cradling in his hands.

  Opening the door further, I stepped in and knelt in front of him, realizing with surprise that he held the conch shell.

  “Are you all right?” I asked quietly.

  Without a word he held up the shell to my ear, and it was all I could do not to jerk back and knock the shell out of his hands and away from me. Instead, I remained rooted to the closet floor, listening to the tremulous echo of the ocean’s waves whispered from the pearlescent lips of the shell.

  I tried to move away, but Gil’s hands holding the shell followed me, not allowing me to escape from the sound of my past. Finally I put my hands over Gil’s and moved them away so that I could turn my head to look at him. His eyes appeared liquid in the dim light, and I realized he was crying.

  I took the shell away from him and laid it aside, then drew him to me as I remembered my gruff grandfather doing all those years ago. Gil sobbed silently on my shoulder, soaking my shirt as I patted his soft head. My voice was low and seemed to be coming from somebody else. “Do you want me to stay, Gil? Do you not want me to leave?”

  I brought his face around to look at me. He hiccupped once and continued staring at me but didn’t answer. Instead, he reached behind him in the dark and picked up the shell again and held it out to me. I ducked my head so he couldn’t see my own tears. I wasn’t sure what else he was asking of me, but I knew that I couldn’t leave. I saw a part of me in his neediness—the girl who’d reached for her mother and had only found salty air—and a corner of my heart softened for that young Marnie and for this lost child.

  “I’ll stay, Gil. For you.”

  His arms came around my neck, and I felt the scratchiness of the shell against my cheek. His other hand patted my back as if to comfort me, and I smiled into the darkness as I contemplated the wisdom of this young boy.

  CHAPTER 5

  Terrestrial orchids live on the ground, needing a constantly moist medium in which to grow. Epiphytic orchids live on the branches of other plants. They are not parasites, as they obtain no food from the trees on which they grow, but have air roots, which are accustomed to drying out in between periods of rain.

  —DR. QUINN BRISTOW’S GARDENING JOURNAL

  Quinn

  The marsh slowly pulled a reluctant sun into the dawn, its faint light etching lines through the layers of clouds, creating thin reptile skins in the sky. That’s how Gil, with his artist’s heart, had once described the dawn to me. We’re both early risers and Gil would usually be waiting for me as I set out for my greenhouse, and we’d watch the sun come up together. He’d join me and my orchids and ask a thousand questions while I tended to the flowers. He’d never asked if he could help me; it was almost as if he knew I needed to sink my fingers into damp mulch as much as I needed to fill my lungs with air. And he’d be right, of course. Studying orchids has taught me a lot about life, and a lot about women. Certainly more than I learned in three years of marriage. But at least with orchids you know that if you water them and treat them well, they’ll reward you with blooms.

  When I heard a tap on the greenhouse door, I assumed it was Gil. He hadn’t joined me in the greenhouse since the accident, so I turned with pleasant surprise toward the door and tried to hide my disappointment that it wasn’t him.

  Marnie stuck her head through the doorway, her hair already pulled mercilessly back from her face in a tight bun at the base of her neck. I wondered absently if she ever wore it loose and what it would look like falling across her shoulders and down her back. I thought I knew, of course. I’d seen the painting before Diana had taken it from the living room wall, leaving only the scars on the paint as a reminder.

  Marnie smiled. “Can I come in? Is this a good time?” Her smooth forehead puckered.

  I motioned for her to come inside as I flipped on the faucet and began filling my watering can. “It’s always a good time when I’m in here.”

  I allowed my gaze to flicker over her as she entered through the glass door and shut it softly behind her. She wore a pale knee-length skirt with a floral print and flat-soled sandals. Her sleeveless blouse was buttoned up to the neck, with only the defiant flash of a gold chain buried inside the collar. I almost smiled. She couldn’t have been more different from Diana if she had tried. And I had the distinct impression that she had.

  “Why is that?” she asked, smoothing a hand over the back of her head to tuck in any errant strands that would dare to push past their boundaries.

  “Because Diana never comes in here.” I wanted to bite back the comment before the last syllable had faded in the early-morning air between us.

  Marnie turned her head, but not before I’d seen the trace of a smile on her lips. “I know what you mean.” She turned back to me and flapped her hand. “No, not because we don’t get along. But because I’ve known Diana for a long time. I know how she can suck the air out of a room just by entering it.”

  It was my tur
n to smile. “Yeah. I used to think that was a good quality in a person. Now I find that it’s too exhausting for us mere mortals.”

  She didn’t say anything but turned to examine a shadow-witch orchid, its pearlescent white petals bisected with bright green veins. She leaned forward and sniffed, closing her eyes, and I was once again reminded of the girl in the portrait. “Do you live here?” she asked.

  “In the greenhouse?”

  She bit her bottom lip in a move I was beginning to recognize as something she did when she didn’t want to smile. “No. I meant here. On this property. Since you and Diana are divorced, I was just wondering…” Her voice trailed away.

  I hoisted the full watering can up on the laminate counter. “I wanted to be near Gil. And your grandfather. Diana forgets sometimes that she’s responsible for them.” I figured I didn’t need to soften my words for Marnie. As she had said herself, she’d known Diana for a long time. “We have joint custody. She was taking her meds at the time of the divorce and I didn’t want to make it an issue then.”

  “Then?”

  “Yeah. Up until about a year ago, when I noticed her behavior getting more and more erratic and I figured out what was going on. It’s kind of a wake-up call when your young son calls you at two o’clock in the morning asking where his mother is.”

  “Was there something else going on in her life a year ago? Maybe something that might have triggered her decline?”

  I remembered having the same thoughts and it made me feel a certain kinship with Marnie. Not everybody analyzes a situation trying to find a reason, perhaps to point blame on yourself for your own shortcomings that may or may not have had anything to do with it.

  “It coincided with Diana trying to find a nursing home for your grandfather. I don’t know why that would have triggered anything if at all; it’s just that I remember what was going on then.”

  I relaxed my grip on the watering can, not surprised at the anger I still felt at the danger she had put our son in. And how I was no closer to understanding her demons now than I had been then. I reached for the old dish towel on the counter and began wiping off any water droplets that might have landed on the leaves of the plants. I took another glance at Marnie and saw her in what I assumed was her teacher’s pose: feet together, hands clasped in front of her, and her hazel eyes impassive. She wasn’t one to give anything away, I figured. Or maybe her years as a Maitland had taught her that holding back was the only way to survive.

  I continued going down the line of potted orchids, watering each plant according to the little notes I kept beside each pot and feeling her gaze on me as I worked. “I tried to talk to her about it and to even get her to go with me to see her doctor but she wouldn’t. So I fixed up the old caretaker’s cottage and moved in. I didn’t ask and she didn’t complain. She didn’t even say anything when I built this greenhouse. And everything was sort of working out if you could overlook her unexplained absences and reappearances or her sudden need to visit a new friend in a nursing home. Until the accident, anyway.”

  Gently, Marnie stroked an ivory petal. “You didn’t really explain on the phone what happened—only that Gil and Diana were in an accident involving your sailboat and that he’d stopped speaking. I think that to help him, I really need to know as much about it as possible.” Her lips had thinned, turning white at the edges. “It reminds me…” She stopped and dropped her hand from the flower. She looked at me again, her face placid but her eyes stormy and bright. She continued. “It reminds me of the night our mother died.”

  I nodded, recalling what little Diana had told me. How their mother in one of her periodic manic episodes had decided to take her two daughters sailing despite the whitecaps on the waves and the warnings from the weather center. But as Diana had explained, there was never any dissuading their mother once she’d made up her mind. I never had the heart to tell Diana that she and her mother were no different as far as that was concerned.

  I brought the watering can back to the sink, trying to recall the night of Gil’s accident and explain just the facts to Marnie devoid of the gut-twisting sense of loss I had felt when I’d walked into his room and found it empty.

  “I’d known for about a week that something was wrong. She’d taken to spending hours and hours in her studio without eating for days on end. And then she’d go out on the beach and build sandcastle after sandcastle, all of them nearly identical. I tried to talk to her, to get her to come inside and eat a meal. I even called her doctor, who said that unless I committed her, I couldn’t force her to see him. But she was happy—happier than I’d seen her in a very long time. And because her behavior seemed nondestructive, I decided to let her be and just keep an eye on her. I kept trying to talk to her, to ask her about her medication, but I couldn’t get through to her.”

  I twisted on the water faucet again to begin refilling the watering can but saw only Diana’s empty eyes. My hands gripped the handle of the can, the metal edge biting into my palm. I looked up at Marnie, but her eyes remained blank, her hands folded neatly in front of her. It was then that I saw the resemblance between her and Gil: not the physical similarities like he shared with his mother, but the slightness of movement, the emotions hidden behind blank expressions as if they were trying very hard not to be noticed. Like hiding in plain sight, their wary eyes like those of a deer I’d once seen on a hunt with my father and older brother, straddling the riverbank to slake his thirst, but constantly aware of the danger of letting down his guard just once.

  I turned off the water and faced her. “It was around eight o’clock in the evening. Gil and I normally sit and watch a little TV together before he goes to bed at nine. When he didn’t come, I went to go check on him and found his room empty. I panicked when I discovered that Diana was also gone. I was at a loss until I got a call from the marina telling me that Diana had taken out my sailboat and that Gil was with her. They were worried because of the approaching storm and were calling the coast guard.”

  Marnie’s lips had gone completely white now. When she didn’t say anything, I continued. “As I told you on the phone, we don’t know what happened. The coast guard found the capsized boat. Diana had passed out from loss of blood from the gash in her leg and Gil was somehow managing to hold on to her, keeping them both from slipping off.”

  Something gray and fast-moving swept behind her eyes and I saw her swallow. Her voice was strained when she spoke. “And neither one of them will talk about what happened?”

  I shook my head. “Diana won’t and Gil can’t.” A thickness arose in my throat like a fist of dried hope and I swallowed it down. “I’ve taken Gil to several specialists in Charleston and they all tell me the same thing: He’s faced a trauma and this is how his mind is dealing with it. He’ll speak when he’s ready and not before.”

  “Is he receiving counseling?” Marnie’s tone was placid, but her fingers had begun to pluck at the fabric of her skirt.

  “For a couple of weeks I tried.” I wiped my hands over my face, trying to forget Gil’s tortured expression every time I had to take him to the doctor. “I gave up. I asked the doctor to give me a month with him to see what I could do.”

  “So you called me.”

  I stared at her nails on her clasped hands, noticing that they were short and well-kept. They were capable hands, not those of an artist at all. I wondered if that had bothered her, being in a house with artists, with a love for creating things on canvas, yet relegated to simply watch like a crow who’d found herself in a nest with nightingales. In the moment that our eyes met, I thought she knew what I was thinking. Embarrassed, I looked away.

  Hoisting the watering can, I resumed my rounds of the orchids. “Yes, I called you. But I can’t take credit for that. It was your grandfather’s idea.”

  “Grandpa?”

  I gave her a quick glance, relieved to finally see emotion on her face. “Yeah. He showed me a passage he’d highlighted from the Bible about sisters. His nurse gave me your address.”
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  Her lips parted in a soft “o” as she turned her gaze to the window, toward the rising sun and the fading moon that pulled at the ocean beyond the dunes. Softly, she recited, “‘Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.’”

  I scratched my head trying to remember what else the old man had told me. “Genesis, I think.”

  “Genesis, chapter twelve, verse thirteen, actually. It’s about Abraham and his wife, but Grandpa thought that the words taken out of context fit Diana and me.” She grinned sheepishly. “Having a preacher for a grandfather sort of stays with you, I guess.”

  “I guess,” I said, not able to look away from her face, which had gone soft and luminous. This was the Marnie I’d only seen on canvas—the Marnie she was very careful not to let anybody see. I watched as her expression changed into the mask I was beginning to get used to.

  “After last night, on the beach, I decided I wasn’t going to stay. Diana and I…well, we don’t like each other very much. I couldn’t imagine being around her every day. But Gil came to my room and convinced me that he needs me here.” A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “He’s a great kid. And I think…” She stopped and I saw her chin jut out as she searched for something different to say. “I think I can help him. I’ve never worked with this kind of case before, since my training and experience is with special-needs kids, but I think my methods could help. I just need you to give me free rein.” She raised a hand to stop me from speaking. “I’ll keep you updated, of course. But I also need you to act as a buffer between me and Diana. I’d rather not have to talk to her at all.”