The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  Gil smiled, and for the first time in over a month, I saw his teeth. He spotted me looking at him and quickly began to study his hands as if a smile had somehow become contraband. Marnie saw this, too, and her brows creased.

  I sat back in my chair, eager to change the subject. “Do you still sail, Marnie? I’ve seen all your trophies, and Diana used to talk about all your sailing adventures when you were younger.”

  Obviously, I’d picked the wrong subject again. Her face went still and white as she gave up all pretenses of eating. Slowly she put her spoon down by the side of her plate. “I live in the desert now.” She forced a smile—a wooden smile that reminded me of a clown puppet Gil had had as a baby. “No ocean.”

  Stupidly, I pushed on. “I used to sail a lot—as a boy on Cape Cod.” I glanced over at Gil again and saw he hadn’t lifted his head. I took another spoonful of my soup, only tasting powder. I swallowed slowly. “Maybe we can go sailing together sometime.”

  “Maybe,” she answered in the tone of voice Diana used when she meant “never.”

  Marnie slowly pushed out her chair and put her hand on Joanna’s arm. “May I?” she asked as she picked up her grandfather’s spoon. Joanna nodded and Marnie took the seat Joanna had vacated. The side of his mouth that wasn’t paralyzed tilted upward in a smile as Marnie began feeding him, and I was once again struck with how very different she was from her sister.

  Without looking at me, she said, “Would you please make up a tray for Diana? I’ll bring it up to her when we’re done here.”

  I sat back in my chair. “She won’t eat it. I’ve tried, but I can’t force her to eat.”

  She looked at me with eyes that were frighteningly like Diana’s. “I’d like to try, if you don’t mind.”

  I nodded. “I hope you succeed.” And I did. Watching Diana waste away with our damaged son as a witness was one of the reasons I’d asked Marnie to come. I stood. “If you’re done, Gil, it’s time for your shower. Maybe afterward we can watch the Braves on the big screen in my study. They’re playing the Mets tonight.”

  My son, the child I’d picked up at every cry as a baby, who’d allowed me to carry him in a backpack as soon as he could hold up his head on his own, and whose first word was “Daddy,” shrank back from me. I let my hand drop to my side. Even I heard the weariness in my voice. “Go take your shower, Gil. I’ll be up in a little bit to check on you.”

  Gil slid out of his chair in the quiet, catlike way he’d adopted since the night of the accident and I watched him go. “I’ll go make a tray for Diana,” I said as I walked toward the kitchen without looking to see Marnie’s expression.

  Marnie

  I carefully carried the tray up the back stairs to the attic where Diana had her studio. It was at the back of the house, with a distant view of both the ocean and the marsh, and a huge turret window that allowed in the outside light. It had been our mother’s studio when she was a girl, and shortly after Diana and I had moved here, Diana had adopted it as her own. But whereas my mother tolerated my presence while she worked, Diana kept the door locked at all times, making it clear that I wasn’t welcome. My own feeble attempts at painting had been relegated to the back shed, where the heat and humidity made canvases soggy and paint too thick to do anything with. Maybe that had been Diana’s intention all along.

  I balanced the tray with one hand while I knocked on the door. When there was no answer, I pressed my ear to the rough wood, listening intently. All was still. I knocked again, knowing I wouldn’t get a response. I lowered the tray and placed it on the floor in front of the door, blocking the area between the stairs and the door so that she’d have to pick it up to get inside or, if she were hiding there already, before she could walk down the stairs. Maybe that was all it would take to get her to take a bite. I remembered how she’d looked to me out on the beach and knew I had to try.

  Regardless of how I felt about Diana, she was my sister. Maybe blood was thicker than water, after all. Or maybe I was still trying to win affections. I’d done it all my life.

  I slowly made my way down the stairs, pausing at the window on the landing. In the daylight, you could see the ocean from here, but at night it was simply a frame for absolute blackness in a moonless sky like tonight. I shuddered, knowing what was out there, and was about to turn away when I noticed a speck of orange glowing in the distance. It was a campfire on the beach and I suspected I knew who was there.

  I continued my descent into the foyer, pulled toward the broadcasted sound of a baseball game in the back of the house. Pausing in the threshold, I saw Quinn on a couch with his back to me, the space next to him vacant. On the coffee table in front of him sat two large bowls of popcorn, both untouched.

  Backing away, I made my way to the back door. Out of habit, I pulled open the drawer in the hall table and took out a flashlight to guide my way down the path to the ocean. I flipped it on and made my way down following the triangular arc of yellow light, my feet already knowing the way.

  The beach was worse at night. At least in the daylight, I could see the ocean clearly where it pressed against the shore and keep my distance. But at night all I could see was liquid shadow, and hear the insistent murmur, like static between stations in my grandfather’s old Cadillac. And I couldn’t see where it swept over its boundaries, waiting to grab my feet and pull me under.

  I kept to the edge of the dunes, my feet slipping in the heavy sand so that I was winded by the time I reached my sister’s campfire. She sat in the sand with her arms around her knees, and I remembered times, long ago, when I’d sat next to her and we’d contemplated the universe.

  “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  Diana’s blond hair glistened like gold in the firelight and I almost said, “Beautiful. Like you.” But even I knew how stupid that was. You were either born beautiful or you weren’t. “An artist.”

  She looked at me, her eyes reflecting the flames from the fire and I was afraid for a moment of what she might say, knowing that if she said I couldn’t, then it would never come to be. Instead, she looked into the fire and said, “Me, too. We could have our own studio and paint together. We’d be a team. And we’d always be together. Like we promised when we were little.”

  I nodded, afraid to feel hopeful, but satisfied anyway. I sat back, pulling my knees up to my chest, and allowed myself to dream.

  I stood now facing my sister, the echoes of our past circling around us with the smoke from the fire. “You need to eat,” I said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  I shivered despite the heat from the fire and rubbed my hands on my arms. “I brought a tray up to your studio. I know how you love clam chowder.”

  “I’m not hungry. And I’m not one of your little students who you can easily coerce into doing what you want.”

  “You need to eat. You don’t look…well.”

  Her flame-eyes regarded me silently. “And you look…frumpy.”

  “Ouch,” I said, watching the smoke rise over her head like a ghost. “I’m not here to pick a fight. I only mentioned it for your own well-being. You need to take care of yourself, if not for yourself, then for Gil.”

  She stood, kicking sand on the fire, and then leaned down to shovel big handfuls onto it, making the flames sputter and crack. “Leave my well-being to me and do what you came here for—to help Gil. Just leave me out of it.”

  Angry now, I faced her over the smoldering fire. “Unfortunately, I think Gil’s recovery has everything to do with his relationship with you. Maybe if you pretended to give a damn about him and paid him some attention, he might not have any problems.”

  “Damn you!” With a sudden motion, she grabbed the flashlight out of my hand and threw it as hard as she could. It landed with a splash and cold fear lit my heart. “You don’t know anything. Leave me alone, you hear? Deal with Gil and make him well, but leave me alone.”

  She turned and ran from me. I wanted to follow her, but I was paralyzed by fear. My feet were
lit by the glowing embers of the dying fire, but the sound of the ocean behind me was like a growling animal in a dark forest, out there and waiting for me.

  “Stop!” I opened my mouth to scream, but only a strangled whisper emerged from my lips. I turned my head, sure I could hear footsteps in the sand, the moonless night making me blind.

  “Marnie?”

  I almost fell to my knees in relief. “Quinn? I’m over here.” I could see the circle of light made by his flashlight as he approached and I reached for him.

  His arm was warm to the touch and I clung as a scared child would cling to a parent in the dark of the night.

  “I saw the fire and figured this is where you’d gone.” He made a small sound of disgust. “I don’t know why she would do that. Leave you here in the dark.”

  I leaned into his warmth and clung to his arm as he led me back to the path. “I do,” I said, as I struggled with leaden feet back to the house.

  CHAPTER 4

  But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue…

  Shake one, and it awakens; then apply

  Its polished lips to your attentive ear,

  And it remembers its august abodes,

  And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

  —WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

  Gil

  My daddy took me to Lighthouse Island once when I was five to see the two lighthouses. It was our secret, since they’re closed and you’re not supposed to go there, but I promised I wouldn’t tell anybody. We borrowed a small motorboat and I clung to the sides of it and listened to the snapping of the tall marsh grass against the metal sides as we sped across Muddy Bay and the marsh to the island. But that’s how my dad moves; he doesn’t seem to know how to go slowly. It’s like he thinks there’s something chasing him and he can’t get away fast enough.

  There are two lighthouses because the first one was a mistake. I thought that was funny: having do-overs because the first lighthouse was too short. Mama tells me that I should always do it right on the first try because you don’t get second chances in real life. Since Dad showed me the lighthouses, I’ve always wanted to tell her she’s wrong. But there’s something in the way she looks at me that makes me feel as if I’ve already made a mistake just by breathing and there’s no use adding back talk to whatever else it is she thinks I’ve done bad.

  The first lighthouse is halfway gone and is the color of a train’s caboose. We walked around it for a while, looking for souvenirs but not finding any, and then turned toward the taller one. The bottom half is solid white but the top half is black and white striped. If you look at it just right, it looks like a man with a jacket on and the light itself is the man’s head. It leans a little bit, as if it’s tired after standing all those years. I’d like to paint it with my watercolors sometime—sometime soon. I haven’t painted since the accident. I want to, but when I see the pictures that I want to paint in my head, it’s like somebody’s switched the channel on the TV to something I don’t want to watch. It’s that way with words, too. I know what I’m supposed to say, but I can’t seem to make the words come out. I guess it’s because Grandpa has always carried on about how liars can’t go to heaven. Because if I opened my mouth now, I’d have to lie.

  The staircase was missing in the smaller lighthouse, but it was still there in the black-and-white one. Dad went first, testing each step carefully, and I followed up behind him, counting the 195 steps. Without him knowing it, I stopped every once in a while to listen for the ghost of the lightkeeper’s wife. I’m not supposed to know about her, but I’ve found that if I’m real quiet, people forget I’m there and say things that they wouldn’t if they knew I was listening. That’s how I knew that Aunt Marnie was coming, and that she lives in Arizona. It’s how I knew that my parents didn’t want to be married anymore and that Mama hates Aunt Marnie. And it’s how I heard about the lightkeeper who killed his wife a hundred years ago and how she now haunts the lighthouse on Lighthouse Island.

  Mama tells stories to Grandpa, not all of them made-up. I know he doesn’t approve of ghost stories but I don’t guess he has much say about it now. He has to just sit there while Mama tells him whatever story comes to her head. She does this when she can’t paint. I don’t think she’s painted anything since our accident, either, because she’s been spending lots of time with Grandpa.

  When Dad and I got to the lantern room, we stepped out onto the little balcony and held on to the railing. I wanted to see the ghost and I kept looking inside the glass to see if she was there, at the top of the stairs. I wanted to see if she looks like Mama: see-through, but right there in front of you. And I know why she’s like that. It’s because of what happened the night on the boat. I think she’s still there, in her head, in the ocean in the dark with the tall waves and the sails falling overboard. But that’s okay because I don’t think I really want to see her, anyway.

  My dad took me to a doctor after the accident, and she asked me a lot of questions about what happened the night Mama and I took the Highfalutin out into the open ocean. I wanted to tell the doctor that everything is safe inside my head, wrapped up in a little box like it was Christmas. And I will never open it. Not ever. That’s why I can’t talk about what happened. Because I don’t want to go to hell and that’s where liars go.

  Dad and I left Lighthouse Island without seeing any ghosts but I’m okay with that. I’ve already seen enough ghosts to last my entire life.

  Marnie

  I sat on my old bed and stared at the familiar landscapes that my mother had painted and that had hung on my bedroom wall since I was a young girl. They were all marsh scenes: of oyster beds and nesting herons and stretches of battered maritime forests that always made me think of my mother. She’d been like one of the tall cedars clinging to the sand as the ocean washed away the earth its roots clung to, making its demise a certainty. This had been the world beyond my four walls, a world I’d never imagined leaving, no matter how flawed. Even now, I look back on my childhood as a canvas splashed with vibrancy; the paint spurted from a wild machine, and I never realized how dangerous it could be if I got too close.

  My suitcases sat unopened on the floor inside the doorway, where Quinn must have left them. I tried to will myself to go to them and unpack, to hang up my functional shirts and nondescript skirts in the empty closet, but I couldn’t seem to move myself forward. My resolve to leave immediately, which had started down on the beach, had lost its burn somewhere on the path back to the house. But I knew I couldn’t stay. Remaining here, in this place with these people, was too hard. As my mother had always told me, I lacked courage: the courage to use purple to color the ocean in a painting and the courage of conviction had always been synonymous in my mother’s mind. And I lacked both.

  I stood and moved to the closet door, nudging it open with my foot. Reaching forward I pulled the string on the overhead bulb, the light illuminating the corners of the room like a recalled memory. Most of my stuff was gone, packed up and given to charity by my grandfather after I had left for college. I suppose he knew even then that I never intended to come back.

  I spied the large conch shell in the dim corner of a top shelf as I reached to turn off the light. I could almost believe, as I stood near the closet doorway, that I could hear the echo of the ocean’s surf emanating from the delicate folds of the shell. I stood my ground, wary of the sounds I thought I could hear and of the memories they invoked.

  Quickly, I snapped off the light and stepped out of the closet, nearly tripping over Gil, who stood silently at the foot of my bed. I startled, swallowing a scream. In my agitation, I almost asked him why he didn’t give me a shout to let me know he was in my room and felt instantly ashamed.

  I knelt in front of him, staring into familiar eyes. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, but his lips tilted into a slight smile as if to say that his words weren’t fooling either one of us. I smiled back and smoothed the hair off his forehead. He smelled of sweat and salt water and a sugar-cookie dust
ing of sand coated his damp skin and clothes as if he’d stood in the surf, facing its encroaching tide without fear.

  “Will your dad be mad that you need another shower?”

  Ignoring my question, he walked slowly around the room, his hands and eyes taking in the unpacked suitcases and empty drawers.

  I sat down on the bed and patted the spot next to me and waited until he slid up on the yellow chenille bedspread. “I can’t tell you how much it’s meant to me to finally meet you, Gil.”

  He kept his head down as he stared at his hands, and I noticed again the long, slender fingers so much like his mother’s. I glanced away. “I’d like to stay here longer, to get to know you better, but I don’t think it’s going to work out that way after all.”

  His fingers began pulling on the cotton tufts of the bedspread, his agitated movements mimicking my thoughts. There’s nothing you can do for us here, Marnie. Go back to your desert, to your months without rain, and leave us alone. We don’t need you here, and I don’t want you here. So go home. I’d been foolish to think I had the strength to help Gil. To help Diana. To think that sixteen years after our mother’s death, we could finally come to terms with each other and what happened the night she died.

  A door slammed somewhere in the house, and I pictured Diana climbing the stairs, the scent of cigarettes and stale perfume trailing behind her. I watched as Gil’s shoulders went rigid, his eyes wide as he shifted his gaze to the corners of the room as if looking for a place to hide. His gaze settled on the closet door and he sprang from the bed and darted into the dark closet, closing the door silently behind him.

  I waited for a moment, listening for approaching footsteps that never came, remembering other nights spent in this bedroom as a young girl, waiting for Diana to come home and tell me that everything was all right again. That she wanted my forgiveness. But forgiveness is a hard thing to squeeze from a stone, and that is what my sister had become when we’d moved to this house. All of her emotions were eked onto the canvases she created, leaving no scraps for me. I’d once made the mistake of waiting for her in her room. She was angry when she’d found me asleep on top of her quilted bedspread. She’d thrown her sweater at me, and it had smelled of pluff mud and marsh grass and some other odor I couldn’t identify yet. And I’d known she’d snuck off to Cape Romain and she hadn’t gone alone. A button hit me in the eye and made me cry.