by Karen White
I recalled all the sailing trophies lining the walls in the house and the old pictures of the two sisters in their younger incarnations with their arms around each other. I’d found them in shoe boxes in the back of the hall closet and knew Diana had put them there. Looking at Marnie now, I was encouraged by the fact that Diana hadn’t thrown them away. I had no idea what had happened to those two happy girls, other than their mother’s death. But that alone didn’t really explain their animosity toward each other. There was a story there that Diana had never shared with me despite my prompting—one that might come to the surface now that the sisters had been reunited, albeit reluctantly. But my concern was Gil, and all else had to take a backseat.
“Of course,” I said. “Gil’s well-being is my priority. I have a lot of faith in you.” I wasn’t sure why I had said that, other than that I truly believed it. There had to be strength and a sense of purpose in a woman who would turn her back on her childhood by the sea to live in the desert just to prove a point. The fact that she worked with special-needs children was just icing on the cake.
Her impassive mask remained in place. “I’ll do my best.”
She moved to the door but I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “What were you going to say before—about you and Gil? You stopped, but I think you meant to say something else.”
She looked at me for a long moment, her eyes distant. “I was going to say how much alike Gil and I are. I didn’t think you’d want to hear that.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you married Diana and Gil’s her son. I’m nothing like her.”
I stopped myself before I could disagree. She wouldn’t want to know the reason Diana and I had first met and how it had everything to do with how very much she and Diana resembled each other in ways not easily seen.
I didn’t say anything as she pulled the door open, then stopped to face me again. “What happened to your sailboat—the one Diana and Gil were on?”
“The coast guard towed the Highfalutin to shore. She’s in dry dock now, waiting for me to decide what to do.”
She’d gone very pale and still. “You named your sailboat Highfalutin?”
“Actually, Diana did. She never stepped foot on it until that night, but she insisted on naming it.”
Barely audible, she said, “She would, wouldn’t she?”
I held the door as she stepped through the threshold into the heavy morning air, the humidity high despite the early hour. “I’ve seen your sailing trophies, Marnie. Maybe you’d like to come down to the marina with me some time to see her. Let me know if you think she’s salvageable or not.”
“No!” She shook her head, then said more evenly, “No. I don’t know anything about sailboats or sailing anymore. It’s been too long.”
Or not long enough, I thought as I watched her stumble in her hurry to get away from me. I grabbed her arm to steady her and our eyes met. The fear I saw in them sent a cold shock running down my neck despite the heat. Her fear was real and raw, and I knew then that ten years in the desert had done nothing to dispel it. She’s as lost as the rest of us, I thought with a sinking heart. Our knight in shining armor had turned out to be just another lonely soldier stuck in the trenches. I let go of her arm.
Glancing toward the house, she said, “I’m going to go find Gil and start our first lesson. I think it will help him to have routine and structure in his life. Can we meet you at the house at noon for lunch?”
“I’ll work it out with my practice so that I’m home every day at noon. All right?”
She gave me a tremulous smile, but her eyes remained flat. “All right. I’ll see you at lunch, then.”
I held the door, not allowing her to close it, and she looked up at me expectantly.
“I’m thinking that maybe Gil’s not the only one who can benefit from you being here.”
“What do you mean?”
I was reminded yet again why I had chosen to work with animals instead of humans: I have an almost uncanny ability to say the wrong thing and animals don’t seem to care. Yet I couldn’t forget the look on Marnie’s face when I’d said the name of my boat.
I cleared my throat. “I only meant that it seems you have some unresolved issues with Diana and that spending time with her—”
She cut me off. “I’ve resolved all my issues by moving away and getting on with my life. I’m here to help Gil because he’s my flesh and blood and I can’t see him getting the help he needs from his own mother. It is my duty to help. And when he’s better, I’ll go back to Arizona and get on with my life, as I’ve been doing for the last ten years.”
She walked away quickly, her shoes kicking up gravel and sand and old crumbled shells, crushing them beneath her feet like dried-up dreams and memories she thought had long ago been relegated to dust.
Gil
I watched Aunt Marnie from my secret spot under the porch while I tried to decide if I wanted her to see me or not. I wanted to go to the greenhouse with my dad, but stopped when I saw her. She had that look on her face that grown-ups wear when they have to do something they don’t want to. Like when my dad comes to get me for one of my doctor appointments. And for some reason my aunt Marnie looks like that all the time. But I know that’s not true. In my mom’s room, there’s paintings of two girls that I think are my mom and her sister, and Aunt Marnie is different in them. It was like she was softer then. Like clay before it goes in the oven and hardens so that there’s no memory of how it used to be before. Except for her eyes, I’d say that’s how it is with Marnie.
I’d like to paint her, I think. When that thing inside of me that tells me to paint lets me know it’s ready again, I’ll paint her first. It’s not like she’s pretty like my mother. My mother is beautiful, and people always stare at her when I’m with her and it makes me proud. But Aunt Marnie is different. You don’t see she’s beautiful by looking straight at her; it’s more like catching her from the corner of your eye that makes you know you’ve seen something special. And her eyes. They’re not like my mom’s at all. But maybe that’s why I think they’re so beautiful.
I crawled out of my spot so that Aunt Marnie could see me. She stopped, then waved and gave me a real smile—not the kind of smile my mom gives me when I try to tell her something. She rubbed my hair and hugged my shoulders, and I didn’t want to pull away.
“Well, it’s official, Gil,” she said. “I’m staying. And I want us to have fun.” She looked me straight in the eyes like Grandpa does and I liked that. “But it also means that we’re going to have to do some schoolwork, too. Just you and me. I’ll be the teacher and you’re going to be my only student. Does that sound like fun?”
I nodded and she touched my face.
She kneeled in front of me, and I know it must have hurt her knees to kneel on the sand and broken shells but she pretended that it didn’t. “You remind me a lot of someone I used to know a long time ago who was very special to me. We used to paint together and that’s how we became so close. I was thinking that you and I could start out that way, too.”
I blinked. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t painting anymore but I couldn’t. Because then I’d have to tell her why. So I just kept quiet.
“After breakfast, let’s go down to Jeremy Creek and study the waterfront with the boats coming in and out. We’ll just bring our sketch pads and see how we do as we get to know each other.”
I nodded. I’d been afraid she’d say she wanted to paint the ocean. But I’d seen the painting that used to hang over the couch downstairs and knew she wouldn’t want to go near the ocean, either. So we’ll go to Jeremy Creek and sketch boats instead. Maybe, if I’m good, she’ll let me sketch her. And if I do, maybe I can draw the person I see when she thinks no one else is watching—the person in all those photographs in the album I keep under my bed that nobody else knows I have, except for Grandpa because he gave it to me.
Taking Aunt Marnie’s hand, I led her inside the house to show her my shell c
ollection. She hurried after me like somebody was chasing her, and I knew that she’d heard Mama’s voice call out to my daddy and that if we stayed where we were for a few more minutes, she would see us.
Aunt Marnie stopped at the door for a moment as if trying to decide what she should do, so I tugged on her hand to help her choose and she followed. I knew she would. Aunt Marnie sees ghosts when she looks at Mama, and it’s way too early in the morning for that.
CHAPTER 6
Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.
—THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JUDE 13
Diana
When I was nine and Marnie six, our mother took us to Disney World. This visit to the Nirvana of every childhood was marred by the fact that our mother woke us in the middle of the night to tell us we were going. In a frenzy she stripped the sheets from our beds and told us to throw our clothes onto the sheets and then knot the ends together. These were our suitcases, and Marnie and I thought we were on a grand adventure as we tossed our bundles over our shoulders and ran barefoot—we were still in our pajamas—out to the car.
We ran out of gas before we’d crossed the state line. We waited until dawn when Mama was able to flag down a passing trucker to hitch a ride to the nearest gas station. She left us alone in the car, and I held Marnie while she cried and cried for Mama to come back. And she did—four hours later. Four hours of Marnie crying and me trying to pretend that I wasn’t scared and really believed that Mama would come back.
When Mama got back into the car smelling of gas and something else we didn’t recognize, we told her we wanted to go home. But she was in the middle of one of her episodes and nothing could make her turn back once she’d got started. I didn’t like the way she looked at us, her eyes like vacant skies with dark storm clouds creeping up from behind. It scared me the most because every once in a while, I could see the same dark clouds when I looked in the mirror.
We sped down the highway while Mama spun stories about our adventure, how we were princesses on the run and that we would be met at the gates of Disney World by Walt Disney himself. Mama was flushed and sparkling, as insidious in her charm as I was impervious to it. I, after all, had seen the clouds. Eventually it would start to rain.
By the time we reached Orlando, Marnie was smiling but I was girded. Mama’s energy had begun to flag with the darkening sky and I reached for Marnie’s hand to hold for the last hour of our trip.
We never made it inside Disney World. Mama had a breakdown somewhere between the empty parking lot and the vacated ticket windows, attracting the attention of two security guards.
I grew up that night, I think, under the celluloid eye of Mickey Mouse and two Orlando police officers, the night air around us saturated with the scent of old popcorn and spun sugar. My childhood was forever stained with the image of my little sister clinging to me in the back of a police car and then on the couch at the police station until my grandfather arrived hot and harried and smelling of sweat. I can still see two barefoot little girls in pajamas clutching dirty sheets stuffed with clothes and perched on a green vinyl couch with tufts of stuffing pressing through the seams like bleached cotton candy.
But Marnie kept her head tucked under my neck the whole time, her hand in mine, as night became morning and I grew older and older. Afterward, when we were staying at our grandfather’s house and our mother had been sent away for the first of many times, Marnie told me that she hadn’t been scared because I was there. She pretended that I was Superman and that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. And I didn’t.
Even now, when I turn my head, I can sometimes feel her there, at my side, her warm breath like that of a suckling baby. She has always been a presence there, my sister, not a twin but the other half of my soul. My right side walks with her ghost as if without her I am not whole. We are Maitlands, after all. And what better curse could there be but for two inseparable sisters to resent the very air the other breathes?
I could feel Marnie and Gil watching me from the porch but I didn’t turn to look at them. I was quite sure that they didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to see them. Instead, I made my way to the silly glass building that Quinn calls his greenhouse. It’s nothing more than a kit he ordered on the Internet and he put together on a clearing between the big house and the old caretaker’s cottage that he now calls his house.
If I were to paint a picture of the greenhouse, I would show Quinn on the inside of his fortress sanctuary, where he breathes life into temperamental plants and pretends that he can see everything around him just in case somebody might need him. But it’s a house of glass, after all, and I would paint the fissures and holes that exist in the walls but that he refuses to see. Standing on the outside and looking in would be me and Gil. And Marnie. She’s one of the people Quinn has collected because she needs fixing. He’s only attracted to the broken ones. Why else would a vet not even keep a goldfish as a pet?
I didn’t knock but pulled the door open, letting it slap shut loudly behind me. My bandage itched under my skirt but I dared not scratch at it and call his attention to it. I needed to be on my best behavior, so I just stood there and tried not to look as belligerent as I felt. I tried not to think about how much a prisoner Quinn had made me, and instead focused on our son. It was only because of him that I would put myself in this position. I almost smiled at the irony, considering how Gil couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me anymore. Not that I blamed him.
Quinn looked up at me from the small desk on the far side of the room, and I watched as his calm doctor face settled on his features. I love the way he looks, all broad-shouldered and blue-eyed and tall enough so that when I wear heels I still need to look up at him. And yet I can’t say that it was his physical looks that first attracted me to him. He had the misfortune to fall in love with one of my paintings, one that wasn’t for sale, and his persistence in acquiring it and my perverseness in not letting him have it are what first drew me into his bed. The painting still belongs to me, yet it is stored with a sheet over it in my studio, where I don’t have to look at it and face all of my failures.
Unaccustomed to talking, I cleared my throat before speaking. “I need the car keys. I have an appointment with Dr. Hirsch at two o’clock, and I’d like to run some errands while I’m out. I need more canvas board.” I looked hopefully up at him at this last admission. It wasn’t a complete lie. I did need more, but I’d needed more for almost two months. It was only after I’d uttered the words that I realized I had spoken the truth. Since Marnie’s return, I’d felt drawn to my paints again. That part of me that makes me paint trembled inside like a tightly folded flower emerging into the sun, and I had begun to see light and shadows again instead of the flat colors I’d been seeing since the night on the boat with Gil. I didn’t want to examine the reason why too closely, afraid that I might see Marnie’s return into my life as something good. The barrier of hatred I had erected between us was not impenetrable; but should it dissolve, we would both be forced to examine the truth. And that would be my undoing.
He tapped his pen against his gardening journal. “Did you take your pills this morning?”
I managed to keep my breathing even. I managed a smile. “Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, I found Joanna and asked her for them before she had a chance to come find me.”
He smiled back, but I could still see the uncertainty in his eyes. “Why don’t I take you? I don’t have any patients after twelve.”
“No.” He looked at me sharply and I softened my tone. “Thanks, but no. I’m feeling much better and I’m more than capable of driving myself to Charleston. Besides, Dr. Hirsch thinks it would be good for me to get back to visiting my friend in the nursing home. Helping others does help me, and I’m eager to see her again.” My wound itched as if it were clawing at me from the inside, and I struggled to keep my fingers away from it. Quinn’s eyes watched my fingers as they twitched on my skirt a
nd I quickly clasped my hands together. Quinn was never one to miss anything.
“I still think I should drive you. It’s still so soon…” He didn’t finish his sentence, his unspoken words loud enough for both of us to hear.
I played my trump card. “But I’d be gone for most of the afternoon, and I know you don’t want to leave Gil for that long. He’s only known Marnie for a short while, and I don’t know how comfortable he would be spending all day with her.”
He stood, then hesitated only a moment before digging into his pocket for his keys. “Is your cell phone charged?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I want you to call me when you get to Dr. Hirsch’s and when you leave the nursing home so I’ll know when to expect you.”
“And if I don’t?”
He didn’t blink. “Then you’ll be confined here or in a hospital. Either way, you won’t have your freedom.”
I had won a small victory, so I bit my lip to keep me from replying. Instead, I simply turned on my heel and left the greenhouse, giving the door a satisfactory slam on my way out. I didn’t have to turn around to see that Quinn was already on his cell phone. First, checking with Joanna that I really had taken my pills and then calling Dr. Hirsch to verify my appointment. He would probably even call the nursing home to confirm my visit, and he would be satisfied with all the answers provided. There would be only one more question to ask, one more thing to find out. But this one last question would never be asked; I had made sure of that. Because how can you find an answer when you don’t even know there’s a question?
Marnie
My grandfather’s house is located on a strip of land sandwiched between the South Santee River and the Atlantic Ocean. The original house on the site had been built by my great-great-great-great-grandfather, Josiah Maitland, a retired sea captain who wanted to become a gentleman farmer and grow rice out of the rich, wet earth of the South Carolina Lowcountry.