The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  After one such dream-filled night, I made my way to Grandpa Maitland’s room. For a guy who doesn’t talk, he’s given me more peace of mind and counsel than any psychiatrist I’ve ever been to. Maybe it’s his years as a preacher with a needy congregation that makes his presence a soothing one. Whatever it was, I always found myself in his room several times a week, hunched over a chessboard—usually losing—and talking about life.

  There’s something reassuring about the game of chess. It’s about the only time I feel as if I’m in control, moving chess pieces across a board as if with the hand of God. I once even considered myself a pretty good chess player. Until I challenged Edward Maitland to a game as a charitable act and got my ass whipped. He’s a formidable opponent, and once you get past the shaking, yellow highlighter-stained fingers and wheelchair, you realize that he’s got a razor-sharp mind and those Maitland eyes that don’t miss a thing. I think that’s why Gil spends so much time with him. All the other people in Gil’s life use words like smoke to obscure the truth.

  I moved my bishop forward within striking distance of Edward’s queen and removed my hand from my chess piece before realizing the flaw in my reasoning. Giving himself only a few minutes to contemplate his next move—most likely done for my benefit, to pretend that I had given him a quandary—he slid his queen forward placing both my errant bishop and my king in jeopardy.

  “Check,” I said for him and he smiled.

  I moved my king out of harm’s way and then watched as he captured my bishop with his queen.

  I pretended to contemplate my next move as other thoughts tugged at my attention. Finally, I looked up from the board and found him watching me closely. I noticed for the first time that his left hand rested on his dog-eared Bible, the open pages decorated with sporadic yellow highlighter marks. I glanced to see what chapter he’d been reading, but couldn’t make out the tiny print at the top of the page. I sat back in my chair and said, “I need to get Gil on a sailboat again.”

  I stared down at the black-and-white board, but saw only the blue of the ocean. “I’m not a psychiatrist—not that they’ve done him any good—but I have a gut instinct about this. He loved it so much before—before the accident. And now he’s petrified of going anywhere near the water. His doctors have said that getting him back on the water might help jog his brain, get him talking again. I just need to do it carefully and gradually. But I can’t do it on my own.”

  I looked up to see Edward’s eyes gazing steadily at me, but I couldn’t read them as easily as I usually could. “I was thinking that since Marnie was an excellent sailor at one time that I could convince her to help me, although I’m beginning to think that she might be as afraid of the water as Gil seems to be.”

  I picked up a pawn, feeling its cool stone surface against my fingers. “I don’t suppose even you know what happened out on the boat with their mother the night she drowned. Diana would never talk about it. But from what I can gather from the dates on all the trophies upstairs, Marnie—or Diana—never put foot on a sailboat again. I feel like I’m living with ghosts who won’t—or can’t—communicate with the living.”

  I put the pawn down and moved it one space forward in an unplanned move. A quirk of Edward’s eyebrow made me quickly pick it up again. Instead of replacing it on the board, I gently closed my fingers around it, cradling it in my fist. “I’ve got to do something for Gil now. I can’t just sit and wait this out.” I looked up at Edward again to find his clear gaze still leveled at me. “And I think that bringing him out on the water again is the right thing to do.” I sat back, still holding the pawn. “But Gil doesn’t trust me anymore. Maybe it’s because I’m his father and therefore connected to his mother, which is another story altogether. I need Marnie’s help to do this, but I think she’s going to resist the idea as much as Gil.” I spotted the perfect move and replaced the pawn on the board before sliding my rook two spaces.

  Edward sat forward in his wheelchair and moved his queen within striking distance of my rook.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  He nodded and I efficiently moved my rook and took his queen, positioning my piece in proximity to his king. “Check,” I said.

  Instead of moving his king, he picked up my queen, a pawn, and my rook and held them out to me with shaking fingers. I opened my palms and he dropped each piece, adding to the queen I already held, the soft clinking noise the only sound in the room. Slowly he reached over to me and closed my hand over them. Confused, I stared at my closed fist, thinking I understood the two queens and the pawn. What I didn’t understand was the rook.

  “Are you the rook?” I asked.

  Slowly, he shook his head and sat back in his seat, his eyes steadily penetrating. For a moment, while our eyes met in the quiet room, I felt a small fissure erupt in my armor, and for the first time since Sean’s death, my belief in my ability to fix things and people faltered. There was something in his eyes that only hinted at the magnitude of our problems and that Gil, the small pawn I held in my hand, was just a grain of sand buried under the unforgiving coast of his ancestors.

  A soft tap came from the door and I startled, unaware of how long I’d been holding the chess pieces. After a quick nod from Edward, I said, “Come in.”

  Marnie stood primly in the doorway and I had to look away as I felt the odd sensation of a blush rush to my face. It was seeing her there, outlined by the hallway light, that I remembered for the first time that in my dream Marnie’s hair had been loose and falling around her shoulders. And she’d been naked. What was worse was that I could feel Edward’s gaze on me and I had the distinct impression that he knew.

  Marnie seemed agitated and I felt a stab of alarm. “Is Gil all right?”

  She smiled, and her face softened. “He’s fine. I’ve just been discovering that he’s a very gifted artist, although I’m sure you already know that.”

  I didn’t really. I’d been in sort of a denial about his talent ever since he picked up his first crayon, and he hadn’t done much in the way of art since the accident. I almost considered this a blessing, seeing as how the artistic mind of a Maitland wasn’t always the healthiest.

  She clasped her hands together in front of her in what I had always considered a classic teacher pose, and saw that it didn’t suit her at all. Neither did her hair, scraped off her face. It looked much better loose around her shoulders, like in my dream. Where she was naked. I quickly looked down at my hands, the chess pieces pressing against my closed palm.

  Marnie walked over to her grandfather and kissed his cheek. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  Edward grunted and I said, “No, actually. We just finished.”

  “Oh, good. Who won?” she asked absently.

  I glanced at her grandfather and saw that he was flipping through his Bible, each page turn a chore. “We both did. I allowed him to let me win.”

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything and I could tell that she wasn’t really listening. Moving to the window, she looked out at the gathering gray clouds, deliberately avoiding the view of the ocean. “When Gil and I were in town today, we passed an art shop. They had one of Diana’s paintings on an easel in front of the store.”

  “I’m not surprised. You might not know this since you’ve been away for so long, but Diana’s established herself as a fairly renowned artist. She’s received commissions from all over the country.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Even in Arizona people know who she is.” She worried her lower lip for a moment. “I’ve just never seen one of her more recent paintings and it was a bit of a shock.”

  Edward continued his search through his Bible while I became aware again of the weight of the chess pieces in my hand, their heaviness equal to the growing dread I felt.

  She turned to face us, the darkening clouds of the sky behind her framing her pale face. “There was…there was a familiar person in the corner of the painting. I’m not sure that I would have even noticed the figure exc
ept for the fact that it was me.”

  I slid my chair back and stood. “Yes. It’s become sort of like her signature. Your image always appears somewhere in her paintings. I thought you knew.”

  She shook her head and I noticed her turquoise earrings, shaped into shells. I almost smiled, seeing how even in her exile in the desert, her memories of home lingered—if only in her subconscious.

  “No. I didn’t.” Her eyes held shades of panic. “Why does she do that? Why does she feel the need to include me?”

  “I’ve asked Diana, but she’d never tell me. I thought that maybe you were her muse, somehow. That she needed you to inspire her.”

  The corner of her mouth dipped. “No,” she said, her voice not quite convinced. “It wouldn’t be that.” She faced the window again and stared out at the clouds, pregnant with rain. “I don’t like storms,” she said quietly and I wondered if she’d forgotten that she wasn’t alone.

  “Neither does Gil. It was stormy on the night of his accident, too.”

  She jerked her head back to me, and I held her gaze as I watched something dark and tremulous pass behind her eyes.

  She turned back to the window. “Even as a child I didn’t like storms. Diana would let me crawl under her covers on stormy nights and stay there until it passed. She was never scared.” A smile was there in her voice. “I suppose children are born one way or the other.”

  “Gil was never afraid. He used to always ask me to go outside to watch the ocean. If it wasn’t lightning, I’d bring him to the beach. He wasn’t afraid of anything—not before the accident, anyway.” I sat back down and let the chess pieces in my hand clatter onto the board.

  I watched as Edward slid his arm across the board, knocking all the other pieces in his lap. He continued to look at me steadily as I reached for the wooden box where we stored the pieces, and handed it to him. I took a deep breath. “I want my son back. I want him fearless again. I want him to love sailing again. It was so important to him once.” Edward slid the pawn over to me and I picked it up, rubbing my thumb over the cold hardness of it. “But I need help. From someone he trusts. Someone he’s not afraid of.”

  “No,” Marnie said and she brought her hand up to the window, her fingers clenched in a fist. “That’s not why you brought me here. I’m trained to use art to help children with problems. Just let me do what I know how.”

  “I’m not asking you to do any of that differently. And I do think that his art is also an integral part of him, and if you can help him rediscover his talents, then it can only be good. But it’s not enough. I know that. And I think you know that, too.”

  “No,” she said again, her voice wavering like the sheets of rain that had starting spilling out of the heavy clouds.

  “I’m not saying that I should throw you both on a sailboat at night during a storm.”

  She shuddered and I wished I hadn’t said that, but I pressed on. “I’d like to take you out on the marsh again in my jon boat until you’re both comfortable in a boat. We’d only go in good weather, and to familiar places—and never near the ocean.”

  I watched as her shoulders relaxed and I was tempted to stop there. But I felt the heaviness of the pawn in my hand and I knew that I had to go on. “And I’ve decided to refurbish the Highfalutin. It’s in dry dock—away from the water—and I thought that if we all worked on it together—”

  “No!” She turned away from the window and faced me, and her eyes were lit with fear and anger and something else—something that reminded me of Diana when she began to lose her grip on reality.

  I stood, the enormity of what we were fighting for overriding any concern I might have for Marnie’s feelings. This was about an innocent child who had lost his way and couldn’t find the road back. And it seemed that I was the only one willing to fight for him.

  I grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look at me. “You’re his only hope, Marnie. I’ve seen him with you, and he responds to you better than I’ve seen him responding to anybody since his accident. Don’t you see? I need you.” I dropped my hands, realizing too late that I shouldn’t have touched her. Quietly I said, “We need you.”

  She backed away, rubbing my handprints off her shoulders. A flash of lightning split the sky answered by a growl of thunder. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t. You just don’t know.” Shivering, she backed away from me. “He’ll be afraid. I’ll go to him now.”

  I nodded, too spent and defeated to say anything else as I watched her leave the room. I didn’t realize that I had been staring after her until I felt a bump on my arm. Edward had wheeled himself over and was pushing his Bible at me as if he wanted me to read something. I took the book and squinted at the small print highlighted in yellow that he indicated with a yellow-stained fingernail. It was Proverbs, chapter twenty-four, and I read it aloud. “‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.’”

  I started to shake my head but he grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly. I pulled away gently and gave him back his Bible. “It’s not my call, Edward. It’s not up to me at all.”

  He began flipping through pages, wetting his thumb to make it easier to grip the paper, and finally came to rest at another passage. He pressed it open and held it up to me again, this time at the book of Genesis. Once again I read aloud, “‘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 looked at him in confusion, ready to remind him that the last passage was being taken out of context, but his chin had already sunk to his chest and his eyes were closed as his breath rose and fell in the steady rhythm of sleep. I gently pulled the Bible from his fingers and placed it on the table before leaving the room to go find Joanna. Outside, the rain began to fall hard on the house and the restless sand, shifting the color of the ocean from blue to white.

  Gil

  I hate storms. I didn’t used to. There was something about the electricity and noise of a thunderstorm that seemed to recharge that thing inside of me that makes me paint. Sort of like putting a new battery in a flashlight makes the light stronger and brighter. I wasn’t afraid because I never thought that something that beautiful could ever be so dangerous. Until that night on the boat with my mother when I learned the truth.

  I figured out that if I lay on my bed on my stomach and squeezed my pillow over my head, pressing it against my ears, I couldn’t hear the storm. Except that sometimes, if I pushed the pillow on my ears too tightly, I thought I could hear children crying. It always took several tries to get it just right, and then all I could hear was the swooshing of my blood and my own breathing.

  I knew Aunt Marnie was in my room before she touched my back. I had heard her and my dad arguing, and I was pretty sure it was about me, even though I couldn’t understand any of the words. I’ve learned that when you do more listening than talking, you can hear a lot more. So I kind of expected one of them to come find me when I didn’t hear them arguing anymore. I hadn’t felt my dad’s heavy footsteps on the stairs outside my room, so I figured it was Aunt Marnie.

  I flipped over on my back to see her, careful to keep the pillow around my head, and when lightning lit the room, I thought I could see a ghost by her side. I shut my eyes, and when I opened them again, it was gone, and I allowed Aunt Marnie to move the pillow away from my ears.

  “Gil? Are you all right?”

  I nodded, keeping my eyes on her face and away from the window.

  “I don’t like storms either.”

  In the next flash of lightning, I thought I could see her ghost and me out on the beach, staring at the storm, and we were laughing as the wind blew her hair in her mouth and the water splashed over our feet and we didn’t care.

  She sat down on the bed and I barely felt the bed move because she was so small.

  “I had fun this morning. Did you?”

  I nodded, knowing that our visit to town wasn’t really what she wanted to talk about.

  Her fi
ngers plucked at my bedspread and she kept her eyes away from my face. “Your dad says that you used to love sailing.”

  I felt my heart tremble like a butterfly in my chest, but it wasn’t because I was scared. It was because when Aunt Marnie said the word “sailing,” it came dressed with sunshine and the smell of salt water in your face and all the happy memories of being on a boat beneath sails with only ocean around you. It made me remember everything I had forgotten about sailing—all that I used to love doing. And in that one word, Aunt Marnie told me that she had loved it once, too. I nodded and she touched my head, lifting the hair off of my forehead.

  I watched her throat as she swallowed. “He said that it might be a good idea for you to maybe start thinking about sailing again.” She put her hand flat against my head as if to stop my thoughts from jumping ahead of what she was going to say next. “Not right away, of course. But he thought maybe you—and I—could maybe start using his jon boat on the marsh and creeks.” She looked out the window, where the rain was still hitting the glass like BB pellets. She smiled at me but I could see she didn’t really mean it. “And he wanted you to help him fix up the Highfalutin while it’s in dry dock.”

  My heart fluttered again, just like it does when the mainsail is hoisted and the boat begins to move under your feet. It was a feeling. The feeling I painted when I made my best pictures.

  She began stroking my hair again. “I won’t make you do it, Gil, if you’re really too scared. I wouldn’t do that.”

  Aunt Marnie’s voice had gone real quiet, like she’d forgotten I was there and she was talking to herself. And then I thought that she actually was because I had already decided that it was something I wanted to do. Probably something I needed to do. I missed my painting so much that it sometimes felt like I had stepped into an elevator and forgotten to push the button. I just sort of stood there, waiting for the elevator to move on its own or for somebody else to push the button. I guess Aunt Marnie had shown me where the button was and was waiting for me to do something about it.