by Karen White
I felt Gil step out slowly from behind me. “I thought you had quit painting since…” I stopped in time, remembering Gil’s presence.
“I did. But for some idiotic reason, your face is the only thing I can get excited about painting. Except for my mural, but that doesn’t count. But I want to—need to—paint you.”
I almost smiled at her dramatic emphasis. But she seemed sincere and the old part of my heart—the only part that still belonged to this place I had called home—tugged at me and willed me to take a chance. I felt Gil’s presence beside me and knew that I had to do it for him, too.
“Fine. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my lessons with Gil.” I smiled at her. “And as long as you eat everything on the food trays I bring up to you.”
She looked resigned but pleased. “Fine. I need to get set up in my studio, but I’ll let you know when I’m ready to get started.”
She turned without saying anything else and I called out to her, “What did you tell Quinn about Trey?”
Pulling open the door, she looked back at me. “Ask him yourself,” she said before disappearing inside.
I turned to Gil and wondered if he knew that his expression mirrored my thoughts. Because as eager as I was to find common ground again with my sister, I couldn’t help but wonder if her overture had some ulterior motive.
“Come on,” I said to Gil as I moved off the porch and headed out toward the marsh, where the ocean met the land and secrets nestled in the cord grass.
CHAPTER 12
The Ponthieva Racemosa orchid (known also as the shadow witch) does best when planted with other orchids. I have placed mine in the same pot as the fragrant ladies’ tresses, yet I’ve watched the leaves brown and curl and then drop off completely. In a fit of frustration this morning, I ripped the plant out by its roots, determined to start again. But what seldom works in real life will most likely fail in the art of orchid cultivation. Instead of starting all over again, I will repot my orchid and give it special care until it thrives. I won’t give up on it.
—DR. QUINN BRISTOW’S GARDENING JOURNAL
Quinn
I had just finished repotting the Ponthieva Racemosa, handling it like I would a newborn kitten, when I heard a timid knock on the door. I knew it was Marnie without turning around through a simple process of elimination: Diana would have barged right in and Gil wouldn’t have come at all.
She wore a skirt that fell to midcalf and hid a great pair of legs, a nondescript blouse with a single button left open at the neck, and her ubiquitous bun held tight to the base of her head. I thought back to what Trey Bonner had told me about Marnie’s wildness, and I almost smiled but stopped myself when I considered what must have happened to her to make her into the timid mouse of a woman she pretended to be.
I motioned for her to come in and she opened the door. “I hope I’m not bothering you.”
“Not at all,” I said, standing, then dusting the dirt from my hands and letting brown specks fall on the cream laminate countertop. She watched me, and I had the distinct impression that the untidy countertop was making her uneasy.
She tore her eyes from the counter and stood primly in front of me. “I’d like to come with you to the marina today. To see the boat. If that’s all right.”
I noticed she didn’t say the boat’s name. “Sure,” I said, glancing down at her clothes. “I thought I’d leave in about half an hour to give me time to clean up a few things here. Will that give you enough time to change?”
“Change? What’s wrong with what I have on?”
Besides stating the obvious, I strove to be more tactful. “It would be quicker if we took the jon boat and you might find it more comfortable in shorts.”
“Oh,” she said, smoothing her hands across her skirt.
“And we’ll probably see Trey Bonner. Thought you might want to wear something a little less…schoolteacher when you saw him again.”
A flash of anger illuminated her eyes and flushed her cheeks, and I knew that I was catching a glimpse into the face of the old Marnie—the Marnie who once fearlessly faced the wind on the open ocean and had been called “wild.”
“Why should I care if Trey Bonner sees me? He’s a guy I dated a long time ago, end of story.”
I knew there was no end to any story involving both Marnie and Diana, but I let it go. “Fine,” I said. “Just go put on some shorts.”
“I will.” She started to leave but turned back to me, then hesitated as if she wasn’t sure what she was going to say.
I looked up at her expectantly.
She tugged on her ear as I had seen Diana do countless times. “Diana wants to paint my portrait.”
I felt a quick jolt of alarm, but tried not to show it. “Is that a good thing?”
“I don’t know. You said that she hasn’t been able to paint since her accident with Gil. Except for the wall mural she started in her studio, I haven’t seen any evidence that shows that’s changed.”
I walked toward her and she crossed her arms as if erecting a barrier. “I think you being here has been good for her. Maybe it’s made her want to paint again, and you’re the most obvious choice. I wouldn’t say that she’s improved since your return, but she does seem to be taking more of an interest in life. She even asked to take Gil with her to the nursing home next time she visits, which was unexpected. Even before the accident, she didn’t spend a lot of time with him.”
“Why would she want to bring him to the nursing home?”
I shrugged, not really sure of the answer myself. “I think the old woman’s lonely, and it seems to help Diana to help someone else. Diana’s been bringing pictures of Gil and telling stories about him, and I guess they both figured it was time to meet him in person. She also mentioned that her friend’s an artist, too, which could be why Diana wants to bring Gil. Not that Diana’s ever been the biggest advocate for Gil’s art, but maybe this is a start.”
Marnie pressed her lips together, thinking. “Before the accident—Diana was still painting, right?”
I swiped dirt off the counter and onto the floor before leaning back, her eyes taking in every movement. “If you could call it that. She still sold paintings, and they were certainly better than average. But they weren’t her best. Her best work was those paintings she did from the time you left up until the time she gave birth to Gil.”
She thought for a moment. “Like the painting I saw in the shop window when I went to the Village with Gil.”
“Right.” I wondered if I should say more, if I should mention the nature of her sister’s work after Marnie’s departure, or even the painting that had first introduced me to Diana and which she always accused me of falling in love with before I ever met her. But I said nothing, unsure if there would ever be a right time for Marnie to know.
She continued to stand where she was, making no move to leave. “When was she first diagnosed?”
It was odd talking to Marnie about Diana, about things most sisters knew intimately about the other. But there was very little about the relationship between the Maitland sisters that could be described as normal. I almost felt sorry for the woman standing in front of me begging for information like a seagull scavenging for stray breadcrumbs. “After Gil was born,” I answered. “Your grandfather put her under a doctor’s care once before, after you left, and he thinks that might have been her first episode. But she wasn’t really diagnosed until she became a mother.” Marnie blanched and I wondered if I shouldn’t have told her what had happened to Diana after Marnie had moved away. But she had wanted to know, and I wouldn’t lie to her. “Her doctor said it was probably something that had always been there but that she had learned to suppress, most likely because of what she saw from growing up with your mother. But with the hormonal flood that pregnancy creates, it was too much for her.”
“So you had her put on medication, and she was fine?”
“Well, ‘fine’ is one way of putting it. She didn’t have any manic or depressive epi
sodes. But she became…flat. And so did her paintings. It killed her a little, I think, selling inferior work for inflated prices. But she stuck to her medication for Gil. She might never have been the perfect mother, but I have never doubted that she loves him.”
She gripped the sides of her arms so tightly that the tips of her fingers turned white. “So what happened? What made her go off her medication?”
I shrugged, mentally covering the events of the last year as I had dozens of times already. “It was a normal Saturday. I spent a few hours at my practice in the morning and Gil was with Diana. She wanted to take him to a nursery to get a tree or something—I can’t remember what. But I do remember that the last conversation I had with her was about your grandfather. She’d become convinced that he would be better off in a nursing home—although I completely disagreed with her. Regardless, the fact remained that Edward had taken out nursing home insurance several years back, and Diana was going to go through his papers to see what she could find. The next thing I knew, Gil was calling me on the phone to tell me that his mother was flipping out.”
I turned away from Marnie, unable to bear her scrutiny, which seemed to take in my story along with all my weaknesses and powerlessness in the face of Diana’s illness. I picked up a soft towel and began wiping the green pointed leaves of a white butterfly orchid. “I had to put her in a hospital—that’s when I moved in here. She had been taking her meds—I checked—but something sent her over the edge, though to this day she hasn’t told me what. Her doctor said that it can happen when a patient’s meds need to be adjusted, and has told me what signs to look for to avoid another episode.”
Marnie’s touch on my back startled me and sent gooseflesh racing down my spine. “But that was last year. Gil’s accident was only a few months ago. What’s been going on with her in the past year that could culminate with her taking Gil out on a boat during a storm and nearly killing them both?”
I turned on her, anger at myself irrationally directed at her. “I wasn’t married to her, remember? I did my best taking care of your grandfather and Gil, and when Diana came home from the hospital, trying to get her to take her meds and making sure she stayed away from her grandfather and son.”
She stepped back, her hands clenched at her sides. “Well, you didn’t do a good enough job at that, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said, leaning toward her. “But neither did you, a thousand miles away from here, completely and happily oblivious.”
I watched the color drain from her face. “I wouldn’t say ‘happily,’” she said quietly. “Diana and me, you can’t understand…you can’t understand unless you grew up in our house with a mother whose behavior was so erratic and unpredictable that you never knew if you were going to awake to a slap on the face or a hug. Or if your mother would show up at your school in her pajamas. Or not at all.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my anger rapidly deflated in the face of her grief. “I didn’t mean to dredge up the past or to hurt you. It’s just that since my brother’s death, I’ve become really good at fixing anything that’s broken. But I’ve tried and failed with Diana, and I’m afraid that I can’t fix Gil, either.”
Her face softened and I took a second look at her. I remember shortly after meeting her how I had thought that she seemed, within the confines of her artistic family, to be a crow in a nest of nightingales. But I suddenly realized that she was neither crow nor nightingale, but the nest that held them all together, the one part that sustained the whole. I wanted to tell her this, but I knew that she wasn’t yet ready to hear it.
I held my breath as Marnie stepped closer to me and raised her face to mine. “I think you’ll find that people don’t always need to be fixed. Sometimes all we need is to be told which way the wind is blowing so we can adjust our sails accordingly. And to be allowed to find our own way.” She stood back suddenly as if realizing how close she was. “All of those years with our mother who was never diagnosed. What a waste. I sometimes wonder how different our lives would have been if she had sought treatment.”
Her eyes held shadows of terror in them, and I knew she was thinking of the night sixteen years before when she and Diana had lost so much. She was watching me closely, and I felt as if she were challenging me. I remembered her fearlessness, and I wondered what it had taken to suppress it all those years and what it would take to resurrect it.
I stepped closer, my curiosity piqued. “How much do you remember about the night your mother died? When did you know that something was wrong?”
She turned her head away from me and hid her eyes, and I thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to answer me. Her voice was quiet when she spoke. “I don’t…I don’t remember everything. I’ve seen doctors, but nobody has been able to help me recall everything that happened. One doctor said it was a survival mechanism, that my brain is protecting me from things I’m not ready to know, yet.” She took a deep breath. “We were so young. But we knew enough that when Mama was in one of her good moods, we needed to keep it that way. We were used to the crazy ideas and the impromptu trips, and her excitement was always contagious. I always hoped that maybe she’d get stuck in the happy part and forget to go back. I don’t think that Diana ever had any hope at all.”
Marnie walked toward the counter and began methodically swiping the remaining dirt into a cupped hand. “So when Mama got us out of bed and told us that we were going sailing, it sounded like a grand adventure and that maybe this time it would work out and Mama could stay happy.”
Marnie stood there with her hand cupped in front of her, a frown wrinkling her forehead. “It was Diana who made sure that I was dressed warmly and had on my boat shoes. Mama never thought of things like that. She wore her nightgown and was barefoot, and I’ve always wondered why Diana didn’t make her change. When we got to the boat, we found that the life jackets were missing, and I was disappointed, thinking that we weren’t going to be able to go. But Mama didn’t say anything about it, so neither did we.”
Her eyes met mine, and for a moment, I could almost feel the sway of a boat beneath my feet and the tremor of fear that coursed between us like a shimmer of lightning.
“The funny thing is, I wasn’t scared. I had heard the storm advisory on the radio, so I knew, but I wasn’t scared. Diana was. I could feel her body trembling when she held my hand to help me board. I didn’t need her help whenever we were on the boat, but I never let her know that the water never frightened me. I became myself whenever I was on the water, just as Diana did when she picked up a brush. But she was my sister.” Marnie looked at me as if this last part made sense to me, and oddly enough, it did.
Without even seeming to realize where she was, Marnie began walking around the small greenhouse and tidying up as she spoke, putting trowels at right angles to one another and placing the potted plants in perfect rows, creating order in a world of abstract placement.
“Mama put me on the main sail and she sat at the tiller. She told Diana to just stay out of the way, and I remember how happy that made me.” She looked around, searching for more disorder to put to rights. “I was a much better sailor than Diana. It was the only thing I could ever best her at, and I had the trophies to prove it. For a long time I wasn’t sure if it was the thrill of moving my boat through wind and water or the joy of capturing my mother’s attention that made me want to sail. I suppose it was always a mixture of both.”
She looked at me, her hazel eyes staring steadily at me, as if waiting for me to judge her. I said nothing.
“We weren’t out to sea more than ten minutes before the wind picked up and the waves became rough enough to splash up over the deck. Diana was so scared that I could hear her teeth chattering over the noise of the storm. I was starting to get scared, too, but I wasn’t going to show it.” She gave a small laugh but there was no mirth in it. “The things we do for a mother’s affections.”
She stopped then, her hands gripping the edge of the counter and her fingers bloodless. “And t
hen Mama…she wasn’t at the tiller anymore. I thought maybe a wave had knocked her away, but I couldn’t tell because the rain was coming down hard, making it difficult to see.” Her thumbnails scratched at the counter’s edge. “I…I remember standing up so I could turn around and look down into the water—looking for Mama, I think—when I was hit from behind by something. I knew before I landed in the water that it was the boom and it was my own stupid fault.”
She had begun to shiver in the hot and humid greenhouse. “The water was so cold that it knocked the breath out of me. Every time I opened my mouth to get air or to shout for help, I swallowed salt water and I knew, at twelve years old, that I was going to die.”
I walked toward her but she turned from me and made her way to my desk, where she began methodically stacking papers and neatly organizing the pens and pencils that lay scattered on the surface. “At the same time, something brushed my leg, and when I whipped around, I saw that it was my mother. She…she was only about five feet in front of me. I wasn’t sure if she’d been in the water before me or if she’d jumped in after me, but she was there and swimming toward me. I was angry at her for leaving Diana all alone on the boat and was wondering how Diana was going to manage to pull us both out of the water when I spotted Diana about twenty feet away from us in the water. At this point the boat was heeling and filling with water, and one big wave would swamp her. Our only hope would be for the three of us to try to reboard her and begin bailing water while one of us radioed for help.”
Marnie stopped, her hands frozen in position in the act of stacking papers, and she stared at a spot in the wall as if it were a screen flashing her past in front of her.
“Did you manage to get back on the boat?” I prompted.
It took her a long time to answer. “I…I don’t remember,” she said, slowly turning to face me. “I’ve blocked out what else happened that night. I’ve been to more psychiatrists than I can count, but none of them can get me to remember the rest. All I know is what I’ve been told, which is that Diana and I were rescued the next morning, clinging to seat cushions from belowdecks. Our mother was never found.”