The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  “The other kids, but not you?”

  She waited a moment before answering. “No, I resented it, too. Sibling rivalry is a rite of passage for most kids. But for us…” She shrugged. “I guess we spent a lot of time vying for our mother’s attention. I remember thinking how unfair it was that Diana should be the better artist and the better crabber. And Mama, she just…”

  Marnie stopped suddenly as if she’d already said more than she’d intended.

  “She just what?” I prompted.

  Looking down at her bare toes, she said, “She just told me to be careful what I wished for.”

  “Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding, but wanting her to say more.

  Ignoring me, she went to kneel next to Gil. “Look, see the crabs? They’re close enough to the surface now that we can scoop them up with the net.”

  He looked up at her with a face that was half excitement and half terror.

  Reading him correctly, Marnie said, “Not to worry. You keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll handle the rest, okay? There’s no reason for you to get into the water.”

  Gil nodded, relief bathing his face.

  Stealthily, she raised the net, being careful not to cast a shadow over where the crabs were blissfully unaware of impending danger. “Don’t move,” she whispered to Gil as her net descended into the water, before she raised it up again with a quick snap of her wrist and a white spray of water, neatly catching three large blue and very surprised crabs and one waterlogged chicken neck. “And all of them over five inches, so we’re allowed to keep ’em.”

  Gil jumped up and down in silent joy, then raised his right hand for a high five from Marnie. She gave him a one-armed hug, being careful to hold the net aloft. “You are definitely your aunt’s nephew, Gil.”

  He stopped moving and looked up questioningly at Marnie.

  Gently, she clasped his hand and said, “And you’re definitely your mother’s son.”

  This made him smile, and I wished, just for a moment, that Diana had been there to see it.

  She turned to me. “How are things going over there?”

  I turned to my forgotten pole and lifted the line out of the water, the nearly untouched chicken neck still attached. “I guess they could tell I was a Yankee and preferred the other side of the dock.”

  “Or maybe,” Marnie said as she traded my pole for the squirming net, “we’re just better crabbers.”

  She laughed, then turned away with her arm around Gil, looking younger than she had when I’d first seen her step out of her rental car. Still, though, she carried her pain and grief with her as a traveler might carry a suitcase, and it weighted her step and darkened her eyes. I watched them as they walked away, remembering what she’d said about being careful what you wished for, and wondered what the young Marnie Maitland had once wished for and now regretted.

  CHAPTER 15

  The human heart has hidden treasures,

  In secret kept, in silence sealed;

  The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,

  Whose charms were broken if revealed.

  —CHARLOTTE BRONTË

  Marnie

  The first time I saw Diana sneak away, I was sketching with Gil. He’d taken me to a site that was familiar to me, the high point of land from which you could see all of the Maitland property. Diana and I went up there often as children, calling it our magical place. We were goddesses there, surveying our world, which included land, sky, and ocean, and for most of our childhoods, we believed that we owned it all.

  I never went up there alone, mostly because Diana told me that the bones of the Maitland children burned to death all those years ago were buried there where they died, their father too grief-stricken to bury them in the churchyard. I knew this wasn’t true, as I’d seen their graves at the old Presbyterian Church in the Village, but I felt the sadness on the patch of land, as if the Maitland curse was real and strong and could live on in the blades of grass that grew over the scarred earth.

  Someone had planted an orange tree and, judging by its size, not that long ago. I asked Gil about it, but he simply stared at me and shrugged. I was in the process of making a mental note to myself to ask Quinn about it when Gil tugged on my arm and pointed toward the house. Diana was exiting through the back door, taking a great deal of time and care to close the door behind her as if she didn’t want anybody to hear. I knew she was alone in the house except for Grandpa and Joanna, having just watched Quinn leave in the jon boat for his office. That was when it occurred to me that she would have known this, too, as well as known that Gil and I were gone.

  I scrutinized Gil, wondering why he would have called my attention, and when he started moving me down the hill, I figured that he had seen this before and perhaps wanted me to intervene. I began walking quickly but was soon running fast as the possibilities of what Diana could be doing raced through my mind. I shouted to Gil, “Go inside and find Joanna—she’ll be with your grandfather—and tell her that I’ve gone somewhere with Diana.” He nodded and I watched as he raced past me toward the house.

  I was sprinting now, eager to close the distance to Quinn’s car before Diana could. We reached it at the same time, with me gasping for breath and unable to speak for a minute.

  She looked annoyed when she spotted me. “What are you doing here? I thought you were with Gil.”

  “I was,” I said, breathing heavily. “But Gil saw you leaving and thought maybe I should know about it.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Gil, huh?” She shook her head. “That boy’s too smart for his own good.” Her voice held a hint of pride.

  “Where are you going that you had to sneak away when nobody was looking?”

  She looked defiantly at me. “I don’t have to tell you anything. It’s none of your damned business.”

  “Maybe not,” I said. “But I’m sure Quinn would like to know. He told me you’re in a probationary period here, and how well you do will determine how much you’re going to be allowed access to Gil. I would guess that he’d want to know where you were heading.”

  Her chest rose and fell in short deep breaths, but that was the only sign of anger she couldn’t keep me from seeing.

  “I was just running some errands. I needed a few things—personal items. I didn’t think it necessary to get permission to go buy tampons.”

  I glanced in the backseat and noticed two short stacks of books, a package of charcoal drawing sticks, and a box of Twinkies. I almost grinned at the sight of the box. Twinkies had been a diet staple of our childhood. Where other people’s mothers made soup or chicken casserole, our mother would throw a box of Twinkies on the table for supper. She ate them by the boxful, and I suppose we felt lucky that she would share any of them at all. It was the kindness of neighbors that had staved off malnutrition—something I had taken for granted until we’d moved into our grandfather’s house and realized what three meals a day were really supposed to be like.

  Diana saw me looking at the Twinkie box. “It’s still my favorite snack. Reminds me of home, I guess.” She smirked and I returned the expression, as only the two of us could ever understand the absolute absurdity of her statement.

  I studied her for a moment, still not convinced. “You sure are bringing a lot of supplies with you just to go run errands.”

  She shrugged. “When I’m through reading a book, I toss it in the car so that I have it when I visit the nursing home. They’re always asking for books. And the Twinkies”—she glanced at the box—“well, those are for if I get hungry.”

  “What’s the charcoal for?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. “My friend at the nursing home’s an artist. Whenever I find art supplies on sale, I buy them for her and hang on to them until my next visit.”

  “Well, then,” I said. “If you’re just running errands, you won’t mind if I tag along.”

  Any other person wouldn’t have seen the panic and desperation in the pale green eyes. But she was
my sister, as transparent to me as if I were looking at myself in a mirror.

  “Suit yourself,” she said as she slid into the driver’s side and turned the key.

  I realized that I didn’t have my purse or my cell phone but had no doubt that she would no longer be there if I asked her to wait while I ran and got them. Instead, I opened the passenger’s-side door and slid in, barely closing the door before Diana sped off, her wheels spinning on the loose shells of the driveway.

  We sped down Highway 17 and I kept glancing nervously at the speedometer. “There’re always cops on this road, Diana. You might want to slow down.”

  Her response was only to lean forward and turn the volume of the stereo up higher so that the heavy rock beat vibrated the speakers.

  I flipped the stereo off. “If you get a ticket, don’t you think Quinn will find out about it?”

  “But I won’t get a ticket if I don’t get caught. And what’s the matter with you? You don’t think I can drive?” She began to swerve erratically on the two-lane highway, making me grip the seat and pay close attention to the thankfully sparse traffic. “Am I finally going to make my perfect little sister scream?”

  She jerked the steering wheel, careening the car to the right. When it hit the uneven shoulder, the car veered to the left, narrowly missing a car in the oncoming lane.

  I was gripped with fear, recalling other times in a car with my sister, but with our mother at the wheel. I couldn’t count the number of times she’d piled us in the car, then threatened to drive off a bridge or into a swamp just to make her pain go away. Back then, we thought her pain was from her headaches. It hadn’t taken us long to realize that we were the source, and the only way our mother could be well would be if we simply weren’t there.

  “Stop it, Diana! Stop it!”

  She laughed, the sound mimicking our mother’s, and she jerked the wheel again. But this time we were on a small bridge over marsh, and my side of the car grazed the cement barrier, the sound of scraping metal somehow bringing Diana back into herself. She pulled off the bridge onto the shoulder of the road and threw the car into PARK. The only sound was our heavy breathing and the occasional buzz of a passing car.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, her voice shaking.

  I nodded, not at all convinced that was true.

  “I’m sorry.” Diana leaned forward and rested her forehead on the wheel. “I don’t…I don’t know what comes over me sometimes. It’s worse when I’m not on my medication, but even with it, I sometimes feel so…angry.” She looked surprised, as if she’d finally put a name to the emotion.

  She continued. “Angry at everyone—at Mama, at you, at Quinn. And I want to lash out and hurt like I’ve been hurt.” She looked down at the bandage on her leg, which she wore like a badge. “But I always end up hurting myself more.”

  I turned to her. “What about Gil, Diana? Do you ever get angry with him?” I avoided looking at her bandaged leg or thinking about how afraid Gil was of the water.

  She shook her head. “No. Never. Never with Gil.”

  I leaned toward her. “So tell me what happened that night on the boat with Gil. How did you get hurt?”

  “I could never be angry with Gil,” she said, my question unanswered. She pulled back out on the highway, even using her turn signal to show her intention of merging into the right lane.

  I settled back in my seat until I noticed that she had passed the exit for McClellanville. “You missed the turnoff,” I said, turning around in my seat as if to make sure that they hadn’t changed the road since I’d last been on it.

  “Yep,” she said, pushing in the lighter on the dashboard, then rummaging around her purse before pulling out a pack of cigarettes. “Quinn’s talked to all the shop owners in the Village, so I have to go to Charleston to get my smokes.” She plucked out a cigarette with her teeth, then showed me the empty pack before tossing it in the backseat.

  “So you were driving all the way into Charleston just to get a pack of cigarettes.”

  “Pretty much,” she said, holding the lighter to the cigarette before pulling a deep drag.

  I wasn’t quite sure that I believed her, and I was about to question her further when I had a flash of memory—a memory of our mother throwing a pack of cigarettes into the backseat of her car as we drove with her. But there were bright splashes of orange in the backseat, and I realized that they were the life jackets. The fluorescent color glared at me through my memories and the passage of time, jiggling something loose and making me recall a conversation I’d had with Quinn before we’d gone to look at his boat. About how the life jackets on my mother’s boat were missing the night of our accident, and how none of us had thought to question it.

  I turned to Diana, seeing the chicken pox scar on the side of her cheek, and remembered the week we both stayed home with Mrs. Crandall because we had chicken pox and nobody knew where our mother was. I had it first, and had given it to Diana, who had a much worse case than me. I remember feeling bad about that, and how I’d tried to apologize, but Diana just thanked me. She thanked me for giving us that week in Mrs. Crandall’s house, where people slept in beds when it was dark, and ate real meals at the kitchen table and said prayers before bedtime. She said the only thing I needed to be sorry about was that I wasn’t sicker. Then we’d have been able to stay even longer.

  “What happened to the life jackets that were on the Highfalutin?” I asked. “They were always on the boat except for that night, and I don’t remember ever seeing them again.”

  Diana stared straight ahead, and I thought for a moment that she hadn’t heard me, until I saw the tic in her cheek.

  “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “I don’t really remember if they were there or not.” She kept her gaze directed steadily on the road in front of her. “And I try very, very hard not to remember anything about that night at all. That’s why I don’t talk about it to anybody. Especially not to you.”

  It struck me suddenly that this was the first time we had ever said anything about the accident at all to each other. Maybe it had taken all those miles and all those years to stretch between us before I allowed myself the dangerous task of plowing a path through the minefield of memories.

  “Diana, we’re not young girls anymore. Don’t you think it’s time we deal with what happened?”

  She looked at me for so long that I was tempted to take the wheel to keep us on the road.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Marnie. I do deal with it. I deal with it every damn day of my life, no matter how hard I try to forget. I can’t not deal with it.” She crushed her cigarette into the ashtray, then flipped it out the window. “It was easier before you came back. But now you’re here and I have to look at you every day, and I have to deal with it again.” Her hands trembled on the steering wheel and she shook her head. “Why can’t you just leave?”

  I swallowed, feeling the prick of tears behind my eyelids. But I blinked them away and straightened my shoulders. “Because Gil needs me. And because I’m just beginning to realize how many unanswered questions I have about our mother’s death.”

  Her trembling fingers reached inside her purse, tossing around the insides before she slammed her fist on the wheel. “Damn it! I need a goddamn cigarette.”

  I knew I should stop, but I couldn’t. So many images and memories were flooding toward the surface now, reminding me of things long since forgotten, and I couldn’t let it go. “It was the night that changed our lives, but I don’t—or can’t—remember all of it. I remember being in the water and then seeing Mama near me, and you were in the water, too. There’s more. I just can’t…” I could feel the cold water and taste the salt in my mouth. But no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t see past my hand reaching for my mother.

  “Why would she do it, Diana? Why would she take us out in a boat during a storm without life jackets?”

  “Because she was crazy, Marnie. Didn’t you know?”

  I stared at her, surpri
sed at the sudden lightness to her tone, and saw that she was half smiling.

  She pressed down on the gas pedal, making the car lurch. “And you never know what a crazy is thinking.”

  “Stop it, Diana! This isn’t funny.”

  The car slowed. “Actually, it is. But I keep forgetting what a lightweight you’ve become, so you’ll just have to remind me from time to time.”

  She was silent for a while, and then she said, “Remember when we were little and Daddy took us to the shrimp festival? He bought us those half-heart necklaces that when you put them together it says ‘forever sisters.’”

  “Yes,” I said softly. “I remember.”

  “I still have mine.”

  I thought for a moment, wondering if I should tell her how I frequently took it out of my jewelry box and polished it. Instead, I just said, “Me, too.”

  She glanced into the backseat. “Why don’t you grab us a couple of those Twinkies and we’ll have one, just like old times?”

  The thought should have paralyzed me. Instead it brought back the memory of Diana and me under the covers in her bed, hiding from the dark because the electricity had been shut off, and eating our Twinkies. Looking back, I could sense the terror and hopelessness that drove my sister even back then, but when I was a girl, Diana had been my refuge and I’d had nothing to fear while she was around.

  I slipped off my seat belt and grabbed the box, easily slicing it open and pulling out two individually wrapped Twinkies. I gave her one, and then, out of habit, we grasped the little desserts as if they were swords and crossed them.