The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  “Good morning,” he said, putting the can down on the counter, then moving toward me.

  “Grow lights?” I asked, keeping my sweater-clad arms wrapped tightly around me.

  “Yep. There’s not enough sunlight hours for the orchids on cloudy days like this, so I try to help them out.”

  I nodded, glancing down the rows of pots with their parental lights beaming at them from above. “Why orchids, Quinn?” I stepped around him to walk down the first row of plants, pretending to study them.

  He thought for a moment. “I guess one reason would be because they’re temperamental and can be difficult to grow.”

  I raised my head to look at him. “Like being married to Diana wasn’t enough conflict in your life?”

  “Maybe,” he said, leaning back against the door with a half smile, as if he knew why I had put an entire row of orchids between us.

  “That’s one reason. What’s another?”

  “Because my mother loves orchids.”

  “Loves?” I repeated, noting the present tense. “So your mother’s still alive?”

  “Yes—both of my parents are, actually. They live in Massachusetts, not too far from the house my brother and I grew up in.”

  “Oh,” I said wiping off a stray water droplet from a green pointed leaf. “I just assumed they had both passed because you never talk about them.”

  He straightened, then moved back toward the sink. “There’s not a lot to talk about there.”

  “Have they ever seen Gil?”

  He shook his head. “No. My dad’s too ill to travel.”

  I didn’t point out the obvious that traveling goes both ways.

  “Why do you ask?”

  I looked up, startled to find that he had moved next to me again, blocking my way.

  I shrugged, feeling that jumping sensation again. “I don’t know. I was just thinking that I would like to see my parents again…if I could. I guess as I get older, I find myself wondering how I’d see my parents through a woman’s eyes instead of a child’s.”

  He reached up and tugged on my ponytail, pulling it loose. “In my experience, people stay pretty much the same.” He eyed me closely, making me squirm. “Except for you, Marnie Maitland. You’re not the same girl you used to be, are you? The brave Marnie whose fearlessness won so many races. The Marnie who used to let her hair run wild in the wind.”

  I swallowed and my eyes met his. We hadn’t kissed since the night of our dinner at the Crab Pot. It was as if by mutual agreement that we blamed the wine and retreated to a platonic relationship that was as full of discussions about Gil, the boat, and the weather as it was of tension between us—a tension as taut as fishing wire. And always, always the specter of my sister haunted us; a ghost we could both see but had no idea how to exorcise.

  A fleeting thought grabbed hold of me, as I smoothed my loosened hair behind my shoulders. “How would you know what I looked like? We didn’t meet until a few months ago.”

  He gazed silently at me for a long moment. Finally, he said, “Really? It seems as if we’ve known each other for a lot longer than that.”

  “But you knew what I looked like. Did Diana talk about me?”

  Quinn hesitated just for a moment and then nodded. “That was why I almost didn’t recognize you when you showed up. I guess I was expecting warrior Marnie.”

  “And you got me instead,” I said, thinking of the beautiful Diana with her blond hair and waiflike figure and how she was everything I wasn’t.

  “And that’s not such a bad thing.” The corner of his lips quirked up in a familiar half smile. “Who else could tell the story of the legendary Uranus the dog to my son in such an eloquent way?”

  I blushed. “Nobody was supposed to hear that but Gil.”

  Quinn was smiling fully now. “No, but I enjoyed it just the same.”

  I tilted my face up to his as he leaned toward me, but I pulled back as the greenhouse door blew open and Diana walked in, bringing the chill winter wind with her.

  “I hope you know that the walls are see-through and everybody can see what you’re up to in here.” She wore jeans and a spaghetti-strap top, accentuating the thinness of her arms, her bare skin marked with splotches of paint.

  “Good morning to you, too, Diana,” said Quinn, not stepping back from me. “Aren’t you cold?”

  “Not at all. I’m quite warm, actually. I’ve been painting since midnight, and it’s really worked me up into a sweat.”

  Her face glowed as she fidgeted around the potted orchids, flitting like an unsettled butterfly, while Quinn and I exchanged glances.

  Quinn moved toward her. “Did you take your medicine this morning?”

  Diana turned on him, her previously ecstatic face now turned to fury. “Of course I did. How could I not? Joanna practically forces them down my throat every morning. So, yes, Warden, I took my damn pills.”

  I stepped forward. “He’s just trying to help you, Diana. Even I thought something was up with the way you’re acting. If he hadn’t said anything, I certainly would have.”

  She turned to me, her eyes hard. “Why is it, Marnie, that you have to take everything from me? Haven’t you taken enough? Is there anything left for me?”

  I met her gaze, afraid to look at Quinn. She was beautiful in her fury, her green eyes large and clear, her bones as thin and delicate as a bird’s. I had hated her for that a long time ago, and it hit me as odd that I would be having this conversation with a woman who was everything I always wished I could be. “I’ve never taken anything from you, Diana.”

  She didn’t look away. “Have you ever once wondered how we both ended up in the water that night?”

  I jerked back as if hit; memories of that night were always a physical thing for me. I shivered in my sweater. “I was hit by the boom—that’s all I remember. And then…” I blinked hard, feeling the salty water sting my eyes. “And then I saw Mama and you in the water.”

  “Had you ever in your life as a sailor been stupid enough to get hit by the boom?”

  “No.” I shook my head, trying to clear it of her words and old memories that didn’t seem to fit. “But what has this got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all,” she said softly. Her attention had shifted to the door behind my shoulder, and I watched her anger seep out of her like a deflating balloon. Her entire face softened, and I knew before I heard the tapping on the door that Gil was there.

  Quinn opened the door and ruffled Gil’s hair as he stepped into the greenhouse. I watched as he took in his mother’s presence, and was relieved when he didn’t shrink back from her.

  “Hi, Gil,” Diana said, squatting to get down to eye level with him.

  He regarded her with matching solemn green eyes.

  “I haven’t seen a lot of you lately.”

  Gil remained where he was but he didn’t hide behind me or his father, so I counted that as progress.

  “My friend at the nursing home was asking about you yesterday. I’ve been showing her the drawings you’ve made for me, and she really wants to meet you.”

  This was pretty much the same tack I’d been using for weeks, and I wondered if Diana would have better luck.

  Gil studied his mother before reaching into his back pocket and drawing out a piece of white paper that had been folded into a small square. He hesitated only for a moment before handing it to her.

  Still squatting, Diana slowly opened the paper and her smile slowly faded. “That’s nice, Gil. That’s real nice. Thank you.” Without showing it to anybody else, she folded it back up and put it in her own pocket. “Well, then,” she said, standing. “I guess I’d better get back to work.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Remember those two framed prints of the blue herons that I painted for the art competition when we were in high school?”

  I thought I saw something flicker behind her eyes, and I continued. “They were always hanging in Mama’s room but they
’re not there now. I was wondering if you had any idea what had happened to them.”

  She wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “I vaguely remember them—just vaguely. But I have no idea where they are now. Probably sold when Grandpa took everything out of the attic.”

  “After Hurricane Hugo.”

  “Right. Something like that.”

  I nodded as she put her hand on the door handle before pausing. Slowly, she turned to face Quinn and me. “Have you told Marnie how we met, yet? Have you told her about the painting?”

  Diana didn’t wait for an answer. The three of us stood watching as Diana walked through the door, snapping it shut behind her.

  Diana

  When Marnie and I were about six and eight, my mother took us to Pawleys Island for a day at the beach. It was during one of our mother’s fleeting bouts of wellness, and neither Marnie nor I had the heart to explain to our mother that living near the water as we did, Marnie and I already spent more time near the beach than we did in our own beds.

  We’d felt so normal: the three of us with our brightly colored beach bags with matching towels that we’d stopped by to purchase from one of the tourist shops in Litchfield Beach. My mother had also purchased zinc oxide for my nose and a hideous sun hat for my head, and I held my tongue from telling her that I preferred her when she was being crazy.

  She kept me under the rented umbrella the whole time, making sure I was coated with the zinc oxide and the sun lotion with the highest degree of protection. I watched as Marnie sat on the beach and built sand castles and chased the waves, her olive skin turning a light brown under the sun’s rays.

  I envied her her dark hair and brown skin, her freedom to run into the surf without worrying if her sun hat was going to stay on, and the strong capable hands that couldn’t paint a boat on the water but could build a sand castle that withstood the incoming tide. But mostly I envied the way our mother watched her. I had always felt as if my mother and I were apart from others, but never from Marnie. But for the first time I saw what my mother saw: I was the flawed child and the dark-haired girl with the skin that browned in the sun was the child to be envied.

  As I shut the greenhouse door behind me, with the picture of the three of them standing so closely together, I wondered not for the first time exactly what I was fighting against. Maybe there comes a time in every woman’s life when pride and old hurts lose their sting. But all I had to do was think of Mama and how she had looked at Marnie, and I was drowning again in a sea of my own making.

  I found Grandpa on the back porch in one of the rockers, his hands folded neatly on top of his opened Bible. In the last months I’d found myself both avoiding him because of his inability to condemn me and seeking him out for his peaceful acceptance of everything I was, including my sins.

  I tucked the heavy blankets around his shoulders and legs, making sure he couldn’t feel the wind. I was impervious to it, it seemed, but by the way he hunkered down into the folds of the blanket, I could tell the wind whipped into his old bones.

  Straightening, I asked, “Do you believe in life after death, Grandpa?”

  His clear eyes regarded me silently. And then, almost imperceptibly, he nodded.

  I leaned against the porch railing and crossed my arms as I looked out toward the ocean. “I don’t believe in a lot of the stuff you used to preach from the pulpit, but I do believe that there’s life after death.” I turned my head to face him. “After all, I have proof, don’t I?”

  He continued to stare silently, his blue eyes watery, and I thought that it might not have been from the wind. His hands remained still, resting on his Bible.

  “I think Gil knows. You remember that paper I found in your library? Somehow, he found it. He just gave me a drawing of it while I was standing there with Marnie and Quinn.” I couldn’t help but smile. “It was sheer innocence or just plain brilliance on Gil’s part—I haven’t figured out which. Either way, he didn’t inherit either trait from his mother, did he?”

  I slid off the railing and moved to the chair next to my grandfather. I rocked back and forth, the movement jarring instead of comforting. Maybe because it felt too much like being on a boat. I craved a cigarette and started patting my pockets before I remembered that I was with my grandfather. I’ve always found it amusing that no matter how old you get, you’ll always be a little girl to your teachers and the people who raised you.

  “I hated to sail. Did I ever tell you that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Remember how Daddy bought us our first little Sunfish? I hated that damn thing and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. And then Marnie got up on it and was able to coax the wind into the sails and go whipping off into the waves. It was like she was a magician and all she had to do was conjure the wind. It was all so damned effortless for her. When I got up on it, I’d slide off or capsize like an uncoordinated fool. But all I had to do was watch Marnie taming the wind with her hair blowing behind her like some masthead and I’d climb back on, pretending to love it and not to notice all the bruises on my legs.”

  I felt my grandfather tugging at my arm, and I resisted looking at him at first, knowing he would press the Bible into my hands again and make me read from Scripture something about Cain and Abel. He didn’t give up, and eventually I turned to him, surprised to see not the Bible, but his proffered hand.

  I put my hand in his and squeezed and felt his gentle squeeze back. I tilted my face so he couldn’t see my tears, but we sat there for a long time, our hands clasped while we turned away from the ocean and watched the sleeping marsh, instead, all of us, it seemed, waiting for something to happen.

  Gil

  Before Grandpa had his last stroke, when all of a sudden he couldn’t talk or move his hands very well, he used to teach me sailing knots. I was really good at it, and he said it was because I had long fingers like my mama’s, which made it easier to hold a part of the rope while twisting another part at the same time.

  I learned them all: loop knots, hitches, stopper knots, and even some that are just done because they’re fun to look at. Grandpa made me learn them by closing my eyes and using just my fingers while I listened to him give instructions. He said it was a trick he picked up when he was in the Navy: how it’s better when you’re trying to focus on just one thing like hearing or seeing, that you block out everything else. I think that’s why I’m a much better listener now that my mouth has stopped working. I’m learning how to read lips, too, because people always talk slowly to you if they think there’s something wrong with you. So I stare at their lips, waiting for them to finish talking and that’s how I learned.

  I think that not talking has made me think more, too. Mama was tearing apart the house looking for something, and it didn’t take me very long to figure out what it was. Only it didn’t make any sense why that piece of paper was so important to her. And then I remembered hearing Aunt Marnie and Mama talking about the leak in the attic after Hurricane Hugo and getting rid of all the stuff up there, and everything just sort of made sense. It was like in the cartoons when a giant light-bulb goes off over somebody’s head. So I drew a picture that had some of the words from the piece of paper on it and gave it to her. I didn’t give her the piece of paper because it will hurt Aunt Marnie. I knew this because I heard Mama saying that to Grandpa. But I wanted to let her know that I had it and it was safe. I also figured that I’d be having to go with Mama soon to the nursing home to visit her friend.

  I lay in bed that night and closed my eyes, my fingers feeling the scratchiness of the imaginary rope in my hands as I tied a bowline. It has a fixed loop at the end and then a stopper knot when you’re done so that it doesn’t ever slip or come loose. Under, around, through, then up and around and through, tuck in end and pull tight.

  The great thing about bowlines is that besides being strong and stable and easy to tie, they’re also quick and easy to untie. I think about Mama when I’m tying bowlines; she’s strong and capable when she’s
feeling well, but she’s just as easy to come undone. And I’m beginning to think that her ends are frayed, and starting to unravel. I guess that’s why I’d better go with her and Aunt Marnie to see the old lady, because it seems to mean so much to her. And maybe I’ll see her as strong and capable again, and then I can become the son she used to think she didn’t want.

  CHAPTER 20

  In my research I’ve discovered that there are over 28,000 species of orchids. That means that they’re the most genetically changing group of plants on earth and one of the most adaptable. Some Australian orchids grow completely underground, and several jungle orchids grow in trees. But I’m left to wonder if a genetic component in those wandering orchids ever craves the soil of their ancestors and if they might flourish better if they’re ever returned to where they started out.

  —FROM THE GARDENING JOURNAL OF DR. QUINN BRISTOW

  Marnie

  I tapped on Gil’s door. When there was no answer, I thought he might have fallen asleep, so I opened the door just in time to see him sliding a clear plastic box under his bed. He turned around abruptly, his face registering guilt, so I smiled reassuringly at him.

  “It’s okay to have private things, Gil. As long as you’re not doing anything that would hurt somebody, it’s all right to have personal things that you keep private.” I thought back on my training with children who had special needs and amended my statement with “But it’s also okay to share with somebody you trust.”

  He simply sat on the floor with his back to the bed and stared at me blankly.

  I held out my hand to him. “Come on, it’s time to go. We’re going to the nursing home this afternoon, remember?”

  He nodded and allowed me to pull him off the floor. I wasn’t completely sure what had changed his mind, but for Diana’s sake, I was pleased and relieved. I’d still go with them, but this marked a change in their relationship. It was a bittersweet realization for me, as I considered what Gil’s continual progress would mean to my departure date.