The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  “I’m here to see Meredith Maitland.”

  “Oh, yes. I thought I recognized you. Your sister is already here. She’s in room seventy-nine, but I suppose you already know that.”

  “Yes,” I said, my lips numb. I’ve been so close. This whole time, I’ve been so close and never knew it.

  My joints felt stiff and heavy as I went down the hallway, reading the numbers on the other doors like a condemned man counts down the minutes to his execution. My eyes barely registered the burnt orange carpeting and green doors, wondering what kind of punishment it must be for an artist to be confined in a place devoid of any grace or beauty.

  My fist paused in midair in front of the door to room seventy-nine, poised to strike. Gathering my courage, I allowed it to come down in three hard rasps.

  There was a short pause, and then Diana’s voice said, “Come in.”

  Slowly I turned the knob and pushed open the door before stepping into a narrow foyer. At first glance, it looked like a regular apartment: the small galley kitchen to my left, the plain white paint on the walls, the heavy-duty neutral carpet on the floors. There were hotel-quality couches and lamps placed in a sitting area that faced me as I entered, but when I turned toward what must have been the bedroom door, all semblance of a hotel ended.

  I followed Diana’s voice, like a fireman scenting smoke, passing a Formica dining table with an opened box of Twinkies sitting on top, and entered a small bedroom. In here, attempts had been made to make it feel more apartmentlike, but the hospital bed and the emergency button on the wall next to the metal walker signaled that the person who lived here was elderly and most likely infirm.

  The bed was empty, and I pivoted toward the sound of Diana’s voice in the corner of the room, where two fake leather club chairs had been placed in an effort to appear homey, but succeeded only in reminding its occupant that she was far from home.

  Diana stood, but the old lady sitting in the other chair with a cane resting on the stuffed arm remained seated. I felt her eyes on me—eyes that I knew were just like Diana’s—but I couldn’t look at her yet. Instead, my attention was drawn to the only artwork on the stark white walls: two watercolors, each showing a blue heron in a different pose, in matching frames with my signature in the corner of each one.

  “Did Quinn find Gil yet?”

  I squinted in concentration, wondering how Diana could ask such a normal question, given the circumstances.

  I touched my purse, realizing that I didn’t have my phone. “No,” I answered. “Quinn said he’d call me when Gil showed up, but I left my phone in the car.”

  She nodded, then took a deep breath, squaring her shoulders in the old familiar way she had when she needed to appear smug and confident but she really felt neither. “Sorry to have left without saying anything, but I knew that Quinn wouldn’t let me go, and it was urgent that I get here. I finished my mural and your portrait, although you probably already know that since you’re here.”

  I reached into my purse and pulled out the admittance form and Gil’s picture, and showed them to her. “I found these in Gil’s room.”

  Her pale eyebrows arched in surprise. “Oh. Oh,” she said again as if something new had occurred to her. She stared down at the form. “I’ve been looking for this.”

  “Yes, I imagine you have.” Finally, I turned to the old woman sitting in the other chair. Her hair was held back in a long braid, as thick as when I’d last seen it, yet now completely white. Her hands, resting in her lap, were fisted into tight balls with large, round, arthritic knuckles, the once beautiful fingers now useless. She regarded me silently, her green eyes cloudy but alert, watching me intently. I love you, she had said. I remembered now. When she had let me go on that night in the water, she had said that to me.

  “Mama?” I said, wanting to touch her, but stopped by the look in her eyes. I suppose there’s something in all of us that makes us want our mothers during the difficult times in our lives, regardless of how well one was mothered in the first place.

  “Sit down, Marnie.” Diana indicated her vacated chair.

  Gratefully I sat, not taking my eyes off my mother’s face. Her skin was pale, her eyebrows almost nonexistent in the thick lines and wrinkles that spoke of her years in the sun and on the water. “What happened? You…drowned.”

  My mother blinked twice, her eyes bright, then glanced away.

  I forced myself to look at my sister. “How long have you known?”

  Diana sat back against the bed. “Since about a year and a half ago. I was going through Grandpa’s desk, looking for an insurance policy he had that would cover him if we decided to put him in an assisted living facility, and I found a copy of Mama’s admission form.”

  I tried to sort through the questions racing through my head. A year and a half ago would have been when Quinn said she’d gone off her medication and had her most recent bipolar episode. “But how did Mama get here?” I put my hands on my head, as if that would still my thoughts. “Oh, my God, Diana. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Diana faced our mother as she answered me. “Because then I’d have to tell you what happened the night we thought our mother drowned. And why I’ve hated you ever since.” The old woman flinched under Diana’s scrutiny. “I was supposed to die that night, you see. Mama had it all planned so that I would die. And then you had to get yourself knocked into the water.”

  “What? What are you talking about?” And then I remembered the life jackets and the painting in Diana’s study, and I suddenly felt sick.

  “Diana, no. Please don’t.” My mother’s voice was the same, still. But it lacked the power she had once used to command our obedience.

  Diana turned on her. “Don’t what? Tell her that you made a choice that night—a choice about which daughter should live and which one should die?”

  “Stop it!” I stood. “Stop it, Diana. Why are you doing this? She’s an old woman. Why would you be doing this?”

  Diana went very still. “Because I thought you wanted to know the truth. The truth I’ve been hiding from you all these years. The truth that she chose you that night because you were the untainted one. She knew, even back then, that I was blemished with the Maitland curse, and that we would all be better off if it ended with me.” She was shaking, her eyes wild.

  “That can’t be. You were her golden child—the gifted, beautiful one who looked just like her. She never had any time for me.”

  Diana jerked herself off the bed and barked out a hysterical laugh. I took a step backward, my legs pressed against the chair. “Do you know why you aren’t a good artist, Marnie? Because you aren’t very observant. You miss all the details, including the most important ones. Like how Mama could barely tolerate my presence because I was so much like her—in the bad ways as well as the good. And you,” she said as she pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead, “you were everything I wasn’t.”

  My mother sat in her chair, shaking her head from side to side. “No, no, no, no.”

  I moved to kneel in front of her and placed my hands over her ruined fingers. “It’s all right, Mama. Diana’s confused….”

  Diana moved to stand behind me. “Tell her, Mama. Tell her the truth. And then maybe she’ll understand why I couldn’t stand the sight of her after the accident. Because I had been forced to learn what it was like to lose the thing that mattered the most to me—my mother’s love—and to know that it had never been mine to begin with.” She stepped to my side so I could see her face, pinched and wounded with the years of secrets. “It had always belonged to you, Marnie. To the sister who I always thought was the other half of my soul, the sister who betrayed me without even knowing it.”

  The sun from the window behind her caught the side of her face, and she seemed old all of a sudden, the unforgiving light highlighting the fine lines and wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, marking her resemblance to the old woman in the chair. “Tell her, Mama,” she said again, her voice hard. “Maybe if she hears
it from you, she’ll believe it.”

  At first, I didn’t think Mama had heard her. She sat so still, with her head bowed. But when she raised her head, she looked at me with dry eyes, and for a moment, I thought I recognized the woman who had been my mother for such a short time, and who, despite everything, was still the woman who had given birth to me and who had framed my amateurish paintings and hung them on her wall. I love you, she had said.

  “Tell me,” I said, squeezing her hands. “Tell me what really happened.”

  She looked down at our clasped hands and nodded. Then she began to speak in a near monotone as if she had long since rehearsed the words she would say to me and had bled the emotion from them to make them easier to hear.

  “I wasn’t well. I never really had been. Your grandfather would have me committed, but they would drug me up so badly that I couldn’t paint, so I’d find a way to get out. But I couldn’t get well, and I learned to seek the uneasy times, because that’s when I would do my best work. It didn’t matter to me during those times that I was a mother with two daughters who needed me. This disease does that to a person—makes them unable to see any logical reason in anything.”

  Diana left for a moment and returned with a glass of water. Mama took it without looking at her.

  “The night of the storm, I’d gone off my medication, because I decided it was time to feel real life again. I knew there was a storm coming, but I didn’t care. And I can’t even say that any of it wasn’t planned. A few weeks before, I’d taken the life jackets out of the boat and thrown them into the car. You two drove around with those life jackets and never said a thing. Probably because you were scared of me, but there you have it. I went to the marina that morning and put them in a Dumpster. I was looking for a grand adventure. And maybe”—she took a sip of her water—“and maybe to show you girls a little bit of my life—how I lived it every day without the safety net of a life jacket. But Diana already knew that, of course. I’d already started to see the first signs in her that she had inherited this sickness from me. If she didn’t already know what it was like living without safety nets, she soon would.”

  My knees ached and I sat back on the floor, hearing the steady rhythm of my heart as I focused on my breathing.

  “I don’t know when I decided what was going to happen that night. In my mind, looking back, everything took on a logical progression. I think it began when the mast broke, and we no longer had control of the boat. It was like a sign to me, the broken mast symbolized my entire life—I’d been set adrift in life without the tools to steer my boat.”

  She took another sip of water and paused for a long moment. “And then I looked over at Marnie, so competent and levelheaded. I think I knew then that if I left Marnie alone on the boat, she’d be safe. All I needed to do was to get Diana in the water and then follow her. Diana was always so thin—she didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds—and I didn’t have too hard of a time knocking her overboard. But before I could jump in after her, I saw the boom swing across the boat and slam into you, knocking you overboard.”

  She closed her eyes, but they remained as dry and emotionless as her voice. “I knew then that you’d seen me and Diana, and that you weren’t paying attention because you were looking for Diana in the water. I was so angry with you, that you couldn’t see that I was trying, for once, to make everything better for you.”

  I fell back, scrambling across the carpet to get as far away from her as I could. “No, Mama. Please stop. I don’t want to hear any more.” My tears tasted salty on my tongue, reminding me again of the water and of that night.

  Diana kept her gaze on our mother. “Keep going. You haven’t gotten to the best part yet.”

  I put my hands over my ears, but it wasn’t enough to block out the strange monotone of my mother’s voice.

  “I picked up a seat cushion from the boat and threw it to you, but you didn’t see it. I jumped in and swam to you so that I could lead you to it. I held you in my arms for what I knew would be the last time, and then I pushed you away from me and toward the seat cushion. There were straps on the bottom of it so that you could stick your hands in and use it to float.”

  I remembered again my mother’s hands slowly pushing me away. But this time I remembered, too, the bright orange seat cushion bobbing toward me in the storm-tossed ocean. I picked up a seat cushion from the boat and threw it to you, but you didn’t see it. “Oh, God,” I sobbed and covered my face with my hands.

  “And then I spotted another cushion that must have fallen in the water because the boat was heeling sharply now. Diana was swimming toward it and I had to stop her. I was a strong swimmer—much better than Diana—and I reached her before she could get to the cushion. She struggled with me, but I held her back. Except this time she must have known that she was fighting for her life, because she didn’t give up. The waves were so high and the wind so strong that it was hard to hold on to her and to keep her head underwater.”

  I stole a glance at Diana. She was trembling, her face ashen, and I wondered if that was how she’d been when she’d first heard our mother’s story. I thought of all the years that marked the distance between us, the events of that long-ago night filling them in ways that I had never understood.

  My mother paused and her eyes were far away, as if she were not just seeing the night sixteen years before, but was actually there. I thought that if I turned my head, I’d see the wrecked boat and feel the lash of the water against my face. I shut my eyes and listened again as my mother resumed her tale.

  “I remember thinking that what I was doing was wrong, that this was my child, and that I should love her, even though she was flawed.” Her eyes flickered and then settled on Diana. “But this disease—the real curse of this family—it robs you of everything. Even the ability to think clearly when your own children are in danger. Or to remember that you were responsible for getting them there in the first place.”

  She drained the glass of water before continuing. “Somehow, Diana released her arms and swung back and hit me in the head with her elbow, making me let go of her. I was exhausted from struggling with her in the water, and I didn’t have the strength to go after her. So I lay back in the water and began to think of dying.

  “But then something hit me in the shoulder—I think it was a door hatch or something that had broken off of the boat—and I knew it was a sign to me. A sign that I was supposed to live. You see, no matter how much faith I put in the Maitland curse, I was the daughter of a preacher. And all those years of his fire-and-brimstone sermons had been drummed into me so that they were as much a part of me as breathing. I figured I was meant to survive, regardless of what happened to my children, so that I could suffer for my sins.”

  She looked down at her gnarled hands, at the fingers that had once belonged to an artist who could hold a brush and create brushstrokes of beauty. And I wondered if she considered them now as part of her atonement. A drop of moisture fell from her face and onto a swollen knuckle, bathing it in salt water, as if it were a reminder of her sin.

  I cleared my throat. “What happened to you next? How did you end up here?”

  She shrugged, but continued to look down at her hands. “I don’t know how long I drifted out to sea, pushed at the whim of the storm so that I had no idea which way was land. Around dawn, I was spotted by a Florida fishing boat. They took me to a hospital, where I faked amnesia and then escaped, taking my roommate’s clothes with me so I’d have something to wear. When my body wasn’t found, your grandfather hired a private detective, and I guess it wasn’t too hard to find me. I’d been living in an artists’ colony in the panhandle and using my real name. I suppose I wanted to be found.”

  Slowly she looked up, her gaze meeting mine. “He had me institutionalized, knowing that if he called the authorities they might take you and your sister away. And then about ten years ago, he moved me here so that I could have a little more freedom while still receiving medical care. But in return I had to pro
mise never to contact either one of you.”

  Diana sank back down on the bed, her teeth chattering. “Until I found a copy of the admission form in Grandpa’s desk.”

  I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, hoping to stop myself from crying. This woman didn’t deserve my tears. “That night, when you hugged me and then pushed me away, I didn’t know that you were pushing me toward something. I’ve always thought that it was pure luck that I found something to float on. But I thought you’d pushed me away so that you could go save Diana.”

  A thought washed over the back of my brain, a stray thought that tapped at my memory, pressing me to bring it forward. And then I remembered what it was. I looked back at my mother. “You said something to me. Before you pushed me away, you said something to me. I’ve never been able to recall what it was until today. Do you remember what it was?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I said ‘I love you,’ because I did and because I still do. I know it’s hard to believe after all you’ve been through because of me, but it’s true. I was never a good mother, but I did love you. Both of you.”

  I forced myself to stand and began walking in circles around the small room, seeing the starkness of it and wondering again if this was part of my mother’s penance.

  I turned on Diana. “Why didn’t you tell me? All of these years I thought you hated me for something I’d done. That our mother had tried to hurt us both by taking us out in the boat that night and that you blamed me. If you’d just told me…” I shook my head as if to clear it and make this room and everything I’d just heard go away.

  “Oh, Marnie, don’t you see? She chose you. You. How could I not hate you for that? Our own mother chose you to live and me to die. I couldn’t live with that. In my stupid, jealous way, I thought it would be easier to have you believe that it was your fault than live with the truth.”

  I stared at her, seeing her with my old eyes, and understanding her more than I wanted to. “So why now? Why have you decided that it’s time to let me know the truth?”