The Memory of Water

by Karen White

  Quinn’s boat was lost, and I can’t help but think that maybe it was for the best. Quinn and I discussed it with Gil and decided that maybe later in the summer, when we’d all given ourselves more time to heal, we would pick out a new boat together. We haven’t decided yet, but I think we will christen her Diana.

  I haven’t been back yet to see my mother. There’s still so much forgiveness I’m not prepared to give. But it will come. I suppose that’s part of the healing. I know it will come because I have Quinn and Gil with me now, and with them I can do anything. Quinn pushes me in the right direction, just as I push him toward a reconciliation with his own parents, and one day it will happen. But not today.

  They’ve never recovered Diana’s body. I try not to think of that when I picture my beautiful sister as I knew her, with her golden hair and bright green eyes, who could coax little miracles out of oil paint and canvas. She is the mother of the boy I love like my own son, and I see her whenever I look in his face. We’re planning a memorial service for her up on the hill by the orange tree she once planted with Gil so that he might always remember her. I wonder if, even then, she knew. I try not to think of why she wasn’t wearing her life jacket when she jumped in the water to try to save Gil. I’d handed her one when we’d boarded Trey’s boat, and it never occurred to me to notice whether she’d put it on.

  I feel her with me still, my sister. My ghost. She is there next to me, and sometimes I think if I just turn my head quickly enough, I can see her, with her beautiful blond hair dancing behind her in the wind, her elegant fingers gripping a paintbrush while a secret smile haunts her lips. I miss her. I suppose I always will.

  We went to the McClellanville Shrimp Festival and Blessing of the Fleet yesterday. It’s always warm in May, but there was just enough of a breeze to make it comfortable. Quinn pushed Grandpa’s wheelchair, while I walked beside my grandfather, holding his hand and supervising Gil with his new black-and-white puppy, U-dog. Only a select few know the origins of the name, but it always brings a smile to Gil’s face whenever somebody asks. I didn’t really care what he called the dog; I loved hearing Gil’s voice too much for it to matter.

  Trawlers festooned with colorful flags and pennants slowly paraded down Jeremy Creek to receive the prayers of the local clergy. A man wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes led the procession of three local clergymen, and silence settled as they gave their blessings to the fishermen for a safe and bountiful season. And then the mournful wail of the bagpipe lilted over the crowds of people and the flag-bedecked shrimp boats as the floral wreaths were dropped into the water as a memorial to those souls lost at sea.

  I tried to hide my tears from Gil, but he slid his hand into mine and pressed it hard while he blinked back his own. He’s older now. How odd to see the maturity of a young man’s face on the body of a child, but he is still our Gil. He’s returned to painting, and he wants to sail again. I love him for that. His courage is his Maitland legacy, along with his ability to re-create the world with paints and pencils, and his inherent knowledge of how to trick the wind into moving his boat. And that is all.

  A young blond-haired girl named Laura Gray came up to Gil and asked him about his puppy. Quinn and I let the two of them run off to one of the tents selling ice cream, more happy than either one of us could express that the young man inside him could still be the boy he was meant to be.

  My grandfather seems older now, too. Quinn plays chess with him, and I sit and talk with him, but there are no recriminations from me. I don’t know if I would have done things any differently, and for his constant love for both myself and Diana, I will always be grateful. Gil is his joy, and the two of them sit for hours on the porch, witnessing the encroaching summer together and the changes it brings to the marsh, both of them understanding more than most the eternal circle of life.

  As we were getting ready to leave the festival, Tally Deushane ran up to me to let me know she’d picked her top three colleges to apply to. And then she told me that she was writing a story for the Archibald Rutledge Academy’s Pirate Press on past graduates, and she’d come across my senior yearbook, where I’d been voted least likely to leave the Lowcountry. She was looking for a quote she could put in the paper.

  “What made you come back?” she asked.

  I looked out at the boats docked along Jeremy Creek, where the water was fed by the vast Atlantic Ocean, the same waters that nourished my beloved marsh, and I thought for a long moment. I almost told her what Diana had once said to me, that surrounding myself with a lot of desert was like sitting in quicksand, that sooner or later the water would find me and suck me under. Instead, I turned to Tally’s young, eager face and said simply, “I missed the water.”

  She’d smiled and thanked me before leaving, and I had looked at Quinn, sensing his question.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m home to stay.”

  He kissed me then, and I felt the blood run in and out of my veins, nourishing my heart and my soul, like the ocean’s tides flooding the marsh with life-giving sustenance, then bringing it home again.

  Photo by Picture Perfect Photography

  Karen White is the author of seven previous books. She lives with her family near Atlanta, Georgia. Visit her Web site at www.karen-white.com.

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  This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

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  CONVERSATION GUIDE

  A CONVERSATION WITH KAREN WHITE

  Q. Sailing and boats play a prominent role in this novel. Do you sail?

  A. Until I wrote this book, I had never been on a sailboat before, but I’d always admired sailboats and sailors from afar whenever I’d see them out on the water. To research this book I had to do a lot of reading and ended up taking a few sailing lessons on a local lake. While doing my research, I discovered that the more I learned, the more I realized that I didn’t know! Sailing is certainly an art form and something that would take years in which to develop a proficiency. Maybe when I retire!

  Q. The relationship between Marnie and Diana is very complex. How would you explain the complexities of the relationship between sisters? Do you have sisters of your own?

  A. I grew up with three brothers and my endless wish was always for a sister. I suppose that’s why I’ve always been fascinated by the subject of the relationship between sisters and why I always seem to write about them.

  Now that I have children of my own (a daughter and a son), I am similarly fascinated with the relationship between siblings and the power of sibling rivalry. Although I could never imagine having a “favorite child,” I wanted to explore this concept in a book, and take it to its farthest degree (a mother who seemingly pits the sisters against each other) and watch the fallout by how my characters—in this case two sisters who considered each other an ally in an otherwise dysfunctional family—reacted.

  Q. Gil is a fascinating boy. Who or what was your inspiration for his character?

  A. I love young children, finding their forthrightness and honesty both disarming and charming, which makes them ideal characters to place in a book. I have found in my own experience that children usually say it like it is and see the adults around them with a clarity unmuddled by social mores or prejudices. This makes them sort of the microscope characters in my books; through their eyes the readers see the other characters as they really are.

  Q. In this novel, your character Diana is suffering from a mental illness. What interested you about this illness in particular? What kind of research did you do?

  A. Before I wrote this book, I read an article in a magazine about two sisters who grew up with a mother who had bipolar disorder. It was a story that was both heartbreaking and inspiring as I read about how the sisters clung together as a defensive device against their mother’s abuse and neglect. When I decided to write The Memory of Water, I coul
dn’t find the article, but the crux of the story stuck with me enough that I was able to borrow the emotions I had when reading the article and use them in my book.

  Luckily, there are lots of articles and books out there on the subject of bipolar disorder—including my textbook with case studies from my college course in abnormal psychology. As I found while researching how to sail, that it would take years to get a firm hold on my subject, it was apparent that the complexities of this disease could never be fully fleshed out in a single novel. However, I hope to at least convey part of the emotional cost of living with a loved family member afflicted with the disease.

  Q. This book is written differently from your previous novels in that the perspective is continuously rotating between the characters. What made you decide to write this way? Did you find it difficult to keep track of their individual voices?

  A. I don’t think I consciously set out to write the book in any particular way. When I started I had four very distinct character voices in my head, and each one came to me in first person as if they were all vying to be heard. I realized that each one had an important role to play in the book, and then I had to sit down and figure out the best way to do them all justice.

  By using the different viewpoints, all told in first person, I was better able to get inside the characters’ heads—especially Gil’s, who is mute throughout the book. Using a rotating first-person viewpoint allowed me to literally “change hats” for each character—much like an actor does, I suppose—and become a different person as I wrote each scene. Not that writing is ever easy, but I found this to be a very useful tool in keeping each character separate in my mind.

  Q. Diana’s paintings also play a central role in this novel. Do you have a personal interest in painting?

  A. As with sailing, the ability to paint has been something I’ve always admired from afar but am hopelessly inadequate at when it comes to creating anything recognizable on canvas.

  However, as an artist in a different medium, I identify with other artists—singers, musicians, painters, even sailors—understanding what it means to find that part inside of yourself that needs to be expressed and then being blessed enough to be able to express it in a public way. In the book, Quinn refers to this when he says that when watching Marnie sail, she has found the thing that makes her soul sing. That is the thing that I believe all artists search for and what binds us all together.

  Q. What message would you like readers to take away from this story?

  A. My books are always about families muddling through difficult lives and finding their way—much, I would think, like us real people do.

  I hope at the end of The Memory of Water, my readers will close the book feeling uplifted and hopeful that even the toughest obstacles can be overcome by forgiveness and by a family’s unconditional love.

  Q. Water is a recurring theme in many of your novels. What does water mean to you? How is it important in your life?

  A. To my great disappointment, I have never lived (yet!) near a large body of water. Not even a creek has ever graced my backyard. But from my first glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico while visiting my grandmother’s house in the Florida panhandle when I was a small child, I have felt an affinity for the water. There is something restful, beautiful, and eternal about the ocean and other large bodies of water—even something a little bit frightening about the unseen depths. But whatever it is, it pulls at me. The coast of the South Carolina Lowcountry especially draws me; it might be the smell of the pluff mud or the ethereal beauty of the old cedars and live oaks. I sometimes think it’s because the landscape of the ocean hasn’t really changed all that much through the centuries. Perhaps I, being a history lover, find staring at the ocean a bit like traveling through time, seeing the exact same thing as someone standing in the same place saw hundreds of years ago when the world was a much different place, and so many stories were yet to be told.

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  CONVERSATION GUIDE

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Water is a central theme in this novel and has a different significance for each of the characters. To whom is water important and why?

  2. Painting is Diana’s passion. After that night on the boat with her son, she is unable to paint again until her sister returns. What is the significance of this?

  3. Quinn feels that helping to restore the boat will help Gil to heal. Why is this?

  4. Marnie and Diana feel equal amounts of love and resentment toward each other. Why is this and how are they able to mend their relationship?

  5. What is the significance of the time line that Diana has painted in her studio? How is this a reflection of her mental health?

  6. It is mentioned several times throughout the story that Marnie and Gil are very much alike. How so? How are they different?

  7. How is Diana’s painting related to her mental illness? How does it reflect her relationship with her sister?

  8. Gil has refused to speak since the incident on the boat with his mother. What is his reasoning for this, and why does he finally decide to speak?

  9. Their mother plays an important role throughout the book that we learn about through Marnie’s and Diana’s memories. How is she significant to whom Marnie has become? How so for Diana?

  10. Quinn and Marnie gradually develop a relationship as the book develops. How is Diana’s painting related to this?

  11. What is the significance of Diana naming the boat the Highfalutin?

  12. What role does the orange tree play in the relationship between Diana and Gil?

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