by Karen White
I looked back toward the ocean and at the quilt being slowly dragged from the sand into the surf, the colors blurring as it sank farther under the waves. Reds and yellows and blues wept together and my fingers itched to paint the abandoned chair and the drowning quilt. Instead, I pulled out another cigarette, needing the soothing drag of nicotine so that I wouldn’t care so much that I seemed to have lost the ability to paint.
Taking another deep drag, I forced myself toward the meandering path, following it until I reached the house. I spotted Marnie as she rounded the corner, heading toward the front porch, and made to follow her but a hand on my arm stopped me.
“Give them a few minutes.”
I stared into the serious dark blue eyes of my ex and Gil’s father, Quinn. Out of habit, I pulled away. I had acquired an aversion to being touched and he seemed to recognize that because he stepped back and dropped his hand.
“Sorry, Diana. I don’t want you up at the house right now. Gil’s on the porch waiting for Marnie and I want to give them a little time to get acquainted.”
He was on the offensive and I couldn’t say I blamed him. Even I wasn’t sure how I’d react to things anymore. Since the night of Gil’s accident almost two months before, I had somehow lost myself. I had become a spectator of my own life—a life that I barely recognized and one in which I had no idea what would happen next.
Quinn stared warily at me. “Please.”
I nodded, too disjointed to feel either anger or rebellion.
His eyes traveled down to the bandage on my leg. “It’s time to change your bandage again. You’ve been picking at it.”
My eyes strayed down to where he was looking. I put my hand over the bandage, over the evidence of what I had done, and I shook my head. I couldn’t explain that I needed it to remind me and that I could never let it heal. “It’s fine. It’s scabbing up.”
He looked at me again with those eyes I had once fallen in love with and took a step closer. “Just let me see.”
I felt the reassuring snap of anger. “I said it’s fine. I’ll take care of it.” I began to walk away from him. “Don’t worry. I won’t scare Gil with my presence. I’m going up to my studio and won’t be down for dinner.” I was almost running now.
“Diana—wait. Don’t you want to say something to your sister? You haven’t seen her in a long time.”
I stopped but didn’t look back. “We already spoke. Sorry it didn’t turn out to be the reunion you anticipated, Quinn. There are some things even you can’t fix.” I continued walking to the back of the old house, not remembering to breathe until I was safely inside the crowded walls of my art studio.
Marnie
I paused on the front steps for a moment, thinking the front porch empty. I looked up at the ceiling, painted a robin’s egg blue. Our grandfather had told us it was to make the bees and birds think it was sky so that they wouldn’t build their nests there. But our mother always said that it was painted blue to scare away ghosts. I still wasn’t sure who was right.
A small movement caught my attention, and I turned toward the old metal chairs now painted a cobalt blue with schools of brightly colored mythical fish swimming across the backs and seats. They were the old-fashioned spring chairs made to bounce as you sat on them—chairs you didn’t see much anymore but that always reminded me of my childhood by the sea.
In the chair farthest from me sat a young boy, sunk back into his chair as if to blend into the ocean scene painted behind him. He sat watching me with familiar green eyes, his limbs completely still. I stared back, taking in his USC T-shirt and cutoff jean shorts, and his sun-streaked white-blond hair. It needed cutting and lay about his head in tangled waves, the long bangs acting as a barrier between his eyes and the world.
I wanted to step away, to retreat back to my car from this miniature replica of my sister. How could I help this boy? How could I ever learn to see past his mother to the child that lay beneath? As if sensing my thoughts, he bowed his head, like he was asking for forgiveness for something that wasn’t his fault. It was an act of submission and humility that I had never seen from Diana. It reached my heart and shook me from my thoughts, opening my eyes to see the troubled child Quinn had called me all the way from Arizona to come help.
Slowly I approached, afraid that any sudden movement on my part would make him bolt. I knelt in front of him, my knees cracking, and touched his arm. “Gil? I’m your aunt Marnie. I’ve come for a visit.”
He looked up at me, those eyes meeting mine again, and simply stared back at me.
“I’ve come to spend time with you so we can get to know each other. You’ve been my nephew for nine years and we’ve never met. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
He continued to look at me, and I could see the comprehension in his eyes. I stared back, willing him to speak while trying to remember what his father had told me on the phone. He won’t speak. It’s not that he can’t—he’s been doing that since he was a year old. But he won’t now. Ever since the boating accident with Diana, he hasn’t said a word. Neither one of them will speak of it.
I stood, moving away to sit on the chair next to him, feeling as if he wanted the extra space between us. I was his mother’s sister, after all. “I teach art to kids about your age in Arizona. Did you know that?” I didn’t mention that I taught special-needs children, nor did I expect him to answer. “I thought maybe we could use the rest of the summer to paint together. We could take trips to the marsh and paint the dock and any birds or wildlife we see.” But not the ocean. I will never paint the ocean.
I pointed to the giant live oak on the front lawn. “That tree was the first thing I ever painted. I think I was about six, and the picture resembled a mad brown cow wearing a fancy green hat.” But your mother’s painting of the same tree made me weep for its beauty. I faced him again. “Not exactly the look I was going for.” I slid a sideways glance at him and saw a lip twitch. “You can have a go at it, too. Then maybe we could paint the house, or your dad, or the tire swing, or your nose, or your toes, or maybe even your belly button….” I let my voice trail away as I slid another glance his way and was rewarded with a full smile. I faced him and smiled, and for a moment, his smile matched mine.
“I see you’re already becoming friends.”
Gil’s smile faded as I turned around to find the owner of the voice. The man was tall and lean with sandy blond hair, sun-streaked like Gil’s.
He continued, perched on the top step as if waiting for an invitation to move forward. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you arrived. I was in the greenhouse and didn’t see your car until just a few minutes ago. I figured you’d want to say hi to Gil first.”
I stood and approached him with an outstretched hand. “You must be Quinn, then. It’s nice to finally meet you.”
The hand he slid into mine was strong and firm, his palm and fingers hardened with old calluses. A sailor’s hand. I pulled my hand away a little too quickly. His eyes flickered slightly, and I thought I could see him looking for any similarity I had with Diana, and not just physically. After a short pause, he said, “Thank you for coming.”
I looked back at Gil, who had pulled his legs up in the chair with him, hugging his knees with his arms, and I realized with a start it was the same position I’d seen his mother in when I’d first spotted her down by the beach. “I’ve enjoyed chatting with Gil.” I grimaced, knowing how inaccurate the word “chatting” was.
Quinn took my elbow, steering me toward the door. “I’ve made clam chowder. I’m sure you’re hungry after your long trip. Why don’t we all go inside and eat and you can tell us about Arizona?”
Gil slid from the chair, lizardlike—stealthy and quiet so as to escape notice as he slipped through the front door. As if he were afraid of being caught.
As the screen door banged shut, Quinn called after Gil, “Go wash up. Then please tell Joanna to bring Grandpa to the table.”
I paused outside the door. “How is Grandpa?” I hadn’t see
n my mother’s father since I’d left, but I’d dutifully spoken to him on the phone every Saturday for five years until he’d had the stroke that had robbed him of his speech. I’d sent a dwindling number of letters in the years since, the only responses being from Joanna, his nurse, who kept me apprised of his condition, which never seemed to change. He was an old man, confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak, and I knew it was only his legendary stubbornness that made him cling to a life that no longer wanted anything to do with him. After all, he was a Maitland.
Quinn held the door open for me. “Still the same. He and Gil spend a lot of time together. I think they find some sort of comfort in each other’s presence.”
I looked at him in surprise, wondering how two people who couldn’t speak could forge any kind of a relationship. “Grandpa never had much interest in children. Couldn’t stand all the noise Diana and I made.”
Again, I grimaced at my faux pas, but Quinn squeezed my elbow. “No, it’s not that. There’s some kind of bond between them. And I encourage it. Gil doesn’t want to be anywhere near his mother, and he’s begun to avoid me, probably just because of my association with her. I’d rather he be sitting with Grandpa than wandering the beach by himself. Diana had been looking into putting Grandpa in a home about a year ago, but seems to have dropped that idea. She doesn’t talk to me, so I don’t know why. I think he’s better off here, anyway.”
I nodded and preceded him through the screen door and into the house of my childhood. It hadn’t changed much; it still smelled of old wood and lemon furniture polish. And always, always the cloying smell of salt water.
The chintzes and rugs were comfortably worn and faded, but were hardly noticeable for the vivid artwork on the walls. As I glanced into the dining room across the foyer, I saw row upon row of gilt-framed watercolors, depicting everything from ocean scenes to renderings of the house and the metal chairs on the front. There were several of a towheaded baby and growing boy that I recognized as Gil, and even a few of a younger Quinn perched on a sailboat, facing toward the sea.
As if sensing that I wanted a few minutes alone, Quinn excused himself, saying he’d take the luggage from my car and bring it up to my old bedroom. I could find my grandpa in his room. I nodded, then continued to study the paintings, marveling as I always had at my sister’s talent. Despite my own yearnings in the same direction, it had been a long time since I thought to be jealous of it. Being second-best in our mother’s affections had used up my entire well of jealousy.
I was the queen of technique and art history. I could teach art to anybody and coach talent from the youngest of students to the elderly in the classes I gave at a local nursing home. But I could never coach the liquid beauty of color and form from my own paintbrush; that talent had been given to the golden-haired Diana, who resembled our mother in so many ways.
I crossed the foyer and walked into the formal front parlor and stopped. There was no artwork in this room. Instead the walls were decorated with rectangular patches of darkened paint. I paused before the old familiar sofa, staring at the large, empty rectangle on the wall behind it, wondering about the painting that had hung there.
I heard the sound of wheels rolling on wooden floors, and I turned back to the hallway that bisected the house, connecting the front formal rooms to the kitchen and family rooms in the back. A heavyset woman wearing white nurse’s shoes stood behind a wheelchair carrying an old man whose thin face was dominated by thick glasses. In his lap lay a well-worn Bible and a TV Guide, both bearing marks of a fluid yellow highlighter. I wanted to laugh, remembering this idiosyncrasy that he seemed to have passed on so well to me. I still cannot pick up something to read without a highlighter in my hand.
A guttural sound erupted from his throat and I moved forward. Squatting, I took his blue-veined hands in mine. They trembled slightly as I registered a slight squeeze. He made that sound in his throat again and I looked up at Joanna. “Is he all right?”
“He’s having a good day. He’s spent most of it at his window, waiting for you.”
Grandpa jerked his hands and grunted again and I knew that he was trying to tell me something.
I held his hands tighter and stood to kiss his cheek, the unshaven and familiar bristles scratching my chin as I kissed him. “I’m home, Grandpa. I’ve come home.”
I felt his hands relax in mine, and when I looked into his eyes again, before he turned his head away from me, I was sure that I saw tears.
CHAPTER 3
Ocean into tempest wrought,
To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
—EDWARD YOUNG
Quinn
I’ve lived by the ocean all of my life. But the cold waters off New England did nothing to prepare me for the yellow-green vibrancy of the Lowcountry marsh, or the heaviness of the air that could only be escaped out on the water, clipping the waves on a sailboat.
Almost reluctantly, I fell in love with this place. I’m not sure if it was only because anywhere other than where I’d come from seemed a likely refuge, and this was the first place I’d stopped. I remember driving down Highway 10 and pulling off to the side of the marsh. The tall sawgrass undulated in the wind, like a heavy sigh from a tired earth and I knew then that I had found a place to lick my wounds and build a life.
I was easily transplanted. I had a thriving veterinary practice and a new wife all in the course of a year. I should have known better than to call myself a success before giving it more time. Raising orchids has taught me this: A plant’s inability to adapt to a new climate will not always be immediately apparent. You’ll try a new soil and snip off dead parts from the leaves, maybe try fertilizer. But one day you’re going to walk in and find your beautiful orchid slumped over and hugging the earth whence it came.
I met Diana through one of her paintings. I’d been attempting to decorate my new house with limited funds and had walked into an antiques store in McClellanville on a hot summer afternoon. I’d seen the painting hung behind the cash register and knew that if that was the only thing I could afford in my house, I had to have it. I haggled with the storeowner for almost an hour before I could be persuaded to understand that it wasn’t for sale. The artist, Diana Maitland, had lent it to the store for safekeeping. She could no longer stand to look at it, but had not wanted to sell it, either.
About a week later, after me making daily offers to buy it, Diana herself showed up on my doorstep with the painting and never went home. She still claims that I fell in love with the subject of the painting before I fell in love with her. Even now, knowing what I know, I can’t really say if she was wrong.
From the stories Diana told me of her childhood, I expected Marnie to be more like her sister. When I saw Marnie on the front porch with Gil, I wasn’t at all sure that the woman standing in front of me could really be related to my ex-wife. This woman was calm and cool, her hair dark and neatly held back in a smooth bun. Her voice as she spoke to Gil was soft and reassuring. But when she faced me for the first time and I saw her eyes—hazel, not green like Diana’s—I knew without a doubt that she was a Maitland. There is something about their eyes that rivets you: a mix of light covering shadow so that you never really know what you’re looking at. It made me think of my orchids again, of how two completely disparate hybrids look completely different, but when you put them each under a microscope, you see the characteristics that brand them as being from the same genus and species.
I sat at the head of the table, with Marnie on my right and Gil on my left, the seat next to me empty as usual. Grandpa sat at the foot of the table, with Joanna next to him, slowly feeding him. I passed the corn bread, expecting a neutral conversation about the dry climate of Arizona.
“Does Diana not eat with you?” Marnie looked steadily at me.
I paused with the breadbasket suspended in midair. Slowly, I put it next to Gil’s plate, knowing he’d never take a piece as long as I held on to it. “Not usually. She hates to interrupt her painting and she’s rarely hungr
y. Diana really only leaves the house once a week to run a few errands and visit a nursing home. She’s found a friend there, apparently—an elderly woman who’s also an artist.”
Marnie nodded and pinched off a piece of her bread, small delicate movements that were at odds with what little I knew about her from Diana. She primly dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. She looked at Gil, as if measuring what she could say in his hearing.
“When does she spend time with Gil?” She flushed slightly. “What I meant was that I need to come up with some sort of schedule for Gil and I don’t want to interfere with her time with her son.”
“I don’t anticipate that as a problem. Go ahead and make up a schedule, and I’ll make sure Diana is aware of it.”
She was still for a moment, her eyes on her plate. Finally, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “I’ll work on it tonight.”
Gil studied his aunt as she ate small, precise spoonfuls of soup. He sat halfway in his chair, one foot on the floor, as if he were ready to bolt. I put my spoon down, my appetite gone. When had my son become this quiet, fearful boy? He’d sailed through the divorce without any problems, and I made sure I still spent as much time with him as I had before. It was only in the last year that Diana had made it difficult for me to see him, with weeks in between my visits. I thought it a good sign that Diana had taken such an interest in spending time with him. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realized how very wrong I’d been.
I leaned toward him. “Gil, your aunt Marnie comes from a place where there are tarantulas and scorpions just like we have seagulls and crabs.”
Gil’s eyes lit up.
Marnie smiled. “Well, I don’t know how accurate that is, but I will say I’ve seen more large, hairy spiders and stinging insects in the last ten years than I ever thought possible.”
