by Karen White
I sat up quickly. “Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. Still not speaking, but he’s doing fine. He seems a lot calmer, a lot less anxious. I think Marnie’s been a good influence on him.”
“I suppose she would be. Sort of like the way bland foods settle your stomach.”
He sent me a warning look but didn’t say anything, and I wondered if he were giving me a reprieve because of what he had to say next.
Without trying to sound nervous, I asked, “So what’s up with Gil?”
I watched Quinn clasp, then unclasp his hands. “I’m taking him back out on the water.”
My wounded leg began to throb without mercy, and the pain shot up through my body like a ragged bullet, pounding in my head and flooding my lungs so that I could barely breathe. “You…can’t,” I managed to gasp out.
“I know this is difficult to understand—even more difficult than it is to explain. But I know in my gut that he needs to get back on the water to heal. I’m afraid…” He swallowed but his gaze never faltered. “I’m afraid that if we don’t make him face this now, we’ll never get him back.”
I pressed the palm of my hand against my racing heartbeat. “You can’t do this. I won’t allow it.”
He stood, his face darkening. “Yes, I can and I will. Remember—since the accident Gil is legally mine. You have no say whatsoever. I’m only here because I figured I owed it to you because you’re his mother.”
I stood, too. “You’re damned straight I am. And as his mother, I’m begging you not to do this.” I felt the tears on my face and I touched them, surprised to feel the wetness. It had been a very long time since I had cried. “You weren’t there,” I said, feeling the spray of salt water on my face and feeling the pain in my leg. “You don’t know what he went through.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t. And nobody’s telling me. But our son is suffering and the only thing that I can think of to try that I haven’t already is to give him back something that he once loved almost as much as painting.”
Quinn stepped toward me, his hand outstretched as if to touch me. I pulled back and he dropped his hand.
“What about his doctors? Have you asked them what they think of this?” My fingers were frantically plucking at my nightgown where the bandage was. I watched my hand as if it belonged to somebody else and heard the panic in her voice. For once I was glad of the medication veil that separated me from reality.
“They think it could help, as long as we take it slowly and gauge his reactions before moving forward. Dr. Hirsch says that if he relives the events in a nonthreatening environment, it could trigger his speech again.”
“We?” I asked, that one word sticking in the fog of my mind.
“Yes, Marnie has agreed to come with us. We’ll start with exploring the marshes, like we used to, and then Marnie and Gil will help me refurbish the Highfalutin.”
I had the absurd urge to start laughing and leave no doubt as to how crazy I really was, but I was too stunned to do anything besides stare at him. I fell back on the futon and rubbed my hand over the throbbing bandage. “And Marnie’s going to help you? Willingly?”
A small smile crossed his lips and a fissure of jealousy crept through the fog, mercifully overtaking the pain. “I wouldn’t say willingly, exactly, but she’s agreed to help.” He gave me an odd look. “She says she’s doing it for Gil.”
His face blurred through my tears. “She should know better than most why none of us should ever go near the ocean again.”
“If you’re talking about your mother’s death, that was an accident….”
“Was it, Quinn? Were you there? How much of an accident can it be when a mother decides to take her two children sailing at night when every weather forecaster is calling for hurricane-force winds?”
He stilled. “You never told me that.”
“There’s a lot I’ve never told you. But you should know enough to ensure that your son stays away from the ocean.”
He knelt in front of me and took my hands in his, and I had no strength left to pull them away. “Are you talking about the Maitland curse, Diana?”
I kept my head down and didn’t answer, glad for the mental haze that softened even heartache.
“We talked about that with your doctor, remember? He told you that there was no such thing. It’s just a crutch people use to help them understand why bad things happen.”
I looked into his open and trusting face, and pulled my hand away to cup his cheek. “I’ve faced death twice, Quinn. And the second time our son was with me. Don’t do this to him. Don’t.”
He squeezed my hand and stood. “I’m sorry you don’t agree, but I’m going forward with this. We both want what’s best for Gil, and I need something more tangible than a family curse to make me change my mind. I promise I’ll go slowly, and I’ll protect him from danger. And so will Marnie.”
I jerked away from him and stood. “Marnie? You think Marnie can protect him?” I again fought the urge to laugh, knowing that once I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. “She needs more protection than anybody. You think she’s this quiet little mouse of a woman, but I’ve known her for a very long time, Quinn. I’ve seen her when she’s out on the ocean, and it’s like it becomes part of her blood. She feeds off the wildness of the water and wind until she becomes reckless and dangerous. I never entered a sailing race with her because it scared me too much to be on a boat with her.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “You’ve never been scared a day in your life.”
I walked toward him and my fingers clutched his shirt. “Every single day of my life I’m scared. I’m scared that I will become like my mother. That this disease we share will eat away at me until I no longer recognize reality.” I pushed at his chest and he grabbed my hands. “And I’m scared that our son, who is so much like me and her, will one day end up just like us.”
He blanched, and I knew he was thinking about all the tests we’ve had run on Gil, and how the doctors had told us to be vigilant of any cues signaling that our son had inherited more from me than the color of my hair and my ability to put paint on canvas.
He stepped back, putting distance between us.
“And you know I’m right about Marnie, too, don’t you?” I asked.
I watched as his eyes flickered to the corner of the room, to the stack of framed pictures covered with layers of sheets and blankets and then secured together with masking tape. I had made very sure that those pictures stayed where they belonged.
Quinn drew a deep breath. “None of that matters right now to Gil. Sailing was his biggest love—more than his painting. And I miss his voice.” His own voice broke but he covered it with a clearing of his throat. “This is the only thing I know to do that we haven’t tried before. And I’m going to give it a shot.” He aimed his blue eyes at me and I felt that little jolt again. “I’ve got to do it, Diana. I’m sorry if you don’t agree, but you know that I won’t let anything happen to him.” He moved as if to touch me but dropped his hand as if thinking better of it.
He left the room and I fell back on the futon, staring up at the walls, where my strokes of paint had not yet become my voice. Then I closed my eyes and willed the tears to come. But I lay there, dry eyed, and thought about how one could be married to a person for years and never really know them at all.
CHAPTER 9
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
—HERMAN MELVILLE
Marnie
Sedona, Arizona, is known for its spiritual vortices, which offer healing to hurting souls. Being raised by a preacher, I had no dearth of spiritual knowledge, but when I left the ocean behind me and headed for the desert, my soul emptied like a breached well.
The first week I was in Arizona, I hired a guide to take me to the four official vortices in my search to find
my soul again. Nestled at the bottom of a canyon, Sedona is surrounded by towering red sandstone and limestone cliffs and mesas, sculpted by time into Neolithic shapes that change from gold and orange to crimson and purple according to the rising and setting of the sun. They say it’s the iron oxide that gives the red rocks their color, and that also acts as a natural magnet to conduct earth-based energy. I suppose an empty soul is ready to believe anything and I dutifully followed my guide.
I don’t remember much about my tour except my disappointment at each supposed vortex in which I was supposed to feel a new energy and an abiding peace. But they eluded me. At the end, we had a parting ceremony that included a Native American prayer: I honor Father Sky; I honor Mother Earth, and all the directions all around. I bring them into my heart. I give thanks for all the blessings I have received, known and unknown. Maybe because the prayer didn’t include the water, I didn’t feel as if it had been meant for me.
That night I dreamed of the ocean and allowed its liquid cradle to rock me to sleep. But always, in the deepest recesses of my mind, the powerful tug of the tides threatened to pull me under and thrust me out onto the shores of my old home lost and struggling for breath.
I remembered all this as I stood in the upstairs hallway of my grandfather’s house, holding my sister’s dinner tray as I contemplated the ocean beyond the glass. I have come home, I thought, then shivered. Slowly, I made my way up the attic stairs and knocked on the studio door.
“Diana, it’s Marnie. I brought you dinner.”
There was absolute silence, and for a moment, I thought she was going to pretend no one was there. Instead, she surprised me by saying, “Just a minute.”
I heard the sound of a large piece of fabric being whipped open and then tape being pulled from a dispenser. The tray got heavier in my hand and I knocked again. “This is heavy. Can I just come in and put it on a table? I promise I won’t look.”
The noises within continued as if I hadn’t spoken, and then I heard the sound of the bolt being slid back from the door. Diana opened the door and I tried not to look shocked at her appearance. Her hair was wild and paint-stained, as if she’d spent hours raking her hands through it without any thought to the wet paint on her fingers. She wore a paint-splattered white nightgown with masking tape affixing the shoulder straps to her skin in an apparent attempt to keep the sleeves from falling down and distracting her from her painting.
The room reeked of paint but I could see no visual signs of what she might have been working on. She held the door open wider, and I stepped inside with the tray, my eyes scanning for any partial canvas. Quinn had mentioned that Diana had stopped painting after the accident with Gil and I was eager to see signs that she had moved beyond whatever barrier that had been holding her back.
I faced her. “You didn’t come down for dinner again, so I brought this up for you. I thought you might be hungry.”
Her gaze flickered over the tray in my hand before she wrinkled her nose. She waved her hand, indicated a small table by a paint-splattered armchair. “Put it over there. And sit down.” I did as she said, but hesitated before sitting.
“I won’t bite you,” she said with the familiar roll of her eyes. “It seems to me that we have some catching up to do.”
I sat on the edge of the chair, mindful of wet paint. I watched as she walked over to the sink with a fistful of brushes. She was barefoot, and as I looked at her feet, I felt an involuntary smile creep across my face. Our feet were identical, with the second toe longer than the first and the smallest toe turned slightly inward. We used to laugh, saying that looking at our feet was the only way people could tell we were sisters.
She washed the brushes without speaking, and I allowed my gaze to wander to the canvases stacked against the wall and on every available flat surface in the room. There were also a large number of canvases, wrapped in sheets and masking tape, against the far wall that aroused my curiosity, but I said nothing. Having her invite me in to her studio was rare enough and I didn’t want to wear out my welcome already. There had been a hint of desperation in her voice when she’d asked me in, and the old Marnie had responded.
She continued to wash the brushes in silence, so I stood, my attention captured by a stack of canvases standing against the wall behind my chair. I knelt in front of them and began to browse through them. Each one was beautiful and captivating, a riot of color harnessed into a picture that mere mortals could understand. I felt the old pang but continued to look through them, noticing the small portrait of a girl in the background of every painting. I rested them against the wall where I had found them, then moved to another stack that was against the wall, with their backs facing me as if Diana didn’t want to see them.
Curious, I knelt in front of these, too, and began thumbing through them. They were beautiful and fine and good, but they weren’t genius. For a shocking moment, I thought that maybe they were mine. But as I stared at the paintings, I saw the small portrait of a young woman in the background of each, and I knew they were Diana’s. Even mine at my best could never equal Diana’s at her worst. It bothered me, this inconsistency in these sets of paintings, both clearly made by the same artist, and I studied them closely again, looking for a clue.
“There’s a reason why I have those facing the wall, Marnie.” Diana stepped behind me and slammed the stack back against the plaster. “If I wanted people to see them, I’d frame them and show them off.”
I stood, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I was just looking….”
She spoke as if I hadn’t said anything. “They’re so bad that you could have painted them.”
“Ouch,” I said, still amazed at how much she could hurt me, and realizing that hearing the truth from her was far worse than thinking it myself.
I headed for the door. “It was a mistake to come in here. I’m leaving.”
She grabbed my arm in a firm grip that belied her slender, girllike arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that. I’m just upset about…about Gil.”
I recognized that hint of desperation in her voice again, and I stopped, unable to walk away from her. They say that no matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood. For me, that meant that Diana was the special, delicate, and talented child who needed coddling, and the younger, more serious, and capable Marnie was there to give it to her.
“What about Gil?”
She regarded me through cloudy green eyes. “Quinn says he’s going to make Gil get on a sailboat again. And that you’re going along with it.”
“Yes, that’s true. But it’s not like we’re taking him out tomorrow, Diana. We’re just going to navigate the marshes a bit, maybe head down to Cape Romain. And then when we think he’s ready, he’s going to help Quinn with the restoration of his boat. That’s all.”
“The Highfalutin,” she said quietly.
“Yes.”
“That was the name of Mama’s boat, remember?”
I turned away from her face, unable to look into her eyes and see our mother. “Yes, of course, I remember.”
“I named it after hers, you know. So that I’d never forget.”
“Funny,” I said. “I don’t need any reminders to help me remember the night we almost died. The night Mama did die.”
“I didn’t say that I needed to remember. I said I did it so that I’d never forget. There’s a difference, you know.”
I began pacing the perimeter of the room to keep my distance from her. “Don’t worry about Gil. I’ll be with him the entire time. And the boat will be in dry dock, so there’s no need to worry.” I turned to face her. “Why are you so set on keeping Gil on dry land? Isn’t sailing something he loves?”
She stepped close enough so that I could smell the turpentine on her hands and feel her breath on my cheeks. “I’ve never told anybody what happened the night Mama died, Marnie. Not even Quinn.” She leaned closer. “So what Quinn or Gil wants to happen shouldn’t matter. They don’t know anythin
g. And they certainly don’t know why we need to stay away from the water.”
I stepped back, unsure of what I saw in her green cat eyes. They were Diana’s, and yet they weren’t. I had thought they’d looked cloudy before, but it seemed now as if half of her sight was turned inward toward her secrets and her own losses, obscuring a clear vision toward the present and future. It must have been her medication, but I shivered just the same.
She reached for a pack of cigarettes on a nearby table and slid one out. With shaking hands she held it to her mouth and then picked up the lighter.
“Don’t!” I shouted, knocking the lighter to the floor. “You’ve got turpentine on your hands and the room is saturated in paint fumes. Do you want the house to burn down with us in it?”
She looked at me oddly. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?”
Ignoring her, I said, “Your quarrels with Quinn have nothing to do with me, okay? Leave me out. If Quinn wants to take Gil out in a sailboat, then that’s up to you two to decide. I’ll be here to help Gil on dry land and to prepare him for the next step. But that’s as far as I’ll go.”
I turned to leave again, but this time I stopped myself as I caught sight of the border at the top of the wall near the ceiling. It looked like a time line with two miniature portraits and birth and death dates beneath. Squinting to read the small print, I read the names Josiah and Rebecca Maitland. Stepping closer, I read the small hand lettering beneath the dates. “‘Death by broken heart and suicide.’” I shrank back. “What is this?”
“It’s a history of the Maitlands. And the curse, of course. I figured since I can’t paint anymore, this would be my final legacy.”
Annoyed, I said, “Don’t be so melodramatic. You’re still young and you’ve got lots of years to paint.”
She shrugged, the unlit cigarette bobbing in her mouth. “But not if I can only paint shit. I’d rather do wall murals.”
