Silver Water (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Violet’s sister, Rose, starts experiencing schizophrenia as a teenager. Violet remembers Rose before the mental illness hit her, as a beautiful, wonderful older sister. When Rose is fifteen, she has her first psychotic break. Rose’s mother, a musician, realizes that Rose is “going crazy,” even though the father, a psychiatrist, does not realize this. The mother takes Rose to a hospital that day, beginning Rose’s ten-year odyssey back and forth to one hospital or halfway house after another.

Rose has many bad therapists and only a few good ones. The family — Violet; the mother, Galen; and the father, David — also participate in family counseling. Violet recalls the best family therapist they had, a doctor named Dr. Thorne. Under Dr. Thorne’s care, Rose does much better and gains more control of her compulsive behaviors. She is able to move into a halfway house, loses weight, continues to take her medication, begins singing with a church choir, and is able to be brought back more easily when she “goes off.”

After five years, however, Dr. Thorne dies, and Rose begins to lose all the progress she has made. She stops taking her medication and she gets thrown out of the halfway house after she throws another patient down the stairs. Rose’s new psychiatric coverage doesn’t start for forty-five days, so she comes home to live with her parents.

At that time, Violet is living an hour away from her parents. Her parents tell her that although it is hard taking care of Rose, they are managing. Violet comes home on Sunday, however, and she realizes how difficult the situation has been when she discovers that Rose broke their mother’s piano bench. Her father confesses that he doesn’t know how they will make it through the next twenty-seven days with Rose at home. Unfortunately, he can’t put her in a psychiatric hospital, even if he and Galen pay for it themselves, because Rose’s insurance policy says she must be symptom-free before her coverage begins.

Rose and Galen come home from the lake. When Galen tells Rose to go upstairs and change her wet pants, Rose begins to bang her head against the kitchen floor. Galen tries to prevent her from doing this, but Rose throws her off physically. Violet positions her body under Rose so Rose cannot hit her head anymore. This makes Rose realize what is happening. She apologizes and runs up to her room. When David comes in, Violet does not tell him what really happened or how her mother got the bruises on her face.

Throughout the evening, Rose tries unsuccessfully to control herself. Finally, Rose gets to sleep. That night, Violet wakes up at three o’clock in the morning. She goes to Rose’s room, but her sister is not there. Violet goes outside and sees Rose’s footprints heading into the woods. Violet finds her sister in the woods, lying on the ground, holding a bottle of pills in her hand. Violet believes that Rose says, “Closing time.” Violet sits with her sister until the sun comes up. She goes back to the house, imagining how badly her mother will react to Violet’s letting her sister — the “favorite” — die. Galen, however, only calls her a “warrior queen,” and says Rose was one, too. Then she goes into the woods, alone, to be with Rose. When she returns, she wakes David, who calls the police and the funeral parlor. At the funeral, while her mother plays the piano, Violet closes her eyes and sees her sister at fourteen years, in the opera house parking lot with head thrown back and lovely notes rising in the air.