The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Maxine jumped, dropped her side of him so that he flopped sideways on top of the blanket. 'Shit. What's he saying?'

  'Faye!'

  'I don't know,' Abby said, staring at him for a minute. 'Is he calling somebody?'

  'You better get Rebecca. Get the nurse and get Rebecca.'

  'Faye!'

  Although it was cold and they'd been told to come in, Petra and Bob were still out on the front porch. It wasn't in the interests of good patient care for them to be out there, both because of the evening chill and the fact that they weren't wearing coats and because they were doubtless engaging or about to engage in inappropriate activity; Diane, finally on her way home, stopped to give the charge nurse instructions. 'Insist that they come in. You can probably trick them; if you tell Petra her husband's on the phone she'll come in, and then Bob will follow her eventually. Or send Larry and Maxine out to get them.'

  Ever since they'd come out here after supper, Bob had been telling Petra a story. A piece here, a space there — it was a mosaic, and whether she received the same picture he sent was debatable, but he kept talking and she kept listening, both erratically, neither looking at or touching the other although that would come.

  He'd gone downtown to Woolworth's. He'd bought a hamburger. Today or ten years ago, he went downtown. He sat at the snack bar at Woolworth's. He'd bought a hamburger and fries.

  Everybody was looking at him. He didn't care. Fuck 'em all. He sat at the counter like everybody else and ate his hamburger. They were staring at him, they were laughing at him. Fuck you. Take a picture. Then his hamburger floated up in the air. Nobody else acted like anything was going on, so he didn't either. He just waited and it floated back down and he ate it. When the hamburger floated up in the air nobody noticed but when he sat there and ate it like everybody else they laughed. Fuck 'em.

  Petra interrupted her own underbreath red-ants monologue to tell him out loud, roughly, 'Shit, I know what causes that.'

  He kicked at the wall. He swung his forearm into the wrought-iron post. When she didn't tell him, he snarled, 'So what, bitch? Think you're so smart. Think you're such a smart-ass. I'll show you who's smart. What?'

  She sidled over to him. The top of her head reached the middle buttonhole of his shirt; that button among others was missing. Not looking up at his face, poking her sharp fingers through the holes in his shirt, she croaked, 'Why, honey, it's the tides. You know. It's the power of the tides.'

  With that, everything slid into focus for Bob. 'Oh,' he said to her, brimming with gratitude and something like love. 'Oh, yeah. That makes sense. The tides.' He knew that. He wasn't as dumb as he looked.

  He stooped and picked her up. She screeched and giggled. He carried her off the porch.

  Chapter 5

  Five forty-five in the morning and already behind schedule, rushed, because the first feeding had to be done by seven so the second shift could get in and out by seven-thirty in order for baths to get done in time for morning meds. There were morning activities, too, today a book club at nine o'clock and men's group after that, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if people missed that stuff.

  Some residents wanted to linger over coffee. Some lingered, not especially wanting to, because their hands were uncertain getting food and drink to their mouths or because they had to swallow three or four times for each bite or because they kept sliding to the verge of forgetting what a fork or a piece of toast was for. Lingerers intentional or otherwise would soon be rousted from the dining room whether they were ready to leave or not, in the constant and constantly frustrated attempt to maintain some sort of schedule.

  In the kitchen, Roslyn Curry made as much noise as she could. The radio on top of the freezer was turned to elevator music which she liked, goddammit, no matter what anybody said. Getting to pick the music on the kitchen radio was one of the few perks of being Food Services Director, and Ros took what she could get.

  There was some sort of interference this morning, though, a ghost in the signal so that it sounded almost like somebody singing along, way in the background, to an instrumental version of 'Qué Sera Sera.' This was especially aggravating because it made you want to listen to the damn thing instead of just letting it drizzle along the way it was supposed to. Ros frowned, but it was too much trouble to fuss with the dial and try to clear it up, so she'd just put up with it.

  She liked this job. She liked these people. She wanted to do right by them. It wasn't easy.

  Adele couldn't stand old people or sick people or anybody who wasn't normal, which was sort of funny, considering. Nursing homes made her physically ill. She couldn't fathom why Ros worked there, and she really didn't want to hear about it. It was one of the things between them. There were a lot of things. Married to a man all those years who had never taken much of an interest in her, Ros had thought things would just naturally be better with a woman, and it threw her to discover the same old crap.

  Stainless steel pots and pans clanged against stainless steel sinks. The louder the clanging the more Roslyn felt both harried and efficient. That was ridiculous, not that she cared.

  Bob Morley was hanging around in the doorway. 'Go sit down!' she told him. His perpetual scowl deepened but he slunk away. Not very far, she knew. He was like a stray dog, putting up with kicks and curses on the off-chance that you'd drop something edible — not give it to him; she doubted anybody had given him anything in a long time, except maybe Petra. He'd as soon bite you as look at you.

  He'd already been sitting in the dining room when she'd come to work at four-thirty — well, she'd been a little late. Four-thirty in the morning was just too early to expect anybody to be at work, if you had any kind of social life. Which at the moment Ros had a lot of, if social was what you could call it.

  Fifty-eight years old and as mixed up as a teenager. Trying to figure out who she was, which had been pretty well decided until the afternoon she'd met Adele at the nursery buying tulip bulbs — and they'd spent the day together gardening and having lunch and then the night. Thinking about that night and every other night since, thinking ahead to tonight with Adele, Ros felt sinful and joyful at the same time, both feelings stronger than anything she'd experienced in years, maybe in all her life.

  Half-asleep and obsessing over Adele, she'd cut somebody off on the highway and missed the Elm Street turnoff, for Chrissake, which made her even later than she already was. She had trouble with the key in the back door and then stumbled over a bucket the supper crew had left in the way. Just before she'd flipped on the light switch, she'd thought she glimpsed somebody else in the empty, dim, echoing dining room, flitting from table to table, wearing purple. Ros didn't know who it was and couldn't take time to look. By the time she got herself situated, coffee started (stronger than recommended; no self-respecting coffee drinker could stomach the dishwater the budget called for), and went out to do a quick check of the dining room, she hadn't seen anybody but Morley.

  She kept looking over her shoulder, though, and squinting into the shadows behind the cooler, behind the doors. She couldn't shake the feeling that somebody else was there, just outside her field of vision, making a disturbance not quite loud enough for her to hear. Amazing what lack of sleep and a sex drive newly awakened and impossible to satisfy could do to you. She'd been better off married and celibate.

  Bob Morley gave her the creeps. For one thing, he was tall and big-jointed, kind of like Abe Lincoln. And he looked right at you. Not many people around here did that. His blue eyes were like windows on a war, whole regiments in there, whole armies, most of the bloodshed from friendly fire. You always had the feeling you were walking into an ambush. Ros didn't much like being alone with him early in the morning. On top of everything else, he had a rancid body odor that could curl your hair.

  For all that, Ros got a kick out of the fact that Bob Morley and Petra Carrasco were getting it on, not least because it scandalized practically everybody else around here. The two of them couldn't keep their hands off eac
h other. There was a time when Ros wouldn't have understood that. Now, her palms itched to be following the sweet swell of Adele's breast, her own nipples hardened before she was even consciously aware of thinking about Adele, and she felt an unwelcome comradeship with Bob Morley, of all people.

  There wasn't enough pancake batter for the second shift. Gordon Marek alone could eat a dozen pancakes, and Ros didn't see why he shouldn't. Annoyed with herself for the oversight and with Adele for distracting her, she hefted the big box of pancake mix and decided there was enough left for another breakfast after this one. She detested using mixes and prepackaged crap, but there wasn't time or money to make things from scratch. For a minute she indulged herself in a fantasy about bran and banana pancakes. Bran would help these people's bathroom problems — hey all had bathroom problems of one kind or another — and bananas were good for their electrolytes, which could make old people dizzy and confused if they weren't balanced. Ros knew a helluva lot more about nutrition than anybody gave her credit for.

  She poured mix into the huge stainless steel bowl and added water without bothering to measure any of it. She wedged in the big beaters and lowered them into the bowl. The mixer shrieked when she turned it on. Holding the bowl precariously with one hand, daring it to spill or break, she leaned over to check how much fruit she had. Four gallon cans. Sweetened fruit. There was no earthly reason she couldn't serve these people fresh fruit in season. She resolved to talk to Rebecca about that, for all the good it would do. Ros did not like working for a woman, especially one young enough to be her daughter.

  The bowl was slowly rotating now; she let the rim slide through her fingers, imagining Adele's earlobe. Jesus. When she straightened up, she saw powdery pancake mix on the floor in the outline of her shoe. She swore. Well, one of the girls could clean it up when they got in at six-thirty. That was another perk of being Director, come to think of it: you could tell somebody else to sweep the floor. They better be on time, too.

  Adele had held her face in her hands to kiss her goodbye from the bed, which was now their bed. Adele had whispered, 'I'll be here when you get back, hon,' and Ros, thrilled, was also repulsed. How could she go home to a woman in her bed? How could she stay away, even for an eight-hour shift?

  When the pancake batter had been beaten enough that it goddamn ought to be smooth, whether it actually was or not, Roslyn turned off the mixer. The radio was playing a schmaltzy version of 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' smoothed out, lots of strings. Ros started to sing along, with feeling. When it dawned on her that she was thinking of — Jesus, fantasizing about, getting off on — Adele, she shut up and turned the radio down. Then off.

  A whispering rose like crickets, except that there were words in it. Ros stood still and listened. Tender stroking riffled her hair, the sprayed curls at the crown of her head and up under the hair cut close and tapered at the nape of her neck, raising goosebumps and an urgent desire for sex. Soft insistent hands held her face, and soft lips pressed against hers. For a split-second, her vision blurred lavender, and an idea came into her head, fuzzy, hinting at something terrible, suggesting something unbelievably exciting, something she would never have considered herself capable of thinking about, let alone doing. But she didn't know herself anymore.

  'Shit.' This was getting ridiculous. It was hard enough to be like a kid in love when you were a kid and it was the opposite sex you were head over heels for. Pushing sixty and in love with another woman was too much. It wasn't that she thought it was wrong. She didn't think she'd ever thought it was wrong, really. But it was such a shock. She didn't have the faintest idea what the rules were. Everything she did these days surprised her. She could not believe she was in this particular fix. This was not what she'd expected to have to worry about at this time in her life.

  Out of Roslyn's field of vision, on the other side of the kitchen wall with the steam tables and serving counter, the gauzy presence hovered in the half-lit dining room. When it settled, briefly, over tables and chairs, it altered their contours and outlines for as long as it stayed there.

  When it bounced up to suspend itself, fleetingly, from the ceiling, it was like a giant cobweb, a spreading place where the paint was melting, where the very concrete was dissolving. When it raced toward the hall, where fluorescent lights were on all night, it blurred both light and harsh shadow, sound and silence. There was an aura of playfulness about its antics, overlaying menace.

  Even when the dining room was full, four people to a table, it didn't sound like a room full of people eating breakfast anywhere but in a nursing home. Plasticware against plastic trays didn't ring or really even clatter, but made scraping and sliding sounds as muted as the colors, grayed pink, brownish yellow. There wasn't the hum of restaurant diners or the separated-out conversations, friendly or hostile, of a family at table. It was a noise all its own. Roslyn thought that when she was a hundred years old and senile — not that she'd have to live that long to get senile — she'd still recognize the sound of a meal in a nursing home. Maybe not, though. Maybe she wouldn't remember any of this. Like a year-old kid, maybe she wouldn't remember anything that was happening to her right now, no matter how real and interesting, even amazing, it was while it was happening.

  Ros shook her head at herself. Even her thoughts weren't her own.

  The aides were wheeling people in. In a hurry, Florence brought two wheelchairs in at once, pushing Paul because it took him too long to walk and pulling Myra Larsen backwards. Myra hollered, pointlessly.

  People did talk — often to themselves or in parallel like toddlers at play, sometimes in brief exchanges, once in a while in extended conversation randomly interrupted when the time allotted for the meal was over. Marshall

  Emig was actually quite talkative this morning, and Billie didn't know whether to be pleased or saddened by how chipper he was. Throughout their marriage, he'd set the tone. When he was happy — whistling, playing silly little practical jokes — she and Rebecca had been happy. When he was in one of his moods, everybody'd walked on eggshells. Now, though, she never knew how to take him. His states of mind these days bore the same resemblance to what she was used to as a raisin did to a grape you knew they came from the same source, were versions of the same thing, but your intuition insisted that couldn't be, they must be completely different.

  Marshall was talking about the universe. He'd always liked to talk about such things, and Billie's job had been to nod her head and once in a while say something to pretend she was interested. If he'd ever realized she wasn't the least bit interested, he'd have stopped talking about it, stopped thinking about it, and that would have been too bad. What he was saying now made no less sense to her than what he'd said a hundred times before, but she couldn't trust anymore that he knew what he was talking about, either. Something about black holes which were really made of light, and the universe being infinite but curved at the edges, which Billie thought had to be contradictory. But what did she know?

  Marshall said something about the war. What he said was just a part of a sentence, and it didn't make any sense, but Billie tensed. Terrible things must have happened to him in the war. He'd never talked to her about it. It would be awful if being senile made him tell her terrible things he'd never told her before.

  She ate her pancakes. Ros Curry always made sure she got a tray whenever she was here at mealtime, which was more and more often.

  Partly, that was because Billie always hoped for a few minutes with her daughter. Rebecca had even less time to visit now than before she took this job, but at least they were in the same building and ran into each other once in a while. She seemed — not happy, exactly, but animated, at least; not so lost. Still, Billie worried about her. Running a place like this was an awful lot of responsibility for a twenty-eight-year-old girl, and Rebecca looked tired all the time. She always had been a loner, never more than one or two friends at a time and those came and went. This Kurt was her first real boyfriend, not counting a couple in high school, and somehow
Billie didn't think they were really serious, even though they were living together and almost certainly sleeping together. As far as her mother could tell, the only thing that Rebecca really paid attention to was her work. That wasn't good for anybody, especially not a woman. But she guessed it was better than all those years when Rebecca hadn't seemed to pay attention to anything.

  Still, Billie liked spending so much time where her daughter worked, liked having an excuse to watch Rebecca be efficient and compassionate and so grown up. They weren't very close. Billie didn't dare let herself be too close to this daughter. But it was good to be around her while they both, in their own ways, worked at taking care of Marshall, who was the main thing they'd ever had in common.

  Billie didn't like the type of people they had here, alcoholics and crazy people like that Petra woman and crippled young people and senile old people all under the same roof. Rebecca said real human communities were like that, all different kinds living together. Billie didn't think that was so in the first place, and anyway this wasn't a 'community,' this was a nursing home. She sipped her watered-down orange juice.