The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Before Abby could get back to him, though, someone else came in. Alex's first thought was that she'd managed to get away early for him, and he was touched and triumphant. But it wasn't Abby. It wasn't his current roommate, either, a burly and lame old man whose gait—whose entire presence—was much heavier than this light, gauzy disturbance of the air. Perhaps there was a new nurse. Alex did not want to deal with a new nurse tonight, but he would, of course, if the situation warranted. He could see nothing of this person—the word intruder came to him, which rather surprised him, since he had honed a detachment from the spaces which he inhabited that generally did not allow for the concept of personal boundaries capable of being intruded upon. He didn't hear anything definitive, voice, tread, breath rhythm. With a calm that had little to do with patience, he waited to receive more information.

  Now there was a peculiar tapping on the inside of his skull, like nothing so much as someone requesting—demanding entrance into a locked room. Training his considerable powers of concentration full on the sensation, Alex was nonetheless able to smile in bemusement at the image; his mind was indeed locked, barricaded, although the effectiveness of this security depended to a great extent on presenting the illusion that it didn't exist.

  Therefore he had, as it were, constructed apertures that would look like windows, through which other people were convinced they could see in, but which were actually one-way mirrors.

  The staccato sound and jarring were insistent. Alex was reminded of a hand with long nails, tapping, rather than cruder knuckles knocking. He was briefly tempted to open his mind to it out of simple curiosity, but the foolhardy impulse had not even enough time to be rejected before the tapping had stopped and he was alone again with his thoughts, excellent company that they were, roiled now by this odd experience.

  Alex shifted. Not physically, since he could move nothing below the neck, but quite literally. Perfectly, intimately aware, of course, that there would be no corporeal response to the orders issued by his brain to his shoulders to move an inch to the right, to his hips to slide slightly downward, he nevertheless issued those orders, and the sensation of having moved was as palpable and released as much tension as though he'd physically shifted.

  He must not allow stray outside forces of any kind to influence his mental processes. There had been distractions before; whatever this newest one was—and he suspected it was in some way connected to the development of his relationship with the sweet Abby—he was more than a match for it.

  Across the hall, Myra Larsen was singing. Her bony hands waved in the air, knobby fingers twirling as though they were graceful, wrists like coat hangers on which might have been draped soft variegated scarves.

  Hearing her from the other end of the building, Rebecca looked up with a start, sat back in her chair, laid down her pen and turned off the calculator to hear her better. There was something eerily familiar about the song the crazed old woman was singing, though its melody was so fractured and its lyrics so nearly incomprehensible that it could hardly be called a song. Rebecca listened, didn't want to be listening but was mesmerized. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and legs. A hot sensation like panic geysered into her chest, from where she could not imagine, unless it rose out of the roiling sadness and guilt she felt about Bob Morley and Roslyn Curry.

  After a few minutes she roused herself, came out from behind the desk, and shut the door. She could still hear Myra. Frustrated far beyond what the situation called for, she gave the dial of the radio on the shelf above her desk an angry twist, and mellow, undemanding jazz trickled out into the room as she tried again to work.

  Marshall had been sitting in his room staring at the wall, staring at his interlocking and disentangling fingers, peacefully, waiting for Billie, waiting for Rebecca, waiting, not waiting for anything. When Myra had been singing for a while, he was singing along. He knew this song. It made him happy. It frightened him. It took him back, and forward.

  Dan Murphy stuck his head into Rebecca's office. He wasn't the only one who disobeyed the bright red Do Not Disturb sign Gordon Marek had made for her in craft class and hung with a flourish on her doorknob. Gordon himself loved the sight of it hanging there but paid scant attention to its purported message. Other people usually acknowledged it with an apology or a joke; Dan just ignored it, though it flapped against his hand. 'Hi, babe. Busy?'

  Rebecca looked up frowning from the spreadsheet of accounts payable, which had just begun making sense. Then she sighed, smiled, and rested her chin in her hand. 'Never too busy for the boss. Come on in.'

  He was already in, flyaway red hair looking badly cut although it undoubtedly was not, expensive sports jacket rumpled. He was followed by the woman whom Rebecca recognized—still incredulously—as his wife Naomi: small, thin, colorlessness so thorough it had to be purposeful, very quiet. Dan settled himself into one of the new captain's chairs he had insisted Rebecca buy for the office and lifted his feet onto her desk, his boots smudging the three-page staffing report she was almost a week late completing in triplicate for the Health Department, which required the same information as the weekly reports for the management company but in different combinations. His wife stood by the door.

  'You'll be getting a refund check from Vic Andres,' Dan said. 'Deposit it.'

  'Vic Andres? The guy from Surgical Supply? What's he refunding? We got the order.'

  'Don't worry about it, babe. Just stick it in the bank. Vic and I go back a long way. So what's this I hear about a patient dying under suspicious circumstances?'

  Rebecca shuddered, and the nausea that threatened every time she thought about the oven-cleaner incident—and there were few moments when she did not think about it—rose again. She passed a hand over her eyes. 'Nothing suspicious about it. We know what happened.'

  Dan guffawed harshly. 'Jesus, what was she, drunk on her ass? Oven cleaner instead of pancake syrup? I mean, wouldn't you think she'd have smelled it or something?'

  Rebecca could only shake her head. 'She wasn't drunk or stoned. She said she was tired. She said she was distracted by personal problems.'

  'Shit, that's some fucking distraction, not to even notice a patient pouring oven cleaner on his goddamn pancakes. On the kitchen floor, no less.'

  Not sure she ought to be telling him this, Rebecca went on. "She was absolutely hysterical. She kept saying she tried to get to him before he put it in his mouth but she couldn't move. As if it were happening to somebody else.'

  'Great. Just what The Tides needs. A psychotic cook.'

  'Or as if somebody held her back. She said she actually thought she felt hands on her arms, fingernails digging in.'

  'Even better. A possessed cook.' Dan was up and pacing. 'You'd think the guy who died would have noticed. You'd think he'd have smelled it, or it would have burned his tongue. How could he eat enough of it to kill him? Christ, that's what institutionalization will do for you.'

  'He was a burned-out schizophrenic, controlled for years by massive doses of Thorazine. Thorazine suppresses olfactory sensations, among other things. I doubt he noticed much of anything.'

  'Family?'

  She shook her head. 'None.' She thought of Petra Carrasco, who had shown no reaction at all to Bob's death, but couldn't bring herself to tell Dan about her.

  'Jesus.' He sat for a moment, not still but, for him, subdued. Then he said several of the things Rebecca was thinking, though she wished she weren't. 'Jesus, what a way to live and what a way to die. But at least there's no

  family to raise hell.' Rebecca nodded unhappily. 'Health Department been here yet?'

  'No. We notified them, of course. I expect them any minute.'

  'They'll be all over this place.'

  'Well, they should be. I'd worry if they didn't look into something like this.'

  He narrowed his eyes. 'It won't be fun, babe. Trust me. They'll have a field day. At the very least, you'll get written up. I'll do what I can to keep it out of the papers, but I can't guarantee anything. This is no
t the kind of attention I need right now. So what does this do to your census?'

  She hesitated. When Sandy had come running to tell her what had happened to Bob, census hadn't been the foremost of her reactions, she was glad to note, but it had been among the first. 'A hundred and thirty-five.'

  'Damn.'

  'Referrals are down. I suspect we were already being blackballed because of this "patient mix" business. And Bob's death won't do much for our reputation, either.'

  'Patient mix,' he repeated scornfully. 'Shit. I've been in this business a long time, and they've never complained about having different kinds of patients in the same facility before. Hell, everybody does it.'

  'We sent them our policies so they can see that we know what we're doing. And I have to admit we're being more selective about admissions than we were.'

  'Can't afford to be too selective,' he reminded her, almost breezily, springing to his feet. 'Gotta pay the bills. Listen, babe. Naomi and I have a favor to ask you. Naomi needs a job. Anything. I was thinking maybe she could help Lisa with the social work stuff. Something to take her mind off herself. We all get a little crazy when we don't get enough outside stimulation.' He touched his wife's cheek anxiously, tenderly. She kept her gaze out the window and finally Dan turned away from her, his face rigid. 'I don't know,' he said quietly. 'Maybe it won't work out. But talk about it, will you? I gotta be someplace.' He shut the door behind him, then opened it again as Rebecca's phone began to ring. 'By the way, babe, the place stinks. You better get your housekeepers on the ball.' He shut the door again and was gone.

  Rebecca wrote 'odor' on a piece of paper taped to the top of her desk and answered the phone. It was an anxious supplier calling about an overdue account. She promised to pay him in full in thirty days. She did not add: If the Medicaid check comes through on time. If census holds. If the roof lasts another few months. He harangued her about the problems of small businesses and the size of his payroll; she commiserated, actively listened, and allowed her voice to tremble. Finally he said he'd call again in a month if he didn't have a check, and would she be free for lunch sometime? She hedged. When they hung up she crossed the name of his company off one of her lists.

  With an effort, then, she turned her attention to Naomi Murphy. 'What kind of work do you think you'd be interested in?'

  It seemed to take a beat or two before it registered with Naomi that she was being directly addressed. 'I don't know. I really don't know much about nursing homes.'

  Naomi Murphy's father was Ira Goldberg, principal partner in Western Health Care Associates, the corporation that owned The Tides and one of the largest nursing-home chains in the state. Besides that, she was married to

  Dan. How could she not know much about nursing homes? Rebecca regarded her curiously. 'Actually I don't have any openings right now. My staff is pretty well stabilized and the budget won't allow me to add any more people, much as I'd like to.'

  Naomi nodded and rose. 'Thank you for your time.'

  'Wait.' Rebecca was suddenly reluctant to let her just vanish again. 'What about volunteer work?'

  Naomi shrugged. Her hand was on the doorknob and her back half-turned to Rebecca, but it seemed she was listening.

  'We always need good volunteers. One-to-one visiting, writing letters, family contacts, accompanying people to appointments outside the facility.'

  Naomi took the few steps required to get her across the room to the chair her husband had vacated, sat down, crossed her legs at the ankles, folded her hands in her lap. Then she said quietly, her eyes averted, 'This is my husband's idea. He thinks I spend too much time in the house. I like my house.'

  Somewhat vaguely, Rebecca nodded. There was a silence. Rebecca started worrying about her paperwork again. Thoughts of Bob Morley's gagging and Roslyn's hoarse screams burst like fireworks in her memory. Not quite consciously, she saw again the odd sheen that had stained the kitchen floor around them; she'd assumed it was vomit or some other bodily fluid, but it hadn't been there when she'd looked again, so it must have been some peculiar trick of the fluorescent lights and the sunrise through the window above the counter.

  She tapped her pen on the desk and said briskly, 'Well, at least let me show you around. Give you some idea what our people are like.'

  Naomi made no objection. As they left the office the phone rang again. Rebecca hesitated, then shook her head irritably and shut the door firmly behind them. Whatever it was could wait. Sandy could take a message.

  Chapter 7

  Billie didn't know why in the world she bothered to talk to Marshall as if he was in his right mind, but for almost thirty years she'd been talking to him and old habits died hard. 'Why would she come back now? Becky's grown.'

  'She wants her,' Marshall moaned, as if that explained everything.

  'Anyway,' Billie said, shaking her finger at him, 'you told me she was dead.'

  'I think she is dead.'

  'Well, then, she can't be here, now can she? But Billie drew her sweater more snugly around her in the close cramped room. Here was another way she'd been betrayed: Marshall had promised that Faye's name would never pass between them again, because she was dead and couldn't hurt anybody anymore. Until now he'd kept his promise, too; maybe he'd thought about Faye - Lord knew Billie had, and Marshall had even more reason - but neither of them had mentioned her in decades.

  It appalled her to be talking about Faye. The woman had been in her mind for as long as her husband and daughter had, which seemed like her whole life even though she knew better. But she'd kept her in the airless and lightless dusty dungeon in the back of her mind,

  where she belonged. Now, because Marshall was losing himself right before her eyes, Billie was being forced to think about Faye and talk about Faye, and she didn't like it one bit.

  The danger was that she'd say something she shouldn't. One good thing about senility was that more than likely Marshall would forget whatever either one of them said, but he might not, and she definitely wouldn't. The danger was that she'd tell the one thing she knew about Faye that Marshall didn't. In fact, right this very minute she could hardly resist the temptation.

  And why should she? You didn't see Marshall holding anything back these days. She could always deny it later, to Marshall and to anybody he might tell and even to herself, Marshall had Alzheimer's, after all, so you couldn't believe anything he said.

  Apparently Marshall had forgotten she was there. He might have forgotten all about Faye again, too, since he didn't look scared anymore. His expression was almost happy. There was a little smile on his lips, as if he was thinking about something funny that he wasn't going to tell her. His hands were relaxed in his lap, and the Posey restraint could have been a nice vest on him, grayed from washing but with a lot of wear and even a little elegance left in it, instead of what it really was, something to tie him down. His eyes were focused somewhere past her. If he'd known she was there he wouldn't have known who she was.

  That was what did it, the fact that her husband had had the nerve to forget who she was. Billie set her jaw, leaned forward, and reached toward him, thought better of it just before her fingertips would have come into contact with his knee and drew back, didn't touch him after all. She didn't say his name, either, though it was all but filling her mouth. She just started talking, telling the story she'd never told anybody that had sometimes seemed to be what her life was all about.

  A few doors down on the other side of the hall, Jenny Booth had just showed up for a surprise visit with her husband. Alex knew the instant she appeared in his doorway that she was under the influence of alcohol. He had no reason to suspect, though, that she was not alone, that her presence—needy, increasingly hollowed by the drink that pretended to fill it in—would have been greeted as an invitation, and that she was under another influence as well.

  With an effort certainly substantial though perhaps not quite as enormous as he hoped to make it seem, he turned his head away. 'You're drunk,' he stated.

&nbs
p; Jenny trapped his head between her hands to kiss him lingeringly on the mouth. 'Hi, honey,' she crooned, her breath rank. 'I'm glad to see you, too.'

  In order to lean over him, she was bracing herself on the rails of his bed, an outrageous violation of his personal space. She must be shaking, for the rails rattled. The smell of her nauseated him and he couldn't turn his head far enough away. So he narrowed his eyes and levelled his gaze, which he knew to be formidable, directly into her face.

  'Look, I brought you a present. Sweets for my sweetie.' She set a box of chocolates onto the unresisting mound of his stomach.

  'You know I don't eat chocolate. You know I must be very careful about my diet.'

  The box slid down between his legs and she retrieved it, never acknowledging that she had rubbed against his genitals, a contact of which he himself was aware only in theory since he could neither see nor feel it. Reaching across him to set the candy on his very orderly bedside stand, and thereby disturbing the order, she kissed his mouth again in passing as though she had a right to do so. 'There. That's for my favorite boy.' Noting that the plastic wrap around the box had been removed, he wondered icily who had given her this candy.