The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Abby was enveloped by a prickly warmth. It descended on her from above and behind, and as she felt it wrap itself around her like scratchy thin cloth, she saw Paul's eyes widen and his mouth stretch wide.

  She felt breath on her hair, heard a teasing little song, caught a whiff of rose perfume that would have been overpowering if it had lasted more than a split second, and then saw her own hand come to rest on Paul's crotch. She tried to pull it away. Her brain sent frantic messages to her arm and hand to pull away, to stop it, but the messages were ignored. Instead, her fingers started working Paul's zipper, and in the process the backs of her knuckles massaged his penis. Paul, still crooked in the chair, had stopped yelling, and now his breath was coming short and fast.

  'Everything okay, Abby?' came Florence's voice from the doorway behind her. 'Need any help?'

  Hoping she hadn't jumped, although her heart did and she thought she was going to pass out, Abby answered right away, even before the strange soft grip on her hand was loosened and the itching along her bare arms and legs had quit. 'Oh, sure, we're okay, aren't we, Paul? I'm just trying to get his pants zipped and his shirt buttoned right.'

  The older aide was suspicious of something. 'Maxine said he was giving you a hard time. That's not like Paul.'

  'It was my fault.' Abby was allowed now to stand up, but she kept her back to Florence. 'I've got a lot on my mind right now, and I lost my patience with him in the shower. You know how much he likes his shower. I was just trying to tell him I'm sorry, but I guess he's going to be mad at me for a while.'

  'He doesn't hold a grudge, do you, Pauly?' Florence came in then and smoothed Paul's hair, got a comb from the bedside stand and wet it under the faucet and made a part on the left, the way he liked it. At first Paul kept watching Abby, but it didn't take long for him to shift his gaze to Florence, who was crooning about how handsome he wasand actually, Abby found herself thinking, he was.

  'Thanks, Flo,' Abby said miserably, and stumbled out of the room. Lights were on all up and down the hall, bells dinging. Intensely relieved to know what to do, she set about her job.

  It took Rebecca the rest of the day to go through the mid-month budget reports, not because there was such a wealth of information—they were cursory at best, and Diane hadn't even submitted one for nursing, which accounted for by far the largest share of the facility's budget—but because she couldn't keep her mind on them and because other things kept happening. Wanting to concentrate on numbers, she thought of these things as interruptions, intrusions, distractions, but they were not. They were the life of the nursing home, going on. She'd have ignored it all if she could, but her attention was demanded.

  The hospital called to say that Viviana's hemorrhaging had been stopped and she was stabilized; Diane reported this with undisguised satisfaction. Rebecca didn't know whether to be glad or not. She didn't know what to say to Diane, how to explain the shame she felt, whether Diane ought to be feeling it, too.

  The new maintenance man, the third since what Dave's wife had told her, with curious reluctance, had been a stroke, informed Colleen he was quitting, going to California tomorrow, had just needed this job long enough to fix up his truck. Rebecca tried to take some comfort in the few things he'd fixed while he'd been at The Tides, but the prospect of hiring someone else was too daunting even to contemplate. Maybe she could persuade Kurt to work for her weekends; he was handy around the house. Thinking of Kurt made her think again about his birthday, with no more enthusiasm or persistence than before.

  Suppliers called. Those whose accounts receivable were thirty days past due tended to be relatively civil, unless this wasn't the first time; those who'd been owed money for ninety or a hundred and twenty days were increasingly nasty. Rebecca wrote a few checks. They would clear, but the management fee wouldn't. She didn't know what Dan would say to that, and it was hard to care.

  She found a note in her box from Lisa: 'The county put Dexter in another facility where they'll control his spending money so he can't buy candy. He just called me crying to see why he can't come home. Can you believe this?' Numb, Rebecca went through the motions of putting in a call to the caseworker, but it was just as well that she was out of the office until next week.

  It was evening before she got back to her father's room. Her mother wasn't there; it struck Rebecca as odd and oddly sad that she didn't know where her mother was. Her father still lay on his back, board-stiff, but he was conscious, and when he saw her he gave a little yelp of, she was sure, fear. 'Dad, it's me, Becky. What's wrong?'

  She reached to touch his cheek and he jerked his head away with shocking alacrity. His eyes bulged and he was breathing hard. He lifted one hand and waved it fiercely. 'Get out of here.'

  Hurt despite everything she knew about dementia, Rebecca said gently, 'I love you, Dad,' and the words all but glowed between them. She could not remember the last time she had said that to either of her parents; she could not remember the last time she had felt it. She was feeling it now.

  'I love you, too,' he said easily, 'and I don't want to see you hurt. Becky, you have to listen to me. You can't be here. She'll get you.'

  'Who, Dad?' She never knew whether to remind a confused person what consensual reality was or to play into the fantasy on the grounds that it was real for him and elicited genuine emotion. So she did both. 'Who's after me, Dad? Nobody's after me.'

  'Faye!' he croaked.

  Rebecca hesitated. Then she caught his hand, stopping its frantic motion in the air, and held it between hers, even interlaced her fingers with his. Wedging herself between one of the ungiving chairs and the equally hard bedrail, she bent as close to him as she dared. 'Tell me about Faye, Dad. Tell me about Faye.'

  'Faye,' he said very clearly, 'is your mother, and she wants you back.'

  Chapter 16

  'He's senile,' Billie insisted. She wouldn't look at Rebecca, but that was not uncommon and couldn't be considered a clue as to the state of her mind or the content of what she was or was not saying. 'He's confused. You can't believe a thing he says.'

  'Then you tell me.'

  'There's nothing to tell.'

  The question clamoring to be asked was, of course: Why did he say she was my mother? But she could not ask it.

  They had walked together across the ragged field behind the nursing home to the weedy lake-bed where Rebecca had found her father—where he had been, she was convinced, one way or another in Faye's embrace. It was one of the first mild spring days, and there had been so little snow this winter that there wasn't much melt, so sitting outside for a short while would have been pleasant if not for this between them.

  The fact that they were here together, alone, not quite looking at each other but on opposite sides of one of the worse-for-wear picnic tables still scattered around the field, marked this as an occasion of significance. Neither of them was in the habit of making such personal overtures. In fact, neither of them had made this one.

  Neither had said to the other, 'We need to talk.' Neither had suggested or agreed to the walk to this peculiar space. But here they were, and secrets wove them together, braided them apart.

  Rebecca remembered a place not at all like this, a leafy and piney wood, and it must have been a rainy day instead of a sunny one because needles of stormy light, wands of cloud had hung down among the trees. A place not at all like this place, a time not at all like this time, but something was causing her to remember.

  She realized what it was: the presence of secrets, something, someone secret. Waiting for someone secret in a wood. Someone who never came.

  'How are things with Kurt?'

  It was a strange thing to ask under the circumstances. It was also so unlike her mother to ask such a thing that Rebecca's mind went blank and her mouth wordlessly opened and shut. Her father had greeted Kurt, the few times he'd been in his company, alternately like a long-lost relative whose identity he couldn't quite pinpoint but who was indisputably somebody important, and like a complete stranger wit
h no significance whatsoever. Her mother, unfailingly polite to Kurt's face, had hardly ever mentioned him otherwise. Maybe she didn't approve of their living together, but that was sheer speculation; actually Rebecca had no idea what her mother's moral stance on that or any other subject might be.

  What could be the import of such a query now? Was it small talk, a conversational gambit intended to divert from the numerous difficult topics at hand? Or was it leading somewhere?

  'Fine,' she could say, and leave it at that. Or she could add some detail that pretended to be revealing but really

  obfuscated: 'We don't see each other very often, we're both so busy,' or 'He fenced-in the back yard last weekend so now he can get the dog he's been wanting.'

  'Not good,' she found herself confessing. 'It's not a very close relationship. We don't seem to have—I don't know, to have found each other.' Suddenly, surprisingly, the barrenness of it struck her, brought tears to her eyes.

  'You shouldn't settle for that,' her mother declared. 'There's more to life than that.'

  'Mom,' Rebecca dared to ask, 'have you been happy with Dad?'

  The answer was emphatic. 'Yes. Very.'

  'But what about Faye?' There. The name was said. Whether or not her mother had meant to be leading up to Faye, they were in her presence now.

  'More than once over the years she did her best to come between us,' Billie said in a rush, and Rebecca sat back, hugging herself, trying to be ready for whatever onslaught was to come, 'but we were stronger than she was. Stronger than she expected. Now Marshall's losing himself, and she sees her chance. I should have known.'

  'I thought you said she was dead.'

  'Nobody knows what happened to her. At least, I don't know. Maybe your father knows. Knew. We heard rumors that she was dead. He said she was dead.'

  'Rumors from whom?'

  'From people who knew her. People whose lives she ruined, or tried to. People who still loved her. Not very many people ever could stop loving Faye.'

  'How did she die?'

  'We heard more than one story, but they all had something to do with those ridiculous scarves of hers. The end got caught in the wheels of a carnival ride and strangled her. A man, or a woman ' Billie snorted 'she'd jilted stuffed it down her throat. Some underworld character she was involved with soaked it in something and held it over her nose and mouth till she suffocated.'

  'Wow,' was all Rebecca could think to say.

  Below them, under the lip of the dry lake-bowl where neither of them could yet see it, a glitter crept toward them. There was no substance to it, no core around which its sparkles and colors were organized, but it had speed and energy, vivacity and magnetism, and it knew what it wanted.

  'You said she was evil,' Rebecca said, carefully advancing the discussion. 'That's not just because Dad loved her before he loved you.' Speaking of her parents' love caused her discomfort, and she hastened ahead. 'You had other reasons?'

  'Yes.'

  Rebecca waited. When it became clear that her mother wasn't going to elaborate, she took another risk. 'If you could tell me something about her, maybe we could figure out why Dad's so afraid of her now.'

  'I know why he's afraid. I'm afraid, too. Faye always was somebody worth being afraid of.'

  'Tell me.'

  'She always went for weakness,' Billie said. 'She'd make friends with somebody when they were down and out in one way or another, convince them she was the best thing that ever happened to them and they'd just love her, they'd do anything for her, and she'd just kind of take them over, use them up, and then when she got bored she'd leave them.'

  'Did she do that to you?'

  Her mother stiffened. 'Me? No. Before she met your father, and even after she was with him, she tried to be my friend, but I saw right through her. She never got anywhere with me. Not really.'

  Remembering the story about her mother rescuing Faye in the wood, Rebecca wondered about this. But she let it go.

  'But I saw what she did to other people. I kept my distance.'

  Rebecca craved detail, yearned to fully imagine this Faye. 'Give me an example.'

  Her mother hesitated, then seemed to make a decision. 'There was this girl we worked with. Her husband beat her. Everybody suspected it, we saw the bruises, but she'd never talk about it, she was so afraid of him—ashamed, I don't know. I don't understand women like that. Faye got on her good side, persuaded her to confide in her, and then Faye went and got the husband in bed and told him everything the girl'd said. He killed her.'

  Rebecca breathed, 'Jesus.'

  Billie nodded. 'I'll always believe Faye knew exactly what she was doing. She acted shocked and horrified, cried and carried on, but I saw the look in her eyes.'

  'Why would she do that?'

  'For fun.'

  'That's hard to believe.'

  'And because she didn't have a life of her own. She didn't know who she was if she wasn't stealing pieces of other people's lives. That's what made her so appealing. It's what made her so dangerous, too.'

  'Was Dad like that? Weak and vulnerable?' Sadly, it wasn't hard to imagine.

  Billie nodded again. 'I guess he was a broken man. From the war, you know.'

  Rebecca didn't know exactly what that meant and couldn't bring herself to ask.

  'He sees her,' Billie said resentfully. 'He says she's come back, and she tells him awful things. Sometimes he thinks I'm her.' This last was particularly offensive, and obviously she could scarcely bring herself to say it. Rebecca recognized the maternal sacrifice; in some way she didn't comprehend, her mother was telling her these things for her own good.

  'More and more he doesn't know who I am either. Maybe he thinks I'm Faye, too.' This time it was Rebecca who laughed ruefully and Billie who winced.

  'But I don't look a thing like her!' her mother protested. 'She was smaller and prettier than I ever was. She was the kind of girl who made men and women turn their heads. Real nice to look at, if you didn't know what was under the surface. Like a pretty flower with poison in its heart.'

  She ought to say something complimentary about her mother's appearance. It wouldn't have been hard, for Billie Emig was a pleasant-looking woman; people might not turn their heads to stare at her, but they certainly didn't turn away, either. Instead, Rebecca was driven to ask, almost meekly, 'What did she look like?' But that wasn't sufficiently to the point, and she gathered her courage. 'Could he think—do I look anything like her?'

  Her mother's long silence gave her the answer, but she waited for the description that finally came. 'She had blonde curly hair - sometimes, when it wasn't red or black or silver. Marshall told me once he thought blonde was her natural color. She was small. She had big blue eyes. She always looked younger than she probably was, although she kept her age a secret, like a lot of other things.'

  Rebecca's next question followed of its own accord; all she had to do was stay out of the way. 'Was she my mother, Mom?'

  Billie sat very still. Rebecca heard traffic noise, her own heartbeat, a peculiar sizzling like the sound of Fourth of July sparklers setting something afire. 'She gave birth to you. I am your mother.'

  'She died when I was little,' Rebecca breathed. 'Didn't she? I remember her. I remember waiting for her to come back. She couldn't come back, because she died. It wasn't her fault.' Sorrow for the woman who had died swept her, then a fiercer sorrow for the little girl waiting.

  'She could have come back.' Billie told her grimly. 'She didn't die, not then. You might as well know everything. We were afraid she'd come back and steal you or hurt you, but she didn't. She was a selfish, headstrong, evil person, Becky, and she just flat-out left you. I wanted you. I wanted to be your mother, and I was. I am.'

  There was another silence. Several times Rebecca tried to speak, but instead ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and swallowed, taking in the bitter taste of sweet-smelling roses. At last she managed to croak, 'Am I like her?' hoping and dreading that she would be told yes.

&
nbsp; 'I don't think Faye had a self,' Billie answered slowly. 'Do you have a self, Rebecca? Do you know who you are? You're the only one who can answer that.'

  Something shot across the plane of the lake bowl as if on a glossy quivering membrane of surface tension, straight for Rebecca.

  Her mother didn't see it, didn't feel its seduction or its threat, didn't recognize Rebecca's choking as anything other than sobs. But she got to her daughter before Faye did, and wrapped her in her sturdy arms.

  'My name is Myra Larsen and I am suffering! My name is Myra Larsen and I am suffering! Ohh! Listen to me, girlie, and you might learn something!'

  Whispering, stiff as she could make herself in a chair in Myra's old room, which was still unoccupied because of The Tides' low census, Naomi Murphy reached out with one hand clawed like Myra's, then with the other, doing her best to feel the hands mittened, warm and itchy. She whispered, whispered the holy words.