Tide King

by Jen Michalski

  “Did you…want to come in? For tea?” Heidi was stunned that her lips moved and sound came out. A few packets of Lipton, probably moldly, awaited in the cupboard.

  “Oh, I can’t today. I’ve got to run. But I’m taking a raincheck.” Ms. Webster backed toward the Volkswagen, her arms wrapped around herself, gave Heidi’s father a little wave with the flick upward of her right palm. “See you tomorrow, Heidi.”

  “Bye, Ms. Webster.” She was not leaving forever—Heidi would see her the next day. And yet, as the Squareback spun around tightly on the road and zoomed away, that’s exactly what it felt like.

  Johnson

  “She’ll be home at 4:30.” They sat in the study. Palmer had the handsome carriage of a doctor—clean shaven, a tanned, lined face and wavy hair layered with silver and dark locks. “But shall we get started?”

  That afternoon, Johnson had taken off work. Kate had brought some clothes she’d picked up for him at Pierre Cardin, which he changed into at the apartment. He absently petted the soft corduroy of his fitted camel-colored blazer. She had also bought him two pairs of smoky gray wool slacks, slightly flared as was the fashion, and a mulberry-colored V-neck sweater, which he wore along with a crisp white oxford shirt. He slid the buttery soles of his new leather loafers on the Persian rug, feeling like a child at church as Kate lit a cigarette in the leather-backed chair opposite him.

  Papillary serous cystadenocarcinoma. A form of ovarian cancer, she had explained to him over dinner that night. A late-stage diagnosis from a routine checkup. She was dying as soon as she knew. It seemed so strange that she could be so composed, a black-stocking leg dangling over a knee, her hair tucked neatly into a bun, as she inhaled and exhaled through her nostrils, a half smile, reassuring, for him. The faintest frailty had begun to show, like ivy in a crack—strands of grey hair, a fold of fabric by her waist that had been filled with flesh previously. She worked four days a week at the museum, the other reserved for doctor’s appointments, treatment. How many months would the vacuum inside her continue to grow, suck in her cheeks, the fat from the bone, the moisture from her eyes?

  “Do you think there is more of this herb, in your friend’s family?” Dr. Palmer sat at his desk, palms spread on the blotter, the placid expression of a poker player.

  “It’s possible—I don’t know. I’m going to visit him.” Johnson looked at Kate. “If that’s all right.”

  “Of course.” She touched the top of his hand, withdrew. He thought he felt the tremor of her fingers, but perhaps it was the medication, the barbiturates he’d seen in the plastic amber tumbler in her purse. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  There was a knock at the study door. The cook brought tea on a silver service. She was followed by a young, dark-haired girl in plaid schoolgirl jumper, white knee socks, and patent leather Mary Janes. She did not carry herself with the slinking shyness of a grade-schooler; she strode to the left side of Palmer’s desk, piercing him with her dark eyes before gazing at them like they were curiosities in a shop window.

  “My new parents?” She clasped her hands at her waist as the cook set out the tea. Johnson concentrated on the steaming liquid filling the china rather than look back at her, eyes dull blades.

  “No.” Dr. Palmer stood up. “This is Kate Strauss and her friend, Calvin Johnson. Calvin Johnson has a lot in common with you, I think you’ll find.”

  “How old are you?” She walked to him, grabbed his palm and ran her fingers over its smoothness.

  “I’m 53.” He leaned forward as she looked in his eyes, touched his chin with clinical dispassion.

  “You are baby. According to Palmer, I am 169 years.” She stepped back, hands on her hips, rocking with pride. “I come here in 1964. I am in the last grade of your schooling here, and then what do I do? I am nine-year old girl in body, not mind.”

  “Ela’s been asked to stay on full-time at my institute after high school, for observation, but she’d like to go home.” Palmer leaned back in his chair, playing with a pen. “My wife, frankly, thinks this is a good idea. Of course, I’m reluctant to let Ela return to Poland unless…”

  “You have another subject,” Kate answered. She looked at Johnson. “Of course, it’s preposterous. Calvin can’t be a lab rat.”

  “I’ll do it.” He took her hand. If Polensky could not cure him, perhaps he could cure Kate.

  “He’ll think about it,” Kate said, blowing on her tea.

  “The herb you get from Poland, Dr. Palmer say,” Ela spoke to Calvin. “Where from Poland?”

  “I don’t know. A fellow gave it to me during the war. I don’t know where he got it from. Named Polensky. From Baltimore.”

  Her eyes widened. She nodded to Palmer. She plopped on an overstuffed chair by the fireplace with a Chips Ahoy! and her tea and attacked them hungrily.

  The room was not quite what he imagined for a girl—green walls onto which were painted murals of trees and forest creatures, glowing eyes and sharp claws grasping tree limbs. A thick brown shag carpet covered the floor. There were no toys, no dolls, but of course, she was not a girl. It was easy to forget until she looked at you, until she spoke. Ela sat on the canopy bed munching on her final Chips Ahoy! Her shoes, no bigger than his hands, rested against each other on the floor. She had explained to him about the lightning, the herb—burnette saxifrage—Stanley’s mother Safine, they understood now, taking it to America. Johnson filled in the rest. Stanley to Johnson. It all seemed so random, so unremarkable in the cosmic scheme of things. They had not saved lives, heralded a new age. They couldn’t even hurt themselves. The origin of the herb’s magic didn’t bring them closer to God, any god, but it did not push them closer to hell. They remained suspended, the frame in which the gyroscope spun wildly before them.

  “What’s wrong with us?” He sat on a desk chair made for a grade-school girl, his knees almost grazing his ears. “Is Palmer helping you?’

  “He knows nothing.” Ela shook her head derisively. “If he cannot put numbers on a sheet and make sense, it is not real. And if he cannot make money from it, it is not important. The herb with your Stanley—it is what is left of the only herb. The bewitched herb, the one my mother gave me so long ago. If you could get it to me, perhaps I can figure it out yet.”

  “You don’t want Palmer involved?” He scratched his ankle. He thought of Kate, the years he was robbed of her, the years he would be robbed of yet. “Can we test it on others?”

  “Too dangerous.” She shook her head. “It is not clear how we upset the order of the world, but we do, and more people will upset the world more.”

  “I can’t watch her die.” He pleaded with her, as if she held the key to Kate’s fate. But she didn’t; Stanley did.

  “This is only the beginning for you.” Ela stared at him. Her eyes softened, a glimmer of moisture on her rims, before they returned to that vacant place. “You wait until your first hundred years.”

  “What are you going to do with the herb?”

  “Take it back to Poland.” She pointed at him. “You get the herb. You take me to Poland. We will go back to Reszel, and I will have what my mother had to make tinctures. No one will bother us.”

  He did not mention to her that the little village she had remembered from her youth did not even exist, possibly, especially after the Nazis decimated most of Poland. But he had no other plan. If they found the herb, it should go to the person who knew the most about it, he thought.

  “How will we get to Poland?”

  “The Palmers do not want me here anymore. Mrs. Palmer is scared, think I will put spell on her. They do not understand what I want. I don’t want to make miracle drug for Americans. I want to die. I miss my mother. I miss Ferki.”

  “All right, then.” He slapped his hands together, stood up gingerly from his semi-squat. The chair had not broken, and he smiled. A chair made for him. “I’ll see if I can find old Stanley and the herb. You get us some plane tickets to Poland. Get us three now, okay? I think there mig
ht be one more.”

  “There is one more of us?” Ela looked at him incredulously. “How do you know?”

  “Stanley might have taken it, you know,” he said. But that was not what he was thinking. He was thinking of Kate, immortal, warm-fleshed, her hand in his as they ordered sirloin tips from the stewardess. “Just try to get three in case.”

  “I can’t, in good conscience, let you do something like this.” The car lurched along in Sunday evening traffic to Penn Station. He had not told Kate about Ela’s plan. It was best to spring that on her last. That when he saved her, made her immortal, he hoped she took to Eastern Europe. Kate drew a line on her upper and bottom lips before filling it in dark red. “Who knows what Palmer will want to do to you at the Institute? Blood tests, then experimental surgery? It’s a slippery slope.”

  “If there’s anything I can do to…help you.” He stared at the buildings, the New Yorkers on the sidewalk. They walked through him, their orbits collapsing into his, and he would always know their pains and joys. The solace of humanity is that pain is temporary. There is always death. But that pain had to go somewhere. He wondered if it went to people like him, like Ela.

  “Calvin, I’m scared.” She clenched his hand. He could feel the bones in her fingers, her wrist. He tried to remember if he had always felt them so starkly. “My legacy here…I’m not nearly finished at the museum. My boys…one is still in college. I want to see them get married, have their own children.”

  “I’ve got nothing to lose.” He placed his hand on her thigh. Even in her fear, he desired her. He would rip open his throat so that she could crawl inside, live in him, a pupae, until his or her transformation was complete. “I’ll find Stanley Polensky. I’ll get the herb, and this will fix itself.”

  “Your optimism is always endearing.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “But do you expect him to believe you, just give you his knowledge, or the herb, if he even has it?”

  “I don’t know.” He smelled her hair. She always smelled of young, fresh flowers, but also of propriety. “You did.”

  “I’m not the best sample from which to draw.” The cab pulled up to Penn Station. She had given him money for a ticket, for expenses. More than he thought he needed.

  “Why don’t you have dinner with me?” He kissed the top of her head. “Or we could get a hotel…”

  “I’m having dinner with my husband. I really need to get going. It’ll take an hour to get uptown.” She sat up straight, dabbed the corner of her lips with her pinky finger. He dimly expected, in some way, that she would be here for him, in New York, even in dying, when he got back. And, to come back, he still needed to believe it.

  “I love you, Kate.” He took her face in his heads. Her lips seemed fuller as he pressed them to his. Disappointment? Resignation? Possibly medication. “I won’t be long, I promise.”

  “Hurry back, darling. Be safe.” She smiled, ran her hand the length of his face. Then, he watched the back of her head, exposed in the window of the cab, disappear uptown.

  Heidi

  “This is my favorite time of the year.” Ms. Webster explained to her twelfth-grade honors English class. Heidi wondered why; it was the end of January. “Because we get to do group projects.”

  Heidi stared at her notebook until she thought she would burn a hole through it. Group projects were the equivalent, she thought, of choosing teams for gym, and she was always chosen last. She couldn’t believe Ms. Webster would have such a tin ear for classroom politics. Whoever she wound up with, at any rate, she would be assured of doing more than her fair share—one, because anything less than an A was unacceptable to her, and two, because taking on more than her share had been the only way to present her as an appealing member of any group that didn’t consist only of the school’s downtrodden.

  “Before you get all excited, I should introduce a caveat—I will be doing the pairing. I have taken the liberty of already pairing everyone with someone on the basis of your strengths and weaknesses so everyone will participate in the strongest groups possible. And, I have also chosen your topics.” Ms. Webster paced the front of the room, hands in her khakis. “I’ve given this a great deal of thought, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. First group—Oliver Truitt and Heidi Polensky will do T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”

  There was a chortle from the left edge of class, where Oliver Truitt and Shauna Beck sat with the jocks and cheerleaders, and Ms. Webster frowned and continued reading the lists of groups and authors. But Heidi could no longer hear them. She snuck a glance at the back of Oliver’s curly head and considered whether she could ask Ms. Webster to change the assignments. Not that there was any way now, not without it looking suspicious or bad or crazy.

  She didn’t know whether Ms. Webster simply paired the over-achieving Heidi with the clearly underachieving Oliver or whether she had some other sort of matchmaking designs in mind. Not that Heidi had a chance. Oliver Truitt, for a small-town hick, had a distinctly suburban style that everyone envied. His father, who was in upper management at the chemical plant in nearby Delaware, outfitted his family and his home handsomely. The Truitts often went on shopping excursions in Annapolis, Baltimore—even Philadelphia—to find the latest in designer fashions.

  Yet Oliver could not be pinned down by a store receipt. He was a forerunner of “shabby chic” before people in town even knew how to pronounce “chic.” His curly hair grew over his eyes and ears like a shaggy mutt, although Stacey Benkin’s mom often referred to his coif as a “JFK Jr.” He wore ratty t-shirts under expensive Ralph Lauren oxford shirts that were left untucked underneath Merino wool sweaters. His jeans were ripped strategically at the knee, and his Adidas were always untying themselves. He was an effortless god of a boy, and Heidi had no more business having a crush on him than she did Robert Redford.

  However, even if it was more out of cluelessness than chivalry (for a jock, Oliver was a real space cadet), he did not tease her like the others. In fact, he always acted as if she was a perfectly normal human being, deserving of polite and sometimes extended conversation. After class, Oliver walked over to her desk and punched her lightly on the shoulder.

  “Hey partner.” He smiled. “I guess I lucked out, huh? You want to go to the library later today and get some source materials?”

  “I could.” She nodded. She knew where everything was; it would certainly be the fastest and most efficient use of their time.

  “So you want to me to pick you up, or do you want to meet there?”

  “Oh—you meant together.” She felt a lump the size of an egg in her throat that she hoped wasn’t lasagna from lunch.

  “Yeah. How about we go grab a bite to eat beforehand? I’ve got basketball practice, but I can meet you at six-thirty. How about Taco Olé?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” she answered. Other than from Ms. Webster, Heidi had kept her house a well-guarded secret, fearing that Shauna and her friends would egg it, or worse. She insisted that her father take a long, winding route home from school every day, one in which she could tell, on the open country roads, whether someone followed. She never put her address on her backpack or in her books. And she would never let Oliver come to the house to pick her up, no matter how much she wanted to ride alone with him in his Mustang, show her father she was popular—maybe—or at least had friends, other than “the donut boy at the library,” as her father called Darren—“softer than an éclair.”

  Oliver chucked her on the chin, almost knocking her to the ground in her weak-kneed surprise, and then jogged out of the room, leaving only a whiff of cologne behind. She stood up and didn’t bother to wait for the class to empty. She strode to her locker in a daze, the buzz of the hallways’ white noise around her, and when she climbed into the truck cab at 2:45, Stanley sat up straight in his seat.

  “Well.” He lit a cigarette and muscled the stick shiftinto submission. “You’re late.”

  “Dad, I need you to drive me to the Taco Olé toni
ght at six-thirty,” she said, ignoring him, asserting herself in such a way that her father snorted but, for once, kept his mouth shut. “I have work to do.”

  Oliver was late, and she was very early. Early enough to study the menu and see what she could get for dinner with a dollar ten, the amount her father had scraped from the pockets of his two pairs of pants. She could get one large taco and a cup of potato olés, but no drink. She spread her notebook and papers on the table and went through the basic outline of a presentation she had scribbled down at home. She’d read Prufrock many times, had jotted various plans of attack they could pursue. She could do all the work in a few days, complete construction visuals and Oliver’s own neatly written index cards, which he would merely have to read to the class.

  But Ms. Webster had not assigned them together to do that—she had wanted Oliver to care about something other than baseball and cars and Shauna—to see the love of the world, of learning, through another student’s eyes. Or at least prepare him for the workload of college. And maybe, Ms. Webster figured, Heidi would taste a glimpse of the leisurely life of the senior class’s royalty, the non-shit world.

  “You look prepared.” Oliver appeared, smelling like the soap in the high school locker room showers, clad in a t-shirt, running shorts, and flip flops, even though it was still a little chilly—January, to be exact. “You eat yet?”

  She shook her head, suddenly not very hungry, and followed him to the counter, where he ordered three tacos, two potato olés, a large Pepsi, and one cinnamon chalupa.

  “What do you want?” He nodded to her as she fumbled for the change her father had thrust into her hand, although with lint and a bent nail. “Don’t worry; I’m buying.”

  She ordered a taco and a diet Pepsi, and Oliver added to her order a cup of potato olés and a cinnamon chalupa.

  “God, I hate when girls don’t eat,” he explained as he guided the overloaded plastic tray to their table. “And then Shauna pukes it right out in the women’s room. You seem too smart to do that kind of shit, though.”