The Floating World

by Babst, C. Morgan

  Cora took her hands back. “If you want to call it sick—if you want me to say I’ll get help if I get that way again—then yes, sure, I’ll get help. But it doesn’t help me to think of it as a sickness.” She turned her face towards the windows, to the curtains open to the day. “It doesn’t help me to believe I don’t have control, even if I don’t. It doesn’t help to look away, to pretend that it’s all okay, that you can ignore it. That’s what got us into this mess, isn’t it? Pretending everything was fine. Pretending the levees could protect us, that the storms wouldn’t come.”

  “Oh, honey. I am so sorry,” Tess said. She was picking at her nails, she realized—always dirty now that the work on the house had started. She put her hands in her pockets. “We never should have left you. We abandoned you.”

  “No,” Cora said. “I chose to stay. And now I’ve chosen to leave. What happened there, after—” She paused, looking to the stairs, where the Looney Tunes theme song drifted faintly from the upper rooms.

  “You don’t have to talk about it, honey, if you don’t want to. I know about Reyna. I know how sick she was. I know the house burned down.”

  “I can tell you,” Cora said. “If you want to hear.”

  It almost sounded like a dare. Tess looked at her, trying to read from her face whether she actually wanted to talk, whether she needed to. She didn’t think she could stand to hear more than what Troy had told her. A mother off her meds in a disaster. Traumatized children. A shotgun. A silence. She had gone back to the house on Esplanade to look at the pockmarks on the upstairs ceiling where the birdshot had entered the plaster. She had seen the bloody water stain on the floor that Troy said came from a wound in his arm. Troy had said that Reyna was only unconscious when he brought her to the Red Cross. She wanted to believe it. Cora looked at her patiently, her eyes open, her face wide.

  “That’s alright,” Tess said.

  Cora nodded. “Okay. But you have to understand that with what I experienced—I need to stay away for a while.”

  Tess curled her fingers up around Cora’s, nodded. “I understand. It’s completely normal, actually. But I want you to come back, honey. Where we can get you treated for PTSD, where I can take care of you. I can see that you feel good right now. I know this—” She swept her hand around the room, at the upright piano and the saccharine paintings of dogs and flowers and the fire going in the fireplace. “You’re comfortable here. They’re taking good care of you. But pretending—”

  She stopped herself. She’d been going to say that Cora needed to face reality, that running away solved nothing, but she realized in time that that was exactly what Cora had been saying. Evacuation—wasn’t that how all this had started?

  “I wish you’d let me look after you. You know—I told you on the phone that I’m staying at Augie’s now. You could have the bedroom you slept in when you were there with Mrs. Randsell. Didn’t you say yourself that it was like heaven? Imagine how nice it is now, with the air-conditioning on. Fall has come, and it is so beautiful just to sit in the garden.”

  Cora shook her head.

  “At least find someone to talk to, honey. It’s hard to work through a trauma alone.”

  “I’m not alone.”

  “No, that’s right.” She listened through the ceiling to the boys rearranging themselves on the second floor. “You enjoy babysitting the children?”

  Cora smiled again, narrowed her eyes at her, then put her hands on her thighs and stood up. “I’ve got cooking to do,” she said. “You’ll come?”

  JOE WISHED DEL had come with him for this. Last time he had had everyone there. Tess had done all the talking while Sister Cecelia tapped her pen against the edge of her old oak desk. Then, it had been inevitable, like stepping onto a moving sidewalk in an airport. Once you’d taken the first step, you weren’t getting off until you’d reached the end.

  All he could see now were exits. They were clearly marked over each doorway, red glowing signs that jarred in the context of pink upholstery and romantic still lifes. The management tried hard to hide the institutional nature of the place; in the front hall, an old woman sang along with a therapist at the flower-bedecked grand piano, but there was no escaping fire codes, or nurses, for that matter, or the smells of industrially prepared food and urine and bleach.

  The receptionist looked at him, kindly, from across the desk. “Sorry it’s taking a while. You know how it goes—start the day off on the wrong foot and it’s hard to get right again.”

  He nodded.

  “Can I get you something? Water? A Coke?”

  He could still taste that morning’s eggs in his mouth. “I am a little thirsty, thank you.”

  She stood and tugged at the miniskirt she was wearing under her sweater set.

  “Just a little water would be nice.”

  The receptionist shuffled down the long tiled hall. The noise of the place seemed to get louder once he was alone. Television voices argued in the long succession of rooms. Wheelchairs squeaked on floorboards. Nurses chattered. A microwave hummed and beeped. Beside the door to the director’s office, a grandfather clock swept away the seconds with its long brass pendulum, beat after steady beat. His heart was good. Actually, Mark had teased him about it at his last physical, saying that if Joe was the only person in the city who didn’t need Lipitor, he must be doing something wrong. His father’s heart was good too, and his maternal grandmother had lived to be one hundred and three. He had thirty years left in him then, given the state of modern medicine and provided he wasn’t broadsided on the bridge and sent over into the drink. Thirty years was a long time, as long as he and Tess had been married, as long as he’d lived before he’d gotten his first show. There was enough time in thirty years to build something, fix something, become something, destroy something. Enough time to do it over again.

  And he would have to do it again. This would force his hand. No other reason to be here, sacrifice his father’s happiness, pay them money he didn’t have. He would exercise his power of attorney and sell the cabin and the trees, he supposed—property that had been in their family for nearly two hundred years. He wouldn’t get any trouble from Vin. Vin would be overjoyed to see the land parceled into lots, developed; he would probably buy himself a new truck, pay off the kids’ student loans. Meanwhile, with his birthright, Joe could buy a derelict little house somewhere to fix up, in the Marigny maybe, but he’d be willing to go farther out. Something with slaves’ quarters behind it which he could ream out like a juice orange and use for a studio. Driving over, he had felt the ghost of Tess sitting in the passenger seat, nodding her approval. It’s the best thing for all involved.

  The receptionist came back with the water in a Mardi Gras cup incised with a drawing of the Greek Revival plantation home that served as the facility’s main building. The eponymous “Belle Maison.” He took a sip and watched her bend over to peek through the director’s door.

  She turned around, nodding. “He’s ready for you now.”

  Joe got up, watching the water in his cup tremble.

  The director looked up from a file as Joe walked in, adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses. “Lewy Body, I hear.” He extended his hand, and Joe shook it. “Please, take a seat.”

  Joe sat.

  “That’s a rough one, isn’t it.” The director hiked up his slacks and sat down again behind his desk. “Worst of both worlds—Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s—and then there are the periods of lucidity that show up just to throw you off your game.”

  “We treasure them, actually,” Joe said, though he was relieved not to have to explain.

  “Certainly. It can be a relief, but I personally find it unsettling, like seeing a ghost.”

  “He’s not dead yet.”

  “I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot, here.” The director chortled, his dyed hair shifting on his scalp. “I just meant to reassure you that we do understand your situation—I know it was a concern of yours. But we know this disease. Our staff is fully
trained to deal with all of the disorders the elderly face. There’ll be no Valium here.” He waggled his finger as if Joe had requested a personal dose. “And no restraints, never restraints. We are all about calm understanding and compassion. Those are our bywords. Our job is to give you the peace of mind of knowing that your father is comfortable and cared for somewhere he may come to call home.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  The director shook his head. “I assure you it can happen. I’m not saying the transition is an easy one, but being with peers, having every need met—it can go a long way.”

  Joe was shaking his head. “He doesn’t even feel at home in the house he grew up in, with his family all around him. I want to go home, I want to go home. And you can drive him around, make a big show of arriving, show him his room, his dentures, but it’s still a big show, isn’t it. It’s all a trick.”

  “That’s the paranoia,” the director said gently. “The search for home, it’s very common. And then, for some, there are the hallucinations—of loved ones, sometimes, who appear only to vanish again. It’s heartbreaking. But I truly think it’s harder for the caregiver than it is for the patient. They forget; it’s you who remembers. And sometimes, a separation can be healing. Away from the pain of those who love them, away from the anxiety—you’d be surprised at the improvement.”

  Joe sighed and shook his head. That was where they seemed to be headed: Divorce. Departure. Separation. Tess flying off to collect their missing daughter, bullheaded and alone. They had all gotten so far from one another, and it filled him with a terror of the same sort he’d felt watching John Glenn being launched into space on the grainy little TV in his parents’ den. He’d imagined the tight little box being soldered shut around him, the fast acceleration as the man was flung, flaming, into the sky where no one was and no one could reach him, where, if something failed, even help could not go, where, if something failed, he would remain alone until his food ran out, or his air, from where there was absolutely no chance of coming home.

  “Getting them set in new routines can help as well. Your father was a carpenter?”

  “A cabinetmaker.”

  “If he wishes to, he can sign up for crafts classes. Work with his hands.”

  Friendship bracelets, the man meant. They’d have Vincent Boisdoré making elastic-band pot holders and “stained glass windows” out of Popsicle sticks and paste. Joe saw his father working to thread beads on a string. Saw his hands start to tremble, the beads fly, skittering across the floor.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Joe said, making to stand.

  “Now, wait—” The director stood up in a crouch, his hand out, quelling the air. “Please. Let’s take a step back. Your instinct to come to us was a good one. You need a respite, you said, and your father needs more care than you can provide. Has this changed?”

  Joe sat back down and looked through the window. Out on the lawn, old folks were sitting with their aids around a pond. A reflection of the pink plantation house wavered on the surface of the water, bathing their faces in rose-colored light. Old men were walking out among the beds of red flowers, while one of the therapists played guitar. Joe watched a woman lift her hand to catch a golden leaf as it drifted down from a towering gingko.

  “You notice our tree?” the director said. “Being from Tucson, I hadn’t encountered one before. Living fossils they call them. Their longevity is phenomenal. Several even survived the A-bomb at Hiroshima. And of course, there is some evidence to support the belief that their seeds support memory and cognitive function. I see it as a kind of mascot for the place.”

  Joe nodded as the tree tossed its golden mane.

  “Obviously it is your choice,” the director said. “But I must tell you that I do believe your father would do well here. The best way to honor him is to live your own life.”

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  The old woman held the leaf in front of her face as if she were reading the veins.

  “Alright.” Joe sat back down in his chair. “Alright.”

  DEL WALKED ALONG the wire fence that separated the property from the spread next door, where Sol was driving his four-wheeler between the cattle pastures. The strong wind that had been blowing since morning had pushed drifts of pine straw against the chicken wire, and she kicked at the piles, watching the breeze toy with the twigs and needles. She felt jittery, overcaffeinated, and she kept glancing back at Papie on the screen porch whittling at one of the Tess sculptures she’d rescued from the burn pile. Every so often the breeze brought her the sound of his knife. She felt like she was waiting for something—that there was something she needed to remember or to know.

  She was almost to the dead pecan when, for no reason, she decided to run. She sprinted, leapt over a log, caught her foot on something and landed in the sand and pine needles on the other side. Her scraped hands burned. She brought them up to her face and turned over, pillowed her head on her arms and lay there, listening to the blood throb in her veins.

  She had come through something, she realized. Her mother hadn’t let her go with her to find Cora, but Cora had been found. All the fires had died down. Everything moved on, and no matter how you tried to stop it, the earth kept spinning in the infinite sky. Above her, the pecan towered, its broken trunk stabbing at the clouds like the tip of a shivered lance. Suddenly, the wind began to gust, but rather than being shaken by it, the limbless tree stood steadily while the sky vibrated around it.

  She thought of the little figure of Fuji wrapped inside the giant wave, the column of water rigid around the leaping carp. That was the sort of thing she would make when she got down to work, she realized, if she could somehow translate it into furniture. It wouldn’t be Art Nouveau or Arts & Crafts, not Majorelle, not Mallard, not Theodule or Homer or Vincent Boisdoré. She would not bend chaos around structure, nor make structure out of chaos. She wouldn’t make armoires shaped by symmetrical whiplash vines, nor shape pine boughs around the four posts of a bed. She wasn’t sure how she would do it, but there would be more tension, a hint of threat, petrified and polished. Neither nature nor structure, in the end, could win.

  She scooted herself up and combed her fingers through her hair. On the other side of the fence, the cattle, lying down, had matted the weeds in the pasture in beautiful, complicated patterns. She took her notebook out of her sweatshirt pocket and began to sketch, and she kept drawing until she heard Papie stand up from the rocking chair. The porch light went on. A flock of birds came tumbling in from the north, fighting for headway, wings folded, wings open, dipping, rising, circling each other. A clutch of them alit on the top of the pecan, then took off again, black darts against the sky.

  TESS WATCHED CORA move around the kitchen as she peeled vegetables, tied herbs together with string. On the worn table was her prep list, the menu of celeriac soup, roasted beet and parsnip salad, osso bucco with risotto and parsley root gremolata, broken into its component parts: chop mise, simmer stock, roast veg, sear off shanks. Cora kept the fingers of her left hand bunched as her right hand, thumb and fore-knuckle around the blade of her chef’s knife, chopped carrot at a blistering pace, and when Troy came back from work, she held out a taste of vinaigrette to him, her hand cupped under the spoon. She seems inhabited were the words Tess kept thinking. She had been vacant in New Orleans, but now she had returned to herself, and this time, it wasn’t the way summer tenants return, throwing their suitcases on the beds and tracking sand into the floors; her actions were considered, careful, as though she were planning to stay. She bruised the thyme between her fingers and smelled it. She pulled the mitts on before opening the oven, and when she opened the lid of the big earthenware casserole, she leaned back away from the rich, wine-drenched steam.

  Troy went into the dining room to set the table, and Tess followed him, took the silverware, and went around behind him as he put down the napkins, the wineglasses.

  “Is she taking medication?” she said qui
etly, as she heard the oven open and a racket resumed in the kitchen.

  He looked over his shoulder. “Not that I know about. But I don’t pry.”

  Tess nodded. She placed a fork and a salad fork on top of a folded maroon napkin.

  “I didn’t expect,” Troy continued. “When they called from the school, I thought this was going to be temporary. I was just glad I could help out, but how she’d be—” He put down two wineglasses at once, distracted, off-kilter. “I expected bad, but what she was was just strange, like a shipwrecked Martian, thinks they’re never going to see another soul again. Then, just like that—” He snapped his fingers. “—she stopped being strange, stopped being anything. We drive up here, I walk her up to the door, holding her arm so she won’t fall down, and the kids rush out to hug her, Bea gives her a glass of milk and a piece of fruit, and all of a sudden, she’s back in the land of the living.”

  Tess nodded. “What do you think changed?”

  “You know, when we talked on the phone—” Troy paused, his pink tongue sliding out over his upper lip. “I know you’re meaning to take her back to New Orleans with you, but I don’t think she’s going to want to go. She’s looking for work here.”

  “Yes,” Tess said. “She told me she was planning to stay.”

  “There’s the boys to think about too—they take to her. And they need all the people they can get, seeing as how their mama’s not coming back.”

  “Have you told them?”

  Troy put down the final two glasses and looked at them, adjusted their placement on the tablecloth. “I think Tyrone knows.”

  “You do have to tell them, Troy. There is nothing harder. Very little that’s harder than that. But they need to know.”

  “I know.”

  “Well.” Tess sighed. “At least she let me come.”

  “Yes. I was as surprised as you.”

  “I already called the airline.” She lay down the last knife and straightened herself up. “I’m going back tonight. I don’t think I’m helping here.”