by Melanie Tem
The Tides
Melanie Tem
Leisure Books, New York City
A LEISURE BOOKS®
August 1999
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
276 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to The publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."
Copyright © 1996 by Melanie Tem
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
ISBN 0-8439-4574-5
The name "Leisure Books" and the stylized "L" with design are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
This is for my father, John Kubachko, 191293,
himself until the end.
Thanks, Daddy.
And for Steve, who knows who he is
Acknowledgments
My thanks to:
my agent, Richard Curtis, for his ongoing support, guidance, and inspiration;
my husband and first-line editor par excellence, Steve Rasnic Tem;
Roberta Robertson, for the story that inspired the title;
and the residents and staff of Westland Manor Nursing Center and Everett Court Community.
Chapter 1
'Faye?'
That first evening when Faye came into his room - uninvited, unless he'd finally given off some terrible, mysterious summons as he'd been so afraid of doing twenty-eight years ago when she'd left him and the baby; unwelcome, except that his heart leaped in just that ancient and immediate way - Marshall stared and roared her name.
`Faye!'
Funny how he knew precisely, without even pausing to figure it, how long it had been since Faye had vanished, and what her relationship had been to him and their child, and what she'd left behind. He'd never heard from her again, but he'd imagined he would, with trepidation and shameful hope kept himself alert for signs. Funny how clearly he could picture her: piquant face, alabaster skin, the longest nails he'd ever seen on a woman shaped and polished into beautiful claws, clothes always thoughtfully chosen and arranged to appear carefree. He could hear her voice as if she were calling him now, which she was, crooning to him, singing; the sweetness of her voice, speaking and singing, had often both belied and brought out the nasty things she said, the raunchy things she sang.
He could smell her flowery fragrance. He could taste and feel her as though she were in his arms, as though her clawed fingers were at his throat.
She was endangering their daughter. 'I've got my own life to live,' she'd flung at him more than once, screamed or sung at the baby. At least once she'd raised her hand; he'd stepped in just in time, and the blow, incompletely deflected, had shocked him when she'd slapped his forearm and spun away, not crying, not apologizing. Singing.
Funny how clear and present all that was. And often these days, Marshall couldn't remember what he'd had for breakfast, couldn't keep straight in his mind who anyone was to him. Often he had the sense that who he was, the person he'd have thought he'd come to know over the span of his lifetime - how long? seventy years? - was permeable and changeable. Perhaps it always had been thus. Perhaps he never had known for certain who he was.
He held onto the knowledge of his own name Marshall Emig repeating it as though that told him something, but really it didn't. Often he was frightened, sad. Sometimes, though, he merely let what would happen happen, and then he would come back into this reality or some other with the sense of having accrued new memories he couldn't quite place.
But he remembered Faye.
Faye was here now.
'Oh. Faye'
If Billie had been there - his wife; his companion; in his life infinitely longer than Faye had been, except that Faye had never really left his life although he'd tried to make her she'd have understood right away, and she'd have been as upset as he was to see Faye. So for her sake and because of the guilt, for his ownhe was glad Billie was gone somewhere when it happened. He was always unsettled when Billie wasn't there, always had been and lately it was worse. He used to be able to disguise how dependent he was on Billie for security and stability, but he didn't think he was so good at that anymore.
Maybe that was why Faye had reappeared. Because his mind kept pulling itself loose from the moorings he and Billie together had painstakingly constructed. Because he couldn't be counted on to remember who he was.
Faye -- the memory of Faye; the dread of Faye; the insinuation and memory and, yes (he didn't understand it himself, could scarcely tolerate it) his love of Faye that had always been between them — had hurt Billie too much over the years. He had always done everything in his power to protect Billie from Faye, but he knew that sometimes it hadn't been enough. This time he would do whatever it took.
Rebecca was there with him. Becky, his daughter -- although it was hard for Marshall to believe in any solid way, to remember that he believed, that this slight blonde young woman with the crowded eyes was the same person as the child whose raising had so consumed him for so many years. Years which now, looking back, considering them as a portion, a fraction of his life, seemed so few, so quick.
Was she, in fact, the same person as the girl-child he'd raised? Was he himself the same person as when he'd been little else but her daddy? Was he the same person as when he himself had been a child -- so long ago, a span of time beyond human comprehension, like the age of the universe (yet with an immediacy like the burst of flavor from a capsule punctured by the teeth). Was he the same person as when he'd been with Faye? Was this really Rebecca? What did 'really Rebecca' mean?
Always given to moody rumination, Marshall could now wander among these thoughts and bits of thoughts for hours, days, periods of time without demarcation. The reality that stretched outward from himself, to which his physical senses provided access and from which they collected data his brain was supposed to process, was showing itself to be considerably less engaging than the reality that stretched inward, behind his eyes and ears and tongue, under his mind, the back-of his head expanding, the root of his brain. Many people inhabited the vast bowl-shaped space there, sometimes firm and dry, sometimes shimmering as if with tides.
A boy in a steel town on the yellow-hazed bank of the Monongahela River: no sensation of growing up there, of passing through, but of being there, being that boy. Going last night and again tonight and again tomorrow night down the steep hill to the Club to retrieve Pop, then back up the hill, Pop staggering and singing, home.
A young man friends with another young man named Windy Curtis, wrestling each other, lifting weights together, shyly double dating. Windy Curtis always smelled of fish no matter how much cologne he used, and he used a lot. Marshall's nose wrinkled and his head ached from it. The time as Windy's pal, perhaps three years, was the only spell of comradeship Marshall had ever known, and it was as present as it ever had been, though taking place this time in that space behind the boundary through which he looked out on the world as if through the windshield of an enormous and fully loaded truck, Windy as three-dimensional as ever. And Marshall was no longer the boy, the son; he no longer lived in the yellow town. Windy's friend was who he was. The two of them did everything together.
Faye's lover. God, he was Faye's lover, consumingly, but she, somehow, was not his. Faye's husband. And then she was gone.
Rebecca's father. Billie's husband. Clerk and then manager of
retail clothing stores, work he didn't find especially rewarding but didn't mind, incorporated into his experience of himself because it was part of how to be father of Rebecca, husband of Billie, one of the many men Faye had taken over and passed through. Marshall Emig.
Not infrequently he did not recognize his daughter when she entered his field of vision. Sometimes he knew she was someone who mattered, but he didn't have a name for what she was to him. Sometimes she was an utter stranger. Both these perceptions had truth to them, as did his equally frequent and equally substantiated apprehensions that she was his daughter.
He knew her name perfectly well, of course, and could recount episodes out of their shared histories. Sometimes - and Marshall thought these moments were increasingly precious as his mind became more and more confused - he absolutely basked in their father-daughter love.
Maybe it was a trick. Maybe they were tricking him. Maybe the assumption that you could recognize anybody, that a person had a core identity which remained constant and discernible over time and place and circumstance, was a ruse. Or, at best, a construct which he was not required to accept anymore — was, in fact, incapable of accepting as the tidal spaces opened up behind the face the outer world saw.
Somebody was always watching him. If it wasn't his wife or his daughter, it was somebody. Every once in a
while he got away, and the sense of freedom when he wasn't under their gaze could be exhilarating, until he considered what it meant about his life that he felt freed when what he really was was lost; what it said about him that just being out on the sidewalk or among trees by himself made him feel freed; pretty pitiful, when you thought about it.
That evening he'd been haphazardly plotting to escape, but he couldn't really keep his mind on it and he doubted he would have done it, even if Faye hadn't shown up. Where would he go? (Sometimes he knew, but he couldn't have said, as if the imagined destination didn't have a name.) Faye being here should have made him want even more to escape. Instead, it made him want to stay. Did Billie know that? He would never tell Billie. It would terrify her. It would break her heart.
When Faye whizzed in as if she owned the place, scarves flying and prettily gauzing her face, Rebecca was on duty with him. If he had done one thing right with Rebecca it had been to keep from her any knowledge of Faye. She didn't recognize the name he shouted. She didn't even recognize that it was a name. Marshall, her father, was glad of that. But Marshall was afraid of facing Faye alone. He never had been any match for her. If she hadn't left him, he never would have had the strength to leave hers even though he'd known at the time and knew even more clearly looking back that staying with her would have killed him and probably would have killed their child. 'Faye!' he bellowed again, or maybe it was just the one time reverberating in his mind the way words spoken or thought often did now.
Rebecca looked up in alarm from the papers spread out on the little table. What was she doing there, anyway?
Then she got to her feet — wearily, he thought, concerned — and came toward him. 'Dad? What's wrong?'
Faye wasn't exactly gone, but she wasn't exactly there anymore, either. Gauze from her scarves remained, around the lights, around the face of the young blonde woman leaning too close over him. He pulled back, raised his hand. In her eyes he saw Faye.
Now she had one hand on each arm of his chair, trapping him there as if her body were a lid and he in a box. She wasn't very big. He knew her from somewhere. He'd have to push up against her in order to free himself, maybe hit her, even knock her down, maybe hurt her. Maybe hurt Faye, once and for all; it wouldn't be the first time he'd wanted to hurt her, but it would be the first time he'd followed through, and the thought gave him energy and direction.
He readied himself. (He knew her from somewhere. She was somebody important to him. She was his daughter. She was Becky.)
When she said, 'There's nothing to be afraid of, Dad,' he believed her, but he couldn't allow her to put him in a cage like that. ''Come on,' Rebecca said to him, smiling. She'd always had such a pretty smile, more guarded than her mother's, less brilliant and easy, which was a good indication of her character but made him yearn for her mother as a young woman every time she smiled at him. She put her hand on his arm, but she'd straightened up now and he didn't feel so trapped, and he would never hurt her.
Now he was paralyzed, imprisoned in his chair by the knowledge that he had been prepared to hurt her, had been designing ways to hurt her for his own benefit. The need to protect his child, the drive to do what was best for her no matter what the cost to him, he had always considered one of the most primitive of instincts. He had, in fact, sacrificed a significant share of his own happiness in order not to hurt her. It was not that he begrudged her that; that's what fathers were supposed to do. But could it be that there were instincts even more primal that would rise out of the mush of his mind now like nightcrawlers out of rain-soaked soil? Something was wrong with his mind. He stared at his daughter in horror.
'Come on, Dad,' she said gently.
Marshall was certain she had said that before, she had just said that. Why was she repeating herself? He had heard her the first time. He had not understood what she wanted; he still didn't understand what she wanted, but repeating herself wasn't going to help; the problem was that she wasn't being clear. He scowled.
Rebecca stood up, away from him (relief, but also a feeling of abandonment, of imminent abandonment: would she really leave him alone? How would he survive alone?). 'Let's go for a walk. You can help me make rounds.'
He had no idea what she was talking about, and he did not care for her patronizing tone. Nonetheless, Marshall acquiesced, happy to sacrifice his own happiness for his child's. He knew how to do that. She took his arm and walked close beside him, as if they were a young couple out for a stroll in the spring sunshine. Was it spring? Marshall thought it was spring. Was it evening?
Marshall was proud to have such a pretty young lady on his arm, his own lovely daughter Rebecca for all the world to see. For Faye to see.
As they made their way out of the room into a hall, where bluish-white fluorescent lights rippled and dazzled off white floors and white walls, Marshall had the sensation of gauze trailing across his face, touching just the thinnest layer of his skin and flesh, and it was light enough to tickle and tease, rough enough to hurt. He flinched away. He smelled a flowery odor that was naggingly familiar and evocative. But he didn't say anything. The human heart requires secrets; Faye had taught him that.
Rebecca spat, 'Look at that,' and stopped short.
Marshall looked, saw innumerable things that could have accounted for her distress - holes in the linoleum that turned out to be only darker squares that turned out to be holes after all; doorways that listed; a man with his zipper open.
Rebecca had let go of him to take a pen and notebook out of her pocket. She scribbled something on what he could see was a list covering most of the page. He couldn't make out what she wrote, and he was curious, a bit wary; was she writing something about him? When she reached for the handrail and flipped it halfway off the wall he saw that all its screws on one end were missing, and the bracket clattered onto the floor. He bent to pick it up, hefted it in his hands. 'I'll fix it for you,' he offered.
He saw her start to refuse. Then she looked at him. 'That'd be great, Dad. Do you think you could?'
'I expect I could manage a job of this magnitude,' he advised her with studied irony, and to his gratification she smiled. She had a pretty smile, if she could just let herself go. But maybe it was a good thing she didn't.
She put her notebook and pen away and took his arm again, hugging it to her. They made their way along a corridor whose length, breadth, direction, and function he found inscrutable. They were in a hospital, he thought, and then fleetingly reme m bered: This was a nursing home. The phrase appalled him, then slid away.
Behind and above them, where neither of them noticed - and producing such a slight distortion in light, sound, and air
quality that Rebecca wouldn't have thought much of it anyway, though Marshall would — Faye followed them. She'd just got here, and she still found the sheer novelty of it energizing, but she hadn't come all this way, gone to all this trouble, just for the buzz. She liked this place. There were opportunities everywhere. There'd be plenty to keep her amused while she waited for her chance at the real prize. But patience had never been Faye's strong suit. She wouldn't just sit on her hands.
Marshall was shocked that there were so many people out here, and uneasily he wondered if he was supposed to know any of them. Actually, not a few of them did look familiar, but one of the reasons he'd always had trouble with names was that the world's population (what he'd seen of it, which wasn't much; keenly he regretted not having traveled more, knew he never would now, thought maybe he would, maybe he would go to Greece, he'd always wanted to go to Greece, he would talk to Billie about it when she got back, there was no reason they couldn't go to Greece, they had plenty of money and plenty of time) was made up of types. Physical types. Psychological types. Marshall had made something of a study of the world's types. Consequently, he had difficulty distinguishing one individual from another, and often didn't see much point in doing so.