by Melanie Tem
A cheat, a trick. A trick of the light and atmosphere, certainly, that had caused her to feel tides where there were none, see debris far different from the paper sacks and soft-drink cans and occasional used condoms that Gordon and Dave cleaned up out here every once in a while. A trick of her own mind, frayed by overwork and worry, obsession and prolonged insufficient sleep. But a trick, also, perpetrated on her from some source just outside herself.
She could not stay out here anymore. She could not think about this anymore. She scrambled out of the depression and hurried across the field. The back door of The Tides would be locked now, unless Gordon had propped it open again, and she went around one end of the building toward the front.
Through her physical and emotional discomfort, intense by this time, her attention was caught by a mark on the wall that she was sure had not been there before. Maybe eighteen inches higher than the foundation, it created a demarcation below which the brick was noticeably darker than above.
Out of professional obligation, she stopped in what had become nearly a headlong rush and crouched to run her fingers over the darker brick. It was wet. She straightened, forced herself to walk more slowly around the corner of the building. The moisture mark wasn't consistent, faded altogether in some places and fairly dripping in others. She could detect no obvious source for it, nor any actual damage. She'd have Dave check it out in the morning, if he showed up for work. She'd check it out herself.
Petra was in her usual sentry position just inside the front door. No more or less crazed than before Bob had died, she caught Rebecca's sleeve and murmured confidentially, 'You know what? I have a nest of red ants in my rectum.'
Rebecca patted her hand, which caused Petra to flinch away. 'You know what? There are times when I feel that way myself.' She went on past. Petra, of course, was one of the people the Health Department surveyors had most in mind when they objected to inappropriate patient mix, which was why she'd lived in ten or twelve facilities over the past fifteen years. Rebecca was, in fact, more than a little embarrassed to think of her accosting the next person through the front door with her tale of insectoid colonic invasion, but it didn't seem grounds for exile.
She waved to Beatrice Quinn, back yesterday from the hospital. Beatrice had a yellowing bruise on her hip and her characteristic leftward list was more pronounced than before her encounter with the Volkswagen, but otherwise she seemed all right. She waved back, a little acknowledgment that might have been nothing more than a social grace but that pleased Rebecca inordinately and made her very glad to be back inside The Tides, where she belonged.
It was not because of her father that Rebecca felt at home there, and her father, in the same building, felt no connection to her, either, as she was now; he didn't even know her as she was now, and certainly had no intuition that she was only a few hundred feet away. His attachment was to his child, as he remembered her, as he had imagined her in the first place, a person not unreal but forever incompletely formed.
Marshall had been taken to his room after supper and put down for the night. His roommate - who could put himself to bed and often did not until well after the night shift came on at eleven, much to their consternation since it was in their job description to wake people, not to put them to bed - was watching television in the lounge, and so Marshall was supposedly alone. He wasn't alone, though (he was in the company of others, who were so close to him that they invaded him, inhabited him not unlike Petra's red ants, of which he had not heard). He was cradling the infant Rebecca. He was talking to his mother. He was pleading with Faye. He was hoping his mother, who had died when he was seven, could protect him and Rebecca from Faye (who might be dead, too; he never knew).
Not nearly asleep but not precisely awake, either (he'd lately discovered plenty of states of mind imprecisely identified by pairs of supposed opposites like asleep and awake, confused and alert, oriented and disoriented; more and more he was drawn into those states, and not always was it a terrifying experience; not always did he resist), Marshall asked of Faye, 'What do you want?'
But it was his daughter Rebecca who answered. He knew it was Rebecca when she sat down beside him and took his hand, but he forgot he knew that and something about her was just like Faye. 'I wanted to talk to you, Dad. Are you up for company?'
Marshall understood that she was evaluating his degree of orientation and the state of his sensorium and otherwise taking his measure. As well she should. He turned his thin, cool hand over in her warm one, his still so much bigger than hers, and meant to smile at her, though he couldn't be sure either that he'd smiled or that the smile, if there was one, had reached her. Faye might have stolen it. Faye had always had a passion for pretty baubles that she had no use for; she'd swiped his mother's wedding ring and then pouted and begged until he'd allowed her to wear it, and she'd left with it still on her finger. Or in her pocket. Or between her teeth. At that Marshall found himself tempted to laugh. He should have said something to Becky, who probably had asked him a question, but the opportunity for meaningful discourse, brief as it always was, seemed once again to have passed.
'Mom told me something today,' she said.
Mom was Billie. Marshall knew that.
'But she wouldn't tell me very much, and I was hoping you would. It's about Faye.'
Shock blew through Marshall's mind like a cold black wind with no color in it, a frigid white wind using up all colors, and he pulled himself upright by wrenching his daughter's hand and digging his fingers in. She winced but didn't let go. 'We had a pact. We were never to mention that name. You were never to know about Faye.' Such blatant vocalization of the name made his teeth chatter, his lips itch as though a scarf had been trailed across them, his tongue curl.
'Why not, Dad? Why keep it a secret from me?'
Marshall was trembling now, and his mind shook. He heard Faye laughing, that peal and howl he'd so loved and grown to loathe. He felt her reach inside him, and reach out through him to grasp his daughter, and he could not let that happen. He flung out his hands.
Rebecca caught them like tossed discs. 'Dad?' she urged. 'Dad?' But Marshall's mouth was full of Faye as he struggled to swallow her back down, and he couldn't say any more.
That was about the time Abby saw the three people come in. She was busy, and at first she didn't think much about it. But when, out of the corner of her eye as she was pushing a wheelchair into the hall for the night shift to wash, she saw one of them unlock the medical records office, she went to get Rebecca.
Rebecca was leaning over her dad, who was curled up in his bed crying like a baby. Abby felt so sorry for him, and for Rebecca, who, once she'd heard about the visitors, glanced over her shoulder to ask, 'Can you stay with him while I go find out what's going on?'
Abby hesitated. She had a lot to do. 'Sure,' she agreed, coming forward. 'What's the matter?'
'I don't know. He thought he saw something. Somebody. He thought somebody was trying to hurt me.' She passed his hand from between hers to between Abby's. Her father didn't seem to notice the transfer. Rebecca paused another minute or so, then shook her head, muttered, 'I'll be back when I can,' and hurried out of the room.
'Danny sent us.'
'At eight o'clock at night?' Rebecca kept her hand on the doorknob. The woman was considerably taller than she, and the two men loomed over them both.
'He wants all the records from all the facilities centralized in the main office.'
'It's against regs to take medical records out of this facility.' The three of them advanced on her, and involuntarily she stepped out of their way. But as soon as the woman had the door open, Rebecca was inside first, standing with her back against the file cabinets and her arms folded, feeling a little ridiculous and unsure whether she might be making too big an issue of this. 'Suppose we had a survey tomorrow? I'd be held responsible for those records.'
The woman shrugged, her considerable breasts in motion. Annoyed with herself for noticing, Rebecca deliberately stared. 'Danny'
s orders,' the woman said, almost languidly.
'I don't give a shit whose orders they are,' Rebecca said evenly. 'I'm in charge here.'
'If you don't box them up for us, we'll do it ourselves.'
'No,' said Rebecca. 'You won't.' She rested her hand on the phone. It was not quite an empty gesture; whether or not the police had jurisdiction, calling them would complicate things for a while.
There was a charged silence. Finally the woman shrugged again. 'Hey, he don't pay me enough for this. You'll be hearing from Danny in the morning. Come on, you guys, we got other places to be.' They left by the side door, and Rebecca pulled it tight behind them, making sure it locked, wondering what the hell had just happened.
'Go get 'em, little lady!' yelled Dexter McCord from his place among the half-dozen old men who sat all day in a row against the wall, not talking much among themselves but observing.
'I don't know what that was all about,' Rebecca said, smoothing her clothes and working to catch her breath as if she had been in a physical scuffle.
'I'm ninety-two years old,' Dexter blustered, 'ninety-two years old, and I never saw anything like that.'
'She's got no call to talk mean to my Princess,' Gordon declared. His round face, dusky from broken capillaries under dark brown skin, was made even more childlike than usual by his scowl and protruding lower lip, and his puppy squirmed and squealed between his fat knees.
Rebecca wished she could feel more respect and less fondness for Gordon; she wished she didn't think of him as cute. Resisting the impulse—which she wished she didn't have in the first place—to pat him on his bald head, she instead rested her hand on his shoulder for a minute. 'Thanks, buddy.' The puppy gave a miniature growl and scrambled up Gordon's chest for Rebecca's hand, managing to sink its needle teeth into the ball of her thumb. 'Hey!' She shook it loose. As it tumbled into Gordon's lap, a thin wet trickle appeared across his shirt and left suspender.
He didn't seem to notice the urine. He scooped up his puppy in both big hands and raised it to eye level, peering at it anxiously. 'Don't hurt my dog!' he meant to shout at her, but his voice cracked. 'Don't you hurt my dog, you hem me?'
Her thumb stung. 'He's not hurt. But he is peeing. Get him outside, Gordon.'
'You scared him.' He hauled himself to his feet and lumbered away with his dog cradled in his hands against his bouncing belly.
Rebecca didn't watch to make sure he headed for a door. As she passed the nurses' station the pool nurse remarked, 'One of these days that dog's going to seriously bite somebody.'
She left urgent messages for Dan Murphy everywhere she could think of, then managed to finish the census report and the Plan of Correction from Lindgren's investigation before, finally, Dan returned her call. 'I suppose you know we had a little visit tonight?'
He was calling from someplace noisy. 'What are you talking about, babe?'
'Dammit, stop calling me that.'
'Hey. Sorry'
'What's the name of the woman in the management office? Tall, blonde?' Although he'd surely have known immediately whom she meant had she referred to the woman's breasts, she did not.
'Joni. Jesus, haven't you ever been introduced?'
'Joni said that all the records from all the facilities are to be ''centralized." By your orders.'
'She did?" He gave his characteristic mirthless chuckle.
'I didn't let her take them, Dan.'
'Is that right? Wish I'd seen that.' His amusement caused her to question her judgment again.
'Danny'
"I'll take care of it," he said. 'Trust me.'
It was after eleven when Rebecca finally got back to her father's room. He was asleep. Abby had finished her shift and gone home, and the night crew knew nothing about the earlier upset.Things happened around here and then vanished as though they'd been washed away, important things, profound things. Rebecca shuddered and, because she had to, left the facility.
The pines around The Tides bent like serene old ladies who knew what their lives had been about; Rebecca wondered whether there was really any person like that. Gordon was out on the porch without a shirt, swigging from a brown paper bag. Chewing on something, his puppy gave a puppy growl; Rebecca didn't look to see what it had. 'You'll freeze,' she told Gordon crossly. 'It's winter.'
'Hey, boss-lady.' He tried to slap her hand in greeting and missed. 'I got my love to keep me warm.'
'Your love, huh? They sell love for a dollar forty-nine a pint these days?' She shook her head at him and went on out to her car, leaving him humming and executing a precarious softshoe shuffle on the porch.
She was tired. More than that, she was overstimulated. Her heart raced. Her head ached. Her thoughts were edging into the surreal, the way they'd been when she'd walked out into the lake. She kept going over the events of the day, mentally completing lists, crossing things off (the census report; the Plan of Correction, though she'd have to go over it again in the morning when, hopefully, her head would be clearer), adding things (the water mark on the wall). Dutifully she tried to guess what Kurt might have done today and what questions she might ask to indicate interest without inviting a whole exhausting conversation.
The house was completely dark when she got there, not even the porch light left on for her. Unaccountably hurt by the darkness, she let herself in with more noise than necessary. One of the cats zigzagged toward her, mewing. She picked it up and cradled it against her chest but, responding to her tension or to some feline disquiet of its own, it twisted in her arms and jumped down.
Rebecca frowned, feeling unwelcome and out of place, things she never felt at work. 'Fine,' she said aloud, though the cat was long gone.
She took the new Time—already, she noted irritably, dogeared—into the bathroom, where she drew a hot bath. When she sank into the water, it was not quite hot enough, only tepid around her shoulders, and she shivered. She propped her feet on the edge of the tub and felt, with a grim sense of vindication, the ends of her hair getting wet, which meant she'd have to take time in the morning to curl them.
Abruptly she was remembering being bathed in a dishpan set on a red oilcloth. She remembered streaks of sunlight on the red oilcloth, the particular way it gleamed. She remembered the water getting cold. The water over her face like a rainbow ribbon, then withdrawn. She remembered crying, being comforted.
That must be a very early memory, she thought, shaken, and it didn't seem to be a pleasant one because she felt exposed, vulnerable. Dimly, she wondered why.
Finally, so tired now that her body didn't seem to be performing its automatic functions automatically and she couldn't consciously quite think what to do, she climbed
out of the tub, dried and lotioned her skin, put on her nightgown and robe after some struggling with the sleeves. With great effort, feeling self-righteous and put upon, she hung up her towels and cleaned the ring out of the tub. She turned off the lights and stumbled upstairs to bed.
Kurt didn't move or speak to her. She couldn't tell whether he was really asleep, but he might as well be. Relieved, Rebecca slipped in beside him. As usual he was wrapped in the covers like a burrito, leaving none available for her. Enormously annoyed, she tugged at them until they unwound, and by that time she was well into an exaggerated mental harangue about his thoughtlessness. He muttered something, ostensibly in his sleep, and flung an arm over her. She stiffened and thought how more often than not these days she cringed from his touch. But the thought barely registered before it was obscured by impending sleep and the need for sleep.
In the hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleep—which now seemed to her probably not unlike the state of mind her father was in much of the time—her thoughts did not turn but flowed toward the mysterious Faye. Buoyed and pulled by a fear that felt ancient, for which there weren't words, she made herself small and waited for sleep.
Marshall was buoyed by a dreamy fear, too, and by old love. On his hands and knees between his bed and the wall, he might have been s
wimming in love and fear, drowning. Faye danced erotically around him, inside him, tenderly, as she had when he'd been able to hope she loved him, and her scarves crossed his face like bands of a rainbow, now swishing, now snapping, hurting his eyes, soothing. 'You can't have her, Faye!' Marshall shouted.
'You left her when she was a baby, and you can't have her now!'
But Marshall may not have said anything out loud, and the nurse and two aides on the night shift were either dozing or playing cards, and nobody heard him, but Petra Carrasco, desperate for Bob or for her husband or for somebody, anybody, who came into Marshall's room, observed him and muttered to herself and went away again.
When Rebecca's phone rang, she squinted at the clock as she always did. 3:12 a.m. 'Yes?'
'Rebecca, this is Linda at the nursing home. Did I wake you up?'
Too, sleepy to react to the foolishness of the question, Rebecca managed, 'Yes, Linda, but that's all right. What's up?'