The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Beatrice blinked. 'Oh, dear,' she said, 'I've been sick for so long, don't you know. I think it might be Tuesday?' She looked at Harriet questioningly and Harriet nodded encouragement.

  'No,' said the other one, making a checkmark on her paper. 'I'm afraid it's Friday, Mrs Quinn. Friday.'

  'Oh, me.' Beatrice smiled self-deprecatingly and tugged at her ear.

  'And the year, Mrs Quinn? Can you tell us the year?'

  She hesitated. 'Oh, my dears, it's been a long time since I thought about days and years. I mean, things like that don't matter much to me anymore.'

  'Do you know what year it is, Mrs Quinn? Can you guess?'

  'Well, let's see. 1989.'

  'Almost.' Another checkmark. 'And do you know, Mrs

  Quinn, who the President of the United States is?'

  Beatrice, still polite, lost patience. She patted the woman's knee. 'Now, my dear, why in the world would I be interested in a thing like that?' Gina and Harriet took pains not to look at each other, but Beatrice plainly saw them nod in unison and knew that she'd failed.

  On her way to The Tides, though she knew there was something important she had to do, Naomi went to see her mother. Maybe her mother would stop her. Maybe her mother would tell her what it was.

  Her mother's house was haunted' horror in its bones, evil always caught out of the comer of its eye. 'Mama, please, tell me about the camps.'

  Esther Goldberg looked at her daughter across the brown living room, recently turned brown-and-gold from teal-and-white. The décor changed so often that Naomi couldn't remember what it had looked like while she was growing up; she often couldn't remember what it had looked like when last she'd visited, was only aware of being unnerved by its appearance this time. She felt the jolt of her mother's eyes locking on her. 'Why do you ask this now? It was a long time ago.'

  'Tell me, Mama. I want to know'

  'It has nothing to do with you. Your papa and me, we make sure it has nothing to do with you.'

  Esther's eyes left her again for their customary focal point in the middle distance, and Naomi was on her knees beside her mother's chair. She saw the blue numbers on her mother's wrinkled forearm, close enough to be pressed into her own cheek, though they were not. She imagined the old woman's mittened hands tangled in her hair, pulling her head back until she could hardly breathe and someone had to come and rescue her. She imagined her own hands, as if they were not her own, as if they were guided by someone else, around her mother's throat, forcing out the story that was not hers. Saw herself lying unconscious at her mother's pale feet. But her mother would never touch her like that, had seldom in fact touched her at all for fear one of them would contaminate the other with what she knew of the world, would never allow such intimate contact as for one of them to murder the other.

  Esther said nothing, did not look at her daughter, did not move in her chair. Naomi put her arms around her mother's knees and laid her head in her lap. The body under the clothes made her skin crawl, as if she hadn't known there would be flesh and blood.

  'Mama,' she wailed, against her mother's skirt, 'tell me why you never visit the nursing home.'

  'I do the books,' Esther answered automatically. She kept her arms on the arms of the chair. Naomi opened her eyes and saw again the awful wrinkled numbered flesh of her mother's wrist. It hung from the bone. She closed her eyes against nausea in her throat, then opened them again and saw that the flesh was beautiful. Where her own arm was flattened against her mother's thigh, she saw the beginnings of the same tiny dry wrinkles, the same soft folds. 'I do the books,' her mother repeated. 'That's all.'

  There was a long pause. Once, Naomi thought she might actually be falling asleep in her mother's lap. Then the older woman spoke, still not touching her, speaking over her head.

  'Everybody looks the same. Everybody smells the same. Everybody sounds the same, and they all have the same eyes and the same voice and the same skin, and they all have the same name. Musselman.''Oh,' Naomi started to protest, squirming around so that she was looking up at the underside of her mother's pocked chin. 'They're not the same. Not at all, Mama. Myra'

  'The sickest ones. The thinnest ones. The ones with the eyes that see things you can't see, things you don't want to see, things you will see soon enough when it comes your time. The ones who are the next to go, the next to be chosen, for no reason, left or right, every second one, every sixth. You touch them and they cry out, and your hand goes into their flesh. And you find you are crying out in the same voice, and you are all the same. You cannot look at them. You cannot look at yourself.

  'You walk among them and you're covered with the stink of their waste. Your own waste. You're assaulted by your own waste, and by the pain that doesn't hurt anymore of your own body rotting away. In that place, you are Musselman, daughter. You are next.' The old woman's fingers tangled in Naomi's hair and tightened around her skull.

  After a while Naomi whispered, though she didn't want to, 'I have to go. I have to go there, Mama.' and the old woman nodded.

  Chapter 12

  When Rebecca got to work that morning, two cars with state license plates were parked in the parking lot, and the discoloration on the side of the building was clearly visible from the street, undulations in the stain indicating where the water level had risen and fallen more than a few times. How was it possible that nobody had noticed this before?

  Already on edge from interrupted sleep, Rebecca was dizzied and nauseated by the adrenaline that shot through her, but she couldn't allow herself time to calm down. Hastily she gathered her things, got out of the car, slammed the door, then realized she'd forgotten the yellow pad with hand-scrawled drafts of half a dozen letters to be typed and mailed today. She fumbled with her key in the lock again and reached across the seat for the pad, struggling not to drop everything else in the process and to keep her feet from slipping out from under her on the frosty asphalt.

  'Hi, Princess,' Gordon called, beaming. He was sitting on the porch with his puppy in his lap, a cigarette in his hand, and butts scattered around his feet. She didn't see the usual paper bag. His thin trousers and sweater were pockmarked with burns; his suspenders were twisted over a dirty undershirt; a toe or two stuck through his tattered slippers. 'I missed you since yesterday'

  'Morning, Gordon. Aren't you cold?'

  'Nah. I sure do like my dog.'

  'I do, too.' She hastened up the walk. 'Who's here?'

  'Big shots.'

  'Surveyors? Health Department surveyors?'

  'They didn't say who they was to me. Just walked right in like they owned the joint'

  'Shit,' said Rebecca, not quite under her breath, and Gordon chuckled appreciatively.

  'Do you think my dog's pretty?'

  'Yes, Gordon,' she snapped, then was instantly sorry for her impatience and tried to soften it with, 'I think he's beautiful.'

  'He thinks the same about you.'

  'Tell him thanks.' Working one hand free, she managed to open the door, then stopped and looked back at Gordon. 'Listen, old buddy, could you do me a favor? Could you spruce up a little? Shower and shave and put on that sexy shirt I bought you and find pants that don't have quite so many holes and put on real shoes. And if you're going to be outside, please wear a coat so they don't think we're abusing you, okay?'

  'Sure, Princess.' He saluted. 'Anything for my Princess.'

  'I guess you'd better make your pup stay outside today, too.'

  'It's cold,' he protested, hugging the squealing pup.

  'He has a house. He'll be fine.'

  'He stays with me,' Gordon said, lower lip comically stuck out but brow furrowed dangerously.

  'Come on. We're being surveyed. Help me out here.'

  'Fuck 'em,' he said, thick-tongued. 'This ain't their home, man.'Holiday decorations were no match for the overall bright white institutional feel of the place, and Rebecca would have found that depressing, even tragic, if she'd had time to register it. But the spots of color and good ch
eer—paper snowflakes, red velvet bows on evergreen wreaths, walnuts for some obscure reason painted and glued to look like strawberries—could be said to suggest a certain perkiness. Rebecca wound her way through another Cub Scout troop lining up in the hall, one of the onslaught of carolling groups that Colleen had to start scheduling right after Thanksgiving in order to fit them all in before the Christmas holidays were over.

  'I don't know what I was thinking of,' Colleen greeted her, frazzled, hair wilder than ever and hands full of decorations and wrapping paper. 'Trying to combine the Christmas party and Beatrice's birthday party. It was her idea - she said she was a Christmas baby and her birthday was always part of Christmas, and I thought it would be easier. Hah. I am losing my mind here. No doubt about it. Save me a bed.'

  'No problem there,' Rebecca said wryly, and Colleen laughed.' You didn't expect to have to deal with the Health Department at the same time. Have they been giving you a hard time?'

  Colleen patted her shoulder with the back of a hand full of bows. 'Not bad. Don't worry about it. Go enjoy yourself. Dance. The band's pretty good. It's Mark from housekeeping and some of his buddies. They call themselves Making the Mark. I don't know, but I think that's supposed to be suggestive. There's nothing you can do about the Health Department anyway. They'll find whatever they find.'

  The band began 'Sentimental Journey,' and Gordon pulled her onto the dance floor. He smelled, but only faintly, of booze. 'How do I look, Princess?'

  'Better.'

  He pushed her away a little and scowled down at her. 'I changed just for you.'

  'You look terrific, Gordon. Thank you? His red velour shirt, stained and stretched out of shape, puffed out over his belly and didn't quite reach the top of his pants, but it was better than anything else she'd seen him wear. His shoes had no laces, but they also had no large holes. Rebecca meant to give him a quick hug; he held her too close.

  Over his shoulder she saw Ernest Lindgren moving among the crowd, clipboard in one hand and a plastic cup of Christmas punch in the other. She should go talk to him.

  But Gordon, sensing that he was about to lose her attention, led her in a sudden intricate series of turns and dips and whispered in her ear, 'You're sweet, Princess.'

  'I bet you say that to all the girls'

  'Love me?'

  'Sure.'

  He looked at her gravely. 'Do you really? Love me?'

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed his whiskered cheek. 'You know I do.'

  After a moment his big odoriferous body moved in time to the music again, but his face was baby-solemn and his feet shuffled worriedly. 'How come the big shots are here all the time, Princess? Is it because of my dog?'

  Firmly, she said, 'Your dog is fine.'

  He nodded. When the music stopped he wouldn't let her go until Colleen called him to try on the Santa Claus suit.

  Catching sight of her parents on the other side of the lobby, she detoured to say hello. They looked like Jack Spratt and his wife, her father wispy, her mother big and solid. Her father was staring at the mural, lost, she supposed, among the colors and forms of it, or in some other reality it might or might not have occasioned. 'Merry Christmas,' she said to them both.

  Her mother hardly answered, a curt 'Merry Christmas' all she could bring herself to say.

  Her father's attention swung ponderously in her direction, missed, passed over her, traveled back. 'Thank you very much,' he said, gentlemanly, speaking to a stranger. 'I wish you the same.'

  'Qué Sera Sera,' the band began, and Rebecca was dangerously moved. Someone used to sing that song to her; could it have been her father? The impulse to ask him to dance with her—hold him in her arms, sing to him—was strong, but she was afraid of such tenderness between them, couldn't do it. 'Can I get you some punch?' she hastily asked her mother instead.

  'No, thank you. We'll have lunch soon.' Rebecca nodded, relieved and disappointed, and moved away.

  The nursing surveyor, a small grim-faced woman named Odette McAleer, sat behind the Wing I nurses' station, with Diane standing stiffly beside her. 'Good morning, Odette,' Rebecca greeted her, trying for geniality.

  Without looking up Odette slid her billfold across the desk for Rebecca to see her state ID. 'Morning.'

  'Are they taking good care of you? Are you finding everything you need? Can I get you a cup of coffee? 'To her own ears Rebecca sounded obsequious.

  'You don't need to be taking care of us. You need to be taking care of the patients. Which you're not.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  The surveyor shook her head in obvious distaste. She turned all the way around in her chair to inspect the clock on the wall. 'I must say I am surprised to see you here so early. I wasn't expecting you before ten or ten-thirty.'

  'What?' Rebecca looked at Diane, who met her gaze.

  The surveyor had turned back to the charts and continued flipping through pages and making notes as she talked. 'You do understand that regulations require a full-time administrator.'

  'Odette, I was here until after eleven last night and on the phone about this place in the middle of the night' Rebecca was furious.

  'And look at that.' The surveyor indicated Trudy going by in her wheelchair like a model on a runway, waving and smiling and throwing kisses. Trudy wore a brilliant green kimono splashed with huge cerise flowers, and her face scintillated with makeup, vivid spots of rouge on her cheeks, lipstick extending inches beyond the outlines of her mouth. 'It's disgraceful to allow her to look like that. 'These people have the right to be treated with dignity.'

  'She does it herself,' Rebecca began.

  'Your job is to take care of her. She looks ridiculous' The old woman slowly passed the nurses' station, smiling and waving in slow motion, and Rebecca couldn't tell whether she'd heard or not. The surveyor's eyes followed her until she had turned the corner. Then McAleer shrugged and went back to her charts.

  Dismissed, Rebecca went into the bookkeeper's office for her usual morning cup of coffee from the pot behind the desk and her usual very detailed account from Sandy of what to expect from the day, from the month, and from life itself. 'Rebecca,' The instant she came into the office Sandy was on her feet, pouring coffee, stirring in cream. Rebecca would have liked to be pleased by all this solicitousness; instead, it never failed to bring her guard up. 'Am I glad to see you,'

  'Why.' Rebecca asked warily.

  'The survey team showed up at eight o'clock this morning and nobody knew where you were.'

  'I was at home. In bed.' Rebecca took a sip of coffee before she added, unwillingly, 'I was here late again last night and on the phone in the middle of the night, so I decided to sleep in a little.'

  'Shut the door,' Sandy said in a stage whisper.

  Rebecca got up and shut the door.

  'You'll never guess what just happened.'

  'Lord.'

  Sandy loved a good story. She sat down on the edge of her desk. 'You know how Petra and I always split Cokes? Well, she just gave me some with Thorazine in it.'

  Rebecca's eyes widened. 'Jesus, Sandy, how do you feel?'

  'A little foggy. I didn't get much. You can taste it, you know. She said you always say it's good for her.'

  'Are you sure you're all right? Did you call your doctor?'

  'I'm fine.' Sandy laughed merrily. 'Maybe I'm even better than normal now, huh?'

  Rebecca passed a cold hand over her eyes. 'Do me a favor, Sandy. Don't mention this to the surveyors.' Saying that made her feel tacky, but she waited for Sandy's assent.

  Ernest Lindgren came in without knocking. 'There you are, Rebecca,' he said cordially, but his tone was brittle. To Sandy, 'I could sure use another cup of that good coffee, if you don't mind. And, Rebecca, I need your policy book.'

  Sandy rushed to pour him another cup of coffee, stirring in sugar and cream as if she had been waiting on him a long time. Rebecca groaned. 'The policy book is at the printer's. We've been working on it for months, and I had somebody in your office r
eview it, and it's supposed to be ready today. Sandy, would you go get it?'

  'Sure. I can always do this work at home.' Sandy said without a trace of sarcasm, demurely handing the surveyor his coffee and smiling up at him.

  'You don't need to do that Rebecca knew this was not the response Sandy wanted. 'This is supposed to be a forty-hour-a-week job.'

  Lindgren gave a huge sigh. 'You mean that's the only copy of the policy book you have?'

  'It's being printed. We're getting five complete copies,' Rebecca said watchfully.

  'And what does the facility run on while that book is being printed? Luckily, he didn't appear to expect a reply. He took his coffee and went away.