The Tides

by Melanie Tem

  Rebecca clamped a hand over her mouth, but the cries did not stop so she must not be the one making them. Albeit loud and harsh, they were emotionless, as though produced by a parrot that had blundered upon truth.

  'Ohh! I am no one!'

  Rebecca backed into the room where Naomi lay, flat on her back, limbs contracted and torso rigid as if she were restrained in bed although she was not. The last Rebecca had known, Naomi had been in a private psych hospital. She had not known they had admitted her to The Tides; the possibility would never have occurred to her, and she could not fathom, how it had been accomplished. 'What are you doing here?' she asked her softly.

  Naomi met her gaze on common, shifting ground. 'I am no one,' Naomi said to her. 'Sit down here beside me, girlie, and you might learn something.'She grasped her hand. One or both of them whispered, 'I am no one. I am no one. Ohh.' But she could not stay here.

  Her perceptions were dismembered, one quite discrete from another with spaces in between. Here was a metal bar across the undersides of her fingers. Then, here was open space, cool air. Then, here was a flash of sunny slick red, set apart from the gray day. Then, here was her car, a hollowed mound, prepared to transport her from one place to another place. Then, here was the rumble and vibration of the engine, the gasoline smell.

  Her house was empty. So empty she was afraid to go in. Kurt, of course, was at work, this being a weekday afternoon, but she'd expected that, counted on it. The emptiness of the house had less to do with his absence from it than with her own. Huddled in her car at the curb in front of the small brick house she knew to be the place she lived, she could not go in; she would be swallowed up.

  It didn't take long, even in rush hour, to get across town to her parents' house. A tan and white split-level in a development now well-established, this was the house she'd grown up in; there were no woods here. Surely there was no red oilcloth. She didn't have a key, of course, and even if her mother were at home rather than at The Tides, Rebecca had no place here.

  Spring dusk was falling as she returned to The Tides, coming up on it from the west. One or another of its back windows flashed peach-colored, suggesting an aborted signal. Between her and the building stretched the vacant field, with the lake-bed sunk far enough below the plane of the slanting light that it wasn't really visible. Rebecca didn't want to go down there. She was afraid she would.

  She locked the car doors and backed away, and was not pursued.

  Here was a red light. She stopped. There was a restaurant sign. A horn honked. She went on. She checked into a motel a dozen blocks away from The Tides, cheap enough that she could cover it with the cash in her wallet. Without even thinking about it, she concocted an alias. The room had a phone, from which she called Kurt, got the answering machine, left a message that something had come up at work and she wouldn't be home tonight, realized without amusement or distress that he might well think she was having an affair.

  There was, however, no room service. She considered. Her hunger was not sufficient to drive her out of the room now that she was safely in it, and her thirst she could slake, if not satisfy, with rusty-tasting water from the sink. She lay on the bed. The ceiling had no marks on it. The picture on the wall was mostly green. She was cold, felt exposed. She got under the bedspread. A few disjointed dream images surfaced, swept back out to sea.

  In the morning, her first organized, conscious thought was that she could go back to her place now, find out what had happened during her exile, be with people she knew. Relief bordered on joy. Cursorily she combed her hair, had to look in a mirror to put on makeup but successfully kept her gaze focused on the specific feature being altered—lips pinked, lashes darkened, lids tinted lavender. As she dressed, it crossed her mind to wonder whether people would remark on the fact that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday; she herself wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't taken them from the back of a chair. She'd get something to eat at the facility; if she was lucky, they'd be baking cinnamon rolls. Once she'd had a cup of coffee and mints from the roll in her desk drawer, no one would be able to tell that she hadn't brushed her teeth. She was ready, trembling a little.

  The early morning was bright gray; she squinted and her eyes watered, and objects caught in peripheral vision had auras of storm gray and lavender. She hadn't thought to warm up her car, and the engine was sluggish, all but coasting out of the motel parking lot, stalling out at the first red light. It had rained in the night and partially frozen, or snowed and already started to thaw. The streets were slushy, viscous waves fanning out from her tires. Runoff in the gutters whorled in oily rainbows. The closer she got to The Tides, the closer together and more connected her thoughts became, and the clearer her understanding that this was who she was: the administrator of The Tides Nursing Center, going to work.

  Even before she unlocked her office and deposited her coat, briefcase, and purse, she went to check on her father. He was up, ready for breakfast, a sheet wrapped around his chest and under his arms to knot behind the chair. He seemed relaxed, even contented. His hands rested in his lap. His gaze lifted to her face and he smiled gently. 'Good morning,' he said, glad to see her, whether he knew who she was or not.

  She leaned to kiss him. His cheek was whiskery against her lips; obviously they hadn't got around to shaving him yet. Maybe she'd have a chance later this morning to come back and do it herself. She'd like that. 'Good morning,' she said to him. Then, 'Good morning, Marshall.' Calling him by his given name sent a little shock through her, not altogether unpleasant.

  On her way out of her father's room she caught sight of Dan Murphy in the room across the hall, at his wife's bedside. She hesitated, then went in. 'How is she?' she asked, quietly although Naomi's eyes were open.

  'No change.'

  'Do they know yet what—what happened?'

  'Rebecca.' He used her name like a weapon. 'We need to talk.'

  She was supposed to have confirmed with the roofing company that they'd start work this week. She half-turned. 'Wait till I call'

  'We're having visitors today;' he said.

  'Another survey.' She sighed and shook her head. She looked at him, though he wasnt' quite in focus. 'Another complaint?'

  'A Notice of Summary Closure.'

  'What's that?'

  'They believe there's sufficient danger to the health and safety of the residents in this facility that they're taking action to close it. Summarily. Without a hearing.'

  'That's bullshit.'

  'Rebecca' He placed his hand flat on the bedside stand. There was no noise, yet the effect was of a resounding slap and she jumped. 'Rebecca, listen to me now. It's over.'

  'You mean The Tides will be closed today? Just like that?'

  'No' He took the step or two to the window. 'I just got back from a breakfast meeting at Lou's with some people from Health and Social Services and from the Fraud Unit. We were able to strike a deal'

  He paused. Okay, she thought; I'll ask. 'What kind of deal?'

  'They'll deliver the Notice of Summary Closure first thing this morning, make a show of force and intent, and the media will be informed. We'll be in court this afternoon. Alex Booth went home, and he dropped the abuse thing, so all they have is the fraud, and they don't really have that. So they'll settle for a compromise.' He gave his signature mirthless bark of laughter. 'Or a sacrifice, depending on your point of view.'

  This is not as hard for him as it should be, she thought, not yet quite conscious that she knew what was happening. She concentrated on the part she could grasp. 'Alex went home?'

  Dan went on as if she hadn't spoken. 'The price for saving The Tides is you.'

  She nodded. She moved as far away from him as she could in the small room and nodded again, more shocked than she should have been. 'And you agreed to this.'

  He shrugged. 'Buys us a little time.'

  'When do you want me out?'

  'Today.' She stared at him. 'Now. Before they get here. I told them you'd be gone. Besides,
babe'

  'Do not call me babe!' She was halfway across the room toward him. Naomi stirred.

  'It'll be harder on everybody to draw out the goodbyes. Just go. You'll have a month's severance.'

  'Can we afford that?' she began automatically, and stopped. Dan said nothing. He wasn't exactly meeting her gaze—which, in any case, would have been hard to meet, since it was skittering, fading in and out—but he wasn't looking away, either, and she thought somehow he ought to be.

  'Ohh!' Naomi breathed.

  'Rebecca,' said Dan at the window. 'They're here.'

  'My things,' she said helplessly.

  'We'll get them to you.'

  Just inside the front door, the administrative surveyor who'd taken Ernest Lindgren's place was already reading aloud in a preacher's voice the Notice of Summary Closure of The Tides Nursing Center. Petra was pacing in front of him, hunched over inside her knotted pink sweater, muttering about the red ants that just this morning had started to colonize her heart. Diane and Sandy stood together in the door of Sandy's office, and Rebecca wondered dully that they were in so early.

  Keeping her head down and her hands up as if to fend off attackers, although nobody approached her, she pushed her way outside through nothing in the least resistant. Went off the porch, across the parking lot toward her car. Veered into Elm Street as if thinking to leave on foot. Stopped. Came back.

  Sneaking, like a fugitive or a spy, she went around the end of the building. The water mark on the brick was as tall and as wide as her shadow. A few weeds in the field were starting to green at the tips, making the space look complex and unstable. The lake must sometimes have been bigger than it was now, sometimes smaller. Clear in the flat morning light were scalloped markings across the ground and through the air, undulating variations in color and texture and growing patterns where tides waxed and waned. Rebecca made her way to the depression and stood there, edged to the very rim, wavering, balance off, thinking how easy it would be just to slide down.

  Inside the building, Marshall—restrained in a chair now so he wouldn't wander or fall, contemplative throughout the long hours since they'd lifted him out of bed—suddenly writhed and bellowed. Those staff and residents who weren't busy with breakfast and baths and morning meds, which had to be taken care of no matter what happened next, were preoccupied with the Health

  Department and television cameras, and no one was anywhere near him.

  Marshall managed to work the knotted sheet around so that his arms were free of it, but it secured his neck and head. He roared, choked. He twisted himself sideways and the chair tipped, then toppled. The sheet pulled tight across his throat and mouth, a gag, a noose. 'Faye,' he called, but no one hearing him would have understood what he was trying to say.

  Except Naomi. Across the hall, Naomi sat up, then pushed herself to her feet. She stood a few moments with her eyes closed and her head down, getting her bearings, then walked out of the room.

  The side door was mere steps away, and she leaned on the bar to push it open. An alarm was supposed to sound, but the apparatus was not functioning, and the door jerked open and swung shut without attracting anyone's attention.

  Naomi breathed, 'Ohh!' as the prickling, swelling, demanding sensation inside her took form and voice. 'I am Faye! I am Faye!' That was not quite true, not quite, though it wanted to be. 'Listen to me, girlie, and you might learn something!'

  In a ferocious undertone, lying on the hard shiny white floor with the chair on his back and the sheet over his nose and mouth and around his straining throat (not understanding and not needing to understand what was under him or on top of him or why his movements were impeded), Marshall was talking to himself, talking to Faye, talking to Rebecca, exhorting himself to hurry, to find a way, telling her no, pledging himself to her, saying be careful be careful, saying no. He managed to get up onto his hands and knees, the chair on his back like the cracked shell of a turtle, the sheet pressing painfully into his Adam's apple. He managed to crawl.

  Just outside, stepping into her own crisp shadow as it emerged from the long low shadow of the building, Naomi experimentally began a soft wail. 'I am Faye and they took my baby away! I am Faye and they won't give me back my baby! Ohh!' This, Naomi perceived, was still not authentic suffering, but it was leading somewhere.

  Marshall collapsed.

  Billie had come to feed him his breakfast, not minding so much this morning, tentatively entertaining the possibility that it might be bearable to define herself as the wife of a demented man. Seeing the reporters and cameras, avoiding them, at first she had thought Colleen was finally getting press coverage for some sort of special activity, and wasn't that nice? But then she'd spotted the long sheet of paper tacked to the front door and had gone over to read it: Notice of Summary Closure. Even though it was written in bureaucratese, its meaning was plain enough. They were going to close this home. She would have to find someplace else for Marshall. She couldn't trust Rebecca to help her, either, for the paper said, for the world to see, that Rebecca wasn't a good nursing-home administrator after all. That hurt. She tried to think of a way that it might not be true, but surely the Health Department of all people knew what they were talking about. Rebecca would lose her job. This job meant everything to her. Billie never had understood that; how could working in a nursing home matter that much? But it scared her, how much it mattered to Rebecca.

  Billie looked around, not wanting to. All these people would have to find another place. That made her mad, at her daughter and at the Health Department and at she didn't know who all.

  She didn't see Rebecca. That worried her. Rebecca would be devastated, even if she had gotten herself into this mess. Billie's impulse was to find her, go to her, but she held it sternly in check. What was there to say?

  So she went instead to her husband's room and found him on the floor with the chair tied to his back, arms and legs squirming. She said just his name, 'Marshall!' which didn't come close to saying what she meant but she couldn't imagine what would.

  She got him free, even though he thought she was Faye and tried to fight her off. When he realized who she was, he called for Faye, tried to chase after Faye, crawling, until the girls came in and they could get him into bed with the siderails up. Shirley kept telling her it was all right but it wasn't all right; Billie couldn't look her in the eye. She was afraid he'd try to crawl out over the rails. Just the thought of it made her sick. But he seemed to have settled down now. He just lay there flat on his back staring at the ceiling. Billie had to stop herself from reaching over and shutting his eyes.

  Instead, grunting, she cranked up the head of his bed and tried to feed him his breakfast. He wouldn't eat a bite. He just wouldn't open his mouth. Finally she gave up and put the full tray in the hall for them to collect and went back and hoisted herself up on the bed beside Marshall and they just sat there. She didn't think he knew her anymore. In a sweet, unnerving, surprising way, though, she knew him.

  The window of Marshall's room was closed against the cool spring air, curtains drawn against the light although the room was fluorescent bright inside, and so Billie didn't see the pale fog settling over the empty lake-bed and fluttering out of it like layers of gauzy scarves. She didn't hear Naomi keening softly to herself as she set off into the tidal field: 'I am Faye and they took my child away! I am Faye and they won't give my baby back to me! Ohh! Sit right here beside me, girlie, listen to me and you might learn something. I am Faye! Ohh!'

  Chapter 18

  Petra knew about the fog. Ants liked fog, she was told, especially red ants, especially fog that had all different colors in it like this. Muttering, hugging herself with the flat arms of her grimy pink sweater, she went out into the many-legged fog.

  'She cannot be allowed outside in this weather,' Odette McAleer said sternly to Dan. 'Especially without a coat. Accepted standards of patient care require clothing appropriate to weather conditions if patients are permitted outside the facility.'

  'Go
get her,' Dan snapped in Maxine's direction.

  Maxine restrained herself from coming back with, 'Go get her yourself.' But she did protest, 'She won't come in if she doesn't want to. Or she'll go right back out again.'

  'Go get her,' Dan snarled and, dismissing her, pushed his way behind the nurses' station where Diane, Sandy, and Health Department officials were preparing discharge plans for all the patients of The Tides to present to the court this afternoon, although they would likely not be put into effect.

  Maxine waited, barely, until Dan's back was turned before mouthing obscenities at him. Then she went out the front door and around the end of the building in

  search of Petra. It was chillier out here than she'd expected, and cloudy, clouds scudding across a paler cloud cover, a front or something coming in. She shivered and swore. She didn't know where Petra was and she didn't care. Damned if she was going to freeze her ass off out here. She let herself in the north door without noticing anything unusual outside other than the weather.