The Tides (8 page)

A whispering rose like crickets, except that there were words in it. Ros stood still and listened. Tender stroking riffled her hair, the sprayed curls at the crown of her head and up under the hair cut close and tapered at the nape of her neck, raising goosebumps and an urgent desire for sex. Soft insistent hands held her face, and soft lips pressed against hers. For a split-second, her vision blurred lavender, and an idea came into her head, fuzzy, hinting at something terrible, suggesting something unbelievably exciting, something she would never have considered herself capable of thinking about, let alone doing. But she didn't know herself anymore.

'Shit.' This was getting ridiculous. It was hard enough to be like a kid in love when you were a kid and it was the opposite sex you were head over heels for. Pushing sixty and in love with another woman was too much. It wasn't that she thought it was wrong. She didn't think she'd ever thought it was wrong, really. But it was such a shock. She didn't have the faintest idea what the rules were. Everything she did these days surprised her. She could not believe she was in this particular fix. This was not what she'd expected to have to worry about at this time in her life.

Out of Roslyn's field of vision, on the other side of the kitchen wall with the steam tables and serving counter, the gauzy presence hovered in the half-lit dining room. When it settled, briefly, over tables and chairs, it altered their contours and outlines for as long as it stayed there.

When it bounced up to suspend itself, fleetingly, from the ceiling, it was like a giant cobweb, a spreading place where the paint was melting, where the very concrete was dissolving. When it raced toward the hall, where fluorescent lights were on all night, it blurred both light and harsh shadow, sound and silence. There was an aura of playfulness about its antics, overlaying menace.

Even when the dining room was full, four people to a table, it didn't sound like a room full of people eating breakfast anywhere but in a nursing home. Plasticware against plastic trays didn't ring or really even clatter, but made scraping and sliding sounds as muted as the colors, grayed pink, brownish yellow. There wasn't the hum of restaurant diners or the separated-out conversations, friendly or hostile, of a family at table. It was a noise all its own. Roslyn thought that when she was a hundred years old and senile
—
not that she'd have to live that long to get senile
—
she'd still recognize the sound of a meal in a nursing home. Maybe not, though. Maybe she wouldn't remember any of this. Like a year-old kid, maybe she wouldn't remember anything that was happening to her right now, no matter how real and interesting, even amazing, it was while it was happening.

Ros shook her head at herself. Even her thoughts weren't her own.

The aides were wheeling people in. In a hurry, Florence brought two wheelchairs in at once, pushing Paul because it took him too long to walk and pulling Myra Larsen backwards. Myra hollered, pointlessly.

People did talk
—
often to themselves or in parallel like toddlers at play, sometimes in brief exchanges, once in a while in extended conversation randomly interrupted when the time allotted for the meal was over. Marshall

Emig was actually quite talkative this morning, and Billie didn't know whether to be pleased or saddened by how chipper he was. Throughout their marriage, he'd set the tone. When he was happy
—
whistling, playing silly little practical jokes
—
she and Rebecca had been happy. When he was in one of his moods, everybody'd walked on eggshells. Now, though, she never knew how to take him. His states of mind these days bore the same resemblance to what she was used to as a raisin did to a grape you knew they came from the same source, were versions of the same thing, but your intuition insisted that couldn't be, they must be completely different.

Marshall was talking about the universe. He'd always liked to talk about such things, and Billie's job had been to nod her head and once in a while say something to pretend she was interested. If he'd ever realized she wasn't the least bit interested, he'd have stopped talking about it, stopped thinking about it, and that would have been too bad. What he was saying now made no less sense to her than what he'd said a hundred times before, but she couldn't trust anymore that he knew what he was talking about, either. Something about black holes which were really made of light, and the universe being infinite but curved at the edges, which Billie thought had to be contradictory. But what did she know?

Marshall said something about the war. What he said was just a part of a sentence, and it didn't make any sense, but Billie tensed. Terrible things must have happened to him in the war. He'd never talked to her about it. It would be awful if being senile made him tell her terrible things he'd never told her before.

She ate her pancakes.
Ros Curry always made sure she
got a tray whenever she was here at mealtime, which was more and more often.

Partly, that was because Billie always hoped for a few minutes with her daughter. Rebecca had even less time to visit now than before she took this job, but at least they were in the same building and ran into each other once in a while. She seemed
—
not happy, exactly, but animated, at least; not so lost. Still, Billie worried about her. Running a place like this was an awful lot of responsibility for a twenty-eight-year-old girl, and Rebecca looked tired all the time. She always had been a loner, never more than one or two friends at a time and those came and went. This Kurt was her first real boyfriend, not counting a couple in high school, and somehow Billie didn't think they were really serious, even though they were living together and almost certainly sleeping together. As far as her mother could tell, the only thing that Rebecca really paid attention to was her work. That wasn't good for anybody, especially not a woman. But she guessed it was better than all those years when Rebecca hadn't seemed to pay attention to anything.

Still, Billie liked spending so much time where her daughter worked, liked having an excuse to watch Rebecca be efficient and compassionate and so grown up. They weren't very close. Billie didn't dare let herself be too close to this daughter. But it was good to be around her while they both, in their own ways, worked at taking care of Marshall, who was the main thing they'd ever had in common.

Billie didn't like the type of people they had here, alcoholics and crazy people like that Petra woman and crippled young people and senile old people all under the same roof. Rebecca said real human communities were
like that, all different kinds living together. Billie didn't think that was so in the first place, and anyway this wasn't a 'community,' this was a nursing home. She sipped her watered-down orange juice.

Marshall announced, 'Faye's home.' His face was alight, his gaze fixed on the middle distance of his fractured but expansive interior landscape. Billie wasn't sure what he'd said. A lot of the time she wasn't sure what he'd said, and it bothered her, but if she asked him to say it again he got agitated.

Then, abruptly, he cringed and tried to curl himself up in his chair. The vest restraint prevented him from doing more than bringing his knees up, his head down, his wrists in to cross over his torso, which he'd made concave by bending forward his shoulders and pelvis as though to protect his internal organs.

Across the table from him, not too close but close enough to be identified as his wife, still part of a couple, Billie sopped up the last of the syrup on her plate with the last bite of pancake. The pancakes hadn't been hot when Roslyn had slapped them onto the tray and by now they were positively cold, coated with cold syrup, and they'd come out of a box to begin with. But they weren't bad.

Every meal she ate here, which was almost every supper and sometimes lunch and once in a while breakfast, Billie' was offended by all the shortcuts they took in the kitchen, to save money and work. She'd never say anything to Rebecca or Ros, but she didn't think food was where you ought to cut corners, not when food was just about all some of these poor people had left. She and Marshall had always been on a budget, too, especially in the early years. She'd been busy, too. But she'd never in her life served pancakes from a mix.

On Marshall's behalf she took offense, even though he didn't seem to notice any difference between this food and what she'd cooked for him all their lives together. He'd always been so persnickety about food, and he wouldn't have eaten instant pancakes if he'd been starving to death. Here he ate a tall stack, and would want more. Billie couldn't understand where he put all that food; he was so thin. Frail. Frail was a disconcerting thing to think about your husband. Senile was, too.

Marshall always said the food was good, affectionately told
her
it was good, as if she'd cooked it for him. He was always so pleased. His pleasure made Billie feel good as if she really had cooked it with him in mind. It also made her terribly sad.

The funny thing was, Billie herself didn't mind the nursing-home food as much as she thought she ought to. Even the cold pancakes out of a box tasted pretty good, and she'd actually liked the chicken last night. Roslyn did the best she could. Billie decided she'd ask for the recipe; she'd never go to the trouble of fixing it just for herself, but still.

They made her feel so welcome here. At home. Marshall didn't always exactly know her, and that broke her heart, but she was known and welcomed in this place. Dexter and Gordon always spoke to her by name, and both of them flirted, Dexter declaring at the top of his lungs, the way he declared everything, that her husband was a mighty lucky fellow, a mighty lucky fellow, and Gordon presenting her with flowers he'd pilfered from neighbors' yards. Gordon called Rebecca 'Princess,' which Billie thought was cute, but she didn't know about this dog of his; who ever heard of animals in a nursing home? Mrs Quinn would come and have a cup of coffee with her
in the evenings, sometimes just the two of them left in the dining room. Fervently, Billie hoped Mrs Quinn would be all right. What an awful thing. It wasn't Rebecca's fault, you couldn't be everywhere at once, but those nurses ought to have been watching better.

Billie liked the old people, when she didn't dwell on the fact that they were her own age, many of them even younger. Gordon was sort of endearing, although she didn't think this was the best place for him; didn't they have places for old drinkers? She didn't mind Paul, really, and she felt so
sorry
for him, but his drooling and lurching made her nervous. Alexander Booth could be charming and he had some interesting things to say, so she guessed he was all right.

But the insane ones bothered her. Like that man standing over there against the wall watching her
—
he always seemed to be watching her; he always seemed to be watching everybody
—
and that woman of his and the old lady who screamed she was Cleopatra and Jesus Christ. Billie shuddered. People like that didn't belong here, and more of them were being admitted. What was Rebecca thinking of? Her own father.

Instinctively Billie moved to block Bob Morley's view of her husband. She'd have been able to ignore what he'd said just now if he hadn't unfolded himself and said it again, pitifully, as if he hardly could believe it himself. It was almost a question. 'Faye's home?' Then he looked right at her, and his eyes cleared, and he said brightly, 'Faye. You're home. Welcome home.'

Stunned, Billie protested, 'Marshall Emig! I'm not Faye! For goodness' sake, Marshall, I'm Billie! I'm your wife!'

Marshall exclaimed again, pleased as a little boy, 'Faye!'
And strained across the sticky table to hold out both old hands to her.

Billie didn't take his hands. In fact, she leaned back out of his reach. Her fingers had turned numb with the shock of what he was saying, but she knew it wouldn't really sink in until later, until she got away from him. He thought she was Faye. He thought Faye had come home. And he was glad.

Marshall relaxed then, while maintaining that awkward position; though she was terribly hurt, Billie fretted that the restraint must surely be cutting into his ribs. His face slowly went blank. Billie watched as energy drained, muscles slackened, eyes clouded over. His head drooped toward his outstretched arms, as if to rest there, but the Posey
—
an awfully cute name for such a contraption
—
held his torso upright. He was asleep.

Billie wanted more than anything to get out of here. Why should she care about Marshall if he was going to think she was Faye? She'd thought they were rid of the woman years ago - and yet, she found she wasn't completely surprised that Faye had reappeared now in Marshall's scrambled mind. Tears filmed her eyes but she refused to let them fall. Lots of people around here shed lots of tears, but she was not going to be one of them. She'd cry at home, alone.

But she couldn't leave him just sitting here asleep, not with that madman staring at him, not when he was seeing Faye. And she couldn't manage him by herself when he was all sprawled out across the table like that. She looked around for somebody to help her. All the girls were busy hurrying people out of the dining room whether they'd finished their breakfast or not.