The Tides (25 page)

And her father. She and her mother had searched for him well into the night, until finally Billie's objections to being driven home had subsided to pale exhausted protests, easy to override. Rebecca had been torn, an increasingly commonplace experience; she hadn't wanted to leave her mother alone, but she'd been frantic to find her father. Hating to impose, she'd called Kurt for help, but he hadn't answered the phone and, curiously relieved, she'd had to settle for leaving a message on the machine telling him there was an emergency and she'd be late.

For a long time then, hours, she'd driven and walked almost aimlessly, having no way of guessing where he might be, gradually losing track of where she'd already looked and how long ago, crazed by the recurring image
—
which came to seem emblematic of her life as a whole, and of human life in general
—
that her path might be intersecting with her father's and intersecting again without her knowing he was anywhere nearby and, certainly, without him ever perceiving or recognizing her.

Well after midnight, the sleet had stopped and the temperature had perceptibly started to rise. Spring, she'd thought, extraordinarily moved; the advent or the premonition of spring. As she got out of her car behind The Tides again, she'd even taken off her coat and left it on the seat.

Abruptly, then, the randomness and hopelessness of her search for her father had dissolved, and she'd known where he was, as if she'd been informed. She'd looked there earlier in this endless evening, and she would never know whether she'd overlooked him or whether he'd come there after she'd left, been deposited there. Either possibility was too awful to contemplate for long and made no difference anyway, for there he was now at the
bottom of the dry take-bed, lit from all. sides as if by vibrating variegated stage lights, and he was not alone.

Rebecca couldn't tell how long she'd stood on the rim of the bowl, mesmerized. Fervently she hoped that it had been no more than a few seconds, and that her delay hadn't allowed more harm to come to her father, but there was the persistent suspicion that a long and hurtful span of time had passed before she could rouse herself to go in after him.

He was naked from the waist down. Rebecca could hardly bear to see him, and couldn't tear her eyes away. His thighs were no bigger than his calves except for the flesh that drooped behind them like something sewn on, and his buttocks strained and contracted and puffed out as if they had no underlying form or structure, as if they were being roughly kneaded. His genitals stood out in relief against the soft pallor of the rest of his flesh. He was moaning, pleasure and horror and pain all plausible sources of the chilling arrhythmic noises, or maybe just awe.

Rebecca had tugged off her high-heeled boots and scrambled down the incline. She knew the depression was shallow, but almost at once she lost perception of anything above or around it; she knew it was dry, filled in with weeds and urban debris she'd been meaning to have cleaned out, but she was submerged in light and odor so thick they should have had tactile properties, too, should have been wet and viscous on her skin.

Her father moaned again. She pushed toward him, through the assaultive smell of roses that must be adhering to her. Her father's arms were curved around a form she couldn't quite see, but the volume of air and light it displaced was substantial. Her father's parted lips were

pursed in a lingering kiss and his tongue glinted out between them. His penis was erect.

'Dad!' Rebecca started to cover his nakedness with her clothed body but was flung away. The back of her head hit the ground hard. Dazed, she struggled to clear her senses.

Then she heard her father roar, 'No! Faye! I won't allow you to have her!' and he was pulling her by the wrists up out of the depression and stumbling with her toward the back door of The Tides.

His strength had horrified her, so obviously born of desperation and of a love for her that defined him now, defined her, too, beyond the particulars of who they were. She'd glanced back once and seen pulsing pastel light in pursuit of them like a monstrous incoming tide, but the back door had not been locked, as it was supposed to be, and she and her father had rushed inside, where he'd collapsed and she'd shouted for help.

Now, at her father's bedside in broad sunny daylight, with budget reports needing to be attended to and Viviana Pierce trying to die across the hall, Rebecca watched his face. But she was thinking about Faye. Dementia could produce powerful fantasies, but she'd seen and smelled and heard things last night, too, and even now she felt things
—
a pressure in the air, a lightness that in itself should not have been sinister but radiated intense danger.

She looked across at her mother. The ceiling lights were too bright, of course, their illumination flat and graying, practically shadowless. Billie Emig looked stalwart and unapproachable in the other mustard-colored chair, just like Rebccca's, hard arms and awkwardly angled back; the rectangles made by the aluminum bedrails streaked her bulky shoulder, her thick cheek. Her hand on the vertical crosspiece didn't seem to be trembling; that might be
because she was clutching the rail so hard, or she might really be as calm as she appeared to be.

Her wedding ring glinted, the ring Rebecca must have seen on her mother's hand countless times every day of her childhood and had never really noticed, didn't know what its pattern was or whether there was an inscription. Only one of countless things she didn't know about her mother, it suddenly appalled her.

Seized by a desire to make contact with Billie, she thought what to say. She might try a statement of empathy, which she could offer sincerely to any other resident's family member but could not quite bring herself to say to her mother about her father: 'It must be hard for you to see him like this.' Most people responded warmly, correctly inferring that she cared about them. If her mother thought so, it would be true, but not entirely so, and the possibilities made Rebecca squirm. If her mother thought she was being a professional instead of a daughter, that would be true, too, but not entirely so.

She could just ask straight out about Faye.

'Faye.'

Somebody had spoken the name aloud. Rebecca was sure she herself had not, but her mother was still staring straight ahead, face lined and drooping in the harsh light, and gave no sign of having said anything. Rebecca leaned forward to look again into her father's face.

His eyes were open. When she moved into his line of vision, his eyes focused on her, and she saw in their wet feverish surfaces her own reflections on a swirling variegated background. Her father's lips moved, and she thought he was saying, 'Faye.' But when she bent closer she heard nothing; his lips kept moving, opening and closing very slightly, twitching in minuscule tics and
tremors, the top gum coming down to touch the edge of the bottom lip again and again. She felt the faint intake and outrush of his breath on her own lips, but there were no words.

Rebecca found herself glancing behind her and overhead for the source of the filmy pastel colors that had framed her in her father's eyes. The fluorescent lights had bluish auras, but that was all.

The commotion across the hall in Viviana's room coalesced into shrieks, and something crashed onto the floor. 'I want to die here! Please! Leave me alone!'

Rebecca was on her feet and out into the hall. A small crowd had gathered. Steeling herself, she pushed past Petra, who was clutching the crossed arms of her pink sweater with her own crossed hands and muttering. The man in the flannel shirt was Viviana's grandson, but he was well out of the way.

The scene inside the room was a physical shock. Viviana lay on the floor with bedclothes scattered around her, one thin leg tangled in a sheet and caught on the edge of the bed. She was covered with blood. The sheets were wet and spotted dull red. With both hands she was clutching the gray metal frame of the bed, which hardly rattled although she must have been using all her strength.

Diane was kneeling over her. For a split second it seemed to Rebecca that Diane's stance was threatening, and instinctively she started forward to come to Viviana's aid. But then she saw the look on the nurse's face. 'Diane, what's going on?'

'She's hemorrhaging.' Diane glanced up, brushed a lock of damp dark hair out of her face and then lowered her gaze and her hands again as if to grapple with the frail, bleeding old woman on the floor. She grasped Viviana's
wrists but did not seem to be exerting any real pressure. 'The ambulance is on its way.'

'I don't want to go to the hospital!' Viviana wailed, kicking with her free leg as Diane tried to remove her fingers from the bed frame. Blood spread around them, dark red and shiny on the shiny gray and white tiles.

Viviana's nightgown, spattered and torn, was up around her hips. Diane reached to pull it down and the old woman twisted away from her as if the nurse were causing her pain. 'Viviana, you listen to me,' Diane commanded. 'You have to go to the hospital. You're losing a great deal of blood.'

'Nana,' said the grandson, who had come back into the room but was keeping himself on the periphery of the drama, not to overstep his role or second-guess the professionals. 'Nana, please,' but it was unclear what he was pleading with his grandmother to do.

'I think,' said Rebecca, 'we should discuss this.'

Diane sank back on her heels and looked at Rebecca, keeping one hand on the back of the struggling old woman. 'What do you went, a committee meeting? Rebecca, she'll bleed to death if she doesn't get to the hospital immediately. This is a nursing decision.'

'It's not only a nursing decision,' Rebecca began.

'I want to die! Can't you people understand that? I want to die!'

Diane's white uniform was speckled with Viviana's blood and with dust from the floor. She put her hands on the old woman's shoulders and bent to look into her eyes. 'Viviana, I can't let you die like this.'

Rebecca forced herself to step into the room. 'Diane.'

Diane was fussing over Viviana, efficiently, as if there were no doubt in her
mind about what she should do.

Viviana lay still now, eyes closed, toothless mouth open, obviously exhausted. But she still gripped the frame of the bed. Without looking up, Diane said to Rebecca, 'I'm a nurse. I won't let someone bleed to death in front of me without trying to save her life. That's what I'm trained to do. That's why I'm a nurse.'

'You were willing to let her starve herself to death.'

'That was different. Calmer. Passive. Not an emergency. This is a medical emergency, and I have to intervene.'

Viviana was crying almost silently now, but she would not let Diane loosen her grip. Blood still flowed
—
from between the old woman's legs, Rebecca could now see
—
and Diane's white shoes were flecked with it. Rebecca struggled with sudden nausea and her vision blurred violet, evidence of her own blood rushing to her head.

Then her vision cleared, even assumed a hyper-clarity, as though she were looking through a high-powered lens that concentrated on the small bright sphere where Viviana's hands were wrapped around the aluminum post of the bedframe. Other fingers were among hers, working hers free. Not Diane's; Diane had risen, was talking to the grandson by the door. No one else was in the room. But Rebecca clearly saw long strong fingers with painted nails twist and scratch and claw at Viviana's fingers until, one by one in awful surrender, they let go.

The ambulance pulled up outside, its siren ceasing mid-wail. Two attendants with a stretcher raced in the side door. One of them picked up the old woman from the floor, as unresisting now as if she were already dead. He laid her more or less flat on the stretcher, where the other attendant covered her to the neck. Rebecca looked for blood on the white sheet, but before it could appear Viviana was whisked away, Diane following to provide the
information necessary for hospitalization and the grandson hastening to his car.

Haltingly, Rebecca joined the hushed little group of residents and staff outside Viviana's room. Shirley was in tears. Rebecca went to her, started to put an arm around her, but the aide pulled angrily away. 'How could you just let that happen? You didn't think it was right, but you just stood there and let it happen!'

Rebecca shook her head. 'It wasn't up to me'

'You're the administrator! You're the boss! Everything is up to you!'

Rebecca could scarcely think. 'I didn't know what was right,' she started to say, but stopped, pressed her back against the wall, took deep breaths that hurt and made her sick.

Florence spoke up. 'I think Diane was right. You can't just let somebody bleed to death right in front of you.'

'She's been wanting to die for a long time,' Shirley said fiercely. 'This was her chance, and we took it away from her.'