The Tides (26 page)

Florence smiled. 'Believe me, she'll have other chances.'

Tillie and her crew had already arrived and were hard at work cleaning the blood from the floor, stripping the bed, purging from the room any sign of the struggle
—
life-and-death, certainly, but bewilderingly inverted. Purging, too, apparently, any residue of the disembodied fingers Rebecca had seen; there was no sign, either, of anything that could account for such an illusion.

Abby went to the linen closet for clean towels. She was shaky and upset, not wanting to talk to anybody about the awful thing that had just happened to Viviana, whatever it was, whether it was bleeding to death or not being allowed to bleed to death. Wanting, actually, to talk to Alex about
it, but she could never talk to Alex about anything again. She'd hit him, and she deserved to lose her job at least, and even if she didn't lose her job she couldn't face him, couldn't ever take care of him anymore. That made her feel terrible.

She'd been on her way to give Paul a shower when she'd heard the screams from Viviana's room, and she wished now she'd just gone about her business and left Diane and the others to handle things. That was their job, not hers. Because she'd been there and watched the whole thing, stood by and witnessed it all, somehow Abby felt she had to decide what was the right thing to do. She didn't know what was right. What had happened wasn't right, but she didn't know what anybody should have done different. She told herself to just quit thinking about it. She had enough things on her mind.

Paul loved his shower. He asked for a shower a dozen times a day, and Maxine and some of the others said it was because he liked to get naked with girls. Abby thought maybe that was at least partly true, and so what if it was? Or maybe Paul just liked the feel of the warm water on his skin, the soapy washcloth, her hands. Colleen was talking to a massage school about the students doing internships at The Tides, and Abby thought that was a terrific idea; maybe they'd have time to do her, too. She didn't get touched enough, and neither did people in a nursing home, and neither, she suspected, did most people in the world. It seemed to her that one of the ways you knew who you were was when other people touched you, but it was never enough for anybody.

Except Alex. She didn't want to be thinking about Alex, but she knew she had to. Alex got touched pretty much whenever he asked for it, and he asked for it a lot, and as
far as she knew he couldn't feel a thing below his neck. They touched his face as part of his daily care routine, shaved him and put on aftershave, brushed his teeth and wiped away the foam. He also directed them, especially her, to touch the rest of his body, bathing and drying and oiling and powdering and moving his limbs in his exact range of motion exercises, and he acted as if it felt good.

Now, reaching up to shampoo Paul's hair, she laughed along with him and promised herself that she'd touch her girls more. Maybe those massage students would teach her how to do it. 'Okay, kid,' she said to Paul, 'turn around and I'll do your back.'

If you gave him time, Paul could do this part by himself. Usually they couldn't give him time because they had so many other showers to give, but today Abby stood still with soap and washcloth at the ready and let him get himself turned around the way he wanted. First he braced both hands on her shoulders, hard. Then he took his left hand off and pressed it against the slippery tile wall and moved his right hand from her left shoulder to her right. He stood like that for a minute, grinning, making sounds. Then he took his right hand off her right shoulder, moved his left hand to the corner of the shower stall, put his right hand where his left had been, and in this way turned his upper body all the way around. But his feet still pointed sideways and he was twisted at the waist. One foot at a time, he turned step by step to his left until he was fully facing the back Wall and his bent shoulders, long back, droopy butt were toward her and under her hands.

'Good,' she called to him over the clatter of the water. 'Now here comes the best part.' Paul's snort of assent and anticipation echoed.

By 'the best part' she'd meant getting his back scrubbed.

She wished they had one of those long-handled bath brushes; the bristles would feel really good, and he might even be able to use it himself. Diane would think that was a stupid idea, but Rebecca and Colleen and Lisa wouldn't; she'd bring it up in Paul's care conference. When she told Paul, 'Here comes the best part,' that was what she meant.

But all of a sudden her hands were around in front of him and she was rubbing his private parts with the washcloth and then with her bare fingers and Paul was hooting in obvious surprise and pleasure.

Horrified, Abby snatched her hands back and retreated out of the shower stall. She turned the water off. Paul kept standing there with his back to her, waiting for more, or maybe just not able to turn around fast enough to suit her now. Mortified, she was furious with him; although she knew he couldn't possibly have made her do that, it really did seem to her that it hadn't been her idea, that somebody had pushed her hands there, that she would never have done something like that on her own.

She started to dry him off, not very well and too roughly. When he realized that his shower was prematurely over and she wasn't going to touch him anymore anywhere, he got himself turned partway around, and she saw that he had a huge hard-on.

Disgust made her even rougher then, and a couple of times he almost fell; once, she almost did. By the time she got him more or less dried off and more or less dressed
—
clothes on him, anyway, but his shirt buttoned wrong and the collar not turned down neatly the way he liked it, and she didn't bother with his hair
—
he was as upset as she was, hollering and swinging at her, and she had to call for Maxine to come help her get him into his chair and restrained.

When they finally had Paul tied down so he couldn't hurt himself or anybody else, Maxine stood back, panting. 'So what got into him?' When Abby didn't answer, the other aide cuffed her arm in what was supposed to be a friendly way. 'Hey, girl, you can't let 'em get to you, you know?'

Barely able to keep from screaming at her and hitting her back, Abby did hiss venomously, 'Shut up, Maxine, okay? You think you know everything. Just shut up, okay?'

Maxine raised her hands in mock self-defense and backed off, pretending to be afraid of her, which made her even madder. 'Hey, hey, what got into you?' But she did go away, leaving the door to Paul's room open behind her.

Abby stood looking down at Paul. He was all twisted up, one leg half over the other, head off to one side, but he was still glaring and yelling. Through his thin yellow pants she couldn't help but see that he still had a hard-on. Meaning to calm him, to apologize to him (not for touching him in his private place; already she was starting not to be sure that had really happened, but for being impatient with him), meaning to make friends again, she knelt in front of him, holding on to the arms of his chair. 'Hey, Paul, come on. We're buddies, aren't we? Don't be mad at me.'

Abby was enveloped by a prickly warmth. It descended on her from above and behind, and as she felt it wrap itself around her like scratchy thin cloth, she saw Paul's eyes widen and his mouth stretch wide.

She felt breath on her hair, heard a teasing little song, caught a whiff of rose perfume that would have been overpowering if it had lasted more than a split second, and then saw her own hand come to rest on Paul's crotch. She
tried to pull it away. Her brain sent frantic messages to her arm and hand to pull away, to stop it, but the messages were ignored. Instead, her fingers started working Paul's zipper, and in the process the backs of her knuckles massaged his penis. Paul, still crooked in the chair, had stopped yelling, and now his breath was coming short and fast.

'Everything okay, Abby?' came Florence's voice from the doorway behind her. 'Need any help?'

Hoping she hadn't jumped, although her heart did and she thought she was going to pass out, Abby answered right away, even before the strange soft grip on her hand was loosened and the itching along her bare arms and legs had quit. 'Oh, sure, we're okay, aren't we, Paul? I'm just trying to get his pants zipped and his shirt buttoned right.'

The older aide was suspicious of something. 'Maxine said he was giving you a hard time. That's not like Paul.'

'It was my fault.' Abby was allowed now to stand up, but she kept her back to Florence. 'I've got a lot on my mind right now, and I lost my patience with him in the shower. You know how much he likes his shower. I was just trying to tell him I'm sorry, but I guess he's going to be mad at me for a while.'

'He doesn't hold a grudge, do you, Pauly?' Florence came in then and smoothed Paul's hair, got a comb from the bedside stand and wet it under the faucet and made a part on the left, the way he liked it. At first Paul kept watching Abby, but it didn't take long for him to shift his gaze to Florence, who was crooning about how handsome he wasand actually, Abby found herself thinking, he was.

'Thanks, Flo,' Abby said miserably, and stumbled out of the room. Lights were on
all up and down the hall, bells
dinging. Intensely relieved to know what to do, she set about her job.

It took Rebecca the rest of the day to go through the mid-month budget reports, not because there was such a wealth of information
—
they were cursory at best, and Diane hadn't even submitted one for nursing, which accounted for by far the largest share of the facility's budget
—
but because she couldn't keep her mind on them and because other things kept happening. Wanting to concentrate on numbers, she thought of these things as interruptions, intrusions, distractions, but they were not. They were the life of the nursing home, going on. She'd have ignored it all if she could, but her attention was demanded.

The hospital called to say that Viviana's hemorrhaging had been stopped and she was stabilized; Diane reported this with undisguised satisfaction. Rebecca didn't know whether to be glad or not. She didn't know what to say to Diane, how to explain the shame she felt, whether Diane ought to be feeling it, too.

The new maintenance man, the third since what Dave's wife had told her, with curious reluctance, had been a stroke, informed Colleen he was quitting, going to California tomorrow, had just needed this job long enough to fix up his truck. Rebecca tried to take some comfort in the few things he'd fixed while he'd been at The Tides, but the prospect of hiring someone else was too daunting even to contemplate. Maybe she could persuade Kurt to work for her weekends; he was handy around the house. Thinking of Kurt made her think again about his birthday, with no more enthusiasm or persistence than before.

Suppliers called. Those
whose accounts receivable were
thirty days past due tended to be relatively civil, unless this wasn't the first time; those who'd been owed money for ninety or a hundred and twenty days were increasingly nasty. Rebecca wrote a few checks. They would clear, but the management fee wouldn't. She didn't know what Dan would say to that, and it was hard to care.

She found a note in her box from Lisa: '
The county put Dexter in another facility where they'll control his spending money so he can't buy candy. He just called me crying to see why he can't come home. Can you believe this?
' Numb, Rebecca went through the motions of putting in a call to the caseworker, but it was just as well that she was out of the office until next week.

It was evening before she got back to her father's room. Her mother wasn't there; it struck Rebecca as odd and oddly sad that she didn't know where her mother was. Her father still lay on his back, board-stiff, but he was conscious, and when he saw her he gave a little yelp of, she was sure, fear. 'Dad, it's me, Becky. What's wrong?'

She reached to touch his cheek and he jerked his head away with shocking alacrity. His eyes bulged and he was breathing hard. He lifted one hand and waved it fiercely. 'Get out of here.'

Hurt despite everything she knew about dementia, Rebecca said gently, 'I love you, Dad,' and the words all but glowed between them. She could not remember the last time she had said that to either of her parents; she could not remember the last time she had felt it. She was feeling it now.

'I love you, too,' he said easily, 'and I don't want to see you hurt. Becky, you have to listen to me. You can't be here. She'll get you.'

'Who, Dad?' She
never knew whether to remind a
confused person what consensual reality was or to play into the fantasy on the grounds that it was real for him and elicited genuine emotion. So she did both. 'Who's after me, Dad? Nobody's after me.'

'Faye!' he croaked.

Rebecca hesitated. Then she caught his hand, stopping its frantic motion in the air, and held it between hers, even interlaced her fingers with his. Wedging herself between one of the ungiving chairs and the equally hard bedrail, she bent as close to him as she dared. 'Tell me about Faye, Dad. Tell me about Faye.'

'Faye,' he said very clearly, 'is your m
other, and she wants you back.'

Chapter 16

'He's senile,' Billie insisted. She wouldn't look at Rebecca, but that was not uncommon and couldn't be considered a clue as to the state of her mind or the content of what she was or was not saying. 'He's confused. You can't believe a thing he says.'

'Then you tell me.'

'There's nothing to tell.'

The question clamoring to be asked was, of course:
Why did he say she was my mother?
But she could not ask it.

They had walked together across the ragged field behind the nursing home to the weedy lake-bed where Rebecca had found her father
—
where he had been, she was convinced, one way or another in Faye's embrace. It was one of the first mild spring days, and there had been so little snow this winter that there wasn't much melt, so sitting outside for a short while would have been pleasant if not for this between them.

The fact that they were here together, alone, not quite looking at each other but on opposite sides of one of the worse-for-wear picnic tables still scattered around the field, marked this as an occasion of significance. Neither of them was in the habit of making such personal overtures. In fact, neither of them had made this one.