The Tides Read Online Free Page A

you're here!'
     
    Sometime later (or earlier, or in a different time sequence, or outside time altogether, or in memory, or in a kind of foretelling), Marshall found himself poised in front of a mostly white wall. A wide paintbrush was in his hand, dripping white paint onto the thigh of his charcoal trousers.
     
    Faye encircled his hand in both her small, soft, longnailed ones and laughed, in that delighted and malicious way that had always made him want to run from her at the same time that he would have done almost anything to cause her to laugh like that again, to smile at him like that, to show him he could still please her. 'Aren't we a team, Marshall, honey? Aren't we something?'
     
    Faye raised his arm high above his head, higher than he could reach without standing precariously on tiptoe and bracing the heel of his other hand against the wall, which was sticky. A jagged yellow streak descended into - or, depending on your perspective, rose out of - the thick waves of white paint like the branch or the root of a tree, maybe dead, being covered or marooned by the rising or falling tide. He shouldn't be doing this.
     
    Faye squealed, 'Ooo, this is fun !' — and shoved his arm up.
     
    He tried to stop, but she was quicker and much more wi l lful than he was, and the yellow zigzag disappeared under thick, rivuleted white.
     
    'Marshall, what in the world are you doing?' It was Billie. He knew right away that it was his wife Billie, and he was very glad she had come, but he also felt guilty, although he had forgotten what it was he had done wrong. 'Oh, for heaven's sake, look at your clothes!'
     
    He looked, saw his good charcoal trousers, a burgundy shirt he thought must be new, and respectable black shoes, but no socks. Why was he not wearing socks? Marshall felt himself flush with shame. No wonder Billie was embarrassed. He suspected he embarrassed her a good deal these days, but he never seemed to be aware of it until it was too late. 'I'm sorry,' he said.
     
    'Becky, for heaven's sake, just look at your father!'
     
    'Is he okay?'
     
    'Look at his trousers. Look at his brand-new shirt. A brand-new shirt, first time he's worn it.'
     
    'How did he get into the paint? I thought Lisa put it all away in the cabinets in the activity room.'
     
    'Why wasn't anybody watching him? That's why I had to put him here, because I couldn't watch him twenty-four hours a day, but I could watch him better than this.'
     
    'Dad! You painted over the mural!'
     
    Uncomprehending, Marshall stared. Then, to get away from all of them, Billie and Rebecca and Faye, he retreated a step. The back of his shirt and the seat of his trousers clung to the wet paint on the wall.
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
     
    As an early autumn sunset stretched and thinned the blue-gray light, Rebecca walked toward The Tides. She'd been at a meeting across town and could well have gone home afterward, but it was too early; there was nothing at home that wouldn't wait, including Kurt, and The Tides compelled her.
     
    She'd parked her car in a lot several blocks over, so she could approach her nursing home on foot, see what it looked like from a distance, experience the feel of it as it gradually came closer, larger, more detailed. Her nursing home. Her facility. Even after three months as administrator of The Tides, she still thrilled to the phrase she finally had a right to use: my place.
     
    People outside the business, to most of whom nursing homes were nothing but warehouses where the elderly and sick with nobody to take care of them went to die, didn't understand that. When she'd met Kurt she'd already been hooked, a geriatric social worker with ideas about revolutionizing the field, and once she'd started studying for her administrator's exam she'd hardly been able or willing to think of anything else. She'd tried to tell him stories about the residents to make him see how fascinating they were, but all he could see were their illnesses and disabilities