The Tides by Melanie Tem

her head reached the middle buttonhole of his shirt; that button among others was missing. Not looking up at his face, poking her sharp fingers through the holes in his shirt, she croaked, 'Why, honey, it's the tides. You know. It's the power of the tides.'
     
    With that, everything slid into focus for Bob. 'Oh,' he said to her, brimming with gratitude and something like love. 'Oh, yeah. That makes sense. The tides.' He knew that. He wasn't as dumb as he looked.
     
    He stooped and picked her up. She screeched and giggled. He carried her off the porch.
     
     
    Chapter 5
     
     
    Five forty-five in the morning and already behind schedule, rushed, because the first feeding had to be done by seven so the second shift could get in and out by seven-thirty in order for baths to get done in time for morning meds. There were morning activities, too, today a book club at nine o'clock and men's group after that, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if people missed that stuff.
     
    Some residents wanted to linger over coffee. Some lingered, not especially wanting to, because their hands were uncertain getting food and drink to their mouths or because they had to swallow three or four times for each bite or because they kept sliding to the verge of forgetting what a fork or a piece of toast was for. Lingerers intentional or otherwise would soon be rousted from the dining room whether they were ready to leave or not, in the constant and constantly frustrated attempt to maintain some sort of schedule.
     
    In the kitchen, Roslyn Curry made as much noise as she could. The radio on top of the freezer was turned to elevator music which she liked, goddammit, no matter what anybody said. Getting to pick the music on the kitchen radio was one of the few perks of being Food Services Director, and Ros took what she could get.
     
    There was some sort of interference this morning, though, a ghost in the signal so that it sounded almost like somebody singing along, way in the background, to an instrumental version of 'Qué Sera Sera.' This was especially aggravating because it made you want to listen to the damn thing instead of just letting it drizzle along the way it was supposed to. Ros frowned, but it was too much trouble to fuss with the dial and try to clear it up, so she'd just put up with it.
     
    She liked this job. She liked these people. She wanted to do right by them. It wasn't easy.
     
    Adele couldn't stand old people or sick people or anybody who wasn't normal, which was sort of funny, considering. Nursing homes made her physically ill. She couldn't fathom why Ros worked there, and she really didn't want to hear about it. It was one of the things between them. There were a lot of things. Married to a man all those years who had never taken much of an interest in her, Ros had thought things would just naturally be better with a woman, and it threw her to discover the same old crap.
     
    Stainless steel pots and pans clanged against stainless steel sinks. The louder the clanging the more Roslyn felt both harried and efficient. That was ridiculous, not that she cared.
     
    Bob Morley was hanging around in the doorway. 'Go sit down!' she told him. His perpetual scowl deepened but he slunk away. Not very far, she knew. He was like a stray dog, putting up with kicks and curses on the off-chance that you'd drop something edible — not give it to him; she doubted anybody had given him anything in a long time, except maybe Petra. He'd as soon bite you as look at you.
     
    He'd already been sitting in the dining room when she'd come to work at four-thirty — well, she'd been a little late. Four-thirty in the morning was just too early to expect anybody to be at work, if you had any kind of social life. Which at the moment Ros had a lot of, if social was what you could call it.
     
    Fifty-eight years old and as mixed up as a teenager. Trying to figure out who she was, which had been pretty well decided until the afternoon she'd met Adele