Shaking out the Dead (24 page)

“I'm not really apologizing,” Paris said. “I'm sorry I wasn't there like, you know, as in I regret I wasn't there. I've never seen you cry like that.”

“What, you wanted to watch?”

“I wanted to be with that part of you.”

Tatum looked at Paris. He shrugged, and Tatum's breath caught in her chest. Could she believe it? That he wanted to be with that part of her? Her heart pushed out energy toward him, but she had to look away. She moved toward Rachael instead. She climbed onto the bed and lay on top of the spread, scooting up beside Rachael as close as she could be without actually touching her.



Paris seated himself at the end of the mattress and placed a hand on Tatum's ankle. Though calm on the outside, he was still shaken by what had happened at the water's edge. He had seen Rachael's fingernails catch Tatum's cheek and after that, a bright, white light exploded inside of him. Next thing he knew, he was in the back seat of Tatum's car with Rachael in his lap with no recollection of how he got there.

Then, at the hospital, he had carried Rachael from the car and through the sliding doors, struggling not to look back to where the woman he loved was crying and the man who loved her was walking away. If he looked back, he would never make it through the door.

Paris wanted to climb into the bed on the other side and make a circle with Tatum that held Rachael safe in the center. But he stayed where he was, watching them. The two seemed far away and separate, even from each other. It made Paris want to say their names, to see their eyes open, and pull them all to a single shared space.

“Paris,” Tatum said, breaking his revelry. “You should get out and save yourself while you can.”

“No,” was all he could think of to say.

Then he slid up the mattress and lay beside Tatum. He kept his knees bent and boots hanging off the edge of the bed, trying to be mindful of the spread while protecting them all from the greater evil of his exposed feet.

Tatum reached up with a tentative hand and placed it on Rachael's shoulder.

“Tell me something,” she said to Paris.

He could tell she wanted him to say something that would take her away from the voices in her head. She wanted him to carve out a new space for them to occupy, wrap them in a story where it all had already happened and led them here, however indirectly, to each other.

“Paris?”

He didn't want to let her down.

“I have a secret,” he said. “Want to hear?”

Tatum answered with a bend of her knees that he could feel as her feet pressed to his shins.

“It's about the diner. Around two a.m. . . .,” he began.

It was a story he had once been saving, a perfect story, before he had ruined it in the janitor's closet. Paris told Tatum about the women, about the soup and the quiet of the night. Paris told her that he had tried to draw the women, but he could never draw their eyes.

Then, he was quiet. Lies of omission weigh nothing, but they carve out perceptible holes, and the hole in his story, to his mind, was gaping. No Linda. Nothing. Like she was never there. He reached his arm across Tatum, but with his will, he cast a broader wing of protection. Across Tatum. Across Rachael. Across the Deluxe and a wider world, a sea of uplifted eyes wanting only to be noticed, to be seen. His lie had carved an empty space into the room. He tried to fill it with a promise.

Be a man.

The words formed clearly in his head, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. This was what it meant to be a man. To possess not with a clenched hand, but to
be
possessed by a promise. A promise to protect. In declaring them as his, he realized, he became theirs.

It was an oath.

It was love.



Geneva held her speeding ticket, slightly crushed, in the hand supporting the bottom of her purse as she dug out her key. The scent hit her first, heady and dusty, and then the snatch of color caught her eye. Purple and white lilacs crammed into a jelly jar sat beside her door. She turned the lock and dropped her purse and unused overnight bag onto the floor inside. Then she returned to the hall and picked up the flowers. She carried them, and the speeding ticket, inside to her desk. She lifted the folded note from the bouquet. It simply said, “ — J.”

Geneva lowered herself into her chair. The day did not slip away. The bad mood and the bouquet. It was a staring contest.

Then the bad mood spoke.

Ralph. She had never blamed him for anything. But then today, driving home, some inner switch got thrown. Geneva found herself blaming Ralph for an “it all” she didn't know she had in her. Her resentment festered. She let it pump through her veins. Defensiveness locked up her jaw and tightened her lips despite her knowing that such rigidity trapped one inside rather than protected one from what could come from without. She also realized that the reason she hadn't blamed Ralph all these years wasn't due to her love or her personal virtue. It was about control. If she blamed Ralph, it meant the problem lay elsewhere, outside of herself. Whereas if it were
her
fault,
her
responsibility, it was hers to change. And the only person she needed to count on was herself.

But no more. From now on, she decided, it wasn't her fault. Nothing was. Ralph, the social worker, the cop — they were the problem.

She looked at the lilacs. They offered no opinion. Geneva reached toward the speeding ticket and turned it face down on the desk.

Then, she closed her eyes to make both disappear in search of some inner silence. But the dusty, heady lilac scent was persistent and seemed able to reach inside of her with soft tendrils. Her body drew a sudden fast breath, reaching for more, an act separate from her will. The exhale was slow, and almost complete, when there was a soft rapping at her door.

Geneva opened her eyes.

“Hello?” Tatum's voice.

Geneva closed her eyes again. Despite her affection for Tatum, she was in no mood for handwringing, melancholy or gloom, or at least not someone else's. She didn't want to say words or think thoughts or manage herself in any way in relation to what someone else might want or need.

Another knock on the door.

It was a roll of the dice. Geneva hoped for the best. She sighed heavily and said, “Come in.”



The sound of Geneva's arrival, doors opening and closing, had wakened Tatum, who had been dozing across the hall. Paris was gone. Tatum peeked over the top of Rachael, who slept beside her, and looked at the clock. 7:30 p.m. Paris must have gone to work. Tatum remembered that Geneva said that she would be gone for the night and wondered what had happened, why she was home.

So she had slipped from the bed and out of her apartment, leaving the door ajar, and rapped a knuckle on Geneva's door.

Geneva answered after the second knock. Tatum stepped inside. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the jar of lilacs on the desk.

“Oo,” she said. “Pretty.”

Geneva looked at the flowers and nodded in agreement.

“Where'd you get them?” she said. She stuck her face into the blooms.

Geneva fingered the note that accompanied the flowers.

“I met him at the coffee shop,” she said. “In passing. He doesn't know I'm married.”

“In-ter-est-ing,” Tatum said, enunciating each syllable.

Geneva pushed the note away, picked up another slip of paper, and gave it a wave.

“Got a ticket,” she said.

“For what?”

“Speeding.”

“How fast?”

“Ninety-five.”

“In a what?”

“In a Saab,” Geneva said, for the second time that day.

“Sounds like you're a fast woman on all fronts.” Tatum crossed the room and flopped down on the sofa. “So who is he? What's he like? Why are you home?”

Geneva didn't answer right away. Then, she looked at the bouquet like it was the flowers, as opposed to the man, that she was about to describe.“ He's attractive,” she said but then corrected herself. “Handsome, in a soft and rugged way. He seems like a thinking man.”

“Gosh,” Tatum said, “and the downside is?”

Geneva shot her a look.

“No one would blame you,” Tatum said.

“Well, it's not about ‘no one' — whoever that is. It's not about ‘everyone' either. Just me.”

“You'd feel guilty?”

“I'd feel like a liar,” Geneva said. She tossed her speeding ticket across the desk.

Tatum wondered if Geneva meant she'd be lying to Ralph, or the new guy. She was about to ask for clarification, but Geneva spoke first.

“Even Rachael knows that rationalization is just lying to yourself.”

Tatum didn't understand how Geneva would be lying to herself and was about to pursue it, but again Geneva spoke first.

“Tell me,” she said, pulling off her coat and deliberately redirecting the conversation, “how was your day?”

The diversion worked. Tatum told Geneva about the day's premiere drama, Rachael's fall and the trip to the hospital. She left out the part where she had sat crying in the car while Paris took care of Rachael.

“You should have seen Paris and Rachael on the way home,” Tatum said, remembering the two of them in the back seat, Paris's arm around Rachael, Rachael's cheek on his arm. “I think Rachael fell in love with Paris.”

“Who wouldn't fall in love with Paris?” Geneva said, offhandedly.

Geneva's words entered Tatum like they were something she hadn't meant to swallow.
‘Who wouldn't fall in love with Paris?'
The idea tasted of metal. It unnerved her, that she could be one of millions.
‘Who wouldn't fall in love with Paris?'
She hadn't realized it. Paris definitely didn't realize it. She rose from the sofa and walked to the window. She knew for a fact that no one would ever ask who wouldn't fall in love with her.

“I think Rachael stole a picture of Vincent,” Tatum said, with her back to Geneva.

Geneva reached up and clicked on the floor lamp beside the desk.

“Paris really took the lead today,” Tatum continued. “Taking care of Rachael. Maybe that male energy is something she needs. Maybe that's why she took Vincent's picture.”

“Did you consider asking her why she took it?” Geneva said.

Geneva's voice sounded oddly testy.

“I have,” Tatum said, turning to face her. Then she corrected herself. “No. I asked her
if
she took it. That's when everything went weird.” Tatum crossed her arms over her chest. She dropped her head and shook it. “She needs her father.”

Geneva stood and wandered toward the kitchen.

“I've really tried my best,” Tatum said, “but I don't know. I just. You know, the truth is, I never even went in the hospital. Paris did. I sat in the car. . .”

“Stop,” Geneva said. She was standing behind her kitchen counter.

Tatum looked up.

But Geneva just stood there, fingertips on the countertop. Her eyes were closed. She didn't move. She didn't seem able to.

The silence made Tatum anxious.

“Can I just ask you one thing?” Tatum said softly.

“What's that?” Geneva said.

Tatum's voice wavered.

“I have to call Lee,” she said. “Insurance stuff. But I was thinking I should tell him maybe that Rachael needs him. I failed today in a way that scares me.”

“Do what you need to do,” Geneva said.

“I don't know if it's what I need to do,” Tatum said, taking a step toward the kitchen. “I just think Rachael. . .”

“Have you asked Rachael what she wants in terms of her father?” Geneva said, stopping Tatum's steps with her voice.

“I was thinking I shouldn't ask until I know I can deliver. That I should line him up first.”

“What she wants has nothing to do with what you can deliver,” Geneva said. “Her answer to the question would be clarifying, perhaps for both of you.”

“Well, yeah,” Tatum said, “but why get her all full of hope for something she can't have?”

“The point,” Geneva said, “would be that she wants it. Admitting it. Knowing it.”

Tatum could feel Geneva's frustration, and it confused her. It forged a convergence of feelings that combined made Tatum feel like she was something collapsing from the center.

“What did I do?” she said.

“Rachael's been great for you,” Geneva said. “Paris adores you. You're acting like . . . like some kind of reverse-Rumpelstiltskin, spinning gold into shit.”

Tatum's body cooled from the surface of her skin down to her core. She hadn't seen it coming. Not from Geneva. Paris, maybe. Rachael, all in time. But Geneva? Time was up?

The humiliation was always greater when it came as a surprise.



Geneva's face shifted as her attention was drawn over Tatum's shoulder.

“Rachael,” Geneva said.

Tatum turned.

“Rough day?” Geneva said.

Rachael stood in the doorway, a bandage covering her right temple. She shrugged as though rough days were the norm.

“Come let me see that,” Geneva said.

Rachael walked to the kitchen. Geneva pushed back Rachael's hair and examined the bandage.

“Dang, dang, dang,” she said and then shuffled Rachael's hair back into place.

Rachael looked up at Geneva like she was waiting for her to tell some truth lurking in the moment. Geneva felt Tatum, too, standing there in hurt and confusion, exerting a pull, wanting comfort.

But Geneva did not want to be there for them. She didn't want to be
there
, in that place of hand-wringing and need, worry and questions. She had flowers on her desk and a speeding ticket. She had a husband who wouldn't die. She thought that it was more than enough.

“I had a rough day too,” she said.



Their voices had been quiet. Rachael had been sleepy. But still, she had heard. Not word for word, but key phrases and names. She filled in blanks not knowing they were blanks, creating sums from disparate facts. They knew she stole the picture. Tatum was calling her father.

Her father. He was as shadowy as her mother. The difference was that he always had been. She and her mother had been one unit, and he had been another. Together they made their family. But without her mother, there was no unit. No family, and the not-there of it scared her. To imagine her father taking her away was like to imagine disappearing.

Back in Tatum's apartment, Rachael left the kitchen where her aunt was preparing a supper of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. In her bedroom, Rachael unzipped her backpack's side pocket and checked on Vincent. She pulled him out and tucked him up her shirt sleeve. She slipped quietly from her room.