Shaking out the Dead (36 page)

“Rachael's pictures,” he said.

“Where are you living, Paris?” Geneva said. “Where did you go?”

“It doesn't matter,” Paris said.

“Do you need a place to stay?”

Paris shook his head.

“Stay,” Geneva said.

Paris shook his head again. He pushed the cutouts farther apart. Tatum. Geneva. Himself. Vincent. Rachael and each of her parents. They lay there like puzzle pieces.

“For a moment,” Paris said, “it seemed like everything was how it's supposed to be.”

Geneva couldn't agree with him. She didn't believe in supposed-to-be.

“Tatum was an interesting woman,” she said.

“I loved her,” Paris said. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “So why'd I walk away?”

He looked at Geneva over his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot. Geneva shook her head. She didn't know why he walked away. She was asking herself the same question.

“Every time she said I'm sorry,” Paris said, “I wanted to hate her.”

“What was it that you wanted her to say instead?”

“I don't know,” he said.

Neither did she, Geneva thought.

He turned back to face the counter.

“If I take this in,” Paris said, “I'll never be able to forget.”

Geneva stepped up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders and rested her cheek on his back.

“You can think about it as little or as much as you want,” she said. “But all you can ever change about any of it is how you see it. And even with that, you still end up stuck in time.”

“So what do I do?”

Look forward, Geneva thought, but knew he was not ready, and that it was not yet time for the words.



Nobody wants to open his door to cops. All the inward guilts make one calculate in an instant, what have I done? And then, secondarily, who's dead? Lee stood with the police officer on his front step. The air was thick with summer heat. The sound of cicadas traveled across the landscape and gave the humidity the dimension of sound. The officer spoke in an official drone. All business. Even the “I'm sorry for your loss” was perfunctory, as devoid of emotion as a cashier's “Have a nice day.” The cop handed Lee Geneva's phone number and told him she had asked to be contacted. The patrol car pulled away. The cicadas called out again.

Lee shoved his hands into his pockets. Tatum was dead. Margaret, first. Now, her sister. Then a morbid thought struck him. Such things came in threes, some people said. Was Rachael next? An image flashed through his mind. A dainty casket. Against his will his eyes were drawn to the grove where Margaret wasn't buried. The sight of it embarrassed him. It hadn't seemed wrong at the time.

He'd made some mistakes. Lee could see that now. At first, his reunion with Rachael had gone just as he'd dreamed. She had run to him. Blazed in his presence. But since arriving home, a tension had set in as if each were waiting, each unsure whether or not they were going to be enough for the other.

Lee blamed, in part, the house itself. The fact that Margaret wasn't there made it difficult to think of much else. It was why he had planned the trip to Montana. His plan was to drop Rachael with her aunt and go on to Denver for a job interview. He was hoping to move before the school year started.

The front door opened behind him, and Rachael's tutor stepped out, joining him on the front stoop. Lee listened to her but could not take in her report and pleasantries. Lee watched her drive away, delaying doing what had to be done.

What to say? Tatum was dead. Shot, for god's sake. He tried to remember how he had told Rachael about her mother's death. He had held her at Margaret's bedside. This, he remembered. But he had forgotten that no explanation had been necessary and that it had been Rachael who had told him.

He turned and went inside. The sudden soft chill of air conditioning gave rise to the small hairs on his neck and arms. He supposed there would be a funeral and wasn't sure what his role in the arrangements should be. Maybe this Geneva was managing it, he thought, fingering the piece of paper. He vaguely remembered her as Tatum's neighbor and the widow at the funeral he had attended. Funerals. Tatum's would be the third. That was the three. It was true that he didn't know one of the deceased, but he was there, so it counted. Three. Maybe the thing had run its course. Maybe he was lucky to be alive.

Not finding Rachael in the kitchen, he started up the stairs, dragging his hand along rail. Rachael didn't fill the house the way Margaret had. Nor did she turn a constant antenna to the ether, seeking out his presence.

With increasing unease, Lee moved toward Rachael's room. His legs felt unsure beneath him as a creeping realization made its way to his consciousness. With Tatum dead, his safety net was down. He was alone again. Alone with his daughter. When he reached the top of the steps, the phone rang, and Lee gratefully took the out. He bypassed Rachael's bedroom door, peering in and winking at her on route to his own bedroom, where he still did not sleep.

Lee answered the phone. A woman identified herself. Geneva. She reminded him of their meeting at Ralph's funeral. Have you heard about Tatum, she asked? He told her yes.

“How's Rachael doing?” Geneva said.

“The police just left,” Lee said, lowering his voice. “I haven't told her, yet.”

“Will you allow me to tell her?” Geneva said. “I knew Tatum better. I knew the two of them together.”

Lee barely had time to weigh it before Geneva added, “Let me be the messenger. She'll need you to be there for her.”

Lee sat on the side of the bed, looking into the hall through the open bedroom door. He was being rescued. He felt gratitude, and shame. He felt relief.

“That may be best,” he said.

“Before I talk to Rachael,” Geneva said, “one more thing. I know you were planning a trip here under better circumstances. I hope you'll still come for the service. If you do, I want you to know that Rachael is welcome to stay with me while you attend to your business in Colorado. It might be helpful to her. For closure.”

Lee considered her words, and he didn't miss the careful intonation, the sell. She wanted Rachael to stay with her for a time. It would serve him too. He could still make the interview. He was about to say “yes” when Geneva continued.

“But here's the deal,” she went on. “This has to be up to Rachael. If she doesn't want to come, I want her to have that choice.”

Lee looked up. Rachael — small, with eyes filled with knowledge and dread — stood in the bedroom doorway.

“She's right here,” Lee said to Geneva. “I'll put her on.”

Lee covered the mouthpiece. He held out the phone.

“Geneva,” he said.



Geneva's name sounded strange in his mouth. Rachael never spoke of Geneva. Or Paris. Or even her Aunt Tatum. She had the sense it was something she was supposed to pretend never was.

Rachael looked at her father and then the phone. Her eyes had been filled with knowledge and dread because Rachael already knew something was bad. She knew the feeling. The reason for the feeling would be the details coming like water to fill in the cracks.

She stepped forward and took the phone.

“Hello?” she said.

“Rachael,” Geneva said, “I've missed you. I was thinking of you just yesterday and thought, just like we said we would, ‘I wonder when we'll see each other.' But Rachael, I'm sorry, because I'm calling you with some sad news. It's about your Aunt Tatum.”

“She's dead?” Rachael said.

“She's dead.”

Rachael pictured her aunt, a fistful of pills in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other.

“Someone shot her,” Geneva said.

“Someone shot her?”

“It wasn't on purpose. Someone was committing a crime, and she walked in on it.”

Rachael imagined a scene like she had seen on television. A man in a ski mask walking into a convenience store. Aunt Tatum was in line with milk. It was a stick-up.

“Like at a store?” Rachael said.

“It was at the diner,” Geneva said. “She went to see Paris. It was late at night.”

“What about the women?” she said.

“What women?”

“The women who go there?”

“I don't know,” Geneva said. “I don't know about any women.”

Rachael had never been to the diner, but she remembered the story told in bed after she had gotten stitches. Paris was telling his story to Tatum, but Rachael had been there and his voice had reached her half-sleep and made the pictures unfold. The women she imagined had dirty faces. They lived in the riskier world of the night where soup was sucked from spoons and crackers were bitten gingerly.

What Geneva was telling her now appeared in her mind like it were a memory, a thing she had actually seen. Paris served the women soup. Tatum sat on a stool watching him. They exchanged shy and loving glances. Then a man burst in the door. He was going to kill Paris, but Tatum jumped in the way.

“I know you were planning on visiting next week,” Geneva said. “Would you still like to come and stay with me for a couple of days? We could have a service for Tatum.”

Rachael looked at her father, not knowing what she should want. A sad smile flickered across his face. Rachael thought about Geneva's living room, smaller than the bedroom she was standing in. Darker. She remembered lying on the sofa while Geneva rubbed her feet.

“If you don't want to, that's fine,” Geneva said. “If you want to, that's fine. I've already asked your dad. He said either way is okay.”

But Rachael knew that either way was not okay. Her eyes shot to her father, and she tried to gauge what he wanted her to do.

“I'll come,” she said, taking a hopeful guess. Lee placed a hand on her shoulder.

“This isn't the way it will always be,” Geneva told her. “This is it,” she said. “You've got your dad. And you've got me,” she said. “No more dying.”



“Dad?”

Rachael was handing him the phone, but he did not see. He was staring down the hall, an idea formulating inside of him. Lee had sat on the bed as Rachael took in the facts. He would need to attend the service, he knew, before heading to Denver. He would let Geneva take the lead in the planning, he thought. He would pay for whatever needed paying for. He remembered the convoluted planning necessary for Margaret's funeral. The Catholic wake. The secret cremation. The burial that was a sham. And now, her ashes were stashed beneath the bed they sat upon.

“She wants to talk to you,” Rachael said.

Lee snapped to and took the phone. He asked Rachael to excuse him. She left the room, and Lee put the phone to his ear. Before Geneva could speak he asked what arrangements had been made for the body.

“None yet,” Geneva said, “but I can certainly . . .”

Lee cut her off.

“I'll take care of it,” he said. “It's the least I can do.”

The two agreed that Lee would deal with and pay for the cremation. Geneva would arrange the service. He and Rachael would arrive on Saturday. The service would be Sunday. He would take off for Denver on Monday and be back Thursday.

Lee hung up at his end but remained sitting on the bed. His chest filled with something warm. He called the feeling love, but it was, in fact, relief. Emotions, like other creatures of nature, sometimes use camouflage to pass for something other than what they are. Many feelings pretend to be love as it is the most effective disguise in the attempt to win you over and enlist you in their cause.



Geneva hung up and looked down at the Book before her. She turned another page or two and then flipped to where she had crammed the picture that Paris had drawn. She thought about the inevitable conclusions forming in Rachael's mind, the kind that can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies. What else was there for her to conclude but that everyone leaves? One way or another. They die. They pack you up and ship you off.
Don't count on anyone. Don't get too connected
. In a way, she knew, Rachael would be right. We run through each other's hands like water.

“But it's not what you think,” Geneva said. Then she grimaced, knowing she meant something by it but not being sure what.

She closed the Book's cover. She turned away from it and wandered to the back of the apartment, peering into the rooms as she passed them. She wondered how much she should do, if anything, before Rachael arrived. At the rear of the apartment, she looked through the window in the back door. The dead have their secrets, she thought. They leave behind clues, but clues are different than messages. They were never meant for prying eyes. One thing did seem clear, however. The picture that Paris had drawn had upset her. The whole Book upset her.