Shaking out the Dead (7 page)

Tatum stepped toward Paris but turned profile, grabbing the swing's chains. She sat down on the leather seat and backed it up until she was positioned to push off. She smiled at him weakly. It was a request. Paris thought she was requesting his love but not the risk of losing it.

“I know other stuff about Einstein, too,” she said.

“Tell me.”



Paris passed through both the park and the memory. He walked toward the duplex in the autumn chill through the northside neighborhoods of the aspiring working class and the liberal professionals. The houses weren't grand, but they were beloved. Matted, raked leaves sat like black puddles on the dark lawns. These leaves were the last round, the round that might not make it into the Dumpsters and compost piles but would sit quiet under the snow until raked up in the spring with ice still clinging to their soggy brownness. The grass beneath would rise greener than the rest.

He walked the blocks, allowing himself the hope that Tatum would be sitting on the front stoop of the duplex. He pretended that she had called him at work from home, choosing to ease back into his company, first just a voice, materializing slowly.

But the stoop was empty.

Love is a demotion. The lover ranks lower than the friend. This is how Paris remembered what Tatum had told him that night in the park. He had decided that, for Tatum, such rankings must have to do with permanence. Those we can keep as opposed to those we can't. Lovers were, undeniably, more slippery, more likely to come and go than were friends. Paris tried to understand her thinking rather than argue against it. He didn't want to frame an argument on love's behalf and risk it being a compelling one that wins her over but, in the end, isn't true. She could be right. He might not hold up under love's mighty scrutiny. When the hope for love outshines its reality, the beloved becomes a disappointment.

And a person can't measure up to an idea, Paris knew. It was apples and oranges.



Geneva dozed while the cold hands of November pressed against her window. The black sky outside spread its arms, holding back the dawn. Voodoo curved in the soft angle of her knees and hummed, a pleasure engine. The sheets were clean, softly warmed with the heat of but one night's sleep. Geneva had changed them before she left for Amsterdam so they'd be here when she got back, cool and fresh for her first night home.

She hiked the sheet farther up her shoulder and nestled deeper into the pillow. How good it all is, she thought, as the cat stood, stretched, and stepped over her hip to settle again against her belly. Geneva lifted a hand to pet him, a mere flutter of movement, and her mind changed direction like birds in the sky, a moment of love toppled by the fear of loss. A tragic equation of cause and effect.

Her mind flipped through tragic possibilities. Voodoo meeting his end by lethal injection at the vet, a mercy killing, the only recourse to an unrelenting suffering. Or she might find him, little body twisted at the curb, victim of a hit and run. Bad thoughts. Bad. Ill-advised and dangerous. Geneva had heard the warnings. The theories that our thoughts move into the physical world, twisting and shaping outcomes just like in the quantum physics experiments. Balance the bad thoughts with good ones, the gurus counseled, something to even out the bottom line. Voodoo may live another seven years, she told herself, have nine lives.

“Jeez,” she said aloud, propping herself to an elbow. How exhausting it is to be happy for just an instant.

Too many ideas camped out in Geneva's noggin. Bad citizens, all of them, they left their litter behind, and they shook down newcomers, forcing all experience to run a gauntlet of comparison, reference, and cross-reference. Life arrived exhausted.

Geneva was well aware that she could crash and burn ecstasy on the rocks of overanalysis. But she didn't believe analysis, itself, was the problem. In fact, she thought it essential to the well-lived life. Just knowing when to stop — that was the rub.

But her thoughts were interrupted. Her ears pricked up to attention. She heard a distinct
click,
a key in a lock. Her own front door opened and closed. The floor creaked beneath footsteps, and the hinges on a cupboard squeaked. There was no stealth, here. Whoever it was thought himself alone.

Then, a voice.

“Breakfast time.”

Voodoo sprang off the bed and trotted out of the bedroom.

Paris. Talking to Voodoo. Geneva's heart resumed beating, and her adrenalin slumped off, slightly embarrassed. False alarm.

She got out of bed and put her thin, flannel robe on over her thinner cotton nightshirt. She made her way down the short hall. Quietly.

“Paris?” she said from the kitchen entry.

“Uh-jeez,” he said, turning fast and jumping back, holding a bag of cat food. Voodoo startled and made a break for it, leaping across the counter to the living room chair where he arched his back and raised his tail.

Paris held the cat food across his chest with one hand while pushing his glasses up his nose with his other.

“You scared me,” he said.

“I'm home.”

“I see that,” he said. “Tatum asked me . . .”

“I know, I know,” she said, waving him off. She looked at the clock above the sink. Five twenty. Voodoo jumped back onto the counter. Geneva picked him up and stroked him.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“That's okay,” Paris said. “I'm sorry I woke you. It was still Thursday to me.”

“I wasn't sleeping,” she said. “I was listening to the ridiculous nonsense in my head. Even when I thought you were a burglar, I was glad for the interruption. So, c'mon, interrupt some more.”

“You think the ridiculous nonsense in my head would be much improvement?”

“At least it won't be mine.”

Paris put down the cat food and let out a breath.

“I'm really sorry,” he said, again.

“Me, too.”

Geneva put the cat on the floor. The apartment was dark save for the light on above the stove that served as a night light. Geneva opened a cupboard and retrieved the French press.

“So a sick sister, huh?” she said. “Have you heard anything?”

Paris stepped around the counter and sat on a stool on the living room side, looking in.

“She's dead,” he said.

Geneva looked to Paris. She frowned and then pressed the button on the coffee grinder. It was the inverse of a moment of silence but still an acknowledgment of the weight of death. When the grinding stopped, Geneva asked, “How's Tatum?”

“It's hard to say,” Paris said. “Shaken, I think, but perfectly calm, too. You know.”

Geneva put the teakettle on the stove and then brushed the tiny hairs off the counter between them. Paris watched with his signature expression. Not waiting. Not eager for the next exchange. Just present as a cat. Paris was attractive in a way most young women wouldn't notice, Geneva thought, until another woman saw it first, and then they would kick themselves, knowing they could've had him.

“Cancer?” she asked him, dumping the coffee grounds into the press.

“No,” Paris said. “No, thank you. I'll take it black.”

Geneva smiled. Then Paris did, too. The two of them were seldom alone. Tatum was the juncture where they met.

“Cancer infests that family,” Geneva said. “Passed on like an heirloom.”

“I didn't know that.”

While the water continued to heat, Geneva went to her record collection. Even in the dark, she could zero in on what she wanted, a row of albums in paper sleeves, no original covers. Ten years ago, the young man who owned the record store she frequented had a flood in his basement. He gave Geneva fifteen albums that had survived the flood intact but with their covers ruined. A purist, he had replaced those too and had given the coverless copies to Geneva.
A
's,
B
's, and a few
C
's. He had alphabetized from the floor up. Some Allman Brothers. Bowie. Camel. Geneva picked an old Camel
album,
Flight of the Snow Goose
. Perfect morning music. Jazzy, mellow.

“Cancer took out both of Tatum's parents,” Geneva said, dropping the needle.

“I guess I did know that,” Paris said. “Do you think Tatum worries?”

“About cancer?” Geneva said, surprised.

“Yeah.”

Geneva hesitated. From the sound of his voice, she didn't think he meant did she worry about getting cancer
again
. She did the math with her back to him as she adjusted the volume. She calculated that Tatum had brought Paris around for the first time right when she had finished chemo. Tatum had a cue-ball head at the time and was skin and bones. She looked like a child refugee, a bald young boy. How could Paris not have known? What did he think? That she had just escaped from a concentration camp?

The kettle whistled.

“I honestly don't think she thinks about it much,” Geneva said. “She doesn't talk about it, at any rate.” Which was true.

Geneva remembered when Tatum told her about the diagnosis. Just two weeks before, Vincent had dumped her, or she had dumped him. Geneva never got the full story. Nonetheless, brokenhearted with a shaky prognosis, Tatum had forged ahead. Mastectomy. Chemo. Geneva had been surprised that Tatum took traditional, prudent steps to beat the cancer. She had expected indifference and self-neglect. She wondered if it wasn't so much a will to live that drove her as it was a determination to be the one to decide whether and when to pull the plug.

Geneva looked at Paris. His brow was drawn, and he stared off to the side in private worry.

“Tatum's okay,” Geneva said, pouring the water into the press. “Cancer.” She shook her head. “I hear it, and I want to know what did she eat, or breathe? What's the family background? Was she repressed, not dealing with something — anger, resentment, unresolved childhood issues?”

“Cause and effect,” Paris said. “It's pointless to look.”

“You think?” Geneva said. “Maybe. I guess I just want to reassure myself that my circumstances are nothing like theirs. I want to kid myself that I'm somehow different and therefore safe.” She slowly pushed down the press.

Paris still looked troubled. Geneva pointed a finger at him.

“Don't you dare start worrying about Tatum,” she said.

Paris looked taken aback.

“Look,” Geneva said, turning to retrieve the mugs. “I once had a cat I absolutely adored. Sure, I adore all my cats, but this one was particularly amazing. Her name was SoHo, and we thought each other was just the bees' knees. Anyway, she got diagnosed with cancer and was given four to six months. After that, every time I looked at her, I saw my own grief instead of the sweet, little creature that she was.” Geneva set two ceramic mugs beside the press. One was covered with Egyptian-style hieroglyphs. The other had a ♀ on it. “Tatum's not sick,” she said to Paris. “Don't start looking at her as though at any moment she may keel over dead. You may as well worry about asteroids hitting the Earth. They're out there, you know.”

“You're scaring me,” Paris said.

Geneva smiled, and he smiled back. She poured the coffee.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just can't stand any more worrying. It's not you. I'm lecturing myself.” She passed Paris the Egyptian mug. “Worrying,” Geneva said, “it's largely a woman's disease, you know. An epidemic blocking female enlightenment everywhere.”

Paris accepted what she told him. He didn't know anything different.

“Ask me about my trip,” Geneva said.

Paris paused, then obeyed.

“How was your trip?” he said with a slight nod.

“Had great soup luck,” Geneva said, changing her tone. More upbeat. “Garlic soup from heaven. Tomato bisque to die for.”

Paris looked down, and then he made a mock serious face.

“Do you think we make our own soup luck?” he said, looking up.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But some of us are just born soup lucky. Perhaps we earned it in a past life.”

“Because you shared your soup?”

“Who knows?” she said. “Cause and effect,” she repeated his words.

“It's pointless to look.”

They saluted each other with their mugs, not quite a toast. Geneva took a sip of coffee but knew she would not finish it. She had drunk it every day in Amsterdam, but it had been a vacation indulgence, more about ceremony than the caffeine. It was served dark and bitter with bread and a hard-boiled egg, the breakfast included in her lodging. But she couldn't live on a regular basis with the low-grade agitation that came with drinking coffee. She thought she needed to know for certain whether any potential heart palpitations were driven by caffeine or some oncoming cardiac disaster.

“I like the music,” Paris said.

Geneva liked this about Paris. He always noticed the music.

“Paris,” she said, “since you've got the key, could you stop by tomorrow morning too? I need to go see Ralph. I'll be spending the night.”

“Sure,” he said. “Do you think he realizes you haven't been there for a while?”

Geneva looked past Paris into her living room. Ralph hadn't done so much as mumble her name for nine years. It had been equally long since he had given her that old dog look, a combination of deep love and of being deeply tired.

“You know how they say dogs don't have any sense of time,” she said. “They just know you're there or you're not there.”

“That's how it is with Ralph?”

Geneva opened her mouth to say yes but knew it wouldn't be true.

“No,” she said. She twisted her mouth in thought. “He doesn't know whether or not I'm there. I'm pretty sure.”

Outside the windows, it remained dark and would be so for at least another hour. The two were quiet, Paris on the stool, Geneva standing across from him leaning on the counter. Neither searched for the next thing to say. Both of their thoughts drifted privately. Geneva suspected her lecture didn't take and that Paris continued his concern in private. His affection for Tatum was unmistakable. He was so different from Vincent, Tatum's ex-lover and the son of a dear, old friend. Tatum met Vincent because of Geneva, but not through her. She did not set them up, nor would she. Vincent had used Geneva's apartment sometimes when she was out of town or on weekends when she was visiting Ralph. He would leave her small buds of reefer in an empty cookie jar. Geneva was certain he did so at his mother's direction. Vincent's mother was 100 percent Northern Cheyenne and not crazy about white people. Geneva, for some reason, had been granted a special dispensation.

Geneva had watched Vincent grow up. His mother's blood showed in Vincent's eyes and cheekbones, and his nose belonged to his Italian father. The thick, dark hair could've come from either one. Vincent's father was never referred to by name. No love lost. But the resulting offspring, Vincent, hit puberty with sultry looks, a good mind, and a fierce maternal loyalty — a death trap for any girl. To make matters worse, his taste in women tended toward the wounded. A little existential pain made him feel needed. But he expected to be the cure. It was a classic case of can't-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too. That alone didn't bode well for Tatum, but there was more. The idea of Vincent with a white girl wouldn't sit well with his mother, despite that she now lived in Ventura shacked up with a white seventy-two-year-old California surf bum.

Tatum never stood a chance.

So they split up. Vincent disappeared into his career as an activist in the natural death movement, fighting corporate ownership of the passage to the other side, as he might say. He had published several articles and had even been on a talk show or two.

“Geneva,” Paris said, calling her back to the moment. “Back in Europe?”

Geneva looked to him. She was grateful Tatum had brought him around, thrown him into the mix.