Shaking out the Dead (20 page)

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The weight of the sky grew. The sun climbed behind the gray wall of it. Midmorning, it spit out a rock. Then another, and another. The hail spilled onto the earth, rattling, pounding the sidewalk and nicking at the windows as it battered its way through the neighborhood. Paint jobs suffered flesh wounds. The tulips broke under heavy fire. From behind windows, nervous homeowners with bad roofs peeked. They crossed their fingers and exchanged hopeful looks. Maybe this would be it, the storm mighty enough to merit an insurance claim. With luck, there'd be money left over for lawn furniture.

Paris and Tatum, Geneva, and Ron watched the sudden downpour from inside Geneva's apartment. The hail bounced off the hood of Tatum's car and off of Paris's mattress, which was strapped to the roof of the car under a tarp. The winter had been mild; the spring, cold and erratic. A deep freeze had hit at the end of March. Flurries had emerged from sunlit April mists. And now, May first brought a hailstorm, straight from the apocalypse.

Geneva played no music, but the hail made for a constant
click, click,
with the occasional burst that rattled like spilled marbles. Paris looked out the window from over Geneva's shoulder. Tatum stood just to his side, slightly behind him. Tatum and Paris had slept together four times. Socially, they still behaved as friends. But anyone within twenty paces could feel the tug and pull between them. Paris's joy was deep as he stood there. In that moment, four people silent in a room listening to a hailstorm seemed all he'd ever wanted.

“I tasted hail, once,” Ron said, and three heads turned to him. “Bitter. Sooty.”

It seemed the sign the sky had been waiting for. Magic words, stumbled upon, accidentally. The hail ceased. Just a few more nuggets fell, randomly, as they dislodged themselves from clouds.

“I can see how ancient people would think a storm was an angry spirit passing through,” Tatum said.

“Maybe not even angry,” Geneva said, “just mighty and reckless.”

Twigs and leaves, casualties, littered the sidewalks. The four picked up where they had left off when the hail had chased them from their work. Geneva swept the rocks of ice from the walk while Paris and Ron negotiated the mattress off the roof of the car. Tatum pulled a box, the only box, of Paris's clothing from the back seat. Rachael was in school today, but yesterday, she had helped with the moving of most of Paris's things into the basement of the duplex. The diner hadn't closed yet, but Paris had been evicted from his downtown apartment. He needed just a month or two to save up enough for a first and last months' rent and damage deposit. So he moved out of one basement and into another. Both had daylight windows. But this one also had a space heater and upstairs privileges at Tatum's.

Paris and Ron maneuvered the mattress up the walk. Tatum held the front door. It had been her intention to help Paris carry it, but Ron had waved her off. He walked backward now, watching the ground over his shoulder. He shifted his way through the open door. Paris's eyes met Tatum's as he passed. Each smiled and looked away.

But they hadn't been falling effortlessly into love. In fact, Paris never fell at all. It was where he had started, and so he continued to float there while Tatum treaded love's waters, struggling to keep her head above the surface, slapping and kicking with arms and legs.

In Paris's old apartment, after the first time they had sex, Paris had asked her, “Would you freak if I said I loved you?”

Tatum dragged his thin sheet up over her head.

“Would you believe it?” he asked.

“La-la-la-la-la,” Tatum said, loudly.

Paris tugged the sheet off her face.

“You don't believe me?”

She rolled her head in his direction. “I believe you,” she said. “But I know the me you love may not be the me I am.” She sat up, pulling the sheet to her neck. “Someday, you might be disappointed that I'm not all you thought. You'll be the one who was wrong, but I'll be the one you're disappointed with.”

“That's not true,” Paris said. “I'll always . . .”

Tatum held up a hand to interrupt him.

“Don't ‘always' or ‘never' me, Paris,” she said. “People lie without meaning to. You don't want it happening to you.”

Then Tatum turned and placed her feet on the floor. She dressed, quietly. Paris pulled on his jeans but remained barefoot. He wondered for how long she would be gone.

Over the next several days, Paris called her once per day. When her machine beeped, he would sit silent at the other end of the line, enough time for the heart to speak and no more. He would hang up as though parting company with her. He let go reluctantly.

It took six days to receive her breathless call.

“Paris? Can I . . . ” she said.

“Come over.”

It had been less awkward. More abandon. Afterward, Tatum lay on her stomach with her head on her forearm.

“I'm a danger to myself and others,” she said.

“Who isn't?” Paris said, rolling over and kissing from the base of her spine to the base of her skull.

When she left that time, he didn't hear from her for four days. Paris imagined her sitting in her orange chair, one hand nervously toying with the nearby leaf of the ficus. She would chew on her bottom lip. Her mind would be up the road, calculating risks and outcomes. She would rise from her chair and watch the sun set, as she liked to do. It would feel to her like defeat when she showed up unannounced at his front door at the bottom of the concrete stairs. Paris led her in and took her to his mattress. He kissed her and then disappeared into the bathroom. He turned on the tub, washed his feet with cool water, and then returned to the bed, feet pink and clean.

They made love. Quietly and slowly. Afterward, Paris hovered above her, leaning on his elbows. His hair hung forward.

“I can't help it,” he said. “I do love you.”

Tatum squished her eyes closed then rolled out from under him and sat on the edge of the mattress. Paris picked up his glasses from the floor and sat up too.

“You're going to disappear again,” he said.

“Don't love me, please,” she said, reaching for her pants. “I won't be able to take it when you don't some day.”

“I don't think I can not love you as a favor,” Paris said. “If you don't want it, that's different, and I accept it.”

“No,” she said, snapping up her shirt from the floor as she stood. “I do want it. I just can't afford it.”

“You don't love me.”

“Stop it,” she said, throwing her shirt at him. “That's not fair. If anyone's. . .”

She stopped and buried her face in her hands. Paris gathered up her shirt as a ransom.

“If anyone's what?” he said.

Tatum sat back down.

“I can't believe what almost came out of my mouth,” she said. She turned and looked at Paris. “I almost said, ‘If anyone's not loved, it's me.'”

“Turf, huh?” Paris said, sitting beside her. He ran a hand down her bony spine.

Tatum flopped backward on the mattress.

“I am so fucked up,” she said.

Paris bent over her and kissed her forehead. They made love for the fourth time.

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Geneva waited in the basement with a stack of blankets and a set of flannel sheets piled in her arms as Paris and Ron maneuvered the mattress down the stairs. They tipped it onto the rug Geneva had unrolled to carve a room out from the larger space.

“I have sheets,” Paris said, seeing Geneva standing there.

“These will be better,” she said.

“Done with me?” Ron asked.

“Thanks, man,” Paris said.

They shook hands, and Ron headed up.

Geneva put the blankets to the side and tossed the pillowcases to Tatum, who had followed them down. Tatum worked Paris's skinny pillows into them.

“Your sheets have completed their service,” Geneva said. “Let them retire. These,” she said, shaking the sheet out over the mattress, “need a life. Purpose and meaning. They've been sequestered too long in a cedar chest.”

She tucked in the edges while Tatum and Paris passed energy back and forth above her, a silent conversation in which she was not included.

They would make love for the fifth time shortly.

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Paris and Tatum's newfound passion was hard on Geneva. She was happy for them, but the energy between the two of them was so taut that it made her realize her separateness from it. She left them, climbing the stairs and returning to her apartment. She was heading for Parkview Home later in the day. Ralph had been put on breathing and feeding tubes, and Geneva couldn't help but wonder if his decline was due in part to her absence. So, she had accepted the sentence: monitored visits. Ralph rebounded enough to get off the machines, but the Home had asked Geneva to sign a Do Not Resuscitate order, a DNR. Signing it, of course, was the right thing to do. But what she wanted to do was storm into Mr. Hans Mood's office and declare with great indignation,
You think signing a DNR for my husband would be advisable? Hear me well: I'll sue if every effort is not made to ensure his well-being. I'll get the Right to Life involved. If he's got one cell left quivering, damn it, you help it quiver.

Such had been her petty dreams of vengeance. Instead, she had signed and been surprised by the onset of anxiety that accompanied the very real possibility that Ralph's days were numbered.

She would leave for Parkview in the afternoon. Right now, she just wanted a bath. She went to her bedroom and kicked off her shoes in front of the dresser. She pulled off her earrings and flipped open her jewelry box. On top sat the old, blue, folded piece of legal pad paper. She lifted it between a finger and her thumb. It was the note she had received from John inviting her to dinner. Unanswered, it had taken up residency in her jewelry box. She knew it belonged in a garbage can, cast into the realm of “what if?” Wistfulness, she could allow herself, but not the suspense of indecision. Her lack of response
was
the decision, she thought, lying to herself. The note was just a souvenir.

Geneva did not see herself as having chosen a man, Ralph over John, per se, but instead as having chosen a path. It was a path she chose long ago. Committed love. Seeing a thing through to the end in order to know what one can only know by taking the whole road. There was knowledge at the end of it. There had to be. So she would not indulge thoughts of sacrifice or martyrdom. She would not make Ralph a burden. People aren't high maintenance. Love is.

She refolded the note and returned it to the box. She picked up the envelope beside it and checked the contents. Inside were three joints that Vincent had brought her on his last pass through town. Several hours after Rachael put her hand through the window, Vincent had called, and Geneva met him for burgers and shakes at a greasy spoon. They had caught up quickly. Geneva noticed he didn't ask the identity of Paris, despite that Tatum's blouse hadn't been buttoned quite right. Vincent shared his successes — an article had been picked up by the
Utne Reader
. He shared his troubles — fines, harassment. He told her of his plans. He and a friend were starting a business making simple, plain, pine coffins and marketing them to yuppies. He was studying composting human remains, though he knew the country, neither Indian country nor the U.S. of A., wasn't quite ready for the idea.

Vincent was an interesting man. Geneva enjoyed his good looks and charm. No woman could compete with him when it came to holding his own interest. Geneva identified and thus couldn't condemn him for arrogance. He was a good kid. A good man. He had called his mother's old friend and made sure she had a small stash of weed. He had taken her out for lunch. He had risked running into an old girlfriend to do it.

Geneva removed one of the joints from the envelope. She frowned at it but took it with her into the bathroom. She sat down on the closed lid of the toilet. Through the heating vent, she heard sporadic sighs and throaty gulps of air. She struck a match and was about to light up when she had second thoughts. Did she need her mind any more open than it already was? Few understand the open mind. It's not all “yeah, whatever, that's cool” because it accommodates all the opposing arguments and the judgmental voices too. The open mind is not laid back and groovy. It stretches and stretches, works to accommodate more and more. Geneva figured her mind had stretch marks, and she really wasn't in a mood to reconsider hard-won choices or see anything from a new perspective. She didn't even want to acknowledge her choices as choices. They were decisions. Done deals. If God were truly benevolent, she thought, returning to her bedroom and placing the joint back in the envelope, he would have given Adam and Eve
freedom
, and not free will. Free will was the call to choose, but not to create.