Shaking out the Dead (28 page)

Geneva looked at him. The firelight licked at his face.

“No,” she said. “I did change. I pretended I didn't. But . . . ” she looked away and shook her head. “If you feel you've changed on the inside, but on the outside pretend you haven't, which is the lie?”

“Good question.”

Geneva smiled at him, but then her lips flattened in thought. She blinked. Then shrugged.

“Ralph didn't want to be pushed to do, think, or talk about anything he didn't want to do, think, or talk about,” she said. “That's reasonable, though, isn't it? Nobody wants to do something they don't want to do. That's why we call it something we don't want to do.”

“So he said go forth and do what
you
want.”

“He did.”

“As long as what you wanted was what he wanted.”

Geneva half-laughed.

“I guess it was a lucky coincidence,” she said, “that for a time, anyway, the two were the same.”

John shifted on his stump.

“How 'bout this?” he said. “What do you want
me
to do?”

Geneva's brows drew together.

“He said ‘do what you want,'” John said. “I'm saying, ‘What do you want from me?' There are people to whom I doubt I could give anything they wanted. But you? I could. Not because you don't want much, but because anything you'd want would be good, something I'd want in myself too. Or for myself. I know I'm not omnipotent,” he said, crossing a giant leg over his knee, “but my gut tells me I can grant any wish that it's in you to ask.” He looked not at her but the fire. “I would trust what you want,” he said.

His face was serious. He was no frat boy in a bar making movie promises that he lacked the self-knowledge to keep. Geneva knew that she, herself, had never been as certain about anything as John seemed to be of what he offered to her. She was attracted to the certainty, and she was attracted to the man, and she tried to force herself to distinguish between the two.

And, she wondered, what would she ask of him, if she were to take up his offer? He turned to face her just then, as though he had heard her thought and was waiting.

Would you kill for me?
She could say it with a wicked flick of the brows, deflecting the weight of the moment and escaping her own discomfort. Or she could lift her glass in his direction.
Pour me some wine
, she could say, imperiously. But it seemed a sin to waste wishes out of fear they'd come true.

The fire snapped and spit up ash.

“Why?” she finally said.

“‘Why' what?”

“Why do that for me? You don't even know me.”

John lifted the bottle from beside his stump. Geneva extended her glass, and the neck of the bottle chinked against the rim.

“From the first time I saw you,” he said, “I've been considering it. That afternoon in the coffee shop with your little friend, it wasn't the first time I saw you. I'd seen you in the Grounds before. Thinking. Staring. The idea grew inside me over time.” He smiled sheepishly at her. “I'm not spontaneous.”

John then reached down, picked up a nearby stick, and poked at the fire. He turned to face her again but rolled his head farther to see the sky. He pointed a finger upward, and Geneva's eyes followed. The moon hung above them silver, like a quarter tossed to the sky. Darkness pointed at Geneva's back, and warm light illuminated and warmed her face from the front. No stars fell. Geneva didn't wish. A log shifted, sending up a cloud of wood smoke and a spray of hot cinders.

Geneva watched the orange spray vanish in the night.

This is what it's like
, she thought,
not to be alone.

“I don't want you for a friend,” John said. He reached over and placed his hand on hers.

Geneva looked to him. She didn't want him for a friend either. Nor had it ever been what she had wanted from Ralph. Friends don't stretch us, she thought, the way lovers do, or lead us to those inner cliffs that we must leap from alone, not knowing whether or not those that brung us will be there when we land.

John took his hand from the top of hers. He lifted the stick and poked at the fire. There was nothing more to say. John was there with a decision, and Geneva was there with a choice.

The fire kept its own counsel, burning down, singing softly to itself. They drank to the bottom of their glasses.

John walked Geneva to her car in the unsettled silence of indecision.

“You call me if you want to,” he said.

Geneva turned when they reached her car door. He was taller than her by nearly a foot.

“Kiss me,” she said, and he did. He smelled of flesh and wood smoke. His lips were cracked, but his flavor, sweet. Their mouths opened to each other's. The land around them stretched out wide, and it felt to Geneva like they were its warm center. Each cell in Geneva's body came to life, lit up by an illicit sense of grace, illicit because it was stolen, stolen from the beautiful and young, the crime witnessed by the moon.

John was the one who broke away.

“It would change who I am,” Geneva said, a fact, not a complaint, nor a reason one way or the other.

Her chin dropped, and her body slumped. John stepped back. Geneva turned and slid into her car. She hesitated with the key at the ignition but then turned it over.

She backed onto the dark road, put the car into gear, and turned into red taillights in the night. But she didn't make it far — fifty yards? — before her foot shifted from the gas to the brake and the car rolled to a tentative stop. The road before her was empty, dark and narrow, barely wide enough for two cars to pass. The headlights lit up the dirt and gravel. What difference could it possibly make, she thought? She'd practically been declared a rapist as it was. Why not a cheater, or a whore, to boot?

She eased into reverse, looked over her shoulder, and gave the car the slightest bit of gas. She tried to shake the image in her mind of Ralph in his pajamas lying in his bed, his fragile mind sensing a frayed rope snapping as she traveled that one more irrevocable inch. Once snapped, she and Ralph would continue to drift apart, lost in space, pulled apart by separate forces. Even if she continued to visit, continued to make cassette tapes, and place flowers at his bed, he would be alone.

She couldn't do it. She pressed on the brake and shifted back into drive.

But driving forward meant going back. Geneva thought of the duplex. She thought of Tatum, hand wringing in the face of everything she wanted. She didn't want to be like Tatum, walking away from her desires. It was bad juju. It misinformed the powers that be.

She hit the brake, put the car into reverse again, and threw her arm over the back of the seat. The time for finding happiness in concepts was over, she thought. It was time to choose it in touch. This was her thought when she slammed on the brakes as the shadow stepped out into the center of the road.

John came around to the passenger side of the car and climbed in. They mauled each other like teenagers.

“Back this baby up,” John said.

Geneva did.



Geneva's bra was stuffed into her purse. It was four a.m., and she felt thoroughly fucked. Turns out John was a horse. She didn't know her insides extended that far up. Another inch, and it would've been unpleasant, about size and nothing more, maneuverability lost to sheer bulk.

But it had been perfect. Glorious. The universe did not collapse as she thought it might, which wasn't to say that it didn't change everything. She could have never called his number. She could have never gone. Never moved to the fire. Never tasted his breath. But well enough isn't meant to be left alone. The effort to leave it alone is futile. Moments press on moments. One cell replaces another. We are re-created against our wills. How can the re-created self be held responsible for the choices made by a being who has since self-destructed?

The highway was her own. The valley lights ahead were a shimmering sea. She thought of what John had said to her,
What do you want me to do for you?
She thought maybe the question was the thing. Another's faith in what she wanted. Another's faith in her perception.

She turned down her side street and tried to block out any thoughts involving “next” — what this would mean in the light of day and what this would change. For now, the world twinkled, and her pelvis radiated. Time would unfold as it did. She would catch up to it later.

She parked in the garage. Voodoo joined her as she crossed the yard, trotting at her feet. Geneva entered through the back door and moved with slow pleasure down the hall to the front of the house. She dropped her purse on the desk. The answering machine blinked.

She hit the button. It was Parkview Homes. They needed her to call at the soonest possible moment.

Geneva picked up the phone and dialed, but she already knew that Ralph was dead.



Geneva rolled away from the sudden blast of light and covered her face with the bed sheet. Geneva's friend, Helene, stood at the switch, a barn jacket thrown on over her blouse and jean skirt.

“Let's go, Eva,” she said.

Ralph was on Geneva's nightstand, cremated to dust.

“Get rid of him now,” Helene said, “or you'll spend years trying to figure out what to do with him.”

Geneva turned over in her bed, rose to an elbow, and squinted in Helene's direction. She shaded her eyes with her hand. The service had been earlier that day. Vincent had arrived on Geneva's doorstep within ten hours of her having called his mother, Helene, to tell her that Ralph was dead. It took Helene another day and a half to arrive from Ventura. Vincent and Tatum had dealt with the logistics of the service while Helene served as muscle for Geneva. For the last few days, to get to Geneva, you had to go through her.

“Where are the keys to that piece-of-shit car of yours?” Helene said.

“It's not a piece of shit.”

Helene flashed the lights on and off several times. Geneva watched Helene's short, thick frame disappear and appear again.

“Get dressed,” Helene said.



Vincent had been five inches tall on Tatum's pillow one morning and sitting on her sofa the next. It made the paper doll seem like a voodoo doll, a magic spell. She had always imagined Vincent running from her, checking over his shoulder. How could it be that he was here, she wondered, looking at her sidelong, and knocking her out? How could that be a one-way feeling? It felt so much like an in-between.

But it wasn't. It wasn't chemistry. Chemistry is about a combination of forces, not a one-way hunger. In nature, one-sided attraction is considered predatory. I-want-you-but-you-don't-want-me usually means you're lunch. Wanting to consume what doesn't want to be consumed — is that what unrequited love is?

No wonder he ran, Tatum thought. Wouldn't she? Or did she want to be consumed? Loved like a lion loves a gazelle — with hunger, with anticipation? Or would she run from such love too, as though running for life itself?

On the morning of Ralph's funeral, she, Rachael, and Vincent sat on the sofa choosing frames for the pictures that Helene had brought over. Rachael had not been included in the planning of her mother's funeral. But Vincent had invited her in to planning Ralph's, and her legs swung and kicked the side of the sofa as they worked. Vincent didn't talk to her like she was a little girl, which, ironically, brought it out in her. He explained cremation to her. He told her there were many ways to return to the earth.

Vincent dressed for the service in dark wash jeans, a crisp white shirt, bolo tie, and black sports jacket. Rachael wore a new dress, purple and black, and slightly more mature than she had worn in the past. Geneva didn't want a church, and so Tatum had arranged for the main floor and deck of a local bed-and-breakfast. Geneva and Helene had selected a black lacquer box for Ralph's ashes, which would be placed on a white tablecloth surrounded by pictures spanning the course of Ralph's life. Vincent would do the eulogy.

Tatum stood and left Rachael and Vincent to the framing job and went to stand on the side of the bathtub to see her whole outfit in the mirror above the sink. The new blazer was meant to be for work. But apparently, a funeral would be its debut. She adjusted the slate blue blouse's collar above the blazer's lapel. Her head was cut off in the reflection, but she could see the line of jacket, slacks, and shoes. She thought about Margaret and wearing her skirt at her funeral. Tatum knew she had looked terrible that day. The clothes were upscale, and yet somehow, she had managed to look dressed from boxes dropped off behind a Salvation Army.

She stepped down from the tub and realized why Margaret had crossed her mind. Vincent's and Rachael's voices spoke softly as they worked. They were talking about Margaret. Tatum stood still so she could hear.

“Does all this make you think of her?” Vincent asked Rachael.

“A little,” she said.

“What was she like?”

“Pretty,” Rachael said. “Nice. But she used to cry a lot.”

Margaret used to cry a lot. Of course, she did. A strange guilt crept up in Tatum. She knew Margaret cried a lot. Why did she know and never admit it? Was it Lee who made her cry? Or something older, more ancient?

Or did the crying Rachael referred to come after the diagnosis?

Tatum didn't move but kept listening, either for sounds from the living room or coming up from the heating vent. Sometimes she could hear Paris moving around below. Paris was taking the night off to attend the funeral and reception, but largely, he had been making himself scarce while Vincent was around. It had bothered Tatum at first. Embarrassed her, really. She didn't want Vincent to think her boyfriend wasn't attentive. Silly, but true. Still, it had its advantages, the two of them, Paris and Vincent, not being together. The two times they'd all been together in the previous four days, Tatum had felt as though with each word and use of eye contact, she was choosing one above the other. Besides, she was enjoying Vincent's attention. She could tell she had risen in his esteem, was better in his eyes than she had been when he had left. Somehow, she had improved. She was flattered and insulted, both.

Paris did not seem to much impress Vincent. Either that, or he just didn't want to let on he might care. Tatum thought she did notice once, however, Vincent's eyes trying to penetrate him, trying to see what he was made of. If they were dogs, there might have been a scuffle, just to see who was whom.

Tatum had been embarrassed to find out about Ralph's death through Vincent. She may have been promoted in Vincent's eyes, but it was the opposite with Geneva. It's a dose of humiliation, finding out someone likes you less than you thought. Then Helene arrived. If Tatum and Helene were dogs — bitches, as they say — Tatum knew there would be no scuffle. As to who was alpha was clear.



Geneva held Ralph on her lap. Helene drove. They headed out on the strip toward the highway. Neon blinked. The bank's marquee flashed that it was just after midnight and forty degrees. Traffic signals issued commands to no one. Lights and shadows stretched and receded across the dashboard.

“I don't like that girl,” Helene told Geneva.

“Rachael?”

“Not the little one, the aunt.”

“Tatum?”

“The one Vincent used to see. That's a woman waiting to be rescued. Women like that are nothing but trouble.”

“She's ,all right.”

“Yeah, you think so, but you don't have sons. The boys want to ride in on white horses. They don't realize that for girls like that getting rescued is like heroin.”

“Does Vincent like to ride in on a white horse?”

“Vincent rides
through
on a white horse.”

“Well, then there's no need to worry, at least not for him,” Geneva said. “Besides, she's seeing Paris.” She placed her hands on each side of the black lacquer box. “I don't know what to do with him,” she said, meaning Ralph. “It seems to me that the time to do something is when I know what to do.”

“Nah-ah, no way,” Helene said. “I'm not letting you think about this for another ten years.”

“Well, I'm not going to dump him along side the road or leave him in the bathroom of a 7-11.”

“You'll think of something.”

Geneva looked sidelong at Helene leaning forward over the wheel as she drove. Helene had a tendency to ride the brake — she always had — and so she accelerated big and broke long, pressing with her wide foot stuffed into slip-on rubber sandals.

“In the end,” Geneva said, “I lost my capacity to love him, you know. My great failure.”

“I don't know what to tell you, Eva. I don't know if not loving a person means you
failed
to love him.”

“That's my suspicion.” Geneva looked out the passenger window at strip malls and the Chinese Buffet. “This is the problem with being smart,” she said. “You know you're responsible for everything.”

“Nah,” Helene said. “Just because you create a stupid life doesn't mean you owe it anything.”

Helene hit the blinker and merged onto the ramp. The sides of the highway opened up, uncluttered by commerce. Gradations of black and blue-black formed silhouettes against the sky. The moon and earth had just begun their monthly good-bye, and the moon looked over its shoulder as they parted ways. Helene pulled her purse from the floor at Geneva's feet and dug in it with one hand as she drove. She pulled out an old Sucrets tin and handed it to Geneva. Geneva tucked Ralph's ashes between her legs and opened the tin. Inside were three fat doobies.

“You know what I was thinking during the funeral?” Geneva said.

“What?”

Geneva took a joint from the tin. Helene passed her a lighter. Geneva spoke with the joint in one hand, the lighter in the other.

“I think, to Ralph, my life was my hobby.”

“Isn't it?”

“Really?” Geneva said. “The cultivation of my soul is on par with collecting porcelain kitties?”

“You're fighting with a dead man,” Helene said.

Geneva raised the joint to her lips and the lighter to the joint. She lit up and took a hit. She passed the joint to Helene and let the smoke out slowly.

“Speaking of the cultivation of my soul,” she said, looking through the passenger window, “did I tell you I'm a whore?”



Paris wore khakis and a white dress shirt with the creases from the packaging still running down the front. He sat on the edge of his mattress. He had never aspired to much, he thought, and it seemed he had arrived. The presence of Vincent had rendered him invisible again. But it was a different kind of invisibility than before. It was not a cloak that served or politely allowed for the invisibility of others. In fact, it wasn't even his own invisibility. It had been cast upon him. He stood in a shadow.

So he hid. If he was to be invisible, he would at least be in the driver's seat. He deemed it not cowardice but the exercising of quiet dignity. He knew better, though. He knew he was no threat to Vincent, and that fact wasn't the problem. The problem was that the idea had crossed his mind, that the assessment had taken place at all. Since when did he want to be a threat?

But he was becoming someone else. He'd felt it happening for some time. His sense of duty had mutated. He had become a pair of sticky hands. Tatum and Rachael belonged to him. He belonged to Tatum and Rachael.

He looked up, hearing footsteps, male ones, he could tell, in the foyer above. He took a deep breath and rose from the mattress. There were no booths to wipe. No corn bread to make. There was a funeral to attend. Vincent was the man of the hour.

Paris climbed the basement steps and emerged through the door, but the image before him did not compute. A man at Tatum's door. Blond, not dark, hair. Not Vincent. The man looked at him then back to the door that was opening before him.