Shaking out the Dead (31 page)

She kept driving, and the road started to climb. The tree line encroached, and the moon above now flashed in and out between the lodgepole and spruce. Helene slowed down.

“My night vision's shot,” she said.

“That's a comfort.”

With John's shack several miles behind them, Helene pulled over where the shale had broken free of the earth and spilled, carving a sort of stone waterfall into the side of the mountain. She killed the motor and silence asserted itself, there all along.

“What could I have done with my mind if I hadn't spent all that time trying to figure out my marriage?” Geneva said.

“Maybe you would've cured cancer.”

“Probably not.”

“The life that wasn't,” Helene said. “You're bound to have one no matter what you do.” She turned the key halfway to get just enough juice to roll down the window before realizing it wasn't electric. She shut the car back off and rolled down the window manually. The air came in smelling of earth and pine. “Well,” she said, looking at Geneva. “What shall we do? We could ride up the road farther. Looks like it keeps climbing. We'll find the edge of something to pour him off of.”

Geneva shook her head. “That doesn't sound right.”

“Well, I have to go home day after tomorrow, and I don't want to leave you alone with that box.”

“You know,” Geneva said, “I want to do it when I feel good about it. Resolved. Right now, it feels like walking away from a failure.”

“I thought you didn't believe in guilt.”

“I don't. I believe in responsibility.”

“So what responsibility are you living up to by carrying around that box of dust?”

Geneva stared straight ahead, hands flat on the top of the black box.

“I didn't succeed. I didn't do this right. I'm responsible to figure out how I could've done better. I don't mean I'm responsible to God or anything like that, just responsible to myself to do the best I can.”

“But you haven't done anything for years — that's the problem. You want to do well at something you weren't doing.”

“What wasn't I doing?”

“According to you, loving Ralph. You can't succeed at loving someone you don't love.”

“But I did love him.”

“Well, okay then.”

An owl hooted, and Helene turned in the direction of the sound. She pointed with her thumb out the window.

“A sign?” she said.

Geneva felt the box in her hands. She wished she had the sudden impulse to leap from the car and climb a rock and speak into the night some final farewell, a request to Grandfather Owl to carry Ralph off on his sacred wings. But it didn't ring true.

“Drive,” Geneva said. Helene sighed and turned the key. She started up the engine, rolled up the window, and turned the car around to go back the way they came. Geneva looked out the passenger window. She and Ralph both knew he loved her. They knew she loved him too but just wasn't good at it. He had been generous enough to allow her to keep trying to figure out how to do better.

Geneva's foot tapped agitatedly as they came back down the hill. They emerged from the trees into the open valley and traveled several yards when Geneva blurted, “Let me out.” Helene looked at her but kept driving. “Let me out,” Geneva said louder. Helene hit the brake. Geneva got out, taking Ralph with her. Helene watched through the windshield as Geneva hustled past the front bumper. The headlights illuminated the ditch and barbed wire stapled to fence posts. Geneva stopped up the road a bit but still in the headlights' glow. She put down the box at the edge of the road. She backed away from it, just a few steps.

Helene opened her car door and stood.

“I cannot think this now,” Geneva said, without turning.

“Think what?”

“He didn't love me,” Geneva said. “It wasn't me. It was him. I filled a slot for him. That's all. When I failed to fit snugly in the slot, he let me know, and I hopped to, shut up, rearranged myself, whatever it took to solve the ‘problem.' I made myself palatable.” Geneva looked back over her shoulder at Helene. “
Palatable
, for God's sake.” They stood looking at each other in the night. “You knew,” Geneva said.

“Uh-huh.”

“But you didn't say it.”

“I said it a million times,” Helene said. “You couldn't hear.”

Geneva put her hands on her hips and looked to the sky in exasperation. Stars winked.

“You're just mad at yourself,” Helene said.

“Mad at myself.”

“Yeah. For denying yourself. You wanted more. You talked yourself into less.”

Geneva looked over her shoulder at her friend and then back around at the box. Geneva's body sank just slightly, as if sighing.

“I am not mad at myself for denying myself,” Geneva said. “I'm mad at you for pointing it out.”

Helene smiled.

Geneva stepped forward and picked up Ralph. She returned to the car. Helene swung back in and put it in gear.

“A man asking you what you want him to do might get old,” Helene said as they drove past John's shack. “Isn't it hard enough figuring out what you want to do yourself?”



The group was too small for the tensions. Geneva tried to stay uninvolved behind her sunglasses. When it was near time to go, Rachael climbed the front porch steps to say her good-bye to Geneva.

“What a day for both of us,” Geneva said to her.

Rachael pointed out to Geneva her father on the front lawn and told her he was taking her home. Helene stood from where she sat beside Geneva and walked inside as Geneva pushed the sunglasses down her nose, just enough to look over the top of them into Rachael's eyes. Vincent moved too, following his mother, but descending the front steps to where Tatum stood waiting for Rachael.

“Are you ready?” Geneva asked Rachael.

“I would like it if things stopped happening,” Rachael said with a painful kind of laugh.

“Good things happen too,” Geneva said, and Rachael gave her a sad “like when?” kind of smile.

Geneva pulled her in for a hug. “There's good out there,” she said quietly into Rachael's ear, “and it's coming for you.”



“What's going on?” Vincent asked Tatum, having seen from a distance the scene played out with Lee.

Tatum put on a good face.

“Rachael's dad wants to take her home. It's bittersweet, you know.”

She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. He seemed to be taking in her words, comparing them to how things seemed. Tatum smiled and stepped away. She joined Rachael and Geneva on the porch. Geneva pushed her sunglasses back up her nose and looked to Tatum.

“Big changes,” Geneva said.

Tatum nodded. She placed her hands on Rachael's shoulders.

“How are you doing?” Tatum said.

Geneva closed her eyes and nodded.

“We're right across the hall,” Tatum said. But she knew as the words came out that it would only be her there across the hall. Rachael would be gone.

Rachael left the funeral with her father. He would drop her back at the duplex later. Tatum drove home and parked the Celica out front. She turned off the engine. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel. Paris. He had split. It was time to find out why.

Tatum got out of the car and headed inside. In the foyer, she rapped gently on the basement door. She knew Paris was down there — she could sense his presence — and when he didn't respond to the knock, she entered and went down the stairs anyway. She stepped slowly, craning her neck.

“Paris? Knock, knock.”

She reached the bottom. Paris stood beside the mattress with a box at his feet.

“Where'd you go?”

“Here,” he said, coldly.

“I'm going to try to talk Lee out of this,” Tatum said, sitting at the edge of the mattress that had no sheet.

Paris said nothing.

“Do you think it's the right thing to do?” she asked.

“I don't think anything,” he said, reaching for his pillow and shaking it from the case. “You know me.”

Tatum realized then that his boxes had moved, the pile shifted toward the bottom of the steps.

“What are you doing?” Tatum said, abruptly knowing.

“I'm leaving, Tatum,” he said. “Aren't you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Aren't you going with Rachael back to Chicago?”

“I just wanted. . . I was just trying. . . Lee doesn't want me there.” She tried to speak calmly. This was no big deal, a misunderstanding about to be fixed. “Didn't you hear him? He did some song and dance about sometime up the road.”

Paris tossed the pillow onto the mattress and looked her squarely in the eye. She could see what was in there, the pain turned into anger.

“I don't mind being second to your,” he closed his eyes and shook his head, “your sadness, or your fear.” He reopened his eyes. “But you would leave me? You would just volunteer to walk away?”

“Paris,” Tatum said, standing. “I couldn't have Rachael feeling pawned off again. She's a child. If she needed me . . .”

“You act like you were sacrificing yourself,” Paris said, “but you were sacrificing me.”

Tatum took a backward step.

“Is that what I was doing?” she said. “I didn't mean to. I'm sorry.” She reached toward him but then pulled her fists to her forehead. “Paris, I'm sorry,” she said. “I told you I'm no good at this.”

“Yeah, Tatum,” Paris said, “throw yourself on a sword. That's what I want.”

Tatum looked up from her fists. Paris's face was stone.

“You don't love me anymore,” she said flatly.

Paris searched the ceiling. He put his hands on his head like he was pulling out his hair.

“I have to leave you because I do love you,” he said. “What you do with my love makes me crazy. I mean, it's like,
aarrgg
. It's like, you're stomping on it, and I'm like, hey, that's my love. You're so careless.” He turned away from her. “Loving you doesn't feel very good, Tatum. Not knowing if at any second you're going to vanish off the face of the earth doesn't feel very good.”

“That's how it is, Paris,” Tatum said, with some anger. “People vanish off the face of the earth all the time. Get used to it. In fact, it seems exactly like what you're about to do.”

“Look,” Paris said, throwing up his hands, “forget it. It's all my fault. You're enough for me, but I'm not enough for you. You're all that matters to me.” But even as the words fell from his lips, he thought of Linda, and Rachael, and the diner. He thought of his abandoned art supplies and he knew he was a liar. She wasn't all that mattered. Too much mattered. But the lie was out there and what did it matter now, anyway. “Go away, Tatum,” he said, having nowhere to go away to himself.

Tatum stepped away from him. She bit her lower lip and then turned and climbed the stairs. She stopped halfway and looked over her shoulder but could only see Paris's jeans and boots. She continued up and returned to her apartment. She closed the door behind her, and the devil rose up in her living room, reminding her whose soul she was dealing with. Why can't it be different, she thought? Why not? Just one time.

She crossed the room and sunk into the orange chair. All this time, she had been getting on Geneva's nerves. She'd been breaking Paris's heart. All that time, Margaret had been crying. Dying.

And Rachael was leaving.

The tears inside stayed put as a familiar calm sunk in. A stillness. She was not traversing the scary turf of the new, where with each step you wondered if the ground would rise up to meet your falling foot. This landscape was predictable, flat and arid. For the first time in a long time, she knew what came next.