Shaking out the Dead (5 page)

Geneva stood beside her desk, lost in the past, disconnected from the physical world. Then, she pulled a pen from a coffee mug and retrieved Unforgiving's letter.

Don't forgive them,
she jotted at the bottom of the page
, and feel free to retain the self-righteousness that rises from victimhood. The pr
e
vailing knowledge is that forgiveness is really for your benefit and not that of your persecutors. Thus, I would recommend granting them mercy, r
a
ther than forgiveness. Mercy will tend to the real objective without suga
r
coating the crime.

She hovered with her pen over the letter for a moment more. Then, she stood straight, tossed the pen across the desk, and unbuttoned her coat.

Geneva turned and walked to her wall of music. First, she checked the turntable to see if Tatum or Paris had listened to anything while she was gone. But it was empty, as she'd left it. She checked the tape deck. The Louis Armstrong compilation she had been playing the morning she left still sat inside. It was a good collection of both early and more mature pieces, including a version of “When You're Smiling” from 1929 with Tommy Dorsey sitting in on trombone.

Geneva snapped the tape deck closed and scanned her album collection, honing in on the
B
's. She still wanted Beatles and pulled
Hey Jude
from the shelf. Her copy was an import from Uruguay, still in its plastic cover, purchased in 1978. Mint. The back was her favorite picture of the Beatles and the only picture she knew of where Ringo looked downright attractive. She placed the album on the turntable and dropped the needle. She plopped down in her old wingback. A deer hide covered the tattered upholstery where a long-dead cat, Madame Blavastsky, had scratched through to the foam.

Two weeks, thousands of miles, and a couple of grand, she thought to herself while kicking off her leather boots, and I'm back where I started. Must all journeys be so damn metaphoric, she thought? She returned to the same self, the same dissatisfactions, she had been sick of when she left. It made Geneva miss her days of New Age zealotry when she knew that every situation, no matter what it was, was perfectly designed to teach her what she most needed to learn.

I have no business being dissatisfied
, she lectured herself inwardly, and began her rote and tired litany of things for which to be grateful. She was healthy. Though not rich, she didn't need to worry about money. She liked her friends. She liked herself. She'd been loved.

Geneva knew Ralph had loved her because she trusted Ralph. However, trusting that Ralph loved her and feeling loved were not one and the same.

She let her head drop against the back of the chair. She knew people wouldn't understand. Current wisdom had it that you should trust yourself. But she knew that voices in one's head are as likely to be liars as messengers of the divine. Trust meant spinning the roulette wheel of life's possibilities. The right answer, the winning number, the truth — make your bet. Ante up. Trust means turning your back to the ticking wheel. You've chosen your number. You believe. There's no peeking over the shoulder. You live with the sounding of the ticking in the background and in the faith that you know where the wheel will stop.

“Hey Jude's” big finish faded. Geneva heard the cat door flap and the soft padding of little paws. Then, “Old Brown Shoe.” Voodoo, cool and smelling of wood smoke, leapt into her lap.

“Hey there, sweetie,” she said, stroking his back straight through to his tail. He purred with gusto and touched his nose to hers.

Holding Voodoo, Geneva rose from her chair and shuffled over to the turntable. She lifted the needle and skipped to the next song. The needle crackled in a blank groove, then Lennon sang, “Don't Let Me Down.” She stepped back and watched the needle ride the vinyl, pressing the cat to her. Voodoo dug his claws into her bosom. A slow, deep sink. An expression of pleasure. Geneva winced but continued to stroke him.



It was early evening, and Tatum gripped the wheel with both hands. As Rachael slept, wet November snow shot out from the black of night, splatting against the windshield. Tatum's eyes shifted back and forth between white lines and guardrails as she drove into a pit. She thought of black holes, bellies full of swallowed light. The experts used to say that no light could escape one. But Tatum had read that now they say it might not be true, that tiny particles of light may well be able to escape the black and bottomless vacuum. She had been disappointed by the news, by the loss of absolutism.

A sign for an upcoming exit glowed through the precipitation. Tatum hit the blinker. Normally, she wasn't one to pull over to escape storm, snow, or fog. But not tonight. Things were different, now. She wouldn't try to outrun the dark clouds. She felt a wave of compassion for all the careful parents of the world who mind the speed limit and come to full stops.

She took the exit and picked up drive-thru food. They pulled into the lot of the Cloud 9, a small motel west of the middle of South Dakota. Tatum had stayed there before. It was cheap, simple, and clean. The owner struck her as a retiree who needed some income beyond his social security. He lived in a room behind the check-in desk. A little bell above the door rang when she entered the registration office. He shuffled out, old, tall, and lean, reminding Tatum of an Irish wolfhound.

He handed over a key, and Tatum drove across the gravel lot to the parking space in front of their room. The sleet was wet and cold on their faces as they each dug out from the hatch a small bag to take in for the night.

“Let's eat,” Tatum said, hitting the light switch as they entered. The room consisted of a small round table flanked by two well-worn chairs and two double beds separated by a nightstand. The TV sat on a six-drawer dresser. The floor was hard, as though the thin carpet had been glued directly onto a concrete slab. Tatum dropped the bag with the food onto a bed. She found the thermostat, turned up the heat, and joined Rachael sitting cross-legged and opening the bag of food. Rachael had already turned on the TV and found her way to a program taking place in a high school with young actors carrying books and being funny outside of their lockers. Tatum and Rachael opened their sandwiches' wrappers to use as plates.

“I think we should pray,” Rachael said.

“Okay,” Tatum said. “Good idea.” She thought a little dinnertime grace might have been part of Rachael's family dinner routine, good to return to for a small comfort. Tatum put down her chicken sandwich, folded her hands, and gave it her best shot. “Thank you, God, for the food,” she started.

“No,” Rachael said. “For my mom. Ask God to take care of her.”

“Oh,” Tatum said. It was a more serious sort of prayer than she had thought. She picked up the remote from the bedspread and clicked off the television set. She searched for words, prayer words. “Dear God,” she started but wasn't sure where to go. “God . . . ” she started again.

Tatum hadn't prayed since she was not much older than Rachael. By then, she had already recognized that most of what she prayed for never came to pass and figured Mr. Big and Important probably wasn't even listening. She had tried some lesser celestials, saints and virgins, mostly just to insult God, to show him she didn't need him.

“God,” Tatum said, “Rachael and I would like you to take care of her mom and my sister.” She paused, lost for words again. “Amen,” she said. “Please,” she added for good measure.

Rachael remained in prayer posture. Not finished, Tatum supposed. Then she blessed herself and picked up her sandwich. She took a bite and then reached for the remote.

“How will we know if He does?” Tatum asked.

“What?”

“How will we know if God takes care of her?”

Rachael stared at Tatum coldly. Then, clearly disgusted, she threw her sandwich at her.

“You ruined it,” she spat.

Tatum looked down to her chest. She picked shredded lettuce off her sweater and winged the pickle into the trash.

“Don't be mad,” she said. “I'm sorry. I just thought we should define our terms.”

Rachael scrambled off the bed and stormed into the bathroom.

Objects thrown, doors slammed. Round two. Tatum hadn't meant to ruin it. The question was dumb, maybe even inappropriate, she thought. But it was sincere.
Take care of
— what did that mean to God? After all, supposedly God was already ‘taking care of' everybody, and based on results, Tatum thought, what ‘taking care of' someone meant to God might be similar to what it meant to the Mafia.

Tatum got off the bed and went to the bathroom door. She rapped a knuckle on it.

“Rach.”

“Take care of my mom in heaven,” she heard Rachael say. But her piety seemed exaggerated, an I'll-do-it-myself quality that informed Tatum that the point was no longer to beseech the Lord God, but to let Tatum know how miserably she had failed.

Tatum pressed her back to the bathroom door and slid down until seated on the floor. The praying stopped. Tatum listened for Rachael's breath.

“Are you okay?”

Bam
. Rachael kicked the inside of the door. She sounded fit and healthy.

Then Tatum listened to Rachael resume her prayers, asking for favors she would never know had or hadn't been granted. Prayer. It was probably a good sign, Tatum thought. Proactive. Indicating some belief in having power over one's circumstances. Hail Marys and psychic hotlines, they were last ditch efforts to take control, take action, if only to call for help.

She knocked softly on the bathroom door.

“Rachael?” she said. “Hey, Rach, if your mom was here, right now? What do you think she'd be doing?”

No answer. Tatum noticed a bottle opener screwed into the wall across from her and up a few feet. Randomly placed. A considerate thought but weak in execution.

“C'mon Rachael, if we were all on a trip together.”

Rachael spoke each word progressively louder.

“My. Mom. Is. Dead.”

Then,
bam
, another kick. Tatum felt it through the door.

“I'm just saying ‘what if,'” Tatum said. “Pretending might make us feel better.”

A second passed. Then, another. Then the bathroom door opened, and Tatum fell back a bit before catching herself. Rachael stepped past without acknowledging her. She went to the motel room door and struggled with the knob. Tatum rose to her feet and followed.

“I want to go home,” Rachael said, twisting at the lock.

Tatum reached over her head and flipped the bolt. Rachael walked out into the wind and sleet. Tatum had the room key in her pocket. She reached for their coats.

Outside, Rachael struggled with the door handle of the passenger's side of the car until Tatum came and unlocked it. Then Tatum came around the car and got in the driver's seat. Rachael buckled her seat belt. Tatum considered it but passed. Rachael turned her head to look out the passenger window as though at any moment they might pass prairies, cattle, and mountain ranges. Tatum could see Margaret in Rachael's profile and in the arc of her brow. It reminded her of when she and Margaret were kids in the back seat of the car on the drive home from the Wisconsin Dells after summer weekends late on Sunday nights. Margaret would allow a truce for the sake of comfort, and the two of them would share a grown-up's windbreaker for a cover. Margaret would lean against the cool glass of the window. Tatum would close her eyes against Margaret's arm.

Tatum looked away from Rachael and faced forward. Beyond the windshield, glare from the motel's floodlights illuminated the falling sleet. She felt the hole in the world that was Margaret being dead. She wished that she'd reached her before she died.

Rachael. That was the name Margaret had used in the message on Tatum's machine. “Rachael, it's Margaret,” she had said. “I need you to come. I'm sick. It's important.” Then, there was a long pause before the machine cut the message, as though Margaret had sat there with the receiver in her hand wondering if there was more to say.

Tatum had called back. She spoke to Lee because Margaret was sleeping. She asked what was going on, but Lee was stingy with the details. She told him that Margaret had called her and that she was on her way. He seemed surprised. Tatum figured Margaret had to be either mortally ill or drugged out of her mind to have made that call. Maybe both.

Drops too sloppy to be hail and too fat to be rain slapped against the windshield. Tatum surveyed the gravel lot. Three cars, counting her own. Not bad for the middle of nowhere. Outside one of the rooms, an orange glow rose and fell as a smoker took in the sleet and the low clouds from beneath the motel's awning. He flicked his cigarette out into the lot. The sky stepped on it wetly. All in all, Tatum thought, the Cloud 9 wasn't so different from the motel in Nebraska. Somewhat worn, but not seedy. Booked by people who watch the rain.

Tatum briefly imagined that the man outside the motel room was smoking his last cigarette. He would return to his room where a .38 and a bottle of Wild Turkey sat on his nightstand.
Bang
. They would hear it in the middle of the night. It would wake them, jar them from their sleep. Perhaps, in their grogginess, the silent night that followed the shot would fool them. False alarm, they would think. Nothing. They would ease back into their dreams.

Tatum had never told Margaret about the pills in Nebraska. But Margaret did know about that earliest attempt, so long ago in the shadow-cool of the garage. Tatum sniffed, a rueful, private laugh. She hadn't thought about it for some time. She rolled her head to the side to look at Rachael. The shape-shifting of genes made her look like Margaret, then not Margaret, then Margaret again. Rachael's eyes drooped and her head fell forward in sleep then snapped back up to sloppy wakefulness. She blinked slowly.

Tatum reached over to tuck Rachael's coat more tightly around her. For the first time since Rachael could walk, Tatum kissed her head.

The two sat in the cold car pointed at their warm, bland room. Tatum loved the car, being in a car, looking up through a windshield at night, being in-between, which is nowhere. Tatum had lived alone most of her adult life, had worked largely for herself and primarily alone. She used to compile people's data, write reports, organize information and return it to those with a stake in it. She hadn't gone back to it, though, after her bout with cancer. She lived frugally on savings and a modest inheritance from her parents that wouldn't last much longer. It was a life so different from Margaret's. Margaret had it all in the classical sense. She had never tried to kill herself. Yet, Tatum was glad not to be her.

She let her head roll back toward Rachael who slept with rose-colored lips slightly open. She looked peaceful, at last. But then, a shiver jerked her little shoulders, waking her, her eyes opening just for a second before falling back closed. The car was getting colder. Tatum considered starting the engine to warm them up but decided instead to get Rachael back inside.

Tatum took hold of the door handle. She got out and walked to the passenger's side. She unbuckled Rachael, gathered her up, and hauled her back into the room.

Rachael was too tired to resist as Tatum turned back the bed and pulled enough clothes off of her that she would sleep comfortably. Then Tatum turned on the light in the bathroom and cracked the door. The rest of the room was dark. She grabbed the phone book and sat again outside the bathroom door. She opened it to the
G
's. She looked for Vincent.

But no Goes Aheads were listed.

She closed the phone book and stared at the bottle opener screwed into the wall. She imagined a shrink, a Sigmund Freud type, playing word association. He said, “Motel.”

“Suicide,” she would reply from the couch.

But Tatum wasn't reminiscing about suicide. She was reminiscing about Margaret. It was happiness Tatum had felt that day when she had turned the barrel of a rifle to her own head. It was a memory she stroked like a cat in her lap.

But she didn't want to think about it. She wanted to tell it. To Paris.

Her heart flickered at the thought of him.

She wanted to tell him the story.

Tatum got up and hauled the phone as far from the bed as she could. She let the call be charged to the room, and she dialed the Deluxe. It was 2:30 a.m. Paris would be there. He would listen without judgment, without defining or nailing down. Labels. Tatum hated them all. They turned lives into case histories. Paris didn't label, not even in his mind. She would not get categorized under it. It would be categorized under her. No more or less weighty than a hundred other things.