by K M Cholewa
Margaret had thought she was the surviving twin, and Tatum, the ghost.
Guilt hovered over Margaret as she thought of Tatum. But the guilt was no worse than before she got sick. Yes, she had done Tatum harm. Her defense: she was a child. Children are cruel by all accounts, and she had felt her own spirit was at stake. It is survival of the fittest, after all, an inescapable animal instinct. Sometimes, Margaret thought, it hadn’t been her doing at all. Their mother was just as responsible. So were all the grandmothers.
Or maybe it was nobody’s fault. A family needs a black sheep. The straws are drawn in another realm.
She did not dial.
It was pride. Margaret knew it. But knowing it and being able to put it aside were two different things. Margaret would call Tatum. Just, not yet.
‘Not yet’ extended forward for days, then weeks. It extended into increased pain and increased morphine. In and out, Margaret floated between underwater dreams and slim cloud islands floating on the black sea sky outside her window. Deep into the night, she would awaken to find Rachael curled up next to her in a pale blue cotton nightgown. Painfully, she would turn over and spoon her daughter. Rachael’s skin smelled clean and unburdened. Her soft child limbs gave off an electricity that Margaret had never noticed before. She was growing, blooming, even as she slept. Her sweetness gave Margaret mercy for herself. She had named her daughter well. She had avenged her mother. A noble thing, yes? And was it not an act of love to want her daughter to have what she did not?
She weighed her faults against her virtues. Vengeance. Envy. Margaret counted these among her sins. Hatred. But Lee was not Tatum, and her hatred of him never touched him. You can’t hurt someone who doesn’t love you. Did the failure lessen the crime? And then, in her favor, she had sacrifice. She never had another child even though she wanted to. She had never told Lee the reason. She would not risk having a second daughter.
Margaret lifted the phone and pressed #5.
Tatum’s machine picked up.
“Rachael,” Margaret said after the beep, “it’s Margaret. I need you to come. I’m sick.”
She closed her eyes and rolled her head to the side. When she reopened them, she looked out the window where a silver moon hung, thin and curved, a canoe upended and sinking into the rising float of night clouds. It’s poetic, she thought. Poetic justice, that is, for Tatum to raise Rachael. Margaret had honestly loved her sister, but she had hated her more. She had decided early on that Tatum was never to benefit from stealing her destiny, and though it all sounded so silly now, it was where it all started and for whatever reasons never ceased.
She was jerked into wakefulness by the beep of the answering machine cutting her off.
The canoe-moon reemerged from cloudy waters and dropped borrowed light onto the bedspread. With great effort, Margaret reached for the needle of light, to touch moonlight one last time. But as she reached a sharp pain shot through her limbs and torso. It traveled like a wave, not one of water but bad electricity, not like the power that lit up Rachael but something toxic.
The waves became more frequent, like contractions in labor. Her own body was squeezing her out. No more squatters. The building had been condemned.
Clammy cold followed sweat, and she rolled away from Rachael to spare her.
Margaret began to confuse dream and non-dream. Tatum told Margaret that she would take Rachael, she would make sure she remembered her. Tatum told her this as they rode through the night in the back seat of their parents’ car. No, Tatum told her that she wouldn’t take Rachael. It had something to do with the green leather book. Tatum kept pointing at one of the pages, but Margaret wouldn’t look. She stared out of her bedroom window through knuckled branches of autumn trees down to the curved driveway and Rachael running out to the car to be driven to school. Lee walked around the car to the driver’s side and fumbled with his keys. Dried leaves puddled on the car’s hood. Something in the sudden skitter of them, moved by a wind Margaret couldn’t feel, made her recognize that she was one of them, part of the past, mulch.
Margaret woke with a start. Lee looked down at her. He was speaking, but she heard her mother’s voice. Her mother told her she loved her best. Or maybe she didn’t actually say it, but Margaret knew. Her mother also told her that dying was not heroic. Everyone who had ever wronged her would not get their comeuppance because of it. Her mother laughed.
Margaret laughed too.
Someone leaned in and asked, “What is it?”
But Margaret kept her eyes closed. She felt Tatum’s car coming toward her, following the curve of space. Just as she always felt Rachael nestled somewhere inside, Tatum was there too. Like the pit of a peach, she sat inside of her, and Margaret grew firm and ripe around her. Margaret gave birth to Tatum, and because she did, Margaret would always feel her. Tatum had left behind straggler cells and a hard center that was not her own.
Margaret willed herself to turn over but could not budge. She tried to move just an arm and was able to make it happen. It creaked back behind her until she touched the thin cotton that wrapped the tiny furnace.
Rachael.
Was it night again, already?
Margaret had heard we come into this world alone and we leave it alone too. But that was backward, she thought. Her mother’s body brought her here and her daughter’s walked her to the edge and reached for her with sweet arms as she vanished. It was the time between she had been alone.
12
A pale strip of light glowed between the drawn drapes. While Rachael took her turn in the bathroom, Tatum dressed quickly to avoid Rachael catching her naked and a breast short of a pair. She figured she was monster enough.
Tatum flipped her hair over to towel dry it thinking that the next time she and Rachael went to bed, they would be in Montana, under her blankets and under her roof. Tomorrow morning, Rachael would sit at her table. Tatum wondered what they would have to say to each other, day after day after day.
When she flipped back over, Rachael’s reflection was in the mirror sitting on the bed behind her.
“Yikes.”
Tatum looked over her shoulder to assure herself Rachael existed in the flesh. Rachael sat on her hands. Her eyes were large. She looked hung over.
“What’s on your mind?” Tatum asked.
Rachael’s eyes moved slowly from her own reflection to Tatum’s.
“How am I going to go to school?” she said.
“You can go to school where I live, or you can take a break if you want.”
“How will I get back — when my Dad’s better?”
“I’ll drive you,” Tatum said. “If that would take too long, we’ll take an airplane.”
Rachael’s eyes returned to her own reflection. Tatum hoped this was all a good sign, figuring out the logistics of being stuck with her aunt rather than working on an escape.
“I knew she was going to die,” Rachael said.
Tatum joined Rachael at the bottom of the bed.
“I wish I had known. She didn’t tell me.”
“She didn’t tell anyone,” Rachael said. “Just me.”
Tatum doubted she was telling the truth. It didn’t sound like Margaret.
“She must have trusted you very much,” Tatum said.
“She did.”
Their eyes met in the mirror, again. It was an interesting contrast to the night before, Tatum thought, perhaps a new experiment in coping. She considered placing a hand on Rachael’s knee but didn’t want to push the moment. Rachael was talking. Tatum decided to let it be enough. She half-smiled at Rachael in the mirror and then stood and gathered their things, piling their bags in the chair nearest the door.
The car hummed beneath the pigeon-gray sky. The speedometer climbed toward 80 as they cut through the flat South Dakota landscape. Leaves from unseen trees skittered across the highway, small migrations hustling toward the
safety of a ditch. Rachael seemed in a trance. Tatum wanted to snap her fingers in front of her face, walk her around the block, or throw her into a cold shower.
“Have you noticed the leaves?” Tatum said.
Rachael lifted her eyes enough to see over the dashboard.
“When’s the last time you saw a tree?”
Rachael looked out her side window. Bored? Looking for trees?
“It’s strange,” Tatum said. “Don’t you think?”
Rachael turned from the window and looked at her aunt. Tatum smiled. Rachael did not smile back. Her expression was still flat, a shield inserted between the world and some inner sanctum. Such shields, Tatum knew, were dangerous. Over time they start playing tricks on your mind. You start mistaking it for yourself. One begins to protect the shield rather than the other way around.
“Rachael,” Tatum said, “do you want to talk about your mom, or want me to? I could tell you a story about when we were kids.”
Rachael kept her face averted. She mumbled something under her breath.
“What?” Tatum said. “I couldn’t hear you.”
Rachael turned and faced her.
“I said, ‘no thank you.’”
By noon, sloppy ice dollops of rain smacked the windshield like bugs. Great gusts of wind shoved the Celica, but it bounced back and held its ground. The roads were empty. Tatum’s car buzzed along under the black blanket of sky. Weather-wise, it appeared that the going might get tough, so Tatum pulled off the highway at an exit that promised a Genuine Cowboy Town so that she could take a break before a potential stretch of white-knuckling it.
But the sign had lied. Beyond the Sinclair dinosaur at the exit was a short main drag. The road was dirt, and the sidewalks were wood and raised off the street, boardwalk-style. Beyond the stores’ front doors (some painted to look like swinging ones) were pharmacies, beauty salons, hardware, and feed shops. The whole place looked closed and deserted, but it was just an ordinary town, quiet, behind a cowboy veneer. Tatum reached the end of the main drag that ended abruptly in a field. She pulled into the last parking slot on the block and got out to stretch.
“Guess I better hitch up the car,” she said, pretending to tie it like a horse, trying to get into the spirit of things.
They stepped up onto the boardwalk. The dime store had an ancient children’s ride in front of it. An elephant, a pony, and a fish were dressed in circus regalia, saddled and ready to spin in a small circle.
“How do you think a fish made it into the circus?” Tatum asked Rachael.
The silence that followed was promising. Rachael didn’t answer, but Tatum thought she was considering the question. Acknowledging absurdity is one of the first steps toward healing.
“Want to take a spin?” she offered Rachael.
Rachael looked at Tatum and rolled her eyes.
Tatum didn’t care. She wanted to see it in action, hear what little ditty it might play. She dug in her pocket for change. A dime slipped from her hand as she dropped the change into the slot. As she bent to retrieve it, she thought of Paris. He always bothered to pick up stray change from a sidewalk. It wasn’t because he was cheap. It was because he was unwilling to ignore its value.
The ride cranked into action. Surprisingly, the ditty was a circus-y version of “Both Sides Now.” Tatum would’ve put her money on “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
“Rock on,” Tatum said, watching it turn.
Rachael refused to be charmed. She walked away, past the ride to the edge of the raised boardwalk. She looked out onto a knapweed-infested field, dead and broken, in the November chill.
Tatum stared at the back of Rachael’s head as the elephant, fish, and pony paraded in circles. She was still thinking of Paris and found herself seeing the image of Rachael before her through his eyes: A child’s silhouette framed on three sides by the wooden walk, the awning above, and the side of the building. The coat open and askew on her shoulders. The kiddy ride in the foreground. The dead field in the distance. But Tatum knew that Paris would see her in the frame too. He would look at the person looking, see Tatum seeing Rachael. And, if he ever wanted to, he would be able to see Rachael seeing Tatum as well.
A sudden discomfort brought Tatum’s hand to her neck. She rubbed at it, unconsciously. Paris would see her through Rachael’s eyes. Through the family eye.
Families can reduce a person, sum one up in reference to a single bad day in grade school, or excellent grades in math. The athlete. The smart one. The sensitive one (spoken with a sneer). And, of course, the black sheep. It was bad enough having the family idea of her living in her own head, Tatum thought, but at least there, it could remain secret.
She turned away from the view in an effort to turn away from the thought and noticed the pay phone near the dime store’s door. She walked to it, grateful for the opportunity to refocus her anxiety. She zeroed in on the phone book and started flipping through. She hit the G’s. Two Godwin’s. A Goe. A Goebel and a Goedker.
Then, Goes Ahead. First name, Vincent.
The task had been performed as routinely as checking one’s lottery numbers. Always expecting. Never expecting.
It won’t be him, Tatum thought. This was Indian country. There must be other Vincent Goes Aheads. She lifted the receiver. She dropped the found dime in the slot and followed it with more change from her pocket. She dialed the number from the book. Her palms were warm. Would she get a machine, she wondered? Hear his voice? Was it even the right Vincent?
The ring was long, drawn out. It rang again, and Tatum’s throat tightened. She stood with her forehead against the phone, eyes closed. Tatum wondered if Vincent could feel her coming. If the hair on his neck was standing up and a voice was whispering to him “Don’t answer.” She huddled close to the phone and closed her eyes, increasing the intimacy between herself and the ring. Don’t do this, a voice inside of her said.
13
Paris felt rich. One pocket jangled with quarters from tips from the diner. In the other pocket was a new box of Lemonheads just purchased at the convenience store. It was his night off. It was dusk, and he was doing his laundry — blue jeans and white T-shirts, a dozen white socks, some whose bottoms were stained an oily brown. The laundromat was on his block. He slipped his quarters into the slot, attentive to the cool surface and rough edging of each. Paris loved quarters. Loved their aesthetic. The big fish in the humble pond. King in a world of small change.
His clothes didn’t need him to watch them spin, so he headed back to his apartment to wait out the cycle. Besides, Paris felt the itch in his fingers. He could draw. Maybe even paint. He had a sense of glorious achievement, and he hit the sidewalk optimistic. He took the concrete steps to his apartment door two at a time. Inside, he tossed his keys into the ashtray and went straight for the drawer that held his paper and pens. He paused before it, hand on the knob, and thought maybe he should eat something first. He sidestepped to the refrigerator and opened it. After several seconds of staring at the condiments he said, “Geesh. What am I doing?” He pushed the door closed. “Just open the fucking drawer.”
Paris yanked it open. He reached into the middle and withdrew a random pile that he scattered on the counter. The Einstein Era. Sketches of wild hair and a bulbous nose. Eyeless, all of them. Some pictures had the blank space for eyes gouged out by a frustrated pen. He remembered the point at which he had become unnerved. He knew the challenge was to draw the hidden thing, make visible what the subject tried to hide. Einstein’s genius made it hard for him to fit into the smaller world of most minds. Paris could feel it. The result was not arrogance but loneliness, a squatter in the eye that conducted itself like the homeless, deflecting attention.
Flipping over an Einstein, Paris set in on some fast, loose sketching. He started with a torso, the ridges of the rib cage barely visible beneath a thin layer of skin. He sketched the breasts he remembered from the picture
, small and well shaped. He reached the top of the piece of paper too soon. Only half of a head would fit. Fine. It meant no room for the eyes.
Paris examined his sketch, tapping the end of his pen against the counter. He thought about the canvas slid up against the wall inside of his closet. Was it time?
He left the kitchen and crossed the room. He hauled the canvas from the closet. Leaning it against the wall, he sat down cross-legged before it. He knew its language and waited for it to speak. It would speak in clues at first, doled out slowly. A red smear. A blue-black arc. A beginning pressed against some inner seam. The moment grew fat, poised to pierce the dimensions. To be. To be. To be.
The streetlights outside were flickering, coming on. They spilled through the guardrail above the steps and cast the palest of light onto the basement apartment’s floor. Paris was drawn to it. At first, it was just the streaks on the floor that drew his attention. But soon he had abandoned the canvas to follow the light to its source from the street above. From his window, he watched the flickering lamp glow purposelessly like a morning moon. He stood there imagining showing Tatum the painting he had not painted.
Piece by piece, the moment broke up like a cloud. Want. It had contaminated the moment. Dissolved it. Paris wanted to paint. He wanted Tatum. But all he did was stand there in what he did not and had not. A pocket full of quarters and a new box of Lemonheads. Just minutes ago, he had had it all.
