Shaking out the Dead

by K M Cholewa

  “Hello?” she said.

  Silence.

  Then, a hesitant “Is Tatum there?”

  It wasn’t her father. It was Vincent. She was sure of it.

  “Hello?” he said again.

  Rachael held the phone in one hand, her milk in the other. She hung there until she heard a click and the line go dead. She replaced it on its cradle.

  But she didn’t step away. She watched the phone, waiting for it to ring again. Outside the window, she heard the drip of icicles, slowed down from earlier that afternoon as the ice firmed up as the temperature fell. Rachael thought of the dogs with their frost-dusted backs leaving belly trenches in the surface of the snow yet somehow not ruining it. Then the phone rang again. Rachael let it ring. She turned her back to it.

  Rachael stood in the kitchen, holding her glass and listening to the ringing. The sound both soothed and stirred her, like the sensation of hiding while hearing someone search for you. Your name is called. You hear your own breathing. They cannot see you but are reaching out with antennae. So it’s more than your body that you have to hide. The game played in Rachael’s head. An unnamed He was looking for her. But whoever it was that was looking, she thought, he would have to wonder where she was, what happened to her, and be worried.

  The back door opened, and the sound of music and voices drifted in. Tatum’s head was cocked as she entered the kitchen, carrying dirty plates and empty platters.

  “Did I hear the phone?” she said.

  Rachael looked to the phone, but it was silent. Just a moment ago, it had felt good to let it ring and walk away. But now she felt a slow, creeping panic. She had made a mistake, though she couldn’t name exactly what it was. But she knew she made Him go away. She flushed, the inward terror clear on her face, and her glass slipped through her fingers, crashing on the linoleum.

  Tatum jumped back when the milk and glass splattered.

  “Oh no,” Tatum said, “what’s wrong?”

  Large, curved pieces of glass sat sharp edges up on the floor. The back screen door opened and fell closed. Paris came up behind Tatum, looking over her shoulder at the mess.

  Rachael looked at the lightning bolt of milk across the blue linoleum.

  Tatum’s brow was a question mark. Her hands were full.

  Paris picked up the broom and dustpan to his right by the fridge and stepped between them.

  “May I?” he said.

  20

  

  Paris stood alone in the yard, looking over the fence and into the sky. The trees reached above the rooftops with gnarled, beggar’s hands against a background of mountains drenched in purple winter dusk. In a canvas, there is a dimple, an implied horizon, no more illusory than the one before him shape-shifting in the changing light. He knew there was nothing there. The Earth, after all, is round. To ride into the sunset is to never arrive. It is to forever chase a lie.

  Paris thought of his sketches decomposing in a landfill as he gathered the last of the glasses from the earlier meal. They chinked together in a cluster as he grasped them with his fingers. He carried them up Tatum’s back steps.

  Inside, Rachael was already asleep in her bed, having started to run a temperature. Tatum washed dishes and stacked them in a rack. The sounds of chores, the scrubbing and clinking, was pleasant to Paris, reassuring. He put down the glasses and took a seat at the kitchen table. The coffeemaker spit and gurgled. Tatum knew Paris had to go to work soon. She wiped her hands on the kitchen towel and poured Paris a mug. They retired to the living room.

  Paris seated himself on the sofa, and Tatum sat on the orange chair, putting her feet up on the ottoman. On the trunk Tatum used as a coffee table sat the film and the maracas she had given Rachael and the birdhouse from Geneva. The barrettes had been put away, but Paris’s hat remained. Paris picked up a maraca. He held it with two hands and shook it once. He turned it over in his hands like it were an artifact.

  “You know,” he said, “I’ve always felt sorry for the leader of a conga line. He gets the ‘Hey, dude, saw you last night, cha-cha-cha.’”

  Tatum smiled and rolled her head to look in his direction.

  “But the leader of a conga line is not the instigator,” Paris said. “It’s the number two person in the line who started it. Conga lines start when the second person in line grabs the first person’s hips. After that, it’s out of the leader’s control. No control over the length of line or the behavior of the people in it.”

  “Some leaders are chosen by the people.”

  “The next morning,” Paris said, returning the maraca to the trunk, “no one remembers who was second in line. No one remembers who started it. Only who led it.”

  “Was there an incident, Paris? Something you want to tell me about?”

  “No,” he said. “Just being philosophical.”

  They were trying to return to normal, get past the tension of earlier that afternoon, and create new moments to usurp the old.

  Tatum pushed the film with a socked foot.

  “It’s a mysterious thing,” she said, pulling a fleece throw from the back of the chair across her body, holding it under her chin. “Rachael loves taking pictures and filling her photo albums. She asked me to make copies of all these old pictures she has of Margaret and Lee. I wonder if she’s mingling them with ones from now, trying to merge the past and present. Whatever she’s doing, it’s top secret. She won’t show me. And she does it with the focus of a priest. Isn’t it funny how kids have secret worlds, entire universes of purpose we know nothing about? Do you have a secret world, Paris? You don’t have to tell me about it, since it’s secret and all, just tell me if it exists.”

  “A secret world?” Paris said. “Not just secrets or secret thoughts, but a whole world?”

  Tatum waited.

  “Sometimes I feel like my whole life is a secret world,” he said.

  “Secret from everybody?”

  Paris wasn’t sure.

  “I remember when I realized that secrets were possible,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I think, for a while, during childhood, I thought everyone knew what I thought. That we were all thinking the same thing, but it was taboo to talk about a lot of it. I thought there was a great conspiracy to pretend certain things weren’t real.”

  “But that’s not how it was?”

  Paris adjusted his glasses at the corner.

  “No,” he said. “Something that happened at school showed me that everyone doesn’t know everything. That I, alone, might know something, or maybe just me and another person. Everyone isn’t pretending not to know. They genuinely don’t.”

  “What happened?”

  Paris leaned forward, hunching over his mug, which he held with two hands.

  “I wasn’t a popular kid or a geek kid, either,” he said. “I was more of an invisible kid. But this other guy who rode the bus, Warren, he had the curse, and he was the morning target of one of the biggest thugs in my grade school. Bruce. Me and Warren were in second grade. Bruce was in like fifth. Every morning, Bruce stole Warren’s lunch and ate it right in front of him on the way to school. I watched it for almost a year. Warren was so hungry every afternoon, he was passing out. Some days I acted like my mom gave me stuff I hated, and I gave it to him. I had to be careful, though. I couldn’t risk being his friend. I felt bad for him, but I had to survive, myself. Besides, there was something kind of weird and gross about him.”

  “Seems like most guys named Bruce turn out to be bullies who steal lunches from guys named Warren,” Tatum said.

  Paris sipped from his mug and adjusted his glasses.

  “I had this parakeet,” he said. “Elvis. One morning I woke up, pulled the sheet off his cage, and he was lying there dead in the bottom. I told my mother I was going to bury him, but I didn’t. I went into the yard and crammed him into my pocket. When my mom was in the bathroom, I pressed him between two pie
ces of white bread and packed him into a lunch sack. That day, when I got on the bus, fast as I could, I grabbed Warren’s lunch and dropped this other bag into his lap. He looked at me strange but didn’t have time to think because Bruce was boarding too.”

  “Wow,” Tatum said, seeing it coming together. “What a plan.”

  “So, I’m sitting like three rows back from Warren. I’m as nervous as if I were wired with explosives. The whole world felt so different. Vivid. It felt like everyone in the world had to know, had to see it on my face. Anyway, new day, same story. Bruce steals Warren’s lunch and sits a row in front of him, like he always did, so the poor kid had to watch him eat his food.”

  “Bruce ate Elvis.”

  “He tore the plastic wrap off like he did every day. See, I had to count on him doing it like he always did. He had his eye on Warren, you know, ‘Ha, ha, I’m eating your sandwich, whatcha gonna do about it.’ — God I hated him. Well, he was true to form that morning. He takes a bite, and right away, he’s spitting and jumping out of his seat. When he sees what he bit into, the idea of it makes him even sicker than the bite, and he mini-pukes on the spot. ‘You’re dead, you’re dead, you little fucker,’ he says, puke dribbling off his lip.”

  “Whoa,” Tatum said.

  “He beat the shit out of Warren later that day, but he never stole his lunch again. Plus, the story got around. Warren was kind of an everyman’s hero for a while. We never said anything about it.”

  “And that’s how you learned about secrets.”

  Paris nodded. He put his mug back down on the trunk.

  “It was both good and bad,” he said. “I mean, on one hand, I learned I could have secrets separate from what anyone else in the world knew. But, it also meant,” he paused, “it also meant, I don’t know, like we weren’t all in it together.”

  He looked at Tatum. She closed her eyes and let her head fall against the back of the chair. A branch from the ficus arced above her, and a small smile played on her lips. If it were any other woman, Paris might believe there was an invitation in her demeanor, an acceptance, or even encouragement, of an advance. He found himself wanting to give her more. Feed the sweet space she seemed to be inhabiting.

  “Paris.”

  “Tatum.”

  “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “Me too.”

  She raised her head from the back of the chair and looked at him. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  Paris shook his head like he didn’t remember.

  “About what’s not there mattering more than what is.”

  Paris blinked and tried to hope for nothing.

  “I probably spend too much time thinking about what I could never be for Rachael instead of thinking about what I could be doing for her.”

  Rachael. It was about Rachael.

  “How can I better help her, Paris? What do you think I should do for her?”

  Something in Paris closed, quietly.

  “I mean,” Tatum said, “you can love someone, but really, what does that do for them?” She leaned forward and picked up the same maraca Paris had been fiddling with. “It never raised anyone from the dead,” she said. “In fact, people say you can love someone to death, but never that you can love someone to life.”

  Paris didn’t want to think about love’s utility. About what it could do for anybody. For. The word made him edgy.

  He stood, abruptly. Tatum looked up.

  “Paris?”

  He ran a hand over his head. What could she do for Rachael? What could he do for her? It was a mark on a wall. Something to achieve.

  Paris looked at Tatum. Anger was not familiar to him, and he lacked the experience to navigate its expression.

  “I think I have to go,” he said.

  “Work?” Tatum said, knowing that wasn’t it. “What’s wrong? Oh, no.”

  “I, I’m sorry,” Paris said, “I . . .”

  “Paris, I’m sorry.”

  “No,” he said, closing his eyes. He did not want her to apologize. He didn’t want her to feel wrong.

  “No, you’re right,” Tatum said. She rapped the maraca against her forehead. “Ack. This is what I do. I ruin shit. I’m an idiot. Please don’t be mad at me.”

  “No.” Paris grimaced and shook his head. “You don’t ruin shit.” I’ll die if I made you feel that way — Paris didn’t say the words. He would not make her feelings responsible for his. “I have to go.”

  Tatum huddled down deeper beneath the throw, gripping it beneath her chin.

  Paris walked fast down the street. He was blind to the night, so it let him be and looked away as he passed. What did he want? Nothing, he insisted. But then, what was it that made his head hurt and chest tighten? Was it just as Tatum didn’t know what to do for Rachael, he didn’t know what to do for her? What act would elicit the desired response?

  “For” — that was the problem. For destroyed people. If you’re doing something “for” someone, and it doesn’t work, well, then it means somebody failed somebody. Somebody didn’t do the right thing or somebody didn’t react right.

  Paris did not want to be there for Tatum. He wanted to be there with her.

  21

  

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Tatum whispered it. She whispered it twice.

  “I can take care of myself. I can take care of myself.” She said it faster and faster and rocked with its rhythms. “I can take care of myself.” It was an incantation.

  Sitting on the kitchen floor, still wrapped in the fleece blanket, she pulled her knees to her chest and rocked like an autistic child. She tried to drown out thoughts of Paris. If she didn’t, she feared her heart would explode.

  Good things get fucked up, she thought, as she rocked. I’m the constant. Tatum knew it was a fact that she drove people away, and what drove them away was not temper or cruelty, not a nasty habit or violation of hygiene or courtesy. It’s just me, she thought. I’m just better appreciated from a distance. A few arms’ length, and she found she could engage and deflect at once. Move in too close, and the jig was up. Next thing that poor soul knew, misery had descended upon him, and whatever it was she did, Tatum thought, he needed her to stop doing it. And what that “it” was that she needed to stop doing, best she could figure, was being herself.

  It made her wonder if her soul was surrounded by a moat, troll infested. Something repellent in the path of the space where she wanted someone to enter.

  Either that, she thought, or I am the moat. The troll.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”

  She rocked and used the mantra to drum out other thoughts, the calculating of failures that spit out sums she didn’t want to face. Margaret’s presence in it all revealed itself slowly, appearing, casually, among the psyche’s rubble as though it had been there all along. Tatum did not sense Margaret as a ghost, but as an understanding, a sense that she too had known about the moat. Not Tatum’s moat, but one of her own. Tatum wondered how she did it, had a life, had a family. How did she keep the planets in balance, generate enough magnetism, enough attraction, to draw loved ones in, but not so far that they’d meet the trolls?

  Trolls.

  Trolls were the problem. Ugly and hopeful. They know they’re fundamentally unlovable, and yet they ache for love. A tragic combination.

  

  The panic slowly eased. It always did. Pathetic though it was to be reduced to a puddle on her kitchen floor, she found herself noticing that suicide hadn’t even crossed her mind. Not even recreationally. Unless, of course, the noticing that she hadn’t considered it counted against her.

  With such thoughts, she slowly shifted into her second self, the one that could carry on and perform life’s mundane tasks. She rose from the floor. She turned off lights and locked the front door. She picked up Paris’s mug from the coffee table and put it in the sink. She headed down the hall,
past Rachael’s room, to turn off the back porch light and lock the door.

  Through the glass window in the door, she noticed Geneva in the yard opening the lid of the grill. Tatum still had the fleece throw wrapped around her shoulders, and she pulled it tighter around and stepped outside. The cold felt fresh hitting her face and nostrils.

  “Whatcha doing?” she said.

  Geneva reached into the grill and then turned around holding up a shish kabob, forgotten and left behind.

  “I knew it,” Geneva said, laying it down on the small, attached shelf. She wore a berry-colored parka, and her pajama bottoms were stuffed into snow boots. “I saw it in my mind,” she said. “I was puttering about, doing other things, and suddenly there it was, a floating image. Isn’t that odd?’

  Tatum smiled and hiked the blanket up farther.

  “How’s the sick girl?” Geneva asked.

  “Sleeping.”

  “The father ever call?”

  “I don’t think so,” Tatum said, “unless we missed it. Did you hear from Parkview Homes?”

  

  The question reminded Geneva of what precisely she had set out to forget. Yes, the director of Parkview Homes had called. No decision had been made. A committee had been assigned and was having a phone conference the following day. On the phone, the director had been sympathetic and apologized that the process was taking so long. Geneva had hung up full of an irritation she endured for an hour before taking a hit off her stash.

  “The director would like the situation to go away,” Geneva said. “But he needs to validate the social worker who’s pushing this.”

  “Validate her concerns, or validate her?”

  “Number two.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  Geneva laughed.