by K M Cholewa
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he said.
Geneva looked at her reflection in his sunglasses.
“Ninety?” she said frankly. “Ninety-five?”
“In a . . . ” he said.
Young authorities, Geneva thought, with their guns and their clipboards. She knew what he meant. She knew the right answer. In a seventy-five zone. Sir.
“In a . . . ” he repeated.
Geneva looked up at the cop but saw only herself where his eyes should be, and without a shred of false innocence, she answered, “In a twenty-year-old Saab.”
32
Tatum had let Paris sleep for three hours, and then they went to pick up Rachael from school. They took the car as the day had become glorious and, after collecting her, drove to Spring Meadow Lake under a sky as blue as cornflowers and giant, white cruise ship clouds.
Rachael walked several paces in front of them on a path soft with spring melt. Tatum watched her move through the landscape, small and self-contained, not bursting from seams like the spring growth that surrounded them. It lacked empathy, Tatum thought, spring. Fall and winter were sympathetic. There for you. Dead leaves and abandoned nests said me, too — you are not alone. Spring, on the other hand, was a collective celebration. You could opt in, or you could opt out. But no one was stopping the party to try to convince you to come.
“Spring,” Tatum said. “You can’t help but love it, but it just doesn’t offer comfort the way fall and winter do. Ever notice that?”
The blue bunch wheatgrass was already greening. Cottonwoods lined the shore. Bulrushes and cattails clustered in pockets in the shallow water just ahead.
“It seems perfect,” Paris said.
They rounded a bend, catching up to Rachael, who had paused at the bridge to look out over the railing. As they flanked her, she switched to look over the other side.
“What’s on your mind, Rach?” Tatum said, turning and leaning back to the railing.
Rachael didn’t turn.
“Nothing,” she said.
“So you’ve reached enlightenment?” Tatum said. “Calmed the mind into a nirvana of silence?”
Rachael looked over her shoulder. “What?”
“It’s a joke.”
Rachael made a face. She didn’t get it and didn’t seem in the mood to try.
Tatum turned back to Paris. She curled her hands over the wooden railing, and Paris covered one of her hands with his own. Tatum looked into his profile, at the sandy hair, the full lips. He was an easy fit in the natural world, at home among the tree trunks, reeds, and sky. He was like the surface of the water, too, penetrable yet indivisible. You could break the surface, but he remained intact, and it was you who found yourself surrounded.
Paris turned to face her. As their eyes met, a sense of dissolving overcame Tatum, dissolving into Paris as though she could experience him from the inside out. It felt half like merging, half like ceasing to exist. Both had a powerful attraction.
“What’s in your mind?” Paris asked in a voice just above a whisper.
“Nirvana,” she said.
Paris pulled her toward him. He kissed her on the lips. She pulled away and looked down.
“What?” Paris said.
“Earlier,” Tatum said, “in the basement, I wasn’t looking for anything. Remember that book I told you about? The book my family keeps with all the women named Rachael in it?”
“Yeah.”
“Lee sent it several months ago. It’s in the basement. I was going to write in it. I was going to change it,” she said. “Write about Margaret. Make it a different kind of book.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. I couldn’t. I was unable.”
He looked at her quizzically.
Tatum shrugged. “Writer’s block, I guess.”
Paris reached toward her and plucked a dandelion seed from where it had landed in her hair.
“I’m sorry I faked with you,” Tatum said. She didn’t want to say “lied.”
Paris went to touch her cheek, but she turned before his hand could reach her. She stepped past him, crooking her neck to see up the path.
“Where’s Rachael?” she said.
Paris turned and looked over his shoulder.
“Rachael,” Tatum called.
Rachael had left the path, walking into the brush, under the giant willow, down the embankment, and toward the water. Nirvana. She whispered the word and liked the way it felt in her mouth. She thought it would make a pretty name, good for a turtle. Wearing the chucka boots her aunt had bought her, she climbed slowly down a small hump near the shoreline to where the ground was muddier.
Above, she heard the sound of Tatum’s voice. She heard her mention the Book of Rachaels, a book where everybody in it was dead except Aunt Tatum and herself. The sound of her mother’s name also distinguished itself from above. Her mother was in heaven, Rachael knew, but she could no longer imagine it. Heaven was a place she couldn’t locate, not even in her mind. Heaven seemed farther than the moon, past the sky, which was never-ending. It was nowhere. Heaven was nowhere, and that’s where her mother was. Nowhere. And yet, her cut-out shape, a hole in the fabric of the Universe, remained.
Rachael stepped out onto a thumb-shaped jutting that extended into the lake some thirteen feet. One foot then the other fell on progressively squishier ground. She thought of her mother but not in heaven. She thought of her in the bathroom behind the closed door. She imagined that the cancer made blood drip from her and wash down the drain when she cried in the shower, blood like the girls at school had talked about. Rachael reached the tip of the jutting and looked down at the smooth and algae-filled water at her feet. She wondered if Aunt Tatum bled in the shower too. Or if she did when she was sick. Rachael knew secret feelings were felt in bathrooms. When you came back out, no one was supposed to know.
She then squatted where the mud turned to water. She looked over her shoulder. Furtively, she stuck a finger down her pants. She withdrew it and examined it for blood.
“Rachael?”
Startled, she jumped up and turned, folding the finger back into her palm and tucking it behind her back. Her aunt stood in the arch of the willow.
“Whatcha doing?” Tatum said, side-stepping down the slope.
Rachael’s cheeks flushed scarlet, and she took a step backward, her foot landing squarely in the water.
“No,” she cried out, lifting the soggy boot and keeping the guilty finger hidden.
“What’s going on?” Tatum asked. “What do you have? Did you find something?” She extended a hand to help Rachael out of the muck.
Rachael took a second step back, her other boot now soaked too.
Tatum’s hand then dropped to her side. She blinked.
“Rachael,” she said, “what’s behind your back? Is it Vincent’s picture? Do you have Vincent’s picture?”
Rachael’s little mouth opened. Then Tatum extended her hand again to help. But Rachael twisted to avoid it, jerked herself too hard, and lost balance. She went down sideways, her head slapping against a granite slab jutting up from the cold, shallow water. Tatum lunged forward, stepped into the water, and jerked Rachael up by the arm.
“Omigod,” Tatum said, pulling her to dry ground and kneeling before her. She tried to separate the wet hair from a cut.
Rachael weakly shoved at Tatum’s hand. She reached for the spot of impact and felt a wave of confused grogginess. It didn’t register yet as pain, but the cold shook her.
“Stop,” Tatum said, pushing away her hand. “Let me see.”
“No,” Rachael said, and she pushed away Tatum’s hands long enough to bring her own fingers to her temple. As she touched it, she noticed Tatum’s fingers, the blood on them. She looked down at her own fingers, and her face went white.
“I know. I know,” Tatum said, reaching for her wrists. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Rachael pulled away.
“C’mon,” Tatum said firmly, taking hold of a wrist.
“No,” Rachael said, struggling loose but losing balance in the process.
Tatum grabbed her arm, keeping her upright.
“Let go,” Rachael hollered. “I want my mom.”
“She’s not here,” Tatum said. “I am.”
Rachael screamed in Tatum’s face, a primate’s threat, and then she lashed out, her fingernails dragging across Tatum’s cheeks.
Tatum let go of her and put her hand to the side of her own face. Rachael looked as shocked as Tatum, and then she was suddenly lifted up and over Tatum’s head. It was Paris. He held Rachael, her back to his chest. At first, she writhed and kicked with her heels at his knees and thighs. Then came the tears. He hiked her up once, flipping her chest to face his own.
“C’mon,” he said as he headed back up the embankment and toward the car, walking at a brisk pace. Tatum trotted behind him.
“Paris, stop it,” Tatum said.
But he kept walking.
“Paris,” Tatum hollered.
But Paris didn’t stop.
“We have to go to the hospital,” he said.
At the car, Tatum fumbled with the keys. She climbed behind the wheel, and Paris got into the back with Rachael. Tatum peeled out of the gravel lot. She stole glances in the rearview mirror as she drove. Rachael was whimpering now, but her tears weren’t the tears of protest like those near the water when Paris had first carried her off. Paris pressed his hand to Rachael’s temple. He held her whole body tightly, Tatum could tell. The thigh Rachael sat upon and the chest against which she rested were firm, yet soft, like the earth beneath the grass. Rachael was not trying to wrestle away.
“Don’t let her fall asleep,” Tatum said, though it didn’t seem likely.
The knee beneath Rachael jiggled. Rough fingertips touched her cheek. Tatum was outside the circle.
Tatum wanted to blame Vincent. But she was the one who had brought him up, who had gone looking for him again. She didn’t understand why she saw him by the water in the guilty blush of Rachael’s cheeks and the hidden hand behind her back. Tears fought to the surface, rimmed Tatum’s eyes, and plopped onto her lap. Her mouth twisted, and she sniffed, and her vision blurred. She looked into the rearview and met Paris’s eyes, then she looked away in shame. She sniffled and wiped her nose with her hand.
She was relieved to reach the hospital’s lot.
“Go,” she said. She needed them gone.
“It’s okay,” Paris said to Tatum, touching her shoulder. He carried Rachael from the car and through the sliding doors without looking back.
In the car, Tatum wiped at her cheeks with the heel of her hand. She struggled to get ahold of herself. She was tired of herself. Very tired of herself. But there was no one else to be.
Rachael received two stitches, but it was Tatum who looked the worst for wear. She didn’t make it into the hospital until all was said and done. She dealt with the front desk, providing the information she could and promising to bring in insurance information later. Back at the duplex, Rachael slept. Her cheeks were white against the pale green pillowcase. Low, southern light came through the drapes. Paris and Tatum stood beside the bed.
“Thank you,” Tatum said softly.
“I’m sorry,” Paris said.
Tatum’s brow drew together.
“For what?”
“I’ve never known you to cry,” he said. “I wanted to be there.”
Tatum sighed.
“I’m the one who screwed up,” she said. “Not you. Don’t be sorry.”
“I’m not really apologizing,” Paris said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there like, you know, as in I regret I wasn’t there. I’ve never seen you cry like that.”
“What, you wanted to watch?”
“I wanted to be with that part of you.”
Tatum looked at Paris. He shrugged, and Tatum’s breath caught in her chest. Could she believe it? That he wanted to be with that part of her? Her heart pushed out energy toward him, but she had to look away. She moved toward Rachael instead. She climbed onto the bed and lay on top of the spread, scooting up beside Rachael as close as she could be without actually touching her.
Paris seated himself at the end of the mattress and placed a hand on Tatum’s ankle. Though calm on the outside, he was still shaken by what had happened at the water’s edge. He had seen Rachael’s fingernails catch Tatum’s cheek and after that, a bright, white light exploded inside of him. Next thing he knew, he was in the back seat of Tatum’s car with Rachael in his lap with no recollection of how he got there.
Then, at the hospital, he had carried Rachael from the car and through the sliding doors, struggling not to look back to where the woman he loved was crying and the man who loved her was walking away. If he looked back, he would never make it through the door.
Paris wanted to climb into the bed on the other side and make a circle with Tatum that held Rachael safe in the center. But he stayed where he was, watching them. The two seemed far away and separate, even from each other. It made Paris want to say their names, to see their eyes open, and pull them all to a single shared space.
“Paris,” Tatum said, breaking his revelry. “You should get out and save yourself while you can.”
“No,” was all he could think of to say.
Then he slid up the mattress and lay beside Tatum. He kept his knees bent and boots hanging off the edge of the bed, trying to be mindful of the spread while protecting them all from the greater evil of his exposed feet.
Tatum reached up with a tentative hand and placed it on Rachael’s shoulder.
“Tell me something,” she said to Paris.
He could tell she wanted him to say something that would take her away from the voices in her head. She wanted him to carve out a new space for them to occupy, wrap them in a story where it all had already happened and led them here, however indirectly, to each other.
“Paris?”
He didn’t want to let her down.
“I have a secret,” he said. “Want to hear?”
Tatum answered with a bend of her knees that he could feel as her feet pressed to his shins.
“It’s about the diner. Around two a.m. . . .,” he began.
It was a story he had once been saving, a perfect story, before he had ruined it in the janitor’s closet. Paris told Tatum about the women, about the soup and the quiet of the night. Paris told her that he had tried to draw the women, but he could never draw their eyes.
Then, he was quiet. Lies of omission weigh nothing, but they carve out perceptible holes, and the hole in his story, to his mind, was gaping. No Linda. Nothing. Like she was never there. He reached his arm across Tatum, but with his will, he cast a broader wing of protection. Across Tatum. Across Rachael. Across the Deluxe and a wider world, a sea of uplifted eyes wanting only to be noticed, to be seen. His lie had carved an empty space into the room. He tried to fill it with a promise.
Be a man.
The words formed clearly in his head, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. This was what it meant to be a man. To possess not with a clenched hand, but to be possessed by a promise. A promise to protect. In declaring them as his, he realized, he became theirs.
It was an oath.
It was love.
33
Geneva held her speeding ticket, slightly crushed, in the hand supporting the bottom of her purse as she dug out her key. The scent hit her first, heady and dusty, and then the snatch of color caught her eye. Purple and white lilacs crammed into a jelly jar sat beside her door. She turned the lock and dropped her purse and unused overnight bag onto the floor inside. Then she returned to the hall and picked up the flowers. She carried them, and the speeding ticket, inside to her desk. She lifted the folded note from t
he bouquet. It simply said, “ — J.”
Geneva lowered herself into her chair. The day did not slip away. The bad mood and the bouquet. It was a staring contest.
Then the bad mood spoke.
Ralph. She had never blamed him for anything. But then today, driving home, some inner switch got thrown. Geneva found herself blaming Ralph for an “it all” she didn’t know she had in her. Her resentment festered. She let it pump through her veins. Defensiveness locked up her jaw and tightened her lips despite her knowing that such rigidity trapped one inside rather than protected one from what could come from without. She also realized that the reason she hadn’t blamed Ralph all these years wasn’t due to her love or her personal virtue. It was about control. If she blamed Ralph, it meant the problem lay elsewhere, outside of herself. Whereas if it were her fault, her responsibility, it was hers to change. And the only person she needed to count on was herself.
But no more. From now on, she decided, it wasn’t her fault. Nothing was. Ralph, the social worker, the cop — they were the problem.
She looked at the lilacs. They offered no opinion. Geneva reached toward the speeding ticket and turned it face down on the desk.
Then, she closed her eyes to make both disappear in search of some inner silence. But the dusty, heady lilac scent was persistent and seemed able to reach inside of her with soft tendrils. Her body drew a sudden fast breath, reaching for more, an act separate from her will. The exhale was slow, and almost complete, when there was a soft rapping at her door.
Geneva opened her eyes.
“Hello?” Tatum’s voice.
Geneva closed her eyes again. Despite her affection for Tatum, she was in no mood for handwringing, melancholy or gloom, or at least not someone else’s. She didn’t want to say words or think thoughts or manage herself in any way in relation to what someone else might want or need.
