Shaking out the Dead (18 page)

“Will you play that fish in the sea song next?” Rachael asked.

Geneva loved a request. It forgave a million sins. She held up a finger and walked over to her albums. She let Gladys continue to sing while she hunted for “Too Many Fish in the Sea” by the Marvelettes. It was on a compilation album, so she dropped to a knee to look past the
Z
's where she kept compilations and opera.



Behind Geneva, Rachael shifted back and forth from the waist. She tried turning her wrists above her head in the way she had seen Geneva do it. It had looked exotic and ethereal but too difficult to try while being watched. Doing the move made her think of her birthday gift, the maracas. She decided to try to surprise Geneva by getting them.

She crept quietly to the door, any sounds of her movements concealed by the music. She cracked the door, keeping an eye on Geneva. She moved to sneak into the hall and stepped right into a man's legs.

He wore blue jeans and just a jean jacket over his white shirt even though it was winter. His hair was jet black. She knew him from the pictures.

“Hey,” he said, clearly surprised to see her, “is Geneva home?”

Rachael slipped past him and across the hall. She reached Tatum's front door and looked back over her shoulder. It was Vincent.



Paris showered off the grease and sweat of the night. He washed his feet and tried to scrub the cling of his encounter in the janitor's closet from his body. Tatum had asked him to come over after work. He was at her door by 8 a.m.

Her appearance surprised him. He expected sweats, rumpled hair. Tatum in the morning. But she was dressed, groomed even, in tighter jeans than she usually wore and a blue corduroy shirt. She looked nervous and lovely. The energy around her brimmed with a quality that flooded Paris with hope. But, in the split second it took after opening the door, it seemed that Tatum had assessed him too. She cocked her head and squinted. Sex clings to a person. Shower or no. Paris could tell that she sensed something but couldn't put her finger on it.

Inside, Paris walked two steps behind her into the living room. Then, she turned suddenly.

“I had all this stuff to say,” she said. She looked puzzled. “But it all seems stupid now. I had some weird idea.”

“Tell me your weird idea,” he said, not wanting what it was to slip away.

Tatum bit her lower lip. She shook her head.

“Please,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “Here goes.” Her voice sounded uncertain, as though at any moment she might change her mind. “I was talking to Geneva last night, after everyone left.” She paused. “I was thinking . . .” She sighed and looked at the floor. “Look, this may all seem dumb, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry about last summer when you kissed me — when we kissed each other — in the park. Look, I was afraid. I . . . I ruin things like that. I don't why, but it's so. But I want you to know, I . . . I . . . You're . . .”

She shook her head again.

“It was a good kiss,” Paris said.

Tatum closed her eyes.

“It was a good kiss,” she said.

Her eyes remained closed. She was wrapped inside of herself. But Paris could feel what she was saying. He stepped toward her and placed his hands on her arms. Her eyes opened, green pools. He was welcomed in. Paris pushed down all that had come before, held its head beneath the surface. The pictures. Linda. Vincent. Everything. He kissed Tatum. He pressed his lips to hers as he pressed on the past, kissing Tatum until history stopped kicking and floated to the bottom.

Their lips came apart. Tatum released a heavy breath. She looked at the floor.

“This is a big can of worms,” she said. “You need to know.” She looked back up and into his eyes. “I'm cursed. I have to stay under the radar of God to get away with a thing like this.”

“A thing like what?”

“Something that feels like this. Good.”

“I'll help you,” Paris said.

Tatum shook her head. She half-laughed.

“Thanks, but I'm beyond help.”

“I mean, I'll help you stay under the radar of God. I'm good at that.”

Tatum bowed her head.

“You're killing me, Paris.”

He moved in to kiss her again. He placed his hands gently on the sides of her face. He could feel her wanting him, fighting her own resistance. First, a touch of the lips, and then tongues just barely flashing past each other. Then they parted just inches. Tatum ran a hand down his coat sleeve then took his hand in hers, intertwining their fingers.

Paris pushed back her hair.

“You have no idea,” she said, not looking at him, “how it can come to be with me. It's not pretty.”

“Stop,” Paris said. “You want to confess sins right now. Issue warnings. Fine. I'll start. Here's what you should know.”

Tatum looked up and took a deep breath, ready for anything, revelations of the deepest failings.

“My feet,” he said.

She half-laughed and then drew in her brows.

“Your feet?”

Paris took her hands.

“It's not like a birthmark, or a scar,” he said. “People can find beauty in ugly things. Smell isn't like that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Stink foot.”

“Stink foot?” She laughed.

“Don't laugh. I wish it was funny, but it's not. It started during adolescence, the way stinks do. It was a handicap. I couldn't even jerk off successfully. That's how serious this is. I'd be imagining some girl,” he said, “imagining her in a park or the back seat of a car. We'd be going at it as could only happen in my dreams, and, and I'd lose focus. I'd start wondering, how'd I get my pants off without taking off my shoes? How could I be having sex if I
did
take off my shoes? I lost many an erection to logistics.”

“It's that bad?”

Paris only stared to convey the severity of the stink.

“Part of me wants to tell you to let me smell for myself,” she said jokingly, “but part of me believes you and is scared.”

“My mother had sour feet,” Paris said.

“So, it's genetic.”

“She used to get them scraped.”

“Can't scrape off the stink, huh?”

He shook his head no, then looked at her sheepishly.

“How much can a man with stinky feet expect from this life?”

Tatum looked about to cry. Happy tears. An intolerable happiness. She squeezed her eyes closed. Paris moved in to kiss her again. Mouths opened. Limbs weakened. Taste and smell and touch transported them back in time to a place free from context and identity, a time of unfiltered pleasure.

They pulled away from each other for the thrill of anticipating coming back together again. Tatum looked rapturous. Vulnerable. Then Paris noticed something inside of her retreat.

“No,” he said.

She stepped backward.

“I have to tell you something.”

Paris panicked inwardly. The image of Vincent leaving the Deluxe bubbled up, not drowned, after all.

Tatum's forehead wrinkled with a thought.

“Something to show you, anyway,” she said.

Then she reached toward the top button of her blue corduroy shirt. Her fingers paused there, a protective gesture. Then she unbuttoned the top button and continued down.

Paris's breath shortened. His eyes followed her fingers.

“I see your stink foot,” she said, unclasping the front of the bra beneath. “And I raise you this.”

Tatum opened one side of the blouse and bra to reveal the red and puckered seam.

Though Paris hadn't expected it, he was not surprised. His eyes fell on her rib cage and traced the length of the scar. He saw what was there, not what wasn't. He knew why she had the pictures taken, regardless of who had taken them.

He felt Tatum's eyes on his own, trying to calculate his reaction.

“Talk about a damper on fantasies, huh?” she said.

“You're beautiful,” Paris choked out, and he looked away.

It's a stupid world, he thought. Men made it stupid for women. They made a world where she couldn't see that he felt like he needed to rip out of his own skin to be close enough to her. Her broken fingernails. Her fine wrinkles and moist eyes. Her scar. There was nothing missing, nothing not enough or nothing too much, just everything that she was.

Tatum pulled her shirt around her.

“Paris?” she said.

He looked up. His eyes were brimmed with tears.

“It's bad, huh?” she said.

Paris reached for her, and she reached forward too, their fingers intertwining, catching one another. They stood and pressed into each other. Paris didn't want her to think he was crying for her, feeling sorry for her, but he didn't know what to say.

Hands locked, he stretched both their arms out to the sides and up over their heads.

“You're beautiful,” he said again. There was an ache in his voice, the truth coming out painfully like it was something dislodged from inside.

“Paris,” Tatum said. She pushed him back, let go his hands, and shook him by the shoulders. “Heed me. You're going to find out. The thing will happen. You'll need to shut me out in order to endure me. I don't know what you think I've got, but it isn't there. You will fool me too, because I want to believe. I'll want to believe what you see in me is real. But you'll find out that it's not. Then I'll see that it's not. That's my worst secret. The best of me is an illusion. I've got nothing.”

“‘Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand,'” Paris said.

Tatum buried her forehead in his shoulder. He pushed her away and placed his palm on her throat. He let it drift down between the undone buttons of the blouse and bra, savoring each inch of skin.

“I feel like I'm jumping down a rabbit hole.” She laughed nervously.

Paris's eyes lingered on her collarbones, then he met her eyes.

“We are,” he said.

Paris pushed the shirt and bra slightly off her shoulders just as the front door opened.



Rachael saw it. Despite Paris's tight proximity, despite that Tatum had closed her shirt fast and turned her back to the door. Rachael saw the carved out place on Tatum's chest. She saw the damage.

Still hurriedly buttoning up, Tatum turned to face Rachael. Rachael backed out through the door. She stood in the hall for a moment before Geneva's door flew open.

“Rachael,” Geneva said, relieved.

Rachael hurried past her. She elbowed past the man she knew was Vincent and ran down the hall and slammed herself in Geneva's bathroom. She latched the door with the metal hook.

Inside the bathroom, Rachael stared in the mirror. The girl looking back was the one who had been there the day her mother died, invoked into being, brought in by ghosts and secret damage. Rachael knew about both. She knew about bathrooms too. Things happened in them. Ghosts frequented them. She looked away from the mirror to the door she herself had latched. Illogically, she felt locked in. Trapped. She looked back to the mirror.

“I hate you,” she said, and she slapped at the reflection with her palm.

“Rachael,” Tatum said, from outside the door.

Rachael knew it was just her own reflection she looked at, but at the same time, it was someone else. The girl she once was was vanishing. She watched her lower lip quiver. Why did she have to be there? Why did she have to be the girl in the mirror? Why couldn't she be someone that things didn't happen to?

She backed away from the mirror and looked around the room as though for an escape. She pushed away the heavy curtain at the window that looked to the side of the house. The snow outside was ugly. Melted and refrozen. Messed by footprints. Paris's. Tatum's. Geneva's. Her own. Rachael tried to remember the unblemished humps of whiteness she once viewed outside her own living room. She tried to force the mirage.

But she could not see it.

“No,” she said, and she slapped at the image outside the window. The duplex was old, as was the pane of glass. Triangles of frost grew in its corners. “Go away,” she said, and she slapped it again, harder and with both hands, a firm blow, and the window cracked with a fast, sharp
tissshh
. Small chunks of glass beneath the base of her hand separated from the rest.



Outside the bathroom, Paris watched from Geneva's front door as Vincent pushed Tatum aside, grabbed the knob, and turned it hard while hitting the door with his shoulder. The lock snapped easily as wood fibers popped and splintered. Geneva was first in.

Vincent backed away from the bathroom.

Rachael stood beside the window with tiny shards of glass at her feet. She looked frightened and surprised.

“Gimme,” Geneva said, reaching for her hand.

Rachael stood frozen. Tatum looked from over Geneva's shoulder. The cold air from the outside leaked in.

Geneva and Tatum examined Rachael's hand and arm. It didn't seem too bad. No great shard had cut her wrist, just small pin pricks of blood and some glistening sharp slivers on the base of her hand.

“We need tweezers,” Geneva said, opening the medicine cabinet.

“C'mon,” Tatum said, lifting Rachael up over any broken glass and then leading her into the living room.