Shaking out the Dead (27 page)

The next day, Tatum stood beside him as the hired backhoe dug Margaret's phony grave. Her questions about Margaret being buried on the property were oddly specific. Did it take a permit? Were there laws governing family plots? It made him wonder if she knew that Margaret would acutally be cremated and she was testing him.

When the backhoe was done, Tatum was silenced by the product. She squatted down and fingered the dying grass beside the grave. It was a crisp autumn day, the trees swaying ever so slightly.

“That last call from Margaret,” she had said, “I wish I knew if there had been something important she wanted to tell me, some final message.”

Lee looked down. She was looking up, her eyes green pools like Rachael's, exerting a pull too, though not as strong. She was asking him a question, and he felt he knew the answer she sought.

Lee remembered the moment from his Adirondack chair in Cape May. Seagulls shrieked and landed not far from his chair, acting nonchalant, while piercing him with their sidelong glances as though if they pierced hard enough, a Cheeto or Cheerio might be extracted from his flesh. He shook the white pebble ice cubes in the bottom of his glass as the morning haze drifted. Standing there by the phony grave, it could've been so easy. He could have made up anything. He could have told her that Margaret wanted her to take care of Rachael. Her, and no one else. Her, above all others. Even himself. But he just couldn't give it to her.

Instead, he had pleaded overwhelment. His tears were real. Take Rachael, he asked of her. He asked for time. He knew it was the right thing. Right for him. Right for Rachael. Right for Tatum.

Of course, she had said yes. But she judged him for it and made it no secret.

He had left Tatum standing there beside the grave. He walked toward the house over the matted leaves, a strange mix of relief and fear making him unsteady as he crossed the yard. He lifted his eyes to the trees and noticed an empty bird feeder hanging on the dogwood near the house. How long had it been empty, he wondered? Since Margaret got sick? For years? He felt it again, the feeling that had started in his daughter's room the day before. The unraveling. The eye closing.

As Lee looked up at the tree and feeder, a sense of lightness had entered through his feet and traveled up his legs. To keep from floating up, he reached for things — the knob to his front door, the railing on the stairway inside as he raced up, the varnished wood surface of the door to Rachael's room as he pushed it open. When Rachael saw his face, her bottom lip set to quivering and then panicked tears began to fall. Lee sat on the bed and pulled her into his arms.

Four days later, he loaded her into Tatum's car and sent her west. He headed south.

Three months later, when he returned home for just two days, he had visited Margaret's ashes, but not her grave. The ashes hadn't looked back at him, but the green leather book had. When he stood from the side of the bed and left the room, he had unconsciously carried the Book along. When he took the birthday gift he had bought to the shippers, he also sent the Book of Rachaels.



And now, he was alone, with no He to be. The eye had closed. Margaret was no longer inside his mind, watching him like God, present and silent. He had existed to her always. In his presence. In his absence. In love. In anger. In sorrow. In contempt. Clocks told her when he was leaving and when he was late to come home. Calendars told her when she needed to make sure the dry cleaning was picked up for his business trip. A ringing phone. Was it him? He was the sun. She orbited. He was the tree that fell, and she was the ears to hear. He had never really believed she would die. He thought that someone who wants something from you doesn't leave.

The seagulls gave up on him. The white waves of low tide crashed and were pulled back to sea, dragged by their heels, ruffled fingers clawing at the packed sand. Lee stood and headed up the beach to the restaurant's patio. Unfaithful husband. Part of his mind knew what it meant. It meant that he had been unfaithful to a role in order to be faithful to something that ran much deeper. But the part of his mind that knew this was softened by vodka. The part that was left didn't know what to know. He looked up into the washed out sky, but it gave him vertigo. He looked down, but the rolling granules of sand that tumbled forward with each step did the same.

He crossed the restaurant, his eyes taking a quick inventory of the few customers. He didn't know that he was looking for a woman. A face. Someone to look into him and see herself and mistake him for the self she had misplaced. Vanity didn't kill Narcissus. It was mistaking his beauty for that of another's.

Back in his room, Lee sat on the edge of the bed and called in for his messages. He listened to Tatum's voice, earnest but without edge. Her words made him remember the “hunkered-downness” of his daughter. The green pools of her eyes. The need. But the black hole that had dismembered him now felt more like gravity pulling him in, reassembling the pieces of a self that had fractured and broken. Tatum told him to try to see himself through Rachael's eyes.

He did, and he could. He was the mysterious stranger. He was her father. When he imagined her, he felt a push-pull coming from her. Enough pull to keep his feet on the ground. Enough push to keep him from sinking.



Geneva used her best lotion. She dressed in a cream-colored sweater and blue canvas pants and wore her flat, brown leather boots. A little eyeliner. Eyebrow pencil. A touch of rouge. Aging shrinks the range between how a woman looks at her best and how she looks at her worst. On the upside, it saves time. Geneva reached quickly the outer limit of how good she could look. There was no sense in pretending there was further to go.

She picked up the directions to John's and headed for her door. The last of his directions included unmarked roads and navigation by landmark as opposed to street name. She was curious about his word choice. He referred to his house as the “shack” on the left.

Shack. Was he being cute, and it really referred to a ranch estate? Was it indeed a “shack,” and he would meet her in his long johns having just finished shaving over a water barrel? It crossed her mind that it might not be his home at all, but the shed he used to butcher his victims, middle-aged women in search of a last hurrah.

She hesitated at her front door but then returned to her desk. She wrote a note including the date, the time, and John's address — for the investigation, just in case.

Outside the city limits, the valley spread, subdivisions occasionally blemishing the expanse of ten- and twenty-acre lots. Horses stepped toward their barns, shaking out their manes, finished with the day's work of gracing the landscape and providing elegant foreground to the distant snow-capped Rockies. The drive from Geneva's front door to the last stretch of dirt and gravel that led to John's shack took thirty minutes. She approached from the west and noticed a structure on the right. It truly did look the size of a shed, too small to house a man of John's size. As she passed, she looked up into her rearview. On the other side of the small building was an outdoor grill with John standing behind its open lid. Ahead, the only building was a tall and narrow outhouse.

She hit the brakes and threw the car into reverse, rolling back slowly over the gravel. She turned into his drive. Psycho killer or no, Geneva liked the cut of his body against the sky.

John closed the grill and watched her walk from her car across the dust and prickly pear. His eyes sparked at her like he had been waiting for her for years, decades, always knowing that someday, she'd turn her wheels up his drive.

Geneva reached him and turned out her arms as if to say,
Here I am
.

John hung the meat fork on the grill. Behind him in the distance, the Continental Divide lumbered across the sky, snow-capped and purple in the dusk.

“It's a beautiful night,” Geneva said.

“And it's all for free. Come on in,” John said, motioning toward the shed.

The front door was open and constructed like one to a horse's stall — tall, wide, and split with an upper and a lower gate. Inside, there was one large room with north and south facing windows. A queen size bed and nightstand took up nearly a third of the room. The opposite corner included shelves, a sink, and refrigerator. The large wood stove had two burners and an oven compartment. The smell of potatoes leaked from the bubbling pot on top.

“You cook on that?” Geneva said.

“All the time.”

Geneva took in the room. It was completely simple but not without modern conveniences — a refrigerator, a radio. Maybe not a microwave, but a toaster oven.

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“I bought the land twelve years ago,” he said. “There's twenty acres, total. I built this cook's shed and was going to live in it until I built my house.”

“And lo and behold?” she said.

“Yep. Now it's Home Sweet.”

“What did you run out of,” Geneva asked, “money or will?”

“Neither, really,” John said. “I just got a feeling I was pushing the river. I got as far as the slab,” he said, pointing out the door toward a cluster of trees some two hundred yards away.

Geneva looked but couldn't really see it.

“Won't you sit?” he said, motioning to the table in the middle of the room. On it were two simple, but crystal, wine glasses and a good bottle of Shiraz. One of the glasses was a quarter full. John picked up the bottle and presented it like he was a wine steward.

“Please,” Geneva said.

John poured her a glass and handed it to her. Then he lifted his own glass and extended it to her for a quick
chink
. After taking a sip, John put down his glass and picked up a towel and opened the lid of the pot on the stove.

“Can I help?” Geneva said, a reflex.

John turned in her direction and shook his head no with a small smile. He replaced the lid and excused himself to go check on the meat. Geneva let her eyes take a lap around the shack, rooting out the revealing details. Under the nightstand, there was a stack of books, a mix of Eastern religion, Louis L'Amour, and construction how-to's. A postcard on his fridge was of South Dakota's Black Hills. Behind the bed tacked to an exposed two-by-four was a photograph of a sunset that was likely taken right outside the door. Her eyes dropped to the bed. The quilt looked old and handmade, gingham squares bonded by ties of blue yarn. The bed was built high off the floor. If he comes in, she thought, takes my hand, and leads me to it, I'm going.

But best, she thought, not to be caught contemplating his bed. She turned her attention to the man, the rear view of him, standing at the grill. He held his body like a man with decades of physical labor under his belt. She could sense both its power and the creaks and glitches that caused him to lean into his right hip, his left shoulder pulled up slightly toward his ear.

John turned and returned to the shack, a platter of chops in one hand.

“I'm married,” Geneva blurted. “He's in Parkview Home with Alzheimer's. He hasn't recognized me for seven years.”

John stared at her, his face serious. He shifted his body weight to the side.

“So what you're telling me,” he said, “is that if he finds out about us, it's okay, because he'll probably forget in pretty short order.”

Geneva buried her face in her hands, pleasantly embarrassed.

“Pork chop?” he said.

Geneva nodded without looking up. John put the platter on the table and drained the pot of potatoes. He placed them in a bowl and put that on the table too. He retrieved the butter from the refrigerator and put a loaf of ciabatta on a cutting board.

“I'm sorry,” Geneva said. “It's just, you know, full disclosure.”

“Full disclosure?” he said, pulling plates from an open shelf.

“You know, marriages, diseases, outstanding warrants.”

John placed silverware beside the plates and took a seat. He lifted the platter and extended it to her.

“Pick your pork chop.”

Geneva looked them over and took a small one with burnt edges.

“Have you ever been married?” Geneva asked him, dropping it onto her plate. “Or rather, are you married and maybe she's locked up somewhere too?”

“No one in lock down,” John said. “Nothing current.”

“But ever?”

John shifted in his chair.

“Married the first one at nineteen,” he said, “and divorced the last one at forty-two.”

“And the grand total was?”

“Three.”

John picked up his pork chop with his fingers and bit into it, ripping the meat off the bone.

“How do you do that?” Geneva asked.

“What?” he said, chewing.

“Get married over and over,” she said. “I always thought that if I didn't make it in the one I had, I'd never do it again.”

“So you'd blame the institution.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I think I'd blame myself, though, mostly. I'd be the one who couldn't do it.”

“My parents were married for sixty-three years,” John said, getting up and grabbing a couple of paper napkins off the top of his refrigerator. “They were happy. Maybe that's why I think it can be done. When it comes to what we can and can't do,” he said, “I think it's a bad idea to look to evidence. There's never evidence that we can do something we haven't done yet.”

“True,” Geneva said. She smiled. “I like that. I like counterintuitive things that make sense.”

“I thought you might.”

John poured the rest of the Shiraz into their glasses. The next bottle, a cabernet, was already breathing on the table.

Geneva lifted her glass but didn't take a sip.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I wonder if a husband or wife getting Alzheimer's is any different than any other change that makes you feel like you don't know them anymore.”

“At least it's a change,” John said. “I've always thought that you either have two people changing all the time, two people never changing, or you've got a problem.”

“One changing and one not?”

“One changing and one not.”

Geneva briefly wondered if her own problem was that Ralph had changed, and she was the one lagging behind. But it's not what she said.

“I think the problem with marriage,” Geneva said, shifting the subject slightly, “one of them, anyway, is that when a woman gets married, she doesn't get to be irresistible anymore.”

John made a face that indicated he might disagree. He reached for another pork chop.

“It's inevitable,” she said. “Not because he falls out of love or thinks she's unattractive, it's simply that at some point, sometimes, he can take it or leave it. He's too tired, too irritable. Sometimes he just doesn't want to give her what she wants to prove he doesn't have to. It's inevitable. It's life. But that doesn't negate the loss.”

“So because he may not find her irresistible all the time it means she's no longer irresistible?”

“Exactly,” Geneva said. “If you're not irresistible all the time, it means sometimes you're resistible, thus, you're not irresistible.”

John rolled the wine in his mouth and then swallowed.

“Sounds like math,” he said. “What if a man other than her husband found her irresistible?”

“Well, unless she's going to cheat on her husband, it doesn't matter, because she won't be able to
experience
the irresistibility because he'll have to resist, see?”

“You think all women feel this way?” he said.

“I don't pretend to know what all women feel,” she said.

“Well, I don't know if you're right,” John said, “but it does make sense.”

Something warm flickered in Geneva's chest and then spread throughout her body.
I don't know if you're right, but it does make sense.
It struck her as the most marvelous thing anyone had ever said to her.

Their plates were empty, and no one was reaching for more.

“How 'bout a fire?” John said.

Then, he stood and covered the food but left it on the table. Night was falling, deepening the purple of the mountains and turning the snow-capped peaks to pink icing. John tucked the wine bottle under his arm and picked up both their glasses. He motioned out toward a fire pit surrounded by a log and tree stumps.

Outside the shed, away from the stove, the air was cooler. They made small talk as they stepped across the prairie. Geneva thanked him for dinner. They agreed on a preference for pork over beef. They discussed sunsets, not any one in particular, and the herd of elk that passed through from time to time.

At the pit, they settled in, Geneva seating herself on a stump. John handed her a glass and placed his own on the stump beside her. He pulled matches from his hip pocket and lit the prepared paper and kindling.

“I think the problem with marriage,” John said, returning to the subject, “is that if there's a lot of love, it's going to bring up a lot of scary stuff. The problem is, the amount of love it takes to bring the scary business up is only about half the amount you need to figure all the scary business out. You never know going in how much is in the well.”

“I think a lot of people, most, maybe, never figure it out,” Geneva said.

John added two larger logs to the fire and blew on the kindling. He picked up his wine glass and took a seat on the stump beside Geneva. The dry pine slowly took the flame.

“Not me,” he said. “I can't just keep covering the same ol' ground.”

“But don't you have to keep covering the same old ground until it breaks and you can move on?”

He looked out at her from under a heavy brow.

“Like maybe I've just quit too soon?” he said.

Geneva shrugged.

They were quiet as the fire kicked up, crackling, and finding momentum.

“I'm happy to be here with you,” John said.

He leaned forward on his stump. He held his wine glass between the fingers of his upturned hands. He looked like an ancient creature, not so much old as from another time. Sitting there, Geneva had the sense that his fires were not for company only. She could imagine him alone, sitting on a stump, contemplating the orange glow traveling through the wood, snake eyes, opening and closing.

“Before he got the Alzheimer's,” John said, “was it good?”

“Yes,” Geneva said, but not firmly. “Ralph expected absolutely nothing of me, but that I be there, happy to see him when he showed up.”

“Oh,” John said. “He kept you.”

“He set me free,” Geneva corrected him. “He never tried to keep me from anything I wanted to do.”

“As long as you were there when he got home.”

“No,” Geneva said. “It wasn't like that. It was more, ‘whenever you're with me, no matter what, let it be enough.'”

“Don't want,” John said.

“Don't want
more
,” Geneva corrected him,
“
or different.”

“Don't change.”

“Kind of.”

“And was that something you managed to do?”