Shaking out the Dead (3 page)

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Lee packed Rachael's things into Tatum's Toyota. It wasn't everything she owned but enough to imply an extended mourning period for Lee. Rachael's cool silence had evolved since her mother's funeral. For two days straight, she threw tantrums. Tantrums when asked to eat, when told to go to bed. Her tantrums seemed designed to try the nerves of God, forcing Him to spit Margaret back out from the clouds. “
Okay, okay, here she is. Now please, just shut up
.”

Tatum could tell that the tantrums had Lee worried that she might reconsider hauling Rachael back to Montana. He kept saying that she shouldn't take it the wrong way.

“‘The wrong way?'” Tatum asked him. “What would that be?”

“You know,” Lee said, “like she doesn't want to go.”

“But she doesn't.”

Lee looked at Tatum as though she had injured or insulted him.

But Lee needn't worry his pretty little Q-tip head, Tatum thought. Rachael's tantrums did not trouble her. In fact, she saw them as a healthy sign, a spirit of fight in the face of adversity and evidence that, unlike her mother, Rachael's domestication hadn't completely took. Rachael was in for a rough ride. Her survival would require a strain of the wild. Survival always does.

But the tantrums ended when the packing began. Rachael was silent, smoldering, on the edge of helpless tears. Two of Margaret's friends, Marley and another woman Tatum had met at the funeral, packed Rachael's things. Both were cool toward Tatum and confident that she wasn't qualified for the job. One, then the other, pulled Lee aside for hushed conversations. Tatum pretended not to notice. An hour after the women left, Tatum knocked on Rachael's open bedroom door. Hearing nothing but the TV, she knocked again and then peeked inside.

“Hello?” she said, entering.

Rachael was watching cartoons in her pajamas. She didn't acknowledge Tatum's entrance. Her suitcases, tidily packed just an hour before, had been ripped to ribbons, clothes strewn everywhere.

“I wanted to check in with you about tomorrow,” Tatum said. “Do you have any questions?”

No answer.

Tatum sat on the edge of the bed and looked over the undies flung across the little play vanity, the sweaters tossed everywhere. One big corner of a suitcase was crammed in the too small trash basket.

“You don't want to go, I guess.”

Nothing.

“I don't blame you,” Tatum said. “I know you're sad right now, but your dad is pretty sad, too. He needs some . . . time.”

Tatum couldn't bring herself to ask an eight-year-old to be strong for the grown man who was dumping her.

“But more important,” Tatum said, “is that you need some things, too.”

Tatum smoothed the Disney sheets beneath her hand. The Cinderella story unfolded across the soft cotton. Evil sisters. Glass slippers. A handsome cartoon prince. As a child, what had stood out most to Tatum in
Cinderella
was the carriage turning into a pumpkin at midnight. She thought the consequence of breaking the midnight curfew was to be trapped alive in a pumpkin, in the damp darkness with stringy pumpkin guts and seeds hanging in your face and no dry place to sit, forever and ever after. That's what you get when you break the rules. She was an adult before she realized it was the social faux pas the fairy tale was concerned with, the resulting embarrassment when one's carriage turns out to be nothing but a gourd.

“Look,” Tatum said, “I know you don't like me. But when things are real sad, it can be good to get in the car and drive away for awhile.”

But Rachael had shut her out. She turned up the television's volume. Tatum touched the image of the fairy godmother and acknowledged herself as an unworthy substitute. No gowns. No princes. No glass slippers. Just a Celica and a spare room. Fortunately, Tatum thought, it wasn't her job to get Rachael to a ball. Rachael didn't need a fairy godmother. She needed a good right-hand man, someone to escort her through hell, drive her to the showdown and be there while she walked her fifteen paces and turned.

“We leave in the morning,” Tatum sighed. Not eloquent, not comforting, but all she had.

Then Tatum placed her hands on her knees about to push up and leave when Rachael leapt from the floor and flew at her screaming
no
. She was red-faced, little fists chopping through the air, not belting Tatum, only with the greatest restraint. She stood right in front of Tatum engaged in battle, kicking, punching, every body part scrunched up or flying wildly. It was as though there were an invisible shield between the two of them, like Rachael had been taught not to hit, but boy, if she were allowed, this was what Tatum would be getting.

Tatum was surprised at first and drew herself back. Then, realizing none of the blows were landing, the situation seemed strange and curious. She didn't know why, but she reached through the shield and gave Rachael's chest a little poke.

Rachael stumbled backward, just a step, snapped out of one rage, the next one coming on fast. She grabbed a Barbie off the nightstand, flung it at Tatum, and ran from her own room slamming Tatum inside.

Tatum didn't know to whom, if anyone, she was running. Mommy's dead. Daddy's getting out of Dodge. Rachael was learning that love is not unconditional despite what Mommy said, despite the pretty words in picture books geared to induce child self-esteem. Unconditional love doesn't hold up in a world defined by action because it's something people feel, not something people do. That's what's wrong with it.

Tatum rose from the bed. Hand on the doorknob, she stole a last look at Rachael's room, a little girl's paradise. Tatum knew her apartment had no ruffled shams or lace curtains. No princess phone. When it came right down to it, Tatum doubted she owned anything pink at all.

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The following morning, Tatum slid a square package wrapped in a coat into the hatch of her Celica. While Margaret's friends had been packing for Rachael, Tatum had been doing some packing of her own. Discreetly as possible, she had combed the house for what to take for Rachael that she might need as her loss unfolded in a foreign land. She had decided on Margaret's photo albums, and she hadn't asked. She stole them. Her bet was that Lee would never notice. His plans weren't to reminisce. His plans were to move on. Just as Tatum and Rachael were scheduled to leave that day, so was Lee. He was flying out to stay with his brother in Florida. He needed time, he said.

It reminded Tatum of when her ex, Vincent, told her he needed space. She threw away the picante sauce and unused condiments. She took clothes to the Goodwill and scrunched the remaining items into less than half of the closet. She talked less, drew herself inward. But she couldn't get small enough, quiet enough, couldn't hold her breath long enough because Vincent didn't want space, or more space. He wanted the space she occupied. He wanted something else in it.

Tatum suspected Lee felt that way about time. He needed it filled with something new. So just three days after burying Margaret, armed with the irrationality of grief, he was beating feet out of town toward a future unencumbered by the past.

Exiled as she was, Rachael would need the photo albums more, Tatum decided.

Tatum slammed the hatch closed. The moment of truth had arrived. She turned to the front doorway where Rachael had been standing just seconds before, but there was no sign of her. Tatum looked out past the driveway and saw Rachael running as fast as her small feet would carry her across the brown-and-red, leaf-spattered earth.

“Wait,” Tatum said, firmly, to Lee. Then she went after Rachael, walking, following at a distance, her breath small ghosts in the morning air. She caught up to Rachael at the grave where Rachael huddled on the ground, looking like a small bundle, forgotten and left behind. Tatum hung back. From her polite distance, she saw Rachael framed by the surrounding trees, a larger one bending over the grave to a smaller one, branches meeting in a finger-touch like Michelangelo's God and Man. Tatum imagined the tree roots creeping to each other beneath Margaret's casket like lovers' hands beneath a table, their brown and gnarled fingers tangling beneath the satin-lined box.

Don't be mad
was Tatum's silent message whispered from her mind to the dead.

She approached Rachael from behind. Rachael's white skin answered the morning chill with messy, red blotches.

Then Rachael stood. Tatum tried to gently turn her to leave, but Rachael's feet were bolted to the ground. She stared at the fresh mound of soil that had swallowed her mother. She continued staring, and Tatum wondered how long they would stand there if she didn't assert her adult powers. Who would outlast whom, standing in the cold, knowing that the end of this moment was the end of so much?

Tatum went down on one knee behind her and said as gently as she could, “Rach.”

Rachael was still. Tatum knew that Rachael was well aware that she was being evicted and that Tatum was the one escorting her from the premises. Definitely not the fairy godmother with sage advice and a basket of magic, Tatum knew that she was more like the Chinese mothers who tortured their daughters by binding their feet, knowing what it takes to survive in this messy, unfair world.
This is going to hurt
, Tatum told Rachael, silently, in her mind.
It's going to hurt, but you have to do it to survive.

She reached out to touch the back of Rachael's head, fingertips nearly touching the soft child hair lifted by the breeze, when Rachael bolted.

Rachael ran across the clearing away from the house to where the trees thickened at the border of the woods. Tatum rose from her knee and ran after her. She felt no right to catch her but a responsibility to follow, to make sure she didn't get lost or hurt. Rachael kept running and Tatum followed, keeping up easily. Rachael took fast glances over her shoulder, not oblivious to the fact that she maintained her freedom only by virtue of Tatum's mercy.

Over the pinecones and sticks and morning frost, Rachael ran like a child in a nightmare. Tatum did her best to follow, not chase, but doubted there was a distinguishable difference. Suddenly, Rachael turned, cheeks flush and breath heaving.

“I wish you died instead of my mom,” she screamed.

“Of course you do,” Tatum said, throwing up her arms. “Duh.”

Their eyes crashed in the space between. Rachael was anger and tears and futile indignation.

“So what would you do if your wish came true?” Tatum said, trying. “If God zapped your mom here instead of me. What would you do?” She squatted so she would be Rachael's height. “Huh? How would that be?”

Rachael looked at her, distrustfully.

Tatum did think it would be great. Not because she wanted to die right then and there, but for the magic of it — standing in the forest, making your wish, abracadabra. Rachael's face did not change, but Tatum could feel her wish for the magic, the wish for her own face to melt away and Margaret's to emerge as from a Polaroid.

Tatum went to Rachael and picked her up. She was not light. Rachael turned her head away from Tatum as Tatum knew she would. But she didn't resist. Tatum walked a few feet but Rachael was far too heavy for her to be carrying. She returned her to the ground but kept hold of her hand. Rachael trailed slightly behind but did not wrestle her hand away.

When in it, love seems fused with time. This, Tatum knew, was the problem. It was shocking, always, to discover that they can split paths, that they are two, love and time, and they can turn their backs to each other and follow arcs that pull them farther and farther apart.

The frost was turning from white to clear, and the sun reflected up from the ground. They emerged from the trees. Tatum led Rachael past the grave.

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Tatum stood in the
V
between the driver's seat and her open car door under long-fingered clouds feathering across the blue sky. Weather was coming, the road was waiting, and they were an hour behind. Lee buckled Rachael into the passenger's seat of Tatum's car and kissed her temple.