Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “It only rained for three days, not all week,” said Janie.

  “It’s going to start up again tomorrow, and I can’t afford to lose a week of work for a porch. No offense.” He kept moving and scooping, and Janie had to crawl after him to hear what he was saying. “So, I’m going to start here in about a month. Probably around the first of June.” He took off the glove and handed it to her. “There, the whole back side is done. I’ll put a piece of plastic down in the front yard for you.” A hint of a smile crossed his face. “Aim your muck at that.”

  THURSDAY, MAY 3

  That porch guy came by today to tell me he’s NOT going to start work like he said he would, not for another month. At least the gutters are clear.

  Aunt Jude brought dinner over. Franks and beans, even though it’s not Saturday, the “official” franks and beans day. A package of generic hot dogs, a can of Boston baked beans, and a bag of Tater Tots. Gotta be the most highly processed foods known to man, with nary a vegetable in sight. Oh, excuse me, Aunt Jude is of the opinion the Tater Tots are a vegetable—they’re potatoes, aren’t they? Sort of, I told her. If you squint.

  Carly adores her. I think it’s all the colors. The dye job makes it seem like her head’s on fire, and the lipstick looks like the fire engine’s on its way to put her out. Then there’s that baby blue eye shadow she orders online to match the color of her eyes. What with all the big shiny jewelry, Carly probably thinks Aunt Jude is a toy.

  Dylan was happier than a pig in slop. Would’ve eaten the whole pile of Tater Tots himself if Aunt Jude didn’t grab some. I’ll admit I may have had a few, too. Dylan wasn’t so big on the hot dog, however, until Auntie Nutrition slathered it with a spoonful of honey! She’s completely losing it! She never would have done that when we were kids.

  One time, when we went out for one of our Saturday morning breakfasts while Mum was working at the dress shop, there was a little smidge of honey left on the table from the previous meal. Mike stuck his tongue out and licked at it. She went wacky, telling him he could get botulism and die, and how her sister couldn’t afford a funeral. I, of course, had to take her on about this, and we got into a fight about how much money Mum might or might not have.

  We always got under each other’s skin, Aunt Jude and me. Neither of us is what the other hoped for. Even now, with everything, she’s on me, pecking at me to do this, try that. Go to this grief group I found for you. Talk to the priest, Father No-Actual-Life-Experience. My policy is to take as little of her advice as possible, while doing just enough to keep her off my back. I realize now it’s exactly how Mum handled her.

  So, I put the kids to bed, I stretch and yawn, but she sits her butt down on my couch and doesn’t leave. Finally she tells me one of her friends she volunteers with down at the soup kitchen has a son who just got divorced. At first I wasn’t sure what she was getting at, so I made little sympathy noises, hoping that would satisfy her and she would go home.

  She tells me way too much information (as usual) about how he owns his own business, and how I must have heard of it, Walking on Sunshine Carpet Cleaners? With that funny jingle on the radio? Apparently he has kids, but they’re grown. She made a big point of how he married young.

  I’m yawning and checking my watch, but she keeps going. Then she says, “So?” with her eyebrows way up high. With all that reddish-brown pencil on her eyebrows, her face turns into the Joker from Batman.

  Can you believe it? She’s trying to get me to date! I put a stop to that little fantasy quick as a lightning strike. Still, she gives me her special performance of the “You’re an Attractive Woman/At Thirty-eight You’re Not Getting Any Younger” Medley. So then, of course, there was a fight. I told her I wasn’t going to date, EVER, and she said think of the children, they need a father, and I said it’s my business not hers, and she said she’s older and knows a few things. On and on. She and her shiny white purse left in a huff. So predictable and too boring for words.

  I’m going to bed.

  Janie slept fitfully, dreaming that her feet were cold and wet. In the dream she looked down to find the rugs swimming in soap-suds. At about 4:00 a.m. Carly began to wail for no reason that Janie could determine, so she brought her into bed and tried to go back to sleep. The baby’s chubby fists flailed around mercilessly. Finally they both drifted off. Shortly thereafter, Janie woke to find Dylan and Nubby the Balding Bunny hovering over her face.

  “I’m tired,” said Dylan, as if this were the only explanation necessary. He climbed in and burrowed into Janie’s armpit. She lay there, held hostage by her dozing children until she was certain she could extricate herself without waking them. She went downstairs and made a full pot of coffee. It was going to be a high-caffeine-index day.

  The rain did return, just as the contractor had said it would. What he hadn’t mentioned was that the temperature would shoot upward, and the air would feel hot and squishy. The coffee made Janie sweat.

  At 8:45 she went back upstairs to wake Dylan. His teacher, Miss Marla, gave parents her Disappointed Look if children were dropped off after 9:30, when free play was over and circle time began. Circle time was serious business for Miss Marla, and interruptions disappointed her. Miss Marla appeared to be in her late thirties, and Janie guessed that her social life was not going well. It was hard to know, however, which might have come first: chronic disappointment or lackluster dates.

  Dylan was groggy and uncooperative, and screeched when Janie tried to get him upright. This woke Carly, who bellowed until Janie let Dylan slide to the floor so she could pick the baby up. The two crying, sagging children grated on Janie’s exhausted, overcaffeinated nerves, and she yelled, “Stop it!”

  Carly howled even louder, her furious screams stuttering like toy machine gun fire. Dylan went silent, covering his ears with his palms and looking up at Janie in fear.

  “Sorry,” Janie sighed, shushing the baby and slumping onto the floor next to him. “Sorry, sorry, sorry. But you have to get UP, Dylan. We just have to keep MOVING.”

  They threw on clothes, tossed down breakfast, raced to school, and skidded into the classroom just as Miss Marla was calling the children for circle time. Dylan’s relieved smile, the way he squeezed Janie and whispered, “You will pick me up?” decimated her. He was such a trooper, after all, and she felt so mean these days, with no end in sight.

  Every so often, time passed at a normal pace. An hour took an hour; an afternoon lasted just about an afternoon. But more often than not, days were long. Slogging through the puddles and humidity on their way back to the house, Janie knew the day would be endless. This was confirmed when she walked into the kitchen and saw Dylan’s lunch box sitting on the counter, an item he would panic over if it weren’t in his cubby by 11:35.

  “Damn, damn, dammit!” Janie yelled, sending the grouchy baby in her arms into fits. Knowing Carly would scream until she got a little diversion, Janie spent the next half hour on the living room floor, piling up towers of blocks for her to bash down over and over again. Janie was just thinking she had done sufficient penance for her bad temper, and was about to end the block bashing so she could deliver the lunch and be back for Father Teabag by eleven o’clock, when the phone rang.

  “Janie, it’s Mum.”

  “Hi!” said Janie. “Where are you?”

  “I’m home. Just got in from school. Glory be to God, but it’s a rowdy group this year.”

  “Well, summer’s coming, you’ll be out soon,” said Janie, throwing the blocks into a pink plastic basket and sliding it over to the designated toy corner.

  “Oh, I’m looking forward to that, let me tell you,” said her mother. “How are my babies?”

  “Missing their Gram. Have you got a flight yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Mum, it’s May,” said Janie, stunned by her mother’s lack of attention to this task. Noreen Dwyer was nothing if not responsible. Dutiful was the word Janie had often thought described her best. She was never the last one to pick
up her kids from school. She always volunteered to send in cupcakes for the Valentine’s Day parties and never forgot a conference or field trip. She was the sole provider for two children and she took this seriously. Dutifully.

  But Janie always sensed somehow that her mother was only biding her time, waiting to sprout wings. Noreen had the heart of a traveler; itineraries were her own personal poetry. She would have knit a bridge to Europe if only it would have held.

  “Well, I’m not going back right away,” said Noreen. “Marcella—you know, the earth sciences teacher?—she asked me to spend some time with her family near Napoli, so I thought I’d wait on booking a flight to the States.”

  Neither spoke for a moment. The silence was tempered only by the standard overseas call static, a sound that often reminded Janie of lapping water. She could almost hear the vast ocean, exposed to every kind of weather, that separated her from her mother.

  “Naples?” Janie said finally. “You’re staying?”

  “Just until August, Janie. I’ll be back for August.”

  The call ended quickly. Janie had to get the lunch box to Dylan, and Noreen had to answer her door. Her Italian door, thought Janie. In Italy.

  The wind and rain had picked up. Janie got soaked as she ran holding Carly under her coat to the preschool entrance from the only available parking space on the far side of the lot. She dropped off the lunch box and dashed back to the car. As they neared the house again, Janie saw that Father Considerate had pulled into her single-lane driveway. If she pulled in behind him, she would have to move the car later so he could get out. He was just walking up to the front door of the house, and she rolled down her window to call to him to pull his car out so she could get in first. But a quick glance in the rearview informed her that Carly had dozed off, and the sound of her mother screaming out the car window was certain to wake the surly baby. Figuring she had provided more than enough provocation for Carly’s temper that morning, Janie parked on the street.

  “Hi,” said Father Jake.

  “Right,” said Janie, attempting to shelter the sleeping, rain-spattered baby as she fumbled for her keys.

  “Can I take her?” he offered, holding out his hands, water dripping down his wire-frame glasses.

  Janie snorted at him, twisted the key in the door, and lurched into the house. She dropped her purse and trod up the stairs to put the baby in her crib, her sneakers squeaking with water. When she came down to the kitchen, Father Jake had already filled the teakettle and set it on a burner. He was sitting at the table, Robby’s table, waiting with a quiet, understanding sort of patience that made Janie want to break things.

  She sat down heavily into a chair across from him and proceeded to take off her wet shoes and socks. “So, Father,” she said flatly, without looking at him. “How’s it going up at the rectory?”

  “Fine,” he said. “The roof’s got some leaks that apparently never bothered Father Lambrosini. But that’s what buckets are for, I guess.”

  The teakettle began to sing, a hissing screech that went right up Janie’s spine. She stared at him, unmoving.

  “Should I…?” he asked, tentatively.

  “Make yourself at home, by all means.”

  He moved the kettle to a cool burner and the sound deflated. Janie watched him pull his teabag from his pocket and carefully pour the scalding water, and her skin began to itch as if she were having an allergic reaction. When the hot water hit, Father Jake’s mug threw an aroma into the air that smelled to Janie like a combination of orange and cloves and dirt.

  “How old are you?” she demanded.

  “Thirty-eight. How old are you?”

  “You are not. You are not thirty-eight.”

  “No?” he said, pleasantly.

  “Did my Aunt Jude tell you to say that?”

  “No. She told me to say a lot of things, but not that.” He leaned against the counter, sipped his tea, and pushed a clump of brown hair off his forehead. He had the standard man’s haircut, but longer. Waves of hair rested on the curls of his ears.

  “Oh, I have no doubt she has a whole script for you every time you show up.” Janie pitched the wet shoes toward the front door and slumped back down in her chair.

  “Why would me being thirty-eight matter?”

  “Because you don’t even look like an adult. And you sure as hell don’t look as old as me…”

  He took another sip, and set the mug gently on the counter. “So. How’s it going here?”

  “Kinda sucky,” she said. “But thanks for your concern.”

  “What’s up?”

  “What’s up?” she replied, her ice blue eyes widening in incredulity. “What’s up?” Janie shook her head, raising her hands as if to surrender. “Look. Father. I know this is all…I know you’re not…I mean, thanks for coming and everything…but this just isn’t working.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Well, how could we make it work better? What would help?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just not…you don’t…You can’t possibly understand this.”

  “So explain it to me.”

  “That’s the whole point,” she said, putting her bare damp feet up on one of the chairs. “I can’t. First of all, you’re not married, maybe never even dated, for all I know. Marriage is like this…well, anyway, mine was like this huge surprise. I never knew I could ever be…you know, loved…like that. I never thought it would happen, that I would feel so…I mean, not like we never fought or anything. But even that was just…”

  “I know what it’s like to feel loved,” he said, his expression darkening slightly.

  “Yeah, okay, your parents loved you. Great. But it’s not like that. It’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. I thought this was it. He was It. And I was never going to have to…” The ache behind her eyes, the constricting of her throat, infuriated her. She pointed an incriminating finger up at him. “You live alone. You’ll always live alone. That’s what you chose.”

  Father Jake looked at her thoughtfully, surprisingly unscathed by this assessment. “Are there any other reasons?” he asked.

  Janie wanted to hit him. She needed to silence him, to deliver a blow so fatal he would never return. “The other reason,” she said. And she almost smiled, her tone matching his. “The other reason is that I see you. Father Friendly, Pastor Perfect. Everyone likes you, but no one can say exactly why. You glide through Mass and church suppers leaving everyone feeling pleased. They don’t realize that they haven’t affected you in any way. The main reason, Father, that this little arrangement is a sham is because you’re just as locked up as I am. You have a secret life of misery just like me.”

  He didn’t move. His face remained relaxed and thoughtful. He looked down at his somber black sport shoes, then placed his mug courteously in the sink. “We’ll talk next week,” he said, and only his rapid, shallow breathing belied him. A direct hit.

  IT TOOK ABOUT TWENTY minutes of sitting in the silent house, with the rain slapping the shingles, for Janie to start feeling badly. And sorry. Self-disgust grew in her like a blush that wouldn’t subside. She tried to recapture the righteous rage that had made her feel justified—even obligated—to knock him down a peg. No sale, said her conscience.

  When she couldn’t rationalize it away, she tried to stop thinking about it altogether. She busied herself with tidying the house. She spoke for a few extra moments with Dylan’s teacher when she went to pick him up. Uncle Charlie came by to get her trash to take to the dump. She made him stay for coffee, and thawed one of the many banana breads that neighbors had delivered in prior months. She called Shelly and asked detailed questions about her daughter’s play.

  Yet Father Jake, the mild-mannered boy-priest, bland, bespectacled, and benign, loomed large in her brain. The sickening feeling of having bullied a weakling would not leave her, and the longer it lingered the more she began to sense the truth and weight of her words. The more she began to wonder what his “misery” might be. By 2:00 a.m.,
she was talking to Robby about it, explaining, rationalizing, confessing. In her mind, he remained very, very disappointed in her.

  WHEN SHE GOT UP the next morning, Janie knew what she had to do. First she dropped the kids off at Aunt Jude’s for their usual Saturday visit. Then she went to the bakery. She prayed that her cousin Cormac would not be there, but of course he was. The guy’s going to be buried with flour in his hair and frosting under his nails, she thought.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said too casually. Janie knew he was checking her for signs of deterioration.

  “Hey, nothing,” she said, searching for something nonchalant to say. Cormac’s girlfriend of the moment was a safe subject, a nonsubject, really. She was a tall, attractive former blonde who had tried to perk up her now flat tan hair with an overabundance of honey-colored highlights. She wore “outfits,” even to work at the bakery.

  “How’s Barbie?” said Janie. Casual right back atcha.

  “It’s Barb, you snob.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll believe that when I see her in flat shoes.”

  Cormac laughed a real laugh, and Janie felt okay for a minute. “She thinks she’s too short,” Cormac confided, still chuckling.

  “Compared to what? You, ya buffalo?”

  “Hey, that’s bison to you, chickie.”

  This patter went on for a few minutes, and then Cormac went in for the kill. “So, what’s up?”

  “Nothing much,” Janie said, perusing the huge glass display case. “What’ve you got for cakes?” There were at least ten different kinds, from basic to exotic, elegantly plain to elaborately decorated.