Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “Either that or you misunderstand me on purpose. I haven’t decided which, yet.”

  “Probably a little of both.”

  “Probably.”

  THE VIEW FROM THE top of Jansen’s Hill was obscured by the oaks and evergreens that had moved in since the Jansen family had given up and let the farmland revert to forest in the 1930s. But hikers still got the sense that they had ascended to a satisfying height when they sat on a fallen tree-trunk and smelled the oxygen-rich air.

  “Hey,” said Janie. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you see your parents very often?”

  “No,” said Father Jake. He inhaled deeply and let the air in his chest out slowly, carefully. “Last I knew, my father was the deputy chief of police in Hamilton, Bermuda.”

  “Jesus!” Janie whispered, immediately regretting her choice of expletives.

  “Yeah,” he snorted. “Miserable bastard.”

  “Your mom’s there, too?”

  “No. He left her years ago. I’m not really sure where she is.” He was completely still for a moment, then he blinked. “Where are your parents?”

  “My mother lives in Italy. She teaches Home Ec at the American School in Turin.”

  “Even during the summer?”

  “Nope. She’s off now. Visiting a friend in Naples. Noreen Dwyer spends every cent she earns on travel. She’d rather board a plane than eat.”

  “Oh,” he said, watching her.

  “My parents split when we were little, and my father took off. I have a feeling my Uncle Charlie, my mom’s brother, made the options clear: you either step up to the plate or you get traded to Siberia.”

  “And you have a brother?”

  “Mike, my twin. He’s in Flagstaff, Arizona. He’s a sculptor.”

  Two crows flew screeching across the treetops and landed in a nearby hemlock. The birds sat quietly on separate branches, as if their prior outbursts had been embarrassing lapses in otherwise decorous behavior.

  “And you have Jude,” said Father Jake.

  “Like a bad rash,” replied Janie.

  The priest chuckled and shook his head.

  THEY BOTH SEEMED TO know when it was time to go, and rose simultaneously from their separate spots on the huge log. As they descended the trail Father Jake mentioned, “I’m going over to that soup kitchen, Table of Plenty, to help serve dinner tonight. I guess that’s what got me thinking about homelessness.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Janie, her quadriceps burning as she worked not to jostle the sleeping baby on her back. “Aunt Jude roped you in.”

  “She’s definitely blessed with determination,” he said diplomatically.

  “If she told you to work on me about that stupid self-defense course,” she said “you can save your breath. I’m not doing it.”

  “I’m not going to work on you.”

  “But you think I should do it.”

  “I don’t think you’ll get anything out of it if you don’t want to be there.”

  “She did tell you about it, then,” said Janie.

  Father Jake smiled to himself and glanced at Janie. He looked for a split second like he might roll his eyes, but he never did. “A lot of those women at Table of Plenty have been assaulted at some point in their lives. Jude’s probably heard some pretty grisly tales.”

  “I’m sure she has. And if I slept behind the Dumpster at Stop & Shop on a regular basis, self-defense would be high on my list, too. But I don’t. Which is why it’s so annoying that everyone’s on me about it.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “Well, Aunt Jude, of course. And my neighbor Shelly. Also, my cousin Cormac, who stopped by last weekend to ply me with muffins.”

  “So all the people who’ve done the most to support you through this terrible time are asking you to do something that helps them sleep better at night.”

  “Exactly—it’s not for me, it’s for them. They just don’t want to have to worry about me.”

  He stopped and waited.

  “Shit,” she whispered, the sudden realization of her utter self-absorption causing her to slump in defeat. “Sometimes I just can’t stand myself.”

  They continued on. When they got back to Janie’s house, Father Jake pulled a rock speckled green with lichen out of his pocket. He placed it in the empty fruit cup jar on the kitchen counter.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Something for your jar.”

  “Why that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just liked it.”

  WHEN JANIE WOKE UP Sunday morning she felt frantic and didn’t know why. She dearly wanted to go back to sleep and wake up the next day, but reminded herself this was not an option when you have two kids and you’re the only grown-up in the house. Also, it was just generally not a good idea. I guess everyone wants to spend the day in bed sometimes, she told herself, but when you feel half dead to begin with, it’s an urge you really ought to fight.

  Dylan was feeling low, too. The first thing he said to her as he climbed into her big Robby-less bed was, “The sky is white.” She didn’t fully understand until he made her look out the window. Sure enough. White. Not a speck of blue, but also not gray. It wasn’t sunny, but it didn’t look like rain, either. It was as if the sky had stayed in bed.

  And they had no plans. No one to see, nowhere to go. Well, Dylan had some ideas. As they collected Carly, went downstairs and started breakfast, he suggested that Disneyworld, snowboarding, or a volcano would work for him. Finally Janie offered up Paint ’N’ Plaster Zone, with the cheesy plaster figures that you buy for about a 9,000 percent markup and coat in acrylic paint, which ends up on your clothes no matter how completely you’ve covered yourself with one of their overused, underwashed aprons. She was feeling pretty selfless when she suggested that one.

  Dylan wasn’t interested. “What does everybody else do?”

  Damned if I know, thought Janie.

  “What does Auntie Jude do?” he pressed.

  Janie took a big slurp of coffee, requiring fortification at the mere thought of her aunt. She had more or less decided to do the self-defense course, but couldn’t stand the idea of admitting it, feeling sure that Aunt Jude would be openly and annoyingly proud of herself.

  “She goes to church,” Janie told Dylan, never thinking that this would interest him.

  “What kind of donuts will they have?”

  Janie told him they don’t have donuts, they have Eucharist, which he’s not allowed to have because he’s not old enough. He insisted that he was, too, old enough, and did the U-Triskets have chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles, because that’s his favorite kind. This got her laughing. All she could think of was some old joke about an ad for “Eucharist Lite—I Can’t Believe It’s Not Jesus!”

  Dylan was not amused. She offered to take them out for donuts (such was the level of her desperation). But by then he had it in his head that church was the place for him. She told him they had to dress nicely and sit quietly for a long time, which he was absolutely certain he could do. He went to his room and returned wearing his very best Hawaiian shirt, the one with gyrating hula dancers on it; a yellow clip-on bunny tie from last Easter; red and blue shorts that said “Go Patriots!” courtesy of Uncle Charlie; and his cowboy boots.

  The earnestness of the attempt combined with the adorable absurdity of the outfit undid her, and she agreed to take him to church. Then she hid in the bathroom and cried, because Robby would have laughed so hard and been so proud and loved him so much, and Dylan would never again see how happy he made his father. But she would see it over and over in her mind until the day she died.

  She took a shower and ran the water just a few degrees shy of scalding to help her stop weeping. When Dylan saw her dressed in gray slacks and a tan blouse he pronounced her not nearly fancy enough, and insisted she wear the macaroni-and-plastic-bead necklace he had made for her at preschool. He thought Carly was okay in a pi
nk ballerina dress, especially after he accessorized her with neon green sunglasses he got at a birthday party. He put his swim goggles on in the car, and refused to take them off when they got to the church parking lot. Finally, they compromised by having him wear them around his neck instead of over his eyes.

  Our Lord is having himself one heck of a laugh today, thought Janie, searching the pews for Aunt Jude.

  They found Aunt Jude at her usual post, standing sentry (kneeling sentry might have been more accurate) in a pew by the pianist. The expressions that passed over Aunt Jude’s face when she saw them troop in were worth whatever lecture Janie knew awaited her. First it was shock that Janie and the kids had shown up at all, then bliss that they were paying a long-overdue visit to God. Then it was pride that evidently she’d gotten through to Janie. Then it was horror at what they were wearing.

  By the time she got to horror, Dylan was hugging her, suffocating himself against her spongy stomach, and Carly was reaching out to grab the shiny, jingling necklaces. Janie knew that, despite the explaining Aunt Jude would have to do to her church lady friends after Mass, she was in bliss.

  It was strange for Janie to see Father Jake processing up the aisle in his Mass attire: the white robe and multicolored stole around his neck. He saw her as he walked solemnly by, she was sure of it, but there wasn’t even a hint of recognition. The opposite of Aunt Jude, thought Janie. Pastor Perfect.

  Janie didn’t have much of an opportunity to focus on the Mass, spending a good deal of time trying to keep Carly from strangling Aunt Jude with her own necklaces or chewing on the hymnals, which she preferred over the baggie of Cheerios Janie had brought. Most of them ended up on the floor, anyway. Then there were a couple of “emergency” trips to the bathroom with Dylan—he just wanted to check out the church basement and the crying room full of squirmy babies and their weary parents. Janie suggested that maybe the three of them should sit in the crying room instead of the pew, but he wasn’t having any of that baby stuff.

  Accompanying Janie in line for Communion, Dylan refused to believe that the host would have no frosting. “Maybe just whipped cream,” he said in a loud whisper. When the Eucharistic minister gave Janie her wafer, Dylan grabbed it from her hand to inspect. “You can’t eat this!” he yelled. “It’s a Bingo chip!”

  We are definitely going to get thrown out of here, thought Janie.

  When Mass ended, they found themselves trapped in a stream of people heading for the basement instead of freedom. Aunt Jude told Dylan he’d been such a good boy, did he want a donut? Then Janie understood Dylan’s confusion. It was a little social thing she had always bypassed: coffee and donuts after Mass. Dylan must have remembered from some long-ago time when Aunt Jude had taken him, Janie realized. And sure enough, there were ones with chocolate frosting and rainbow sprinkles.

  “Janie, dear, how are you?” murmured a raspy voice as Janie reached to secure a plain donut for Carly. It was Mrs. Northup, an old friend of her mother’s.

  Still shitty, was the response in Janie’s head, but she said, “We’re doing better.”

  “Oh, isn’t that good to hear,” said Mrs. Northup, relieved, as she turned to another older woman who had asked her a question.

  Yes, thought Janie. It’s a lie, but it’s a good one. For you, anyway.

  Dylan ate his donut like he was auditioning for a donut ad. His whole body grinned in ecstasy, and by the time Janie had had her fill of smiling bravely at all of Aunt Jude’s friends, he’d had three. Janie pretended not to notice. At least they had killed the morning. She could be thankful for that

  SUNDAY, JUNE 24

  We went to Mass today, of all places, dressed like gypsies. Dylan was our stylist. It was pretty much a fiasco, but we made it through to donut time, which is all Dylan was really after to begin with, so I guess it ended okay.

  It was weird to see Father Jake in his Mass gear, all serious up on the altar. He acted like he didn’t know me, at least until he came down to the basement afterward. He’d gotten rid of the white robe, and I saw him smiling and telling little jokes with the older folks who were basking in the knowledge that the parish priest knows them personally. Little do they know there’s nothing personal about it. I watched to see the guy who told me I was a bitch, and called his father a “miserable bastard.” Nowhere to be found.

  When his crowd of admirers had gotten their fill, he came over to us. Aunt Jude got all twittery, like he was some sort of religious rock star and we had backstage passes. He admired Dylan’s outfit, especially the goggles, and Dylan offered to let him try them on. Father Jake politely declined. He doesn’t need them. He’s already got a built-in set that keeps everyone from seeing him too clearly.

  “Hello, Jane,” he said to me.

  “Hello, Jake,” I said back. I’m not sure why I left off the “Father” part. Maybe I just wanted to shock him a little, see if he was even in there. And suddenly there he was, the real guy, not the body double he uses 99 percent of the time. Just for a moment I could see him. Miraculous.

  THE NEXT DAY, MONDAY, was Miss Marla’s End of the School Year Family Breakfast. Janie dreaded it. It meant acting normal and saying, “I’m fine, how are you?” when she knew—and they knew—it wasn’t true. It involved small talk, a skill she seemed to have lost along with her gregarious husband. It required cappuccino coffee cake.

  The Confectionary was always busy in the morning, and Janie had wanted to pick it up the day before. But Cormac would ask what it was for, and he did not approve of day-old bakery items at festive occasions except under the direst of circumstances. So there she was, in line behind a short man with an expensive suit and way too much product in his hair. The dull shine of the mousse or gel or whatever kind of personal lubricant he used made Janie want to dab him with a napkin.

  “I’ll have two, no three of those,” the guy rapid-fired at Cormac. “And about six of those crescent-looking jobs, and what are those? Crullers? Yeah, about five of those, and, I don’t know, like ten of those little sprinkly things down there—”

  He looked up to see Cormac with his huge hands planted firmly on top of the display case, and stopped his barrage. Cormac gave him a bored stare and said, “You want fries with that?”

  The coffee-sipping regulars at the counter along the windows nudged each other and guffawed. One of the middle-aged baker women called from the kitchen, “Be nice to the customers, Cormaaaaaac!”

  To his credit, the short well-dressed, well-oiled man laughed. Cormac decided to fill his order and threw in a free small coffee, too. Janie was next, and told him what she needed.

  “Good choice, chickie,” Cormac murmured as he handed her the box. “Nothing like caffeine-spiked baked goods to pump you up for a challenge.”

  At school, Miss Marla looked less disappointed than usual. In fact, she looked downright enthusiastic. Janie speculated that, in addition to being understandably glad for the summer break, she seemed particularly interested in one of the fathers in the classroom.

  There were two divorced fathers, Janie seemed to remember, and possibly more had become available since January, when Janie had stopped noticing even things that were specifically brought to her attention. One father was the recipient of more than his share of Miss Marla’s glances and purposeful smiles. Around his neck he sported one of those leather strand necklaces with a single shell on it, as if he might be wearing board shorts underneath his business-casual attire, and was going surfing later. He seemed to be standing closer to Miss Marla than was absolutely necessary.

  Good for her, thought Janie. But in her brain it played more like Better her than me. The thought of any man breaching her personal command module made her skin prickle. Unless it was Robby. But of course it wouldn’t be Robby ever again. It had once occurred to Janie that his big, warm Robby-smelling body was now decaying. His skin might already be gone. The thought had filled her with such a dark hopelessness she had banned it. Whenever it surfaced unbidden, she pinched the back of her hand a
nd changed locations. Watching Miss Marla and this father do their subtle little flirting dance evoked a sudden sense of Robby’s body now lying in a dank, airless box. Janie clutched Carly a little tighter and told Dylan, “Let’s go up in the loft and read a book.”

  “Can Keane come?” he said. Keane turned out to be a skinny blond boy with a big laugh. They sat on the loft pillows, Janie reading books, and Keane found them all completely hilarious. Dylan didn’t think they were that funny, but he liked laughing with Keane.

  “Oh, there you are,” said a woman whose slight edge of exasperation indicated that she was Keane’s mother. Janie almost didn’t recognize her without her sporty biking outfit. She wore tan slacks, high-heeled shoes, and a pink silky sleeveless blouse with a large but tasteful beaded necklace. “I have to go to work now, sweetie, but I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”

  “Where does she work?” Dylan asked Keane.

  “She does mucus groups,” Keane answered.

  “Focus groups,” Keane’s mother quickly corrected him. She glanced at Janie, the skin on her neck now matching the pink blouse.

  “Oh yeah!” said Keane, with a belly laugh. “Mucus means boogers, right?” He turned to Dylan choking with laughter. “MUCUS groups, get it?”

  “Does she have to wear a RAINCOAT?” Dylan yelped. The two boys were now rolling in the pillows of the loft, howling with laughter. Carly dove out of Janie’s arms and onto her brother, wrapping her little fingers in Dylan’s short black curls and pressing her drooly lips against his cheek. This made Dylan scream even louder, which sent Keane into a convulsive hilarity that looked almost painful. “I wet my pants!” he finally shrieked.

  “Oh, Keane,” his mother said with a slumping sigh. She checked her watch. “I’m late already…”