Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “Who’s on first?” he said with a smile.

  “What’s on second,” she answered. “Do you have kids?”

  He shook his head. “Nieces. But they’re teenagers now, so they’ve kind of lost their sense of humor temporarily.”

  “These two think they’re Abbott and Costello.”

  “Boys and dirt,” he said. “Instant happiness.”

  She looked at him, taking in the scar on his right arm as it shifted obediently with the movements of his ropy muscles, and the calm, mildly amused set of his dark eyes. And she could think of not one thing to say. He went back to work. She told the boys to meet her at the swings in the backyard and she would bring them pirate hats.

  WHEN KEANE’S MOTHER ARRIVED she looked at him and sighed. “What happened?” she asked Janie.

  “Oh they got filthy, playing in the dirt out front and, so I put bathing suits on them and turned the sprinkler on in back. I hope that’s okay.”

  “No, it’s fine!” Heidi insisted, running a hand over Keane’s clean wet hair. “I just feel bad he made such a mess. Wait, whose clothes are those?”

  “They’re Keane’s, from when he wet his pants at school. I took them home by accident and then washed them, but I forgot to get them back to you.”

  “It’s pretty rare to find Keane cleaner at the end of the day than when he started,” Heidi said. “Thank you so much.”

  “Stop thanking me. How was work?”

  Heidi gave a meaningful smile over the boys’ heads. “Uneventful.”

  Janie smiled back and nodded. The boys ran over to inspect the bugs on the grill of Heidi’s car.

  “Are you…I don’t mean to be too personal…,” said Heidi.

  Then don’t, thought Janie.

  Heidi continued, “Are you thinking about dating at all?”

  “No.”

  Heidi nodded quickly. “It’s too soon. Only six months since your husband passed. Way too soon.”

  “How do you know when my husband passed?”

  Heidi gave her an incredulous look and stammered, “Uh…Well, we all…they told us at school. I just remember Valentine’s Day was my turn to send over a meal and that was exactly a month after it happened. I wanted it to be really nice because it was the first month anniversary of his death, and it was Valentine’s Day for goodness’ sake, and I just felt so…”

  “Bad for me.”

  “Well…,” said Heidi. “Yeah.”

  Janie handed her the bag of Keane’s muddy clothes. “Sorry I didn’t get to wash them.”

  “Oh God, don’t worry about that,” she said, snatching the bag. “We’d love to have Dylan over some time. Maybe on a Sunday? Keane’s usually with his father on Saturdays.”

  “Maybe,” said Janie. “We have church on Sundays, so it gets kind of busy. We’ll see how it goes.”

  “Oh,” said Heidi. “Okay.”

  When they’d gone, and Dylan had returned from running along the edge of the front yard, waving and yelling to Keane as they drove away, he put his arms around Janie’s waist and collapsed against her. “That was so fun,” he sighed.

  “Keane’s pretty entertaining,” said Janie, rubbing his small shoulder blades. “Is he nice to you?”

  “Yeah,” said Dylan. “He’s my best friend.”

  “HEY, I GOT THIS un-freakin’-believable cake that’s past the sell-by date. How about if I stop by with some takeout?”

  It was 5:45, and Janie’s daily downward spiral was halted before impact by a call from her cousin Cormac. For a brief moment, Janie imagined a balding man floating behind a metal desk in the Cosmic Department of Prayer. He was stamping hers, “Answered.” Not that she had actually prayed. But maybe there was a God, and maybe He saw her lying on the living room rug with the baby gnawing on the hem of her T-shirt and the small boy begging her for just one more game of Candy Land, the most heinously annoying game ever invented, and He could tell that dinner was going to be bowls of Rice Krispies for yet another night. And maybe He was feeling merciful.

  “Sure, that’d be great.” And trying not to sound desperate, she added, “When will you be here?”

  “We’re at Ricky’s Ribs. We already ordered, so about fifteen minutes.”

  We?

  “Cormac’s coming!” Janie told Dylan, who was a little confused by her sudden burst of energy. “Ten-second tidy!”

  Janie put Carly in her “activity center,” a circular seat surrounded by rattles and mirrors and toys. On average, Carly enjoyed “activities” for about twelve minutes before she would scream for release. Janie called out “Ten…nine…eight…” while Dylan scrambled to put away the toys, and she darted into the kitchen to put the breakfast and lunch dishes into the dishwasher. She ran a sponge over the counters and the kitchen table, and dusted up the battalion of Cheerios spread under the chairs.

  “Why do we have to clean up so much?” asked Dylan, as she smudged a remnant of cream cheese off his face. “Cormac’s not tidy.”

  Janie thought of Cormac, who would likely show up with chocolate glaze on his white cotton baker’s pants and confectioners’ sugar on the back of his neck. “No,” she answered, “but it’s good to do when someone’s coming over. We don’t want him to think we’re messy all the time.”

  “Or too sad to put our toys away.”

  Janie looked at him. His T-shirt was too short, she realized. It hiked up above the waistband of his shorts when he moved. How had that happened? How did children keep growing no matter what?

  “Mom, the bottom of your shirt’s all wet with baby slobber.”

  The front door opened as Janie slid a clean gray T-shirt over her head and came down the stairs. “Rib guy!” boomed Cormac, setting down two big brown bags.

  “Yuck!” yelled Dylan, who ran to sit on one of Cormac’s huge, sticky sneakers and wrap his arms around Cormac’s tree-trunk of a calf.

  “Okay, Chicken-Nugget-and-French-Fry guy! How’s that?”

  “Sweet!”

  Cormac walked over to rescue Carly from her toy-encrusted prison, dragging Dylan along with his foot, and revealing Barb, who had been standing behind him.

  “Hi,” she gave a little wave to Janie.

  “Oh,” said Janie. “Hi.”

  Barb removed her shoes, baby blue canvas espadrilles with four-inch wedge heels, and placed them tidily by the front door. Her toenails were painted hot pink.

  “You don’t have to take off your shoes,” said Janie.

  “I always do when I go somewhere after work, otherwise I’d drag flour all over your nice clean house. Plus,” she said with a shy grin, “they’re killing me.”

  Janie surveyed the outfit: a thin, pale pink T-shirt with cap sleeves that clung delicately to her breasts; white cotton pants that matched Cormac’s, except they were clean and didn’t seem to bag around her narrow thighs; and a pink-and-white smiley-face printed belt, which held the pants about a half inch below the hem of the shirt, revealing a flawlessly flat and well-tanned stomach. Her navel was neither innie nor outtie. It lay snuggly in its little cave like a pearl.

  It was the scrunchie wrapped around her honey-highlighted hair that made Janie want to spit. Pink smiley faces to match the belt. Where do they sell this crap? wondered Janie. On the sidewalk outside of Wal-mart?

  Cormac gathered up the children and hauled them into the kitchen, and Barb carried in the bags of food, leaving Janie with nothing to hold but her disgust. Cormac tickled and juggled the kids into their seats. After they settled in to eat, Cormac excused himself and headed to the bathroom.

  “So…,” ventured Barb, holding a rib delicately between her thumb and forefinger. “It must be nice to live in the house you grew up in.”

  “Uh, it’s okay.” Janie sank her teeth into the meat, pulling off a large chunk so that she had to suck in the last bit of it.

  “Bet the price was right, anyway,” Barb joked.

  “We paid market value,” said Janie still chewing.

  “Oh, I di
dn’t mean…of course you wanted to be fair to your mother…”

  “And my brother.” Janie reached for a napkin and wiped a spot of grease from her chin.

  “Of course.” Barb served herself a spoonful of creamed spinach. “Have you changed it much? Redecorating your mother’s house could be a little…touchy?”

  “She couldn’t have cared less. She was so happy to get that job in Italy I could have lit the place on fire and she wouldn’t have noticed.”

  Barb chuckled uncertainly.

  “Lit what place on fire?” asked Dylan

  “Thinking of torching something, chickie?” said Cormac as he strode back into the room and folded his large frame into the wooden chair.

  Janie rolled her eyes. “No one’s lighting anything on fire, it was just a figure of speech.”

  “What peach?” asked Dylan.

  “You!” said Cormac, with a light poke to Dylan’s belly. “You’re a peach!”

  Dylan giggled and climbed onto Cormac’s spacious lap. He slid his chicken nuggets over next to Cormac’s pile of ribs and butternut squash. Cormac gave him a greasy kiss on the cheek. These were the moments Janie feared the most: the times when she felt so grateful and so bitter all at once.

  “Can I get her?” said Barb. Janie had failed to notice the increasing volume of Carly’s irritability.

  “Oh. Yeah.” Janie stood up, forgetting for a moment why, and then turning toward the cupboards. “She needs a bottle.” While her hands completed this task, she contemplated asking Cormac to move in with them and also asking him not to come over anymore. You’re gripless, she told herself and turned back toward the table, where Cormac held her firstborn, and this woman, Barb, held her baby.

  Carly was standing on Barb’s thighs and sticking her fingers in Barb’s mouth. Jesus! thought Janie. Why do grown-ups think it’s a good idea to slobber their nasty germs all over a baby’s fingers, knowing they’ll go right into the baby’s mouth. Would they let someone slobber in their mouths? Then she remembered that that’s exactly what French kissing was and shook herself. Cormac grabbed one of her fingers and jiggled it before she could lambaste his girlfriend, Typhoid Mary.

  “Hey, did you know Barb’s a photographer?” he said with more volume than usual.

  “No, I didn’t,” she replied tightly.

  Before Janie realized it, Barb had taken the bottle. “I am not,” she said with a little flush that Janie knew was probably completely adorable. “Not until I finish school.” Carly assumed a reclined position in Barb’s lap, bottle snug in her chubby hands, limp with contentment as she slurped.

  “Before she got into the photography program at Mass College of Art, she was a sous chef at Le Roux,” Cormac explained.

  “I used to call it ‘Le Zoo.’ The hours were bizarre, and everybody smoked and slept with each other and had crying jags at work. I just couldn’t handle it.”

  “But apparently you’re tough enough for the scone business,” said Janie.

  Cormac and Barb found this hilarious, and when their laughter died down, they glanced at each other and started laughing all over again. Dylan laughed too, his mouth revealing bits of partially masticated French fries. Carly closed her eyes and slurped harder.

  Christ, thought Janie and shook her head.

  When dinner was over, Cormac put Dylan in the bath and Janie cleared the table. Barb held the sleeping baby in her lap. “This is heaven,” she whispered, kissing Carly’s silky head. “Janie?”

  “Yeah.” Janie pitched the takeout boxes into the trash one by one.

  “Do you think you would ever let me photograph them? I have this portraiture class and I’m supposed to do a range of ages.”

  “Oh,” said Janie, hating the idea, but not sure why.

  “It wouldn’t be Olan Mills-y, though. It’s supposed to be creative so I might try some things…if that was okay with you. Actually it would be great if you would be in some of them.”

  “Oh…I don’t…” Janie shook her head.

  “You’re such a matched set, the three of you,” Barb pressed her point. “I mean you look alike, but also…more than that…you just go together.”

  “Do it,” said Cormac, returning to the kitchen with a freshly scrubbed, pajama-clad Dylan. Janie glared at her traitorous cousin. He shrugged. “It’s time for new pictures.”

  JANIE WOKE IN THE middle of the night for no reason. The kids were sleeping soundly; the house was making only its usual repertoire of fifty-year-old house noises. To her knowledge she hadn’t been dreaming. Her eyes opened and she was awake.

  If Robby were here, she thought. Her fingers could feel his skin, smooth and warm and slightly moist. Living skin. When she was cold, or less than content for any reason, she would press herself against his back for comfort. If she wanted to wake him, she would kiss the spot just between his shoulder blades. For a few moments he wouldn’t move, letting her kiss him. Then he would arch slightly, pressing his backside against her, stirring her. It was their signal.

  And now her signal went wandering out into nothing, like those alien hunters playing Mozart into space, hoping for a response. Maybe aliens on some distant planet were listening to Mozart, but for Janie there was no receiver. At any rate, there was no response.

  Janie got out of bed and went downstairs in the dark, not toward anything really, just away from their bed. She put a load of wet laundry into the dryer, the loping hum of it obscuring her hopelessness. She leafed through two days of mail, most of it junk, some of it bills. There was a postcard from her mother, with a view of Mount Vesuvius, addressed to “Dylan & Carly LaMarche.”

  “Hello, Little Ones! How are you! I am having a lovely time in Napoli, Italy. It’s way, way down the boot from where I live, near the ankle. Someday your mother will bring you to see me and I’ll take you all around. I am coming to Pelham next month, and I’ll be there for your birthday, Dylan! A presto! Love, Gram.”

  Presto? thought Janie. Presto would have been a month ago. “Soon” is such a convenient word when you’re not the one waiting. She tossed the postcard back onto the pile of junk mail and wandered into the office. When she flicked on the computer and checked her e-mail, there was a message from Father Jake: “Hello, Jane. I was wondering if we could take our walk a bit earlier on Friday. I need to meet with the Worship Committee Chairperson, and 11:00 a.m. Friday was her best time.”

  Janie sent back, “Dylan’s in between school and camp this week, so a walk wasn’t really in the cards, anyway. Maybe we should just skip it.”

  A few moments later his reply came. “I’d rather not skip it altogether. How about if I come by at 10:00 and we sit in the backyard with the kids?”

  Janie tried to picture Father Jake in his darkened rectory, face illuminated only by the indifferent glow of the computer screen. What was he wearing? Pajamas? Probably the kind that come in a set, the top a button-down with a wide collar. Were they black? Plaid? No, maybe white with little black terriers all over them. Maybe the terriers had little red bows around their necks. Janie smiled. Now she wanted to know.

  “What are you wearing?” she typed. But just before she hit the Send button, she stopped. Asking a priest what he’s wearing in the middle of the night? she laughed at herself. Are you high? She deleted the sentence and asked instead, “When do you sleep?”

  “A couple of hours here or there. I don’t seem to need that much,” was his reply. “I’d prefer not to skip Friday, if that doesn’t conflict with your plans.”

  Plans. Her plans involved getting from one end of the day to the other. Didn’t he know that? He knew that, and yet he acted like he didn’t. “Jake, you know I don’t have any plans. Your little visits are the most planned thing in my life right now.” She hit Send this time, and regretted it. When are you going to stop being so snotty, she admonished herself.

  “Sounds like I’m pretty important, then,” he replied. “I’ll make sure to be there at 10:00.”

  “Sorry,” she sent.

&
nbsp; “When do you sleep?” he asked.

  “I try to keep normal hours, but I get up a lot since January.”

  “Your body’s adjusting to sleeping alone.”

  “How do you know? Maybe this is what I’m like from now on—the ghost of marriage past.”

  “I just know. So 10:00 on Friday, then?”

  “You just know? What the hell does that mean?” she wrote. Her cursor hovered over the Send button. He won’t tell me, she knew. At least he won’t send it by e-mail so I can forward it to all his parishioners past, present, and future. He’s vacant sometimes, but not stupid. She deleted the lines she had just written and sent instead: “Friday it is. Good night, Jake.”

  “Good night, Jane.”

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 4

  We set up camp in front of the Confectionary, just like last year. To tell the truth, the whole day was pretty much like last year, excepting the obvious. Cormac stayed open for the pa rade, Barb by his side, slinging pound cake and half-caf skinny lattes with extra whipped like her life depended on it. Maybe her love life depends on it, who knows.

  Aunt Jude, Uncle Charlie, and Aunt Brigid sat in the same thirty-year-old lawn chairs with the green nylon straps, and clapped for every band, float, and baton twirler. Their hands could have been chapped and bleeding by the end, but they seem to take it as their solemn duty to offer encouragement to anyone with a costume.

  Dylan loved it, except for the fire engine sirens and the American Revolutionary guys firing off their muskets. He sat in Uncle Charlie’s lap clutching those huge catcher’s-mitt hands of Charlie’s. He pulled them over his ears every time he saw a loud noise coming. Uncle Charlie did his usual running commentary, “And here we have the Middlesex County 4-H Fife and Drum Corps. Now look at those lads in their tricorn hats, Dylan. That’s just the way it was in the olden days. Whoops, here comes a fire engine, cover your ears, boy!”