Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “You’re moving,” Janie breathed.

  “Yes, sweetie. It’s time. I’m just too lonely without my Geoffrey.”

  “Okay,” said Janie, pinching the back of her hand under the table.

  “If I could wave my magic wand and take you and the kids with me, it would be perfect, honey. But that wouldn’t be right even if I could, would it?”

  Janie pinched harder and harder, but the tears came anyway. “We’re really going to miss you.”

  “I’m going to miss you more, I swear. And of course I’ll come back to visit. And I expect an invitation to every birthday party and Holy…well, whatever it is you Catholics do. And any other time you need me, you just call. An hour and forty minutes isn’t so far for a friend, right?”

  Janie shook her head and swiped at the relentless rivulets of tears. “When?”

  “I’m putting it on the market next week.”

  “It’ll be snapped up right away.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. I’m not exactly a motivated seller, now am I?”

  Janie tried to smile but it came off forced and pathetic. Shelly held her in the shelter of her long, thin arms. “It’s okay, baby. You can cry to me.”

  ALL WEEK JANIE FELT as if she were recovering from a bad cold: not sick exactly, but achy and slow. At night she dreamed of scary new neighbors. A particularly awful one included a snarling pet panther and children with fingers that lit on fire at random. When she rose to wander around the house in the dark, attempting to outrun the vestiges of the latest sleep disturbance, she checked her e-mail.

  The first night there was an e-mail from Jake, asking if she thought Dylan would like to bring up the basket of money from the collection plates to the altar at the upcoming Sunday Mass. Parishioners seemed to feel more connected to the Mass when children were involved, he explained.

  No, she didn’t think he’d want to, she replied. Also he was too young.

  “Okay,” he sent, moments later. “I just thought I’d ask.”

  They e-mailed back and forth for a while, and she admitted she was upset about Shelly moving. No, not the least bit jealous that Shelly was advancing to a new phase of her life. Well, maybe a little. Since there would never be a new phase to Janie’s life. She would be stuck in the current morass of bitterness and seclusion forever.

  “I know you have a totally different take on this,” she wrote, “because you like your life. But it occurred to me that there’s a very good chance that I’ll live for another forty or fifty years. And also a very good chance that I’ll spend those years alone. Who wants an aging widow with two kids?”

  “You are aging—as we all are—but you’re not quite aged. You certainly don’t look or seem old. And your children are very nice. I think it’s likely you’ll fall in love again and be very happy. Also, don’t assume that forty or fifty years without intimacy is perfectly comfortable for me. I am human.”

  Janie wrote and deleted several responses. She finally sent, “I thought you liked being a priest.”

  It was a longer interval than usual before she received, “I do. But every choice has its disadvantages, and I am well aware of the disadvantages of my choice.”

  After she returned to bed, she thought about Jake and his life’s disadvantages more than she expected to. It relaxed her to ponder something other than her own pain, and she drifted quickly into a soft, dreamless sleep.

  THE NEXT NIGHT, AWAKENING with her teeth clenched and her feet arched, Janie went straight for the computer. She was surprised to find no benign e-mail from Jake. “Do other four-year-olds ever bring up the money basket?” she sent, initiating the cyber-conversation.

  “Sometimes,” he quickly replied. “Usually when their parents or older siblings are bringing up the wine and the host, I offer them the job. They like to feel a part of it, and if they drop the basket there’s no harm done. Bad dreams have you up again?”

  Janie related the latest dream about a family of goat-eating trolls. As she typed, she realized that she’d read Dylan the story of the Billy Goats Gruff at bedtime. “So at least there’s an outside source. It’s a little comforting to know that my brain didn’t come up with that hideousness on its own. Do you ever have nightmares?”

  “Not that much anymore.”

  “How do you handle it?”

  “If I can’t shake it, I go out for a really hard run.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Sure. It’s a great to run when the temperature is cool and the streets are quiet.”

  “And there’s no one to see you.”

  His return e-mail had only a sideways smile made of a colon and an end parenthesis. “: )”

  It occurred to Janie that if they were going to talk like this every night, maybe they should try instant messaging. The response time would be a lot faster. But even if she had instant messaging on her computer, she felt too exhausted to learn how to use it. Besides, there was something good about having to wait. Something good about the world slowing down for one hour a day, with breathing room in between all those words. It didn’t make things any clearer, really, just less overwhelming. She wished that, for the time being, anyway, all her relationships came piecemeal.

  WHEN JAKE ARRIVED FOR his usual Friday visit, he and Janie had a hard time getting in stride. They bumped into each other twice while hiking up Jansen’s Hill. There were long periods of silence and then both would speak at the same time. And most of the way they talked in unnecessary detail about the misty fog that had filtered into the area, the size of Carly’s feet, and how exactly Dylan should make his way up the church aisle with the basket of money. After they’d talked over each other for the tenth time, Janie yelled, “Blah!” and they both laughed.

  “We’re used to e-mail,” said Jake.

  “I can’t take the pressure!” said Janie.

  “Let’s not talk at all for a while,” he suggested. So, they sat on the fallen tree-trunk in companionable silence, breathing the vaporized air and feeling their throbbing muscles slowly relax.

  “Do you ever run during the day?” she asked finally.

  “Almost never,” he said. “The parish keeps me too busy. In the old days there would be three or four priests living in the rectory, sharing the duties. Now it’s just me rattling around in there, trying to keep on top of everything. Also…”

  “Also what?”

  “People feel a little funny seeing their pastor in running shorts. It’s a little too much exposure.”

  Janie smiled, but the image made more of an impression than she liked. “My brother Mike runs every day,” she said. “He needs it like a diabetic needs insulin. Sometimes I worry that he’ll sprain his ankle or something and have to stop for a while. He’d go crazy, I think.”

  Jake looked out into the treetops. “I know how that is. When I was in college I ran every single day, no matter what. Nothing could keep me from it. I did the Boston Marathon all four years, plus a few others, too.”

  “What about after college?”

  “I had a job. I couldn’t just take off whenever I wanted. I remember the first time that I couldn’t run. I had to work late, and then my future in-laws surprised us with an engagement dinner. When midnight came and I hadn’t had my run, I fell apart. I went into the men’s room of the restaurant and had a silent fit, locked in a stall so no one would know.”

  “Why did you run so much?”

  “It was just my way of dealing with things—or maybe not dealing with things sometimes. We all have our ways. But I had to come to terms with the fact that I was too dependent on it. I had to develop more coping skills so I wouldn’t be caught up short like that again.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “My therapist helped me figure out other things that keep me on an even keel. Reading, prayer, talking to friends. I never was much of a confider. I had to learn to talk about things, even if it was mostly in therapy. I still run, but I don’t have to every day.”

  They were quie
t again for a while and then Janie said, “Robby was my way.”

  Jake nodded and waited for more.

  “I’d had boyfriends before, guys I liked, whatever. But Robby was the first guy I really trusted. He got me. He totally got me, and he never flinched no matter what I did or said. And not like he just took it. Ho, no. He could dish it right back. But somehow, no matter what we fought about or how pissed we got, I knew he loved me. After a couple of years we didn’t fight so much. I guess we sort of got into a groove—a rut, maybe. But it was a good rut.”

  Janie got up, needing to cut the emotion with motion. Jake followed her back down the hill as she continued, “I did what girls say they’ll never do—lost touch with friends. I didn’t try to cut myself off, it just sort of happened. Robby and I were always together, and then the kids came, and we were in our own little pod. I liked getting together with my friends, but I didn’t need to anymore.

  “And if I was pissed at Aunt Jude or worried about the kids or just, you know, happy…Robby was who I told. He was my home base.” A breath caught in her throat, making a little gasping sound. She hoped it seemed like a hiccough, but then she felt his warm hand give a little pat to her shoulder. She stopped, afraid that the tears in her eyes would make her trip, and she didn’t want to endanger the sleeping baby on her back. She put her hand on the closest tree to steady herself, a birch, and when they finally continued on, a piece of the smooth white bark peeled off into her palm.

  Back at the house, Janie opened the big glass jar that already contained several rocks, pinecones, and a piece of moss, and she laid the birch bark on top.

  8

  SATURDAY, JULY 14

  I took the kids for their regular Saturday morning at Aunt Jude’s, and then hit a sale at Baby Gap. Carly is growing like a weed. Apparently formula isn’t the growth-stunting, bowel-irritating spackle I once thought it was. At least I don’t have to feel so guilty that I couldn’t nurse her from three months on.

  Auntie was a little funny when I dropped them off, a little more fluttery than usual, but there didn’t seem to be anything actually wrong. At least not that she said. At the time. I should have known it was something.

  When I got back, she said, “I think I should tell you something. I heard it from Sol’s wife. You know Sol.”

  Who the hell is Sol? I can’t keep track of every poor soul she befriends. Anyway, it seems he’s the Grand Poobah of the Parish Council. They just got word there’s an allegation against Father Lambrosini, the pastor before Jake. Actually it’s looking like a bunch of allegations. A bunch of kids, grown-ups now, who say he molested them.

  Molested—such a passive word. Like he bothered them. Disturbed them a little. Was insensitive to their need not to be fondled or raped or screwed up for life. I can’t stop thinking about Katya, pinned down and defiled by “Daddy.”

  I remember Father Lambrosini, he seemed like this kindly older guy. He gave mildly humorous homilies—not hilarious, but just enough to give you a chuckle or two. The moral of the story was always that you should come to Mass more often, and be generous to those second collections for the missions in Africa or Afghanistan or wherever.

  Good God. I wonder what Jake thinks.

  JANIE E-MAILED JAKE AT 2:00 a.m. She checked for his response about forty times over the next hour, as she intermittently folded laundry, scrubbed the grout around the bathroom sink, and watered long-dry plants, the ones that hadn’t already followed the light to plant heaven. Shelly had been the chief waterer, Janie now realized, and her successful social life was the cause of their demise.

  Then she stretched out on the couch, thinking she would doze for an hour or so. At 5:45 she awoke with a sharp pain in her arm from sleeping on it. It felt almost broken, certainly sprained in some catastrophic way, as she held it across her waist and went to the computer. E-mail yielded nothing more than a 10 percent coupon for printer cartridges. Where is he? she wondered on her way back upstairs, where she crawled under the covers and passed out for another hour and a half.

  Dylan’s voice saying, “Give Mommy kissies, Carly, she needs lots of kissies,” and the feel of tiny wet lips on her chin woke Janie from a dark jungle dream where malevolent primates chased her.

  Church had become a given on Sundays since their first costumed trip to Our Lady, Comforter of the Afflicted Church a month before. The donuts were, of course, the main attraction, but Janie knew that Dylan also found the music and candles and comings and goings of various readers and singers entertaining. When Father Jake processed in, Dylan never failed to whisper loudly to Aunt Jude, “We know that guy. He comes to our house sometimes.”

  As they got ready for church, Janie wondered if Jake would address the allegations about Father Lambrosini. It might distract people from the Mass, and that wasn’t good. She remembered Auntie Brigid growling at Cormac about his distractions when they were kids, as if the distraction police would burst through the huge wooden doors at any minute and drag him away. On the other hand, Jake had a gentle way of addressing a subject without being alarming, so Janie guessed he would reference it in some way. All that therapy had given him a penchant for truth, she figured.

  When she pulled into the church parking lot, it was Father Lambrosini’s rose garden by the rectory that tipped her off. There were no roses, just mounds of gaping soil from which plants had been extricated, a remnant tangle of roots peeking from each small, volcanic-looking eruption.

  As Jake came down the aisle with the candle bearers and lectors, Janie knew for certain he would not say a word about the allegations. He was as locked down as she had ever seen him. He went about conducting the service as he did every Sunday, quiet and deliberate. But there were no benevolent smiles and no color in his cheeks. His ghost twin inhabited his robes, not him.

  The first lector, a middle-aged gentleman with a dandruff-speckled suit and a nasal voice, approached the lectern. “A reading from the book of Jeremiah,” he intoned officiously.

  “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord…You have scattered my sheep and driven them away. You have not cared for them, but I will take care to punish your evil deeds…”

  Janie watched Jake as he sat in his ornate chair, displayed on the altar like a caged animal in a zoo, and her heart began to pound. She briefly considered taking the children down to the church basement early. Maybe the donuts were already set out. There were certainly no donuts up here. It was not going to be a sugar-glazed Mass.

  At the appointed time, Jake rose and walked slowly toward the lectern. He proclaimed the Gospel as if he were reading the extended warranty for a refrigerator. Then he said nothing for a moment, the rise and fall of his chest visible even under the heavy robes. His lower lip equivocated, uncertain as to whether it would cooperate.

  “Woe to the shepherds,” he said finally, his voice strangely even and calm. ‘ “Woe’ isn’t a word that’s used much anymore. It’s an old word, not one that most children would recognize. We might translate it today to mean sadness or bad luck, but that would not be sufficient. Woe is so much more.

  “It is calamity.

  “It is affliction.

  “It is suffering without hope.

  “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter my flock.” Jake paused, and it wasn’t clear if he would speak again until he emphasized, “My flock. The flock does not belong to the shepherds, it belongs to God. God’s flock. God’s beloved children. Allofus.” Jake raised his hand and laid it onto his chest, like a startled bird roused from the comfort of its nest. The hand, now splayed out over the front of his vestments, magnified the heaving of his lungs. “The prophecy here is one of endless,” he paused, “hopeless,” another pause, “suffering for those leaders who mis- lead. Whose abuse of power is so egregious it scatters the flock. Our God promises us that such abuse,” he inhaled as if there were not enough oxygen in the room, “will be avenged.”

  Holy Christ, thought Janie. That’s it. That’s what
his father did. Again she thought of Katya and “Daddy.” But she was pulled abruptly from this image by the sight of Jake wavering momentarily at the lectern. She saw the signs that as a respiratory therapist she’d been trained to notice: nasal flaring and increased use of accessory muscles around the neck. He was mildly tachypneic, straining to pull more oxygen into his lungs. But his lips were not blue, so she guessed it was not a medical issue. It was likely happening in his head, possibly the first signs of a panic attack. She waited to see if it would progress. His mouth opened as if he might say more, and then closed again. He walked quickly back to his seat and sank unsteadily into it. Janie watched as his respiratory rate began to slow into the upper range of normal.

  The two lectors sitting in the front row looked at each other. It was the shortest homily Father Jake had ever given. They looked to him for some sign that they should proceed, but as Janie knew, he was there in body only. The dandruff-speckled lector rose and walked tentatively toward the podium, watching for any indication from the pastor that he should change course. No sign evident, he proceeded with the Prayers of the Faithful. “For…For Cardinal Sean,” he read, “and all Church leaders, that they be mindful of the awesome responsibility of selfless service to others that God has laid upon their shoulders…we pray to the Lord…”

  When the baskets were passed for collection, Janie ushered Dylan to the back of the church. “Can I have some?” asked Dylan, as the cash and envelopes were dumped into a deeper basket for him to carry.