Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “Yeah, now please, Dylan, it’s too early.”

  He was still, and Janie dozed and dreamed she was riding a red bike with Carly in the baby backpack and Dylan on the handlebars. She had forgotten to put helmets on them and it was dark.

  “Mom? Is that guy Tug a good driver?”

  Janie groaned, wondering how she could have been so stupid as to tell Dylan about the damned backhoe. But there was no going back, as she had learned all too well in the past four months. Actually five months today, now that it was the fourteenth of June. You never got a do-over, especially for the stuff that really mattered.

  They got up. Janie made coffee. Dylan made a shelter out of couch pillows for two plastic ducks, a goat, a brontosaurus, and a stuffed monkey. The barnyard animals and the dinosaur got along very well. They could share. The monkey was a problem, and was eventually evicted from the compound for “doing trouble.”

  Tug Malinowski and his backhoe did not arrive until 2:15 that afternoon, by which time Dylan himself had had several bouts of “doing trouble” in between periods of standing sentry at the living room window, asking “Is that the Tugboat guy?” every time a car passed.

  When Tug’s truck finally pulled up in front of the house with a flatbed trailer hitched to the back, Dylan ran out the front door. Janie had to pull Carly out of her highchair still smeared with strained peas and scramble after him, afraid he would run into the street. When she got outside, Dylan was nowhere in sight, and Malinowski was beginning to unchain the small backhoe from the flatbed.

  “Dylan!” screamed Janie. The contractor’s head popped up from behind the backhoe. “Don’t move that thing!” she ordered him. “I can’t find my little boy!”

  “Here I am, Mom!” called Dylan, grinning from the passenger window of the truck. “This is SO COOL!”

  “Dylan, get out of there!” she hurried toward him, the baby bouncing on her hip. The boy’s face fell and his chin began to tremble.

  “I told him to,” said Malinowski, coming from around the back of the flatbed.

  “The Tugboat guy said to!” said Dylan, his hazel eyes wide.

  “He shouldn’t be in there—it’s not safe,” Janie admonished. “He could push some button, turn something on, God knows what—”

  “The keys are in my pocket, the emergency brake is on, and there are blocks behind the tires,” said Malinowski. “I just wanted him out of the way of the heavy machinery.”

  “You don’t tell someone else’s kid to get in your truck,” said Janie, pointing at him, the baby clutched in her other arm. “I’m his mother. I decide whose vehicle he can get in, not you, not some guy I barely know.”

  “Well, then, you need to watch him, because he was ready to climb right onto the flatbed.” Malinowski put his hands in his pockets and stood staring back at her.

  “Don’t you tell me…” sputtered Janie, narrowing her eyes at him. “Don’t you dare tell me…You know what? Let’s just call off the whole thing. This was HIS idea, I just…I was just trying to…”

  “Hey,” said Malinowski, those unblinking dark eyes taking her in. He was motionless, except for the rise and fall of his chest. Then he said, “You’re right. I should have waited until you came out. He’s your boy. You get to decide.”

  Hot air surged in and out of her lungs, and she wanted to keep yelling at him, point her finger at him, fire him. But it was over. He had yielded, though he had managed to do so without sounding like he’d actually conceded anything. Janie had to pull her haywire emotions back into some semblance of control. She looked up at Dylan, his little hands gripping the edge of the truck window, and she let out her breath. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said. “Sorry big as a monkey.”

  Janie, Dylan, and Carly sat on the front step and watched Malinowski maneuver the small backhoe off the flatbed and up the driveway. The thing made sensationally loud grinding noises, like some menacing yellow rust-speckled beast. Malinowski nodded to them and Dylan waved back, giddy and pulsing with excitement. “This is so cool,” he whispered several times. “Wait till Keane hears.”

  Huge chunks of mossy lawn came up in the backhoe’s gaping maw and were dumped into a neat pile on the edge of the yard. Less grass to mow, thought Janie, but more house to clean.

  “He’s too hot,” announced Dylan, rising from the step. “I’m going to get him a drink.” He returned with his favorite Clifford sippy cup. Janie could see something dark at the bottom of it.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Chocolate milk.” He moved a few steps toward the backhoe with the cup held out in front of him like a chalice. “It was a tiny bit messy,” he murmured, “but I licked up the puddle. The counter’s all clean again.”

  Malinowski turned off the motor, wiped his sweaty face on the shoulder of his T-shirt and hopped down from the machine. “What’s this?” he asked with a smile for Dylan. He took the cup and sucked on the sippy top. “Chocolate milk! How’d you know it’s my favorite?”

  Dylan’s grin was so wide it almost toppled him over. He ran back to Janie and hid his face in her lap. Malinowski took the top off and swallowed the rest in one long impressive gulp, Adam’s apple bobbing in his thick neck. When he handed back the cup, he caught Janie’s eye, pointed at Dylan, and cocked a thumb at the backhoe.

  She could see that his deference to her was purposeful. He was humoring her, as people tended to these days, and she didn’t enjoy feeling like an oddity for whom others had to make allowances. That was her brother Mike’s role, not hers. But it was tiring to wonder at people’s motives all the time, and Malinowski hadn’t actually done anything wrong, other than present her with a decision she didn’t feel like making. She glanced toward the backhoe, as if it were the source of her concern, not the man standing in front of her. He seems okay, she thought. And I’ll be right here watching.

  “Dylan,” she murmured into the curly black hair. “Mr. Malinowski says you can have a ride.” Dylan’s head popped up, a look of amazement just short of horror on his face.

  “Is it okay if he calls me Tug?” Malinowski asked Janie.

  “Tug says you can help him for a few minutes,” she said to Dylan. “Go get your bike helmet.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “In case you fall.”

  Dylan gave Malinowski an assessing look.

  “I won’t let you fall, buddy,” Malinowski answered the look. “But do as your mother says.”

  A squeal came out of Dylan that Janie realized she hadn’t heard in many months. “Get the…get the…get the…” he stammered at her.

  “Camera?” she guessed.

  “Yes!”

  So Janie took pictures of Dylan sitting on Tug’s lap, waving, moving the levers, face as open as a meadow under his lizard-themed bike helmet. Dylan wanted Carly to have her picture taken on the backhoe, too.

  “She’s too little,” said Janie.

  “I can hold her! I can hold her so tight!” offered Dylan.

  “Not this time,” she said, realizing her blunder: Dylan might think there would be a next time.

  “But she will feel sad!” he insisted. “She will want my pictures.”

  Janie knew that it was no use to try and explain to Dylan that eight-month-old Carly would not only not care about having her own picture, she would have no idea. Yet Dylan’s ever-expanding and sometimes inconvenient sense of fairness would prevent Janie from using the argument that they could hide his pictures from Carly. It was a can of worms. A can among many.

  Without seeming even to look at Janie, Tug cocked his head to one side, in a bring-her-up-here sort of gesture. Janie snorted and squinted into the street. She knew he meant to be helpful, yet it irritated her to no end that he wanted her to reverse herself. Yes, he seemed to say, Carly could, in fact, come up here and have her picture taken. It was easy. It was safe. Janie was just overprotective. Except, of course, when she was being underprotective, like when she let Dylan out of the house without he
r. The lack of confidence Janie felt in the still-unfamiliar land of single parenthood made others’ apparent assessments of her barely tolerable. Everything was so full of worms these days.

  While Janie weighed feeling incompetent against being countermanded, Dylan piped up again. “Hey! Maybe he—” he looked at Malinowski, “maybe you—maybe he could hold Carly. His muscles are very, very STRONG!”

  Janie took a deep breath. Worms everywhere, she thought, as she stood up with the baby. She handed Carly to Malinowski with a brief but meaningful glance meant to imply a warning for the baby’s care, and another warning about her sole sovereignty over her children. Whether he received it or not, Malinowski answered with his now-familiar dark unblinkingness. He wrapped his muscular, scarred arm around Carly, tightened his grip on Dylan, and smiled for the picture.

  “Great,” said Janie, and “Thanks,” as she retrieved the baby. “Dylan, I think it might be time for Mr. Malinowski…Tug…to get some work done.”

  “I gotta get this thing back, buddy,” Malinowski said to the boy in his grasp. “But, you can still watch if you want to.”

  Dylan did watch from the kitchen window for the better part of the afternoon. He only left his post once to bring Malinowski more chocolate milk and a small baggie of Cheerios. The contractor consumed them in seconds with the sincere yet casual kind of gratitude to which small boys aspire.

  The footings dug, Malinowski told Janie he’d be back when the building inspector came out to check the holes. Then he wordlessly loaded the backhoe onto the flatbed. He tooted twice and threw an arm out the window of the truck as he pulled away.

  “BYE!” screamed Dylan, his whole body wagging like a dog’s tail. “BYE, TUG!”

  WHEN FATHER JAKE CAME on Friday, Janie was impatient with his tea preparations and his small talk. “What did you do with all your rage?” she asked him, a non-response to his polite inquiry about the holes in the yard.

  He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He dunked his teabag in and out of the hot water, in and out. Then he set it on the spoon and carefully wrapped the string around, as if he were binding sticks of dynamite. “I went to a therapist, but mostly I prayed.”

  Like that would help, thought Janie.

  “You don’t pray much,” Jake ventured, “or attend Mass regularly, I take it.”

  Janie and Robby had been taking Dylan to church, sometimes as often as once a month, she told him, “But, that’s not what you mean by ‘regularly.’ It certainly isn’t what my Aunt Jude means, I can promise you that.”

  “What about when you were growing up?” he asked.

  She told him her mother had taken her and Mike every Sunday. They sat with her mother’s brother and sister, Aunt Jude and Uncle Charlie, and with Charlie’s wife, Aunt Brigid, and son, Cormac. Aunt Jude insisted they sit over on the left side because she liked to be near the music. Cormac made it fun. He would do something, just one little thing every Sunday that would get them laughing, clutching back the sound in their quivering chests to avoid being scolded. For instance, he would go to Communion, take a sip of wine, and then, catching their eyes, he would smack his lips.

  One time, he pointed out to Janie and Mike how people tend to contract their butt muscles when they kneel. After that, he could just tip his head toward someone and whisper “contracting.” Sure enough, there would be somebody’s buttocks gripping a skirt or a pair of pants like a hand.

  Janie told Father Jake all this, secretly hoping he’d be horrified. But instead laughter burst out of him that kindled the color in his face and made the ghostlike quality recede. It was easier, then, not to hate everything he said. “Okay,” she pressed him, “other than prayer and therapy, how did you deal?”

  “That’s like saying, ‘Other than hats and scarves, how do you keep your head warm?’ You can use whatever you like. Or you can just stay inside when it’s cold. But assuming you want to go outside and you want to use something convenient and effective, it’s hard to beat a hat or a scarf.”

  “But those hats don’t fit me. They’re tight and itchy and smelly, and they piss me off even more than I already am, which is no small accomplishment.”

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger over his eyebrows for a moment, considering this.

  “I know I’m a pain in the ass,” she offered. It was true, wasn’t it? She was the lead weight that everyone else had to carry around.

  “Jane, you are not a pain in the ass,” he sighed. “You have no idea of the people I talk to.” There was an edge to his voice she hadn’t heard before, a whiff of exasperation that, like his laughter, was somehow reassuring in its normalcy.

  Who does he talk to? she wondered. Aunt Jude sprang to her mind, and she felt a fleeting pity for Father Jake. I hope I’m a little bit interesting, in addition to being a pain in his ass. Which I most certainly am.

  He thought for a moment more, rubbing at his eyebrows again, as if his intention were to remove them. “I think you need exercise,” he said.

  “Exercise?” This was the best he could do? And how would she accomplish it, even if she wanted to? Leave the kids home to fend for themselves? Janie could just see herself, jogging with Jesus, weight-lifting her worries away. She picked at a scab on her arm and said, “I don’t think so.”

  Father Jake continued talking, rattling on about taking walks, and how she might collect something along the way, something that catches her eye, like a rock in an interesting formation or a brightly colored leaf. Janie didn’t pay any attention.

  He knows I’m not going to do it.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 15

  Father Jake just left. He’s such an odd, quiet little person. Not little, really—he’s average size. Average everything, I guess. Except for the hair—he’s got a ton of that. It’s just that sense you get that he’s about thirteen years old at a school dance and trying to blend in with the bleachers. His hiding makes him small.

  I don’t like knowing about his father. Not that I know anything, really. But I guess I know enough to keep me from torturing him too much when he comes over now. I feel for him and I don’t want to. I can barely stand to feel my own feelings, let alone anyone else’s.

  He drank his tea and asked his tentative little questions and made his silly suggestions. I got bored, or maybe impatient. He just goes on like nothing happened. Like I didn’t attack him, and he didn’t tell me what he told me. He doesn’t really listen. He just goes on. He’s a Go On-er.

  AT FIVE O’CLOCK THAT night, Janie was hungry. And by the crabby, whiney behavior of her children, she knew that they were probably hungry, too. But it was just too hard. Meal planning seemed unfathomable, like space travel or extreme sports.

  So when Aunt Jude rolled in at 5:10 with two boxes of frozen pizza (one plain and the other mushroom and olive) and salad-in-a-bag (Caesar) and a package of Fig Newtons (fat free), Janie felt like crying. In fact, she did excuse herself while Aunt Jude was fussing with the salad packets, and went into the bathroom to sit on the back of the toilet tank and sob silently into a hand towel. Crying over frozen pizza, she chided herself. Get a grip.

  When she returned, Carly was in her highchair wrangling pieces of a fat-free Newton with her tiny thumb and forefinger and triumphantly placing them in her mouth. Janie knew that an eight-month-old—a toothless one at that—probably shouldn’t be eating something that chewy. And she had tried to keep the baby off sweets so that she wouldn’t balk at vegetables. Dylan hadn’t had refined sugar until his first birthday cake. But Carly looked so happy. And Janie was just too tired from crying. She sat down in the seat next to Carly’s highchair to watch for signs of choking.

  Once Aunt Jude had put the pizzas into the oven and tossed the bag of salad, she shifted her attention to Janie. Or more precisely to Janie’s shoulders. Aunt Jude had recently developed a habit of sliding up behind Janie and setting her gnarled, ring-heavy hands to massaging Janie’s neck and upper back in a surprisingly gentle manner. Janie relaxed under these ministrations despite her
self.

  “Guess what?” whispered Aunt Jude.

  “Huh,” Janie grunted in response. She aimed her half-lidded eyes at the figgy baby.

  “I won that raffle they did for a fund-raiser at Table of Plenty.”

  “Good,” said Janie. Somewhere in her foggy brain she remembered that Table of Plenty was the soup kitchen where her aunt volunteered. She had no recollection whatsoever of any raffle.

  “Well, I didn’t win the grand prize, you know, that sunset dinner cruise for four on Boston Harbor. I was really hoping for that, because I was thinking you and I and Auntie Brigie and Uncle Charlie could go, and maybe we’d meet some interesting people because I think they seat you at tables of ten, so there’d be six others with us. I heard the food isn’t that good, but there’s lots of it.”

  “Okay,” said Janie, telling herself that if she happened to doze off, Aunt Jude would see the baby choke, and Aunt Jude’s screaming would wake her.

  “But I didn’t win it,” Aunt Jude said with a sigh. “I should’ve bought more tickets. But I did win something pretty good. For you.”

  “Thanks,” said Janie, now in a half dream about being on a boat and eating pizza and choking.

  “Remember how I took that self-defense course after I got my bag snatched when I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with the group from the Pelham Senior Center?”

  “Hmm?” said Janie, pulling herself back from the unpleasant boat ride.

  “That was just a two-hour course on self-protection they did at the Senior Center. I set that up, you know. I didn’t want any of the other ladies to go through what I went through. So I just went online and found Experiential Safety. Well, I didn’t find it right away of course. I had to surf around awhile. That word ‘experiential’ can get you into some pretty risqué sites, let me tell you. Even ‘safety’ can get a little dicey…But then there it was, the perfect solution. So Arturo, he’s the new director at Experiential Safety because the old director left to go to acupuncture school. Arturo set up that class for the ladies at the Senior Center. I think a couple of the men took it, too. Ralph and Sol, and Art, I think. No, maybe Art didn’t come. Or did he? I can’t remember now if Art was there. He’s so quiet, you barely know if he’s with you or not.”