Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “No. It’s for the church,” whispered Janie. “So Father Jake can pay the bills.”

  “Oh,” he nodded. “Like Daddy does. Go sit with Auntie Jude now, so you can see me.”

  From the pew Janie watched Dylan walk solemnly up the aisle behind the teenagers bearing the bread and wine, which they quickly handed off to Father Jake. He placed them on the altar and turned back to take the basket of money.

  “Hi,” said Dylan with a sheepish smile. Janie could just barely hear him from her place in the second row. “It’s for the bills.” Jake never made eye contact. It was as if he were retrieving the basket from a conveyor belt. Holy shit, thought Janie. Dylan looked confused for a moment, and then galloped back to the pew.

  “Good job,” whispered Janie.

  “Thanks,” he said, but he was irritated and began to riffle the pages of a hymnal.

  In line for Communion, Janie could hear Jake’s declaration to each parishioner as he handed them the host. “Body of Christ,” he said woodenly, “Body of Christ.”

  When it was her turn, he handed her the tasteless wafer and intoned, “Body of Christ,” his unseeing gaze aimed somewhere in the area of her chin. She noticed tiny red nick marks on his fingers and palms, and she realized he must have pulled out those rose bushes bare-handed, thorns piercing him with every grasp. She felt so sorry for him then, a strangely foreign sensation, since she hadn’t felt sorry for anyone other than herself in a very long time. Instead of answering, “Amen,” she found herself mouthing the words, “Come over.”

  He focused on her then, and she could feel the rage behind his eyes. Bad idea, she thought. Never mind, and quickly returned to her seat.

  After Mass, the church basement crowd was uncharacteristically small. Only a few daring souls, or oblivious ones, braved the small talk and snacks following such an odd Mass. The others seemed to have fled for their lives. Even Aunt Jude didn’t stay long, explaining that she had to sort clothing donations at Table of Plenty. Father Jake never came, and no one seemed to expect him. The ladies of the Hospitality Committee implored Janie to take the extra donuts home. While Dylan was busy buckling himself into his booster seat, Janie heaved them into the Dumpster in the parking lot.

  AS SHE DROVE HOME from Mass, Janie wondered what to do. He was falling apart. Maybe this was more evident to her than to other people. Maybe they just thought he was having a tough day because of the Father Lambrosini news. But she knew. It was bad.

  She would e-mail him when she got home. But she was almost certain he wouldn’t answer. It was none of her business, really. And as he himself had made perfectly clear, they were not friends. But, still…she had this unshakable feeling that it was somehow within her power to divert disaster.

  By the time she turned onto her own street, she had decided she would e-mail him anyway. If and when he decided to get back to her, she’d figure out how to help—if that were even possible. Besides, she told herself, he probably went directly from Mass to his car, stopping off in the rectory just long enough to change into his running gear. At this moment, she calculated, he was probably about twenty miles west of here, at the start of a mercifully anonymous marathon run. Good for him.

  It wasn’t until Janie turned into her own driveway that she saw his car. He was still in it, watching her approach in the rearview mirror. She pulled in behind him and took Carly from her car seat. Dylan scrambled out after.

  “Come in,” she said to Jake through his driver’s side window.

  “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “But you are, so come in.”

  Jake got out and followed them into the house. Janie put Carly down for a nap and sent Dylan into the backyard to play with his dump truck and backhoe in the sandbox. “But the shovels are all lost!” he protested. Janie handed him a serving spoon from the silverware drawer, and he raced out the back door with his new acquisition.

  “Tea?” she said to Jake, who sat rigid at the kitchen table.

  “I didn’t bring any.”

  “I have plenty.” She laid four boxes of various sizes and colors on the table before him. He glanced at them and then looked out the window. Janie picked orange pekoe, thinking it was most like the strange kind he usually brought, and put the rest away.

  “I apologize for coming here,” he said inertly.

  “I invited you.” She sat down at the table. “And don’t worry. This isn’t friendship.” He looked at her for the first time since he’d arrived. “You were having trouble breathing,” she said. “I’m a respiratory therapist. It’s not personal, it’s just emergency response.”

  “Was it that bad?” He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Shit, I’m going to get reassigned.”

  Janie’s face went wide for a second. She wasn’t sure if he meant a reassignment would be forced on him or requested by him, but either way, it sent a tremor of panic through her. “It wasn’t bad,” she said quickly. “Anyone would understand that you were disturbed by the news. And half of them never listen, anyway, so they probably didn’t even notice.”

  He looked up quickly, and said, “Dylan brought up the basket.”

  Janie nodded.

  “Was he nervous?”

  “He was fine,” she said. The teakettle began to sing, and she got up to pour the boiling water into his cup. “Do you think the allegations are true?”

  Jake let out a long breath, and then banged his fist on the table. “God DAMN him.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “They’re true,” he snarled. “When nine adults who’ve never met each other all come up with similar stories about the same person, it’s considered very credible. Miserable bastard.”

  Janie’s memory banks flicked back to Jake’s description of his own father. “So he definitely molested nine different children.”

  “At least. If nine came forward, there are twice that many that just don’t want to think about it.”

  “But you’re thinking about it.”

  “Yes, I’m thinking about it!” he yelled. “Good Lord, how can I KEEP myself from thinking about it! It’s not enough that I know exactly—EXACTLY—how each of those people feels. No, it’s beyond that! I’m sentenced to sleep and shower and eat my lunch in the very rooms where it happened!” He slammed his hand on the table again. “God DAMN it—how can I possibly sleep in a bed where children have been PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED AND EMOTIONALLY MUTILATED!”

  His rage sent shockwaves through the tiny kitchen, and Janie had a moment of fear, not so much that he would hurt her as that she would fail—at what, had yet to be determined. “Maybe you can’t,” she said.

  “Damn right, I can’t! No one in their right mind could—it’s unimaginable!” He expelled a long breath. “Except for me. I can imagine it in detail.” He rubbed his eyes hard, jostling his glasses, and Janie could tell he was concentrating very hard on not crying. When he finally lowered his fingers from his face, he wiped them on his crisp black pants leaving damp marks that soon evaporated. “The press called all morning,” he mumbled.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I said what those drones at the Archdiocese told me to say: ‘I can’t comment because of the ongoing investigation.’ After a while I just stopped answering the phone. Like a coward.”

  “You can’t be mad at yourself for that,” she said.

  “No? Can’t I?” He pushed away the full mug of tea and turned on her. “Your husband died in a completely avoidable accident, leaving you alone with two small children. You’re mad all the time. Are you trying to tell me that anger never doubles back on you?” Before Janie could answer, he continued, “Of course it does. Your anger fills every room you enter, so how could it not? Despite the fact that you bear no responsibility whatsoever for this tragedy, your rage is probably aimed at yourself more than anyone. Even your beloved husband, the guy who could’ve prevented all this agony by taking an extra ten seconds to find his goddamned bike helmet!”

  Her mouth d
ropped open and her eyes went wild and she thought she might hit him.

  “Holy Mother of God,” he whispered. “Forgive me; that was shameful.”

  “You’re a real prick sometimes, you know that?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  She pushed the mug back toward him. “Drink your fucking tea.”

  HE MEANT TO LEAVE and she wanted him to leave, but after a while, the steam went out of them and he just stayed. They ate lunch. Dylan gave him a tour of the whole house, including Janie’s clothes closet. Janie almost stopped them, realizing that there were bras and panties in the hamper that he might see. But she was still just mad enough to derive some private, vindictive little humor out of the prospect of his discomfort.

  By midafternoon they were in the backyard eating water-melon. It was the seedless kind, and Dylan complained that there was nothing to spit. He went back to digging with his shiny new spoon, and Janie regretted giving it to him, knowing she was unlikely to get it back without a fight.

  “Okay, so where are you going to sleep tonight?” she said to Jake.

  He shook his head slowly. “Maybe my car.”

  “Alright then, where are you going to sleep the next night, because you’re going to get caught, and by noon tomorrow the church ladies will be all atwitter.” He ripped a divot out of her lawn and began to split each blade of grass into slivers. Janie pressed him to problem solve. “Is there any place in the rectory that’s…?”

  “Not teeming with child-sized ghosts?” he snorted. “Maybe the front steps.”

  “Isn’t there sort of a reception area right where you walk in? Where we did the paperwork for the kids to be baptized. It’s out in the open with a lot of people coming and going.”

  “An unlikely spot for rape.”

  “Well, yes.”

  He pressed the divot with its shredded green blades back into the hole it had come from. “I bought new furniture for that room last year,” he muttered. “Everything was so bald and dusty. I thought it should be more welcoming. The Finance Committee was against it, but I told them to move the money from the landscaping budget, and I’d cut the lawn all summer myself.” He almost smiled. “It made them feel just ridiculous enough to get off my back.”

  “I’ve never seen you cutting the lawn,” Janie said.

  “And you never will.”

  IT WAS CLOSING IN on dinnertime when Jake got up to leave. Janie asked him to stay, hoping he’d say no. She was exhausted. His problem was exhausting, and she couldn’t make it go away while he was still in view. “Do you want a camping pad in case that couch is uncomfortable?” she asked.

  “No, it’ll be fine. Thank you, though.” He stood at the door with his hand on the knob, not leaving. “Thank you,” he repeated. “I didn’t know where to go.”

  “I’m familiar with that one myself,” she said.

  “It helped.”

  “I’m glad.” She waited, but he still wasn’t leaving. “You help me, too,” she added.

  He smiled and took a full breath. “We don’t make it easy, do we?”

  “We’re prickly,” she said with more warmth than she expected.

  BY WEDNESDAY, THREE MORE people had come forward with allegations of sexual abuse against Father Lambrosini. Janie was compelled to read the ongoing coverage, though it was really the last thing she wanted to do. However, she felt she should know the latest so that when Jake e-mailed her in the middle of the night, which he had done every night but one since Sunday, he wouldn’t have to recount it for her. Reading the paper online was one of the many things she’d stopped doing, along with plant watering and correspondence of any kind, when Robby had died. She found herself becoming current on things that had no meaning to her—school lunch menus, town selectmen’s meetings, the ongoing investigation of those burglaries in the neighboring town of Natick. The police had found footprints in a newly loomed shrub bed and had determined it was the work of a lone man wearing size nine sneakers.

  The one night that Jake hadn’t begun the nightly cyber-conversation, she got worried and e-mailed him. He responded an hour later, when he came in from a run. She imagined all kinds of things in that hour, and it aggravated her. Like I don’t have enough to worry about…

  She did, however, have a growing awareness that she gravitated toward this problem, toward the bearer of this misery, more than she would have expected to. More than she wanted to. Partly she felt that it was like passing a bad accident on the highway. You knew you shouldn’t slow down to look, and yet somehow you always did. There was some fundamental human relief in seeing the results of bad decision-making, or inadequate response to danger, or sheer misfortune of others. Made you feel lucky by comparison, no matter your own sad story. Shameful, yet human.

  There was also an oddly increasing sense of her own influence when talking to Jake. Janie hadn’t realized how completely ineffectual she had felt until she began to see that she had some small power to help this unlikely recipient, if only briefly, in the middle of a sleepless night.

  The morning temperature was cool for mid-July as Janie sat at her computer, reading about Father Lambrosini’s move from the priests’ retirement home to the house of an anonymous friend in an anonymous location. As she skimmed the Boston Globe article, she simultaneously wondered if she had put a sweatshirt in Dylan’s backpack. There was always a breeze at Lake Pequot, no matter how stultified the rest of the town felt, and he might be cold after his swim lesson.

  When she heard Tug’s truck pull up in front of the house, she looked at the clock—ten minutes to ten. Late for Tug, who was always there by 7:20, which was a little irritating, since she was never dressed by then. Several weeks ago, Shelly had dropped by with three sets of “full-coverage construction pajamas.” For all their coverage, they were much prettier than any other pajamas Janie owned. Satin-trimmed cotton in pastel colors that fit perfectly, and yet somehow felt clingy. Very Shelly, thought Janie, embarrassed but thankful. The little snob has never worn ratty pajamas in her life.

  Now wearing a pale blue T-shirt and her oldest pair of jeans, Janie came out on the front step. “Hey,” she said. “Need supplies?”

  “Nah, I’m stuffed.”

  Janie blinked a couple of times, trying to make sense of his response. “No, I meant did you need to go get supplies.”

  “Oh.” He began laying two-by-ten boards in pairs across the footings. “No, I’m in good shape.” He glanced up from his work suddenly. “Oh, you’re asking why I’m late. My nieces took me out for breakfast.” He chuckled. “Actually I ended up taking them, since neither of them had any cash on them. What a shock. Then the two of them got into a fight right there in the booth about who owed who money. They wouldn’t shut up until I started singing ‘Happy Birthday to Me,’ and they got embarrassed that their friends might see them with a crazy man. Not that any of their friends were at Carey’s Diner at 8:30 in the morning. But you know how things get around.” He rolled his eyes.

  Janie laughed—a relief after three days of vicarious rage. “It’s your birthday?” she said.

  “I guess so.” He was clearly embarrassed at having brought it up.

  “Any plans to celebrate?”

  “Nothing big. I got a softball game tonight and we’ll probably go to The Pal after.” The Palace sat on the shore of Lake Pequot, a house-sized bar that seemed to grow more beloved by Pelhamites the more worn out it got. Every year or so the septic system failed or the taxes backed up or some other garden variety violation was reported, but pals of The Pal always seemed to rally round and bail it out. The general thinking was that if you didn’t mind a certain level of stickiness, or a wine list that consisted of “red, white or rosay,” The Pal was the place to be.

  “I haven’t been there in years,” said Janie.

  “You should come,” Tug said, and then added quickly, “sometime. Take Shelly with you. She’s something isn’t she? I can’t believe she’s moving after all that work she did…I did…she hired me to do.”
He pulled a pencil from behind his ear and began making what appeared to be haphazard lines on a board that he then carried to a pile of lumber on the far side of the lawn.

  WHEN JANIE PICKED UP Dylan at Pond Pals, he and Keane had their arms wrapped more or less around each other’s shoulders. Because Dylan was an inch or two taller, Keane’s hand slipped several times to grasp Dylan’s neck. “Keane,” he murmured, “you’re squeezing me.”

  “Can we have a playdate?” Keane hollered to Janie as she approached.

  “Keane, stop choking me,” croaked Dylan as he pried Keane’s fingers off him.

  Janie studied Dylan for a moment. He was red-faced but smiling and nodding. “Who’s picking you up?” she asked Keane.

  “My dad, but he’s usually last, so just tell the camp counselors to tell him you took me. Sometimes he’s first, like really, REALLY first. But this is a last time. This time he’s last.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Janie. “Let’s see what the counselors say.”

  The camp director confirmed that Keane’s father was often a bit on the early side except when he seemed to be running late, but that they could not hand Keane over without his father’s express consent. The discussion of Keane’s father’s timeliness or lack thereof went on longer than Janie’s interest in the topic, and she was just about to tell Keane it would have to be another day, when he screamed, “He’s here! That’s his car, the kind of gold-colored one!” Keane’s father extracted himself from a low-lying sports car and loped toward the camper pickup area.

  “Hey, little dude!” he said as he high-fived Keane. He handed a ten-dollar bill to the camp director with a smug grin. “Late fee.”

  “I’m going to Dylan’s!” Keane announced. “He’s got construction!”

  “Oh,” said his father, face falling. “Alright, if that’s what you wanna do, that’s cool.”

  “Keane,” said Janie, “maybe this isn’t the best day. You can come over tomorrow.”