Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  “Janie, honey, your mum’s still up in the air,” Uncle Charlie told her. “Goddamned air traffic control won’t let her down.”

  Janie imagined her mother floating among the clouds with enormous bird wings strapped to her arms, just as happy to stay aloft as land.

  Because of the delay Noreen was driven straight to her sister Jude’s for a big family dinner. They were all there to greet her when Aunt Brigid, posted at the kitchen window, called out, “She’s here!”

  “Thank goodness,” muttered Aunt Jude. “These chickens are drying out by the minute, and the mashed potatoes are hardening into spackle. Barb, dear, hand me that baster.”

  Dylan was the first to reach Uncle Charlie’s immaculate Ford Tempo, and he threw himself at his grandmother before she’d even gotten completely out of the car.

  “Glory be to God, but you’re enormous!” she teased him. “What is your mother feeding you? Giraffe food?”

  “Do giraffes eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches?” he giggled.

  “I think they must!” Her knobby-knuckled hands ran over his head and squeezed his shoulders.

  “Gram, guess what! There’s only one day between today and my birthday. And I’m gonna have a party with my friend Keane, and you can come!”

  “That’s why I’m here, love,” she said as she hoisted her purse and bag of quilting squares out of the car. “That’s why I’m here.”

  AT BEDTIME NOREEN TOLD Dylan an Italian folk tale about a seam-stress who tamed a grumpy dragon by making him a beautiful vest, so when he flew off to live in the Alps he would feel proud and not so angry. Then she descended the stairs and sorted herself out in the tiny bedroom next to the office. In years past there had been struggles about where she would sleep when she returned to the house she had inhabited for thirty-five years. Robby had often tried to insist that she take her old bed in the master bedroom upstairs. While she appreciated his gallantry, Noreen stood her ground. The single bed was fine for her, she said, and as the downstairs bedroom was closest to the bathroom, she wouldn’t wake anyone if she “took a little trip to the toidy” in the middle of the night.

  Last Christmas, when Noreen had returned to Pelham for the holidays, Robby had pressed the point. His little French grandmother would spin in her grave, he said, if she knew he’d relegated the grand-mère to such an inauspicious spot in her own house.

  “It’s not my house,” Noreen had replied with surprising vehemence, “and it’s not my room. I never liked that room when it was mine, so why should I be forced to take it now?”

  Returning for Robby’s funeral only two weeks later, Noreen quietly installed herself once again in the little bedroom. Janie slept on the living room couch. No one slept in the big bed upstairs.

  “All set, Mum?” Janie now asked, peeking her head in the doorway.

  “Fine and dandy,” said Noreen. “Just working on these quilt squares a bit before my eyes shut.”

  “I didn’t know you were doing quilts.”

  “The pieces are small. They travel better.”

  A code to live by, Janie thought. If it doesn’t travel well, leave it behind. “Well, good night,” she said.

  “Janie, come in for a moment, won’t you?” said her mother. Janie stepped reluctantly into the room and leaned against the waist-high dresser that sat opposite the bed. She sensed an issue.

  “Um…have you heard from your brother since the funeral?”

  “No.” Janie could tell her mother was stalling. They both knew better than to expect Mike to call. He didn’t use the phone if he could possibly avoid it. “He’s probably up to his armpits with another massive sculpture or something. At least he gets paid for it.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right, but…” Noreen trailed off, then started up again with, “I just wanted to know…” she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I just wanted to know how you are, sweetheart. I know Jude looks in on you all quite a bit…” A sly smile drifted across her face. “That’s both a help and a burden, I imagine.”

  “No,” said Janie pointedly. “It’s no burden. Aunt Jude’s great. She’s there when I need her.”

  “Oh, well, yes, of course,” Noreen sputtered. “Of course she is.”

  Janie took a step toward the door.

  “But you’re okay?” said her mother, dropping a quilt square as she gestured in Janie’s direction.

  Janie let a breath of air into her lungs and expelled it. “I’m a single mother now, Mum. You know how that is.”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “Yes, I do.”

  “Good night,” said Janie.

  As she stepped into the hallway, she heard her mother mutter, “Blessed and cursed, all at once.”

  “THIS IS JUST THE way I like it, Gram,” Dylan said. “Mom never makes it like this.” He was down in the kitchen, and Janie could hear the gentle clacking of metal spoons against glass bowls.

  “Well, everyone has their own way, dear-o. No two of us are alike.”

  “Couldn’t you teach her your way? It has more sugar.”

  Everyone’s way looks like it has more sugar than mine these days,

  Janie thought. She climbed out of bed and put on her jeans and the T-shirt her mother had brought her. It was bright pink, with “Italia” across the front in silvery script, and it smelled like the cargo hold of a jet. Janie reviewed it in the mirror. Good God, she thought, and rolled her eyes.

  Dylan raised his bowl toward Janie as she came into the kitchen. “Want some oatmeal? Gram makes it with butter and lots of brown sugar. See? See how brown it is?”

  “The shirt looks nice on you,” said her mother, with a smile that Janie first took to be victorious, but then saw that it might be something else. More like grateful. “Let me pour you some coffee.”

  “You should wear that to church,” said Dylan. “Father Jake won’t mind if you don’t wear a fancy shirt with buttons. He’ll like to see you wearing stuff that’s pretty.”

  THEY SAT IN THE usual pew. Carly entertained herself by sucking on Aunt Jude’s necklaces, much to Janie’s aggravation. But because the rest of the family sat between them, it was impossible to put a stop to it without raising her voice. Janie was half afraid that Aunt Brigid would shush her and tell her to stop being a distraction, as she had when Janie was young. Dylan sat snuggled up under his grandmother’s proprietary arm, describing the donuts they would eat downstairs in artful detail.

  “That’s him!” he said in a loud whisper. “That’s Father Jake! He’s our friend! He comes to our house all the time.” Janie found Dylan’s claim on Jake amusing, since he seemed to have no particular interest in the priest outside of Mass.

  Down in the church basement afterward, they stood and chatted, sipped their weak coffee, and chided Dylan about his third donut. The powder had sprinkled itself like soft snow across his chest, and Noreen took an intricately embroidered hankie from her purse to spot-clean him.

  “Hello,” said Father Jake as he approached their group, having satisfied the more strident of his admirers. “You must be Dylan’s grandmother,” he said smoothly to Noreen, extending his hand.

  “Yes, Father, I have that honor,” she replied courteously. “I understand you’ve become a great friend of the family.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I have that honor.” They all chuckled, pleased to have him claim such a distinction.

  “Hi, Jake,” said Janie, catching her mother’s fleeting look of discomfort.

  “Hello, Jane.” He took in the T-shirt and glanced back up at her, a nanosecond of amused sympathy in his gaze.

  Thank you for getting how silly I feel, she thought. No one else here understands the sacrifice I’m making in the interest of good will.

  “It’s my birthday tomorrow, Father Jake! Do you want to come to my party? You can come if you want to. It’s right after I get home from camp.”

  “Well…” Jake hesitated. He looked to Jane.

  “It’s just family and one of his friends,” said J
ane. “You’re welcome to come, though you may be required to play Twister and bob for an apple or two.” The idea of him dressed in black down to his stocking feet, teetering in some contorted position on a Twister mat tickled her, and she laughed.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “It just so happens I’m very good at Twister.”

  “Well, then, by all means, come. Show us your stuff, Father!”

  After he’d accepted the invitation and moved on to another group, they walked up through the church and out to the parking lot. No one talked until they were at their cars, wishing Dylan a happy day-before-your-birthday. Noreen said not a word the whole ride home.

  THAT NIGHT, KEANE’S MOTHER called to say that she was taking the next day off from work for a long-overdue root canal. The desire to prove to her new boss that she was serious about her work, not some Twinkie who would put up with his low-level sexual harassment, combined with her secret phobia of dental work had fueled her procrastination. However, the time had come.

  “I should be done by eleven at the latest,” she told Janie. “That’s plenty of time to feel normal again before I pick up the boys. It’ll give you more time to get ready for the party.”

  Janie didn’t like the idea. Heidi seemed far more responsible than her immature ex-husband, and yet…she couldn’t put her finger on it. Heidi seemed strangely…desperate? It was hard to reconcile with her blond, bouncy cheerleader looks, but Heidi acted like one of those girls back in high school who could never quite get all the pieces together to be as popular as she hoped. Having never hoped for much popularity, Janie was slightly repulsed.

  “Do you have enough booster seats?” she asked Heidi, thinking this would end the matter.

  “I have one for Keane, and if you leave Dylan’s at camp when you drop him off, that’ll solve it,” she said happily. “People do that all the time.”

  What you don’t understand is I’m not “people.” Some days I feel barely human. Janie was worried she might be particularly snarly with self-pity on Dylan’s birthday. She was not looking forward to celebrating the anniversary of becoming a mother without the guy who had made her so. And I’ll rip your arm off and beat you with it if anything happens to my kid.

  But the options were either to concede or to make an unreasonably big deal out of it. Dylan would love riding in Keane’s car, Janie knew, and Heidi really did seem okay, if a little overeager. Janie gave in. Heidi would drive the boys to the party at one o’clock.

  VALENTINE’S DAY, EASTER, FOURTH of July. All had come and gone without Robby, and they had been fairly miserable as a result. But, nothing seemed as wrong as celebrating their child’s birthday with his chair empty, the piano keys silent, the Robby-shaped hole in their lives never more apparent.

  He’s really dead, she had told herself hundreds of times since the afternoon of January fourteenth, a strangely warm day for midwinter. That morning, Aunt Jude had spirited Dylan away somewhere. Janie couldn’t remember where, having been in a semi-trance of sleep deprivation since Carly’s birth three months before. It was a Sunday, so maybe Aunt Jude had taken Dylan to church. Janie had sat on the couch nursing the baby, and Robby had said, “It’s so warm out. Mind if I go for a ride?”

  How had she replied? Hopefully it was something like “Of course not, honey. Go right ahead.” Or even just a generously delivered, “Fine by me.” She didn’t remember feeling angry, stranded with the ravenous baby while the laundry pile grew and the crust hardened on the dishes in the sink. She only remembered feeling tired. Too tired to care about the state of the house or who went where, as long as no one asked her to get up and function.

  Robby had caressed the baby’s downy head, a promise of Janie’s black curls evident in kitten-fur form. And he had leaned down to give Janie a quick kiss on the cheek. “Love you,” he’d said. But she couldn’t remember if she’d said “Love you” back. She hoped she had.

  She really, really hoped she had said something loving to her husband in the minutes before his death. But she couldn’t be sure. It still nagged at her.

  He knew! she would tell that nagging thought when it tried to overwhelm her. He knew I loved him! He knew that I was surprised to find myself in such a good marriage with such a good man. But still she wished she would have said so just then, with his hand on their newborn’s head and his lips at her cheek.

  “Love you,” she had silently said to him countless times since that day. When the kids were being adorable, or when she was cold at night, or when she sat on the back of the toilet tank with a hand towel pressed to her wet, aching eyes. “Love you.”

  And tomorrow, the fifth birthday of their first child, the one who had permanently altered their lives, their identities, their worldview…tomorrow would be a hard day to be without him. Possibly the hardest so far. It would probably be the second worst day of her entire life, a thought that did not induce sleep as she lay tense and lonely in her bed, awash in the permanence of his death.

  Janie trod carefully down the stairs and closed herself into the office, taking every precaution not to wake her mother. “Are you really coming to the party?” she e-mailed Jake.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Are you worried about it?”

  “I’m planning on spending most of it locked in the bathroom, so it should be a breeze.”

  “Sometimes the anticipation is much worse than the actual thing you dread.”

  “I just don’t want to let Dylan down. And I really don’t want to fall apart with all my relatives standing around like a Greek chorus, moaning about the demise of my sanity.”

  “Keep your mind open to the possibility that it won’t be horrific. Anticipate sadness, yes. But don’t plan a debacle. That’s never a good idea.”

  “I’m glad you’re coming.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  PATHOLOGICALLY EARLY, UNCLE CHARLIE, Aunt Brigid, and Aunt Jude arrived for the party at 12:30, bearing macaroni salad and an orange Jell-O mold with blueberries suspended in it like juicy beetles in amber. Cormac arrived twenty minutes later with a black-frosted cake in the shape of a pirate ship. It sat low in the “water” of turquoise tinted confectioner’s sugar and was topped by dismembered masts and sails from one of Dylan’s toy ships that Janie had secretly handed off to Cormac. Tiny plastic pirates stood ready by their canons waving swords and stolen jewels. It was the perfect combination of scary and mouthwatering. Barb documented her boyfriend’s genius by shooting an entire roll of film at it before the party had even started.

  Up on the new porch roof Tug Malinowski was nailing down asphalt shingles. He watched this cast of characters parade by him into the backyard and waved when they called for him to come and eat when he had a minute. The midday heat had caused rivulets of sweat to darken the neck of his shirt, making him thankful he’d tossed a clean one into his truck that morning.

  “Where’s the birthday boy?” he asked Janie as she climbed the ladder to hand him a glass of chocolate milk. It was yet another of her ploys to avoid the party without retreating to the darkened bathroom to cry.

  “His friend’s mother is bringing him home,” she said. “Do you really like this stuff, or would you rather have something more age-appropriate, like iced tea?” She felt bad for Tug, crouched up there in the squishy-wet heat. She had hoped for a cool, dry day for the party, but it was August, after all.

  “No, I like this.” He gulped it down and handed her back the empty glass. “You let someone else drive him home?”

  “Why? You think I shouldn’t have?”

  “No,” he said. “I think it’s good. For both of you. It’s good.”

  Janie looked into the calmness of his features for some indication of what the hell that was supposed to mean, but found no clues. He watches me, she realized, a thought that didn’t alarm her as much as she supposed it should.

  “Janie!” called Uncle Charlie. “The bucket’s full of water, now where are the damned apples!”

  “Don’t forget to come down for some cake,”
she said to Tug.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he said.

  “HE’S HERE! THE BIRTHDAY boy is right here!” yelled Keane, as he and Dylan came galloping through the gate to the backyard. “This is the guy!” He pointed both fingers at Dylan, in case Dylan’s relatives might not recognize him as a five-year-old.

  “Look at you!” they called, and “You’ve grown since yesterday!” and, ruffling Keane’s white-blond hair, “Who’s this friend, here?” The boys’ enthusiasm ramped up even further when they saw the cake.

  “It’s the wickedest cake ever in the whole universe!” exclaimed Keane, as Aunt Jude steered his fingers away from the icing. They ran to the game of Pin the Earring on the Pirate, which Uncle Charlie was affixing to the side of the house with duct tape. Being blindfolded and spun around was just the thing to keep the boy-energy at peak flow.

  “Hi,” said Heidi, catching Janie’s eye. She stood by the gate surveying the party.

  Janie walked over to thank her for picking up the boys. “How’d it go?”

  “Horrible,” she said. At close range, she looked pale and swollen, like some sort of albino bullfrog. “The anesthesia wore off too soon, and my jaw aches from keeping my mouth open for so long, and I feel like my face is vibrating. Is it? Can you see anything?”

  “Oh, the root canal,” said Janie. “No you look…fine,” she lied.

  “Don’t lie.”

  “Okay, you’re puffy.”

  Heidi’s shoulders slumped in resignation. “I’m Alvin the Chipmunk.”

  Janie smiled at this—perfect Heidi was making fun of herself—and a sudden momentary sense of okay-ness came over her. Miraculous, really, she thought, considering the dread she had barely been keeping at bay. “Stay,” she said to Heidi.

  “I don’t want to barge in.”

  “Barge,” said Janie. “We’ve got Jell-O, and God knows I’m not eating it.”