Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  I worked so hard. For what? So you could be the me I left behind? So you could take my place at the table, eating franks and beans with Jude on Saturday nights? Venturing no farther than Jansen Woods or Town Beach?

  I am deeply ashamed of myself for staying away. A child needs her mother when tragedy strikes. And yet, my dearest girl, I simply couldn’t watch you turn into me. The old pain overtook me and made me run. I told myself that my misery would compound yours, not lighten it. I’m too sensitive, I know. (Hasn’t Jude told me so a thousand times!) I hope someday you’ll forgive me.

  There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you since January, but never saw the right moment. Here, over the ocean, I feel I can say it. Would you ever consider coming to live in Italy? I could get you a part-time job at the American School. The children would be so happy, and we could travel every summer. It’s such a happy life, sweetheart, and I want to share it with you.

  Please consider this opportunity. I know it may seem a little outlandish, but think it through. It would be an answer to all those prayers I’ve been saying to a God who didn’t seem to listen.

  All my love,

  Mum

  16

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 23

  Weird letter from Mum. Said the reason she basically abandoned me this year is because she couldn’t bear to watch me turn into her. Am I her? Is that what happened?

  It made me think of that homeless guy Malcolm. The only person he ever cared about and felt safe with in this world is dying, and he can’t even be with her. All he has is the memory of his hand in hers and the promise of being reunited when they’re dead. I may be a self-pitying, miserable nerve-jangled freak, but at least I recognize that he has it way worse than me. Mum would never make it in the soup kitchen biz.

  She wants me and the kids to come live with her in Italy. I guess it’s an option if I ever permanently dismantle my life here, which was actually starting to happen last week. Always good to have a backup plan when Pology Cookies lose their magical powers.

  Speaking of which, Dylan has a playdate with Keane today. At Keane’s house. Or possibly they’ll hop a flight to Disneyworld if Heidi gets it into her head they need a little something extra. (Keep those cookie sheets ready for action, chickie, as Cormac would say.) Speaking of Cormac…blah. I know. I need to do something. No brainstorms yet.

  Tug’s out there staining the porch. He gave me way too many details about what colors he was going to put where and how and when and why, and the names were all like “honey oak” and “chocolate mahogany” and “fish sticks and a bag of chips birch.” Someone in the stain company marketing department was hungry, is all I can think. I kind of stopped listening. But it was nice sit there and have someone to drink my coffee with.

  HEIDI RETURNED DYLAN HOME from the playdate ten minutes early, which was just about when Janie realized she was checking the clock about every thirty seconds, and she was grateful for the reprieve from this compulsion. His face was painted with a wispy goatee and a black patch over one eye.

  “I did it with eyeliner,” explained Heidi. “In the kitchen, at home,” she added purposefully. “It’ll come off with a little makeup remover.”

  Like I have makeup remover, thought Janie. But she nodded and admired her surly-looking swabby, and responded “Avast ye!” to his “Argh!” Dylan wasn’t allowed on the porch with all the cans of stain sitting around waiting to be spilled, so he contented himself with fighting bad guys in the front yard and doing the play-by-play on his activities through the screen to Tug.

  “There’s another one…there’s two bad scary pirates now, but I am fighting them very hard…fyoo, fyoo, fyooooo! My sword is all fire…You bad pirates…don’t come in my house and scare my mom…she is very brave and she will punch you in the nose so all your blood comes out…”

  Tug leaned close to the kitchen window and said, “Janie, come listen to this.”

  She had been staring into the refrigerator, hoping to be inspired. Actually she’d been hoping that an entire meal had magically appeared in there, complete with drinks and after-dinner mints. She closed the fridge and turned toward the window, but never heard Dylan. What she focused on was the Ford Explorer in her driveway with “Cormac’s Confectionary” written on the door panel.

  Janie glanced from the truck to The Kiss on the kitchen wall. She slid it off its hook. Another quick look told her Cormac was now swashbuckling with Dylan, and he would have to come all the way around to the back door to avoid being spattered with stain. This gave her just enough time to rush up the stairs and back down again before she would have to greet him.

  “Hey, chickie,” he said as he came in, and she rose from the chair into which she had just planted herself seconds before. He seemed tired, and there was something about the particular way a smudge of flour clung to his temple that made her notice how his hairline was receding.

  “Hey,” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “Brought you some day-old muffins. Mixed variety, except no banana almond. For some reason everyone was in a banana kind of mood today.” He reached up to the top of her cabinet and brought down the blue-flowered plate. “Needs a wipe,” he said. It was covered with a fine layer of sawdust.

  “I haven’t used it much lately,” she said, and ran the plate under warm water. She wiped it and put it on the table. Cormac laid out the muffins. “OJ?” she asked.

  “You know it,” he said. She nearly spilled the juice watching to see when he would notice. He pulled the top off a muffin and opened his mouth. And stopped. “You hung it!” he said.

  “Yeah, it’s nice.” She turned to put the juice away, smiling to herself at having surprised him.

  “You hate it.”

  “No, I never said I hated it. I said I had to get used to it.”

  “You said it was the worst birthday of Dylan’s life.”

  “Well, it was. So far. He’ll probably have worse ones. Like that birthday of yours when you hitchhiked all the way up to Colgate to see that girl that you thought you had something going with, and she only pecked you on the cheek when she saw you, and you turned around and tried to hitch back but you couldn’t get a ride. Didn’t you spend like eighteen hours on the road that day? That was definitely worse than Dylan’s.”

  They ate muffins, and Carly showed off her new vertical skills, and Dylan came in complaining of a yucky taste in his mouth, having smeared eyeliner onto his lips. A pineapple coconut muffin turned out to be the perfect antidote (after Janie scrubbed his face with a washcloth. “What, no makeup remover?” teased Cormac.)

  Tug’s face appeared behind the screen of the kitchen window. “I’m taking off,” he said.

  “You’ll be back tomorrow?” asked Janie.

  “Yeah, the floor’s not done yet.”

  “Want a muffin?” asked Cormac. “There’s plenty.”

  Tug didn’t respond immediately. He looked to Janie, and the eye contact went on a little too long.

  “Come in,” she said, turning away to give a piece of corn muffin to Carly, now seated on Cormac’s lap. What was Tug waiting for, anyway?

  When he appeared in the kitchen a moment later, she could see a tiny splatter of stain on his left cheek like a constellation of freckles. He offered a handshake to Cormac. “Tug Malinowski.”

  “Cormac McGrath, Janie’s cousin. You were at Dylan’s party, right?” Cormac steadied the baby on his lap with one hand and shook with the other. “Nice job out there, by the way. Not too many contractors will paint.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Tug, giving Janie a quick glance and seating himself in the chair next to her.

  Cormac pushed the plate of muffins toward Tug. “Try the pistachio,” he smiled. “Janie’s favorite.”

  Barb’s collage of party pictures had been hung in Dylan’s bedroom in a place of honor over his collection of camp art projects. Cormac was urged upstairs to admire it, Carly dangling from one floury hip and Dylan from the other.

  Janie and Tug h
ad sat alone together at the kitchen table any number of times over the previous months, going over the porch plans, discussing changes, and sometimes just sitting there drinking coffee. But now Janie felt a certain unrest, perhaps because Cormac was in the house, and she had the strange sensation of being watched.

  “What happened to the other picture?” Tug asked. His voice was quiet, as usual, and yet it seemed to bounce off the creamy yellow walls of the kitchen. “The one with the couple kissing.”

  “Oh, I just put it in my closet. I guess I’ll hang it when I figure out where it should go.”

  “I can hang it for you.”

  A quick smile. “I know I’m not exactly Bob the Builder, but I can manage something that minor. I should probably find a book on home maintenance, though. Remember when you helped me with the gutters? I was making such a mess of it.” She shook her head and nibbled at her muffin.

  He nodded, remembering. “You weren’t too bad for a rookie. Most of this stuff isn’t astrophysics, you’ll pick it up. And you can always call me if you get in a tough spot.”

  Call him? Like on the phone, not out the window? “Tomorrow’s your last day, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty much. Once the floor’s stained, the job’s done.” He pulled off a piece of his muffin and dabbed at the crumbs sprinkled around his napkin, but he didn’t complete the action by putting it into his mouth. He put the piece down, then picked it up again and dabbed some more.

  TUG LEFT, ALREADY A few minutes late, he explained, for softball pregame warm-ups, a practice that was once incidental but was now necessary for muscles that didn’t leap from rest to action like they used to. He made a mildly self-deprecating joke of it, but Janie could sense both regret at his being forced to coddle a now-less-cooperative body and also pride at getting out there nonetheless. She noticed his ropy forearm tighten as he grasped the napkin and muffin remnants and released them to the trash basket. The scar on his arm had ripened from an irritable pink to a resigned tan color over the time she had known him.

  Cormac, Carly, and Dylan straggled back down the stairs together, Cormac now holding not only the baby but a Popsicle stick structure that Dylan had given him. They plunked back down at the table and went for another round of muffins, Cormac eating only the top, as usual.

  “Why do you just eat the tops?” asked Dylan.

  “It’s my favorite part. I like to save my stomach room for the stuff I like the best,” said Cormac. He glanced at Janie. “And speaking of what I like best…I have some big news.” Janie felt her own stomach clench, as if it were awaiting a death-defying drop into unknown territory.

  “What?” said Dylan, bouncing in his chair. “What is it?”

  “Barb and I are getting married.”

  A sound escaped Janie’s open mouth, part gasp, part synthesized happiness.

  “At a wedding?” asked Dylan. “With a cake?”

  “Cake will definitely be involved,” said Cormac, his eyes on Janie as he transferred Carly, now reaching for the muffin plate, to the other knee. His head tipped one notch to the side. “Chickie,” he said. “You up for it?”

  Don’t be a jerk, she told herself. Right now. Stop being a jerk. She reached her hand up to the back of his head and into his hair, grasping it and giving it an affectionate tug. “Yup,” she nodded, “Definitely.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Cormac’s getting married!” she said to Dylan.

  “I know, Mom,” said Dylan, wagging his head at her. “He already told me.”

  THE SALE PENDING SHINGLE seemed to have grown out of the top of Shelly’s For Sale sign overnight, like a whitewashed weed. Janie noticed it as she backed out of the driveway to take Dylan to his last day of camp. She was still getting used to the news that Cormac, the perennial Happy Bachelor, had suddenly folded his tent and moved to another campground, or so it felt. Also, it was her second Jake-less Friday, and though she had so far resisted the urges she felt to contact him, or even just to drive by Our Lady, Comforter of the Afflicted Church hoping for a glimpse of him, Fridays were particularly hard. Everything seemed to be ending.

  The bathtub, streaked with many days of boy grime, needed scrubbing, and the vacuum had nestled quietly in its closet for too long, but Janie felt limp and lonely and sat in the open doorway to the porch, watching Tug stain the remaining few boards of her mahogany—not pine—floor.

  “You know why my cousin came over yesterday?” she said. “To tell me he’s getting married.”

  “When?” asked Tug, carefully guiding the stain-soaked rag along the grain. It was Australian Timber Oil, he had told her, a special formulation. She couldn’t have cared less.

  “New Year’s Eve. Can you beat that?”

  “A buddy of mine got married the day my wife had me served with divorce papers. I was one of the groomsmen. Had to smile for the pictures and everything.”

  “Did you?”

  “Sure. What choice did I have? Can’t ruin another guy’s wedding just because your own marriage crashed and burned.”

  “She served you?” asked Janie, tentatively. So far she had no data that Tug was anything other than…well, than not-a-badguy. Shelly trusted him. And Janie couldn’t ever remember him doing anything wrong or mean. Annoying, intrusive, and over-bearing, yes, but not actually bad. However, she didn’t really trust her own powers of observation these days. Her instincts had been haywire, scrambled like some sort of foreign military intelligence signal, since Robby’s death.

  “Yep,” he said. “She served me.”

  Janie got the feeling that if she asked him for further information, he would give it. But, scrambled though she felt she was, she understood that divorce details were a whole new level of interaction—at least for her. Maybe he was used to recounting the grisly scenes of his marriage to whoever hired him to build so much as a doghouse. Perhaps it was how divorced people washed the bad taste out of their mouths, by talking to strangers who wouldn’t know any better if the story were spun, here and there, to the teller’s advantage. Did Janie really want to up the ante with this guy, who was likely just passing the last few moments of his employment with her by smoothing out the lumps of his prior bad behavior? She got up to refresh her coffee.

  The dishwasher had finished its cycle, and she unloaded the steaming-hot glasses and plates to their assigned places in the cabinets. She scrubbed a solidified spot of ketchup off the side of the refrigerator. She straightened the napkins in the blue ceramic napkin holder. Tug’s wife served him divorce papers? Returning to lean in the doorway, Janie asked, “She beat you to it?”

  It had been some number of minutes since the conversation had abruptly ended with her departure to dawdle in the kitchen, but Tug picked it up as if it had been a matter of seconds. “No, I was hoping we could hold it together. But Sue was done. She made it pretty clear.”

  Janie remained standing in the doorway, paralyzed by indecision as to whether she would sit back down, ask any further questions, change the subject, or resume her meandering patrol of the kitchen, searching for semi-pointless tidying activities.

  Tug glanced up at her from his crouch on the mahogany planks. “I don’t have any real need to go into it,” he said, “but I’ll tell you if you’re interested. As long as you’re not just being polite.”

  She felt silly, but in a sort of comfortable way. “You know me,” she said. “Polite isn’t really the first adjective that leaps to mind.” A burst of laughter came from deep in his chest, and his head went back, his eyes nearly closed. It was a surprised, tickled kind of laugh and it satisfied something in Janie that she didn’t even know was hungry. It made her laugh, too. “Well, it’s true!” she said.

  “I’d have to agree with you there,” he nodded, still grinning at her. It should have been insulting but it just wasn’t. “Listen,” he said. “I forgot my cooler, and I was going to do takeout at Carey’s Diner. You and Carly should meet me there and we’ll have a nice lunch to celebrate your porch.”

  CAREY’S
DINER WAS NOT really a diner, and the Carey family hadn’t owned it since the 1980s. A local named Mel Gunther had bought it and upgraded it to a café motif, with sponged yellow walls and European-looking pottery displayed in folksy clusters on the walls. In back, overlooking the parking lot, he had installed a brick patio with glass and wrought-iron tables shaded by large green canvas umbrellas. Mr. Gunther had toyed with changing the name of the diner to something slightly more urbane; however he noted quite shrewdly that the steady stream of his customer-neighbors had taken nearly six months to stop commenting on how much the diner had changed. For the better, he hoped they meant, but they never used explicitly positive phrasing. It was better—he knew it was. All they seemed to notice, though, was that it was different from what they were used to.

  “So is Dylan going to kindergarten?” asked Tug, glancing up from his menu. They were seated on the patio where the shade made the heat feel merely summery, rather than oppressive.

  “No,” said Janie.

  “He could go, though. He’s five.”

  “Yeah, he could go,” said Janie. “But since his birthday’s in August, he’d be the youngest kid in the class, and I just didn’t think another year of preschool would be the worst thing.”

  “It’s a big step, kindergarten,” Tug nodded, studying the menu again. “Whole new world.”

  “You’re talking about me now, aren’t you?”

  He gave a quick shrug, “Partly. I’m agreeing with you, you know. Neither of you needs something else to get used to right now.”

  The waitress, a middle-aged woman in a white polo shirt, which was stuffed into the elasticized waistband of her khaki pants, hurried over to the table. “Hi, Rena,” said Tug. “How’s it going?”