by Juliette Fay
Early Saturday morning, with Dylan and Carly circling their legs like cats, Tug and Janie took her small sofa and her mother’s old wingback chair out to his truck. He would bring it to the take-it-or-leave-it at the dump when he brought his own trash. While they waited for Cormac to arrive after the morning rush at the bakery, Tug disappeared for several minutes. She spied him hauling her garbage bags and recycling to the truck from the little unattached garage in the side yard.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said when he came back in.
“Might as well. I’m going anyway.”
“Well, thanks. It’s very thoughtful.”
A look came over his face then—barely a look, only the slightest modification of his features. A slight crinkling of the spray of crow’s-feet around his eyes, a brief play of muscles around his lips, a minor shift of his head to one side. He looked at her, the beams of his pupils dilating, taking in every inch of her, and then after a beat, he looked away.
It sent a spasm of panic through her almost as intense as the night she faced the intruder in her living room. She turned and walked quickly away from him, finding herself in the darkened bathroom. Shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit.
It had been the shadow at the back of their friendship, this look. A silent, barely perceptible edge to the questions he asked and the stories he didn’t want to think about but nonetheless wanted her to hear. In certain light, even a shadow can be caught unawares.
The whole picture came into focus as she sat on the edge of the tub pinching the back of her hand. The lunches and the little offerings—not quite gifts, but also not necessary in the course of a purely platonic relationship. The easy contentment as he leaned against the stands chatting with her while the rest of his team sat on the bench. The pats on her hand. More than anything, the way in which his presence had come to be expected. He hadn’t asked whether his help was needed today. There was furniture to be moved. Of course he would come.
“Janie!” she heard Cormac boom through the house. “We’re here!”
Get a grip, she told herself. Get one huge hell of a serious grip.
“Tug and I are going over for the chair,” said Cormac clapping his hand on Tug’s shoulder when she emerged. “You sure all of this is going to fit? How wide’s this door?”
“Two foot ten,” said Tug. His face was as blank as sheet rock. “The one on the porch is a three-footer.” Measuring tape in hand, the two men left for Shelly’s with Dylan in tow.
Barb came around the corner from the kitchen. Carly was standing on her feet, her little hands stretched upward to meet Barb’s, giggling as they clomped into view. “Are you excited?” Barb asked Janie.
“What?” said Janie sharply, feeling as if her jangling nerves might somehow show.
“About the new furniture—don’t you just love redecorating?”
“Oh.” Janie inhaled deeply and exhaled, finally managing a friendly smile. “Yeah, it’s just…”
“I know,” said Barb, walking Carly all around the nearly empty living room. “I always get a little wigged out when I make a major change, too.”
Janie nodded and leaned against an empty wall, willing herself to calm down. It’s just Tug, she told herself. He’s just lonely. It’ll pass. He knows I’m not…It’ll pass.
“Hey,” said Barb, swinging the little girl up into her arms. “I’m glad we have a moment alone. I wanted to ask you something.” Janie forced herself to focus on Barb with her best I’m Listening face. “Would you…” Barb stammered, took a breath and started again. “I’d really like it if you’d be one of my bridesmaids.”
You’ve got to be kidding me, thought Janie. “Sure,” she said. “Love to.”
“I promise not to make you wear anything silly—no hats or bows or anything!”
Janie sighed. “I’m sure anything you pick will be fine.”
“Ooo, this is so great!” Barb said, giving Carly a squeeze.
“Bah!” squealed Carly and clapped her hands.
WITH BARB CORRALLING THE kids, Janie, Tug, and Cormac got the couch into the house. The living room was more crowded with all the new furniture, but the coolness of the color and the rounded smoothness of the leather softened the room. It begged to be sat on.
Tug remained standing while the others sank to their seats. “I should run,” he said. His dark eyes transmitted nothing as they flicked to Janie. “I’ll catch up with you next week.”
“Thanks for all your help,” she said.
“Thanks, man,” said Cormac, standing to shake his hand. “Couldn’t have managed it without you, no kidding.”
After Tug left, they sprawled out on the couch and chair, the kids climbing over the arms of the furniture like fleshy lizards. Cormac and Barb squabbled happily about what kind of cake they would design for Carly. “Is Tug coming?” Cormac asked Janie.
“No,” she said. “Just family.”
TUESDAY MORNING, JANIE SWEPT up any errant cake crumbs missed the night before, and moved the remains of Carly’s piano cake into the oven. She brought the balloons up to the kids’ room and took out the trash, though the bag was only half filled with festive paper plates and napkins.
Even still, Tug had not so much as unpacked his cooler before he was asking, “Carly’s birthday is this month, right?” He smiled down at the little girl as she grasped the knee of his jeans.
“Uh, yeah.” Why was Janie feeling so guilty? It was a family party. She hadn’t invited Heidi. And she had only invited Shelly because Shelly had instructed her in no uncertain terms that she was to be apprised of all Janie’s festivities. But it was clear that Shelly would be too busy arranging and rearranging her new home in Rhode Island to come, so it didn’t really count. And just because someone keeps showing up, that doesn’t entitle him to a season’s pass to your life. She didn’t have to make excuses. “It was yesterday.”
Tug glanced back up at Janie as if to determine if this could possibly be true. “How’d you celebrate?” His tone was overly neutral.
“Little party here last night. Just pizza and cake. And relatives.”
“Huh,” Tug grunted, the least possible indication that he’d heard her. He ran a hand over Carly’s soft black curls. “Happy Birthday, birthday girl,” he murmured. Carly grinned up into his blankness, then turned and wobbled away, in search of someone or something more engaging.
Janie ground her molars together. It was unreasonable that a grown man would be disappointed at not being invited to a child’s birthday party. It was insane, actually. He couldn’t just puppy dog around like some adoption candidate, for godsake. And if he had a…a thing for her…he would just have to get over it.
Tug glanced back at Janie, nodded once, and began to unpack the cooler. Sandwiches, potato chips, grapes…
“Uhh!” Janie groaned.
“What.” There was a warning in his voice but she ignored it.
“You can’t do this!”
“Do what, exactly.”
“You can’t want so bad to be here! It’s too hard!”
Tug slammed down the thermos with the chocolate milk in it. He shook his head, struggling for words. “Do you think I like this? This was not what I had in mind when I took this job, believe me! I didn’t even want the damned job once I knew…what…that he…” He jammed his hands in his pockets, took a breath.
“What do you mean you didn’t want the job. You showed up here with a signed contract and told me you were starting the following week! Which you didn’t, by the way. You blew me off for a month!”
“That’s right, I gave you a whole month to back out. Why do you think I did that?”
“Because my little porch is so inconsequential and you had bigger fish on the line!” Janie said pointing her finger at him.
“No, because your husband was dead. And my wife of twenty-some-odd years was divorcing me, and I couldn’t stand to be around someone else in pain. I had enough of my own.”
Janie’s mouth dropped open. “W
ell…then why did you take the job?”
“Because he wanted you to have it!”
“And how was that your responsibility?”
“Jesus, Janie!” He shook his head in frustration. Fury clamped around his eyes and jaws. “Jesus,” he muttered again, then took a deep breath and exhaled. “I was somebody’s husband once. And if I had died with a gift for my wife in my pocket, I sure as hell would have wanted someone to take the damned thing out and give it to her before the lid closed on my coffin.”
Janie felt weak all of a sudden, and her eyes began to sting with a warning of tears. She sank down onto a kitchen chair. Carly was in the living room, the discordant notes of her little piano floating through the house.
“I’m sorry,” Tug muttered. “I don’t mean to be the guy who wouldn’t go home.”
“No,” Janie shook her head, stared at the coarse-grained oak table. “You’re not mostly.”
“Mostly.”
Her face softened and she glanced over at him. “You just have to be clear that I’m not…looking for more than friendship.”
“I know,” he said. “Neither am I, really. I should stop coming by so often.”
“No!” She said this with a vehemence that surprised them both. She did want him around. And while she knew that misunderstandings and hurt feelings were possible—probable even—it seemed to be the going price for having him to talk to on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays. And for a standing invitation to all his home games. And for those pats on the hand, which she really didn’t mind so much.
“Listen,” she said. “If I tell you something, can you take it the way I mean it?”
He nodded, watching her and waiting, she knew, for a bomb to drop. She didn’t like it, this power she now seemed to have to hurt him. But if she wanted the balance of power restored between them, she had to hand over a little piece of herself, an embarrassing fact that would offer him some small protection from the damage she could do. “I missed you at the party last night,” she admitted, barely able to look at him. “I wished you were here.”
His relief was palpable, and a slow smile started around his eyes.
“Don’t smile!” she cringed.
“Then next time,” he said, leveling a gaze at her like a dare, “invite me.”
19
FOR HALLOWEEN, DYLAN WANTED to be a knight.
“Not a pirate?” asked Janie.
“No, I’m bored of them now.”
So she cut cardboard into the shape of a shield and stapled a cardboard strap to the back. She fashioned an empty wrapping paper tube into a sword. And she covered these and his bike helmet with aluminum foil. Dylan was so excited that he convinced her of his need to “try it out a little bit.” Within twenty-four hours, the foil was off the helmet, the strap was off the shield, and the sword was bent in so many places it looked like a large, shiny elbow macaroni.
“Can’t we just buy one?” he asked, after a brief and unconvincing expression of regret for ruining all her work.
“There’s a ton of costumes at Target,” offered Tug. His noon lunch with Janie had been delayed until two o’clock by a surly plumber, whom Tug had eventually fired. Tug had to admit to himself that the guy’s making him late for lunch had played a small but pivotal role in the termination.
“What were you doing at Target?” asked Janie. She could imagine him at any hardware store in town, but Target, with its comforter sets and Crock-Pots and entire aisle of hair accessories, seemed completely un-Tug-like.
“When a man needs new boxers, he needs new boxers.”
“Too much information!” she said, putting her hands over her ears.
Tug laughed. “Oh, get over it.”
“Did you get a costume?” Dylan asked Tug.
“Uh, no. I don’t usually go out for Halloween, buddy.”
“Why not?”
“Uh…” He looked to Janie for help.
“Yeah, why not?” she teased.
“You could come with us!” said Dylan.
Again, Tug looked to Janie. Did he want an out or an invitation? she wondered. And what did she want? “Come,” she said. “You can help me carry all the costume pieces when Dylan gets tired of holding them.”
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5
It can’t possibly be November. But it’s getting cold and rainy, and the supermarket has turkey basters and cans of pumpkin in the center aisle, so maybe it is.
Halloween was fun. Dylan was a “nice knight, not the bad kind” and very happy with his plastic sword and shield. Aunt Jude came across a toddler-sized ladybug costume in the clothing donations at Table of Plenty. Not exactly what the well-dressed homeless person is wearing this season, so she nabbed it for Carly. Barb came over with her camera. Among the close-ups of antennae and sword handles, I’m sure there are some very cute pictures. Tug came, too. He was dressed as a guy who’s not covered in sawdust with a tape measure clipped to his jeans. He looked nice.
And now we have more Milk Duds and Tootsie Rolls than we could ever eat in a lifetime. Tug stuck around and took care of a couple of chocolate bars after I put the kids to bed. He still hasn’t told me why Sue divorced him. The obvious reason is infidelity, but I just don’t see it. He doesn’t seem like a cheater. Maybe she wanted to have kids and he didn’t? But he loves kids, couldn’t be more thoughtful with mine. There’s always money, I guess, but he seems to be making a pretty good living. The longer he doesn’t tell me, the more I want to know.
I went to the soup kitchen with Aunt Jude on Saturday. I brought a bunch of the candy Dylan collected but doesn’t like (and even some he does). I’ve learned that alcoholics like sweets, and eating sugar helps stave off the craving for booze. So I was very popular for a few minutes there.
Beryl was back. She told me about her recent travels up north. She stepped across the border into Maine and stepped back into New Hampshire again, then crossed and recrossed. She likes the feeling of getting to choose over and over where she will be. She likes to change course suddenly, just because she can and no one can stop her.
But then apparently someone did change her course. “A distinctly indecorous gentleman” who caught her sleeping beneath the awning of an office building tried to “press his advantage.” It sounded pretty scary, but she preferred not to say too much. She did leave Portland “posthaste” and returned to the relative safety of Pelham.
I have this strange notion that I could take her home, give her a shower and a haircut, put her in one set of clothes (not three), and take her to tea at the Ritz. No one would know that she wasn’t some genteel older woman with season’s tickets to the ballet. My question is who was Beryl before she was home less and a little crazy and incapable of staying in any one place for more than an hour? Was she like this as a little girl? Did something happen that traumatized her so much that her brain chemicals got flowing in the wrong direction? Who was Beryl before she was Beryl?
Malcolm’s younger sister in Oregon is getting worse. He had me write a sad, desperate letter to his nephew begging him to stay by her side and be good to her. He hinted that he knew his sister hadn’t always been easy to live with, that perhaps she wasn’t the best mother she might have been under other, better circumstances. Malcolm implored his nephew to set all that aside, to imagine her in her earliest days, “unstained by hard ship.” Malcolm remembered her as a very beautiful, sweet-tempered child and wished that he could give these memories to his nephew so he would know that his mother had been good. A baby is the purest thing there is, he said, and everyone was a baby once. “She was my baby, the only one I’ll ever get, so please, please take care of her.”
I cried. I couldn’t help it. The impulse to avoid pain, even other people’s pain, is so great. And yet there we are, Aunt Jude and I, almost every Saturday. Otherwise who would type the letters?
LATER THAT WEEK, CORMAC and Barb stopped by with the pictures from Halloween. “Just a few,” said Barb. “The ones you’d like.”
“What about the on
es I wouldn’t like?”
“Oh…No, I…,” stuttered Barb. “There aren’t any you wouldn’t like, so much as they wouldn’t…interest you.”
“Artsy shots,” interjected Cormac, giving Janie a Watch Yourself look. “You know, antennae and stuff.”
“They might interest me,” Janie said. “Who doesn’t like antennae?”
Barb looked to Cormac for interpretation, and found him rolling his eyes and smirking at Janie. “You wouldn’t know antennae if they bit you on the ass!”
“At least I know that antennae don’t bite, biscuit boy!”
Cormac turned to Barb, “That’s it, she’s out of the wedding.”
“What?” said Barb. “It’s only seven weeks away—”
“Oh please, Cousin Cormac, please,” Janie mock whined. “PLEASE can I be in your wedding?”
“I hate it when she begs,” he said to Barb. He swung an arm around Janie’s neck and pulled her in tight, grabbing her chin in his other hand. “Okay, but you better be good, understand? No bad girls in the wedding, chickie.” It was all in fun, but the message was clear.
“I swear on a stack of cookbooks,” she puckered at him, “I’ll be good.”
They looked through the pictures, and it wasn’t hard for Janie to be enthusiastic and appreciative. Barb seemed to have an uncanny knack for making her subjects show themselves: Dylan, sword held high, practically channeling King Arthur; Carly hurling herself across the room, looking for all the world as if the ladybug costume were meant for actual flight.