Shelter Me

by Juliette Fay

  Songs were sung, the Host was consecrated. Janie shuffled obediently toward him in the Communion line. “Body of Christ,” he said as his fingers dipped into the dish for a wafer. When he glanced up to deliver it, he registered her face. Memory softened his features, and the real Jake surfaced momentarily from behind his sacramental duty.

  “Thanks,” she said, rather than the requisite “Amen.” She gazed at him for an extra second, just long enough to cause a stutter in the shuffling feet behind her. Then she stepped away from him and toward the chalice.

  AFTER MASS, THEY WENT home and made struffoli with the kids, rolling out the ropes of dough, cutting them into little balls and frying them in oil. Dylan’s favorite part was dipping them in warm honey and rolling them in the tiny colorful candy sprinkles. He didn’t mind sampling about a dozen of them either. When the kids were asleep, Janie and Noreen stayed up late wrapping presents, making preparations for Christmas brunch, and trolling the Internet for deals on airfare to Italy. Janie was so tired when she went to bed that night, she was certain she would fall asleep before she could think one more thought.

  But as soon as she burrowed into her bed and closed her eyes, the secret despondence she’d held tethered at the far fringes of her awareness throughout the day pulled up its stake and lunged. Missing, missing, missing. The dull ache of Robby’s absence throbbed in her chest.

  Where are you now? she wondered. Heaven, so comforting to a five-year-old, seemed like a made-for-TV concept in the dark press of her sorrow. Where are you right this very minute?

  Somewhere, everywhere, nowhere. No answer satisfactory, and no way to know. She was slipping toward the hem of sleep now, where surreal images and half-sensible sentences dangle at the edge of consciousness. Sad, old Emmett was there, asking her to dance, singing to her in his grieving, gravelly voice, “Let it be over, now.”

  WHEN SHE WOKE SHE knew she’d been dreaming of Tug, the smell of chocolate almost real to her still. She felt for her wedding band and was both relieved and disappointed to find it. She wondered if she could possibly be good enough for him. Then the kids rushed in.

  It was a mostly happy Christmas. However, there was a distinct absence of men: Robby, of course, and Mike, who’d been with them for every Christmas morning until this one. Janie tried to remind herself that it never would have occurred to him that it might be good to show up for this one in particular. Not just them, though. Uncle Charlie’s back had gotten worse, so he came for a short while, but then went home. Cormac, too, made an appearance, but left for Barb’s family’s holiday celebration after brunch.

  And Tug was missing. Very much missing, Janie realized.

  Noreen and Aunt Jude stayed, but when Shelly showed up unexpectedly in the early evening, they took themselves to Brigid and Charlie’s. Shelly brought overly expensive gifts—toys from FAO Schwarz in New York, and dangling crystal earrings for Janie.

  “I didn’t get you a gift,” Janie apologized. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

  “Pfff,” Shelly waved her hand. “Not necessary.”

  “Still, I feel bad.”

  “Tell me some news. Tell me all about your life. That’s what I want.” Janie smirked, shook her head. “Ooo, what’s this?” said Shelly. “What have I missed?”

  “Let me put the kids to bed first.”

  “That good?” prodded Shelly. “That BAD?”

  “You’ll have to judge that for yourself.”

  Once Janie got the kids tucked in, she came back down, thinking on the way about how she might tell Shelly about Tug without getting too specific or personal. It turned out to be a waste of fifteen seconds. As the story began to unfold, Shelly fired well-timed questions at her, surgical strikes that reduced her strategy of nonspecificity to rubble.

  “Wait, so he took you out to lunch when he finished the porch? Did he pay? Did you try to pay and he insisted?” she asked.

  Then later, “Where did he stand when you came to the softball games and his team was on the bench, with you or with the team? Did he ever stand with the team? How close did he stand? Was he touching you?”

  Shelly became so engrossed, she began to pick absentmindedly at the plate of crackers and cheese that was still sitting on the end table from brunch. “What’s he like when he gets angry? Does he swear? Does he get a wild look?”

  They had moved into the kitchen and were cutting themselves pieces of leftover quiche when Shelly said, “WAIT a minute! Just HOLD ON! You’re telling me he asked you to have Thanksgiving together? He came to your FAMILY’S THANKSGIVING?”

  By the time Janie told her about the weekend on Cape Cod, Shelly was eating mint Oreo ice cream straight out of the container. She was completely silent except for the licking of the spoon.

  “So that’s how we left it,” Janie concluded. “It’s four weeks today since we’ve talked. I miss him so much, Shelly, I can barely stand it. But he’s made it clear that he won’t see me until I have all my feelings tucked neatly into place. I just don’t know if I can do that…”

  Shelly tossed the spoon and empty container into the sink without a word. She left the room and came back with her cell phone. “What’s his number?” she asked.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because there’s this really cute girl in my office who just got divorced. I’m going to see if he wants me to fix him up. What’s the number? I can call directory assistance if you don’t have it.”

  “Shelly!”

  “What?”

  “That’s not funny!”

  “You think I’m being funny? You think I’m joking?” Shelly put the phone down and spread her hands flat on the table, the shiny pink nails splayed out like a Barbie doll’s cutlery. “Oh no,” she continued. “This is no joke. This man, whom you love—and yes, he’s right, you absolutely love him—who loves you to the point of insanity—because he’d have to be NUTS to put up with all of this! You think you can just leave him hanging on some hook in your closet, waiting for you to take that damn piece of metal off your hand? You’re wearing that thing like some sort of armor, like it will protect you from something, like it will keep bad things from you. It’s keeping GOOD things from you! Tug Malinowski, is what!”

  She stood up, stalked up and down the room, hands flying. “I’ve never heard of anything so insane in my life,” she muttered. “It should be illegal, this kind of crazy.” She turned on Janie, pointing a finely honed finger. “YOU have happiness by the BALLS, and you don’t even know what to do with it! If you can’t take that thing off right this minute, and go over there on CHRISTMAS—so important to you, your peace and goodwill and jingle bells all over the place—if you can’t go over there right now and tell him you love him, and you’re sorry, and to please give you a second chance, then I don’t even KNOW what.”

  Janie started to cry. Shelly sat down and cried a little, too. “Janie, baby, please,” she sniffed. “I taught you better than this.” She put out her hand, palm up.

  “Shelly, it’s my wedding ring, for chrissake! You can’t just command me to hand it over!”

  “It might be your wedding ring,” Shelly said gently. “But you’re not married anymore, bub.”

  “I miss my husband,” Janie whispered as tears dripped from her chin.

  “Of course you do. We all miss people. I miss my parents, may they rest in peace. I miss my marriage when it was good. You don’t have to stop missing. You just have to accept that missing doesn’t mean you turn away happiness. Missing doesn’t mean you have to miss Tug, too. You can have him!” She held her open palm a little closer to Janie. “So…how is he with the hands? Because I’ve always thought his hands were very sexy.”

  “Jesus, Shelly!” But she started to laugh.

  JANIE DROVE DOWN ROUTE 27, a bowl of struffoli on the seat next to her, wondering what her mother would think when she arrived home and found Shelly there by herself. What would Shelly tell her? Good Lord, it could be anything. She was glad she would miss that particular conversation,
which would likely include some none-too-delicate comment about not expecting Janie home any time soon.

  Four weeks. Time enough for Tug to have moved on himself. Or to be so angry he’d want nothing to do with her. As she climbed his front steps she tried to consider the worst.

  Nevertheless, she was not prepared for the door to be answered by a very attractive, very young woman. She was wearing a skin-tight, low-cut burgundy-colored blouse, and her dark eyes seemed impossibly large and liquid. It took Janie half a moment to realize that the effect was enhanced by expertly applied eyeliner.

  “Uh, hi,” said the woman, who was clearly taking in every thread of Janie’s decade-old gray peacoat and the hole in the fingertip of her black leather gloves. With the bowl of struffoli in her hands, Janie felt like Oliver Twist, begging for gruel.

  “I’m sorry,” stammered Janie. “I didn’t mean to barge in…I just wanted to tell Tug…”

  The woman turned and yelled into the house, “Uncle Tug!”

  Janie exhaled so hard it made her cough.

  When Tug came up behind the young woman, she pointed to Janie and said, “Uh, she wants to, like, tell you something.”

  “Merry Christmas,” choked Janie. She handed him the struffoli.

  “Merry Christmas,” said Tug. He looked down into the bowl at the sticky balls covered in tiny candy pellets. He looked back up at her. “Come in,” he said.

  He put the bowl on the dining room table and introduced her to his brother, Dave, sister-in-law, Christa, and nieces Tracey and Sophie. Janie took off her coat and shoved the gloves in the pocket. Tug reached for the coat and watched her hands come toward him as she held it out to him. He went still for a second, then took the coat and hung it in the closet behind him.

  They had been finishing up dessert when she arrived, so they invited her to sit with them at the table. “Here, I’ll cut you some birthday cake,” said Christa, slicing into a lopsided mountain of fudgy black chocolate.

  Janie’s brain seemed to be crisscrossing the room like a roving camera, flicking from face to face, searching for hints of anger or dislike. Did they know about her, and if so, were they wishing she would leave? “Whose birthday is it?” she asked, trying to sound normal.

  “That would be our Lord and Savior,” said Dave with a stiffness that paralyzed her for a moment. Then he broke into a grin.

  “Dad!” groaned Tracey, the one who had answered the door. She was eighteen—“going on twenty-eight,” her father teased her—and a freshman at Rhode Island School of Design, studying textiles.

  “Fashion,” said Sophie executing a perfect teenaged eye roll. Sophie was fifteen, a sophomore at Natick High School, on the junior varsity lacrosse team but hoping to make varsity next year. She was built like Tug, boxy and strong, tall for a girl. She had his auburn hair, too, hanging in a ponytail from the back of her head. “These little ball things are pretty good,” she said, picking another struffoli out of the bowl and popping it into her mouth. “Good thing you brought them. I’m about up to here with the chocolate,” she mock sneered at her uncle.

  “So, Janie,” said her mother, Christa, “you’re the friend Tug spent Thanksgiving with.”

  Mouth full, Janie nodded. Here it comes, she thought. She saw Tug shoot Dave a look.

  Dave immediately jumped in with, “We went down to Christa’s parents’ house in Woonsocket for Thanksgiving, so that worked out pretty well,” he said quickly. “Ever been to Woonsocket? It’s about halfway to Newport. Now I know you’ve been to Newport. All those mansions on the cliff walk. Did you know they only lived in those monstrosities about six weeks a year?”

  Dave did his best to keep the conversation blithely impersonal, but he was no match for his wife. Christa chatted Janie up like a new best girlfriend, sliding questions in sideways whenever possible. With every question—“So, how’d that porch come out? You like it?” and “Two kids, that’s great. Kids are great, aren’t they?” and “Thinking of going back to work? Part-time or full?”—Janie knew she was running a gauntlet. A time-honored, homemade gauntlet constructed of steel-clad love. Her answers seemed satisfactory to Christa, and yet Janie herself wondered if they were good enough. She wanted very much to be good enough for Tug.

  At the point where Janie thought she could no longer stand the sound of her own voice, Dave suddenly gave the stand-and-stretch international sign for “we’re leaving now.” His daughters, who had been intently watching the chess match laid out by their mother, puffed little sighs of disappointment. Janie stopped pinching the back of her hand under the table, and hazarded her first glance at Tug. His face was masked in the studied calm that had grown so familiar to her.

  Then everyone was standing and moving toward the front door, tossing incidental thank-yous to Tug for presents, and nice-to-meet-yous to Janie.

  “Glad you came over,” Dave told her with a smile that was a shade too big. “Have a really merry Christmas.” When he was hugged by his brother, he let out a little cough as Tug thumped him hard on the back.

  Tug stood on the front step, raising a hand as they pulled out of the driveway. Then he came in and closed the door. “So.” He began to clear the table. “Thanks for bringing this…what did you call it?”

  “Struffoli.”

  “Is it some sort of family tradition?” he asked.

  “In a way,” she said. “Actually it’s a form of Pology Cake. In my family, when we screw up, we say sorry with baked goods.”

  “Okay,” he said, his face softening slightly.

  She held up her unadorned left hand.

  “I noticed,” he said.

  “Sorry it took a while.”

  “Thirsty?” he asked, and walked into the kitchen. She leaned over the counter and watched him as he filled two glasses from the tap. He seemed to be moving slowly, as if he himself were underwater. He dropped two cubes of ice into one glass. Reached into the freezer. Dropped two cubes into the other. He walked into the living room, set the glasses on a copy of Architectural Digest that was lying on the coffee table. Sat down on the russet-colored couch. Janie followed.

  “Are you angry?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Though I have spent the last four weeks wondering how I let myself get left out in the cold twice in the course of one year.”

  “God, Tug, when you put it like that, how could you not be angry?”

  “How could I be angry if half of me wants to kiss you so hard you’d need braces by morning?”

  “The other half sounds pretty pissed.”

  “Nah,” he said. He took a sip of water. “Just scared, I guess.”

  Scared? But why wouldn’t he be—it was just as much of a risk for him as it was for her. “Exposed to the elements,” she commiserated.

  He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

  “You know one of the things I did while I was missing you and freaking out about the ring? I went to see the guy who hit Robby.”

  “You’re joking!”

  “No, well, it wasn’t my idea or anything. His sister wrote to me.” She told him about her two visits with Emmett, how Dylan was surprised she hadn’t contacted him sooner. How Dylan asked if Robby had said anything.

  Tug shook his head. “Amazing,” he said. “That kid is something else.”

  Janie nodded. Lucky, she thought, I am so insanely lucky.

  She reached out with her left hand. The unbanded section of her finger was pressed and pale where the ring had been. She ran her hand down the scar on his right arm, squeezed his hand. “I don’t want to make you scared,” she said. “I want to be your shelter from the elements.”

  “I want to be yours.”

  “Tug, you have been. A thousand times. Times I didn’t even know it. Times I fought it,” she admitted. “I had to be sure I could give that back to you. It wasn’t about the ring, really.”

  His hands went out and stroked her cheeks like they had when she was feverish. His fingers slipped into her hair and r
an gently to the ends of her black curls. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” he said quietly. “Since that day you were up on the roof, throwing gutter muck onto your grass.”

  “Why then?”

  “I don’t know. You just looked so sad and angry, sitting up there with your dead husband’s work gloves on. I wanted to quiet you down. Make you feel better.”

  “You cleaned my gutters. And you made me smile with that joke about contractors never calling.”

  “Least I could do.”

  Even back then he was thinking of me, she realized. I was so busy being pissed off, I couldn’t see he was trying to lighten my load.

  She leaned forward, into him, and kissed his cheeks, his nose, his eyebrows. She kissed his mouth, her lips parting, flicking her tongue across his teeth, tasting everything. “Man,” she whispered, “I have developed such a taste for chocolate.”

  His fingers, tickling gently up her back, were pulling at the hem of her shirt now, untucking it, sliding his hands along her skin. Briefly, Shelly came to mind. Good hands, she thought and kissed him deeper. His fingers moved up under her shirt, sliding over her bra, pulling along the tops of the cups. She kissed him harder, pulled at his hips.

  They slid down onto the couch cushions, Janie on her back, Tug alongside her, kissing, groaning when her hand passed across the front of his jeans. He pressed toward her, onto her, rocking slowly against her.

  Then his hands slowed and he pushed himself up a little, their hips still pulsing into each other. He looked at her, ran the knuckles of one hand gently down her cheek. “Janie, girl,” he whispered.

  “I love you,” she said.

  He closed his eyes, shook his head. Sighed. “I love you so much.”