Shelter Me (19 page)

As Janie began to unwind the tale, wailing and leaking from her eyes and nose, Shelly pulled at her, gently excavating her from the bed and steering her down the stairs toward the bathroom. Occasionally, Shelly inserted one-word directives: “Walk,” and “Blow,” handing her a tissue, and “Strip,” turning on the shower and stepping just outside the bathroom, door cracked so that she could continue to listen and give commands. “I’m going to the kitchen to make coffee now,” Shelly called when Janie had finished her anguished tale. “Lots of shampoo.”

When Janie got out and dried herself, she saw that Shelly had put a clean set of “construction pajamas” on the toilet lid. She dressed and aimed herself toward the sound of clacking heels on the second floor, where Shelly was remaking her bed with clean sheets. “Get in,” said Shelly, lifting the covers, and Janie complied. “Okay, coffee’s in a thermos on the bedside table. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to stay in bed all day. I mean it, do not get up except for the bathroom.”

“The kids…”

“The kids are all squared away. Jude’s set up for them, and your mother would probably babysit until they go to middle school, after what she did.”

“I hate her.”

“Of course you do. Now I have to go. The inspection’s in a few minutes.”

“On your house?” Janie’s words came out in a pinched whine. “You have a buyer?”

“Yes, bub,” she nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not,” muttered Janie. “You’re fucking thrilled.” She looked up, remembering, “You said you’d still come back, but you didn’t even come to Dylan’s birthday.”

“Pfff,” Shelly snorted, shaking her head. “I know. I could’ve kicked myself! Geoffrey and I took a long weekend on Block Island, and I didn’t get the message till Tuesday.”

Shelly stood and straightened her suit, licking her finger and stabbing at a tiny hair of lint on the lapel. “I mean it,” she said pointing at Janie. “Do not get up. Stay in bed tomorrow, too, if you can. Monday will come soon enough.”

A
FTER CRYING AND HURLING
curses at her pillow for most of Saturday afternoon, Janie went downstairs to the bathroom. She peeked into the tiny back bedroom. Her mother’s things were gone. Janie went back to bed.

At 7:30 p.m., the phone rang, but Janie did not answer. At 7:32 it rang again, and again at 7:33. “Hello,” Janie whispered into the receiver, now almost awake.

“Hi, Mom. You sound all scratchy. Are you better yet?”

“No, Dylan.”

“Then can we stay at Auntie Jude’s again? Carly fell asleep, and Gram and me are making snip…snit…,” his voice aimed away from the receiver, “what’s it called? Oh, yeah, Snickerdoodles.”

“Oh.”
I hate her.

“Mom? Don’t get too sicker, okay?”

“I’ll try. I love you, Dylan.”

“Love you, Mom. Carly loves you, too. Everybody does.”

J
ANIE DID NOT FEEL
loved. In fact, at around 3:15 a.m. the arctic desolation she had been experiencing since Jake left thawed temporarily, exposing a reeling rage that made her want to break things. She stormed down the stairs, thankful for her children’s absence, but simultaneously blistered with anger that they were with her mother. The fucking spoiler. Abandoner of despondent offspring. Dutiful just long enough to come back and ensure the permanence of their despondence.

Janie punched the Power button on the computer and composed a long, rambling e-mail to Jake that was alternately self-pitying, self-reproaching and accusatory. It was stalkerlike, a fact
that Janie realized before she hit Send.
What’s next
, she asked herself with disgust.
Getting drunk and trying to French kiss him in the Communion line? Try not to be any more of a cautionary tale than you already are.

She stabbed at the Power button, with full knowledge that it would give her a stern rebuke about improper shutdown when she turned it on again, which made her want to preemptively toss it through the back window. But she was tired all of a sudden, and dragged herself back to her bedroom before any damage, either real or of the cyber variety, could be done.

When she woke again, it was 10:25 in the morning, and she knew with a leaden certainty that Aunt Jude and her mother had gone to Mass. The nerve, the shameless, red-panty-wearing gall of them to show up with her children in that church and take a wafer from that…that…what was he?

What was he, really? Peeling back a tattered corner of her shame and rage and hurt, Janie got a momentarily clearheaded glimpse of Jake. He was just a guy. And he was trying to live by his code, a code that neither she nor many others fully understood. And perhaps he was bound by a vow, and a love of solitude, and a level of self-protection that grew problems for him here and there. But didn’t we all have coping strategies that worked most of the time, but in certain uncommon circumstances failed miserably? He was just a guy, after all, only human. Completely human, though she had fooled herself into thinking that he was somehow better than that.

This fleeting brush with objectivity did not last long. She was back to hating him and her mother, and to some extent, everyone else fairly quickly. And yet, having stumbled upon the truth of his humanness, she could not completely unknow it. Had he used her for a friendship that was not supportable? Had he led her on? Yes! Well, a bit, anyway.

Around noon, Aunt Jude stopped by. Janie was roused from dreams that were barren and vaguely violent by the sound of dishes clinking and jewelry jingling in the kitchen downstairs.
Her immediate reaction was to feign sleep. But she had somehow arrived at a point of boredom with herself and her pitifulness and reached for a hairbrush.

“There you are,” exclaimed Aunt Jude when Janie entered the kitchen fully dressed, with nothing to belie her former state but bad breath. “How are you feeling?”

“Peachy,” said Janie, her voice raspy from disuse. She sank weakly onto a kitchen chair and realized she hadn’t eaten in two days. “Where are the kids?”

“With their gram at my house. I was just making you some pistachio pudding. It’s the instant kind, so it should be set in another few minutes. There now,” she clucked to herself as she put the bowl of gelatinous green goo into the refrigerator.

“You know what she did, right?” demanded Janie. “Behind my back?”

Aunt Jude was now rooting around in her big white purse. She pulled out a sleeve of saltines and began to lay them on a plate. “Yes,” she said.

“Is she still leaving on Thursday?”

“As far as I know.”

“What could have possessed her to go to him, someone she hardly even knows, instead of coming to me, her own daughter? That’s all I want to know.”

Aunt Jude finally stopped fussing with the crackers and faced Janie. “I don’t think it’s my place to get in the middle of this,” she said. “But I suppose I already am, not because I want to be, but because I’m just trying to be helpful. That’s all I’ve ever really wanted was to be helpful to people.” She pushed the plate toward Janie, who ignored it.

“Help away,” said Janie.

“She was just worried about you and Father. You seemed too close. And both being so lonely, it was just trouble waiting to happen, is all. Just trouble and heartache. You’ve had enough of that already. And she’s your mother; she wanted to protect you.”

“It was NONE of her freaking BUSINESS!”

“Yes, well,” said Aunt Jude, helping herself to a cracker. “She did what she saw fit. Maybe others would have handled it differently, but she’s got her own way. She can’t help herself.”

“Can’t help herself from embarrassing me and ruining the one friendship that makes any sense to me these days? Can’t help herself from prancing all over Europe instead of showing up for me? What exactly can’t she help?”

Aunt Jude got up to check the pudding. “Not quite set,” she reported, her ample posterior protruding from behind the refrigerator door.

Useless
, thought Janie.
I’m going back to bed.

Aunt Jude came from behind Janie and began to rub her shoulders. “Whatever you think, and whatever she does, just remember it’s out of love. It’s not always how we want it to look, but she does her best. She just wants a happier life for you than she’s had herself.”

“I hate her.”

Jude’s fingers stopped their gentle probing. “You don’t.”

“Oh yes I do.”

“
Hate
is a very serious word, Jane Elizabeth.” Her thumbs began to move slowly across Janie’s shoulder blades, as if Aunt Jude herself were unaware. “It’s too dark of a word to use against your mother. You have no reason, no reason on this earth to hate anyone, no matter what sorrow you’re holding. I could tell you…I could show you…” Aunt Jude let out an exasperated sigh.

“You went to Mass this morning, didn’t you?” Janie turned to face her, wrenching away from the trance-inducing hands.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I go to—”

“I knew it. God, I knew you’d just march in there with my kids like everything was sunshine and roses, except for me, the loser niece who’s so humiliated she can’t—”

“We went to Immaculate Conception in Natick—not Our Lady’s! You’re not the only one, you know,” Aunt Jude sputtered.
“You’re not the only one who’s upset and angry. I know that’s hard to see right now, but Janie, please, you’ve got to take a broader view.”

A broader view of what?
thought Janie.
I can’t stand to look any more.

Aunt Jude left her with the green pudding and saltines. Janie went back to bed. At seven o’clock that evening, her aunt returned with the sleepy children, who’d been bathed and fed and were already in their pajamas. Janie was glad she had clothes on, even if they were rumpled into spiderwebs of wrinkles. She was dressed, and her “illness” was over, no matter how she felt. She brought Dylan and Carly up to their beds and stayed with them for the few moments it took them to settle into sleep. She drew her fingertips across their silky heads and warm, smooth cheeks.

Blessed and cursed, her mother had called her. Wasn’t it the truth.

G
OOD NEWS
!” H
EIDI’S VOICE
came over the phone like a gleeful squirrel on Monday morning. “Lightning hit my office building over the weekend and the sprinklers went off. No work!”

“That’s nice.” The receiver was wedged between Janie’s ear and shoulder as she cut up pieces of pear for Carly and waited for the toaster to pop. Up came the blackened bread. The toaster knob had somehow gotten turned all the way to “dark.” Dylan would not eat this, she knew, yet she buttered it anyway.

“It’s a paid vacation, is what it is,” chimed Heidi. “There’s a sale at J. Jill—do you want to go?”

“I’m not much of a shopper,” said Janie.
You can tell that just by looking at me.
She wondered momentarily how old her underwear was, as she dumped tiny dunes of cinnamon onto the toast to camouflage the charred sections. Pre-wedding, she realized. That old.

“Well, at least let me have Dylan over for a playdate after camp. Keane would love it. He keeps asking why he always goes to your house.”

“You work,” said Janie, delivering the toast to Dylan, who took one look at it and went back to driving his Matchbox car over the bananas in the fruit bowl.

“I’ve offered to have him over on the weekends, but you’re always busy.” Janie could hear the bristle in Heidi’s tone, but she
couldn’t make herself care. She motioned for Dylan to eat the toast and he picked it up. When Janie turned to Carly with the pear pieces, he put it back on the plate.

“Today might not be good, Heidi,” said Janie, going back to the counter to pack Dylan’s lunch. “My mother’s around, so she’ll probably want to see him.”

“She saw me a lot!” Dylan was kneeling backward in his chair now, aiming himself at Janie, the Matchbox car left to idle in the bananas. “She saw me that whole time you were sick!”

“You were sick?” asked Heidi, concern smoothing her wrinkled pride.

“I want to play with Keane!”

“What did you have?”

“Keane’s Mom!” yelled Dylan, pulling on Janie’s elbow. “I can play! I’m available!”

“Nothing serious. Dylan, STOP!”

“Please! Please let me go to Keane’s!”

“No!” she yelled. Then, “Fine! Go to Keane’s.”

The details were worked out before Janie could come up with any more excuses. Heidi would pick them up from camp and bring Dylan home to Janie at three. He would be off her radar screen for two hours. He had gone on playdates, supervised by mothers Janie knew even less well than Heidi. But that was before Janie had seen how quickly it all could change, how an innocuous activity like bike riding could be fatal. School and camp were exempt somehow—there was no real logic to it. Perhaps it was because they were routine. They were licensed by the state, run by professionals. They were necessary for Janie’s tenuous hold on her temper and sanity. Playdates at other children’s houses had slid off the grid of normal. And Heidi was no professional.

A
T
12:45,
AFTER A
morning of food shopping and errands and trying to keep Carly from crawling up the stairs four or five hundred times, Janie felt herself itching to get in the car. She could just
drive by the Pond Pals pickup line, make sure Heidi was there. And if she weren’t there right on time, Janie could pick up the boys herself. In fact, she could even call Heidi and offer to take them from Pond Pals to Heidi’s house, then maybe stick around for a cup of coffee.

You’re gripless,
Janie warned herself. But the scheme festered in her thoughts until she realized that she really was in no mood to spend any extended time with Heidi—with anyone, really—and that Carly, having missed her morning nap, was now nearly violent with fatigue. Janie took her upstairs and sat with her on Dylan’s bed to read a story.
The Runaway Bunny
was lying on the floor by the bed. Janie picked it up and flipped to the first page.

Once there was a little bunny who wanted to run away. So he said to his mother, “I am running away.”

“If you run away,” said his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.”

Then the little bunny wanted to become a fish and swim away. His mother calmly replied that she would be a fisherman and fish for him.
Heartless little shit,
thought Janie.
She’s just trying to keep you safe.
By the time the little bunny threatened to join the circus and the mother was turning into a tightrope walker to keep up with him, Carly had lost interest and Janie was ready to throw the book against the wall.

She put the baby in her crib and watched as the little hands flung away the stuffed dolly and grasped the rungs of the crib to pull herself along until her head was pressed up against the headboard.
No hesitation,
Janie realized.
No worries. No security item. Playdates at other peoples’ houses are going to be small potatoes for this one. She’ll probably be back-packing across Europe before she’s ten.

How had Janie missed it? This developing personality, this fury to get things out of the way so she could move? If Robby had been here…well, yes, if Robby had been here every single thing would be different. But specifically, Janie realized, they would have discussed their second child. They would have commented
to each other on her independence and tenacity. They would have nudged each other so that neither missed the way this child put herself to sleep, or woke up talking, or played her little piano with such fervor that she was sure to be a pianist like her daddy.

Dear God. Janie had failed to notice even that. A wave of self-hatred washed over her so strong she felt she couldn’t bear the weight of it. She slumped down onto Dylan’s bed and watched the sleeping baby.
Sorry,
she prayed to Carly.
Mommy’s so sorry.

J
ANIE WOKE WITH A
quick gasp of breath that startled her and set her heart to galloping. Her eyes searched the room, for what she couldn’t quite name. Then it came to her. A clock. For godsake, what time was it? There was no clock in the kids’ room because there had never been any need for one. But as she rose like a shot from Dylan’s bed, it suddenly seemed like a gross oversight. Carly was still unconscious in the crib, both arms and one foot hanging languidly from between the slats as if she’d been trying to escape in her sleep.

Janie quick-stepped down the stairs into the kitchen. The clock said 3:20. Where were they? She dashed into the little office and scrambled through the file drawer until she hit the preschool family directory. Heidi and her ex-husband were still listed at the same address and phone. Janie dialed. No answer.

She felt her panic lurching against her insides like an intestinal bumper car. She redialed, hating Heidi for not answering and hating herself for losing control. No answer. Why didn’t she have Heidi’s cell phone number? Did Heidi have a cell phone? Of course she must. She was the type who had emerged from the womb texting the boy newborns as the doctor snipped her umbilical cord.

And what type was Janie? The type who lets her child go off with an amateur. The type who neglects to get the damned cell phone number. A neglectful failure of a mother. She dialed the home number again and left a disjointed, stuttering message, imploring Heidi to call her.

Now it was 3:30. Where, where, where was he? Her brain raced from one catastrophic scenario to the next. A car accident. Improperly buckled. Ejected from the vehicle. Bleeding and crying for her. Or worse.

She dialed 911. “Have there been any accidents?” she demanded of the dispatcher, in a voice that sounded screechy and addled even to her. No there hadn’t, was there some sort of emergency? “My son, he’s four, no he’s five now, and he…he’s on a playdate…and he…the other mother…she hasn’t brought him home yet…she was supposed to be here thirty-five minutes ago…”

Half an hour late wasn’t so long, suggested the dispatcher, a cretin who clearly had no children, no relationships at all, probably lived in a basement apartment with beer-stained indoor-outdoor carpeting and sports talk radio blaring. He offered to send over a squad car, while managing to make it clear that he thought this a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.

“No,” Janie said, and hung up.

She ran out the front door, past Malinowski who was on a damned ladder as usual, and into the street. Hands fisted at her hips, she searched up and down for Heidi’s car. Nothing. Sweat trickled down her spine. She would have to find him. “Hey,” she yelled up at Tug as she ran back into the house for her car keys. “Can you…the baby’s asleep…can you…I have to go find Dylan…”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, descending the ladder.

She leaped into her car, gunned the motor, wrenched into reverse, and narrowly avoided slamming into Heidi’s car as she pulled into the driveway. As Janie jumped out of her car, she could feel the boiling blur of panic slow and congeal into something rancid, toxic. She stared at the three of them, straggling calmly out of Heidi’s station wagon, giggling, sticky with some foreign, happy substance.

“We went to Dairy Queen!” called Dylan. His smile disinte-grated when he saw the wild look on his mother’s face. “It’s okay. I’m still hungry. I’ll still eat dinner.”

“Go into the house, please, Dylan,” said Janie. Dylan didn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” said Heidi, surprise rippling the surface of her perfect features. “It was just a little treat. I only got smalls.”

“That’s nice, Heidi. It’s a nice treat, and frankly I wouldn’t care if you got them a quart each. But now that you’re,” Janie flicked her gaze blindly toward a nonexistent watch, “forty-five minutes later than you said you’d be, do you think you might have thought to call? Would that be so much to ask?”

“Oh my gosh, are we that late? I had no idea…”

“You promised you’d have him home by three. Three o’clock. It’s now almost four. I called your house. I didn’t know what to think. I could only imagine the worst.”

“Oh, Janie,” breathed Heidi. “I am so, so sorry! I didn’t realize you’d be so—”

“Out of my mind with worry? That’s so surprising to you? That’s such a shock? What mother wouldn’t be?”

“I can’t apologize enough.” Heidi’s shame rose in pink blotches all over her neck. She was starting to pant. “It’ll never happen again, I promise. I’ll never—”

“You’re damned right, it’ll never happen again,” said Janie, straining now to maintain voice volume in the normal range. “I’d be completely negligent to ever allow it.”

Keane burst into tears. He pressed his pale, thin fingers across his eyes and sobbed. Dylan stared at his mother in confused horror.

“Get in the house, Dylan,” warned Janie, and he began to move woodenly toward the porch.

Her arms around her bereft son, Heidi, said, “I just can’t…I’m so…I’ll call you later?”

“Don’t,” said Janie, and turned toward the house.

Tug stood alone on the porch when she opened the screen door. He stared at her, his features calm, his hands resting in his pockets. But she knew. Janie could hear every word he wasn’t saying.

“Don’t. Say. Anything,” she warned him.

“You can’t do that,” he said. Beneath the quiet tone, she heard the loud ring of disapproval. “You can’t do it to Dylan.”

“You,” she hissed, pointing her finger at him. “You just shut up about Dylan. He’s MY kid. Don’t you act like you know better—you don’t even have kids. You have NO IDEA how it feels to be so…” she sensed the eruption coming, but couldn’t stop it, didn’t even try. The words flew out of her like flaming birds from an inferno. “I’ve HAD it with you and your opinions about how I should do everything differently. You don’t like how I parent, you don’t like how I handle things, and you have NO RESPECT for my husband’s wishes! My poor dead husband wanted to give me a porch, and you’ve changed every damned thing you could. I wanted HIS porch, not YOURS.”

Janie’s eyes darted around the structure as if she’d never seen it before. “I hate it,” she said. “And you’re fired. I’ll send you the rest of the money, because I don’t even care about that. I just want you out of here. Now.”

O
N
T
UESDAY MORNING IT
was raining, not hard, but steadily enough so that Janie suggested that Dylan stay home from camp. She had no interest in bumping into Heidi. Actually, she had no interest in even leaving the house. Dylan didn’t mind. He said he didn’t really like that camp so much, anyway. He asked Janie to get his goggles from the car, and he wore them all day. At bedtime, Janie made him take them off. The red indented circles around his eyes seemed permanent.

On Wednesday, the weather cleared, and mist rose from the pine needles as Janie dropped Dylan off at camp. Keane was already there, saving a seat for Dylan. Dylan sat next to some other boy whom Janie didn’t recognize. After dinner, he said he was tired and went to bed early.

Cormac and Barb came over and were disappointed to find that Dylan was already fast asleep. Barb had made a collage
of pictures from his birthday party. In the center was a close-up of Cormac’s ingenious pirate cake. The mat around it had openings cut off-kilter for the other pictures: Keane and Dylan laughing and pointing to the earring on the pirate’s butt; the boys bobbing for apples with Uncle Charlie; a close-up of Gram and Aunt Jude singing “Happy Birthday”; Tug showing Dylan how to use the tiny screwdriver; Janie and Cormac passing out cake to Heidi and Father Jake; Carly pulling herself up on Dylan’s new bike.

There was a separate picture, too. Beautifully matted and framed, it was of their little family sitting in the grass. Janie’s head was turned toward Dylan whispering into his ear, and his mouth was wide with laughter. The only one looking directly into the camera lens was Carly. Steadying herself between her mother’s upright knees, the baby graced the picture with a look of such confidence and purpose it was as if she were planning her first solo flight. At any moment she would soar above the backyard and head for parts unknown. Barb’s photo had managed to capture the true Carly, not the lifelike doll who got toted from one errand to the next, whose mother barely even knew her.