Shelter Me (31 page)

But she hadn’t led him on, he had to admit. She’d never talked of a future with him. Purposely, almost superstitiously, they had talked only of the present, her computer skills classes, his work on his grandfather’s house. Now he fought with her, railed about the effort he’d made to mend their marriage. She hadn’t known that was his intention, she said. She thought he was just lonely.

Still, he couldn’t believe that she preferred a life without him. Finally she said, “You know what, Tug? You remind me. And I just don’t want to be reminded.”

“H
OLY COW
,”
MURMURED
J
ANIE
. She shifted onto her side, stiff and aching, she realized, from having sat in the same position listening for so long.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I think she must have headed for a divorce lawyer straight from prison because she had me served about a week after her release.” He didn’t contest it—what would be the use? They divvied things up pretty quickly. He gave her the house
in Northboro and moved into his grandfather’s place here in Pelham. “Want to hear something funny? The divorce became final on my birthday in July. You brought me that cake, remember?”

“God, I had no clue.”

“I wasn’t exactly advertising.”

“It was Dylan’s idea.”

“I know,” he said. “Still, it felt pretty good to have a beautiful woman bring me chocolate on such a hell of a day.”

Janie lowered her chin, gave him the warning look.

“So I think you’re attractive. So what,” he countered, rising. “It’s not like it’s late-breaking news.” He leaned over toward her, felt her forehead. “Still a little warm. You should take more ibuprofen in—” he looked at his watch. “Dammit.”

“What?”

“It’s three thirty. I gotta get over to the job before the crew takes off and leaves power tools all over the yard.”

“Sorry I kept you so long.”

“My fault.”

“I asked,” she said. “I’m glad you told me. Have a good week if I don’t see you.”

“Maybe I’ll make a quick stop tomorrow just to check up on you.”

“On a Wednesday?” Janie raised her eyebrows in mock surprise.

“Okay, maybe not!”

“No,” she said. “Come.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
, J
ANIE
was no better. She knew it was a bug of some kind, the flu maybe, but she couldn’t help but worry that it was something worse. Perhaps it was the opening salvo of some sinister disease, nibbling at her now in anticipation of the larger bites to come.
How do single mothers manage not to panic every time they sneeze?
she wondered. She thought of Christopher Reeve, the actor who was paralyzed by a fall from a horse and died young from
complications. His wife died of cancer not long after, leaving their thirteen-year-old son an orphan.
It happens to people with every possible resource,
she thought.
It could definitely happen to me.

Aunt Jude was busy with the Book and Knickknack Swap she had organized at the Senior Center, so Cormac picked Dylan up for school. He said he didn’t worry so much about leaving the bakery, now that Barb was there for backup. “She can find the register tapes faster than I can these days. And she’s better with snotty customers, God knows.”

Janie crawled into the shower for a quick rinse while Cormac fed Dylan and Carly a breakfast of day-old crullers. In clean pajamas, she dragged her quilt downstairs and set herself up on the huge leather couch. It enveloped and soothed her, in part because it was so cool and soft, and in part because it was Shelly’s. Janie missed Shelly and vowed to dislike the new boyfriend no matter how handsome, rich, and well-housed he might be.

Cormac left with Dylan, and Carly was happy to have free reign of the living room, playing with her toys, switching the TV off and on, crawling up into Janie’s lap and then right back down again. She liked to sit and look at her board books, turning the pages with her thumbs, her little back so straight and noble looking.
At what age do kids learn to slouch?
Janie wondered. Her listless brain offered no answer.

Tug came by just before noon. He sat on the edge of the couch and checked her temperature with his hands. “Poor girl,” he said. “You showered?”

“Yeah, I was grossing myself out.”

“Your shampoo smells good.” He brought Carly’s highchair into the living room and fed her.

“There’s avocado in the vegetable drawer,” said Janie. Tug made a face. “What? It’s healthy!” she said.

“Then you climb out of your little nest there and give it to her,” he said. “It’s too slimy for me.”

“You’re telling me you handle rotten boards and insulation and that nasty smelly window caulk and you won’t touch avocado?”

He shrugged. “Complex, I know, but you’ll get it all straight.”

She smiled and closed her eyes for a moment.
Such a comfort to have him here.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, “I know it’s silly, but you don’t think this is anything…like…serious, right? It’s just a bug?”

He gave Carly a couple of crackers and came to sit beside Janie on the couch again. “There’s no way this is anything serious. In a couple of days you’ll be hopping around like a jackhammer.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a million what-ifs in life. You just have to keep yourself from thinking about the bad ones.”

He couldn’t stay long. After he left, Janie carried Carly up to her crib for a nap. She was completely exhausted ten minutes later when she made it back down to the couch. She fell into a dream-ridden sleep, rafting once again through black waters. This time she really did fall in, leaving the kids alone and adrift. The water wasn’t wet, though. It turned into soil around her, enveloping her, suffocating her like dirt thrown into a grave.

H
EIDI HAD PICKED UP
Dylan from school and brought him to her house to play. At three o’clock Janie heard the boys clomping and giggling on the porch, and Heidi shushing them. The front door opened slowly and Heidi peeked in.

“It’s okay, I’m awake,” said Janie from the couch. “Carly’s still asleep, though.”

Heidi sent the boys around to the backyard to play. “I would have kept him longer,” she said, bringing a grocery bag into the kitchen, “but I had told you three, and I didn’t want to call and disturb you to extend it.”

“It’s fine,” said Janie. “Carly will be up any minute, anyway. And it’s good to see you.”

Heidi sank into the leather chair and put her feet up on the ottoman. “I brought some dinner—homemade mac and cheese—and some salad.” She studied Janie’s pallid complexion. “But you don’t seem like you’ll be eating much of it.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” Janie said. She reached for the washcloth and wiped her face.

“Should I go?” Heidi sat up. “Do you need to rest?”

“No, I just woke up. And I don’t really want to sleep, anyway. I’ve been having these bizarre nightmares about death. I keep worrying that this isn’t just the flu, it’s some fatal illness and the kids will be orphaned.”

“Oh yeah. I used to do that. Right around when the doofus and I were separating. I couldn’t stand the thought of Keane being raised by him alone.”

“When did it stop?”

“I went to my doctor and had her do every test the insurance would pay for. I thought about getting one of those body scans, you know, the ones that are supposed to pick up every little thing you might have? But it was really expensive, and I realized that just because I don’t have anything now, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t five years from now.”

“So once you had a clean bill of health from your doctor, you stopped worrying?”

“Well, that and I called our marriage counselor and had a couple of sessions. He couldn’t save the marriage, but he helped me get control of my intrusive thoughts.” Heidi laughed. “You’re not going to believe this, but you know what it came down to? He basically just told me to cut it out!”

Janie chuckled. “That’s pretty much Tug’s take on it, too.”

“Tug?” said Heidi, her laughter pulling inward, like a humor vacuum. “The contractor?”

“Yeah,” said Janie, feeling self-conscious. “We’ve become friends. He stops by for lunch sometimes.”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘Oh’? We’re not dating or anything. He just comes by. The kids and I used to go to his softball games sometimes until the season ended.”

“I’m not implying that you are. I’m just…”

“What?”

“Jealous, I guess.”

“Heidi, trust me. There’s nothing to be jealous of. We just hang out.”

“That’s plenty to be jealous of! What do you think I’m looking for, a hot date every night of the week?”

“No, I only meant—”

“God!” Heidi shuddered in frustration. “I would kill to have a guy just to talk to!”

Janie exhaled. “You’re right. It’s nice.”

“And he’s okay with that? Just hanging out? Nothing more?”

“Well, I think maybe he’d like something more, but he knows I’m not up for it.”

“Not even a little?”

“No! Robby hasn’t even been gone a year.”

“So maybe after January?”

“Heidi, stop! I can’t think about this!”

“Oh, alright. Don’t freak out.”

Listen to her,
Janie thought, amused.
Miss Insecure is telling me to be cool.
Carly began to stir upstairs, and without asking or being asked, Heidi went up to get her. It was funny, really, how someone so unlike Janie had become so familiar.

“I changed her diaper,” Heidi said when she returned with Carly in her arms. “P-U! What are you feeding this child?”

Not avocados,
thought Janie.

I
T WAS
9:15
P.M
. and Janie was in bed. The plan was to sleep, but she had napped too late in the day. Her flu seemed to be dissipating; she had been only intermittently feverish that day. She’d had enough energy to get up and feed the kids leftover macaroni and cheese for dinner.

A thought came to her as she lay there unable to sleep. She would get up and e-mail Jake, see what he was up to. A moment later she was embarrassed. She had forgotten that she and Jake no longer spoke, had no relationship at all, not even priest and parishioner. Why should it embarrass her, this momentary forgetting of the status of things? It was just a tiny lapse, never spoken aloud, with no one to see the stinging blush that crept up her neck.

How had she come to feel so strongly for a man—a celibate man, no less—that even after three months of radio silence, she could still idly consider contacting? Had her instincts become so tangled and short-circuited that she would subject herself to such a gaffe? Was the damage permanent? She had to be more careful, she told herself—of what, she hadn’t quite worked out.

The phone rang and Janie reached for it quickly, grateful for a reason to change the channel in her brain. “Hello?”

“Hey, how’re you feeling?”

The muscles at the back of her neck, pulled taught by self-doubt, released. “Better. I think I turned a corner.”

“Sorry I didn’t get over there today. The architect on this job is making me nuts. He changes the plans about every fifteen minutes.”

“No kidding,” she laughed. “What’s
that
like?”

“Ah, don’t start,” he chuckled. “You love that porch.”

“True.”

They talked about any number of things. There were five units of 40B affordable housing going in on Old Connecticut Path. The developer had just fired the builder and was calling for new bids. Tug was thinking about going for it. Did Janie have any further thoughts about picking up her old job at Newton-Wellesley Hospital? How would the kids take it? Tug reminded her that his nieces babysat all the time, and might be willing to commit to a weekly stint if she needed it. The call went on for a while as they rambled through the funny moments, minor concerns, and action items of each one’s day. Janie thought briefly of Heidi.
A guy just to talk to
, she had said.

“So, where are you going for Thanksgiving?” Tug asked, the cadence of his words changing slightly. “Your aunt’s?”

“Yeah. Cormac and Uncle Charlie will go over the day before and clear all the furniture out of her living room. She has one of those puzzle tables.”

“The kind that fold up small but have a bunch of leaves?”

“You’ve heard of them?”

“I have one. It was my grandparents’. One of the things I kept.”

“So where are you going?” she asked.

“My brother’s probably.”

“Keeping your options open? It’s only a week away.”

“You might say.” He was quiet for a moment. She could hear the gentle
swoosh
of his breath on the mouthpiece. “I was kind
of thinking about us spending Thanksgiving together,” he said finally.

Of course,
Janie thought instinctively.
Makes total sense
. But then she started second-guessing herself. What would he think? What would it mean? What would he think it means? The blush rose up again, and she said merely, “Oh.”

“Okay, it was just a thought.” A thin line of disappointment underscored the apparent dispassion of his words.

“Well…” Now she was second-guessing her second-guessing. And wanting to be with him. “I mean…where?”

“Anywhere. Your aunt’s, my brother’s, your house, my house.”

“You know how to cook a turkey?” she stalled.

“No, but it can’t be that hard.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s just a turkey and an oven. I have one, I can get the other.”

“No, I mean why do you want to do Thanksgiving together?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, and she was certain that he was working out how to say it, more than why he wanted it.

“I’m thankful for you,” he said quietly. “I want to be thankful
with
you.”

Of course,
she thought.
Me, too.

T
HE ELDERLY
F
ATHER
G
ILROY
, Pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Natick, stood hunched and gently quaking at the lectern. Over the past three months, Janie had grown used to his throat clearing and his lackluster homilies. She usually spent a good deal of Mass keeping the kids from annoying the other, mostly older, parishioners, so it wasn’t like she listened all that much. She often read to Dylan in a barely audible whisper from the children’s Bible Father Jake had given him, full of simplified, white-washed stories and cartoon pictures. Dylan was transfixed. Carly liked to balance like a gymnast along the kneeler, her tiny
hands gripping the pew in front of them. Back and forth she would dance. Aunt Jude would retrieve her if she got farther than an arm’s length away.

“Don’t read,” Dylan whispered to Janie on this particular Sunday. “I already know it. I just want to look at the pictures.” He was studying the too-brightly-colored depiction of David slaying Goliath with his little slingshot. Janie knew that Dylan was making the story much more dramatic and dangerous in his head than the words on the page did. It gave her a moment to tune in to whatever Father Gilroy was prattling on about. Turns out it was the Gospel of Luke:

“Now our Gospel today is a story from times of old,” quivered Father Gilroy when he’d finished with the reading.

They’re all stories from times of old
, thought Janie.

“How-ever,” persisted Father Gilroy. He said it as if it were two words, in his distinctly Boston accent:
How evah.
“We can exTRAPolate from this story given to us by our Lord.”
Owah Lawd.

“It’s about PERSEVERANCE, perseverance in the face of ADVERSITY. Well, let’s see now…” Father Gilroy seemed to lose
his train of thought for a moment. “Yes, well, uh, it’s about friendship, too. Sometimes a friend wants more from us than we want to give. That friend wants something that seems UNREASONABLE. Come over in the middle of the night for a loaf of BREAD? When we’re sleeping? That’s UNREASONABLE!

“How-ever, that friend keeps knocking. That friend keeps ASKING us for something he NEEDS…” Father paused and brushed a hand over his mouth, wiping something away. “You ever notice how darn near half these stories have to do with HOSPITALITY? It’s all about feeding and sheltering people, for Pete’s sake! It’s all about fish and bread and who’s cleaning up after!

“Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s because back in the times of old, when they didn’t have garage door openers and microwaves and all those fancy gadgets you women want these days, if people didn’t feed and shelter each other, THEY DIED! So here’s that friend, banging on your door in the middle of the night, trying to keep his visitor from starving to death right there in his living room. GET UP, for the love of Mike! Give the guy some bread!”

Father Gilroy turned away from the lectern then and took a step down as if the homily was over. But before the other foot hit the floor, he turned back, remembering something. “We don’t always know what our friends need. And they usually don’t bang on the door and yell it. It’s all so much more COMPlicated these days. We have all these newfangled gadgets, like those cellular telephones that don’t even plug into the WALL, and still we aren’t too good at listening. And when WE’RE the guy that needs the bread, we have to persevere. Because sometimes people don’t know how to listen, and we gotta keep asking.

“We gotta keep knocking on each other’s doors, because otherwise,” Father Gilroy glared at the congregation, “WHAT’S the POINT.”

B
ARB FUSSED OVER THE
kids as Janie and Aunt Jude waited for them to pick out a cookie from the Confectionary display case
after Mass. They leaned against the high counter that spanned the bakery’s front window. Customers sat on stools and sipped their Chai and French roast, stoking up to meet the icy blast of air that awaited them outside. An older man approached them, tentatively at first. He tightened his trench coat and fingered the end of the belt nervously. “You’re Mrs. LaMarche,” he said.

“Yes…,” said Janie.

“I’m Ed Martin. From the bank. I worked with your husband. I remember seeing you and your son come by a couple of times.”

“Oh,” said Janie, straining to be gracious. “Hi.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want to bother you…I just wanted to say that…” His words came out faster now, as if he were propelling them from his mouth, “Well, your husband was a good boss, a good man, and we all remember him fondly.”

It was obvious that he had had to gather up all his courage to approach her, and this, in addition to his kind words, softened her. “Thanks, Ed,” she said. “Thanks for telling me.”

“I hope you and your family are…are doing okay?” he stammered.

“We’re hanging in there.” And they were, she realized. So slowly she had barely noticed, their status had been upgraded from “still shitty.”

“Oh, that’s great,” he exhaled. “I’ll tell everyone I saw you. They’ll definitely want to hear.” He nodded and excused himself and was out in the street in moments, nearly at a jog.

They watched him recede down the street, and Aunt Jude reached her bejeweled hand around Janie’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Good,” she whispered. It was the shortest sentence Janie had ever heard her utter.

“So,” Janie said after a moment. “Thanksgiving.”

“Oh yes!” said Aunt Jude. “I’ve ordered the turkey from Stop & Shop. They have those free-range turkeys now. I know you like that kind of thing. It’s a happy bird right up until it’s…well, it’ll be delicious, I’m sure.”

“Think you’d have enough for one more?”

Aunt Jude’s face went wide, on full alert. “Well, YES! Of course! Did you want to invite someone? Is it that nice blond woman, Dylan’s little friend’s mother? It’s so hard when couples part. Her husband has the boy and she’s all alone.”

“Uh, actually the three of them are going to her in-laws’ in Ohio. Her ex-husband’s mother called crying and begged her to come.”

“Isn’t that so kind!”

“Of Heidi or her ex-mother-in-law?”

“Both!”

“I suppose,” said Janie. It all seemed a little nuts to her, and yet she had to admit it was kind, too. Weird and kind. “No, I was thinking of asking Tug Malinowski, the guy who built my porch.”

“Oh, Tug! Of course!” Aunt Jude was a little too excited about this. Janie ground her molars.

“It’s just that he’s all alone and I kind of feel sorry for him.” The lie caught in her teeth but she spit it out, anyway. If Aunt Jude got all revved up about this, Janie would chuck the whole idea.

“Well,” said Aunt Jude, looking away, suddenly focused on untangling her necklaces. “He seems like such a lovely person. I’m sure he has many friends with open doors. It would be our pleasure to have him.” She glanced pointedly back up at Janie. “
Our
pleasure.”

J
ANIE DECIDED TO PICK
Tug up at his house on her way to Aunt Jude’s. If he came on his own, the whole family would watch her greet him, like scientists studying the introduction of a new specimen into the habitat. There was nothing to see, really, she told herself. Just two friends happy to see one another. Nothing so out of the ordinary. Still, why subject herself to more scrutiny than necessary?

When she pulled into the gravel driveway, she saw that his house was a little smaller than hers, probably two bedrooms, she figured. It had an upscale log cabin feel to it, without the actual logs. The clapboards were cedar, and had apparently been applied with some protectant to retain their warm reddish-brown hue. In the center of the wall facing the street, there was a large cedar door with three bull’s-eye glass windows along the top.

She could see part of the back of the house from the driveway. A deep porch ran across it with a spectacular view of Lake Pequot. The lot was modest, and there were houses within thirty feet on either side, as was common for lakeside cottages. But the windows on the sides of his house were small, some with rippled glass that would let light in but not the prying eyes of neighbors. All the sight lines led out to the lake. Tug’s renovation of his grandfather’s cottage had preserved privacy amidst the press of so many other houses.
He got it right,
she thought.

Dylan wanted to be the one to ring the doorbell, so she let him jump out while she stayed in the car with Carly. His unzippered jacket flapped in the wind off the lake. When Tug opened the door, Dylan hugged him. Tug squeezed the boy and rubbed his hand over Dylan’s head. “Someone got a haircut,” she heard him tease.

“Me! I did,” said Dylan. “It’s for Thanksgiving.”

Tug went back in the house for a moment and returned with a bottle of wine and a covered dish. When he got into the passenger seat, he leaned over and gave Janie a quick kiss on the cheek. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he murmured, and turned immediately to set his items on the floor. She could smell the wool of his navy blue V-necked sweater.

He fingered the tiny button on the collar of his shirt. “Should I be wearing a tie?”

“No, you’re fine.” She twisted around toward the rear window as she backed out. “We’re business-casual for holidays.”