Shelter Us: A Novel (3 page)

Robert stops spinning and sets Oliver on the grass. “Want to help me unpack, Olly?” Oliver gets up and stumbles toward his daddy’s briefcase. He loops the leather strap over his small shoulder, leans over like Quasimodo, and lugs it toward the house.

“Who’s the best teacher at UCLA Law?” Robert playfully prompts.

Oliver’s coached response: “Daddy!”

And then they are gone. I stare into the air where they just stood, Robert’s positive energy lingering, almost tangible. I hope that Oliver and Izzy will grow up to be more like him than me.

Robert walks with a glow around him, and he wears his success like his skin, natural and expected. His favorite cocktail party story is about his second-grade parent-teacher conference. His parents had told him to play in the schoolyard while they met with the teacher. But he couldn’t contain his curiosity about what these adults had to say about him. So, in his first (dare I say only?) rebellion, he tiptoed away from the handball court to listen at the classroom door. He was terrified of getting caught, thrilled to be eavesdropping.

He listened in surprise as Mrs. Kimble (“the meanest teacher I’ve ever had, and that includes law school”) warmly told his parents what a fine student he was. It pleased him to know that his powerful father was quietly listening to the formidable Mrs. Kimble extol his achievements.

“He is the true leader of this class,” Mrs. Kimble said. “He’s not bossy or arrogant. The children all look up to him because he always thinks things through, he always raises his hand, and”—she paused for comic effect—“he is always right.”

Robert had never felt his heart so full, listening to these masters of his days and nights chuckle with pride at his achievements.

“I have very high expectations for Robert,” Mrs. Kimble concluded.

As he heard the small, child-size chairs being pushed back, metal legs scraping industrial linoleum, he dashed away from the door. He didn’t have time to get all the way back to the handball court where his parents had told him to stay. He didn’t want them to suspect he’d spied on them, that he’d disobeyed. But if they saw him running away, they’d know. So, with sudden inspiration, he began to run in a circle around the yard, as though he were on a track. When he finally circled around to where his parents were standing and his father asked him what on earth he was doing, he panted his reply: “Practicing for a race.” From that day on, to cover his mortification at lying (and nearly being caught), Robert committed himself to becoming a runner. He joined the track team in junior high and continued through high school and college.

Before that afternoon, he hadn’t had a clue that he was a “leader”; he had known only that he liked reading and handball. Now he had “expectations” for himself. He grabbed each opportunity to live up to those expectations. He ran for student council in third grade, and every year thereafter, until he was Stanford’s student-body president.

By the time we met in law school, he still ran five miles every morning. When we honeymooned, he ran every morning on cobbled sidewalks in Italy. When Oliver was born, he missed a couple morning runs but made up for it by walking laps around our room all night with a colicky baby in his arms.

After The Worst happened, he’d leave the house before sunrise and come home covered in sweat mixed with dew. He’d say, “Let me jump in the shower,” and by the time he was dressed, Oliver was eager to play with him. After fifteen minutes of playing, Robert would find me
wherever I was—the shower, the bed—and say, “Sarah, I need to go to work now.” Oliver would delay him with one more game or story before the official and last good-bye of the morning: “Okay, now I really have to run.” A kiss for each of us, and he was off.

Our pattern was set. We dealt with our loss separately. I wonder if he sees her in the little girls playing at the park, if he says a silent “good night” to her before falling asleep, as I do. Sometimes I wonder if he blames me for bringing a curse into our family. First my mom, then the daughter we named after her; I’m the connective tissue between them. I wonder if he ever thinks that talking about Ella could put a hex on Izzy, could threaten his very life.

I go to get Izzy out of the car. I look at him for a few moments before I begin the careful dance of getting him out of his car seat and into his crib. I unbuckle him and in one movement scoop him up to my body. It’s a tricky maneuver, but this is what I’m expert at now. I wonder if I would have liked teaching law, or been as good at it as Robert is. It never occurred to me to try it. I was so thrilled to get my job at the NRDC when we first moved to LA. I had bold dreams: to save the environment, to make an impact. Now it seems like that happened in another woman’s life.

Izzy’s head rests on my shoulder. I listen for his heavy breathing that tells me he’s still quite passed out before I begin to walk. Then, slowly, and on a steady, swaying beat, I carry him inside, gently close the front door with my hip, and walk upstairs to my children’s bedroom.

We made it. We’re home.

I
lay Izzy
in his crib, and he rolls onto his tummy and settles into the light-blue flannel sheet. I bend down and make sure I can see his nostrils. I check the sheet and turn on the monitor. The day is still hot, so as quietly as I can, I push up on the wooden sash of the window. It’s hotter outside than in. From here I can see Oliver sitting in a patch of dirt in the backyard, where we once thought to plant a vegetable garden. He has confiscated this plot of ground for his own use: a toy construction zone, where he now sits amid yellow metal trucks coated in dirt.

“Daddy!” he shouts. “Daddy! Come play with me!”

Where did Robert go?

Izzy fidgets at the sound of his brother’s voice infiltrating his dream. I close the window. Izzy snores and settles back into his nap. I melt into the soft chair across from the crib. Listening to Izzy’s breathing calms me. I hear Robert turn on the shower down the hallway. That’s where he went.

Even through the closed window, I can tell Oliver’s voice is increasing in volume and impatience. “Daddy! Come! Play! With! Me!”

I used to love playing with my dad. I was not athletic, but he loved baseball, so he bought me a glove and taught me to play catch. At first I was terrible, but I have to give him credit, he stuck with me. He never let on if he was frustrated when I dropped it, and he didn’t make a huge deal when I caught it—he let that be normal. Eventually I got the
hang of it. For a while we played every night that he wasn’t traveling or working late. It was our thing. It’s hard to fathom the distance between me and him, between then and now.

I know Robert will be delayed, so I head downstairs to keep Oliver company. When he sees me step out of the back door, he says, “I want Daddy.” He is matter of fact, without malice. I take it that way.

“I know.” I wish Robert hadn’t postponed him. “Daddy will be right down. He’s taking a shower.” Oliver sighs. “I guess he wanted to be clean and fresh to play with you,” I offer. Lame. “Whatcha building?” I vamp, walking toward him.

“A road, with a castle at the end.”

“Can I help?”

He hesitates. Thinking he’s doing me a favor, he says, without enthusiasm, “I guess.”

The backyard is quiet with just the two of us here. An apple tree that someone else planted years ago surprised us with tart green fruit our first year here. Its confused branches are beginning to bud now in the warm winter sun. The grass is yellow around the perimeter of the yard from too much water and brown in the center from not enough. Last year, during an astronaut phase, Oliver decided that this made a perfect landing target and played hours upon hours of NASA, trying to land rockets and space guys in the brown bull’s-eye from an upstairs window.

I try to get lost in play with Oliver. I rake the dirt with my fingers, follow the path he’s making. In the quiet concentration of the moment, Ella comes. It used to be my mom who’d visit after the car accident stole her from me, but Ella superseded her. She appears without warning, like an unexpected visitor ringing the doorbell. I adjust to the initial surprise, and then welcome her. Sometimes she arrives at an age she never reached. Like today, I’d say she’s twelve or so. She sits down and digs in the dirt with us, like a young babysitter. No sooner do I begin to enjoy the beauty of her presence than I am ambushed by a piercing pain in my womb. It burns like an electric jolt.

I inhale and exhale deeply, try to quell the pain. Oliver looks up.
He is used to hearing me sigh, seeing my eyes redden. I shrug and smile at him.
Breathe
, I coach myself.
Everyone made it home today.

We work on our project. In a few minutes Robert joins us and we are a threesome like we once were. When Izzy wakes, disoriented from his late nap, I bring him outside and our family makes four again. Persimmon stripes emerge in the sky, signaling the conclusion of this day. Here we all are.

“M
ommy
, can I have French toast?” I open my eyelids to let in a sliver of fuzzy light. Oliver is standing beside my bed, his face level with mine. I try to focus, but my eyes have other plans. They shut against the light of dawn.

“Isn’t it Sunday?” I murmur through viscous vocal chords. “Daddy makes your French toast, sweetie.”

“Daddy went for his run,” he answers. “Can you make it?”

“Okay, honey. Just a sec.” Come on, Sarah. Get up. Make your son breakfast.

“Mommy, I’m hungry.”

“I know, sweetie, I’m coming.” Here I come. I’m getting up.

“No you’re not.”

He has a point.

I picture a thousand cheerleaders in an arena, in full pom-pom regalia, chanting, “Sit up, Sarah! Sit up, Sarah!” I swing my legs to the floor. Maybe this will be a good day.

When Robert returns from his run, the boys are playing and I’m standing at the kitchen sink eating French toast crusts. I can’t shake my stupor. I could make another pot of coffee, but the thought of the steps it would take overwhelms me, and this lethargy can’t be cured by caffeine. I wish I knew what would cure me. Time, I once thought.

Robert comes over and rubs my back. He leans into my neck and says, “You okay?”

I don’t want him to carry my burden on top of his. I straighten up and show him my game face. “I’m fine. Just sleepy,” I say. I kiss him on the mouth and feel his cool sweaty sheen on my lips. “How was your run?”

“It was good,” he says, and with a gentle touch he moves a lock of my hair out of my face and behind my ear. “I’ll get showered, and then I’ll take the boys out.” More loudly, he announces to the boys, “Who wants to go to the car show with Daddy?” He runs upstairs, leaving an excited buzz in his wake.

Oliver yells in Izzy’s face, “Izzy! We’re going to the car show!” He tackles him in his excitement, and Izzy falls backward and bumps his head on the floor. I go to comfort them—Izzy’s sore head, Oliver’s feelings. He didn’t mean to hurt his brother. My calm handling of the situation springs from the knowledge that soon Robert will take them out and I’ll get a break from holding my pieces together.

In a few minutes, Robert walks back into the kitchen in work clothes, his eyes conciliatory, his mouth in a tight grimace. “I am so so sorry, honey—I just got a text from my Moot Court kids. I forgot to calendar a meeting for this morning. They’re waiting for me at school.”

No, no, no, no, no.
“On a Sunday? Can’t they do it without you?” My chest tightens.

“I promised I would help them. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I forgot. I have to be there. I’m sorry guys,” he tells the boys.

“Can we still go to the car show?” Oliver pleads.

“Not today,” Robert says. “But next weekend we will for sure.”

“Can’t Mommy take us? Please, Mommy?” Oliver grasps his hands together and squeezes his eyes shut in prayer. Hope pours from his every follicle, his every eyelash.

My family waits for the answer. I picture getting out of my robe and slippers, putting on clothes, driving the freeway downtown, weaving our way through crowds and cars. The silence is broken by
the icemaker dropping a cluster of ice into its unseen bucket. Robert begins, “Sarah, you don’t—”

I hate feeling helpless. I don’t want to be that woman. I don’t want that woman to be my kids’ mom. I clear my throat. “Sure I can.”

A
Sunday morning
in January is as good as it gets on the 10 East. You can see the snow at the top of the distant mountains. The clean air tricks you into thinking you could reach them in an hour. Then it dawns on you how filthy the air must be the rest of the year, thick enough to block out the view of the mountains and your memory of them.

I exit at Grand and pull to a stop at the red light at Olive. So far, so good. On our right is a Korean megachurch that in a former life was an Olympic boxing venue. Its massive exterior wall proclaims its new name: Olympic Church of Christ. They saved paint by keeping the first word the same. I wonder what ghosts of bloody noses and broken teeth hover over the worshipers, and if they have a sense of humor about it. Across the street, the mirrors on the sidewalk at the Olde Goode Things antique store reflect passing cars.

I turn on my left blinker. We’re almost at the convention center. My nerves begin to blister and pop as I anticipate the confluence of a large crowd and my boys’ tendency to roam. Enough worrying. It will be fine. Oliver and Izzy will have fun pretending to drive fancy cars. They will make me smile. Then we’ll go home and tell Robert all about it, and we’ll have made it through this day.

I wait for the light to change. Something seems different about this intersection. I used to come this way to court when I was working. Were these encampments here in the underpass then? People lie on
the ground, motionless in cocoons of dirty blankets. Others shuffle in no particular direction, bruised hands grasping broken shopping carts laden with clothes and bags. A young woman pushing a stroller moves past the collection of discarded people, looking out of place. The stroller holds not bags of clothes but a baby, covered with a blanket. I squint to see if my eyes are tricking me. Is it a baby? Maybe it’s a doll scrounged from a nearby toy-district store? The light changes to green, and I drive slowly forward, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.