Shelter Us: A Novel (5 page)

“It seems so wrong. We gave her a little food and then paid an obscene amount of money to gawk at expensive cars and eat junk. And they’re still out there, this very second. I mean, what kind of a world lets that be okay?”

“I know.” He shakes his head, pulls me close to him. “It is a crazy world. So sad. It was nice of you to give them the food.”

“No, it wasn’t, not really. It was to make myself feel better. It’s so awful. I keep thinking of that baby sleeping outside tonight.”

“Well, there are agencies there to help them,” he offers.

My mind replays the image of them walking away. I wonder if Robert is right, if they have help. I get up and pace. “I wish we could do something.” Then I say what I’ve been thinking since the moment I saw them but haven’t verbalized, not even to myself. “I wish we could take them in.”

Robert nods in support, though not agreement. When he sees the seriousness in my face, he sits up straighter. “Here? In our home?” He sets out to squelch the idea. “Sarah, people don’t do that. We don’t know who she is, or if she’s mentally ill or on drugs, or—”

“She’s all alone with that poor baby. What if it was me with Oliver and Izzy out there and no one would help us?” My voice rises. Why am I looking for a fight? I know he has a point. I know it and I hate it. I push him, argue with him, make him be the bad one.

He opens his mouth to say something, and decides against it. He walks toward the kitchen, and puts his mug down in the sink. “I don’t know why you’re getting mad at me. I didn’t make the world. I’m just telling you, the fact is, you can’t take in a strange homeless woman.
It may be sad, but that’s the way it is. We have our own children to protect.”

His words and tone sound like an accusation to me. Like
you did not protect Ella
.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, in a voice that doesn’t sound like mine.

“It isn’t supposed to mean anything—”

I walk past him to the sink and slam my mug down, harder than I’d meant to. The ceramic shatters into several pieces. “Oh, no!”

“We can fix it,” Robert says.

“No. It’s ruined.” I wipe a tear away, open the cabinet under the sink, and drop the shards into the trash. I close the cabinet door hard, so that the metal latch vibrates in harmonic pitch—an anger symphony. I stomp upstairs and leave Robert standing alone in the kitchen, wondering how long the storm will last.

W
e never
used to fight—not once—before we had children. There was nothing to argue about. Even in the torturous early days of sleep deprivation with Oliver, I was only short with Robert twice. We kissed and moved on. Since Ella’s death, I have been more temperamental. Even I don’t always understand what sets me off.

I am lying on the bed with the lights out when he walks upstairs. He walks into the bathroom. The water goes on, then off. He brushes his teeth for exactly 120 seconds. He counts in his head. Next will come flossing. He will have a gorgeous smile when he’s ninety. I don’t have the patience, or the optimism, to do the same. I hear him remove his clothing and drop it into the laundry hamper. He comes out of the bathroom. In the dark he opens a drawer and puts on pajamas, his annual Father’s Day gift. He gets in bed. I’m on my side, facing away from him. I don’t know what to say to connect again.

“Good night, Sarah,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whisper back.

He kisses forgiveness onto the back of my head, rests on the medium-firm pillow he’s favored since childhood, and falls right to sleep.

I dream about the homeless woman. We are at Starbucks, talking over our foaming coffees. We’ve snagged the green velvet armchairs and sit ignoring the looks from other customers who covet our spots. I am wearing my bathrobe. She is dressed as she was today. We are
out of place among the other patrons—svelte mothers in pristine Uggs, holding forth with personalized notepads and pens, planning school auctions and teacher coups d’état; casually rich men murmuring about stocks; scruffy, unshaven screenwriters pecking at laptops; balding retirees reading
The New York Times
by the light of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The line of men in suits and women in yoga pants waiting to order snakes past $200 espresso machines and racks of CDs, the last in the bricks-and-mortar retail world. The sky glares gray-white through the windows, ready for the sun to break through the cloud cover. Dogs wait outside for masters. Mothers enter with children on hips.

She is talking. I cannot hear the hubbub of the ladies or the men or the baristas or the children or the dogs. I hear only her voice. It is familiar. She tells me that she used to live in my neighborhood. She lived in the house next door to ours. She looks like my childhood best friend Hannah, but she is still the homeless lady, the kind of dream logic that only makes sense in the pre-waking world.

“We were neighbors! Don’t you remember me?” she asks. “Our kids played together. Can’t you remember? Why are you pretending you don’t know me? How could you forget? How can you be so cruel?” She stands up and shouts at me. I recoil into the green velvet chair, and the whole crowd at Starbucks turns to watch. She is screaming. “I needed you! You are killing me! Do you realize? You are killing me!”

I wake sweaty, my heart pounding. As though he were awakened by the shouting in my dream, Oliver runs into my room, straight to my side of the bed. Inches from my face, he announces with a voice full of hope in the almost-dawn light, “Mommy, it’s morning!”

If I closed my eyes, I could reenter my dream. I could defend myself and say,
I don’t know you. We were never neighbors. This is not my fault
. But as sleepy as I feel, as unready as I am to rouse myself and start another day of failing to parent with grace, I can’t go back to sleep. I do not want to dream again. I cannot refute her.

I wipe the sleep from my eyes. “Okay, kiddo. Here I come.”

W
hen I open
the front door to get the paper this morning, still unsettled by the dream, my actual next-door neighbor, Susie, is walking down her front path.

When we moved in, we thought we’d had good neighbor luck. Susie and Stan in the big house next door were our age, deceptively friendly, and she was pregnant, too. We had recently arrived from DC, and I was working full-time on environmental litigation at the NRDC, so Susie was my top candidate for a new friend. Wouldn’t that be convenient?

Susie, unfortunately, did not turn out to be the next-door neighbor I’d hoped for. Her sunshiny smile was all winter; it carried no warmth. I sensed I wouldn’t be allowed too close. She was busy in any case, crafting superior children and a showplace house, and projecting happiness to the world. It didn’t take long for me to see that she was the type of woman who interpreted being married and well-manicured as her life accomplishments. Despite that, for a while we saw each other often on weekends because Oliver and her firstborn, Maxwell, liked to play together. Her empty smile was disconcerting, but I adapted to it. When Ella died, she withdrew even that.

I don’t see her until it is too late to run back inside. She is the image of perkiness, even at this hour. Shiny blond hair (chemically straightened between pregnancies) gracefully kisses her shoulder blades. It is brushed and knot-free. Her lavender tank top shows off
her tanned-to-golden-perfection shoulders, and black Lululemon yoga pants show off her toned and shapely tush. Her face boasts both mascara and lipstick. I am wearing Robert’s fleece sweatshirt over the T-shirt I slept in, and baggy sweatpants I found at the top of the hamper.

Oliver adores Susie’s son, Maxwell. For two years, they enjoyed the natural chemistry their mothers lacked. But after Ella died, the invitations for Oliver to come play ended. I’m not paranoid, not in this case—she’s avoiding me, and Oliver’s friendship with Maxwell is the collateral damage.

“Hi, Susie,” I muster, forcing a smile.

“Oh, hi, Sarah!” she exclaims with a big smile, pretending she didn’t notice me until I spoke. She has been getting worse every month. Whenever I’m in the front yard, she goes inside, mumbling an excuse like she left the stove on. When I see her at the market, she becomes fascinated with the color and texture of an avocado, or the nutritional information on a box of frozen waffles. If she accidentally makes eye contact, she says brightly, “Oops, forgot something,” then swings her shopping cart 180 degrees and power-walks to another aisle.

Now she bends down to pick up her paper and tries to appear absorbed by the front page. I glance at my own to see what may have caught her rapt attention. Kids splashing in a pool. The President says we’re winning the war on terror. Nothing new. She turns toward her house, keeping her eyes on the front page. I decide I’ve had enough of this. I am going to make her talk to me.

“How’ve you been?” I call out. “I haven’t seen you lately. Were you on vacation?”

She looks up at me, then she scans the block for something else to look at—two gardeners getting out of a green pickup truck across the street, a shirtless jogger approaching on the sidewalk, her roses. “Oh, no,” she says, saccharine voiced, “we’ve just been so busy. You know, with school and swim lessons and piano.” All this for a five-year-old.

“How does Max like all that?”

“Oh, Maxwell loves swimming. He should be in the youngest group,
but they moved him up with the older kids.” She’s happy to speak to me about her child’s superlative abilities. “And he has a piano recital next week. ‘Minuet in G.’” She flips her hair over one shoulder as she speaks, beaming as if his accomplishments are hers. She rarely tells me about Peyton, her three-year-old daughter, who was born two months before Ella.

“That’s great,” I say, and self-doubt begins to crackle in my brain. Oliver still uses floaties. I haven’t signed him up for any instrument or sport. Maybe I should be pushing him to join these things. “Well, if Max has some time to play, Oliver would love to see him. He talks about him a lot.” I’m annoyed to feel my blood pressure quicken, but I make a decision to cross a line. I will prostrate myself, I will kiss her feet—anything to get Oliver his friend back. I feel like I’m walking a plank to a shark-filled sea. I know that’s preposterous; we’re talking about two little kids. My chest opens and my heart walks out of my body, straight up to Susie. “Maybe Maxwell would like to come over after school today, or after whatever’s after school?”

She looks at me. Her cold blue eyes size me up, calculate her response. She takes a quick breath; her chest moves up, as though she’s about to speak. Then she seems to change her mind, remains silent for a few more seconds, rethinking. The sky is still cloudy this morning, lending the air around us a mossy film. A stretch of darker gray hinting at rain is moving away from us, and a small circle of white with a blue center is moving toward us. The sky hasn’t decided whether to turn sunny or bleak. She waves to the old man across the street as he comes out for his paper, then turns back to me with her answer.

“That’s so nice, Sarah, but Maxwell is busy this afternoon. All week. And also this weekend.”
Take that
. Her voice, now infused with extra-forced cheeriness, sings, “Okay, bye, gotta go!” She sashays into her house, hair swinging back and forth, without looking back. The lawn mower coming to life across the street covers my gasp. She does not see my reddening eyes, my cheeks flushed with blood from the slap she just delivered.

B
ack inside,
I help Oliver put on the clothes he’s picked out for school.
What a bitch. Just forget her. Who needs her and her stupid kid?
I stretch wide the neck of Oliver’s David Beckham jersey, and he squeezes his head through.
I can’t believe I practically begged her. Seriously, what a bitch
. Oliver pushes his arms through the sleeves. I hold open the legs of his underwear and help him pull them up so the elastic doesn’t pinch his soft, baby-round belly.
Fuck her. Oliver has plenty of other friends. It’s Maxwell’s loss—stupid Maxwell
.

At precisely 8:30 a.m., Robert’s mother, Mrs. Joan Shaw of Brentwood, rings our doorbell. She’s here for her weekly Grandma & Me date at the country club with Izzy.

“Gramma’s here!” Oliver shouts at the sound of the chimes, and runs to be the first at the door. Izzy tails him.

“Check first!” I shout, knowing it’s her.

“It’s her!” he shouts, and opens the door.

“Hello, boys,” she greets them.

I follow behind them. “Hi, Joan.”

She gives me her perfunctory smile. “Good morning, Sarah.” She stands upright, holding her purse. “Ready to go, Izzy?” I stuff a couple toys into Izzy’s bag, and she takes it from me.

“Bye, Izzy Bizzy Dizzy Wizzy Fizzy!” Oliver sings, and spins in a circle. Izzy laughs and tries to copy him, and they whack each other on the arms and body. This makes them laugh harder, carbonated,
high-pitched giggles. My heart wants to hum in tune with their whirling abandon, but Joan’s look of disapproval dampens my small spark of joy.

“Be careful, boys!” Joan cautions, reaching into their tornado to take Izzy with her. She’d take Oliver, too, if she could, take them both and never give them back, run off to Canada, hire a lawyer, and create a grandmothers’ rights law for when your daughter-in-law can’t keep your only granddaughter alive. Robert said it was “nonsense” and that I was “being crazy” when I broke down once and told him my theory. “Then why did she never say it wasn’t my fault, like everyone else did?” I countered. He shrugged and sighed and waved his hands. No answer. He knew I was right.

Nor has she forgiven me for marrying her only child, her perfect son. She was willing to overlook my mixed pedigree—indeed, my half-Jewish, half-Guatemalan heritage conferred certain benefits. She could point to me and her grandchildren as liberal credentials when politics came up at bridge parties or her book club: “Even though my grandchildren exist because of it, I truly believe illegals are ruining the country.” The most unforgivable breach was
how
we got married. When her only child became engaged to a motherless woman, she thought her dreams had been answered—she would get to plan a wedding. But we were married by a judge on our lunch break. No minister, no rabbi, no reception, no guests. She took this as a personal attack. How could we deprive her of this joy?