Shelter Me (32 page)

“You look very nice.”

“Thanks.” She smiled self-consciously. It had taken her a good twenty minutes to choose the outfit: a pale blue silk blouse and a pewter-colored skirt scattered with tiny blue and black spirals, the diaphanous printed layer clinging to the satiny monotone slip. It was a distinct departure from the jeans and T-shirts she’d worn exclusively in the previous months. Not overly alluring—she’d been careful about that—but flattering to her figure, which had begun to remember the shape it had held before two pregnancies. It was at first infuriating, and then, finally, funny to her that she’d spent so much time on what to wear. Once the decision had been made, she’d hastily hung up the rejected outfit pieces, covering the tracks of her ridiculous indecision.

“What’s in the dish?” she asked.

He squinted and shook his head, “Ah, it’s probably terrible.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I tried to…you know…come up with something a little more interesting than a bottle of wine. I brought that, too, of course. But I figured your aunt probably had all the bases covered, so I tried to think of something that she wouldn’t maybe have.”

“Tug,” she laughed, swinging onto the main road. “What’s in the dish!”

“Indian Pudding. It’s a mess. I almost left it home.”

“I’ve had that before, I think. With the cornmeal and the molasses, right?”

“Yeah, I found the recipe online.” He shook his head. “I might leave it in the car.”

Janie had to laugh. The thought of him, normally so competent and self-assured, leaning over a stove with a wooden spoon, squinting at a recipe, maybe with an apron on, trying so hard to please people he barely knew…and ending up with, as he put it, “a mess”…it just tickled her.

He began to chuckle. “You should see my kitchen. Looks like somebody threw a grenade.”

“Bring it in,” she cajoled. “Please? I want to see one thing you don’t do well.”

He smiled at the compliment. “Maybe.”

A
UNT
J
UDE FLUTTERED AROUND
them too much when they arrived. She welcomed Tug like he was a returning war veteran, and it got under Janie’s skin. She glanced at Cormac, who clasped his hands in front of his chest and made a simpering “My Hero” face behind Aunt Jude’s back. It had the desired effect of lowering the voltage of Janie’s irritation.

“Hey, it’s my old furniture-moving pal,” Cormac said to Tug, shaking his hand. Cormac glanced over at his father and then turned back to Tug. “Speaking of which, can you hang around and help me put this room back together when dinner’s over?”

“Sure.”

“Good, because the old man isn’t really up to it anymore.” Cormac raised his voice just a little. “He’s gone a little soft, you know, now that he never lifts anything heavier than a pound cake.”

“Shut your trap,” Uncle Charlie growled from across the table. “I’m in the best shape of my life.”

“Okay, Toughie,” placated Cormac. “Remember your blood pressure.”

“My blood pressure’s lower than yours, ya little snot.”

“Come on,” Cormac said to Tug, “let’s get a beer. Budweiser, Pop?”

“Get it from the back of the fridge. They’re colder.”

W
HEN THE TURKEY LAY
carved in generous slabs on the worn patterns of Aunt Jude’s serving dishes, she began to hand bowls and platters to the adults to bring out to the table. “Careful, now,” she chattered at them, and “Don’t forget the serving spoon!”

“Now let’s see, this would be, um…Tug?” she trilled. “Does your dish go with dinner or dessert?”

“After dessert,” he said. “I’ll use it to seal up any cracks you might have in your driveway.”

“Cracks?”

“He’s kidding, Auntie,” said Janie. “It’s dessert.”

Choosing seats became a barely polite fire drill, with Dylan insisting on sitting between Cormac and Tug, Barb offering with particular vehemence to have Carly by her, and Aunt Jude being none too discreet about seating Tug next to Janie. “I’ll sit in the damned kitchen!” Uncle Charlie muttered, impatient to land somewhere, anywhere, and get to his food.

With an exhortation from Aunt Brigid that everything was getting cold, they took their seats. Aunt Jude said grace. “Bless us, O Lord, as we enjoy this feast of your gifts, and help us, dear Savior, to know your grace in all things, in sorrow and in joy.” Hands started to unclasp around the table, but Aunt Jude went on. “It’s been a difficult year, Lord. A member of our family has gone to his reward in heaven. He was a loving father, husband, and friend and we miss him so much.”

“She’s talking about Dad,” Dylan whispered to Tug, who nodded.

“But, as always, you have given us so many things to be thankful for. Our bodies are healthy and we have work and activities that we enjoy. Most importantly we have each other and we know how fortunate that makes us in a world where everyone seems so cut loose from each other. We have our dear Barb joining the family,” she gave a smile to Cormac’s betrothed, “and we have new friends that lighten our load and remind us of all that life has to offer.”

Janie cringed at this obvious reference to Tug. He seemed so still next to her, not the barest twitch of a muscle in his hand as it held hers. In all of this getting-together-for-Thanksgiving business, she’d only been aware of her own hesitation. His utter
stillness, a seemingly immutable intent not to be thrown by the insinuations of others, gave her an inkling of what it must be like for him, appearing new on such a scene as this.

“We praise you, Lord, and offer our sincere thanks for all your blessings. Amen.”

I
T WAS ONLY WHEN
she’d pulled away from the house with no one but Tug in the car that Janie realized she’d chosen her fury purposely. There was nothing to be angry about, really. Everyone had behaved themselves, if you ignored the TV-ad-worthy looks of rapture the aunts gave as they sank their spoons into Tug’s Indian Pudding. And Cormac had merely mentioned that if Tug stirred constantly over a low flame next time he wouldn’t get so many lumps. Tug nodded and said maybe he shouldn’t have been watching the Patriots game. He gave a hilarious impression of himself holding an imaginary spoon stock-still as he stared in disbelief at Tom Brady’s fourth-quarter game-loosing intercepted pass.

“I saw that!” said Cormac. “Pop, did you see it? It was like something out of a Greek tragedy!”

“Oh, I saw it alright,” said Uncle Charlie, shoveling up another wad of lumpy pudding. “The guy’s had too many damned actress girlfriends, is what I say. He’s distracted!”

Everyone was laughing, but Janie was still stuck on how Tug should have worked harder to make the pudding smooth. Why did Cormac have to criticize? Did he think Tug was the kind of guy who hangs around cooking treats all day? No, he came up with this idea to try and please them…. She looked around the table. Everyone was laughing and eating Tug’s dessert like they’d had nothing but dry toast and thin soup all day. Maybe it wasn’t such an insult, after all.

It was when the dishes were being washed, and last bits of meat were being extricated from the turkey, and the men were reassembling Aunt Jude’s living room that Janie slid into a slow boil. Dylan sat at the kitchen table licking the drips from the ice-
cream scoop while they all worked. “I don’t want to go home,” he said. “I want to stay here. Please, Mom? Can’t me and Carly have a sleepover with Auntie Jude?”

“Aren’t you tired, Dylan?” Janie stalled. Was there a reason for him not to stay? She couldn’t think of any, but there was some sort of weird alarm going off in the back of her brain nonetheless.

“A little, but not that much. Please, Auntie Jude?”

Aunt Jude was very happy to have them. A little too happy, Janie thought. But she had already agreed before she realized the repercussions. Her response was fury, as if the whole family had manipulated a five-year-old to send her off with Tug alone. She could barely contain herself as she kissed everyone good-bye and watched them shake Tug’s hand and pat his shoulder and express their falling-down ecstasy at his having joined them.

Out on Route 27, Tug inhaled and heaved a great sigh. The sound of his relief pulled her out of herself and away from stewing about the humiliation she’d suffered. Or might have suffered. Maybe.
Anger is so easy,
she realized.
It’s being scared that’s hard.
And if she were to heave her own great big sigh of relief, she knew it would be fear she exhaled, not rage.

“That was great,” Tug said, glancing out at the houses they passed, some dark, some with their own holiday scenes appearing in the windows. “Your family’s really nice.”

“I’m glad you had a good time. The pudding was a huge hit.”

“Ah, they were just being polite.”

“Uncle Charlie’s not polite, and he ate about a quart of it.”

When they turned onto his street, Tug said, “Why don’t you come in and see the house? I’ll give you the nickel tour.”

Janie didn’t answer right away. Her heart began to throb in her chest.
My God, it’s just Tug!
she told herself.
You’ve been alone with him a hundred times!
She pulled into the driveway and stared out at the lake. The moon lay behind a cluster of thin clouds, and threw a muted reflection onto the darkened waters. Tug didn’t get
out of the car. He waited for her reply. “I don’t know,” she said finally.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he said.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Janie,” he said gently. “Just come in the house.”

She glanced over at him, expecting to see a no-big-deal smile on his face, but found none. His eyes were as black as Lake Pequot; he was pulling inward, cloaking his emotions. And he wasn’t setting out other, more digestible, ones in their place. He wasn’t trying to fool her—at least there was that. She got out of the car.

Inside the front entryway to the left was a pane-glass pocket door, partially open. In the room beyond, Janie saw a tidy desk and a dark cork wall covered in photographs. Pictures of people were haphazardly interspersed with photos of roof lines, copper trimmed windows and intricately designed paving stones. The room had only two small windows. “Couldn’t expect to get any work done if I had a view of the lake,” he murmured as he stood beside her.

To their right ran a long black slab of marble countertop that separated the kitchen from the entryway. Beyond the kitchen was a sizable wooden table—teak, she thought—and eight matching ladder-back chairs. Past that was the living room, with a couch facing a wall of glass, beyond which was the porch.

As he showed her through the house, he gave her little details: the marble countertop came from a now-abandoned quarry in Vermont. His piece had been the last to be excavated. The dining room set had been ordered by his grandmother in the sixties, when teak was all the rage. It was a little dated, but it reminded him of his visits here as a child. The small maple table in the corner with the leafy red-striped coleus on top was the puzzle table he’d mentioned.

The tour progressed up the open wooden stairway that ran along the left wall of the living room. Here was the guest bedroom right at the top. Down a short hall toward the back of the
house was his bedroom. She stood in the doorway and peeked in, as if she were at a museum and the room were cordoned off with a velvet rope. He had a blue-and-white-patterned quilt on his double bed, which faced a row of tall windows looking out onto the lake.

“I thought you said you never made your bed,” she said.

“I don’t usually.” He looked at the bed, as if it might know why he’d made it. “I guess maybe I just figured it’s Thanksgiving.”

“You’re a holiday bed-maker.”

“Seems so.” They glanced at each other for the first time since they’d come upstairs. It was a relief to see that they were still themselves. “Come on,” he said. “I saved the best for last.”

Back downstairs, Tug unbolted the door to the porch, stepped back, and let Janie out first. Then he switched off the lights in the living room. With no light source behind them, the lake suddenly came into detailed view. Janie let out a little, “Oh!”

“I know,” he nodded, stepping up beside her, his arm brushing her shoulder.

“Tug,” she said. “You must just…”

“Yeah, I’m out here all the time.”

After a few minutes he leaned away from her and switched on a standing lamp. The lake faded and she could see the porch itself. It had wicker furniture—again, his grandmother’s. But he’d painted the pieces a soft gray and bought new cushions. The fabric looked like striped blue-and-white bed ticking. There were several low lamps on end tables, and to the left a sturdy table with thick carved legs, painted white. This is where he ate his breakfast every morning, he told her, unless it dropped below 32 degrees. He didn’t like when the milk froze in his cereal, otherwise even that wouldn’t stop him.

He sat down on the wicker sofa and she followed. It was chilly, but there was no breeze. She tucked her legs up under the bell of her skirt and wrapped her thin sweater a little tighter.

“Something to drink?” he offered. “Cup of coffee? Glass of wine?”

What would he want?
she found herself thinking. “Got any hot chocolate?”

He smiled as he rose. “You know I do.”

Well here you are,
she told herself, alone now on the porch.
In Tug’s house.
She thought back to their first few meetings, that time when she was cleaning the gutters, steamed because he hadn’t come when he was supposed to. He had climbed up onto the roof to talk to her, and ended up cleaning half of them himself. He had a way of diffusing her, even back then. Well sometimes, anyway. The bomb squad couldn’t have diffused her the day Heidi brought Dylan home late. That time she had gone off with a mighty blast that had sent bits of mortar into every relationship she had.

But she’d gone to the ball field and apologized. And he’d accepted, even though she had said some really mean things, like
I wanted
his
porch not
yours. It made her cringe in shame even now.

And yet there had been some truth to it. She had wanted this last gift of Robby’s to be fully his, undiluted by anyone else’s influence. And now when she sat out there, she couldn’t think only of Robby. Tug was all over it. The wind chimes he’d hung even made it sound like him. Shouldn’t this bother her? It hadn’t in a very long time.
It’s too soon,
she thought.
This is all too soon, right?