Shelter Me (8 page)
Authors: Juliette Fay
“Sorry about Cranston,” he said. “The guy’s a lech.”
“Thanks for moving him along,” said Janie.
“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d be much in the mood for that.”
“Oh,” said Janie, the muscles in her neck starting to tense. “You were worried I’d flip out on him. Ruin your chance to pass inspection.”
Malinowski stuck his hands in his pockets. “A little.” Before Janie could summon sufficient breath to tell him to…to go…to go somewhere and do something to himself, Malinowski changed the subject. His words came out quickly, as if they had been trapped in his head for too long and now saw their chance to escape. “Your husband, Rob. He seemed like a good guy. How’d he die?”
Janie exhaled. It was a simple question, but before now she’d never had to answer it. Everyone she came in contact with knew
exactly how her husband, who was definitely a good guy, had died. She surreptitiously pinched the back of her hand, and said, “He went out for a bike ride. He couldn’t find his helmet so he went without it that day. An old guy didn’t see the stop sign and hit him.”
Malinowski was still. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you ever find the helmet?”
“What?”
“Where was the helmet?”
Janie was caught off guard. No one had ever asked about the stupid helmet. “In the toy bin. Dylan had been playing with it.”
“Where is it now?”
“The dump.”
“You threw it in the big compactor and crushed it.”
She looked away. “Damn straight, I did.”
He nodded. “I’ll be here tomorrow with the Sonotubes. Now we can finally start this thing.”
F
RIDAY
, J
UNE
29, L
ATE
Shelly just left. She stayed with the kids while I went to that Experiential Safety course. Aunt Jude didn’t tell me it was Friday night in addition to all day Saturday. I put the kids to bed before Shelly got here so she wouldn’t be endangered by the necessity of child butt-wiping. This gave her more time to rearrange my book shelves and add ornamental touches to my mantelpiece. Not much of a babysitter, but she’s got the home decor thing down.
As I’ve made clear to everyone who comes within ten feet of me, I did not want to go. Jake and I talked about it on our walk this morning. In his careful way, he suggested that “sarcastic humor might not be well-received.” No kidding.
So I went, and I just hated it at first. It was like that grief group! Almost everyone was some kind of wounded creature. When the instructor asked us each to tell why we had signed up, it was a horror show. Two were rape victims, one was an incest survivor, one had been mercilessly teased all her life because of a truly wicked case of acne. An older woman had lost her only child to leukemia, which tanked out her marriage, so she was living alone and scared all the time.
Some weren’t so bad. One was a nurse who worked the night shift and was afraid of walking to the parking garage at
odd hours. There were two girls who had just graduated high school and their parents had made them come so they would be safe at college. They never left each other’s sides. Their mouths dropped open when the others talked. A chocolate pecan pie says they won’t be back tomorrow.
Then it was my turn. I had thought I’d go the single parent, alone-at-night route. Nuf said, right? But then these women were just so—what? truthful? serious? bullshitless? There was no bullshit. It was humbling. My prerecorded answer just wasn’t going to cut it. I was already choky from their stories, so I just out and told them my husband died in a freak accident five months ago, and I have two small children. And this sound went out from them. It was all of them, but it was one sound, one really low note, half groan, half hum. Unrehearsed, unplanned. And it made me think that this is a sound I’ve heard before but didn’t recognize. I always assumed it was pity, and it made me want to scream. But these random women from every walk of life, having just leaked out a little of their own misery—different flavors from mine, different packaging, different brands—they did not feel pity. No. It was something else, something that’s always there, like the rumble of the earth’s core. It was like the hum of all the world’s sorrow.
I don’t feel scared, I told them. I don’t feel much at all, except tired. And mad.
At the break, Instructor Debbie said, “This is going to be good for you.”
After the break, Debbie introduced Arturo, her guy counter part. Then they did a lot of talking about “walking defended” and “giving yourself permission to yell.” Permission? News to me. But that was the hardest part for a lot of them. We think life is so much better now for women. But apparently we still need permission. The Dark Ages are alive and secretly thriving like a herpes infection among us. You think you’re in the
twenty-first century and then up pops a sore of subjugation the size of a pepperoni slice in the middle of your face for everyone to see. Dab liberally with permission.
We practiced walking and yelling and a few cute little moves like eye pokes and foot stomps. We grabbed each other’s wrists and learned how to twist out of it. It’s too much partnering up and touching for me. Debbie said we might have a hard time falling asleep tonight, we might be too wound up. Not me. I’m exhausted.
I
N THE DARK
, J
ANIE
woke from a dream of floating in fog. The source of her levitation seemed to be a steady hum, flowing like a low-voltage current through the marrow of her bones. She opened her eyes to a creaking, scratching sound and froze in her bed. Even her hair strained to determine the source of the noise. She sat up quickly, certain that someone was walking up the stairs.
“WHO’S THERE?” she boomed, having given herself permission.
The creaking continued.
“Mommy?” said Dylan.
Janie leaped out of bed and lunged to the top of the stairs, prepared to eye-poke the intruder to death. No one was there. She flung herself into Dylan’s room, where the noise was louder. Squinting through the darkness, Janie saw the light on the baby monitor flickering erratically, and ripped the plug from the socket. The noise stopped.
“Who yelled?” said Dylan.
“It was just me,” said Janie, trying to regulate her breathing as she straightened his tangle of blankets and tucked them around him.
“No,” said Dylan. “Who said, ‘Who’s there?’”
“Me.”
“Were you being a giant?”
“Kind of,” she said. She kissed him and stroked his cheek with the backs of her fingers. By degrees his muscles undid themselves and he drifted off.
Having slain the mighty monitor, Janie sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for fatigue to topple her over. But her heart continued to pound, apparently unaware that the battle had been won. Knowing sleep was a while off, Janie decided to kill some time by ordering a new baby monitor.
Downstairs in the cluttered office she flicked on the computer and surfed haphazardly through several websites, one offering medical advice on postoperative care of implanted heart monitors, and one hawking very expensive baby clothes. After a while she found a good-enough monitor at a reasonable price with no shipping charges, and clicked Purchase.
Before shutting off the computer, she checked her e-mail. As usual, there were several from Aunt Jude, mostly forwarded messages from her online friends. There was an account of a vision of the Blessed Virgin seen in the boughs of a Douglas fir tree in Washington State; pictures of pets found sleeping in unusual places, including a dishwasher and the basket of a tricycle; and a quiz that would supposedly determine which Sesame Street character you were most like. The only message Aunt Jude had actually written was a reminder not to wear jewelry to the self-defense class. She had made that mistake herself, and her necklaces had gotten all tangled up in her purse. Since Janie only ever wore her wedding ring these days, it wasn’t difficult advice to follow. Delete, delete, delete, delete.
One last e-mail was from Father Jake: “I forgot to ask—is Dylan entering kindergarten in the fall? If so, you might want to sign him up for religious education sooner rather than later. It’s filling up.”
Janie responded: “Not going to KG till next year,” and hit Send.
The plans for the porch caught her eye and she picked them up and studied them. Robby’s porch. His last gift in a long line of gifts he had given her over the years. She wondered which details
had been his ideas. For instance, had he been the one to say, “Build the door diagonally across the corner closest to the driveway,” or had that been the contractor’s suggestion? She thought of asking Malinowski, but then dismissed it. Too pitiful.
A faint ping from the computer gave notice that an e-mail message had arrived. It was from Father Jake: “Okay, just checking. Hope the course is going well.”
Janie replied: “Going okay. Was not sarcastic even once. At least not out loud. What are you doing up?”
In a few minutes, his reply came: “I’m not a very good sleeper. I do a lot of work at night. I like the quiet. How about you?”
“A spastic baby monitor woke me. Think I’ll try to catch a few winks before the kids get up. Good night.”
A few days later when she checked her e-mail, his response was waiting passively for her: “Good night, Jane.”
J
ANIE AWOKE BLEARY-EYED AND
cantankerous to the sound of Carly yelling, “Da! Da! Da!” from her crib. A memory of saying “He wants you” skittered across her mind.
He wants you? Who wants who?
Then it came to her. As a baby, Dylan had learned the “da” sound before he’d learned “ma.” If he wanted someone, no matter who it was, he said, “Da!” On early mornings, when he woke them with his demands, she would nudge Robby and say “He wants you. Hear him? He’s calling you.”
“Okay, I’m coming,” she now heard four-year-old Dylan say, and then the sound of his straining to release his sister from captivity. Knowing they would be on her in moments, Janie ground her molars together to keep from crying.
Jesus, Robby,
she begged silently,
find the goddamned helmet.
W
HEN
A
UNT
J
UDE ARRIVED
with a blueberry loaf from Cormac’s and a new triple pack of Play-Doh, the children were dressed in clean, not-obviously-mismatched clothes, the beds were made, and Janie was pouring tar-black coffee into a carry mug. Before
Aunt Jude could grill her about the prior evening, Janie kissed them all, including her fluttery aunt, and ran for the door.
Arriving several minutes early, Janie sat in her car in the parking lot and sipped the coffee. The cinder block building that housed Experiential Safety on the second floor was painted stale blue, a color that attempted to be cheery but fell short.
Like Play-Doh,
she thought.
Another car pulled in several spots down. Out popped the two teenagers from Janie’s class, wearing sweatshirts and ponytails, one holding an iced coffee. Suddenly the other grabbed it and took a big swig. The drink’s owner faked a foot stomp and an eye poke, startling her friend so that the iced coffee flew from her hand. It fell several feet away, cracking open and pouring itself onto the asphalt as it rolled. The two girls laughed so hard they bumped into a Mini Cooper parked in front of them, which made them clutch each other and laugh even harder. Janie watched them struggle to compose themselves before they opened the door to the building. She waited until the stick-on digital clock on her dashboard turned to 9:03, then forced herself to exit the vehicle.
Most of the women were already in the classroom, waiting quietly, nervously in the chairs that lined one wall. Instructor Debbie entered from a door across the room, affixing her light brown hair into a bun from which strands stuck out at odd angles. “Okay,” she said to the group. “How’d everyone sleep?”
A few told of unsettling dreams that sounded random and mildly psychotic to everyone but the teller. One of the rape victims said she couldn’t sleep at all. The teenagers were silent. At the last minute, strictly from boredom, Janie told them about her brief stint as a giant. The women laughed a few seconds longer than they normally would have under other circumstances.
From there the training took off. They practiced elbows to the chest and thrusts to the nose. They rehearsed demanding attention and ordering help. They kicked and poked and punched. Arturo, who had been adjusting a stance here, reviewing a technique
there, left for a bit. He came back covered from head to foot in a bizarre suit apparently made from football pads, well-placed pieces of Styrofoam, and a massive amount of duct tape. On his head was a cross between a football helmet and a beekeeper’s hat, the mesh stretched tight, obscuring his face. He was huge and shiny. Janie might have laughed, but she didn’t. They were preparing to be attacked.
Each woman got a turn. First was the nurse. She was very good at yelling, but when the attacker grabbed her wrists, she couldn’t remember how to twist out and she struggled without purpose against him.
“Tell her what to do!” prompted Instructor Debbie.
“Foot stomp! Knee to the groin!” the classmates called breathlessly.
The nurse’s knee flew up and her heel crashed down on the bridge of the attacker’s well-protected foot. He released her and grabbed his foot, faking pain. She backed away and he lunged for her.
“Kick! Kick!” yelled the watchers as she landed on the mats. “Kick for your life!” cried one of the rape victims. Women on either side of her instinctively reached out to clasp her hands. “Do it!” they screamed, “Get him!”
The nurse rolled over, propped herself on one side, and swung at him with her foot. The first swipes were ineffectual and only served to push him away momentarily. He kept crawling back toward her in the menacing suit.
“Harder!” the classmates bellowed. “Take him out!”
The nurse’s foot began to swing higher, her heel coming down in a hacking motion on his head. The relentless thumping on the padded helmet felt like fireworks in the women’s chests. Finally the attacker curled into the fetal position and surrendered. The nurse jumped up and screamed “911!” as they had been instructed, barely getting it out before the group rushed toward her. They hugged her and patted her, a couple of them crying. Janie
was surprised to find herself caught up in the crowd, reaching out to pat the nurse’s shoulder.
One by one, they got their turns, the scenarios changing slightly each time. The woman with terrible acne yelled “BACK OFF!” with such intensity that the attacker put his hands up and walked away.
The older woman whose son had died went limp during her turn. She just lay on her back and cried. The attacker sat back on his heels as Debbie crawled up to her and murmured, “Bea, we’re with you. You’re not alone. You have to fight back.”
“No,” whimpered Bea, “I can’t.”
“You can do it,” a few called to her. “Come on, Bea. Just try.”
“No,” she groaned.
One of the two teenagers, the one who’d grabbed the iced coffee in the parking lot, approached. Surprising everyone, she lay down on her back next to the older woman.
“Mrs. Benson?” she whispered. “I would personally really appreciate it if you would make this loser evaporate.” And she closed her eyes.
The attacker surged to life, lunging for the girl who lay prone on the mat. Mrs. Benson groaned, “No!” and blocked him with her foot. He fell back, giving Mrs. Benson just enough time to come to a crouch over the girl, creating a shelter with her aging body. When the attacker lunged again, his mesh-covered face met with the heel of Mrs. Benson’s palm. He fell back again, one hand to the mesh, the other hand swiping at the girl. Mrs. Benson grabbed the arm and sunk her teeth into the duct tape.
