An American Tune: A Novel

11 "Gimme Shelter”

111 “Gimme Shelter” MaybeTomwasrightinhisbeliefthattheywerebetteroffnothaving any contact with Bridget. He probably was right, Jane thought. She stillwouldhaveworried,ofcourse,butitwouldhavebeenadifferent, abstract kind of worry, not the kind born of some small thing Bridget had said during one of her occasional phone calls that burrowed into Jane’s mind, mixing with all the other small, disturbing things she’d said since she’d left with John Cameron more than a year before. If Bridget stopped calling, maybe it wouldn’t feel as if her volatile spirit lived on in the house, too often edging its way into her relationship with Tom. If he answered when Bridget called, he handed Jane the receiver without a word. More often than not, she was already talking when Jane put it to her ear. “FuckingIdaho, canyoubelieveit?”shesaid,whenshewokethem late one night last summer. “At a truck stop. Cam’s got this friend whose parents have this big bourgeois house in Sun Valley and we were up there for a week. Holy shit, you wouldn’t believe these digs. And the mountains! We hiked twenty miles every day–and did a hundredpush-upswhenwe gottothetop.Youshouldhaveseenme!” She rattled on, pausing only to add coins when the phone beeped a warning. “You’re okay?” Jane asked. “Are you okay?” 11 112 An American Tune “Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’ve got to get off. Cam’s coming out.” There was a click, and she was gone. “Idaho,” Tom said. “What the fuck are they doing in Idaho?” “She didn’t say.” “Good,” he said. “We don’t want to know.” He punched his pillow afewtimes,positioningit,andwithinmomentswasfastasleepagain. But Jane lay awake. The way Bridget had hung up at the sight of Cam:didthatmeanshewascallingJaneinsecret,againsthiswishes? Or had she hung up to avoid answering Jane’s question? Neither of themmentionedBridget’scallinthemorning.Inanunspokenagreement between them, Jane didn’t expect Tom to talk to her about Bridget if he didn’t expect her to talk to him about her family, or to spend time with his. In the absence of these tensions, they led what seemed to Jane a fortunate life, happy in their work and in each other’scompany–andwithoutthemoneyproblemsthathadplagued Jane’s childhood and adolescence. The summer before Jane’s third year of teaching, Tom’s father had a mild heart attack, and his parents decided to retire to Florida in January. It was a good idea, Tom thought. He’d miss having his dad within easy driving distance, but he would not be sorry to have his mother farther away. Since his graduation from law school, she’d nagged at him about staying in Bloomington, working as a public defender, when any of the good law firms in Evansville would be thrilled to have him. She disapproved of his living with Jane, whom she’d never liked–although she’d never have admitted it. Tom and Jane had planned to spend the Thanksgiving holiday in Bloomington, as they usually did, and Jane looked forward to the longweekendandthetimetogether.ButthatyearMrs.Gilbertasked him to come home. “Our last holiday season in the house you grew up in,” she said. And,“Yourdad’shealth.Well,wejustdon’tknowhowmanymore Thanksgivings we’ll have together anywhere.” “Come with me,” Tom said. “We’ll get there for dinner and leave right after. Plus, you know my mom–it’ll be a cast of thousands. You probably won’t even have to talk to her.” Janeagreedbecauseshedidn’twanttospendThanksgivingalone. But once they got there, she felt like she always felt in Mrs. Gilbert’s 113 “Gimme Shelter” presence: awkward and small. She had given up trying to explain to Tom why the little things his mother said and did made her feel that way. He honestly couldn’t see why Jane would let them bother her. His mom was a pain. Everybody knew it. He loved her, he guessed. She was his mother, after all. But what she thought meant next to nothing to him. “See?” he said, when they got in the car to go home. “It wasn’t so bad.” But Jane was in a black mood by then and didn’t answer. It was bad. And didn’t he understand that going had made her feel even worse about not having spent Thanksgiving with her own family–or any other holiday, for that matter, since the Christmas after Bobby’s death? Five years ago, now. For a few years afterwards, she’d gone home occasionally, just for a day. But...