by Amy Bloom
I walked down the hall to the bedroom—I used to call it the Lionel Sampson Celebrity Shrine. It wasn’t just his framed album covers, but all of his favorite reviews, including the ones I wrote before I met him; one of Billie’s gardenias mounted on velvet, pressed behind glass; photos of Lionel playing with equally famous or more famous musicians or with famous fans. In some ways, it’s easier to marry a man with a big ego; you’re not always fretting over him, worrying about whether or not he needs fluffing up.
I threw my black dress on the floor, my worst habit, and got into bed. I woke up at around four, waiting for something. A minute later, Buster wandered in, eyes half shut, blue blankie resurrected and hung around his neck, like a little boxer.
“Gonna stay with you, Mama.” Truculent even in his sleep, knowing that if his father had been there, he’d have been sent back to his own room.
“Come in, then, Bus. Let’s try and get some sleep.”
He curled up next to me, silently, an arm flung over me, the other arm thrust into his pajama bottoms, between his legs.
I had just shut my eyes again when I felt something out of place. Lion was standing in the doorway, his briefs hanging off his high skinny hips. He needed new underwear, I thought. He looked about a year older than Buster.
“I thought I heard Buster prowling around, y’know, sleepwalking.”
The only one who ever sleepwalked in our family was Lion, but I didn’t say so. “It’s okay—he just wanted company. Lonely in this house tonight.”
“Yeah. Ma?”
I was tired of thinking, and I didn’t want to send him away, and I didn’t want to talk anymore to anyone so I said, “Come on, honey, it’s a big bed.”
He crawled in next to his brother and fell asleep in a few minutes. I watched the digital clock flip through a lot of numbers and finally I got up and read.
The boys woke early, and I made them what Lionel called a Jersey City breakfast: eggs, sweet Italian sausage, grits, biscuits, and a quart of milk for each of them.
“Buster, soccer camp starts today. Do you feel up to going?”
I didn’t see any reason for him to sit at home; he could catch up on his grieving for the rest of his life.
“I guess so. Is it okay, Mama?”
“Yes, honey, it’s fine. I’m glad you’re going. I’ll pick you up at five, and then we’ll drive straight over to Grandma’s for dinner. You go get ready when you’re done eating. Don’t forget your cleats—they’re in the hall.”
Lion swallowed his milk and stood up, like a brown flamingo, balancing on one foot while he put on his sneaker. “Come on, Buster, I’m taking you. I have to go into town anyway. Do we need anything?”
I hadn’t been to the grocery store in about a week. “Get milk and OJ and English muffins and American cheese. I’ll do a real shop tomorrow.” If I could just get to the store and the cleaners, then I could get to work, and then my life would move forward.
Finally they were ready to go, and I kissed them both and gave Lion some money for the groceries.
“I’ll be back by lunchtime,” he said. It was already eight-thirty. When his father got sick in the spring, Lion gave me hourly bulletins on his whereabouts. This summer, Lion was house painting and home constantly, leaving late, back early, stopping by for lunch.
“If you like,” I said. I didn’t want him to feel that he had to keep me company. I was planning on going back to work tomorrow or the day after.
While the boys were gone, I straightened the house, went for a walk, and made curried tuna-fish sandwiches for Lion. I watched out the window for him, and when I saw my car turn up the road, I remembered all the things I hadn’t done and started making a list. He came in, sweating and shirtless, drops of white paint on his hands and shoulders and sneakers.
Lion ate and I watched him and smiled. Feeding them was the easiest and clearest way of loving them, holding them.
“I’m going to shower. Then we could play a little tennis or work on the porch.” He finished both sandwiches in about a minute and got that wistful look that teenage boys get when they want you to fix them something more to eat. I made two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and put them on his plate.
“Great. I don’t have to work this afternoon,” he said. “I told Joe I might not be back—he said okay.”
“Well, I’m just going to mouse around, do laundry, answer some mail. I’m glad to have your company, you know I am, but you don’t have to stay here with me. You might want to be with your friends.”
“I don’t. I’m gonna shower.” Like his father, he only put his love out once, and God help you if you didn’t take the hint.
I sat at the table, looking out at the morning glories climbing up the trellis Lionel had built me the summer he stopped drinking. In addition to the trellis, I had two flower boxes, a magazine rack, and a footstool so ugly even Ruth wouldn’t have it.
“Ma, no towels,” Lion shouted from the bathroom. I thought that was nice, as if real life might continue.
“All right,” I called, getting one of the big, rough white ones that he liked.
I went into the bathroom and put it on the rack just as he stepped out of the shower. I hadn’t seen him naked since he was fourteen and spent the year parading around the house, so that we could admire his underarm hair and the black wisps on his legs.
All I could see in the mist was a dark caramel column and two patches of dark curls, inky against his skin. I expected him to look away, embarrassed, but instead he looked right at me as he took the towel, and I was the one who turned away.
“Sorry,” we both said, and I backed out of the bathroom and went straight down to the basement so we wouldn’t bump into each other for a while.
I washed, dried, and folded everything that couldn’t get away from me, listening for Lion’s footsteps upstairs. I couldn’t hear anything while the machines were going, so after about an hour I came up and found a note on the kitchen table.
Taking a nap. Wake me when it’s time to get Buster. L.
“L.,” is how his father used to sign his notes. And their handwriting was the same, too: the awkward, careful printing of men who know that their script is illegible.
I took a shower and dried my hair and looked in the mirror for a while, noticing the gray at the temples. I wondered what Lion would have seen if he’d walked in on me, and I made up my mind not to think like that again.
I woke Lion by calling him from the hall, and I went into my room while he dressed to go to his grandmother’s. I found a skirt that was somber and ill-fitting enough to meet Ruth’s standard of widowhood and thought about topping it off with my EIGHT TO THE BAR VOLLEYBALL CHAMPS T-shirt, but didn’t. Even pulling Ruth’s chain wasn’t fun. I put on a yellow shirt that made me look like one of the Neapolitan cholera victims, and Lion and I went to get Buster. He was bubbling over about the goal he had made in the last quarter, and that filled the car until we got to Ruth’s house, and then she took over.
“Come in, come in. Gabriel, you are too dirty to be my grandson. You go wash up right now. Lionel junior, you’re looking a little peaked. You must be working too hard or playing too hard. Does he eat, Julia? Come sit down here and have a glass of nice iced tea with mint from my garden. Julia, guess who I heard from this afternoon? Loretta, Lionel’s first wife. She called to say how sorry she was. I told her she could call upon you, if she wished.”
“Fine.” I didn’t have the energy to be annoyed. My muscles felt like butter, I’d had a headache for six days, and my eyes were so sore that even when I closed them, they ached. If Ruth wanted to sic Loretta McVay Sampson de Guzman de God-knows-who-else on me, I guessed I’d get through that little hell, too.
Ruth looked at me, probably disappointed; I knew from Lionel that she couldn’t stand Loretta, but since she was the only black woman he’d married, Ruth felt obliged to find something positive about her. She was a lousy singer, a whore, and a terrible housekeeper, so Ruth really had to search. Anita, wife
number two, was a rich, pretty flake with a fragile air and a serious drug problem that killed her when the Lion was five. I was the only normal, functioning person Lionel was ever involved with: I worked, I cooked, I balanced our checkbook, I did what had to be done, just like Ruth. And I irritated her no end.
“Why’d you do that, Grandma? Loretta’s so nasty. She probably just wants to find out if Pop left her something in his will, which I’m sure he did not.” Loretta and Lionel had had a little thing going when Anita was in one of her rehab centers, and I think the Lion found out and of course blamed Loretta.
“It’s all right, Lion,” I said, and stopped myself from patting his hand as if he were Buster.
Ruth was offended. “Really, young man, it was very decent, just common courtesy, for Loretta to pay her respects, and I’m sure that your stepmother appreciates that.” Ruth thought it disrespectful to call me Julia when talking to Lion, but she couldn’t stand the fact that he called me Ma after the four years she put in raising him while Anita killed herself and Lionel toured. So she referred to me as “your stepmother,” which always made me feel like the coachmen and pumpkins couldn’t be far behind. Lion used to look at me and smile when she said it.
We got through dinner, with Buster bragging about soccer and giving us a minute-by-minute account of the soccer training movie he had seen. Ruth criticized their table manners, asked me how long I was going to wallow at home, and then expressed horror when I told her I was going to work on Mon day. Generally, she was her usual self, just a little worse, which was true of the rest of us, too. She also served the best smothered pork chops ever made and her usual first-rate trimmings. She brightened up when the boys both asked for seconds and I praised her pork chops and the sweet-potato soufflé for a solid minute.
After dinner, I cleared and the two of us washed and dried while the boys watched TV. I never knew how to talk to Ruth; my father-in-law was the easy one, and when Alfred died I lost my biggest fan. I looked over at Ruth, scrubbing neatly stacked pots with her pink rubber gloves, which matched her pink-and-white apron, which had nothing cute or whimsical about it. She hadn’t raised Lionel to be a good husband; she’d raised him to be a warrior, a god, a genius surrounded by courtiers. But I married him anyway, when he was too old to be a warrior, too tired to be a god, and smart enough to know the limits of his talent.
I thought about life without my boys, and I gave Ruth a little hug as she was tugging off her gloves. She humphed and wiped her hands on her apron.
“You take care of yourself, now. Those boys need you more than ever.” She walked into the living room and announced that it was time for us to go, since she had a church meeting.
We all thanked her, and I drove home with three pink Tupperware containers beside me. The car smelled like pork chop.
I wanted to put Buster to bed, but it was only eight o’clock. I let him watch some sitcoms and changed out of my clothes and into my bathrobe. Lion came into the hall in a fresh shirt.
“Going out?” He looked so pretty in his clean white shirt.
“Yeah, some of the guys want to go down to the Navigator. I said I’d stop by, see who’s there. Don’t wait up.”
I was surprised but delighted. I tossed him the keys. “Okay, drive carefully.”
Buster got himself into pajamas and even brushed his teeth without my nagging him. He had obviously figured out that I was not operating at full speed. I tucked him in, trying to give him enough hugs and kisses to help him get settled, not so many that he’d hang on my neck for an extra fifteen minutes. I went to sit in the kitchen, staring at the moths smacking themselves against the screen door. I could relate to that.
I read a few magazines, plucked my eyebrows, thought about plucking the gray hairs at my temples, and decided not to bother. Who’d look? Who’d mind, except me?
Finally, I got into bed, and got out about twenty minutes later. I poured myself some bourbon and tried to go to sleep again, thinking that I hadn’t ever really appreciated what it took Lionel to get through life sober. I woke up at around four, anticipating Buster. But there, leaning against the doorway, was Lion.
“Ma.” He sounded congested.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah. No. Can I come in?”
“Of course, come in. What is it, honey?”
He sat on the bed and plucked at my blanket, and I could smell the beer and the sweat coming off him. I sat up so we could talk, and he threw his arms around me like a drowning man. He was crying and gasping into my neck, and then he stopped and just rested his head against my shoulder. I kept on patting his back, rubbing the long muscles under the satiny skin. My hands were cold against his warm skin.
Lion lifted his head and looked into my eyes, his own eyes like pools of coffee, shining in the moonlight. He put his hand up to my cheek, and then he kissed me and my brain stopped. I shut my eyes.
His kisses were sweet and slow; he pushed his tongue into my mouth just a little at a time, getting more confident every time. He began to rub my nipples through my nightgown, spreading the fingers on one big hand wide apart just as his father used to, and I pulled away, forcing my eyes open.
“No, Lion. You have to go back to your room now.” But I was asking him, I wasn’t telling him, and I knew he wouldn’t move.
“No.” And he put his soft plummy mouth on my breast, soaking the nightgown. “Please don’t send me away.” The right words.
I couldn’t send my little boy away, so I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him to me, out of the darkness.
It had been a long time since I was in bed with a young man. Lionel was forty-two when I met him, and before that I’d been living with a sax player eight years older than I was. I hadn’t made love to anyone this young since I was seventeen and too young myself to appreciate it.
His body was so smooth and supple, and the flesh clung to the bone; when he was above me, he looked like an athlete working out; below me, he looked like an angel spread out for the world’s adoration. His shoulders had clefts so deep I could lay a finger in each one, and each of his ribs stuck out just a little. He hadn’t been eating enough at school. I couldn’t move forward or backward, and so I shut my eyes again, so as not to see and not to have to think the same sad, tired thoughts.
He rose and fell between my hips and it reminded me of Buster’s birth: heaving and sliding and then an explosive push. Lion apologized the way men do when they come too soon, and I hugged him and felt almost like myself, comforting him. I couldn’t speak at all; I didn’t know if I’d ever have a voice again.
He was whispering, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And I put my hand over his mouth until he became quiet. He tried to cradle me, pulling my head to his shoulder. I couldn’t lie with him like that, so I wriggled away in the dark, my arms around my pillow. I heard him sigh, and then he laid his head on my back. He fell asleep in a minute.
I got up before either of them, made a few nice-neighbor phone calls, and got Buster a morning playdate, lunch included, and a ride to soccer camp. He was up, dressed, fed, and over to the Bergs’ before Lion opened his eyes.
Lion’s boss called and said he was so sorry for our loss but could Lionel junior please come to work this morning.
I put my hand on Lion’s shoulder to wake him, and I could see the shock and the pleasure in his eyes. I told him he was late for work and laid his clothes out on his bed. He kept opening his mouth to say something, but I gave him toast and coffee and threw him my keys.
“You’re late, Lion. We’ll talk when you get home.”
“I’m not sorry,” he said, and I could have smiled. Good, I thought, spend the day not being sorry, because sometime after that you’re gonna feel like shit. I was already sorrier than I’d ever been in my whole life, sorry enough for this life and the next. Lion looked at me and then at the keys in his hand.
“I guess I’ll go. Ma … Julia …”
I was suddenly, ridiculously angry at being called Julia. “
Go, Lion.”
He was out the door. I started breathing again, trying to figure out how to save us both. Obviously, I couldn’t be trusted to take care of him; I’d have to send him away. I thought about sending Buster away, too, but I didn’t think I could. And maybe my insanity was limited to the Lion, maybe I could still act like a normal mother to Buster.
I called my friend Jeffrey in Falmouth and told him Lion needed a change of scene. He said Lion could start housepainting tomorrow and could stay with him since his kids were away. The whole time I was talking, I cradled the bottle of bourbon in my left arm, knowing that if I couldn’t get through the phone call, or the afternoon, or the rest of my life, I had some help. I think I was so good at helping Lionel quit drinking because I didn’t have the faintest idea why he, or anybody, drank. If I met him now, I’d be a better wife but not better for him. I packed Lion’s suitcase and put it under his bed.
When I was a lifeguard at camp, they taught us how to save panicky swimmers. The swimmers don’t realize that they have to let you save them, that their terror will drown you both, and so sometimes, they taught us, you have to knock the per son out to bring him in to shore.
I practiced my speech in the mirror and on the porch and while making the beds. I thought if I said it clearly and quietly he would understand, and I could deliver him to Jeffrey, ready to start his summer over again. I went to the grocery store and bought weird, disconnected items: marinated artichoke hearts for Lionel, who was dead; red caviar to make into dip for his son, whose life I had just ruined; peanut butter with the grape jelly already striped into it for Buster, as a special treat that he would probably have outgrown by the time I got home; a pack of Kools for me, who stopped smoking fifteen years ago. I also bought a wood-refinishing kit, a jar of car wax, a six-pack of Michelob Light, five TV dinners, some hamburger but no buns, and a box of Pop-Tarts. Clearly the cart of a woman at the end of her rope.
Lion came home at three, and I could see him trying to figure out how to tackle me. He sat down at the kitchen table and frowned when I didn’t say anything.
