Where the God of Love Hangs Out

by Amy Bloom

  “And Claudine?”

  “Very pretty. Chien. That’s the word I remember, I don’t know if they still say that.”

  Chien means a bitchy, stylish appeal. They do still say that, and my own landlady has said it of Claudine.

  Julia dug her hands into a bowl of tarragon and cream cheese and pushed it, one little white gob at a time, under the skin of the big chicken sitting on the counter. “Do you cook?”

  “I do. I’m a good cook. Like Pop.”

  My mother put the chicken in the oven and laughed. “Honey, what did your father ever cook?”

  “He was a good cook. He made those big breakfasts on Sunday, he barbecued great short ribs—I remember those.”

  “Oh, Abyssinian ribs. I remember them, too. Those were some great parties in those bad old days. Even after he stopped drinking, your father was really fun at a party.” She smiled as if he were still in the room.

  My father was a madly friendly, kissy, unreliable drunk when I was a little boy, and a successful, dependable musician and father after he met Julia. Once she became my mother, I never worried about him, I never hid again from that red-eyed, wet-lipped stranger, but I did occasionally miss the old drunk.

  Claudine stuck her head back into the kitchen, beautiful and squinting through her smoke, and Mira belle ran in beneath her. My mother handed her two carrots and a large peeler with a black spongy handle for arthritic cooks, and Mirabelle flourished it at us both, our little musketeer. My mother brought out three less fancy peelers, and while we worked our way through a good-size pile of carrots and pink potatoes, she told us how she met my father at Barbara Cook’s house and how they both ditched their dates, my mother leaving behind her favorite coat. Claudine told us about the lady who snuck twin Siamese bluepoints into the hotel in her ventilated Vuitton trunk and bailed out on her bill, taking six towels and leaving the cats behind. Claudine laughed at my mother’s story and shook her head over the lost red beaver jacket, and my mother laughed at Claudine’s story and shook her head over people’s foolishness. Mirabelle fished the lime out of Claudine’s club soda and sucked on it.

  A feeling of goodwill and confidence settled on me for no reason I can imagine.

  “Hey,” I said, “let’s stay over. Here.”

  My mother smiled and looked at Claudine.

  “Perhaps we will just see how we feel,” Claudine said. “I am a little fatiguée.”

  “Why don’t you take a nap before dinner,” my mother and I said simultaneously.

  “Perhaps,” she said, and kept peeling.

  I think now that I must have given Claudine the wrong impression, that she’d come expecting a doddering old lady, none too sharp or tidy these days, living on dented canned goods and requiring a short, sadly empty visit before she collapsed entirely. Julia, with a silver braid hanging down her broad back, in black T-shirt, black pants, and black two-dollar flip-flops on her wide coral-tipped feet, was not that old lady at all.

  My mother gave Mirabelle a bowl of cut-up vegetables to put on the table, and she carried it like treasure, the pink radishes bobbing among the ice cubes. Claudine waved her hand around, wanting another cigarette, and my mother gave her a glass of red wine. Claudine put it down a good ten inches away from her.

  “I am sorry. We have reservations. Lionel, will you arrange your car? Mirabelle and me must go after dinner. Thank you, Madame Sampson, for your kindness.”

  My mother lifted her glass to Claudine. “Anytime. I hope you both come again.” She did not say any thing like “Oh no, my dear, please stay here,” or “Lionel, you can’t let Claudine drive into Boston all by herself.” I poured myself another drink. I’m still surprised I didn’t offer to drive, because I was brought up properly, and because I had been sure until the moment Mirabelle pulled the lime out of Claudine’s glass that I wanted to stay at the Ritz in Boston, that I had come only so that I could depart.

  Mirabelle told my mother the long story of the airplane meal and the spilled soda and the nice lady and the bad little boy from Texas and Monsieur Teddy’s difficult flight squashed in a suitcase with a hiking boot pressed against his nose for seven hours. My mother laughed and admired and clucked sympathetically in all the right places, passing the platter of chicken and bowls of cucumber salad and minted peas. She poured another grenadine and ginger ale for Mirabelle, who watched the bubbles rise through the fuchsia syrup. She had just reached for her glass when Claudine arranged her knife and fork on her plate and stood up.

  Mirabelle sighed, tilting her head back to drain her drink, like one of my father’s old buddies at closing time. We all watched her swallow. My mother made very strong coffee for Claudine, filling an old silver thermos and putting together a plastic-wrapped mound of lemon squares for the road. She doted on Mirabelle and deferred to Claudine as if they were my lovable child and my formidable wife and she my fond and familiar mother. She refused to let us clear the table and amused Mirabelle while Claudine changed into comfortable driving clothes.

  Mirabelle and my mother kissed good-bye French-style, and then Claudine did the same, walking out the kitchen door without waiting to see if I followed, which, of course, I did. I didn’t want to be, I wasn’t, rude or uninterested; I just didn’t want to leave yet. Mirabelle hugged me quickly and lay down on the backseat. I made a little sweater pillow for her, and she brushed her cheek against my hand. Claudine made a big production of adjusting the Crown Victoria’s side mirror, the rearview mirror, and the seat belt.

  “Do you know how to get to the city?” I asked in French.

  “Yes.”

  “And then you stay on—”

  “I have a map,” she said. “I can sleep by the side of the road until morning if I get lost.”

  “That probably won’t be necessary. You have five hundred dollars in cash and seven credit cards. There’ll be a hundred motels in the next fifty miles.”

  “We’ll be fine. I will take care of everything,” she said. In very fast English she added, “Do not call me, all right? We can speak to each other when you get back to Paris, perhaps.”

  “Okay, Claudine. Take it easy. I’m sorry. I’ll call you in a few weeks. Mirabelle, dors bien, fais de beaux rêves, mon ange.”

  I watched them drive off, and I watched the fat white moon hanging over my mother’s roof. I was scared to go back into the house. I called out, “Where’s Buster? I thought he was coming up.” I had threatened not to come back if my brother didn’t show up within twenty-four hours.

  My mother stuck her head out the front door. “He’ll be here tomorrow. He’s jammed up in court. He said dinner at the latest.”

  “With or without the Jewelle?”

  “With. Very much with. It’s only June, you know.”

  “You don’t think she gives Bus a little too much action?”

  “I don’t think he’s looking for peace. He’s peaceful enough. I think he was looking for a wild ride and she gives it to him. And she does love him to death.”

  “I know. She’s kind of a nut, Ma.”

  And it didn’t matter what we said then, because my lips calling her mother, her heart hearing mother after so long, blew across the bright night sky and stirred the long branches of the willow tree.

  “Are you coming in?” she said.

  “In a few.”

  “In a few I’ll be asleep. You can finish cleaning up.”

  I heard her overhead, her heavy step on the stairs, the creak of her bedroom floor, the double thump of the bathroom door, which I had noticed needed fixing. I thought about changing the hinges on that door, and I thought of my mouth around her hard nipple, her wet nightgown over my tongue, a tiny bubble of cotton I had to rip the nightgown to get rid of. She had reached over me to click off the light, and the last thing I saw that night was the white underside of her arm. In the dark she smelled of honey and salt and the faint tang of wet metal.

  I washed the wineglasses by hand and wiped down the counters. When my father was rehearsing and my b
rother was noodling around in his room, when I wasn’t too busy with soccer and school, my mother and I cleaned up the kitchen and listened to music. We talked or we didn’t, and she did some old Moms Mabley routines and I did Richard Pryor, and we stayed in the kitchen until about ten.

  I called upstairs.

  “Do you mind living alone?”

  My mother stood at the top of the stairs in a man’s blue terry-cloth robe and blue fuzzy slippers the size of small dogs.

  “Sweet Jesus, it is Moms Mabley,” I said.

  “No hat,” she said.

  I realized, a little late, that it was not a kind thing to say to a middle-aged woman.

  “And I’ve still got my teeth. I put towels in the room at the end of the hall. The bed’s made up. I’ll be up before you in the morning.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know.” She came down three steps. “I’m pretending I know. But it is true that I get up earlier than most people. I can make you an omelet if you want.”

  “I’m not much of a breakfast man.”

  She smiled, and then her smile folded up and she put her hand over her mouth.

  “Ma, it’s all right.”

  “I hope so, honey. Not that—I’m still sorry.” She sat down on the stairs, her robe pulled tight under her thighs.

  “It’s all right.” I poured us both a little red wine and handed it to her, without going up the stairs. “So, do you mind living alone?”

  My mother sighed. “Not so much. I’m a pain in the ass. I could live with a couple of other old ladies, I guess. Communal potlucks and watching who’s watering down the gin. It doesn’t really sound so bad. Maybe in twenty years.”

  “Maybe you’ll meet someone.”

  “Maybe. I think I’m pretty much done meeting people.”

  “You’re only fifty-five. You’re the same age as Tina Turner.”

  “Yup. And Tina is probably tired of meeting people, too. How about you—do you mind living alone?”

  “I don’t exactly live alone—”

  “You do. That’s exactly what you do—you live alone. And have relationships with people who are very happy to let you live alone.”

  “Claudine’s really a lot of fun, Ma. You didn’t get to know her.”

  “She may be a whole house of fun, but don’t tell me she inspires thoughts of a happy domestic life.”

  “No.”

  “That little girl could.”

  I told her a few of my favorite Mirabelle stories, and she told me stories I had forgotten about me and my brother drag-racing shopping carts down Cross Street, locking our babysitter in the basement, stretching our selves on the doorways, and praying to be tall.

  “We never made you guys say your prayers, we certainly never went to church, and we kept you far away from Grammy Ruth’s Never Forgive Never Forget Pentecostal Church of the Holy Fruitcakes. And there you two would be, on your knees to Jesus, praying to be six feet tall.”

  “It worked,” I said.

  “It did.” She stretched her legs down a few steps, and I saw that they were unchanged, still smooth and tan, with hard calves that squared when she moved.

  “You ought to think about marrying again,” I said.

  “You ought to think about doing it the first time.”

  “Well, let’s get on it. Let’s find people to marry. Broomstick-jumping time in Massachusetts and Paree.”

  My mother stood up. “You do it, honey. You find someone smart and funny and kindhearted and get married so I can make a fuss over the grandbabies.”

  I saluted her with the wineglass. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good night. Sleep tight.”

  “Good night, Ma.”

  I waited until I heard the toilet flush and the faucets shut, and I listened to her walk across her bedroom and heard her robe drop on the floor, and I could even hear her quilt settle down upon her. I drank in a serious way, which I rarely do, until I thought I could sleep. I made to lay my glasses on the rickety nightstand and dropped them on the floor near my clothes. Close enough, I thought, and lay down and had to sit up immediately, my eyes seeming to float out of my head, my stomach rising and falling in great waves of gin and Merlot. Stubbing my toe on the bathroom doorframe, I reached for the light switch and knocked over a water glass. I knew that broken glass lay all around me, although I couldn’t see it, and I toe-danced backward toward the bed, twirling and leaping to safety. I reached for my glasses, hiding on the blue rug near my jeans, and somehow rammed my balls into the pink and brown Billie Holiday lamp. I fell to the floor, hoping for no further damage and complete unconsciousness.

  My naked mother ran into the room. I was curled up in a ball, her feet beside my ass. She knelt down, pushing back my hair to get a better look at me. Her breasts swung down, half in, half out of the hallway’s dusty light.

  “You do not have a scratch on you,” she said, and patted my cheek. “Walk over toward the door—there’s nothing that way. I’ll get a broom.”

  I could see her, both more and less clearly than I would have liked. She pushed herself up, and the view of her folded belly and still-dark pubic hair was replaced by the sharp swing of her hips, wider now, tenderly pulled down at the soft bottom edges, but still that same purposeful, kick-down-the-door walk.

  She came back in her robe and slippers, with a broom and dustpan, and I wrapped a towel around my waist. I stood up straight so that even if she needed glasses as much as I did what she saw of me would look good.

  “Quite the event. Is there something, some small thing in this room, you didn’t run into?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I’ve made contact with almost everything. The armchair stayed out of my way, but otherwise, for a low-key kind of guy, I’d have to say I got the job done.”

  My mother dumped the pieces of glass and the lightbulb and the lamp remains into the wastebasket.

  “You smell like the whole Napa Valley,” she said, “so I won’t offer you a brandy.”

  “I don’t usually drink this way, Ma. I’m sorry for the mess.”

  She put down the broom and the dustpan and came over to me and smiled at my towel. She put her lips to the middle of my chest, over my beating heart.

  “I love you past speech.”

  We stood there, my long neck bent down to her shoulder, her hands kneading my back. We breathed in and out together.

  “I’ll say good night, honey. Quite a day.”

  She waved one hand over her shoulder and walked away.

  LIGHT INTO DARK

  “It’s six-fifteen,” Lionel says to his stepmother. “Decent people have started drinking.”

  “Maybe I should put out some food,” Julia says.

  Lionel nods, looking around for the little cluster of liquor bottles Julia had thrown out when his father was alive and trying to stay sober, and which she replaced on the sideboard as soon as the man passed away. Lionel’s not sorry he’s dragged himself and his stepson from Paris to Massachusetts for their first trip together, but it seems possible, even probable, that this Thanksgiving weekend will be the longest four days of his life.

  “It’s all over with Paula?” Julia doesn’t sound sorry or not sorry; she sounds as if she’s simply counting places at the table.

  “Yeah. Things happen.”

  “Do you want to tell me more about it?”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  After his first wife, the terrible Claudine, Lionel had thought he would never even sleep with another woman, but Paula had been the anti-Claudine: not French, not thin, not mean. She was plump and pretty, a good-natured woman with an English-language bookstore and a three-year-old son. It did not seem possible, when they married in the garden of the Hôtel des Saints-Pères, with Paula in a short white dress and her little boy holding the rings, that after five years she would be thin and irritable and given to the same shrugs and expensive cigarettes as the terrible Claudine. After he moved out, Lionel insisted on weekly dinners and movie ni
ghts with his stepson. He wants to do right by the one child to whom he is “Papa,” although he has begun to think, as Ari turns eight, that there is no reason not to have the boy call him by his first name instead.

  “Really nothing to tell. We were in love and then not.”

  “You slept with someone else?” Julia asks.

  “Julia.”

  “I’m just trying to see how you got to ‘not.’”

  “I bet Buster told you.”

  “Your brother did not rat on you.” He had, of course. Buster, the family big-mouth, a convert to monogamy, had told his mother that Lionel slept with the ticket taker from the cinema Studio 28, and Julia was not as shocked as Buster had hoped she would be. “A cutie, I bet,” was all she said. (The beauty of Lionel’s girlfriends was legendary. Paula, dimpled, fair, and curvy in her high heels, would have been the belle of any American country club, and even so was barely on the bottom rung of Lionel’s girls.)

  Buster talks about everything: his wife’s dissolving sense of self, Jordan’s occasional bed-wetting, Corinne’s thumb-sucking, all just to open the door for his own concerns and sore spots—his climbing weight, his anxiety about becoming a judge so young. Julia thinks that Buster is a good and fine-looking man, and tall enough to carry the weight well, although it breaks her heart to see her boy so encumbered. She knows that he will make a fine judge, short on oratory and long on common sense and kindness.

  “Even in my day, honey, most people got divorced because they had someone else on the side and got tired of pretending they didn’t.” Julia herself had been Lionel senior’s someone on the side before she became his wife.

  “Let’s not go there. Anyway, definitely over with Paula. But I’m going to bring Ari every Thanksgiving.”

  Everyone had liked Paula (even when she got so crabby, it was not with the new in-laws three thousand miles away), but no one, including Lionel, can look at the poor kid without wanting to run a thumb up his slack spine. Bringing Ari is no gift to anyone; he’s a burden to Jordan, an annoyance to little Corinne. Of course, Buster doesn’t mind; he’s the soft touch in the family, and Jewelle, inclined to love everything even faintly Buster, tries, but her whole beautiful frowning face signals that this is an inferior sort of child, one who does not appreciate friendly jokes or good cooking or the chance to ingratiate himself with his American family. It is to Ari’s credit, Lionel thinks, that instead of clinging forlornly, he has retreated into bitter, silent, superior Frenchness.