Where the God of Love Hangs Out

by Amy Bloom

  Buster puts his arm around her waist. “You must miss Peaches, too.” He’d met Peaches only a few times when she was well and charming, and a few more when she was dying, collapsed in his mother’s bed like some great gray beast, all bones and crushed skin, barely able to squeeze her famous voice out through the cords.

  Julia would like to say that missing Peaches doesn’t cover it. She misses Peaches as much as she missed her stepson during his fifteen-year absence. She misses Peaches the way you miss good health when you have cancer. She misses her husband—of course she misses him and their twelve years together—but that grief has been softened, sweetened by all the time and life that came after. The wound of Peaches’s death has not healed or closed up yet; at most the edges harden some as the days pass. She opens her mouth now to say nothing at all about her last love; she thinks that even if Lionel is all wrong about what kind of man Peter is, he is fundamentally right. Peter is not worth the effort.

  “I do miss Peaches, too, of course.”

  Lionel has all of Peaches Figueroa’s albums. On the first one, dark-blond hair waves around a wide bronze face, one smooth lock half covering a round green eye heavily made up. Black velvet wraps low across her breasts, and when Lionel was nineteen it was one of the small pleasures of his life to look at the dark-amber crescent of her aureole, just visible above the velvet rim, and listen to that golden, spilling voice.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t meet her.” Lionel would like to ask his mother what it was like to go from a man to a woman, whether it changed Julia somehow (which he believes but cannot explain), and how she could go from his father and Peaches Figueroa, both geniuses of a kind, to Peter down the road, who sounds to Lionel like the most fatiguing, sorry-assed, ready-for-the-nursing home, limp-dick loser.

  Julia raises an eyebrow and goes into the kitchen.

  The men look at each other.

  “We could open the wine,” Lionel says. “You liked her, didn’t you?”

  “I really liked her,” Buster says. He does not say, She scared the shit out of Jewelle, but she would have liked you, boy. She liked handsome, and she knew we all have that soft spot for talent, especially musical talent, and that we don’t mind, we have even been known to encourage, a certain amount of accompanying attitude. Peaches had been Buster’s favorite diva.

  “Open the wine up. You let those babies breathe. I’ll get everyone down here.”

  “It might be another half hour for the turkey,” Jewelle says. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry, honey.” Buster eats one of Corinne’s peanut-butter-stuffed celery sticks.

  “Charades?” Julia says, putting out a small bowl of nuts and a larger one of black and green olives. Charades was their great family game, played in airports and hotel lobbies, played with very small gestures while flying to Denmark every summer for the Copenhagen jazz festival, played on Amtrak and in the occasional stretch limo to Newport, and played expertly by Lionel and Buster whenever the occasion has arisen since. Corinne and Jordan don’t know what charades is, but Grandma Julia has already taken them back to the kitchen and distributed two salad bowls, six pencils, and a pile of scrap paper. Corinne will act out The Cat in the Hat, and Jordan will do his favorite song, “Miami.” Corinne practices making the hat shape and stepping into it while Jordan pulls off his bow tie and slides on his knees across the kitchen floor, wild and shiny and fly like Will Smith. They are naturals, Julia thinks, and thinks further that it is a ridiculous thing to be pleased about—who knows what kind of people they will grow up to be?—but she cannot help believing that their mostly good genes and their ability to play charades are as reasonable an assurance of future success as anything else.

  No one wants to be teamed with Jewelle. She is smart about many things, talented in a dozen ways, and an excellent mother, and both men think she looks terrific with the low cups of her turquoise lace top ducking in and out of view, but she’s no good at charades. She goes blank after the first syllable and stamps her foot and blinks back tears until her time is up. She never gets the hard ones, and even with the easiest title she guesses blindly without listening to what she’s said. Jewelle is famous for “Exobus” and “Casabroomca.”

  I can’t put husband and wife together, Julia thinks, feeling the tug of dinner-party rules she has ignored for twenty years. “Girls against boys, everybody?”

  Jewelle claims the couch for the three girls, and Buster and Lionel look at each other. It is one of the things they like best about their mother; she would rather be kind than win. They slap hands. Unless Corinne is very, very good in a way that is not normal for a three-year-old, they will wipe the floor with the girl team.

  Jewelle is delighted. Julia is an excellent guesser and a patient performer.

  Lionel says, “Rules, everybody.” No one expects the children to do anything except act out their charades and yell out meaningless guesses. The recitation of rules is for Jewelle. “No talking while acting. Not even whispering. No foreign languages—”

  “Not even French,” Jewelle says. Lionel is annoying in English; he is obnoxious in French.

  “Not even French. No props. No mouthing. Kids, look.” He shows them the signs for book and television and movie and musical, for little words, for “sounds like.”

  Jordan says, “Where’s Ari?”

  They all look around the room. Jewelle sighs. “Jordy, go get him. He’s probably still in Uncle Lionel’s room. When did you see him last, Lionel?” she says.

  Jordan runs up the stairs.

  “I didn’t lose him, Jewelle. He’s probably just resting. It was a long trip.”

  Ari comes down in crumpled khakis and a brown sweater. Terrible colors for him, Jewelle and Julia think.

  In French, Lionel says, “Good boy. You look ready for dinner. Come sit by me and I’ll show you how to play this game.”

  Ari sits on the floor in front of his stepfather. He doesn’t expect that the game will be explained to him; it will be in very fast English, it will make them all laugh with one another, and his stepfather, who is already winking at stupid baby Corinne, will go on laughing and joking, in English.

  The children perform their charades, and the adults are almost embarrassed to be so pleased. As Julia stands up to do Love’s Labour’s Lost, Jewelle says, “Let me just run into the kitchen.”

  Lionel says, “Go ahead, Ma. You’re no worse off with Corinne,” and Buster laughs and looks at the floor. He loves Jewelle, but there is something about this particular disability that seems so harmlessly funny; if she were fat, or a bad dancer, or not very bright, he would not laugh, ever.

  As Julia is very slowly helping Corinne guess that it’s three words, Jewelle walks into the living room, struggling with the large turkey still sizzling on the wide silver platter.

  “It’s that time,” she says.

  Buster says, “I’ll carve,” and Jewelle, who heard him laugh, says, “No, Lionel’s neater—let him do it.”

  They never finish the charades game. Corinne and Jordan and Ari collapse on the floor after dinner, socks and shoes scattered, one of Corinne’s bronze roses askew, the other in Ari’s sneaker. Ari and Jordan have dismantled the couch. Jewelle and Buster gather the three of them, wash their faces, drop them into pajamas, and put them to bed. They kiss their beautiful, damp children, who smell of soap and corn bread and lemon meringue, and they kiss Ari, who smells just like his cousins.

  Buster says, “Do we have to go back down?”

  “Are you okay?” Jewelle rubs his neck.

  “Just stuffed. And I’m ready to be with just you.” Buster looks at his watch. “Lionel’s long knives ought to be coming out around now.”

  “Do you think we ought to hang around for your mother?”

  “To protect her? I know you must be kidding.”

  It’s all right with Jewelle if Buster thinks they’ve cleaned up enough; the plates are all in the kitchen, the leftover turkey has been wrapped and refrigerated, the candles have been blow
n out. It’s not her house, after all.

  Lionel washes, Julia dries. They’ve been doing it this way since he was ten, and just as he cannot imagine sleeping on the left side of a bed or wearing shoes without socks, he cannot imagine drying rather than washing. Julia looks more than tired; she looks maimed.

  “If your hand’s hurting, just leave the dishes. They’ll dry in the rack.”

  Julia doesn’t even answer. She keeps at it until clean, dry plates and silver cover the kitchen table.

  “If you leave it until tomorrow, I’ll put it all away,” Lionel says.

  Julia thinks that unless he really has become some one she does not know, everyone will have breakfast in the dining room, and afterward, sometime in the late afternoon, when Buster and his family have gone and it’s just Lionel and Ari, when it would be nice to sit down with a glass of wine and watch the sun set, she will be putting away her mother’s silver platter and her mother-in-law’s pink-and-gold crystal bowls, which go with nothing but please the boys.

  Lionel and Julia talk about Buster and Jewelle’s marriage, which is better but less interesting than it was, and Buster’s weight problem, and Jewelle’s languishing career as a painter, and Odean Pope’s Saxophone Choir, and Lionel’s becoming counsel for a Greek shipping line.

  Lionel sighs over the sink, and Julia puts her hand on his back. “Are you all right? Basically?”

  “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m not a kid.” He was about to say that he’s not really a son, any more than he’s really a father, that these step-ties are like long-distance relationships, workable only with people whose commitment and loyalty are much greater than the average. “And you don’t have to keep worrying about … what was. It didn’t ruin me. It’s not like we would ever be lovers now.”

  Julia thinks that all that French polish is not worth much if he can’t figure out a nicer way to say that he no longer desires her, that sex between them is unthinkable not because she raised him, taught him to dance, hemmed his pants, and put pimple cream on his back, but because she is too old now for him to see her that way.

  “We were never lovers. We had sex,” she says, but this is not what she believes. They were lovers that night as surely as ugly babies are still babies; they were lovers like any other mismatched and blundering pair. “We were heartbroken and we mistook each other for things we were not. Do you really want to have this conversation?”

  Lionel wipes down the kitchen counters. “Nope. I have never wanted to have this conversation. I don’t want anything except a little peace and quiet—and a Lexus. I’m easy, Ma.”

  Julia looks at him so long he smiles. He is such a handsome man. “You’re easy. And I’m tired. You want to leave it at that?”

  Lionel tosses the sponge into the sink. “Absolutely. Take care of your finger. Good night.”

  If it would turn him back into the boy he was, she would kiss him good night, even if she cut her lips on that fine, sharp face.

  “Okay. See you in the morning. Sleep tight.”

  Julia takes a shower. Lionel drinks on in the kitchen, the Scotch back under the sink in case someone walks in on him. Buster and Jewelle sleep spoons-style. Corinne has crawled between them, her wet thumb on her father’s bare hip, her small mouth open against her mother’s shoulder. Jordan sleeps as he always does, wrestling in his dreams whatever he has failed to soothe and calm all day. His pillow is on the floor, and the sheets twist around his waist.

  Julia reads until three A.M. Most nights she falls asleep with her arms around her pillow, remembering Peaches’s creamy breasts cupped in her hands or feeling Peaches’s soft stomach pressed against her, but tonight, spread out in her pajama top and panties, she can hardly remember that she ever shared a bed.

  Ari is snuffling in the doorway.

  “Come here, honey. Viens ici, chéri.” It is easier to be kind to him in French, somehow. Ari wears one of Buster’s old terry-cloth robes, the hem trailing a good foot behind him. He has folded the sleeves back so many times they form huge baroque cuffs around his wrists.

  “I do not sleep.”

  “That’s understandable. Je comprends.” Julia pats the empty side of the bed, and Ari sits down. His doleful, cross face is handsome in profile, the bedside light limning his Roman nose and straight black brows.

  “Jordan hate me. You all hate me.”

  “We don’t hate you, honey. Non, ce n’est pas vrai. Nous t’aimons.” Julia hopes that she is saying what she means. “It’s just hard. We all have to get used to each other. Il faut que nous …” If she ever had the French vocabulary to discuss the vicissitudes of divorce and future happiness and loving new people, she doesn’t anymore. She puts her hand on Ari’s flat curls. “Il faut que nous fassions ta connaissance.”

  She hears him laugh for the first time. “That is ‘how do you do.’ Not what we say en famille.”

  Laughing is an improvement, and Julia keeps on with her French—perhaps feeling superior will do him more good than obvious kindness—and tries to tell Ari about the day she has planned for them tomorrow, with a trip to the playground and a trip to the hardware store so Lionel can fix the kitchen steps.

  Ari laughs again and yawns. “I am tired,” he says, and lies down, putting his head on one of Julia’s lace pillows. “Dors bien,” the little boy says.

  “All right. You, too. You dors bien.”

  Julia pulls the blankets up over Ari.

  “At night my mother sing,” he says.

  The only French song Julia knows is “La Marseillaise.” She sings the folk songs and hymns she sang to the boys, and by the time she has failed to hit that impossible note in “Amazing Grace,” Ari’s breathing is already moist and deep. Julia gets under the covers as Ari rolls over, his damp forehead and elbows and knees pressing into her side. She counts the books on her shelves, then sheep, then turns out the bedside lamp and counts every lover she ever had and everything she can remember about them, from the raven-shaped birthmark on the Harvard boy’s shoulder to the unexpected dark brown of Peter’s eyes, leaving out Peaches and Lionel senior, who are on their own, quite different list. She remembers the birthday parties she gave for Lionel and Buster, including the famous Cookie Monster cake that turned her hands blue for three days, and the eighth-grade soccer party that ended with Lionel and another boy needing stitches. Already six feet tall, he sat in her lap, arms and legs flowing over her, while his father held his head for the doctor.

  Ari sighs and shifts, holding tight to Julia’s pajama top, her lapel twisted in his hands like rope. She feels the wide shape of his five knuckles on her chest, bone pressing flesh against bone, and she is not sorry at all to be old and awake so late at night.

  FORT USELESS AND FORT RIDICULOUS

  Lionel Sampson reads to his brother from the flight magazine. “‘The Seeing Eye dog was invented by a blind American.’”

  Buster laughs. “Really. Invented. Man must have gone through a hell of a lot of dogs.”

  Julia’s sons, Buster and Lionel, are flying from Paris to Boston, to be picked up and driven to their mother’s house for Thanksgiving. Their driver will be an old Russian guy they’ve had before, big belly, a few missing teeth, with cold bottled water and The New York Times in the backseat. The two men are as happy as clams not to be driving in Buster’s wife’s minivan with all the kids and their laptops and iPods and duffel bags and Jewelle’s gallon containers of creamed spinach and mashed sweet potatoes, which Jewelle now brings rather than making them at her mother-in-law’s, because now that Julia’s getting on, although the house is clean and Jewelle is not saying it’s not clean, you do have to tidy up a little before you get to work in Julia’s kitchen, and Jewelle would just rather not.

  Lionel closes the magazine and the homely flight attendant brings them water. (Remember when they were pretty? Lionel says. Remember when Pop took us to Denmark, Buster says, and they all wore white stockings and white miniskirts?) The flight attendant lays linen napkins in the
ir laps. Lionel likes first class so much that even when a client doesn’t pay for it, he pays for the upgrade himself, and he’s paid for Buster’s upgrade, too. Lionel spends more on travel than he does on rent. His wife thinks he’s crazy. Patsine grew up riding the bumper of dusty Martinique buses and as far as she’s concerned, even now, your own seat and no chickens is all that anyone needs.

  Buster opens another magazine. “Looky here, little girl in northern India is born with two faces. Only one set of ears, but two full faces. She’s worshipped in her village. Durga, goddess of valor.”

  “Jesus,” Lionel says. “What’s wrong with people?” He looks at the picture of the little girl. “Patsine’s pregnant.”

  “Oh, great. Good for you. Patsine’s great.” Buster has disliked all of Lionel’s other girlfriends and wives. The mean ones scared him and the nice, hopeful ones depressed him and Jewelle would say to him, after each meet-and-greet, “All I’m saying is, just once, let him bring someone who isn’t a psycho, a slut, or a Martian. Just once.” Buster pats his big brother on the knee and says, Well, aren’t you the proud papa, and the homely flight attendant smiles at them both. Mes félicitations, monsieur. She brings them pâté and crackers and two flutes of Champagne. Lionel gives his Champagne to Buster and asks for sparkling water.

  Buster keeps reading. “It says the village chief wants the government to build a temple to the two-faced baby.”

  “Who wouldn’t,” Lionel says.

  They’re over the north Atlantic, only ten hours until home and eating a pretty good lunch, as Buster is not one to say no to a good meal. Buster sips his Champagne and Lionel drinks his Perrier and stifles his envy and longing by reviewing all the terrible things that happened to him when he was drinking. He nearly killed an old lady on a Sunday drive; he fell down a flight of stairs and ripped open his scalp, so that when he sat in court the next day, the judge finally said, M. Sampson, the blood is distracting me, and Lionel left to tighten his bandage and came back to a trail of red drops at his side of the table. He lost the case and the goodwill of his partners. If you want to look at the big picture, as Lionel tries to these days—his drinking has led to failed relationships with women who had nothing in common except bad judgment and despair.