Amy Bloom - Where the God of Love Hangs Out

“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.