Amy Bloom - Where the God of Love Hangs Out

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.

I sat down across from him, poured us each a glass of bourbon, and lit a cigarette, which startled him. All the props said “Important Moment.”

“Let me say what I have to say and then you can tell me whatever you want to. Lion, I love you very much and I have felt blessed to be your mother and I’ve probably ruined that for both of us. Just sit still. What happened was not your fault; you were upset, you didn’t know…. Nothing would have happened if I had been my regular self. But anyway …” This was going so badly I just wanted to finish my cigarette and take the boy to the train station, whether he understood or not. “I think you’d feel a lot better and clearer if you had some time away, so I talked to Jeffrey—”

“No. No, goddammit, I am not leaving and I wasn’t upset — it was what I wanted. You can’t send me away. I’m not a kid anymore. You can leave me, but you can’t make me leave.” He was charging around the kitchen, bumping into the chairs, blind.

I just sat there. All of a sudden, he was finding his voice, the one I had always tried to nurture, to find a place for between his father’s roar and his brother’s contented hum. I was hearing his debut as a man, and now I had to keep him down and raise him up at the same time.

“How can it be so easy for you to send me away? Don’t you love me at all?”

I jumped up, glad to have a reason to move. “Not love you? It’s because I love you, because I want you to have a happy, normal life. I owe it to you and I owe it to your father.”

He folded his arms. “You don’t owe Pop anything…. He had everything he wanted, he had everything.” The words rained down like little blades.

I ignored what he said. “It can’t be, honey. You can’t stay.”

“I could if you wanted me to.”

He was right. Who would know? I could take my two boys to the movies, away for weekends, play tennis with my step son. I would be the object of a little pity and some admiration. Who would know? Who would have such monstrous thoughts, except Ruth, and she would never allow them to surface. I saw us together and saw it unfolding, leaves of shame and pity and anger, neither of us getting what we wanted. I wanted to hug him, console him for his loss.

“No, honey.”

I reached across the table but he shrugged me off, grabbing my keys and heading out the door.

I sat for a long time, sipping, watching the sunlight move around the kitchen. When it was almost five, I took the keys from Lionel’s side of the dresser and drove his van to soccer camp. Buster felt like being quiet, so we just held hands and listened to the radio. I offered to take him to Burger King, hoping the automated monkeys and video games would be a good substitute for a fully present and competent mother. He was happy, and we killed an hour and a half there. Three hours to bedtime.

We watched some TV, sitting on the couch, his feet in my lap. Every few minutes, I’d look at the clock on the mantel and then promise myself I wouldn’t look until the next commercial. Every time I started to move, I’d get tears in my eyes, so I concentrated on sitting very still, waiting for time to pass. Finally, I got Buster through his nightly routine and into bed, kissing his cupcake face, fluffing his Dr. J pillow.

“Where’s Lion? He said he’d kiss me good night.”

“Honey, he’s out. He’ll come in and kiss you while you’re sleeping.”

“Where is he?”

I dug my nails into my palms; with Buster, this could go on for half an hour. “He’s out with some friends, Bus. I promise he’ll kiss you in your sleep.”

“Okay. I’m glad he’s home, Mama.”

How had I managed to do so much harm so fast? “I know. Go to sleep, Gabriel Tyner Sampson.”

“G’night, Mama. Say my full name again.”

“Gabriel Tyner Sampson, beautiful name for a beautiful boy. ’Night.”

And I thought about the morning we named him, holding him in the delivery room, his boneless brown body covered with white goop and clots of blood, and Lionel tearing off his green mask to kiss me and then to kiss the baby, rubbing his face all over Gabriel’s little body.