Amy Bloom - Where the God of Love Hangs Out

“Ma misses you,” he said again. He held Jewelle’s feet in one hand. “You know she does. She’s getting old.”

“I definitely don’t believe that. She’s fifty, fifty-five. That’s not old. We’ll be there ourselves in no time.”

My mother, my stepmother, my only mother, is fifty-four and I am thirty-four and it has comforted me over the years to picture myself in what I expect to be a pretty vigorous middle age and to contemplate poor Julia tottering along, nylon knee-highs sloshing around her ankles, chin hairs and dewlaps flapping in the breeze.

“Fine. She’s a spring chicken.” Buster cut four inches of Brie and chewed on it. “She’s not a real young fifty-five. What did she do so wrong, Lionel? Tell me. I know she loves you, I know she loves me. She loved Pop; she saved his life as far as I can tell. Jesus, she took care of Grammy Ruth for three years when anyone else would’ve put a pillow over the woman’s face. Ma is really a good person, and whatever has pissed you off, you could let it go now. You know, she can’t help being white.”

Jewelle, of whom we could say the same thing, pulled her feet out of his hand and curled her toes over his waistband, under his round belly.

“If she died tomorrow, how sorry would you be?” she said.

Buster and I stared at her, brothers again, because in our family you did not say things like that, not even with good intentions.

I poured wine for us all and passed around the fat green olives Jewelle liked.

“Well. Color is not the issue. You can tell her I’ll come in June.”

Buster went into my bedroom. “I’m calling Ma,” he said. “I’m telling her June.”

Jewelle gently spat olive pits into her hand and shaped them into a neat pyramid on the coffee table.

I flew home with my new girlfriend, Claudine, and her little girl, Mirabelle. Claudine had business and a father in Boston, and a small hotel and me in Paris. She was lean as a boy and treated me with wry Parisian affection, as if all kisses were mildly amusing if one gave it any thought. Claudine’s consistent, insouciant aridity was easy on me; I’d come to prefer my lack of intimacy straight up. Mirabelle was my true sweetheart. I loved her orange cartoon curls, her red glasses, and her welterweight swagger. She was Ma Poupée and I was her Bel Homme.

Claudine’s father left a new black Crown Victoria for us at Logan, with chocolates and a Tintin comic on the backseat and Joan Sutherland in the CD player. Claudine folded up her black travel sweater and hung a white linen jacket on the back hook. There was five hundred dollars in the glove compartment, and I was apparently the only one who thought that if you were lucky enough to have a father, you might reasonably expect him to meet you at the airport after a two-year separation. My father would have been at that gate, drunk or sober. Mirabelle kicked the back of the driver’s seat all the way from the airport, singing what the little boy from Dallas had taught her on the flight over: “I’m gonna kick you. I’m gonna kick you. I’m gonna kick you. I’m gonna kick you , right in your big old heinie.” Claudine watched out the window until I pulled onto the turnpike, and then she closed her eyes. Anything in English was my department.

I recognized the new house right away. My mother had dreamed and sketched its front porch and its swing a hundred times during my childhood, on every telephone-book cover and notepad we ever had. For years my father talked big about a glass-and-steel house on the water, recording studio overlooking the ocean, wrap around deck for major partying and jam sessions, and for years I sat next to him on the couch while he read the paper and I read the funnies and we listened to my mother tuck my brother in: “Once upon a time, there were two handsome princes, Prince Fric, who was a little older, and Prince Frac, who was a little younger. They lived with their parents, the King and Queen, in a beautiful little cottage with a beautiful front porch looking out over the River Wilde. They lived in the little cottage because a big old castle with a wraparound deck and a million windows is simply more trouble than it’s worth.”

Julia stood before us on the porch, both arms upraised, her body pale and square in front of an old willow, its branches pooling on the lawn. Claudine pulled off her sunglasses and said, “You don’t resemble her,” and I explained, as I thought I had several times between rue de Birague and the Massachusetts border, that this was my stepmother, that my real mother had died when I was five and Julia had married my father and adopted me. “Ah,” said Claudine, “not your real mother.”

Mirabelle said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est, ca?”

“Tire swing,” I said.

Claudine said, “May I smoke?”

“I don’t know. She used to smoke.”

“Did she stop?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she smokes or not, Claudine.”

She reached for her jacket. “Does your mother know I’m coming?”

“Here we are, Poupée,” I said to Mirabelle.

I stood by the car and watched my mother make a fuss over Mirabelle’s red hair (speaking pretty good French, which I had never heard) and turn Claudine around to admire the crispness of her jacket. She shepherded us up the steps, thanking us for the gigantic and unimaginative bottle of toilet water. Claudine went into the bathroom; Mirabelle went out to the swing. My mother and I stood in her big white kitchen. She hadn’t touched me.

“Bourbon?” she said.

“It’s midnight in Paris, too late for me.”

“Right,” my mother said. “Gin and tonic?”

We were just clinking our glasses when Claudine came out and asked for water and an ashtray.

“No smoking in the house, Claudine. I’m sorry.”

Claudine shrugged in that contemptuous way Parisians do, so wildly disdainful you have to laugh or hit them. She went outside, lighting up before she was through the door. We touched glasses again.

“Maybe you didn’t know I was bringing a friend?” I said.

My mother smiled. “Buster didn’t mention it.”

“Do you mind?”

“I don’t mind. You might have been bringing her to meet me. I don’t think you did, but you might have. And a very cute kid. Really adorable.”

“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.