Amy Bloom - Where the God of Love Hangs Out

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 blown 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.