Amy Bloom - Love Invents Us

“Nice, huh?”

“Very. Interesting. Who are you?”

“Your mother? I couldn’t get into the skirt. She must have been tiny.”

“She was small. You’re quite a bit taller. Bigger-boned, I’d say.” He might be old, he might be dying, he might be every kind of fool, as his history demonstrated, but he had never told a woman she was fatter than another woman.

“I didn’t know you had all these women’s clothes. Fetish?” Elizabeth perched on the end of the couch.

“I guess. I never wanted to throw out all my mother’s stuff, so I just threw it into my footlocker and took it with me. I don’t think I’ve opened it in twenty years.”

“How’d she die?”

“Cirrhosis. A very ugly way to die, I hear. I wasn’t there.”

Elizabeth put the back of her hand to her forehead, staggered around the couch, and collapsed in front of Max.

“I think I would have made a great Camille.”

“Probably. Except for your robust good health. And your sneakers.”

“I do love you. Was your mother kind of a party girl?”

“She liked a good time. She drank quite a bit, she had a lot of boyfriends between husbands. Or so it seemed to me, when I was a boy. Was there anything you wanted in there?”

Elizabeth pulled out a crumbling straw hat with chipped flocked velvet cherries on the brim.

“Hey, a come-fuck-me hat. There have to be shoes to match.”

Max closed his eyes.

“Did I offend you? I’m sorry.”

“You meant to offend me. This isn’t much of a sport, sweetheart. Getting at me is shooting fish in a barrel.”

“But if you really want the fish shot, what better arrangement?” She took off the cloche and the jacket and put on the hat. She took off her sneakers and socks. She put a wide elastic belt, a cluster of plastic cherries concealing the clasp, around her waist and kicked off her underpants.

“What do you want from me?” he said.

“I don’t know. You don’t have any money, what with Greta’s house and Greta’s shrink and Danny’s darkroom and Marc’s whatever. Why do we send Marc money?”

“Because he is getting a small design business off the ground in Lyons and he needs some start-up capital.”

Elizabeth lay down on the floor beside the couch, her breasts brushing Max’s fingertips. He pulled his hand up to his chest.

“Yeah. And because you feel guilty.”

“And because I feel guilty.”

“Don’t you feel guilty toward me?”

“You know I do.”

“This is a pretty funny apology, right? Come nurse me through this illness and let me try to make it up to you.”

“I am sorry, Elizabeth. You were very kind to come take care of me. I know I loved you too much and too soon.”

“The fuck you did.” Elizabeth took his hand and pressed his palm over her breast. She sat up over him, her knees on either side of his chest.

“Touch me. Touch me now.”

Max put his hands down, resting them on her cold heels.

“Now you don’t want to?”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re scared.”

“I’m scared because I don’t know what you want. You can’t want me.”

“Why not? And if I don’t really want you — I mean, you’re right, I don’t — maybe I want something from you.”

“I’m really tired.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Louisa.”

“Call me Louisa. Touch me there and call me Louisa.”

Max didn’t say no (he was not as scared as Elizabeth wanted him to be, but he was uncomfortable and he was angry; he’s dying , for Christ’s sake). He closed his eyes. Soft, matted hair brushed his nose and lips. He smelled her.

“Is this necessary?”

“It’s hard to say. Was I necessary for you?”

“Oh, sweetheart, why don’t you just leave? You don’t have to take care of me. Take the hat, take my passbook, and just go.”

“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and be Louisa, that sweet little thing. Do you think having an alcoholic slut for a mother is what made you chase little girls?”

He wanted to say, You were not little. You were a young woman, and I was wrong, but you were not a little girl. He coughed very hard, bouncing Elizabeth on his chest.

She stood up and handed him a kleenex.

“Never mind,” she said.

She left the cherry-trimmed hat on and dressed in her own clothes.

“I’m sorry, Pops.”

“Forget it. I owe you.”

Elizabeth looked away. “Yeah. Well. Can I keep the hat?”

On Thursday he was better. She found a bright red flannel shirt for him, and in his black overcoat and black beret he looked frail and chic, a French grandfather driving out to inspect the vineyards.

“Let’s go feed the ducks, and we can pick up a couple of bags of apples. I’ll make an apple pie.”

“I never understood ‘feeding the ducks.’ Think about it. We buy stale bread so we can have the pleasure of feeding the ducks, who can’t be hungry, since they’re always being fed. And the store maintains the ducks so it can sell us stale bread. There are no more starving children? We have to come up with this arrangement so we can all play Marie Antoinette by the pond?”

He shut his eyes and Elizabeth kept driving, glad he was talking. It was always a good sign when he had the energy to talk, no matter what he said. Even if it was about the stupid ducks.

Max thought, Why am I talking about this?

He sat on a bench while Elizabeth fed the ducks, and when she sprinkled breadcrumbs right at his feet, two fat black ducks came up, honking mildly. They were dirtier than she had imagined, something dark caked into the tiny holes on top of their beaks, algae and muck trailing their orange feet.

Max ignored them for a while, pulling his beret down over his eyes, covertly enjoying the sun on his shoulders and legs. The ducks pecked around the bench, and when he shuffled his feet a few times, they retreated and then came back, honking a little louder, pecking more aggressively.

“They must be female,” he said, smiling. She didn’t answer him except to bite down on an apple and chew it loudly. Max could no longer chew apples.

They drove home in silence, and when Max touched her thigh, Elizabeth looked down at the trembling loose skin and patted his hand. There’s no point in being mad, she thought. There’s not enough time. I could yell at him and then he’d keel over and the last thing I would have said would be, Don’t be an asshole, Max.

That’s how you know you’re dying, Max thought. I could burn her clothes, shit in the kitchen, wave my dick at the goddamned ducks, and she’d just smile and pat my hand.

Max’s place was tidier, piles consolidated and concealed, the air filled with motes of lemon furniture polish, ten pink roses as open as bowls, but it was not transformed. Elizabeth was glad she hadn’t mentioned Margaret’s true and apparently grandiose intentions. Her mother had failed; it still smelled like seeping death.

“Nice roses your mother left. Nice vacuuming. Thank her for me.”

“Maybe you could. When I call. TV?” Elizabeth steadied Max on her hip, pulled off his coat, and held him up with one hand while she reached out to clear the recliner and slide him down into it. She saw that the recliner was empty, in an alien, pristine, showroomlike state.

Max patted the cushions. “All right. I wonder where she put my stuff?” He shut his eyes. “How about those monks?” Yesterday Family Feud had monks versus nuns and Max laughed until he cried.

“Okay, you watch. I gotta go out now, just for a little while.”

Elizabeth picked up her keys.

“Where are you going?”

“We need some stuff, Max. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”