Amy Bloom - Love Invents Us

“What happened to the pigs’ feet?”

“We still got ’em. In the soul section. And shrimp paste and rice noodles and biscotti and tapenade. We upscale now.”

And she thought that if he could be sure of not being mocked, he would be pleased and only a little sorry that the dusty Coca-Cola cases and cakey cans of Ajax were gone.

They walked to the parking lot, unable to resist bumping into each other, closing their eyes in the pleasure of his hip against hers, as though there were not four layers of fabric between them and not even five seconds before he reached his car.

“Can I start shopping at your place?”

“Does old Max have gourmet tastes?”

“I do.” She was not going to talk about Max now.

“You come anytime. I don’t go in on Sundays.”

“Sundays you go to church in the morning, and then it’s family dinner with your father, who is probably just crazy about your wife, and then you shoot a little hoop with your boys.”

“Don’t make fun of my life.”

“That was longing, not mockery. Or longing concealed by mockery.”

“My son is only four years old, and my knees are too fucked up for me to play. My father is no nicer to June than he is to anybody else. Otherwise you’re right on the money. And you’re going to mess up those Sunday mornings now.”

“How?”

“Because in church, when they hit those high notes, I will not only remember us in that little yellow bed and in these woods back then, I’m going to think of you right here and I am not going to be thinking like a churchgoing man.”

“Good. Me neither.”

“You neither. Still funny.”

“I am. Was the bed yellow? I thought the walls were yellow. Little yellow flowers.”

“I don’t think so. I think the bed was yellow, the walls were no color.” He could still see the rickety bed, could see the wall as it looked to him, before and after he banged his head against it, leaving oily spots he would touch later, touching himself, thinking of her beneath him, his own amazing country.

“All right. I’ll think of you too, Huddie. Horace. I guess this means we’re not going to be getting together.”

“For what?”

“For coffee, for lunch, for a walk.”

“You know if I see you in private I’m going to make love to you, and if I see you in public this is not going to be our little secret for very long. A blind man could see how much I love you. I gotta go, sweet.” His voice rough on that last word, and inside Elizabeth bright red streamers snap open and billow out in six-foot-long celebration. Inside Huddie, there is a quiet pinging, the warning sound of a failed alarm.

“Okay. I’ll see you. Let’s just get into our cars and go. I love you too. What’s your son’s name?”

He shook his head painfully, walking away. “Larry. I know you do.”

They started their cars simultaneously. Elizabeth left first, nosing past his nicer, newer car and shooting gravel onto his windshield.

Huddie’s wires cross every which way now. Sight, smell, taste, and touch enfold one another. Wet is like sweet is like heat is the aching pulse, is salt caking. Her smell is the smell of the unwrapped ready-to-rot figs, and for a lost half hour he scrunches thin lilac tissue paper around their small purple asses, tilting their stems so each seamed bottom is turned to its most seductive side. Carrot fronds are her hair; the slick celadon crack of a broken honeydew is hers and tastes cool, then warm. He puts his lips flat against tomatoes, plums, peaches, and nectarines before stacking them, and they ripen too fast, with hard-to-sell dark spots where his saliva has gathered and seeped in. Marshmallows, not even of interest since early Boy Scouts, roll out of their bags, pull his fingers into their sweet dusty white middles, pull themselves up around his fingertips. Half a bag. Twenty-three marshmallows. His fingers are stiff, powdered white, and his throat is glued shut, but the sugar thickly coating his lips and the drying tug from the roof of his mouth to the root of his tongue is so like a past moment between them he has to sit down behind the un-shelved goods, head resting on the giant cans of juice, sticky hands hard over sticky mouth, and cry without making a sound.

* * *

Three weeks later, after two embarrassing and badly choreographed visits to Nassau Produce, half hiding to watch Huddie sell happy women olive oils they never thought they wanted and milk that was twenty cents more than the supermarket’s, Elizabeth was finally naked, sitting up to admire the way Huddie undressed, laying his red tie on the seat of the armchair, unbuttoning his white shirt, hanging it over the chair back to avoid wrinkling, and then tugging hard on his belt, stomach sucked in and released, in that way that men don’t mind and women feel terrible about, and pulling off pants, briefs, and socks in one piece.

“When did you get so polished?”

He turned his head, reminding her that when he blushed the tips of his ears burned red as if the sun set through them, and like that she fell in love again. For the red-brown tips of his ears.

“I can’t stand standing around in my shorts and socks. Like an idiot.”

“No. You look beautiful.”

“Well. Now, you give me some room here, Elizabeth.”

Huddie splashed water over his face, drinking some from his hands, and looking in the little mirror, he saw his skinny, lovesick young self. He wondered if God was more likely to forgive him if he told June she could go ahead with another baby and then he could leave her when the youngest, not even conceived, was finally off to college, or if he could save himself some time and tell June now that Larry was enough, which would allow him to leave, not dishonorably, in only fourteen years. He sprinkled Elizabeth’s chest with cold water and watched the white-blue skin of her breasts crowd up into tight pink waves around her nipples.

Fourteen years.

“Ohh, it’s cold, you shit. Horace, you shit. If we weren’t here, drinking motel water, what would you want?”

Huddie picked up his watch, checked, and put it down. “To drink? V8 juice, maybe grapefruit.”

“And to eat?”

“Is this the Glamour Quiz for Lovers?” June loved magazine tests and tore them out to answer right before bed. Tests for love, for budget balancing, for keeping your temper, for managing your in-laws. He answered every question of every test honestly, waiting for the terrible truth to hit June as she sat propped up on three lace pillows, totting up the scores, waiting to be touched.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get to cook for you. Tell me.”

“Right now? A real Caesar salad, lots of egg, homemade croutons, heavy on the garlic. Really green olive oil. I’d cover you with leaves and eat it right off you. You salad bowl, you.” He pushed June out of his mind; this little bit of time with Elizabeth would be lost to him if he waited for June to take off on her own.

He lay down again, setting the watch face toward him, and brought June back, waiting in the kitchen. He put his face deep into Elizabeth and willed his wife always safe and far away.

Elizabeth bit the soft flesh above his narrow hips. Maybe, without either of them noticing, without doing harm to June or Larry, she could mark him.

“Huddie, you’re going to be a fat old man, you know that? You foodaholic. Look at that gleam in your eye, homemade croutons. We’ll end up two big porkers together. ‘Come closer, my darling, closer.’ ‘I’m trying, sweetheart, I’m trying.’ ”

Huddie smiled and was stricken, not wanting to say that he did worry about his weight and every time he looked at his father’s gut pushing wide black diamonds between his shirt buttons, he promised not to sample the triple crème cheeses, not to kick June out of the kitchen anymore, not to let the Belgian-chocolate sales rep leave him a two-pound gift box every six weeks. And as he looked to change the subject, bee stings of pure happiness fired up the back of his neck and shoulders. She saw them together, together in a who-cares, fat and happy middle age. Horace and Elizabeth, rocking, creaking in contentment on the front porch of a house near no one they’ve ever known.