Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction (19 page)

Buster opens another magazine. “Looky here, little girl in northern India is born with two faces. Only one set of ears, but two full faces. She’s worshipped in her village. Durga, goddess of valor.”

“Jesus,” Lionel says. “What’s wrong with people?” He looks at the picture of the little girl. “Patsine’s pregnant.”

“Oh, great. Good for you. Patsine’s great.” Buster has disliked all of Lionel’s other girlfriends and wives. The mean ones scared him and the nice, hopeful ones depressed him and Jewelle would say to him, after each meet-and-greet, “All I’m saying is, just once, let him bring someone who isn’t a psycho, a slut, or a Martian. Just once.” Buster pats his big brother on the knee and says, Well, aren’t you the proud papa, and the homely flight attendant smiles at them both.
Mes félicitations, monsieur
. She brings them pâté and crackers and two flutes of Champagne. Lionel gives his Champagne to Buster and asks for sparkling water.

Buster keeps reading. “It says the village chief wants the government to build a temple to the two-faced baby.”

“Who wouldn’t,” Lionel says.

They’re over the north Atlantic, only ten hours until home and eating a pretty good lunch, as Buster is not one to say no to a good meal. Buster sips his Champagne and Lionel drinks his Perrier and stifles his envy and longing by reviewing all the terrible things that happened to him when he was drinking. He nearly killed an old lady on a Sunday drive; he fell down a flight of stairs and ripped open his scalp, so that when he sat in court the next day, the judge finally said, M. Sampson, the blood is distracting me, and Lionel left to tighten his bandage and came back to a trail of red drops at his side of the table. He lost the case and the goodwill of his partners. If you want to look at the big picture, as Lionel tries to these days—his drinking has led to failed relationships with women who had nothing in common except bad judgment and despair.

As her husband and brother-in-law are over the north Atlantic, Jewelle piles all of her children’s things into the van and Jordan and her nephew Ari play basketball and Patsine makes several slow, steady trips to the van, each time carrying something small and not too heavy. Corinne doesn’t help even that much, because she’s taken off to her best friend’s house, so she and the other girl can weep and embrace as if the Thanksgiving weekend apart is a life sentence. Jewelle can’t say a thing to her daughter about her drama-queen behavior or her aggrieved and enormous uselessness because they have just gotten over a huge blowup about people of color, a category in which Jewelle Enright Sampson (English, Irish, and Belgian) does not figure, but her daughter, Corinne Elizabeth Sampson, does. (I joined the NMS Students of Color group, Corinne told her family, after her first day of middle school. I’m secretary. No one said, What color is that? And no one pointed out that Corinne was a few shades lighter than even the all-white people in the family. Her brother, Jordan, who is more coffee-with-a-lot-of-cream, snickered, and her father, who is a brown-skinned man, shook his head fondly. Jewelle called her mother-in-law, the only other white mother of tan children whom she knew, and complained. Julia told her that white mothers of black children were screwed whichever way they went: white trash or in denial or so supportive, they’re punch lines for black
and
white people, filling their shopping carts with Rastafarian lip balm and Jheri curl products and both kinds of Barbie dolls. Someone’s got to be the mammy, she said to Jewelle; unfortunately, it’s our turn. Think Halle Berry, she said; she seems to like her mother.)

When everyone is safely in the van, Jewelle wants to discuss the visit to Julia’s. I’m not
criticizing
, she says. I didn’t say the kitchen
isn’t
clean, she says to Patsine. Patsine has visited their mother-in-law only once before and the kitchen was neither dirty nor clean; it was unexceptional and she doesn’t care. Patsine says to Jewelle, You must forgive me, I am completely exhausted, and she closes her eyes. Corinne sits between her brother and her cousin and she is very aware of her cousin Ari’s long thigh pressing against hers, of his fidgeting from time to time, of his bare arm across her shoulders. All the children are listening to their music and Patsine is sleeping, or pretending to sleep, and Jewelle just drives to the Cape.

As the Russian guy is waiting for Buster and Lionel, as Jewelle is driving everyone to the Cape, Julia and her dog, Sophie Tucker, and her friend Robert lie in bed.

“Everyone is coming home later,” Julia says.

“So you’ve said. I won’t leave a trace.”

Robert gets out of bed and stands in front of the window, looking out at the ocean. The soft light falls over him, over his big shoulders and thick torso and thick legs, everything just faintly webbed by age except his impossibly bright gold hair.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to come to dinner,” Julia says. “You could bring Arthur.”

Robert shakes his head and gets back into bed. Julia tucks two pillows under his knees to protect his back.

“Oh, darling, could you …” he says.

“Oh, darling yourself,” Julia says and gets him another glass of cold water.

“You’re too good to me. Let’s get facials Saturday. On me.”

“I could use one,” Julia says, and she thinks that she could more than use one, that when she stopped coloring her hair, she just let the whole edifice collapse, from roof to rail, except for long walks with the dog.

Robert put his hands at his temples and pulls. He says “Honey, who couldn’t use one? I myself am going to start taping my eyebrows to my hairline like Lucille Ball.”

“Okay,” Julia says. “Me, too.” She rests her head on his shoulder and Robert strokes her hair, tucking a few strands behind her ear. “You won’t come?”

“No,” Robert says. “We can’t. You have nice ears.”

“They’ve held up.”

“They have held up
wonderfully,”
he says, and he pulls the quilt up over Julia’s bare shoulder and begins snoring.

A few hours later, Robert goes home to his lover, Arthur, who looks at Robert over his newspaper and sighs. Julia puts on her raincoat and takes Sophie Tucker for a walk.

Robert is sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Julia’s family to come. He’s been there all morning. He hears the car coming up the drive and goes to the porch. Jordan sees him first.

“It’s the old man,” he says, and Jewelle peers forward.

Robert taps on the van window and helps Patsine out of the van. He’s very strong for an old man. Jewelle moves too quickly for him to open the door for her and she feels a little slighted that he doesn’t, and as she is thinking that her mother-in-law must have fallen asleep on the couch, Robert pulls the two women toward the side of the porch, toward the browning hydrangeas. He tells them that Julia is dead.

He tells them everything he knows about the accident, which is only what the police told him when he had come back to the house for tea and found no Julia, and there was blood on the road and Sophie Tucker whimpering on the porch. Robert carried Sophie Tucker inside and the two policemen said it was a terrible accident, they said no alcohol was involved, they said the boy told them the dog ran across the street and Julia ran after it, and in the wet weather, the boy lost control of the car. The boy was in the hospital, the police said, and Julia was dead.

Robert hugs each of the women and Corinne runs over, like a little girl in a bad thunderstorm, to push her way under her mother’s arm. Patsine wishes her husband were here now to tell Ari, this boy she hardly knows, that his grandmother, whom she hardly knows, is dead. She tells Ari, in French, what has happened and he looks at her, stone-faced, and goes to his room in the attic. Jordan presses himself to Jewelle’s other side and he finds Corinne’s hand. Jewelle kisses both of them, frantically, and says, Oh, I’m sorry, honey, your nana is just so sorry not to be here.

Jewelle and her children go into the house and upstairs like one person. Robert offers Patsine his arm and the two of them stand in the front hall, until Robert says that perhaps he ought to go home and Patsine agrees.

When Buster and Lionel arrive, pulling their bags out of the trunk, Jewelle and Patsine run out to meet them on the driveway and the two men back away, a little, before their wives even speak. Lionel drops to his knees on the lawn and Buster kneels beside him and the two women sit down beside them, all of them on the damp, crisp grass as the driver pulls away. The four of them unload Jewelle’s van and Lionel and Buster go from room to room, kissing the children good night. In the morning, they find Ari in his grandmother’s bed.

“Is anyone going to the store?” Lionel yells up the stairs, and no one answers. Jewelle is walking on the beach. Patsine is napping. Jordan lies on one of the twin beds in the attic room, looking at a few old copies of
Playboy
his father or his uncle must have left behind. Corinne has taken over the living room, her dirty sneakers and sweaters trailing over the sofa and a gold-framed photograph of her latest hero, Damien de Veuster, dead leper priest, on the coffee table. It’s Jordan who has the right disposition for yoga, Lionel thinks; the boy’s a limpid pool of goodness in a family of undertow, and Lionel doesn’t know where he gets it. (Julia would have said that Jordan was very like Lionel’s father’s father, Alfred Sampson, who even as a black man in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1963, and even among white people hoping the world would never change, was revered throughout the town, and when he died, Irish cops sent flowers.) But Jordan is in the attic with his door locked and here instead is Corinne, a big-busted, wild-haired girl, her bodhichitta tank top rising over her round, tan belly, her green stretch pants dipping very close to her ass crack, racing toward enlightenment and altruism like the Cannonball Express.

“You wanna take the bike to the grocery, Corinne?” Lionel asks.

Corinne puts a finger to her lips, as if her uncle Lionel is disturbing not her,
which wouldn’t matter in the least
, but the tranquillity of her spiritual guides. She exhales deeply and squeezes her eyes closed.

“Christ almighty.” Lionel yells upstairs. “Is anyone going to the goddamned store before it closes?”

Lionel can’t go; he doesn’t have a license. France—his home for some thirty years and a nation exceptionally tolerant of drinking and driving—lowered the blood-alcohol level to something like a glass of water with a splash of Pernod and now he can’t drive anywhere, not legally. He doesn’t try. Not driving is his penance, like not drinking, which is itself so preoccupying and gives him such a novel and peculiar and fraught perspective on every activity, he could almost say he doesn’t mind, although he has thought a lot about Balvenie Scotch in a heavy crystal glass for the last two days. Ari jumps down the stairs in two huge steps, punches his stepfather in the arm, and hangs in the doorway to watch Corinne breathe. He breathes with her for a moment. Late last summer, Corinne put her hand on his cock by accident when he spilled his juice and she went to help him mop it up and then she felt him and she dropped the roll of paper towels in his lap and went back to her seat, but that moment is what Ari has come back for.

Late last summer, when everyone had come to Julia’s for Labor Day, Julia took them all into town for Italian ices. The eight of them sat on the wrought-iron benches in front of Vincenzo’s, sucking on paper cups of lemon and tangerine. Julia stood up. She threw her paper cup to the ground and cupped her hands around her mouth. She yelled, “Robert. Robert Nash.” And at the far end of the street, two men turned around and came toward her. Julia began to hurry toward the taller man, and he put his arms around her and all they could see was his crisp white shirtsleeves and gold watch, and when Julia stepped back and put her hand to his face, they saw his pressed jeans, his bare feet in Italian loafers.
“Très chic,”
Jewelle whispered. Julia and the old man hugged again and finally Julia introduced everyone. (“Oh, Robert, my son Lionel, my grandson Ari, my granddaughter, Corinne, my grandson Jordan, my son Buster—I’m so sorry, honey, I should say my son Judge Gabriel Sampson and his wife, Jewelle. How’s that?”) And the old man looked Lionel up and down in an unmistakable way. (“I’d know you anywhere,” he said. “Your father’s son.”) He shook hands with everyone. He said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. This is my companion, Arthur.” The other man looked like a middle-aged hamster and he cradled a big bouquet from the florist, wrapped in lavender tissue and cellophane.

Jordan poked Ari and Ari rolled his eyes.

Robert said, “And what are you two young men doing for amusement?”

He didn’t sound like an elegant old fruit; he sounded like a distinguished and rather demanding English professor, and Julia hid her smile when the boys dropped their eyes. Robert used to reduce college boys of all kinds, potheads, lacrosse players, and clean-cut Christians, to tears with that tone.

Ari shrugged. Conversation with American strangers was Jordan’s department.

Jordan said, “We might do a little fishing.”

“Fly-fishing?”

“No. Just, you know, regular,” Jordan said.

Lionel nodded. “Just reel and rods and worms. Nothing fancy.”

Robert smiled again. “Well, if you can handle a little motor-boat, I have one just rusting in the driveway. You’re welcome to it.”

Everyone except Arthur smiled and Lionel could see the man calculating the cost of the lawsuit when one of the boys lost a hand in the propeller or came home crying after an afternoon skinny-dipping at Robert’s.

Lionel put a protective arm around each boy and began to shift them away.

Robert said, “Well, come look at the boat if you want. And there’s a basketball court across the street. My neighbor’s in Greece and it just sits there. It’s a waste.”

“We could ride over tomorrow,” Jordan said

“C’est de la balle.”
Ari glanced toward the old man. “Cool.”

“Just as you say. Arthur, do show them where we are,” Robert said, and Arthur handed each of the boys a business card with Robert’s name and phone number and a little pen-and-ink map on the back, marking their house with a silver star.