Where the God of Love Hangs Out - Amy Bloom [41]
While the boys were gone, I straightened the house, went for a walk, and made curried tuna-fish sandwiches for Lion. I watched out the window for him, and when I saw my car turn up the road, I remembered all the things I hadn’t done and started making a list. He came in, sweating and shirtless, drops of white paint on his hands and shoulders and sneakers.
Lion ate and I watched him and smiled. Feeding them was the easiest and clearest way of loving them, holding them.
“I’m going to shower. Then we could play a little tennis or work on the porch.” He finished both sandwiches in about a minute and got that wistful look that teenage boys get when they want you to fix them something more to eat. I made two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and put them on his plate.
“Great. I don’t have to work this afternoon,” he said. “I told Joe I might not be back—he said okay.”
“Well, I’m just going to mouse around, do laundry, answer some mail. I’m glad to have your company, you know I am, but you don’t have to stay here with me. You might want to be with your friends.”
“I don’t. I’m gonna shower.” Like his father, he only put his love out once, and God help you if you didn’t take the hint.
I sat at the table, looking out at the morning glories climbing up the trellis Lionel had built me the summer he stopped drinking. In addition to the trellis, I had two flower boxes, a magazine rack, and a footstool so ugly even Ruth wouldn’t have it.
“Ma, no towels,” Lion shouted from the bathroom. I thought that was nice, as if real life might continue.
“All right,” I called, getting one of the big, rough white ones that he liked.
I went into the bathroom and put it on the rack just as he stepped out of the shower. I hadn’t seen him naked since he was fourteen and spent the year parading around the house, so that we could admire his underarm hair and the black wisps on his legs.
All I could see in the mist was a dark caramel column and two patches of dark curls, inky against his skin. I expected him to look away, embarrassed, but instead he looked right at me as he took the towel, and I was the one who turned away.
“Sorry,” we both said, and I backed out of the bathroom and went straight down to the basement so we wouldn’t bump into each other for a while.
I washed, dried, and folded everything that couldn’t get away from me, listening for Lion’s footsteps upstairs. I couldn’t hear anything while the machines were going, so after about an hour I came up and found a note on the kitchen table.
Taking a nap. Wake me when it’s time to get Buster. L.
“L.,” is how his father used to sign his notes. And their handwriting was the same, too: the awkward, careful printing of men who know that their script is illegible.
I took a shower and dried my hair and looked in the mirror for a while, noticing the gray at the temples. I wondered what Lion would have seen if he’d walked in on me, and I made up my mind not to think like that again.
I woke Lion by calling him from the hall, and I went into my room while he dressed to go to his grandmother’s. I found a skirt that was somber and ill-fitting enough to meet Ruth’s standard of widowhood and thought about topping it off with my EIGHT TO THE BAR VOLLEYBALL CHAMPS T-shirt, but didn’t. Even pulling Ruth’s chain wasn’t fun. I put on a yellow shirt that made me look like one of the Neapolitan cholera victims, and Lion and I went to get Buster. He was bubbling over about the goal he had made in the last quarter, and that filled the car until we got to Ruth’s house, and then she took over.
“Come in, come in. Gabriel, you are too dirty to be my grandson. You go wash up right now. Lionel junior, you’re looking a little peaked. You must be working too hard or playing too hard. Does he eat, Julia? Come sit down here and have a glass of nice iced tea with mint from my garden. Julia, guess who I heard from this afternoon? Loretta, Lionel’s first wife. She called to say how sorry she was. I told her she could call upon