Where the God of Love Hangs Out - Amy Bloom [49]
“No smoking in the house, Claudine. I’m sorry.”
Claudine shrugged in that contemptuous way Parisians do, so wildly disdainful you have to laugh or hit them. She went outside, lighting up before she was through the door. We touched glasses again.
“Maybe you didn’t know I was bringing a friend?” I said.
My mother smiled. “Buster didn’t mention it.”
“Do you mind?”
“I don’t mind. You might have been bringing her to meet me. I don’t think you did, but you might have. And a very cute kid. Really adorable.”
“And Claudine?”
“Very pretty. Chien. That’s the word I remember, I don’t know if they still say that.”
Chien means a bitchy, stylish appeal. They do still say that, and my own landlady has said it of Claudine.
Julia dug her hands into a bowl of tarragon and cream cheese and pushed it, one little white gob at a time, under the skin of the big chicken sitting on the counter. “Do you cook?”
“I do. I’m a good cook. Like Pop.”
My mother put the chicken in the oven and laughed. “Honey, what did your father ever cook?”
“He was a good cook. He made those big breakfasts on Sunday, he barbecued great short ribs—I remember those.”
“Oh, Abyssinian ribs. I remember them, too. Those were some great parties in those bad old days. Even after he stopped drinking, your father was really fun at a party.” She smiled as if he were still in the room.
My father was a madly friendly, kissy, unreliable drunk when I was a little boy, and a successful, dependable musician and father after he met Julia. Once she became my mother, I never worried about him, I never hid again from that red-eyed, wet-lipped stranger, but I did occasionally miss the old drunk.
Claudine stuck her head back into the kitchen, beautiful and squinting through her smoke, and Mira belle ran in beneath her. My mother handed her two carrots and a large peeler with a black spongy handle for arthritic cooks, and Mirabelle flourished it at us both, our little musketeer. My mother brought out three less fancy peelers, and while we worked our way through a good-size pile of carrots and pink potatoes, she told us how she met my father at Barbara Cook’s house and how they both ditched their dates, my mother leaving behind her favorite coat. Claudine told us about the lady who snuck twin Siamese bluepoints into the hotel in her ventilated Vuitton trunk and bailed out on her bill, taking six towels and leaving the cats behind. Claudine laughed at my mother’s story and shook her head over the lost red beaver jacket, and my mother laughed at Claudine’s story and shook her head over people’s foolishness. Mirabelle fished the lime out of Claudine’s club soda and sucked on it.
A feeling of goodwill and confidence settled on me for no reason I can imagine.
“Hey,” I said, “let’s stay over. Here.”
My mother smiled and looked at Claudine.
“Perhaps we will just see how we feel,” Claudine said. “I am a little fatiguée.”
“Why don’t you take a nap before dinner,” my mother and I said simultaneously.
“Perhaps,” she said, and kept peeling.
I think now that I must have given Claudine the wrong impression, that she’d come expecting a doddering old lady, none too sharp or tidy these days, living on dented canned goods and requiring a short, sadly empty visit before she collapsed entirely. Julia, with a silver braid hanging down her broad back, in black T-shirt, black pants, and black two-dollar flip-flops on her wide coral-tipped feet, was not that old lady at all.
My mother gave Mirabelle a bowl of cut-up vegetables to put on the table, and she carried it like treasure, the pink radishes bobbing among the ice cubes. Claudine waved her hand around, wanting another cigarette, and my mother gave her a glass of red wine. Claudine put it down a good ten inches away from her.
“I am sorry. We have reservations. Lionel, will you arrange your car? Mirabelle and me must go after dinner. Thank you, Madame Sampson, for your kindness.”
My mother lifted her glass to Claudine. “Anytime. I hope you both come again.” She did not