Where the God of Love Hangs Out - Amy Bloom [55]
“Are you here to help or to bother us?”
“Helping. He’s helping me,” Corinne says. She likes Uncle Lionel. She likes his big white smile and the gold band of his cigar, which he always, always gives to her, and the way he butters her bread, covering the slice right to the crust with twice as much butter as her mother puts on.
“I could help,” Lionel says. There is an unopened bottle of Scotch under the sink, and he finds Julia’s handsome, square, heavy-bottomed glasses, the kind that make you glad you drink hard liquor.
Lionel rolls up his sleeves and chops apples and celery. After Corinne yawns twice and almost tips over into the pan of cooling corn bread, Jewelle carries her off to bed. When she comes back from arranging Floradora the Dog and Strawberry Mouse just so, and tucking the blankets tightly around Corinne’s feet, Lionel is gone, as Jewelle expected.
Her mother-in-law talks tough about men. Every thing about Julia, her uniform of old jeans and black T-shirt, her wild gray hair and careless independence, says nothing is easier than finding a man and training him and kicking him loose if he doesn’t behave, and you would think she’d raised both her boys as feminist heroes. And Buster is good—Jewelle always says so—he picks up after himself, cooks when he can, gives the kids their baths, and is happy to sit in the Mommy row during Jordan’s Saturday swim. Lionel is something else. When he clears the table or washes up, swaying to Otis Redding, snapping his dish towel like James Brown, Julia watches him with such tender admiration that you would think he’d just rescued a lost child.
Jewelle runs her hands through the corn bread, making tracks in the crust, rubbing the big crumbs between her fingers. Julia’s house, even with Lionel in it, is one of Jewelle’s favorite places. At home, she is the Mommy and the Wife. Here, she is the mother of gifted children, an esteemed artist temporarily on leave. At her parents’ house, paralyzed by habit, she drinks milk out of the carton, trying to rub her lipstick off the spout afterward, borrows her mother’s expensive mascara and then takes it home after pretending to help her mother search all three bathrooms before they leave. She eats too much and too fast, half of it standing up and the rest with great reluctance, as if there were a gun pointed at her three times a day. In Julia’s house there’s no trouble about food or mealtimes; Jewelle eats what she wants, and the children eat bananas and Cheerios and grilled cheese sandwiches served up without even an arching of an eyebrow. Julia is happy to have her daughter-in-law cook interesting dishes and willing to handle the basics when the children are hungry and not one adult is intrigued by the idea of cooking.
Buster will not hear of anything but the corn bread–and–bacon stuffing Grammy Ruth used to make, and Jewelle, who would eat bacon every day if she could, makes six pounds of it and leaves a dark, crisp pile on the counter, for snacking. Julia seems to claim nothing on Thanksgiving but the table setting. She’s not fussy—she prides herself on her lack of fuss—but Julia is particular about her table, and it is not Jewelle or Buster who is called on to pick up the centerpiece in town, but Lionel, who has had his license suspended at least two times that Jewelle knows of. Jewelle packs the stuffing into Tupperware and leaves a long note for Julia so that her mother-in-law will not think that she has abdicated on the sweet potatoes or the creamed spinach.
In bed, spooning Buster, Jewelle runs her hand down his warm back. Sweetness, she thinks, and kisses him between the shoulders. Buster throws one big arm behind him and pulls her close. Lucky Jewelle, lucky Buster. If Jewelle had looked out the window, she would have seen Lionel and Julia by the tire swing, talking the way they have since they resumed talking, casual and ironic, and beneath that very, very careful.
Lionel cradles the bottle of Glenlivet.
“You drink a lot these days,” Julia says in the neutral voice