Where the God of Love Hangs Out - Amy Bloom [63]
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