Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction (15 page)

Claudine’s father left a new black Crown Victoria for us at Logan, with chocolates and a Tintin comic on the backseat and Joan Sutherland in the CD player. Claudine folded up her black travel sweater and hung a white linen jacket on the back hook. There was five hundred dollars in the glove compartment, and I was apparently the only one who thought that if you were lucky enough to have a father, you might reasonably expect him to meet you at the airport after a two-year separation. My father would have been at that gate, drunk or sober. Mirabelle kicked the back of the driver’s seat all the way from the airport, singing what the little boy from Dallas had taught her on the flight over:
“I’m
gonna kick you. I’m
gonna
kick you. I’m gonna
kick
you. I’m gonna kick
you
, right in your big old heinie.” Claudine watched out the window until I pulled onto the turnpike, and then she closed her eyes. Anything in English was my department.

I recognized the new house right away. My mother had dreamed and sketched its front porch and its swing a hundred times during my childhood, on every telephone-book cover and notepad we ever had. For years my father talked big about a glass-and-steel house on the water, recording studio overlooking the ocean, wrap around deck for major partying and jam sessions, and for years I sat next to him on the couch while he read the paper and I read the funnies and we listened to my mother tuck my brother in: “Once upon a time, there were two handsome princes, Prince Fric, who was a little older, and Prince Frac, who was a little younger. They lived with their parents, the King and Queen, in a beautiful little cottage with a beautiful front porch looking out over the River Wilde. They lived in the little cottage because a big old castle with a wraparound deck and a million windows is simply more trouble than it’s worth.”

Julia stood before us on the porch, both arms upraised, her body pale and square in front of an old willow, its branches pooling on the lawn. Claudine pulled off her sunglasses and said, “You don’t resemble her,” and I explained, as I thought I had several times between rue de Birague and the Massachusetts border, that this was my stepmother, that my real mother had died when I was five and Julia had married my father and adopted me. “Ah,” said Claudine, “not your real mother.”

Mirabelle said,
“Qu’est-ce que c’est, ca?”

“Tire swing,” I said.

Claudine said, “May I smoke?”

“I don’t know. She used to smoke.”

“Did she stop?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if she smokes or not, Claudine.”

She reached for her jacket. “Does your mother know I’m coming?”

“Here we are, Poupée,” I said to Mirabelle.

I stood by the car and watched my mother make a fuss over Mirabelle’s red hair (speaking pretty good French, which I had never heard) and turn Claudine around to admire the crispness of her jacket. She shepherded us up the steps, thanking us for the gigantic and unimaginative bottle of toilet water. Claudine went into the bathroom; Mirabelle went out to the swing. My mother and I stood in her big white kitchen. She hadn’t touched me.

“Bourbon?” she said.

“It’s midnight in Paris, too late for me.”

“Right,” my mother said. “Gin and tonic?”

We were just clinking our glasses when Claudine came out and asked for water and an ashtray.

“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 say any thing like “Oh no, my dear, please stay here,” or “Lionel, you can’t let Claudine drive into Boston all by herself.” I poured myself another drink. I’m still surprised I didn’t offer to drive, because I was brought up properly, and because I had been sure until the moment Mirabelle pulled the lime out of Claudine’s glass that I wanted to stay at the Ritz in Boston, that I had come only so that I could depart.

Mirabelle told my mother the long story of the airplane meal and the spilled soda and the nice lady and the bad little boy from Texas and Monsieur Teddy’s difficult flight squashed in a suitcase with a hiking boot pressed against his nose for seven hours. My mother laughed and admired and clucked sympathetically in all the right places, passing the platter of chicken and bowls of cucumber salad and minted peas. She poured another grenadine and ginger ale for Mirabelle, who watched the bubbles rise through the fuchsia syrup. She had just reached for her glass when Claudine arranged her knife and fork on her plate and stood up.

Mirabelle sighed, tilting her head back to drain her drink, like one of my father’s old buddies at closing time. We all watched her swallow. My mother made very strong coffee for Claudine, filling an old silver thermos and putting together a plastic-wrapped mound of lemon squares for the road. She doted on Mirabelle and deferred to Claudine as if they were my lovable child and my formidable wife and she my fond and familiar mother. She refused to let us clear the table and amused Mirabelle while Claudine changed into comfortable driving clothes.

Mirabelle and my mother kissed good-bye French-style, and then Claudine did the same, walking out the kitchen door without waiting to see if I followed, which, of course, I did. I didn’t want to be, I wasn’t, rude or uninterested; I just didn’t want to leave yet. Mirabelle hugged me quickly and lay down on the backseat. I made a little sweater pillow for her, and she brushed her cheek against my hand. Claudine made a big production of adjusting the Crown Victoria’s side mirror, the rearview mirror, and the seat belt.

“Do you know how to get to the city?” I asked in French.

“Yes.”

“And then you stay on—”

“I have a map,” she said. “I can sleep by the side of the road until morning if I get lost.”

“That probably won’t be necessary. You have five hundred dollars in cash and seven credit cards. There’ll be a hundred motels in the next fifty miles.”

“We’ll be fine. I will take care of everything,” she said. In very fast English she added, “Do not call me, all right? We can speak to each other when you get back to Paris, perhaps.”

“Okay, Claudine. Take it easy. I’m sorry. I’ll call you in a few weeks. Mirabelle,
dors bien, fais de beaux rêves, mon ange.”

I watched them drive off, and I watched the fat white moon hanging over my mother’s roof. I was scared to go back into the house. I called out, “Where’s Buster? I thought he was coming up.” I had threatened not to come back if my brother didn’t show up within twenty-four hours.

My mother stuck her head out the front door. “He’ll be here tomorrow. He’s jammed up in court. He said dinner at the latest.”

“With or without the Jewelle?”

“With. Very much with. It’s only June, you know.”

“You don’t think she gives Bus a little too much action?”

“I don’t think he’s looking for peace. He’s peaceful enough. I think he was looking for a wild ride and she gives it to him. And she does love him to death.”

“I know. She’s kind of a nut, Ma.”

And it didn’t matter what we said then, because my lips calling her mother, her heart hearing mother after so long, blew across the bright night sky and stirred the long branches of the willow tree.

“Are you coming in?” she said.

“In a few.”

“In a few I’ll be asleep. You can finish cleaning up.”

I heard her overhead, her heavy step on the stairs, the creak of her bedroom floor, the double thump of the bathroom door, which I had noticed needed fixing. I thought about changing the hinges on that door, and I thought of my mouth around her hard nipple, her wet nightgown over my tongue, a tiny bubble of cotton I had to rip the nightgown to get rid of. She had reached over me to click off the light, and the last thing I saw that night was the white underside of her arm. In the dark she smelled of honey and salt and the faint tang of wet metal.

I washed the wineglasses by hand and wiped down the counters. When my father was rehearsing and my brother was noodling around in his room, when I wasn’t too busy with soccer and school, my mother and I cleaned up the kitchen and listened to music. We talked or we didn’t, and she did some old Moms Mabley routines and I did Richard Pryor, and we stayed in the kitchen until about ten.

I called upstairs.

“Do you mind living alone?”

My mother stood at the top of the stairs in a man’s blue terry-cloth robe and blue fuzzy slippers the size of small dogs.

“Sweet Jesus, it
is
Moms Mabley,” I said.

“No hat,” she said.

I realized, a little late, that it was not a kind thing to say to a middle-aged woman.

“And I’ve still got my teeth. I put towels in the room at the end of the hall. The bed’s made up. I’ll be up before you in the morning.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t know.” She came down three steps. “I’m pretending I know. But it is true that I get up earlier than most people. I can make you an omelet if you want.”

“I’m not much of a breakfast man.”

She smiled, and then her smile folded up and she put her hand over her mouth.

“Ma, it’s all right.”

“I hope so, honey. Not that—I’m still sorry.” She sat down on the stairs, her robe pulled tight under her thighs.

“It’s all right.” I poured us both a little red wine and handed it to her, without going up the stairs. “So, do you mind living alone?”

My mother sighed. “Not so much. I’m a pain in the ass. I could live with a couple of other old ladies, I guess. Communal potlucks and watching who’s watering down the gin. It doesn’t really sound so bad. Maybe in twenty years.”

“Maybe you’ll meet someone.”

“Maybe. I think I’m pretty much done meeting people.”

“You’re only fifty-five. You’re the same age as Tina Turner.”

“Yup. And Tina is probably tired of meeting people, too. How about you—do you mind living alone?”

“I don’t exactly live alone—”

“You do. That’s exactly what you do—you live alone. And have relationships with people who are very happy to let you live alone.”

“Claudine’s really a lot of fun, Ma. You didn’t get to know her.”

“She may be a whole house of fun, but don’t tell me she inspires thoughts of a happy domestic life.”