Where the God of Love Hangs Out

SLEEPWALKING

I was born smart and had been lucky my whole life, so I didn’t even know that what I thought was careful planning was nothing more than being in the right place at the right time, missing an avalanche I didn’t even hear.

After the funeral was over and the cold turkey and the glazed ham were demolished and some very good jazz was played and some very good musicians went home drunk on bourbon poured in my husband’s honor, it was just me, my mother-in-law, Ruth, and our two boys, Lionel junior from Lionel’s second marriage, and our little boy, Buster.

Ruth pushed herself up out of the couch, her black taffeta dress rustling reproachfully. I couldn’t stand for her to start the dishes, sighing, praising the Lord, clucking her tongue over the state of my kitchen, in which the windows are not washed regularly and I do not scrub behind the refrigerator.

“Ruth, let them sit. I’ll do them later tonight.”

“No need to put off ’til tomorrow what we can do today. I’ll do them right now, and then Lionel junior can run me home.” Ruth does not believe that the good Lord intended ladies to drive; she’d drive, eyes closed, with her drunk son or her accident-prone grandson before she’d set foot in my car.

“Ruth, please,” I said. “I’d just as soon have something to do later. Please. Let me make us a cup of tea, and then we’ll take you home.”

Tea, her grandson Buster, and her son’s relative sobriety were the three major contributions I’d made to Ruth’s life; the tea and Buster accounted for all of our truces and the few good times we’d had together.

“I ought to be going along now, let you get on with things.”

“Earl Grey? Darjeeling? Constant Comment? I’ve got some rosehip tea in here, too — it’s light, sort of lemony.” I don’t know why I was urging her to stay; I’d never be rid of her as long as I had the boys. If Ruth no longer thought I was trash, she certainly made it clear that I hadn’t lived up to her notion of the perfect daughter-in-law, a cross between Marian Anderson and Florence Nightingale.

“You have Earl Grey?” Ruth was wavering, half a smile on her sad mouth, her going-to-church lipstick faded to a blurry pink line on her upper lip.

When I really needed Ruth on my side, I’d set out an English tea: Spode teapot, linen place mats, scones, and three kinds of jam. And for half an hour, we’d sip and chew, happy to be so civilized.

“Earl Grey it is.” I got up to put on the water, stepping on Buster, who was sitting on the floor by my chair, practically on my feet.

“Jesus, Buster, are you all right?” I hugged him before he could start crying and lifted him out of my way.

“The Lord’s name,” Ruth murmured, rolling her eyes up to apologize to Jesus personally. I felt like smacking her one, right in her soft dark face, and pointing out that since the Lord had not treated us especially well in the last year, during which we had both lost husbands, perhaps we didn’t have to be overly concerned with His hurt feelings. Ruth made me want to be very, very bad.

“Sorry, Ruth. Buster, sit down by your grandmother, honey, and I’ll make us all some tea.”

“No, really, don’t trouble yourself, Julia. Lionel junior, please take me home. Gabriel, come kiss your grandma good-bye. You boys be good, now, and think of how your daddy would want you to act. I’ll see you all for dinner tomorrow.”

She was determined to leave, martyred and tea-less, so I got in line to kiss her. Ruth put her hands on my shoulders, her only gesture of affection toward me, which also allowed her to pretend that she was a little taller, rather than a little shorter, than I am.

She left with Lionel junior, and Buster and I cuddled on the couch, his full face squashed against my chest, my skin resting on his soft hair. I felt almost whole.

“Sing, Mama.”

Lionel had always wanted me to record with him and I had always said no, because I don’t like performing and I didn’t want to be a blues-singing Marion Davies to Lionel’s William Ran dolph Hearst. But I loved to sing and he loved to play and I’m sorry we didn’t record just one song together.

I was trying to think of something that would soothe Buster but not break my heart.

I sang “Amazing Grace,” even though I can’t quite hit that note, and I sang bits and pieces of a few more songs, and then Buster was asleep and practically drowning in my tears.

I heard Lionel junior’s footsteps and blotted my face on my sleeve.

“Hey, Lion, let’s put this little boy to bed.”

“He’s out, huh? You look tired, too. Why don’t you go to bed and I’ll do the dishes?”

That’s my Lion. I think because I chose to love him, chose to be a mother and not just his father’s wife, Lion gave me back everything he could. He was my table setter, car washer, garden weeder; in twelve years, I might’ve raised my voice to him twice. When my husband brought his son to meet me the first time, I looked into those wary eyes, hope pouring out of them despite himself, and I knew that I had found someone else to love.

I carried Buster to his room and laid him on the bed, slip ping off his loafers. I pulled up the comforter with the long-legged basketball players running all over it and kissed his damp little face. I thought about how lucky I was to have Buster and Lion and even Ruth, who might torture me forever but would never abandon me, and I thought about how cold and lonely my poor Lionel must be, with no bourbon and no music and no audience, and I went into the bathroom to dry my face again. Lion got frantic when he saw me crying.

He was lying on the couch, his shoes off, his face turned toward the cushions.

“Want a soda or a beer? Maybe some music?” I pulled at his shoulder.

“Nope. Maybe some music, but not Pop’s.”

“No, no, not your father’s. How about Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan?”

“How about something a little more up? How about Luther Vandross?” Lion turned around to face me.

“I don’t have any — as you know.” Lionel and I both hated bubblegum music, so of course Lion had the world’s largest collection of whipped-cream soul; if it was insipid, he bought it.

“I’ll get my tapes,” he said, and sat halfway up to see if I would let him. We used to make him play them in his room so we wouldn’t have to listen, but Lionel wasn’t here to grumble at the boy and I just didn’t care.

“Play what you want, honey,” I said, sitting in Lionel’s brown velvet recliner. Copies of Downbeat and packs of Trident were still stuffed between the cushion and the arm. Lion bounded off to his room and came back with an armful of tapes.

“Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston … what would you like to hear?”

“You pick.” Even talking felt like too much work. He put on one of the tapes and I shut my eyes.

I hadn’t expected to miss Lionel so much. We’d had twelve years together, eleven of them sober; we’d had Buster and raised the Lion, and we’d gone to the Grammys together when he was nominated and he’d stayed sober when he lost, and we’d made love, with more interest some years than others; we’d been through a few other women for him, a few blondes that he couldn’t pass up, and one other man for me; I’m not criticizing. We knew each other so well that when I wrote a piece on another jazz musician, he’d find the one phrase and say, “You meant that about me,” and he’d be right. He was a better father than your average musician; he brought us with him whenever he went to Europe, and no matter how late he played on Saturday, he got up and made breakfast on Sunday.

Maybe we weren’t a perfect match, in age, or temperament, or color, but we did try and we were willing to stick it out and then we didn’t get a chance.

Lion came and sat by me, putting his head against my knee. Just like Buster, I thought. Lion’s mother was half Italian, like me, so the two boys look alike: creamier, silkier versions of their father.

I patted his hair and ran my thumb up and down his neck, feeling the muscles bunched up. When he was little, he couldn’t fall asleep without his nightly back rub, and he only gave it up when he was fifteen and Lionel just wouldn’t let me anymore.

“It’s midnight, honey. It’s been a long day, a long week. Go to bed.”

He pushed his head against my leg and cried, the way men do, like it’s being torn out of them. His tears ran down my bare leg, and I felt the strings holding me together just snap. One, two, three, and there was no more center.

“Go to bed, Lion.”

“How about you?”

“I’m not really ready for bed yet, honey. Go ahead.” Please, go to bed.

“Okay. Good night, Ma.”

“Good night, baby.” Nineteen-year-old baby.

He pulled himself up and went off to his room. I peered into the kitchen, looked at all the dishes, and closed my eyes again. After a while, I got up and finished off the little bit of Jim Beam left in the bottle. With all Lionel’s efforts at sobriety, we didn’t keep the stuff around, and I choked on it. But the burning in my throat was comforting, like old times, and it was a distraction.

I walked down the hall to the bedroom — I used to call it the Lionel Sampson Celebrity Shrine. It wasn’t just his framed album covers, but all of his favorite reviews, including the ones I wrote before I met him; one of Billie’s gardenias mounted on velvet, pressed behind glass; photos of Lionel playing with equally famous or more famous musicians or with famous fans. In some ways, it’s easier to marry a man with a big ego; you’re not always fretting over him, worrying about whether or not he needs fluffing up.

I threw my black dress on the floor, my worst habit, and got into bed. I woke up at around four, waiting for something. A minute later, Buster wandered in, eyes half shut, blue blankie resurrected and hung around his neck, like a little boxer.

“Gonna stay with you, Mama.” Truculent even in his sleep, knowing that if his father had been there, he’d have been sent back to his own room.

“Come in, then, Bus. Let’s try and get some sleep.”

He curled up next to me, silently, an arm flung over me, the other arm thrust into his pajama bottoms, between his legs.

I had just shut my eyes again when I felt something out of place. Lion was standing in the doorway, his briefs hanging off his high skinny hips. He needed new underwear, I thought. He looked about a year older than Buster.

“I thought I heard Buster prowling around, y’know, sleepwalking.”

The only one who ever sleepwalked in our family was Lion, but I didn’t say so. “It’s okay — he just wanted company. Lonely in this house tonight.”

“Yeah. Ma?”

I was tired of thinking, and I didn’t want to send him away, and I didn’t want to talk anymore to anyone so I said, “Come on, honey, it’s a big bed.”

He crawled in next to his brother and fell asleep in a few minutes. I watched the digital clock flip through a lot of numbers and finally I got up and read.

The boys woke early, and I made them what Lionel called a Jersey City breakfast: eggs, sweet Italian sausage, grits, biscuits, and a quart of milk for each of them.

“Buster, soccer camp starts today. Do you feel up to going?”

I didn’t see any reason for him to sit at home; he could catch up on his grieving for the rest of his life.

“I guess so. Is it okay, Mama?”

“Yes, honey, it’s fine. I’m glad you’re going. I’ll pick you up at five, and then we’ll drive straight over to Grandma’s for dinner. You go get ready when you’re done eating. Don’t forget your cleats — they’re in the hall.”

Lion swallowed his milk and stood up, like a brown flamingo, balancing on one foot while he put on his sneaker. “Come on, Buster, I’m taking you. I have to go into town anyway. Do we need anything?”

I hadn’t been to the grocery store in about a week. “Get milk and OJ and English muffins and American cheese. I’ll do a real shop tomorrow.” If I could just get to the store and the cleaners, then I could get to work, and then my life would move forward.

Finally they were ready to go, and I kissed them both and gave Lion some money for the groceries.

“I’ll be back by lunchtime,” he said. It was already eight-thirty. When his father got sick in the spring, Lion gave me hourly bulletins on his whereabouts. This summer, Lion was house painting and home constantly, leaving late, back early, stopping by for lunch.

“If you like,” I said. I didn’t want him to feel that he had to keep me company. I was planning on going back to work tomorrow or the day after.

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 you, if she wished.”

“Fine.” I didn’t have the energy to be annoyed. My muscles felt like butter, I’d had a headache for six days, and my eyes were so sore that even when I closed them, they ached. If Ruth wanted to sic Loretta McVay Sampson de Guzman de God-knows-who-else on me, I guessed I’d get through that little hell, too.

Ruth looked at me, probably disappointed; I knew from Lionel that she couldn’t stand Loretta, but since she was the only black woman he’d married, Ruth felt obliged to find something positive about her. She was a lousy singer, a whore, and a terrible housekeeper, so Ruth really had to search. Anita, wife number two, was a rich, pretty flake with a fragile air and a serious drug problem that killed her when the Lion was five. I was the only normal, functioning person Lionel was ever involved with: I worked, I cooked, I balanced our checkbook, I did what had to be done, just like Ruth. And I irritated her no end.

“Why’d you do that, Grandma? Loretta’s so nasty. She probably just wants to find out if Pop left her something in his will, which I’m sure he did not.” Loretta and Lionel had had a little thing going when Anita was in one of her rehab centers, and I think the Lion found out and of course blamed Loretta.

“It’s all right, Lion,” I said, and stopped myself from patting his hand as if he were Buster.

Ruth was offended. “Really, young man, it was very decent, just common courtesy, for Loretta to pay her respects, and I’m sure that your stepmother appreciates that.” Ruth thought it disrespectful to call me Julia when talking to Lion, but she couldn’t stand the fact that he called me Ma after the four years she put in raising him while Anita killed herself and Lionel toured. So she referred to me as “your stepmother,” which always made me feel like the coachmen and pumpkins couldn’t be far behind. Lion used to look at me and smile when she said it.

We got through dinner, with Buster bragging about soccer and giving us a minute-by-minute account of the soccer training movie he had seen. Ruth criticized their table manners, asked me how long I was going to wallow at home, and then expressed horror when I told her I was going to work on Mon day. Generally, she was her usual self, just a little worse, which was true of the rest of us, too. She also served the best smothered pork chops ever made and her usual first-rate trimmings. She brightened up when the boys both asked for seconds and I praised her pork chops and the sweet-potato soufflé for a solid minute.

After dinner, I cleared and the two of us washed and dried while the boys watched TV. I never knew how to talk to Ruth; my father-in-law was the easy one, and when Alfred died I lost my biggest fan. I looked over at Ruth, scrubbing neatly stacked pots with her pink rubber gloves, which matched her pink-and-white apron, which had nothing cute or whimsical about it. She hadn’t raised Lionel to be a good husband; she’d raised him to be a warrior, a god, a genius surrounded by courtiers. But I married him anyway, when he was too old to be a warrior, too tired to be a god, and smart enough to know the limits of his talent.

I thought about life without my boys, and I gave Ruth a little hug as she was tugging off her gloves. She humphed and wiped her hands on her apron.

“You take care of yourself, now. Those boys need you more than ever.” She walked into the living room and announced that it was time for us to go, since she had a church meeting.

We all thanked her, and I drove home with three pink Tupperware containers beside me. The car smelled like pork chop.

I wanted to put Buster to bed, but it was only eight o’clock. I let him watch some sitcoms and changed out of my clothes and into my bathrobe. Lion came into the hall in a fresh shirt.

“Going out?” He looked so pretty in his clean white shirt.

“Yeah, some of the guys want to go down to the Navigator. I said I’d stop by, see who’s there. Don’t wait up.”

I was surprised but delighted. I tossed him the keys. “Okay, drive carefully.”

Buster got himself into pajamas and even brushed his teeth without my nagging him. He had obviously figured out that I was not operating at full speed. I tucked him in, trying to give him enough hugs and kisses to help him get settled, not so many that he’d hang on my neck for an extra fifteen minutes. I went to sit in the kitchen, staring at the moths smacking themselves against the screen door. I could relate to that.

I read a few magazines, plucked my eyebrows, thought about plucking the gray hairs at my temples, and decided not to bother. Who’d look? Who’d mind, except me?

Finally, I got into bed, and got out about twenty minutes later. I poured myself some bourbon and tried to go to sleep again, thinking that I hadn’t ever really appreciated what it took Lionel to get through life sober. I woke up at around four, anticipating Buster. But there, leaning against the doorway, was Lion.

“Ma.” He sounded congested.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. No. Can I come in?”

“Of course, come in. What is it, honey?”

He sat on the bed and plucked at my blanket, and I could smell the beer and the sweat coming off him. I sat up so we could talk, and he threw his arms around me like a drowning man. He was crying and gasping into my neck, and then he stopped and just rested his head against my shoulder. I kept on patting his back, rubbing the long muscles under the satiny skin. My hands were cold against his warm skin.

Lion lifted his head and looked into my eyes, his own eyes like pools of coffee, shining in the moonlight. He put his hand up to my cheek, and then he kissed me and my brain stopped. I shut my eyes.

His kisses were sweet and slow; he pushed his tongue into my mouth just a little at a time, getting more confident every time. He began to rub my nipples through my nightgown, spreading the fingers on one big hand wide apart just as his father used to, and I pulled away, forcing my eyes open.

“No, Lion. You have to go back to your room now.” But I was asking him, I wasn’t telling him, and I knew he wouldn’t move.

“No.” And he put his soft plummy mouth on my breast, soaking the nightgown. “Please don’t send me away.” The right words.

I couldn’t send my little boy away, so I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him to me, out of the darkness.

It had been a long time since I was in bed with a young man. Lionel was forty-two when I met him, and before that I’d been living with a sax player eight years older than I was. I hadn’t made love to anyone this young since I was seventeen and too young myself to appreciate it.

His body was so smooth and supple, and the flesh clung to the bone; when he was above me, he looked like an athlete working out; below me, he looked like an angel spread out for the world’s adoration. His shoulders had clefts so deep I could lay a finger in each one, and each of his ribs stuck out just a little. He hadn’t been eating enough at school. I couldn’t move forward or backward, and so I shut my eyes again, so as not to see and not to have to think the same sad, tired thoughts.

He rose and fell between my hips and it reminded me of Buster’s birth: heaving and sliding and then an explosive push. Lion apologized the way men do when they come too soon, and I hugged him and felt almost like myself, comforting him. I couldn’t speak at all; I didn’t know if I’d ever have a voice again.

He was whispering, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And I put my hand over his mouth until he became quiet. He tried to cradle me, pulling my head to his shoulder. I couldn’t lie with him like that, so I wriggled away in the dark, my arms around my pillow. I heard him sigh, and then he laid his head on my back. He fell asleep in a minute.

I got up before either of them, made a few nice-neighbor phone calls, and got Buster a morning playdate, lunch included, and a ride to soccer camp. He was up, dressed, fed, and over to the Bergs’ before Lion opened his eyes.

Lion’s boss called and said he was so sorry for our loss but could Lionel junior please come to work this morning.

I put my hand on Lion’s shoulder to wake him, and I could see the shock and the pleasure in his eyes. I told him he was late for work and laid his clothes out on his bed. He kept opening his mouth to say something, but I gave him toast and coffee and threw him my keys.

“You’re late, Lion. We’ll talk when you get home.”

“I’m not sorry,” he said, and I could have smiled. Good, I thought, spend the day not being sorry, because sometime after that you’re gonna feel like shit. I was already sorrier than I’d ever been in my whole life, sorry enough for this life and the next. Lion looked at me and then at the keys in his hand.

“I guess I’ll go. Ma … Julia …”

I was suddenly, ridiculously angry at being called Julia. “Go, Lion.”

He was out the door. I started breathing again, trying to figure out how to save us both. Obviously, I couldn’t be trusted to take care of him; I’d have to send him away. I thought about sending Buster away, too, but I didn’t think I could. And maybe my insanity was limited to the Lion, maybe I could still act like a normal mother to Buster.

I called my friend Jeffrey in Falmouth and told him Lion needed a change of scene. He said Lion could start housepainting tomorrow and could stay with him since his kids were away. The whole time I was talking, I cradled the bottle of bourbon in my left arm, knowing that if I couldn’t get through the phone call, or the afternoon, or the rest of my life, I had some help. I think I was so good at helping Lionel quit drinking because I didn’t have the faintest idea why he, or anybody, drank. If I met him now, I’d be a better wife but not better for him. I packed Lion’s suitcase and put it under his bed.

When I was a lifeguard at camp, they taught us how to save panicky swimmers. The swimmers don’t realize that they have to let you save them, that their terror will drown you both, and so sometimes, they taught us, you have to knock the per son out to bring him in to shore.

I practiced my speech in the mirror and on the porch and while making the beds. I thought if I said it clearly and quietly he would understand, and I could deliver him to Jeffrey, ready to start his summer over again. I went to the grocery store and bought weird, disconnected items: marinated artichoke hearts for Lionel, who was dead; red caviar to make into dip for his son, whose life I had just ruined; peanut butter with the grape jelly already striped into it for Buster, as a special treat that he would probably have outgrown by the time I got home; a pack of Kools for me, who stopped smoking fifteen years ago. I also bought a wood-refinishing kit, a jar of car wax, a six-pack of Michelob Light, five TV dinners, some hamburger but no buns, and a box of Pop-Tarts. Clearly the cart of a woman at the end of her rope.

Lion came home at three, and I could see him trying to figure out how to tackle me. He sat down at the kitchen table and frowned when I didn’t say anything.

I sat down across from him, poured us each a glass of bourbon, and lit a cigarette, which startled him. All the props said “Important Moment.”

“Let me say what I have to say and then you can tell me whatever you want to. Lion, I love you very much and I have felt blessed to be your mother and I’ve probably ruined that for both of us. Just sit still. What happened was not your fault; you were upset, you didn’t know…. Nothing would have happened if I had been my regular self. But anyway …” This was going so badly I just wanted to finish my cigarette and take the boy to the train station, whether he understood or not. “I think you’d feel a lot better and clearer if you had some time away, so I talked to Jeffrey—”

“No. No, goddammit, I am not leaving and I wasn’t upset — it was what I wanted. You can’t send me away. I’m not a kid anymore. You can leave me, but you can’t make me leave.” He was charging around the kitchen, bumping into the chairs, blind.

I just sat there. All of a sudden, he was finding his voice, the one I had always tried to nurture, to find a place for between his father’s roar and his brother’s contented hum. I was hearing his debut as a man, and now I had to keep him down and raise him up at the same time.

“How can it be so easy for you to send me away? Don’t you love me at all?”

I jumped up, glad to have a reason to move. “Not love you? It’s because I love you, because I want you to have a happy, normal life. I owe it to you and I owe it to your father.”

He folded his arms. “You don’t owe Pop anything…. He had everything he wanted, he had everything.” The words rained down like little blades.

I ignored what he said. “It can’t be, honey. You can’t stay.”

“I could if you wanted me to.”

He was right. Who would know? I could take my two boys to the movies, away for weekends, play tennis with my step son. I would be the object of a little pity and some admiration. Who would know? Who would have such monstrous thoughts, except Ruth, and she would never allow them to surface. I saw us together and saw it unfolding, leaves of shame and pity and anger, neither of us getting what we wanted. I wanted to hug him, console him for his loss.

“No, honey.”

I reached across the table but he shrugged me off, grabbing my keys and heading out the door.

I sat for a long time, sipping, watching the sunlight move around the kitchen. When it was almost five, I took the keys from Lionel’s side of the dresser and drove his van to soccer camp. Buster felt like being quiet, so we just held hands and listened to the radio. I offered to take him to Burger King, hoping the automated monkeys and video games would be a good substitute for a fully present and competent mother. He was happy, and we killed an hour and a half there. Three hours to bedtime.

We watched some TV, sitting on the couch, his feet in my lap. Every few minutes, I’d look at the clock on the mantel and then promise myself I wouldn’t look until the next commercial. Every time I started to move, I’d get tears in my eyes, so I concentrated on sitting very still, waiting for time to pass. Finally, I got Buster through his nightly routine and into bed, kissing his cupcake face, fluffing his Dr. J pillow.

“Where’s Lion? He said he’d kiss me good night.”

“Honey, he’s out. He’ll come in and kiss you while you’re sleeping.”

“Where is he?”

I dug my nails into my palms; with Buster, this could go on for half an hour. “He’s out with some friends, Bus. I promise he’ll kiss you in your sleep.”

“Okay. I’m glad he’s home, Mama.”

How had I managed to do so much harm so fast? “I know. Go to sleep, Gabriel Tyner Sampson.”

“G’night, Mama. Say my full name again.”

“Gabriel Tyner Sampson, beautiful name for a beautiful boy. ’Night.”

And I thought about the morning we named him, holding him in the delivery room, his boneless brown body covered with white goop and clots of blood, and Lionel tearing off his green mask to kiss me and then to kiss the baby, rubbing his face all over Gabriel’s little body.

I got into my kimono and sat in the rocking chair, waiting for Lion. I watched the guests on the talk shows, none of whom seemed like people I’d want to know. After a while, I turned off the sound but kept the picture on for company. I watered my plants, then realized I had just done it yesterday and watched as the water cascaded out of the pots onto the wood floor, drops bouncing onto the wall, streaking the white paint. I thought about giving away the plants, or maybe moving somewhere where people didn’t keep plants. Around here, it’s like a law. The mopping up took me about eight minutes, and I tried to think of something else to do. I looked for a dish to break.

Stupid, inconsiderate boy. Around now, his father would have been pacing, threatening to beat him senseless when he walked in, and I would have been calming Lionel down, trying to get him to come to bed.

At about three, when I was thinking of calling the hospital, I heard my car coming up the street slowly. I looked out the kitchen window and saw him pull into the drive, minus the right front fender.

He came inside quietly, pale gray around his mouth and eyes. There was blood on his shirt, but he was walking okay. I grabbed him by the shoulders and he winced and I dug my hands into him in the dark of the hallway.

“What is wrong with you? I don’t have enough to contend with? Do you know it’s three o’clock in the morning? There were no phones where you were, or what? It was too inconvenient to call home, to tell me you weren’t lying dead somewhere? Am I talking to myself, goddammit?”

I was shaking him hard, wanting him to talk back so I could slap his face, and he was crying, turning his face away from me. I pulled him into the light of the kitchen and saw the purple bruise, the shiny puff of skin above his right eyebrow. There was a cut in his upper lip, making it lift and twist like a harelip.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I got into a little fight at the Navigator and then I had sort of an accident, nothing serious. I just hit a little tree and bumped my head.”

“You are an asshole.”

“I know, Ma, I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back for the car so your insurance won’t go up. I’m really sorry.”

I put my hands in my pockets and waited for my adrenaline to subside.

I steered him into the bathroom and sat him down on the toilet while I got some ice cubes and wrapped them in a dish towel; that year I was always making compresses for Buster’s skinned knees, busted lips, black eyes. Lion sat there holding the ice to his forehead. The lip was too far gone.

I wasn’t angry anymore and I said so. He smiled lopsidedly and leaned against me for a second. I moved away and told him to wash up.

“All right, I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Take your time.”

I sat on the couch, thinking about his going away and whether or not Jeffrey would be good company for him. Lion came out of the bathroom without his bloody shirt, the dish towel in his hand. He stood in the middle of the room, like he didn’t know where to sit, and then he eased down onto the couch, tossing the towel from hand to hand.

“Don’t send me away. I don’t want to go away from you and Grandma and Buster. I just can’t leave home this summer. Please, Ma, it won’t — what happened won’t happen again. Please let me stay home.” He kept looking at his hands, smoothing the towel over his knees and then balling it up.

How could I do that to him?

“All right, let’s not talk about it any more tonight.”

He put his head back on the couch and sighed, sliding over so his cheek was on my shoulder. I patted his good cheek and went to sit in the brown chair.

I started to say more, to explain to him how it was going to be, but then I thought I shouldn’t. I would tell him that we were looking at wreckage and he would not want to know.

I said good night and went to my bedroom. He was still on the couch in the morning.

We tried for a few weeks, but toward the end of the summer Lion got so obnoxious I could barely speak to him. Ruth kept an uncertain peace for the first two weeks and then blew up at him. “Where have your manners gone, young man? After all she did for you, this is the thanks she gets? And Julia, when did you get so mush-mouthed that you can’t tell him to behave himself?” Lion and I looked at our plates, and Ruth stared at us, puzzled and cross. I came home from work on a Friday and found a note on the kitchen table: Friends called with a housepainting job in Nantucket. Will call before I go to Paris. Will still do junior year abroad, if that’s okay. L. “If that’s okay” meant that he wanted me to foot the bill, and I did. I would have done more if I had known how.

It’s almost summer again. Buster and I do pretty well, and we have dinner every Sunday with Ruth, and more often than not, we drive her over to bingo on Thursday evenings and play a few games ourselves. I see my husband everywhere; in the deft hands of the man handing out the bingo cards, in the black-olive eyes of the boy sitting next to me on the bench, in the thick, curved back of the man moving my new piano. I am starting to play again and I’m teaching Buster.

Most nights, after I have gone to bed, I find myself in the living room or standing on the porch in the cold night air. I tell myself that I am not waiting, it’s just that I’m not yet awake.