Read Online Where the God of Love Hangs Out: Fiction by Amy Bloom - Free Book Online Page A

get her husband to call his mother every Sunday night but when he didn’t (and Clare could just hear him, her sweet boy, passive as granite: “She’s okay, Lauren. What do you want me to do about it?”), Lauren, who was properly brought up, made the call.
    “We’d love for you to visit us, Clare.”
    I bet, Clare thought. “Oh, not until the semester ends, I can’t. But you all could come out here. Anytime.”
    “It really wouldn’t be suitable.”
    Clare said nothing.
    “I mean, it just wouldn’t,” Lauren said, polite and stubborn.
    Clare felt sorry for her. Clare wouldn’t want herself for a mother-in-law, under the best of circumstances.
    “I’d love to have you visit,” Clare said. This wasn’t exactly true but she would certainly rather have them in her house than be someplace that had no William in it. “The boys’ room is all set, with the bunk beds and your room, of course, for you and Adam. There’s plenty of room and I hear Cirque du Soleil will be here in a few weeks.” Clare and Margaret will take Nelson, before he’s too old to be seen in public with two old ladies.
    Lauren’s voice dropped. Clare knew she was walking from the living room, where she was watching TV and folding laundry, into a part of the house where Adam couldn’t hear her.
    “It doesn’t matter how much room there is. Your house is like a mausoleum. How am I supposed to explain that to the boys, Clare? Am I supposed to say Grandma loved Grandpa William so much she keeps every single thing he ever owned or read or ate all around her?”
    “I don’t mind if that’s what you want to tell them.”
    In fact, I’ll tell them myself, Little Miss Let’s-Call-a-Spade-a-Gardening-Implement, Clare thought, and she could hear William saying, “Darling, you are as clear and bright as vinegar but not everyone wants their pipes cleaned.”
    “I don’t want to tell them that. I want—really, we all want—for you just to begin to, oh, you know, just to get on with your life a little bit.”
    Clare said, and she thought she never sounded more like Isabel, master of the even, elegant tone, “I completely understand, Lauren, and it is very good of you to call.”
    Lauren put the boys on and they said exactly what they should: Hi, Grandma, thanks for the Legos. (Clare put Post-its next to the kitchen calendar, and at the beginning of every month, she sent an educational toy to each grandchild, so no one could accuse her of neglecting them.) Lauren walked back into the living room and forced Adam to take the phone. Clare said to him, before he could speak, “I’m all right, Adam. Not to worry,” and he said, “I know, Mom,” and Clare asked about his work and Lauren’s classes and she asked about Jason’s karate and the baby’s teeth, and when she could do nothing more, she said, “Oh, I’ll let you go now, honey,” and she sat on the floor, with the phone still in her hand.
    One Sunday, Danny called and said, “Have you heard about Dad?” And Clare’s heart clutched, just as people describe, and when she didn’t say anything, Danny cleared his throat and said, “I thought you might have heard. Dad’s getting married.” Clare was so relieved she was practically giddy. “Oh, wonderful,” she said. “That nice, tall woman who golfs?” Danny laughed. Almost everything you could say about his future stepmother pointed directly to the ways she was not his mother—particularly nice, tall, and golfs. Clare got off the phone and sent Charles and his bride—she didn’t remember her name, so she sent it to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wexler, which had a nice old-fashioned ring to it—a big pretty Tiffany vase of the kind she’d wanted when she married Charles.
    The only calls Clare made were to Isabel. She called in the early evening, before Isabel turned in. (There was nothing she didn’t know about Isabel’s habits. They’d shared a beach house three summers in a row and she’d slept in their guest room in Boston