Ten Thousand Saints (23 page)

“It’s been a long time.”

Johnny wondered if he could bring himself to do it. It couldn’t be so different. A body was a body. “What was it like?” He’d tattooed a few girls before, and had felt a kind of awe at the smoothness of their skin under his hands.

“Where’s this comin’ from?”

“Just curious.”

“You thinkin’ about that girl?”

Johnny didn’t say anything. The needle throbbed in his hand.

“Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about knockin’ her up.” Rooster laughed, bumping the needle.

“Don’t laugh, man!” Johnny let up on the pedal and withdrew the needle. “You fucked up the eyeball!” He wiped at it with his cloth. The needle had scratched the dragon’s cornea, tracing a red tail through it. “It looks like he’s crying blood!”

“Can you fix it?”

“Fucking A.”

“Fuckin’ right.”

Johnny snapped off his gloves. Rooster sat up. His chest was dark with the same stubborn, wiry hairs, and imprinted with the texture of the tousled sheets. He wasn’t laughing anymore. For months, before Johnny had gotten his own apartment, this was the bed he’d slept in. He’d never quite been able to bring himself to leave it.

“Why don’t you sleep in my bed?” Rooster had asked him that first night he’d rescued him from Tompkins, almost two years ago.

“No, man,” Johnny had said. “It’s your bed. You take it.”

Rooster had looked at him, placing the big, calloused palm of his hand on Johnny’s neck, and said, “That’s not what I meant.”

Rooster did the same thing now, stroking Johnny’s Adam’s apple with his thumb. He was gentle, always gentle, but Johnny felt his breath stop, choked with indecision.

“You want to know what it feels like? Bein’ with a girl?” Rooster dropped his hand. “It feels like bein’ a fuckin’ coward.”

Ten

I
n the kitchen, Neena was butterflying a leg of lamb, an indelicate procedure that recalled neither lamb nor butterfly, but a bloody approximation of log splitting, diapering, and liposuction. She had learned the method from her grandmother, a billy goat of a woman four and a half feet tall, in the kitchen of the hotel where she worked in Chandigarh. Until she came to America, it was the biggest kitchen Neena had ever seen. This kitchen, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, thirteen stories in the air (it had taken some time to explain to her family back home why the address was the fourteenth floor), had a six-burner gas range, a refrigerator that dispensed ice crushed or cubed, and a wine rack so full that taking a bottle home now and then was like taking a pin from a pin- cushion. The boyfriend (he was not a boy, but he was dressed like one, in sandals and cutoff jeans and an untucked Hawaiian shirt) was opening the second bottle of the evening. He refilled his glass and then Neena’s, spilling a puddle of wine on the counter. “Looking good, girl,” he said with a whistle, at either Neena or the lamb, and, taking the bottle, drunkenly exited the room.

Stepping into the air-conditioned parlor, away from the aromatic, ovened kitchen, Les saw that the guests had arrived and were arranging themselves on various pieces of furniture. Eliza sat on the ottoman beside a pyramid of gifts, Johnny and Jude in the pair of wingback chairs. “Wow,” said Johnny, who was wearing, of all things, a linen sport coat, “your home is really beautiful, Ms. Urbanski.” He took in the claw-foot coffee table, the baby grand posed like an open-jawed shark. He was eyeing the painting hanging over the piano, the backside of a reclining male nude.

“That’s Pierre,” Les explained.

“Thank you, Johnny.” Di draped herself over the divan. She was wearing jeans and ballet slippers and an indigo-colored leotard, which swept low on her very fine back, and she was balancing a wineglass in her many-ringed fingers. This left Les standing at the margin of the room, but he was glad to keep his distance. Di hadn’t looked at him since earlier that afternoon, when she’d sent him out to pick up her order at the bakery.

He was content being her errand boy: that was how he atoned, how he returned to her good graces. He had done his best this afternoon, and now the living room was festooned with the pink wishes of the Upper East Side’s finest merchants—bouquets of balloons; crimped streamers; sixteen frosted cupcakes from Payard, plated in wedding cake tiers and bedecked with silver bullets.
It looks like a baby shower,
Di had remarked to Eliza.
Doesn’t it?

Eliza was shaking one of the gift boxes now. For her birthday dinner, she had belatedly taken Les’s advice and chosen a dress, a strapless, coral-colored dress with a ruffled skirt and pumps to match. Full, but not full enough. She looked as though she’d swallowed one of those big, curvaceous autumn squashes. “Gucci,” she guessed.

“Nope. Go ahead and open it,” said Di. Eliza did, not taking her time. Inside was a silver watch, slender as a bracelet.

“Ooh, Tiffany’s!”

Eliza was a thrift store hound; she was not one to exclaim over costly gifts. Di wasn’t really one to give them, either. They were putting on a sick sort of show, bending over backward to please each other. Eliza leaned over and placed her wrist on Johnny’s knee, and Johnny fastened the watch for her. Then she trotted over to kiss her mother’s cheek. It was unbearable, watching a person who was in the dark, especially when it was you who had put her there.

“Going to check on that lamb,” Les said, mostly to himself, and returned to the kitchen.

Eliza balled up the wrapping paper, tossed it at Jude, and tied the ribbon around Johnny’s thigh. “Thanks,” he said.

“It’s a garter,” she explained.

“Would you boys care for wine?” Di asked, picking up the open bottle that Les had left on the table.

Jude and Johnny declined. “They’re
straight edge,
” said Eliza in a mock whisper.

“Of course. I forgot. Eliza?” She lifted the bottle. Eliza shook her head, crossed her legs, and stared at her shoes.

“I’m feeling kind of yucky,” she said and patted her belly heartily. At this, Jude could not help but direct a desperate glance at Johnny. What was that about? And what was with the getup? She was nearly five months pregnant.

Di stood up, walked over to her daughter, and held the back of her hand to her forehead. “You don’t have a fever, darling.”

“Something smells good,” Jude said loudly.

“It really does,” Johnny agreed.

“Neena’s doing a lamb,” Di said.

“Mother, you know they’re vegetarian. They don’t eat lamb.”

“Of course.
Vegan,
isn’t it?”

“
Vee
-gan,” said Jude helpfully. “
Vay
-gans are from the planet Vega.”

Di returned to the divan, turned sideways so she could stare into the picture window behind her. The sun was sinking over New Jersey. “Listen to you three, with your secret codes.” She sipped her wine. “You’re all very busy together, aren’t you?”

“We’ve been going to the temple a lot,” said Jude.

“When I was sixteen, I was dancing seven days a week. I didn’t have time to run around the city with a couple of boys.”

“Johnny’s eighteen,” Eliza pointed out.

“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows, impressed. “An adult. What do you do, Johnny?”

“I’m a musician.”

“And a tattoo artist,” Eliza added. Jude looked at her with concern, but she waved her hand. “What’s she going to do—call the police? She’s practically married to a drug dealer.”

“We are
not
married, practically or even remotely,” said Di. “Do you make a decent living with tattoos, Johnny?”

“Getting there,” Johnny said. He was sitting comfortably, legs crossed, nibbling macadamia nuts from a glass bowl he cupped in his hand. “I save money by working out of my apartment.”

“And where is this apartment?”

“Mother, what does it matter?”

“What about college? You don’t live with anyone? Your family?”

“
Mother,
don’t be rude!”

“I don’t have any family, ma’am.” Every pair of eyes in the room dropped to the floor. Johnny shifted his to the painting above the piano. The man’s back was as smooth and as rippled as a conch.

Di sipped her wine thoughtfully. “I’m awfully sorry about that.”

“I bet this one’s Burberry,” said Eliza, ripping the paper from one of the larger gifts. This time she was right. Inside was a checked wool scarf, feathered at the ends and wide as a shawl. “Oh, I love it!” She whipped it extravagantly around her neck and crossed the room again to Di. This time, she sat down square on her mother’s lap, startling the wine from her glass. “I love it, I love it, I love it!” she said, kissing her mother’s cheek each time. Di went with it, kissing her back. They cuddled; they cooed. Eliza wrapped them both in the scarf. Di buried a hand in Eliza’s side, tickling her. Eliza shrieked, leaning back luxuriously, her shoe balanced precariously on her foot.

At this point, Les returned from the kitchen, balancing three glasses of soda water. In the pocket of his shorts were the two letters, now freckled with red wine: the bill from Mount Sinai Hospital for the balance of services rendered (he’d thought he’d paid the whole thing), and the notice of expulsion from Eliza’s school (
We regret to inform you . . . unanswered phone calls . . . take truancy very seriously . . . out-of-town permissions . . . disregard for disciplinary probation . . .)
. Both had arrived in Di’s mailbox that afternoon, and by the time Les arrived to help with the party, Di had burned through half a pack of cigarettes. For once he’d managed to keep a secret, but after Di confronted him with those letters, he broke down, spilled all the details—the ER, the baby, the father.

“Jeezum Crow,” he said now, clanging the glasses down on the table. “Just tell her.”

Di stopped tickling. Eliza stopped giggling. No one seemed sure which one he was talking to. Les withdrew a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, then tossed the pack and lighter on the table. Jude sat frozen. Johnny worked a macadamia nut in his cheek.

“You give me hell about keeping it from you, but now you’re just torturing the girl! And
she’s
so desperate to tell you, to get an ounce of support from you, she’s got it written on her dress! I didn’t tell her, Eliza, but she found out. And by the way, you’re kicked out of school.”

“I know,” Eliza mumbled, sliding off her mother’s lap.

“You girls are two of a kind.” He looked at Di. “Why do you think she doesn’t tell you anything? Because you control the shit out of any situation you get your hands on! And why do you think she does that, Eliza? Because you’re so goddamn out of control!
Three
schools you’ve been kicked out of? It’s a good thing your mother’s sending you to one of those Florence Crittenton homes, because at this point no other school would take you.”

Les stopped for a breath. His hands shook as he held the cigarette to his lips. He had never felt entirely at home here, in this apartment bought with Wall Street money. Les was everything Daniel Urbanski was not. He was all the long-haired men Di had given up for marriage. Her downtown man. Mother Nature’s Son. Her joker, her smoker, her midnight toker. “Blessed are the pot sellers, illusion dwellers!” So many nights they’d spent adrift on her waterbed, smoking joints with the windows open, Simon and Garfunkel anointing their unlikely union. But it seemed that the illusion had been his.

“Florence who?” Eliza asked.

“
I’m
sorry, Lester,” said Di coolly, leaning over to snatch up the cigarettes. “I didn’t know you were so concerned about education.
I’m
the irresponsible parent.
I
didn’t notice that my fifteen-year-old daughter is pregnant because she was
enrolled in school
. I suppose I could have kept better tabs on her if I let her drop out and smoke
reefer
all day. Maybe I could build a special room for her to have sex in, with a heart-shaped bed and a big mirror on the ceiling.” She lit a cigarette and drew on it forcefully.

“Mom, you don’t smoke anymore.” Eliza crossed her arms over her stomach, gripping her elbows.

“I don’t smoke pot anymore,” pointed out Jude.

“She’s not fifteen anymore,” pointed out Johnny.

“I’m sorry—
sixteen
.” Di spoke slowly, without anger, clipping each word. “Fully prepared to raise a child.”

“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here! I’ve got resources. I’ve got money, a lot more money than a lot of mothers have. When I turn eighteen, I’ll have enough money—”

“Enough money for what, Eliza? What will you do until then? I’ve already got a room set up for you at a facility upstate. I called this afternoon.”

“I’m not going to any fucking facility!”

“They take your baby,” Jude said, pitching forward. “That’s what a ‘facility’ is.”