Ten Thousand Saints (26 page)

“No, man, I haven’t done that shit in weeks. Delph doesn’t sell no more.”

“Really?”

“He’s a working man now. More money, more hours, more responsibilities, blah blah.”

Johnny now offered Jude a look. Jude knew he was wondering the same thing he was—whether, during the time Jude had spent in New York, despite Kram’s late-night beer run, he and Delph had taken their own steps, however blind, toward sobriety. Whether they might not be so hard to recruit to their team.

“We got to let Delph know you’re in town. What are you lesbians doing back here, anyway?”

A bell jingled, and Eliza entered the store. Pregnant, barefoot, in her sari. Her cheek was impressed with the handle of the suitcase she’d slept against. “Hey,” she said, “do you think they have any Yoo-hoo?”

H
arriet had been dreaming of her ex-husband, the two of them trying to catch fish in nets on a boat very much like Jerry and Ingrid Donahoe’s—had she ever been on another boat in her life, in forty-three years of living on a lake?—when the wheels of his ancient van turned over the gravel behind her house. It took her a moment to remember that he was not the one driving. She leapt out of bed, pulled on her robe, and ran a toothbrush across her teeth before stalking downstairs, where her son was filling a bowl at the sink. He’d packed some muscle on his frame, and she watched from the bottom step of the spiral staircase as he placed the water on the floor and a tiger-striped cat, purring at his ankles, drank gratefully from the bowl. Through the kitchen door, two more teenagers appeared, each of them holding another cat, and while the scene should have terrified her—six new bodies in the house, seven if you counted the baby—the way the kids carried themselves, tiptoeing, whispering, stroking the animals’ ears, reassured her.

She did not wish to be in the middle of Les’s girlfriend’s business—or ex-girlfriend, as the case may have been—but she found herself without much choice. If she’d refused Eliza and Johnny, she’d be refusing Jude, too, and the fact was she’d missed him. So she wouldn’t think about the pregnant girl, about what would happen to her when she was no longer pregnant. It was not her business. She was merely providing temporary shelter to two kids who needed help. Every summer her favorite aunt and uncle had taken in foreign exchange students, and the homeless at Thanksgiving, and in more than one winter storm along route 7, she and Les had let hitchhikers climb into the back of their van. More than once, they’d been the hitchhikers.

She was thinking of Les as she dropped off the final step of the stairs, recalling the February morning she’d woken up to find him on her couch. If the children were to find out! Seven years had passed since she’d seen her ex, since she’d been with any man at all. Could she be blamed? Did she say yes to him when he called because she’d said yes to him in her bed? The only thing she could do that morning was keep busy, keep him quiet, make scrambled eggs. She’d do the same thing now—eggs and toast and bacon, a pot of strong coffee for her guests, at four-thirty in the morning.

But none of them drank coffee, and the boys didn’t eat bacon and eggs. Johnny made buckwheat pancakes instead, and Eliza praised the Vermont maple syrup. They told her about the trip, and the wedding, and the way Les had come through for them, and Jude showed off the gruesome scar on his arm, which had healed to a raisiny, hairless glaze. After breakfast, while Jude napped, Johnny washed the dirty clothes they’d brought. “No more quarters! I could do laundry all day.” He had grown up quite a bit since Harriet had last seen him skulking down Ash Street, a cigarette tucked over his ear. She was not sure Jude knew how to operate a washing machine. That was the consequence of her indulgence, the apologetic spoiling of an adopted child. Prudence cleaned without being asked, but now Harriet wondered if she had ruined any hope of self-reliance for Jude, if she had poisoned him against helping himself. Even Eliza, who had grown up with silver spoons, who apparently knew nothing about birth control, who had
Les
for a role model, sprang up from the table to help with the dishes.

It was not until Harriet made her way back upstairs to shower and change that it occurred to her it might be nice to have a full house. Prudence had become secretive, eating her meals in her room, stretching the phone cord as far as it would reach up the stairs. One night Harriet had caught her sneaking down the fire escape. It was as though, in deference to her absent brother, Pru were impersonating him.

She passed her room on the second floor, climbed the next flight of stairs to the third, and, after tapping lightly on her son’s bedroom door, eased it open. He was lying on his side with his bare back to her, and she stood there for several moments watching him sleep. After Teddy’s death, it was a sight that used to send her stomach up into her throat, but it didn’t worry her now. She understood that she had Johnny to thank for that.

So he didn’t know how to do laundry. She’d do his laundry a million times.

T
he householders settled in. They learned how to use the remote control, to jiggle the handle of the second-floor toilet. Harriet pored over an old vegetarian cookbook, her glasses dusted with flour. “Can you eat egg whites, Johnny? What about fish?” And one rainy day, Johnny and Harriet spent the whole afternoon in the basement, Johnny admiring her old drawings, Harriet admiring his.

“So your new friends are a hit,” Prudence observed one morning. “Mom practically Frenched them both at dinner last night.” Waking up to an otherwise empty house, Jude had wandered into his sister’s bedroom, where she was getting ready for school. Harriet was in the greenhouse, and Prudence didn’t know where Johnny and Eliza were.

He stood in the doorway, examining the fixtures of the room. The trundle bed where Eliza had slept the last several nights was closed, a pillow and folded blanket piled neatly on the floor. On the door, Kirk Cameron had been replaced by a calendar of male swimsuit models. The word
Frenched
was licking uncomfortably at Jude’s ear, and he wondered suddenly about the question his father had asked about Prudence, whether she was having sex. He studied her smoky eyes, the medley of bracelets—safety pins, braided strings, glittery bangles. Was this the kind of girl who had sex? Who Frenched and had sex?

“You got your braces off,” he said.

Prudence grinned, revealing two rows of aligned teeth. “Tada!” she said, and in this single word, Jude swore he smelled American Spirits.

“Have you been smoking?” He came close and sniffed her. “Do you smoke now?”

With the heel of one of her boots, she shoved him away.

“What are you smoking for? It’s like seven in the morning.”

“Give me a break. You used to smoke more than cigarettes.”

“You’re not smoking pot, are you?”

“What is this? Because you’re straight edge now, you get to harass me?”

“That’s what straight edge is all about.”

Prudence shot him a look of distrust. “What did you do with my brother? The guy who used to sniff Sharpies while we watched cartoons? That was like two weeks ago.”

“Well, you were Citizen of the Week like two weeks ago. What happened to you?”

She went to her dresser and spritzed on some perfume. “I liked you better before.”

“You like Johnny, and he’s straight edge.”

Prudence shrugged. “Johnny’s cute.” In the dresser mirror, she rolled up each sleeve of her T-shirt. “So I don’t get it. They’re married, but they sleep in separate beds?”

“Prudence.”

“It’s sort of weird, isn’t it?”

Jude sat down on the bed, picked up the teddy bear, and put it down.

“I guess it would be weird, too,” Prudence considered, “if they slept in the same bed.”

“Where would they sleep, anyway?”

“Mom has that big mattress in her studio. She doesn’t give a shit. They’re married. But Eliza said Johnny said Mom wouldn’t let them.”

“Eliza said that?”

“I’m just saying.
I
don’t care.”

“You don’t have any idea where they are?” He was staring blankly at the calendar, at Mr. May, and now his eyes went to the thirteenth. “What’s today, Friday?”

“Yeah, Friday the thirteenth. Boo!”

Jude had known the day had been coming, but he had managed until now to push it from his mind. He wanted to smoke something, a cigarette, a joint.

“Look,” Prudence said, “she can sleep in here, whatever.”

“Thank you, okay?”

“But what is it, like a marriage of convenience?”

“Prudence! Where did you get that?”

“Well, they don’t seem . . .”

“What?” Jude asked. He wanted to know. He wasn’t sure what sort of marriage it was. They hadn’t kissed at the wedding, and their first night home, when Eliza realized she’d left her toothbrush at the hotel in New York, Johnny had gone out and bought her a new one. At eleven o’clock at night, instead of just letting her use his.

“Like, in
love
. Like a husband and wife.” Prudence zipped up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “Like Mom and Dad used to be.”

T
he first night Eliza stayed at the St. Marks Hotel, her mother had shown up at Les’s apartment and bullied him through the intercom until the super chased her away. Les assured her that Eliza was safe, and Eliza hadn’t heard from her since. She wondered if her mother thought she was staying at Les’s, or somewhere else in New York, if she were checking hotels by now, or calling the people she thought were still Eliza’s friends. Sometimes Eliza assumed she’d get the police involved, and sometimes she thought it was the last thing she’d do. She knew Di was as ashamed of Eliza’s running away as she was of her pregnancy—she simply wouldn’t want anyone to know. Her purpose had been served, anyway—Eliza was out of sight in a place where she couldn’t embarrass her mother. No doubt she told people Eliza was still away at school.

That first night in the hotel, Johnny had stripped to his boxers, folded his clothes neatly on the chair, stretched out on the bed beside her, and said good night. She was wearing her gray toile pajamas and she’d just washed her hair. He lay there, eyes closed, arms folded across his waist. He’d turned off his bedside lamp, but by the light of hers she admired the curve of the Krishna beads across his throat, each bead as tiny as a baby tooth, and the artwork across his belly and chest, winding around his arms. She’d never seen so much skin so darkly tattooed, the ink so heavy it looked three-dimensional, and she couldn’t help it: she placed her fingertips on the green wing of his shoulder.

He flinched, eyes bolting open. He sat up, then lay back down. She apologized, her face was burning. “We’re going to be married in a few days,” she reminded him. “Isn’t this what you meant? When you said we were going to be a couple?”

Johnny tried out a nervous laugh. “Of course,” he said, sweeping his knuckles over her cheek. But could they wait? It was old-fashioned, but wasn’t that the best way? Les had asked him to protect her here. It was just a few more days.

She thought it was sweet, how respectful he was. He reminded her of Teddy. He ended up sleeping on the floor, and they joked about it, the pregnant bride-to-be saving herself for marriage.

Then, when they’d arrived at Jude’s house, Johnny told Eliza that Harriet wanted them to sleep in separate beds. Eliza would sleep in Prudence’s room, and Johnny would bunk with Jude. “Sorry,” Johnny had whispered the morning after their first night there, handing her a dish to dry. “I didn’t know it would be this way.” It was just temporary, he said, until they found a place of their own. The arrangement was acceptable enough. Prudence mostly stayed out of Eliza’s way, offered her the first shower, cleared her a corner of the closet.

A few mornings in, while Prudence was in the shower, Johnny woke Eliza and asked her to take a walk with him. It was early, not even seven, but every boy who’d ever asked her to take a walk only meant one thing. She put on lipstick, sprayed a shot of Prudence’s perfume down the collar of her sweater. The morning was chilly, the glittering lake appearing now and then between blocks. The root-split sidewalks were stamped with children’s handprints, the telephone poles with staples from long-gone flyers. A row of close-set bungalows lined each side of the street, in white and putty and gray, with cement porches and torn screens, AC units hanging out of the windows. The one Johnny stopped in front of was on the side that backed up to the woods. It was slate blue, set up on cinder blocks, a child’s red wagon capsized in the long grass. A
FOR SALE
sign stood beside it. For a moment, Eliza thought he was going to knock on the door, or pull out a key. Maybe it was an old friend’s place that would be empty for a few hours. “Landlord must have put it up for sale,” Johnny said.

He’d been here to gather Teddy’s things after the funeral. He just wanted her to see it, too. They sat on the bus stop bench across the street and a few doors down, watching the tall pines behind the house bend and sway.

“It’s his birthday,” Johnny said.

“Friday the thirteenth?”

“He’d be sixteen.”

They sat in silence for a moment longer. It didn’t feel like a moment they were sharing. The breeze spun the rusty wheels of the wagon in the yard. Maybe it was a neighbor’s. She found herself wondering if it belonged to a boy or a girl. What was left of her buoyant mood was carried away in the wind, the hope of kissing her husband on a bench in the morning sun. She could only picture Teddy coming in and out of the door across the street. She supposed that’s what Johnny had intended.