spying on me?”
“Spying on you. No. I was maybe checking on you. I heard someone moving around. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You mean you wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting high. Jesus, Jude!” She smacked his arm again. “You have the ears of a fucking Indian!”
Eliza was aware that this was not the proper designation. Teddy was Indian. Gandhi, not Geronimo. Her child would be a “fucking Indian.” She pictured her daughter’s face. Her black, almond-shaped eyes, her endless eyelashes. Powdery, cardamom-colored skin. (How Eliza missed the smell of Neena’s cooking!) Eliza knew her daughter would be beautiful, and perfectly formed; she would have her ears pierced early, the way the babies in Spanish Harlem did. This was a familiar vision. It kept Eliza company when she lay awake at night; it had limitless backdrops and Easter-hued outfits; it was not unlike the happy fantasies of any expectant mother.
But it scared her, too. It scared her that her child would look like a stranger. She slid down the wall and lowered the bulk of her ass to the ground.
“Eliza? You okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m just really tired.”
“You want something? Something to drink?”
“Yeah, a scotch.”
Jude sat down beside her. He placed the gun on the sidewalk between them and leaned against the wall. It was a balmy night, breezy enough to scatter the skirt of Eliza’s nightgown. Jude’s blue paisley boxers made her think of sperm.
“You know what fetal alcohol syndrome is?” he asked her.
“Don’t lecture me, Jude. I was kidding.”
“I had it. I mean, I have it, I guess.” He was staring into the parking lot.
“Jesus, Jude.”
“I mean, I might have it.”
Eliza had given some thought to what happened to babies when their mothers did drugs, but she hadn’t considered that one day the babies would grow up to be teenagers.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I guess I’m supposed to go to the doctor to find out for sure.”
“Maybe you don’t have it, then.”
“Come on. Look at my face.”
“What?”
Jude looked at her. He had these swimming-pool-blue eyes, even bluer than Johnny’s, with these sleepy, heavy lids. He had these outrageous freckles and a little boy’s ski-jump nose and the reddest hair she’d ever seen, just a trace of it, such a tragedy that he’d cut off all that perfectly wild red hair.
“It’s a nice face,” she said.
Nice. It was so much more than nice, but she couldn’t think of a better word. You didn’t call a boy beautiful, not a boy who was your husband’s best friend, not a boy who didn’t like girls and who went around picking fights and who you really did think was beautiful.
“Does it bother you,” she asked him, “that you don’t look like your parents?”
Jude folded his hands in his lap, then cupped his elbows with them, then dropped them to his sides. His thighs were long and pale and unfreckled, and the hair on them was a different red, ginger.
“Have you seen how bald my dad is?”
“Well, that they don’t look like you, then.”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “It would be easier if they had my dashing good looks.”
The hair on her own legs, several days unshaved—she found it impossible to shave in the shower at seven months pregnant, not to mention while sharing a bathroom with six boys—was bristly and black. She pulled her nightgown over them as far as it would reach.
“Seriously, though. Did you ever think about looking for them? Your birth parents?”
Jude shook his head quickly. “Not really.”
“Really?”
“If they wanted to find me, they could.”
“Maybe they think you don’t want to be found.”
“Well, maybe I don’t.” He thought for a while. “I guess I don’t have high hopes for them wanting to be part of my life, seeing as the ones who adopted me don’t.”
“Oh, come on. Harriet and Les love you. They’re just as screwed up as any other parents.”
Jude was staring out at the parking lot again. He said, “You know who I’d like to find instead?”
“Who?”
“Teddy’s parents. Teddy’s mom and dad. I don’t even know if she knows he’s dead. And Teddy didn’t even know if his dad was dead. He never even met him.”
“What would you do if you found them?”
Jude rubbed his head. “I don’t know. I guess I’d just decide if they were good people or not. So I’d know.”
“Well, maybe the parents who gave you up were good people, but they had to give you up anyway.”
“Eliza.” Jude swung his gaze over to her. “You’re not giving up that baby.”
“I know,” she