Ten Thousand Saints Page 0,135
as he was.
“You know, your mom used to get pretty upset about abortion.” Jude wondered if he was thinking about Di again, or about Ingrid Donahoe, the woman who had aborted his child to save her marriage. “It wasn’t fashionable, in the Roe v. Wade days, for a modern gal like your mom to oppose abortion. But, you know, she wanted a baby more than anything.” He shrugged, as though he was still not sure this was a wise idea. “Anyway,” he said, turning to go inside, “Teddy’s kid is going to make some mother very happy.”
His father pressed his hand lightly to Jude’s spine, where the hospital gown opened to his bare back. Then, the glass doors sliding open before them, he followed his son to the entrance.
They stayed at the apartment on St. Mark’s, Davis in the loft, Jude and Les sharing the futon. Davis made breakfast for dinner—grits and Kentucky scramble and buttermilk biscuits. Jude had toast. He called his mother. He’d be coming home soon. Late into the night, Les told stories of his travels, cannabis by cannabis—Mauwie Wauwie, Swiss Miss, Holland’s Hope.
Uptown, Eliza and her mother watched Santa Barbara. Eliza napped on the divan. For dinner Neena made them saag paneer and fresh chapati bread, Eliza’s favorite, and they ate on the balcony, watching the joggers in Riverside Park, their sweatbands glowing like distant planets in the settling dark. The boys were gone. On the dining room table, under a ring of spare keys, Kram and Delph had left a note—Thank you for your hospitality—and eight dollar bills to cover the bottle of wine they’d made use of, a 1981 port. The only things left were Jude’s.
The following morning, Di paid a visit to her lawyer, a colleague of her late husband’s, to discuss a lawsuit against the City of New York and an annulment, on the grounds of nonconsummation, of her daughter’s marriage to John McNicholas. Neena went to the grocery to restock the kitchen. Eliza stayed home. She painted her toenails. She called Nadia and talked to Nadia’s father. Nadia was at her mom’s place in the Catskills. She had a new horse: Rome. Did Eliza want the number?
No, thank you, she didn’t.
She was playing one-handed scales on the piano, a Yoo-hoo in her other hand, when there was a knock at the door. Jude stood on the other side of it, wearing one of Les’s Hawaiian shirts. His eye socket had faded from a deep purple to a jaundiced brown. His lip was cut, too.
“I still have my key, but I didn’t want to bust in. I just want to pick up my stuff.”
She held the door open, and he stepped inside. Hitching up his shorts—those were Les’s, too—he looked around the apartment as though he hadn’t been there before.
“What were you playing? It sounded pretty good.”
“Nothing. Just scales.”
Jude looked across the room for a place to sit, then shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned his shoulder against the wall.
“Anyone home?”
Eliza shook her head.
“How you feeling? I like your head wrap thing.”
“Thank you. Neena gave it to me.” She reached up and touched the top of her head, stroking the silk scarf. “They gave me a list of things I could take for pain, but I don’t want to take anything.” She put her hands in her lap. “What about you?”
Jude shrugged dismissively. “You got it worse than I did. I wish it was my head that got split open.”
Eliza took a sip of her Yoo-hoo. Then she slipped off her scarf. “You can make it up to me.” She found the end of the bandage and unwound it, undressing her head, and released the ribbon of white gauze. Across her left temple, nine stitches held together a naked patch of scalp. “Do you have your clippers?”
He shaved her head in the living room, Eliza sitting on the piano bench, Neena’s purple scarf now wrapped around her shoulders. He circled her body, the clippers humming, her dark hair feathering to the floor. She didn’t open her eyes until the sound stopped. In her mother’s bathroom, her back turned to the sink, she angled Di’s hand mirror in front of her face.
“Now you’re really punk rock.”
“We’re twins,” Eliza said, putting down the mirror on the sink. She swept the scarf from her shoulders and dropped it over his head.
“Do I look punk rock?”
Eliza said, “You look like Little Red Riding Hood.”
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said, taking off the