an apology.
But when he appeared in the kitchen one day, he was carrying only a pair of shoes, as though he were curious what was in the fridge. Her mother had warned her he was coming—her parents had agreed it was best that Jude live with his dad for a while—but still it stung that Les had come to see her brother, not her. Jude, the adopted one, had always found a way to hijack the attention of his parents and the sympathy of strangers. No one seemed to remember that Les had abandoned her, too.
“How’s it going, Lester?” she asked, with the theatrical boredom she’d practiced.
Les, unruffled, said, “Asi, asi,” seesawing his hand. “How you doing, kid?”
Prudence put her hands out in front of her, as if doing push-ups against a wall, and pumped her arms twice.
“What’s that, sign language? What’s it mean?”
“Awesome.”
She let him plant a scratchy kiss on her forehead. Then he put on his shoes and said he was going to round up some dinner.
“He’s here,” Prudence told her mother, opening her bedroom door without knocking. Her mother, who already knew, who also had been listening all day for the sound of the van, nodded but didn’t look up from her book. “Why does Jude get to go to New York?”
“Do you want to go, too?”
“With Dad? No.”
Prudence stood, studying her mother, whose socked feet were propped up on a pillow. Her cigarette hung over the ashtray, smoldering. This was the bed her parents had slept in. This is where they’d made Prudence. Prudence, visited by nightmares, had climbed into this bed a thousand times, pressed between her parents’ warm bodies.
“Are you wearing my blue eye shadow?”
“No,” said her mother.
“He’s pretty bald,” Prudence pointed out.
At this, Harriet raised both eyebrows, but still her eyes hung on the page.
When Les returned from his errand, he brought with him a cardboard carton of milk shakes and a bag of Al’s French Frys that smelled strongly of cheeseburgers. He dragged the bean bag chair to the middle of Jude’s room and turned on the Nintendo. With the fingers of one hand he played the buttons of the control pad like a keyboard, the other hand retrieving fries from the bag.
“Make yourself at home,” Jude said, taking a seat beside him on the rug. He took the controller out of his father’s hand and started playing, sending Mario leaping across the screen.
“Do you know there’s a Kmart on Garden Boulevard? And all these gas stations. I barely recognize this town. It looks like Disney World.”
In the reflection of the TV, Jude could see the two of them, the shiny blocks of their distorted foreheads.
“So that’s how you do it,” Les said, his mouth full. “Very nice. How do you make him jump?”
“A,” Jude couldn’t help answering. “The red button.”
“And B?”
“Makes you go fast.”
Les nodded. “Want a cheeseburger?”
Jude said no, even though he did.
“I got one for your sister. Her favorite.”
“She doesn’t like them anymore,” Jude said. “She mostly eats salads and stuff.”
“What for? Is she a vegetarian?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s not having sex, is she?”
Jude fumbled with the controls, tripping over a turtle. “Definitely not,” he said.
“I need your help with this one,” Les said, sucking a sticky finger. “Do I try to talk to her, or do I give her some space?”
“Who? Prudence or Mom?”
“Prudence,” Les said, waving his hand.
Jude thought about it, zipping through the clouds, through strings of musical coins. “You could ask her to come with us to New York,” he said. He hadn’t agreed to anything himself. He was considering his options. If he lived with his father, he would have to avoid Teddy’s brother. At the funeral, Jude had been too chickenshit to approach Johnny. He had only stared at the back of his bald head, a numb sort of amazement strangling his guilt (how much the back of his head looked like Teddy’s!).
But New York was a big city. If he stayed with his mother, Hippie and Tory would surely find him. Stealing pot wasn’t a crime that could be reported to the police, but he did not want to find out what other punishments were in store. He did not want to end up in the hospital again. Plus, who was Jude going to get his pot from now? His father had pot. His father wanted Jude to live with him. So what if his mother had put him up to it? If he stayed here, his body would shrink and atrophy, like