Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [123]
“Well,” said Johnny, “we’d like to go back to New York.”
Ravi returned to his seat. “So far away?”
“We were staying with a friend in Vermont for a while, but we’ve been forced to relocate again. My wife’s mother—she’s not too hot on the idea.”
“Hot,” Ravi said.
“She wants us to give the baby up. She thinks I’m the father.” Johnny stabbed a tomato, then, reconsidering, withdrew his fork. “Everyone does, actually. We thought she’d be more likely to support our decision if she saw that we were serious about each other, that we wanted to be good parents.”
Ravi didn’t understand. “But why not tell her it is Edward’s? Teddy’s? It is a wonderful thing.”
“She’s going to find out soon enough. But first, we want to make sure we’re . . . protected.”
Of course. It was legal advice he wanted.
“You are married, my boy, yes?”
Johnny nodded.
“Good. You are a smart boy. Now, did she give consent? Your wife’s mother?”
“No, but it was in New Jersey. You don’t need it there if the girl is pregnant.”
“Then she has no legal recourse, none whatsoever. It does not matter who the father is.”
Johnny relaxed visibly.
“Unless,” Ravi said, “she sues for custody.”
“Sues for custody? She doesn’t want the kid. She wants us to give it up for adoption.”
Ravi smiled sadly. “Not your mother-in-law, my boy. Your wife.”
Johnny was tugging on his lower lip. On the inside, beneath his youthful gums, was a tattoo Ravi could not quite read. Why on earth would anyone put a tattoo there? “Why would she want to do that?”
He was still a boy, unschooled in the depravity of the fairer sex. Ravi would die for Arpita, but he had a prenup. When he got home, he would pray to Shiva that his grandchild would be a boy.
“Against women,” said Ravi, “we cannot protect ourselves enough.”
How much did he give you?” Rooster wanted to know.
“A lot,” Johnny said. “At first I said no, but he said it would be an insult.”
“You wouldn’t wanna insult the man.”
“He said it’s for the baby.”
“It’ll be a well-diapered kid.”
Johnny was calling from the pay phone in the McDonald’s parking lot in Vero Beach, Florida, where the band was letting off steam in the Ronald McDonald playground, pelting one another with the plastic balls in the ball pit.
He had told himself he wouldn’t call Rooster, not yet. But the excitement of meeting Ravi had sent him to the phone. He needed to share it with someone.
“How are you feeling?”
“If I tell you I feel like shit, will you come back to New York?”
“You know I can’t. They think I’m talking to some guy in Cleveland.”
“Why Cleveland?”
The recording interrupted to request another quarter, and Johnny complied.
“We’re supposed to do a show there.”
“Well, cancel Cleveland and come back to New York. Ain’t nothin’ you want to see in Cleveland, baby.”
Johnny closed his eyes and imagined the month that lay before him, empty, endless. He didn’t know if he could spend thirty-one more days in the Kramaro, listening to Kram and Delph complain about Jude, or in the van, listening to Jude complain about Kram and Delph, or worst of all, listening to Eliza’s silence. He certainly couldn’t tell them that he’d met Teddy’s father (he’d told them he was going to the local Krishna temple). He couldn’t tell them that Teddy’s father had warned him to keep an eye on Eliza at all times, or that Johnny had already been doing just that.
Through the door of their Philadelphia motel room, while they thought he was sleeping, Johnny had listened to Eliza accuse Jude of accusing her of being on drugs. It had not exactly been a revelation, but Johnny had to fight the urge to jump out of bed. He’d let his guard down. He’d been distracted by Rooster. The next morning, he found his duffel bag open on the floor, and since then, when going through her suitcase and her makeup bag and her backpack, he made sure to zip them back up. He never found any drugs, but this morning he did find a drawing, folded in quarters and tucked inside her pregnancy book. It was a nude drawing of Eliza, and in the corner was Harriet’s signature, and it was so beautiful