Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [13]
Jude licked his cone. New York Super Fudge Chunk.
“Lives?” Teddy said.
“Jude’s and Prudence’s. Sorry.”
“He said that?” Teddy asked.
“Not like, those exact words. But I sense it.”
“My dad’s a prick,” said Jude. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“How do you know, though?” Eliza asked. There was a gap between her two front teeth, just wide enough to slide his napkin through.
“Because I haven’t seen him in seven years?”
But that was the thing, Eliza said. Les felt that Jude and Prudence wouldn’t want anything to do with him. He’d been gone so long that he felt he was better off leaving them alone. “I think he feels bad about everything. I can tell he does.”
“What’s ‘everything’?”
“You know, deserting you. Not being there for you.”
“Where’s ‘there’?”
“Jude, okay, listen.” Eliza stabbed her spoon into her cup of Cherry Garcia. Jude did not want to listen. Whatever she had to say wouldn’t be true, not because he knew his father better than she did but because his father no longer existed. He was a voice on the phone, that was all.
“You should have seen him at Christmas. He got drunk—which I’ve never seen him that drunk—and he was crying, Jude. It was after he talked to you on the phone. He was standing out on the balcony, and he was alone, just crying.”
“You were there? When I talked to my dad?”
“Isn’t it sad?”
Jude said it was sad that he’d sent her to be his messenger.
“Oh, he didn’t. He wouldn’t do that. He just thinks I’m here to, you know, meet you guys.”
“Why are you here?”
Eliza deposited a lump of ice cream on her tongue and swallowed. “I was in the neighborhood.”
“Stowe’s not really in the neighborhood,” Teddy pointed out.
She shrugged. “I feel bad, I guess. I’m hogging Les all to myself.”
Jude laughed. “Really, that’s okay. You can keep him.” Then, having lost his appetite, he turned his ice cream cone over onto the table. “No offense, but it’s not really your business.” The cone settled, and then began to melt.
Teddy was working on his own cone. Jude looked at him and Teddy looked back. Teddy’s rash looked like a birthmark, a twin scar that bound them together. They were parentless; they were orphans, fiercely so. Eliza, Misfits or no, could not get to them. Her red mouth was pouting. Jude wanted to lean over the table and glide his tongue against the groove between her teeth: that would shut her up.
“Maybe you should go see him,” Teddy said to Jude.
“What?”
“Maybe you should give him a chance.”
Jude looked at him. “Don’t mind Teddy. His mom left this morning. He’s feeling homesick.”
Teddy fired a look at Jude. It was the same look he’d given Jude in front of Harriet earlier, drained of all its pleading warmth. Their silent pact had been broken.
“She left?” Eliza asked. “Where’d she go?”
“We don’t know,” Jude said. “We just woke up and she was gone.”
“Just—gone?”
“Just gone.”
Eliza put her small white hand on top of Teddy’s brown one. “Oh, shit. What should we do?” Her nails were painted with red polish, now chipped. Jude wanted to put his hand on top of theirs, as if they were making a promise or cheering before a game, but he didn’t know what they would be cheering for.
On Christmas, Les had asked her, “Do you know what your problem is?”
“I don’t appreciate my mother.”
“That’s true.”
“Or my trust fund.”
“That, too.”
They were sharing a bottle of wine on his fire escape overlooking St. Mark’s Place.
“You’re young,” Les said. He got like this when he was tipsy—enigmatic, flirtatious—but now he was full-on drunk. “You’re naive, girl. You’re a drama queen. You’re a sad-story addict. You’re drawn to them like a moth to a flame. You believe you can save the world by saying so.”
“Whatever,” Eliza said.
“Fine,” said Les. “Go up there. Scatter your pixie