Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [141]
Jude’s head was spinning. “Wait. You and Mom both tried to keep us from Di?”
“And now he wants to move to Vermont, live the country life. Romantic, huh?”
“Mom has a man friend? Who’s a private investigator?”
So he hadn’t imagined the voice in the background. His mom hadn’t dated anyone since his dad.
“Any asshole can be a P.I.” Les told Jude about his friend’s brother who took a class at John Jay, had some business cards printed up, and now charged top dollar to take pictures of husbands fucking around on their wives. Les tapped his cigarette at his side. The bitterness edged his voice again. “But she deserves to be happy. She’s a special lady, your mom.”
“What about Di?”
Les shook his head. The suntan on his face gave him a ragged, inflamed look. His fingers released his cigarette; it dropped to the ground. “I’m done with pining for old flames. She wouldn’t take me back, anyway.”
Which old flames his father was referring to he didn’t know. Surely there were many in the vast bank of his past, before his mother, during, after. Husbands fucked around on their wives, and private investigators took pictures of them. People fucked, fucked up; they married, had babies, divorced. His father was as guilty as any of them, and for years Jude had despised him for it. Now, watching his tattered Birkenstock stamp out the cigarette on the sidewalk, it occurred to Jude that his father, for reasons of his own, might be as heartbroken 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