Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [145]
“Because,” Jude said, “she doesn’t want Johnny to be able to see the baby. He’s just been using her so he can hold on to Teddy.”
“But why shouldn’t he see the baby? Eliza can see the baby, too. Doesn’t a child belong with its family?”
Ravi’s clipped sentences, his backward, belated desperation to control his grandchild’s future, reminded Jude of Di. It occurred to him that they would make a fine couple. Ravi and Di, filing their paperwork, placing long-distance phone calls to private investigators while they swirled wine in their glasses. It was impossible to imagine this man with the slovenly Queen Bea, who would have made a more appropriate mate for Les. How did anyone end up with anyone?
“I didn’t get to raise my son,” Ravi said. “This is my second chance.” He presented his credentials. A house with a pool in Coconut Grove, a position at the second largest law firm in Miami, a loving wife who would be a loving mother. He started to take out his own wallet, to show Jude pictures of his own, but Jude didn’t want to see them. He didn’t want to know what the woman who would hold Teddy’s baby looked like. All his life, he thought he wanted to know the face of the woman who had given birth to him, but a single picture, a name—it would be too much. It was the not knowing that protected him, the blank page that allowed him to believe she might be anyone, or might not exist at all. He could have been raised by wolves. He could be the son of God or a test tube miracle or for all he knew he could have fallen to Earth with the snow from the sky.
We welcome with love our gift from above.
The waitress came by to clear their paper plates and to refill Ravi’s coffee. When he was little, Harriet hadn’t told Jude about his adoption—Les had gotten to him first. Even now, she rarely mentioned it, the glass elephant she’d built to fill their house. She, too, preferred to be blind to it, to pretend Jude had sprung from her alone. He wondered now if his birth mother felt the same way, if anonymity was a gift to her, too.
“Look,” Jude said. “All this time you’ve known Teddy was with his mom, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You pictured them together, you saw her making him lunch and dropping him off at school. First grade, second grade. All that time, you couldn’t sleep at night, right? Wondering if he was okay, if she was treating him right.”
“That’s right,” said Ravi.
“I think Eliza doesn’t want to wonder the same thing about her kid.”
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Eliza just wanted to stick it to Johnny.
“So she’d rather give the child to a stranger?” Ravi looked exhausted.
“A stranger would want the baby because they want a baby,” Jude said. “Not because they wish Teddy was alive.”
Ravi took a final swill of his oversweetened coffee. He shook his head, but he didn’t dispute this. It was true that he hadn’t been in the market for a child. Arpita had taken some convincing. But he hadn’t been in the market for a wife, either. Surprises happen, he’d told her. Wonderful surprises, Arpita. Not long after their meeting at the restaurant, Johnny had called with the proposal that had already been forming over the Milans’ dining room table. “Ravi, how big is your house?” And that was it. Ravi could not say no.
He leaned forward and tapped his briefcase. “This is a shame, quite a shame. It would be easier for all parties if she would cooperate. We wouldn’t have to sue for custody. We could avoid the court battle, the battery of tests. We would be acting in the best interest of the child.”
The boy stopped rolling his skateboard. “What kind of tests?”
“A DNA test, a drug test. Johnny tells me the girl has been abusing drugs. If we must, we will request that the judge order a test to determine if she is fit. Fit to decide her