Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [147]
This was who Johnny had come home to? This was his type? Had he known all the time he liked guys, had he gazed across rooms at them, at Jude?
So he was jealous. But not because he wanted Johnny to gaze across a room at him. He was jealous of that code word he’d uttered to Rooster—“baby.” He was jealous of them in the way he was jealous of Eliza and Teddy, the coupling so dear they, too, had kept it private. He was jealous of everyone who knew how they wanted to be loved.
Finally Rooster pulled on a pair of what looked like Johnny’s camouflage shorts. “He’d rather marry a girl he doesn’t love than admit that he’s with you,” Jude told him. “You think he gives a shit about you? All he cares about is Teddy’s fucking baby. He’s obsessed with Teddy’s fucking baby!”
Rooster sat down on a stool and leaned an elbow on the counter. He looked tired and suddenly old, the floppy bandage on his forehead doing a poor job of keeping him together. “That makes two a youse.” He pointed two fingers at Jude. “You guys gotta get over that kid. Look at you, look how pissed off you are. How long’s he been dead, six months?”
“Don’t fucking say that, Rooster.”
“It’s a shame and all, but Jesus. You know how many kids have OD’d in this town? It fuckin’ happens. Why the fuck you think I’m straight edge?”
“Fuck you, Rooster! You didn’t know him.”
“Neither did Johnny! He barely even knew the kid. He hadn’t seen him in like two years!”
The small flower of satisfaction this comment brought forth swiftly wilted. Jude paced across the room, kicked the minifridge, and squatted on the floor, his head in his hands. It was true: Johnny barely knew Teddy. He barely knew Jude, either. They had both wanted to be the one who knew Teddy best, they had both been Teddy for each other, and now the make-believe had come to an end.
When Rooster spoke again, his voice was softer. “Green,” he said. It was the voice he used to talk to Johnny on the phone, to call him “baby.” He looked for a moment as though he wanted to tell Jude something. It was the distant look he had outside the rec center in Lintonburg as they admired the view together, the mountains, the lake. And then it passed.
Rooster nodded across the small room to Johnny’s bag on the floor. “The guy’s been carryin’ around his kid brother’s ashes in a duffel bag. That’s creepy, man. I’ve been tryin’ for months to get him to leave you and Eliza and that baby alone.”
Jude stood up. “He’s got Teddy’s ashes in there?”
Rooster nodded. “In a fuckin’ flour jar, man.”
Jude took three sweeping steps over to the bag and unzipped it. Rooster didn’t stop him. Jude rifled through piles of clothes, a freezer bag of cassettes, and then his hand struck something solid. He hauled it out. A clear glass canister, like all of Queen Bea’s kitchen canisters, with the orange rubber lid. Embossed in cursive in the glass was the word Flour, but inside were the pebbled remains of Teddy, his bones and skin and teeth, bits of stone and shell in sand.
“Take it,” Rooster said.
“I’m going to,” Jude said, cradling the ashes awkwardly in his arms. They weighed perhaps as much as a newborn baby, and he looked down at them with the same terror and awe with which a new father might look at his child, holding it for the first time.
“Look, don’t worry,” Rooster said. “I don’t think John’s gonna interfere in your business no more.”
“What does that mean?”
“I got a feelin’ he’s gonna have other priorities soon.” Rooster’s voice was grave. He touched the Band-Aid on his forehead, pressing it into place. “He ain’t gonna have a choice.” Jude didn’t know what Rooster was talking about, but he felt a small spring of sympathy for him. Did he have no mother to tend to his wounds?
He stood up, propping the ashes on his hip. Then he put his skateboard under his other arm and left the apartment. He did not see Johnny on the stairs or in the street. He didn’t see Johnny again, not that day, not ever.
You’re leaving?” Eliza asked.
Jude