Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [149]
“Is Jude home?” he’d asked, like any of the boys, in recent days, who’d come over to raid her fridge.
But this time Harriet had not moved aside. The hairs on the back of her neck had gone cool. And then Bob had come downstairs, the gun he never wore holstered now across his shoulders and under his armpit in one of those equestrian contraptions that made him look like a soap opera police chief. Maybe it was the moment she’d fallen in love, when he’d leaned silently, smilingly against the doorframe and slipped his arm around her waist. “No, he’s not,” she told the boys.
“Where is everyone?” Jude asked now, withdrawing his hands from hers. “I heard about your . . . man friend.”
“Bob,” she said, trying not to smile. “Bob’s on a job this morning.”
“What’s with Bob? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Bob’s cool,” said Prudence, who was leaning in the doorway in a towel. “He plays the pan flute, and he can say the Gettysburg Address backwards.”
Jude sat up. “Why would anyone want to say it frontwards?”
Bob came over for dinner. Bob made seven-spice couscous with the green beans and tomatoes from Harriet’s garden. He’d picked up the recipe in Casablanca, where he’d tracked a woman who’d married some rich guy and then emptied his accounts. He’d tracked a guy who’d stolen a helicopter, tenants who’d jumped rent, and an underground cockfighting league, run in a number of Bronx basements. He was done with that wretched place called New York. Two weekends after setting foot in Vermont, he’d moved his sick mother out of their condo and up to a cabin on the lake. And he started every other sentence with the word happily. “Happily, I was able to track down the no-good crook.” “Happily, they had a whole batch of fresh mint.” But he called Jude’s mom “honey” and she called him “honey” back. At one point, he took off her glasses, buffed them on his apron, and slipped them back on her face.
Jude and Prudence did the dishes. Jude washed, Prudence dried. Eliza lay on the couch, her wet bikini still dampening her dress from her swim in the lake that afternoon. “I just want to be weightless,” she’d said. Now Bob was doing hypnotherapy on her, showing her how to put herself to sleep. Prudence told Jude that Tory Ventura and Missy Sherman had broken up, that he was off crutches, and that he’d gotten a football scholarship to Duke. He’d be leaving town within a matter of days. Jude tried to conceal his relief.
“Did you miss me?” he asked his sister. One of the cats—Tarzan—mashed his face into Jude’s shin.
“Yeah, it was really lonely not having someone trying to run my life all the time.”
“Are you still smoking?” Jude handed her a plate.
“Just crack. And just when I’m drinking.”
“Clearly you need my male influence.”
“I’ve got Bob,” Prudence said.
“What’s Bob going to do? Hypnotize you?”
“Mom said it really works. He’s got her down to like half a pack a day.”
Jude submerged his hands in the suds. Maybe his mom would be okay without him. She had Bob now.
“Pru, what if I stayed in New York?”
“With Dad?”
“Want to come with?” He lifted his hands out of the water, scrubbing another plate. He rinsed it and handed it over. “Give him a chance. Let him spend lots of money on you trying to buy back your love.”
“Are you taking the cats?”
“I think the cats are staying put.”
Prudence polished the plate with the tattered dishrag. Jude held another dripping plate while she placed it on the rack. “Maybe I’d visit,” she said.
“You could take the train,” said Jude.
After Bob had gone home and Harriet and Prudence had gone to bed, Jude unlocked the greenhouse with the key his mother kept in the fake