Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [41]
Sometimes his skateboard would take him to the southern point of Manhattan, and he’d look out over the bay past the dollar-green Lady Liberty to the distant biscuit of Staten Island. Somewhere over there was the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, where his father and uncle lived. Now that his mother had disappeared and his brother was dead, they were the only family he had left, but his father was dead to him, too, as dead as his mother had told him he was in the first place.
For his antiseptic lifestyle, plus the white T-shirt, bald head, and gold hoops, Johnny had been dubbed by his friends Mr. Clean. He hadn’t had a drink or eaten meat or smoked a cigarette in almost two years. There was no reason to start now. The sannyasis at the Hare Krishna temple promised that renunciation of desires brought peace.
She chose a New Jersey town she’d never set foot in before, whose name she’d heard uttered only by the train conductor. Cissy’s older sister had had one, and Eliza’s own mother had had two. You called; you made an appointment. Eliza made the call from the hall phone in the dorm, cut swimming that afternoon, and walked from the station to a clinic in the corner lot of a Grand Union shopping center, next door to a travel agency. One of the clinic’s store windows was shuttered with plywood; the miniblinds in the other were shut tight.
Inside the door, behind a chest-high counter, stood a security officer dressed in a blue shirt and tie, like a person who worked in a museum or airport. His mustache was tobacco stained like Les’s, and his name tag said BILL T. He gave her a brisk nod, not quite looking at her, and made a motion with his hand—C’mere—that implied he wanted her to hand something over. A form of some sort? Her fake ID, also from her coke dealer, which put her at twenty-two?
“Your handbag, miss.”
Eliza took off her headphones and tapped the bottom of the book bag hanging on her back. “I just have this.”
“Let’s see it, please.”
To her left, framing the entrance into the office, stood what appeared to be a metal detector. Beyond it, the waiting room was nearly full. A dozen girls, black, white, Hispanic, all of them looking exactly fifteen, sat staring into magazines and clipboards, beside mothers or boyfriends or sisters, silent. She said, “It’s just a backpack.”
“You’ll get it back directly, miss. Just need to take a look.”
One of the girls, wearing a pinafore dress and Keds, was very pregnant. About three inches from her face she held a book with a plain red cover, titled in gold letters You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. Eliza had been trying to keep Teddy out of her head, but now she couldn’t help picturing him in heaven, a place she was pretty sure she didn’t believe in, sending down a quizzical, disappointed look.
“I’m not—comfortable,” she said, looking from the man to the girl, back to the man, “giving you, since I have some private things in here. Can I—”
“It’s policy, miss.”
“Okay.” The girl flipped a page and rested an absent hand on her belly. “I’ll leave it in the car.” Before he could say anything, she turned around and pushed herself out the door, the chime ringing blandly behind her.
When she walked in the door of her mother’s apartment on Riverside Drive, a cone of incense was burning on the coffee table beside a glass of blood-colored wine. Eliza’s mother was perched on the divan, pumping a ThighMaster between her knees and talking on the cordless telephone. It was Friday evening. Neena’s night off.
“All right, darling, she’s here,” she said and hung up. To Eliza, she said, “I thought you might be the delivery boy. I ordered from the Brazilian place.” She glanced at the watch face on the inside of her wrist. “You’re a little late.”
Eliza slipped her keys into her backpack. “I missed the first train.”
“Did you?” Her mother