Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [63]
“So you’re just going to leave her alone up there? Like you did before?”
Les let the accusation hang in the air with his smoke. As exaggerated as his son’s logic was, he could not suppress the clammy grip of his own guilt.
“Forget it,” Jude said. “We’re going out again.”
“We are?”
“Me and Johnny and Eliza. They’re meeting over here.”
“Don’t tell me. You’re going to church.”
“It’s not a church.” Jude scrounged around in the kitchen drawer, through matchbooks, rolling papers, subway tokens, the collection of MoMA magnets that Di had once stuffed into Les’s Christmas stocking—The Starry Night, the Campbell’s soup can—until he found a couple of crumpled dollar bills. “It’s a temple.”
“I thought temple was Jewish.”
“It is. Or synagogue.”
Les shook his head sadly. “My son the saint. St. Jude. You know how you got that name, champ?”
“ ’Cause of that stupid song,” said Jude.
Les waved his hand. “Your mother liked the song. I liked the saint. He’s my favorite. Kind of overlooked, but a fellow to be reckoned with. Loyal, brutal, with that club of his, his head on fire. But you know what? They killed that son of a bitch with an ax.”
“Because he was a traitor?”
Johnny buzzed, and Jude buzzed back. He cracked open the door.
“That was Judah,” said Les, whose religious training was the sum of one semester of biblical literature and thirty years of crossword puzzles. “Jude was the loyal apostle, like yourself. But too much loyalty is dangerous, too. Your mom’s a tough cookie. She can take care of herself.”
Les remembered her as he’d last seen her, when he’d come to retrieve Jude—older, sharper, her face more deeply lined. But she was the same Harriet, the only woman who’d accepted him for the dreamer and schemer that he was. She was an artist, but she had never bought him a collection of MoMA magnets.
Just then, in compelling imitation of a tea leaf reader he’d once had a fling with in Lintonburg—all sequins and gold and spookiness—Di burst through the door. At her heels were Eliza and Johnny. As often as he saw the boy, he could not get used to the earrings, which reminded him, now that he thought about it, also of the tea leaf reader. (His fortune: you will leave your wife. Had she been baiting him, or had even the gods pegged him for a bastard?) Eliza was wearing her father’s extra-large Harvard sweatshirt, which always broke Les’s heart a little.
“I finally got to meet this Johnny,” said Di. “He held the door for us.”
“Hey there, John Boy,” said Les. He couldn’t help having a soft spot for him, too, ever since the day he’d learned about his brother and showed up at Les’s door looking like the walking dead. He, too, was an underground businessman, and in a neighborhood that made St. Mark’s look like Fifth Avenue. For that he’d earned Les’s respect. But behind the competent, tattooed facade was a kid who needed a swift kick in the ass.
“How you doing, Mr. Keffy,” Johnny said. The kitchen was as crammed as an elevator.
“How about a little sundress, honey?” said Les. “It’s spring.” These days Eliza was as hard as Jude to keep up with. Now she was back in the city on weekends, running around with Jude and Johnny, no longer Bookworm Betty. “I don’t get it. The boys are dressing like girls and the girls are dressing like boys.”
“See?” Di rapped Eliza on the elbow. “I say that and she takes my head off.”
“You ready to go?” said Jude, distracted, glum.
“Wait.” Di made a gun of her hands and aimed it at Jude. “We’re having a birthday dinner for Eliza. Not this Saturday but the next. You’re coming?” She swung the gun around at Johnny. “You come, too, Johnny.”
“I told you I don’t want a party.”
“Can’t you just get her some magnets?” Les suggested.
With excruciating slowness, Di lowered her hands. The look on her face could have cracked ice.
“I like the magnets,” he said gently.
“We’re going,” Eliza said and kissed her mother’s cheek.
“Now, where is this temple?”
“In Brooklyn,” said Eliza. This seemed to satisfy her mother.
“How come Eliza doesn’t go to the matinees