Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [68]
Jude sat with his elbows on his knees, speaking to the hemoglobin-colored carpet. “How does it happen, exactly? Is it . . . is it just blood?”
Eliza had insisted on going into the examination room alone, had remained around long enough only for Les to whisper, “You keeping anything else from me? Are you a Mets fan, too?”
“I don’t know, champ,” he said to Jude. “You know who should be here is Johnny. If he’s the father, he’d want to know. Why don’t you call him.”
“He doesn’t have a phone. He’s going to be mad,” Jude let out.
“Why?”
“Not mad. Just—sad.”
“Sad,” Les agreed. He slurped his coffee. “But it’s a relief you’re not the father. You get tied up in it, the lady’s grieving, distraught, she’s guilty, you’re guilty, everyone’s feeling lousy. Be glad you’re not involved. Babies,” he said. He nudged Jude’s arm and indicated the walls around them. “You know you were born here?”
Jude looked at his father and shook his head.
“It’s true.” Les leaned back and crossed one hairy leg over the other. He was wearing his gray suede Birkenstocks with the broken clasp, one of the straps flapping like a tongue. His calves were the size of cantaloupes; they bore no resemblance to Jude’s. “You were tiny as a rabbit. And you had this shock of red, red hair.” He hovered his hand over his Yankees cap, indicating. “Your mom and I were sitting in the nursery in rocking chairs, in scrubs, with these shower caps on our heads, like they were afraid we were going to give you the plague. Just waiting for you.” He wasn’t watching the television now but the empty space in the room. “We waited there forever, just rocking back and forth. Your mom was terrified they’d changed their minds, that there was a problem. She wanted a cigarette so bad and all she had was this king-size bag of M&M’S. She ate the entire bag of M&M’S, waiting for you.”
Jude had not heard this story before, and it was only after hearing it that he realized he’d had a picture of his first meeting with his parents, and this was not it. He now understood why his father had chosen this inconveniently located emergency room, ninety blocks away: it belonged, in his mind, to a baby hospital. Second-degree burn: Beth Israel. Miscarriage: Mount Sinai. If Jude’s heart were not already preoccupied, it might have been warmed by his father’s lumbering logic.
“She prefers Snickers now,” Jude answered, not looking at him. Then, “Did she tell you I might have FAS?”
Les nodded. “Yes, she did.”
“Retard disease,” said Jude after a moment, because his father was cruelly silent.
“Not retard disease. It’s a disability.”
“It’s why I’m always in trouble and fuck my numbers up so bad.”
“Fuck your numbers up how?”
“Mix them up. Turn them around. Letters, too. You didn’t know that?”
“I guess not,” Les said. “Look, who cares? It’s just a fancy name for your birth mom indulged a little too much. So did half my generation, okay? We didn’t know any better. Your mom smoked like a chimney when she was knocked up with your sister. Not to mention a little wacky tobacky now and then.”
“She did? While she was pregnant?”
“She said it helped with morning sickness,” Les said, shrugging dubiously. This piece of trivia made Jude feel better and worse at the same time, but Les looked pleased with himself, as though he’d wrapped up a nice father-son conversation. The fact that his father had tossed off the story of his birth in a waiting room while watching the Today show, might just have easily not shared it with him (as his mother surely would not have shared it with him), was enjoying the memory like he was enjoying his jelly doughnut and the prospect of pulling one over on his girlfriend, left Jude with nothing else to say.
The sliding doors to the street blew open then. Through them came three young black men, two propping up the third, whose jacket pocket was soaked with blood. The boy’s head was rolled back