Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [73]
“I’m not going to any fucking facility!”
“They take your baby,” Jude said, pitching forward. “That’s what a ‘facility’ is.”
“They don’t take it,” Di said. “They don’t sell it into slave labor. They give it to parents that can take care of it properly.”
“Like my dad?” Jude said.
Through the picture window, Manhattan was now curdled a pale twilight blue. No one had moved to turn on a light, and Jude could feel the darkness sifting through the room. He was glad his father’s face was shadowed by his Yankees cap.
“You’re angry that Di found out, but I didn’t tell her,” Les said. “I chose to cover for you.”
“Of course you chose him. Anything to make Jude like you. Anything to be a pal. Leave the fathering to someone who has the time.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Has it occurred to you,” said Di, “that Eliza might not be in this situation if she weren’t desperate for a little attention from a father figure?” Raising his wineglass to his lips, Les momentarily lost his grip. He fumbled it like a football, a red tide rising to find the lapel of his shirt, before he caught it again. No one moved to get a cloth from the kitchen; no one offered the soda water that sat, untouched, on the table.
“You can blame me for fucking up my own kids,” said Les. “But don’t blame me for fucking up yours.” He put down his glass, gouged out his cigarette in the ashtray, plucked up a cupcake, and kissed the crown of Eliza’s head. “You’re not fucked up. I’m just saying.” Eliza sat with her elbows on her knees, hands covering her face. “Happy birthday, sweetheart. I tie-dyed you a Yankees shirt—it’s around here somewhere. You can call me.” His sandals slapped the marble floor as he crossed the room. The door closed noisily behind him.
From behind her hands, Eliza smelled ginger and garlic and cooking meat. She kicked off her shoes. In her bare feet, she stood up and wandered in the direction of the window. She said, “I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you, Mother, but I—”
“Darling, no.” Di put down her glass. “I’m not disappointed that you’re pregnant. I’m disappointed that you didn’t tell me. If you’d come to me, we could have done something about it.”
Eliza rested her hands over her belly. “Well, that’s why I didn’t tell you.” Typical of her mother, she thought—who cared whether the problem was school or drugs or boys or a baby, as long as she got to choose the solution?
But Les was right: they were two of a kind. Eliza was as stubborn as her mother. She was halfway through this solution of hers, and yet standing there she was not at all sure whether she’d chosen it because it was what she wanted or because it was what her mother wouldn’t.
Or because it was what Jude and Johnny wanted. She looked at them, two pairs of blue eyes watching her as though she were an afterschool special.
“What are you looking at?” she demanded of them. “Don’t just sit there. I’m doing this for you.”
“What do you mean?” asked Di.
“She means,” said Johnny, standing up, “that I want this baby as much as she does.” He crossed the room, sneakers squeaking against the floor, and pressed a palm to Eliza’s belly. “Right?”
Her stomach fluttered. She could feel each of his fingertips through the layers of taffeta. No one but the ER doctor had touched her pregnant belly, and now, as if the baby had been awoken, she felt a tiny quiver again, like a goldfish swimming against the fishbowl of her belly.
But Johnny didn’t feel it. He was digging in his pocket for something, dropping to his knee, saying, “I’ve got a present for you, too.”
“Oh, mercy,” said her mother.
Annabel Lee was telling her something, but she didn’t know what it was.
“You can’t marry her. She’s sixteen years old! Not without parental consent.”
A tail-stroke, a wing-beat, a slither through the grass.
“I can in New Jersey,” said Johnny, opening the box.
The boyfriend’s boxer shorts were gone, his toothbrush, the glass pipe he kept cinched in a chamois sack at the bottom of the hamper, where he thought no one would look. His crossword puzzles were not in the basket in the master bath; his bottles