Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [75]
“What do I call you now? My ex-almost-stepdaughter?”
“Don’t get sappy on me, Lester.”
“Will you still come visit me?”
“I’ll be down the street.”
Les sat down beside her and took a hit on the pipe. It settled him, loosened his bones. It tasted, somehow, like Vermont. “When’s the wedding?”
“Sunday, I hope. Johnny’s out taking care of the details now. It’s going to be at the temple.”
“I’m guessing you don’t mean Emanu-El.”
“Are you coming?”
Les took her hand in his and examined the ring. The stone was no bigger than a lentil, and almost certainly not a diamond; he knew a guy who sold these on Fourteenth Street. “You really love this kid? This Hare Rama with all the jewelry?”
Eliza withdrew her hand sharply. She took up her necklace again, jogged the charms.
“He appears to be noble,” Les went on. “A stand-up guy. But why marry him? You’re already knocked up. Why not cohabit for a while, play it by ear?”
“That’s what you’d do, isn’t it. Play it by ear.”
“I find it’s the best organ to play by.” He swatted at the fly. “Although I’ve been accused of playing by others.”
Eliza was scrunched down on the futon, her body practically horizontal, her hand absently rubbing the T-shirt stretched over her belly. “What if it was Jude’s kid? Would you and my mom still want me to give it away?”
“If it was Jude’s kid, well, we’d all get married and live in one big incestuous duplex.”
“It would have been better, wouldn’t it,” said Eliza, gazing into space.
Les tried to picture it: a new age sitcom family, the four of them taking turns with the nighttime feedings. A grandfather at the age of forty-three. It was no more outrageous than the idea he’d had, in the early hours of St. Valentine’s Day, his ex-wife catching her breath beside him, of returning to his old life. Not taking any vows—just staying there in that bed. Just playing it by ear. But in the morning Harriet had wordlessly deposited a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him, and then he’d whisked his son away. And now neither of these options was available to him, his old family or his new. The phone rang, and Les got up and went eagerly to it. He found himself hoping it was Jude, the thread that now held his families together.
Instead, he heard the familiar static of a cordless phone.
Les listened to the voice crack through the noise, to the voice and the static and the fly and the door-buzzer peal of his headache. The voices in his head. Had he seen Eliza? He had better tell her if he’d seen Eliza, he had better tell her where that punk lived, if he didn’t want the cops involved, if he didn’t want a drug-sniffing dog at his door, if he knew what was good for him.
Les was not entirely sure that he did.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t hear you very well.” And he placed the phone in its cradle.
“Oh, God. Is she coming over?”
“Hold on.”
“She’s coming to find me, isn’t she?”
“Hold on, girl. I’m thinking.” It was over, he was thinking. It was not the first time he had hung up on Di, or she on him. There had been other fights, accusations, betrayals, the obvious incompatibilities, but now he had crossed a line. He had stepped between Di and her child.
“I wish there was a place we could go. Someplace safe where she won’t find me.” Eliza was sitting up now, leaning over her belly, her face in her hands. “We can’t stay at Johnny’s! He doesn’t even have AC!”
Les picked up the phone and dialed the number that, the dozen or so times he’d dialed it in the last seven years, he was always surprised to remember.
“What are you doing?”
He listened to the dial tone, fanning himself with the flyswatter now, fanning himself as though putting out a fire. He had a wild idea as he waited: that his ex-wife was pregnant with his child, that this child would be the one he wouldn’t screw up, that he could have his old family and his new one under one roof. Honey, he’d say, I’m coming home.
“Is Jude okay?” Harriet asked when they’d said their hellos. She sounded impatient, or maybe just anxious, out of breath, the way she had when he’d admitted to her that