Ten Thousand Saints (36 page)

Harriet had reported, when they’d called collect, that Di had come and gone. “I think she might have said something about heading for Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“She might be looking for Eliza there.”

“Why there?”

“She might have been . . . thrown off.”

Jude’s mouth dropped open. “Mom, did you tell Eliza’s mom we’re in Chicago, because if so, thank you.”

As for Tory Ventura, Big Ben had learned through his girlfriend that Tory, who had three broken ribs, a few missing teeth, a shattered kneecap, and a concussion, had decided not to press charges. “He must be scared shitless,” Kram had said, but Tory Ventura hadn’t left Kram in the snow with a mouth full of piss. Jude knew Tory wanted to keep this off the record so he could come after Jude himself.

It gave Jude a sense of satisfaction, that his instincts to run had been right. But now, after this weeklong high, this breathless bodega-food binge, they were rocketing out of New York, light-years away from Vermont. They were reunited, and they had made another narrow escape, and not only from Tory and Di. They were safe also from the secrets they had kept from one another, and the secret they had all kept together. Johnny was a model husband. Eliza was a model wife. Jude was a model friend, his Converse straddling the engine between them. “What about Joan?” he asked. “For Joan Jett.”

They were discussing girls’ names for the baby, rock-and-roll alternatives to the southern, dour Annabel Lee. Theirs would be a punk rock baby.

Over the clamor of the engine, Johnny said, “Jett isn’t her real last name. It’s Larkin.”

“I don’t care what her last name is. I’m not naming my baby Joan.”

“I’ve always liked La Toya,” Johnny said.

“Belinda,” Jude offered.

“She’s not punk enough anymore.”

“You know Joan Jett ran away at fifteen?” Johnny, who was cupping a bag of sugared peanuts in his lap, tossed a handful into his mouth and passed them to Eliza. “Her mother was sleeping with her boyfriend. That’s when she formed the Runaways.”

“Like us?” Eliza wondered, adjusting her sunglasses. They liked to conceive of their situation in terms they were familiar with. Punk bands, musicals, young adult novels. Jude and Johnny were the Greasers fleeing the Socs, and Eliza was Cherry Valance, the girl from the right side of the tracks. They were the Runaways, betrayed by their parents, only they’d stitched their way into and out of so many states it was hard to keep track of which one they were running from.

“She’s also vegan,” Johnny said. “And she produced the Germs’ album.”

“Wait, what was Belinda Carlisle’s name in the Germs?”

“Dottie Danger.”

“Dottie Danger! That’s good.”

“And Lorna Doom. Lorna Doom played bass.”

“Or what about Exene,” said Jude, “from X?”

“Ooh, that sounds very edge,” Johnny said. “A straight edge baby.”

Would their baby be a straight edge baby? Jude caught a glance from Eliza in the rearview. Would their baby, Exene McNicholas, toking on her mother’s THC-rich umbilical cord, be received into the straight edge order? They’d made a pact, Eliza and Jude: he wouldn’t tell Johnny if she quit; she’d quit if he didn’t tell Johnny. What had she been thinking? Did she have a shred of self-discipline? Did she believe for a second she was mommy material? These were the accusations Eliza had spewed, not Jude, as she paced Prudence’s bedroom, holding her hair in her hands. Jude had listened quietly as she bawled herself out, and when she was done, there was little he could add. Then she’d answered herself with explanations: she’d just been so
lonely,
so
hopeless,
it was so
hard
for her to get out of bed, did he know what she meant? She’d never really been into pot—maybe it was Les pushing it on her all these years—but now she could see its allure, its sedative weight, it sent her on a vacation from herself. Of course she had thought about Annabel. But that was why she had done it—so she wouldn’t have to think about Annabel. It had been weeks since she’d seen her husband, months since she’d seen her mother, even
Jude
didn’t pay attention to her anymore.

That
even
had plunked on his heart, heavy as a nickel. As though
Jude
were the one she’d thought was a given. What else could he do but cover for her? And watch her like a hawk? There had been only one other time, she told him. All in all, she hadn’t even smoked a whole joint. Would that kill anyone? Harriet had smoked pot, Jude reasoned, and Prudence was alive. Prudence did not have three ears, or her liver on the outside of her body. The baby would be okay.

What made him furious—was this irrational?—was that she’d gotten the pot from Pru. Eliza had found it in her backpack. In a lipstick case. Prudence.

And what was silly was that it had been unnecessary. She had been mourning her lampoon of a teen marriage, and then the moment she returned to New York to reclaim her husband, it was as though all her fears had been made up. Another, more paranoid, more self-destructive and hormonal Eliza had invented them. And
this
Eliza, the Eliza she truly was, was being greeted by her groom with a kiss, a brotherly kiss but an earnest one, and she was enjoying the scrape of his stubble on her cheek, and the patting of her belly, as though it were a cocker spaniel he was meeting for the first time. “What are you doing here? You got so big!” They were standing on the stoop in front of Rooster’s building on Avenue B, everyone embracing, the boys calling one another uncouth nicknames. It was as though Johnny had just been away on a business trip. He
had
just been away on a business trip!

Johnny had been making Rooster dinner when the caravan had arrived in New York. A mashed banana and peanut butter, sprinkled with Grape-Nuts. It was Roo’s favorite, innocent as baby food. This they had planned to eat on the Murphy bed out of Roo’s grandmother’s Depression glass bowls while they watched
The Wonder Years
on the rabbit-eared TV. For a while there, in the sanctuary of Rooster’s studio, they had been the householders, one husband taking care of the other.

Then the buzzer had buzzed. “Don’t come up,” he’d said. “I’ll come down”—as startled and ashamed as if he’d been caught midfuck. Downstairs, his friends’ bright, eager cars were double-parked at the curb. There was his pregnant, radiant wife, carrying his dead brother’s child, and who gave a shit that the guys had gotten into a little trouble with Tory Ventura while Johnny was gone. The prospect of returning to these simple, juvenile crusades, of breaking out of the contaminated apartment for the open road, was suddenly too sweet to resist.

And on the road, Johnny could track down Ravi. A man in a house in Miami—it was a treasure hunt he could win, a tangible destination in the intangible summer that lay before him. His brother’s father—didn’t he owe it to Teddy to find him?

He’d broken it down for Rooster over breakfast at a diner on Second Avenue, where they could be alone.

“Teddy’s dad could be helpful with the baby,” Johnny said. He didn’t say,
He could have money
.

“So take me with you,” Rooster said. “I never been to Florida.” A road trip; palm trees; Army of One and the Green Mountain Boys, reunited for a summer tour. Johnny could play with both bands. This time he really would need to fill in for Army’s new singer, who was doing a study-abroad summer semester in “fucking Paraguay.”

But Johnny was tired of doing double duty. He was tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. In a year, maybe less, maybe more, Rooster would be dead. And Teddy’s baby would be alive.

“You got to understand,” Johnny had said, mashing his toast under his fist, “you’re not the only person who needs looking after.”

Rooster skated his thumb over the bread crumbs on the table. His own toast was untouched. He didn’t have much of an appetite these days. “I’m not sayin’ you need to look after me,” he said quietly. “I’m sayin’ you need to look after you.” He squinted at Johnny, his eyes as black and wet as a lamb’s. The skin beneath them was shadowed with gray.

But Johnny had paid the bill and said good-bye and climbed into Jude’s van, and now he was steering it over the bridge, heading for the New Jersey Turnpike and points south. Their van. Their baby. Their punk rock child.

“I still like Annabel,” said Eliza. She passed the peanuts to Jude. Later, each of them would remember these sun-dappled minutes in the van, the last stretch of peace they’d have together before pulling into the dense, slippery traffic of the highway. Not far past the bridge, the cars slowed for the toll. The lanes separated, rivers into rivers, and along the booths ahead, the green and red lights blinked a distant message. In the lane to the left, two cars up, the Kramaro was idling. It was the music that caught their attention—No for an Answer. Out of the open window, Delph’s arm was dangling a cigarette.

Johnny saw it, and Eliza saw it, and Jude saw it. Never mind that dangling cigarettes were the least of their own transgressions. They were past that now. They were going to do better, for their baby.

Johnny pressed his palm to the horn.

Seventeen

W
hen they got to the motel outside Philly, Jude said, “You might as well tell us everything,” and they did. Delph and Kram were both smoking again. Delph had quit for a while, he had, but it was the road, he said, being in a car. It was like drinking a beer; it just went with smoking. At which point Kram cleared his throat. He’d had a few beers with the boys. The boys? Well, Delph. And Matthew. They’d gone to a girlie bar near Times Square. Kram and Delph had introduced Matthew to his first beer and his first naked girl. They were in New York, man. When else were they going to live it up?

Little Ben remained pure, perhaps only because he was so radically underage.

Also, Kram had eaten three Whoppers and the beef-flavored fries.

No meat for the rest of them, but come on, some Doritos every now and then? A little bit of mayo?

“We’ve met these straight edge guys,” Kram said, draped across one of the double beds. They’d gotten two rooms adjoined by a bathroom, four beds for seven people. It struck Jude that Kram was a man with nothing to lose. No college. No plans. He wore the same reckless, hungry look he’d seen on Tory Ventura on New Year’s Eve. “They have girlfriends. They’re not all vegan.”

Delph said, “They’re not even all vegetarian.”

“That’s good,” Jude said. “Good for them. Let’s all lower our standards because everyone else is fucked up.”

Johnny tossed his bag on the floor and said, “Go easy, Jude. You can’t force a man to do what he doesn’t want to do.”

Go easy? How had Johnny gone so soft? Now he was the peacemaker, the Zen master. As long as he had his hands on that baby, he didn’t care about anything else.

“I’m still into the whole lifestyle thing,” Kram said, picking a scab on his arm. “I mean, it’s cool, I totally respect it.”

“We’re trying,” Delph said.

“Well, try harder,” said Jude.

At the show that night, at the Starlight Ballroom, Jude sang with unusual vigor, barking orders between songs. “Hoods up, motherfuckers!” and “Let’s fuck this place up with some positive aggression!” The kids roared. At the end, he threw down his Les Paul, barked “True till death!” and catapulted off the stage, running in the air until he fell into a forest of raised arms. The rest of the band unplugged their equipment and loaded out in silence, and it was only when they returned to the motel that Jude had the feeling it was a silence built not against one another but against him, that in a matter of hours, when he wasn’t looking, the scrimmage lines had shifted. Johnny and Eliza said good night, shuffled into the marital chamber, and closed the door. Jude was left with the weak-willed pussies in the second room. Delph and Kram claimed one bed, Matthew and Ben the other. Jude spread out one of the sleeping bags on the floor. He attempted some tired banter about homos—he’d rather sleep on the floor!—but they were already asleep, or pretending to be.

N
ext door, Johnny spent half an hour sorting needlessly through his duffel bag, brushing his teeth, doing push-ups, until Eliza did him the favor of asking him to sleep in the other bed. “Would you mind?” she said.

It was true, now that she was so big, that she slept more soundly on her own. Back in New York, she’d shared Rooster’s Murphy bed with Johnny—there was no room to spread out—and as exhilarating as it had been to curl up beside her husband (not quite touching, but close enough to feel his warmth), and to sleep at the head of seven underdressed boys (as though she were the queen bee of their little honeycomb, and Johnny her lucky mate), that week had been hard. She’d tossed and turned, and Annabel had tossed and turned, and the boys had snored, and every time she had to hold in a fart was an acute and tedious battle of will, and every time she had to get up to pee, she had to step over bodies, and squeeze past Rooster’s bike, and his drums stacked to the ceiling, and then wake up poor Ben, who had to wait outside the door until she was done. It was during these wakeful hours that she considered calling up an old friend. Would Nadia be home this summer? What would Nadia say if Eliza showed up seven months pregnant at her door?