Ten Thousand Saints

Seventeen





When 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 f*cked 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, motherf*ckers!” and “Let’s f*ck 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.

Next 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?

But the real reason she asked to sleep alone was to put Johnny out of his misery. She was not certain why he was so reluctant to share a bed with her. First his excuse was that they weren’t married; then it was because of Harriet; then it was because of Teddy. Was that really it, because he wanted to honor Teddy? As though Eliza had been the great love of Teddy’s life?

Maybe he wasn’t as experienced as he’d claimed to be. Maybe he was just nervous; maybe he really was a virgin, like his brother had been. He was so monastic, so chivalrous, almost squeamish in his chastity—it made sense. Straight edge was a convenient front for the sex-scared: reject it before it can reject you. Or maybe, Eliza sometimes thought, he was just gay. He’d always been careful to say it was girls he avoided, not sex per se. “Sounds a little queer to me,” Les had always said about straight edge. And all the clichés applied: he was a neat freak, he dressed with pride, he was a nice guy. He owned a teapot, for God’s sake. Not just a kettle, but a clay teapot he’d bought at the flea market, with matching teacups. Sometimes, in fact, she wished Johnny was gay. Then at least she wouldn’t be at fault.

But no, Johnny was not a virgin, and he was not gay. His distaste for Eliza was more distinct. She hoped that the distinction lay in the fact of her gestation—a condition that would be cured in a matter of weeks. Didn’t men refuse to have sex with their pregnant wives all the time? That she could understand. In fact, the thought of actual intercourse—she felt so big, so unfresh—made her a little nauseated.

Whatever the nature of Johnny’s relief, the look on his face when she made the suggestion was so abjectly grateful that she felt a little choke in her throat. Couldn’t he at least pretend to be disappointed? He kissed her on the forehead and climbed into his own bed, and pretty soon he was snoring softly. For a few minutes she was happy to be sleeping alone. He snored sweetly, and this infuriated her more than the Harley-Davidson snores of the boys next door—deep, rowdy, phlegmy snores, like Les’s, that constituted a white noise she could sleep to. Listening to the teakettle whistle of Johnny’s nostrils required the same maddening alertness as counting Annabel’s hiccups.

At least now she knew where he was. Their last few weeks in Vermont—this was the irrational, crazed, desperate Eliza—she had been convinced that what was keeping him in New York was a girl. She’d imagined him sleeping over at this girl’s place. Showering with her, eating breakfast with her. He was going to stay in New York, or he was going to run away with this girl. He had disappeared. He had left Eliza with a f*cking kid to raise.

But there was no other girl. There was no other woman. The preposterousness of this phrase was proof in itself. Here was her husband, a few feet away.

Still, the oily residue of this worry coated her stomach. She rolled onto her back. Just sleep. Sleep!

Eliza swung her legs over the side of the bed. She struggled to stand up, and the mattress emitted a rusty groan. Johnny stirred, smacking his lips, then resumed his snoring. In the dark, Eliza waddled over to the army duffel on the floor, squatted, and slowly, slowly, unzipped it. Johnny continued to snore. She sank her hands into the contents of the bag. His sketch pad, and something heavy, like a glass vase. What she mostly felt were Johnny’s clothes, still slightly muggy from the hot car. She had the queasy feeling she was wrist-deep in the guts of a warm-blooded, barely dead animal. She didn’t know what she was looking for.

The door between the boys’ room and the bathroom creaked open. Eliza snatched her hands out of the bag. After a moment, she heard another knob turning, and she remembered suddenly the goose bumpy thrill of being in another bathroom, with Teddy, listening to someone try the handle on the other side. Then the door between the bathroom and her room opened, too. She remained crouched on the floor, hoping the darkness would hide her.

“Eliza?”

It was Jude’s whisper.

She stood up and waited for him to pad closer. Gropingly, they found each other in the dark. She whacked him, as quietly as possible, on the shoulder. Then she took his hand and led him outside.

What the hell are you doing?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

The view from their door, glimpsed in the dim light of a moth-swarmed bulb, was of the parking lot. The Kramaro and the van were surrounded by five or six vehicles in only slightly superior condition. Beyond the parking lot and a stand of trees, I-95 rushed by.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Eliza said. “Okay?”

“Me neither. I heard something. I wanted to check the van.” At Jude’s side was a large black gun, which he was doing his best to hide.

“Jesus! Where did you get that?”

He had no place to put it, no pockets. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of boxers. “It’s my dad’s. It’s no big deal.”

“That’s McQueen?”

“Yeah. He gave it to me.”

“Jesus, Jude. What do you think you’re going to do with that thing?”

Jude shrugged. “We’re in Philadelphia. It’s got like the highest murder rate in the country.”

“So you’re going to shoot the guy breaking into the van.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Are you sure you weren’t just spying on me?”

“Spying on you. No. I was maybe checking on you. I heard someone moving around. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You mean you wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting high. Jesus, Jude!” She smacked his arm again. “You have the ears of a f*cking Indian!”

Eliza was aware that this was not the proper designation. Teddy was Indian. Gandhi, not Geronimo. Her child would be a “f*cking Indian.” She pictured her daughter’s face. Her black, almond-shaped eyes, her endless eyelashes. Powdery, cardamom-colored skin. (How Eliza missed the smell of Neena’s cooking!) Eliza knew her daughter would be beautiful, and perfectly formed; she would have her ears pierced early, the way the babies in Spanish Harlem did. This was a familiar vision. It kept Eliza company when she lay awake at night; it had limitless backdrops and Easter-hued outfits; it was not unlike the happy fantasies of any expectant mother.

But it scared her, too. It scared her that her child would look like a stranger. She slid down the wall and lowered the bulk of her ass to the ground.

“Eliza? You okay?”

“I’m okay. I’m just really tired.”

“You want something? Something to drink?”

“Yeah, a scotch.”

Jude sat down beside her. He placed the gun on the sidewalk between them and leaned against the wall. It was a balmy night, breezy enough to scatter the skirt of Eliza’s nightgown. Jude’s blue paisley boxers made her think of sperm.

“You know what fetal alcohol syndrome is?” he asked her.

“Don’t lecture me, Jude. I was kidding.”

“I had it. I mean, I have it, I guess.” He was staring into the parking lot.

“Jesus, Jude.”

“I mean, I might have it.”

Eliza had given some thought to what happened to babies when their mothers did drugs, but she hadn’t considered that one day the babies would grow up to be teenagers.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I guess I’m supposed to go to the doctor to find out for sure.”

“Maybe you don’t have it, then.”

“Come on. Look at my face.”

“What?”

Jude looked at her. He had these swimming-pool-blue eyes, even bluer than Johnny’s, with these sleepy, heavy lids. He had these outrageous freckles and a little boy’s ski-jump nose and the reddest hair she’d ever seen, just a trace of it, such a tragedy that he’d cut off all that perfectly wild red hair.

“It’s a nice face,” she said.

Nice. It was so much more than nice, but she couldn’t think of a better word. You didn’t call a boy beautiful, not a boy who was your husband’s best friend, not a boy who didn’t like girls and who went around picking fights and who you really did think was beautiful.

“Does it bother you,” she asked him, “that you don’t look like your parents?”

Jude folded his hands in his lap, then cupped his elbows with them, then dropped them to his sides. His thighs were long and pale and unfreckled, and the hair on them was a different red, ginger.

“Have you seen how bald my dad is?”

“Well, that they don’t look like you, then.”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “It would be easier if they had my dashing good looks.”

The hair on her own legs, several days unshaved—she found it impossible to shave in the shower at seven months pregnant, not to mention while sharing a bathroom with six boys—was bristly and black. She pulled her nightgown over them as far as it would reach.

“Seriously, though. Did you ever think about looking for them? Your birth parents?”

Jude shook his head quickly. “Not really.”

“Really?”

“If they wanted to find me, they could.”

“Maybe they think you don’t want to be found.”

“Well, maybe I don’t.” He thought for a while. “I guess I don’t have high hopes for them wanting to be part of my life, seeing as the ones who adopted me don’t.”

“Oh, come on. Harriet and Les love you. They’re just as screwed up as any other parents.”

Jude was staring out at the parking lot again. He said, “You know who I’d like to find instead?”

“Who?”

“Teddy’s parents. Teddy’s mom and dad. I don’t even know if she knows he’s dead. And Teddy didn’t even know if his dad was dead. He never even met him.”

“What would you do if you found them?”

Jude rubbed his head. “I don’t know. I guess I’d just decide if they were good people or not. So I’d know.”

“Well, maybe the parents who gave you up were good people, but they had to give you up anyway.”

“Eliza.” Jude swung his gaze over to her. “You’re not giving up that baby.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not.” She wasn’t lying. But she’d be lying if she said she didn’t think about it every day.

“Look,” he said, “you’re going to be fine. The baby will be fine. Look at Johnny and Teddy—they’re brothers, and they don’t look anything alike. Look at Matthew—he’s Korean, and his parents are Jewish. What’s it matter who the kid looks like?”

He was making an admirable case, but Eliza could see him struggling. They had learned only days ago, over twenty-cent tacos at San Loco, that Matthew was adopted. He’d reported this fact with perfect indifference, Tabasco sauce dripping down his chin, the same way he reported that he had two sisters, that he was from Ontario, and that his father was an orthodontist. In fact, he’d administered Jude’s braces, and Jude hadn’t even known they’d been the same Stein. Eliza had watched Jude watch Matthew. Was it possible, Jude must have been thinking, not to care?

“But what am I supposed to say,” she went on, “when people ask about her father? What am I supposed to tell her when she asks?”

There would be no pretending that Johnny, blond and blue-eyed, was Annabel’s dad. The idea seemed suddenly absurd: why would they even want to? Why not tell the truth? Why had they allowed the facts of her pregnancy to become so thickly veiled in secrecy? Fathers died all the time. They died before their children were born, or when they were babies. Fathers died in wars and accidents; fathers died of the flu while sailing across the Arctic; of aneurysms while sitting in their offices, on conference calls to L.A. Why then would Eliza allow her child to be born into shame, a particular condition the three of them, it seemed to her now, had conspired to invent?

She was jogging her charms again. Locket, star, keys, the engagement ring she had taken off when her hands began to swell, Teddy’s lucky subway token. This last she pressed between her fingers, feeling the warmth of her skin through the perfect void in the center. Something to remember him by. She knew nearly nothing about Teddy. This was what was shameful. Should she tell her daughter that?

Jude was saying something sweet and useless, about telling the truth, about love. His knees were pulled close to his chest so that Eliza could see the sculpted underside of his thigh. She had nearly exhausted herself with thinking. She could fall asleep right here, on the sidewalk, with the moths sweeping over their heads, listening to the dips and swells of Jude’s voice. Her head lolled back against the wall. She wasn’t sleeping but enjoying a half-awake dream about sitting next to a boy, and talking.

Through the white-hot month of July, the Green Mountain Boys became well acquainted with I-95. The black-hole beltway of Washington, D.C., the Richmond cathedral so close to the highway you could lean from your car and almost touch the stained glass window. In Vermont, they’d grown up without billboards, but on 95 they were as regular as cows—South of the Border, Yeehaw Junction, Café Risqué, JR. “From Brassieres to Chandeliers!” The grand, gray cities were one and the same, a cordillera of skyscrapers and bridges and no-shoulder construction lanes, an industrial plant hanging over the plain of a rust-colored bay. The air was sweaty and sweet, thick as saltwater taffy.

The venues themselves, and the places they slept, also took on a resemblance. They played two churches, a VFW Hall, the Knights of Columbus, a roller rink, a few clubs. In Atlanta, while Jesse Jackson and JFK Jr. slept at the Omni, where the Democratic National Convention was taking place across town, they stayed at the Super 8, which they learned had been dubbed the Eight-Ball Inn, for the coke outfit that ran out of a block of rooms. When they could, they stayed with friends, guys from other crews they met on the road. Once, they slept in someone’s dorm room; once, they camped out in a couple of tents in someone’s parents’ backyard. In return, the band offered free T-shirts, or copies of their record. Several nights, they slept in their cars—in cranked-back seats, in the musty roof compartment of the van. They parked under the extraterrestrial lights of rest stops, Jude’s gun tucked into the waistband of his shorts.

The money they made at shows—five- or six-dollar covers split among five or six bands of five or six guys each—barely covered gas. It would not pay for college or a Lamborghini Countach. It might cover a bean burrito. If you wanted to talk to your mom, you called collect.

The bathroom routine. Seven sets of teeth to brush, and Jude’s retainers to clean when he remembered, and Eliza’s contacts to remove from and return to their pink plastic bed. There were the politics of showers and bowel movements, of pubic hair left on the soap. Who had slept on the floor last time, and who got the sleeping bag with the broken zipper, and who had blown his load while sleeping next to whom. The hours in the car—the burn of a sun-baked pillow on your ear, the clammy perspiration of a paper cup of soda, the arguments over directions, the arguments over who got to drive, who had to drive, who had driven from Rocky Mount to Fayetteville, the gas station bathrooms, the gas station pay phones to call some guy who set up shows in Gainesville, Florida, to make sure he could fit you in. Then piling out of the car. The anxious hours before a show, the twilight rush of finding a Laundromat, finding something to eat, meeting the other bands, we played there, love your record, of giving an interview for some kid’s zine, of loading in their equipment, of skating some cobblestoned corner they didn’t know. The sound check, the merch table, the kids milling about out front, comparing new tattoos, Delph selling the X stamp he’d had made for fifty cents a hand. Then the dimmed lights. The roar, as inevitable as gravity.

Then the blackout hour. It was a sensation Jude could only imagine was like sex. If the hours beforehand were like the anticipation of a date—not Will I get a blow job? but Will there be a fight?—the show was sex itself. It was carnal, it was communal, it was religious. It was Harriet and Les’s orgy. Yes, there would be a fight. Yes, someone would misinterpret dancing for fighting, or fighting for dancing. Some jock would push some skinhead too hard, and someone would get a boot in the face. Yes, someone would grab the microphone, tongue it, and then hand it back. Mucuses would abound. Someone would dive into the crowd, and his balls would accidentally get fondled. In the morning, they would be purified. The shows purified them. Yes, it would be a night to remember.

It was in D.C.—no, Baltimore—where Jude, bleary-eyed, in the middle of the night, stumbled into the bathroom of a kid Johnny knew, above a noodle shop. They’d had dim sum after their show, and that duck sauce wasn’t sitting right. The apartment was packed tight with people. When Jude found his way to the bathroom, the door was unlocked and the light was off, and when he turned it on, four guys were crammed elbow to elbow in a ring-around-the-rosy with their pants around their knees, jerking one another off. Their eyes had been closed, and what haunted Jude later was the dreamy look on their faces, just before he blinded them with the light. They scrambled to get their pants up—“What the f*ck, man?”—except one of them, who put his hands on his hips and narrowed his eyes at Jude. “You in or out, Green?”

He was out.

He turned off the light and closed the door. He lay down on top of his sleeping bag and stayed there until the sun came up, his stomach cramping into knots, and he didn’t say a word about what he saw, not to Eliza or Johnny or Delph or Kram, who’d put the phrase circle jerk in his head in the first place. He pictured Tory Ventura in the locker room with the rest of the football team, the same retarded look on his face. There were black smudges of paint under their eyes, they were wearing cleats, the white knickers around their knees were grass stained. This is who they were running from?

On they went, to the next city, and the next. Were they any good, the Green Mountain Boys? They were fast. They were new; they were becoming familiar with their own talents. They were the band penciled in at the bottom of the flyer, the last-minute guys who rounded out the bill. They were the guys from Vermont who played New York hardcore. They were sort of Krishna-core, they were sort of radical, they were sort of backwoods, like some lumberjack crazy with an ax, all those songs about brothers and brotherhood, you had the warrior and you had the guru, you had the whole package, they were hard and they were straight and they were fast. Wicked. Even after so many nights on the road, they seemed a little amazed that they were here. They were amazed, and they were grateful, and they soaked their shirts. Those who followed them from town to town witnessed a slight but perceptible maturity of sound, a compression. They responded to one another; they began to breathe together. The singer went, “One, two, three, go!” And the band did.