Ten Thousand Saints (41 page)

“Jeezum,” said Kram, who was standing in the kitchen, eating breakfast. His hand was stuffed into a box of cereal as if into a mitten. “Where are
you
guys going?”

In the subway station, rather than jumping over the turnstile, Johnny deposited a token for her, and then another for himself. She didn’t mind that, on the train, instead of talking to her as Jude would, he read a discarded copy of the
Post
. They appeared as ordinary as any other young couple on the subway—the husband looking sternly at his newspaper, the pregnant wife beside him peering into her compact. One of the ads at the top of the subway car was for a women’s hospital. In it, a woman with her eyes closed held a newborn to her shoulder. The mother looked wise and serene, as though she’d been injected with some celestial barbiturate. Eliza wondered if Johnny had chosen a doctor from this hospital and hoped he had.

By the time they got out at Astor and climbed the stairs to the street, Eliza was exhausted. On the walk east across St. Mark’s, she had to stop to rest in the shade. They passed a police car parked on the street, and on the next block, two more. At Avenue A, police vans and trucks blocked the entrance to Tompkins. Beyond them, a herd of cops milled inside the otherwise empty park.

“Where are all the homeless people?” Eliza asked.

“Where do you think? They kicked them out.”

They continued walking across Seventh Street now, past the other people who’d stopped to see what was going on. Some of them were trying to get the cops’ attention; two men hanging over the fence were chanting, “Pigs out of the park!”

“You guys going to be here tomorrow night?” Johnny asked them.

“You know it, Mr. Clean.”

“What’s going on tomorrow night?” Eliza asked, her shoes pinching her feet.

“We’re demonstrating. I want you to steer clear.”

“What are you demonstrating against?”

She stopped to catch her breath, and after a few steps Johnny turned around. “Eliza, this park is home to a lot of people. They just got kicked out of it.”

“But they’re not supposed to be there.”

Johnny spit out a laugh. He looked at the park and shook his head. “Where are they supposed to be?”

They said nothing else as they finished their walk. Twice, Eliza slowed in front of one of the more attractive buildings on the street, one with scrollwork or arched windows, hoping this was it. The building they finally stopped at was between C and D, around the corner from Johnny’s old place. The plywood in the two first-floor windows gave the building a sleepy expression. Across one of its closed eyelids, red letters spelled
HOME SWEET HOME
. Johnny did not smile at this as he nudged a toppled bicycle out of their way with his shoe. They climbed all five flights of stairs.

“You weren’t kidding,” said the landlord who buzzed them in. “This girl’s got one in the oven.”

For the first few minutes in the apartment, Eliza’s imagination worked hard to transform it into an acceptable place to live. It was an airy, tall-ceilinged space, probably a factory converted at some point into a loft. The walls were indeed brick, and the graffiti could be painted. The broken windows could be replaced. She tried to picture herself with a broom, and Johnny with a hammer, the two of them building a home here. In the kitchen, the cabinet doors and drawers had been removed, and Eliza found their blackened remains in the middle of the charred floor, beside a bare mattress and a single spoon.

Johnny came up behind her and put a hand on her waist. “A little scummy, you think?” he said into her ear. His voice, and the way he leaned close, were conspiratorial, creating for a moment a private space between their bodies. She gave him a thin smile, relieved somewhat, her heart quickening at the same time.

“You ain’t going to find lower rent in Alphabet City,” said the landlord, hitching up his pants.

Johnny asked, “You got electricity in this place? Hot water?”

“Hell you think?” said the landlord. “My brother let the place go off the grid, but now that I been taking over, this place is certified.”

“Richie go back to Rikers, or what?”

“I don’t know where he is, tell the truth.”

Johnny said he was sorry to hear that.

“You’re the kind of kid I want to get in here, Mr. Clean. We need to clean this neighborhood up.”

“I don’t know about that,” Johnny said. “I kind of like it the way it is. What’s the rent again?”

Eliza stood still while her husband negotiated, unable to articulate her state of disgust, betrayal, and now boredom. Was he really agreeing to take this place? They were talking about a deposit, keys. “I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said and walked down the five flights without stopping.

Outside she sat down on the steps. In the bright daylight, Eliza could see a spiderweb strung across the bent spokes of the bicycle, and a tortoiseshell spider tightroping across it. She was studying it so raptly that she didn’t see the woman running down the street until she was quite close. It was a homeless woman she recognized from Les’s neighborhood, red-haired, emaciated, and naked. She ran in a shuffling sort of way, as if her ankles were shackled, and on her face was a look of not fear or desperation but the benign concentration of any New York jogger. Not until she passed, revealing her profile, was it clear that she was pregnant.

T
here’s no lease,” Johnny told her as they walked to their next appointment. “We could just stay there month to month, until we find a better place.”

“I don’t know why we can’t just stay at Les’s.”

“Because we’re not taking any more handouts from Jude’s parents, that’s why.”

Eliza said nothing. Her feet were killing her.

“I didn’t sign anything. If you want, we can look some more.” She thought he said this with some resentment. She stopped on the corner of East Sixth, removed one shoe, then the other, and handed them both to Johnny. The sidewalk was hot, but it was a miracle on her feet. If she was going to live in that apartment, what did it matter if she walked barefoot through Alphabet City?

“Where’s the doctor’s office?” Eliza asked, following him around a corner. She wanted to be in a clean, cool exam room, in a paper gown, the reassuring hands of a doctor on her belly.

“It’s close. Bleecker and Mott.”

“It’s a real doctor, right? Not some guy you know?”

They slowed as they neared Johnny’s old apartment. Eliza barely recognized it. The building was covered with scaffolding, and a pair of trucks was parked at the curb. From inside came the sound of hammers, a saw; two men in hard hats hauled a bundle of two-by-fours into the third-floor window. Johnny watched them with what looked like regret.

“Your old place was better than that dump,” she said. She couldn’t help herself.

Johnny kept walking, and Eliza followed. “Maybe I can see about getting it back. Now that it’s going to be a luxury condo, it might be good enough for you.”

“Luxury condo? I doubt it.”

“What do you want, Eliza? The Christadora? You want a doorman?”

“I don’t want a doorman. I just don’t want a crack house.”

“Just because some squatters lived there doesn’t mean it was a crack house.”

Eliza’s bare feet slapped the sidewalk. “Do you know how hypocritical you are? You call yourself straight edge, you call yourself
Mr. Clean,
and you’re friends with a bunch of junkies and drunks? Who live in that
filth
?”

“So I should turn my back on them? We should just throw them out of the neighborhood like trash?”

“Don’t blame me. I didn’t make up the fucking curfew. I just don’t want my kid playing in a sandbox full of human turds.”

They were walking briskly, not looking at each other. “You worried you’re going to catch the cooties, Eliza?”

“It’s called AIDS, Johnny.”

What were they even talking about? Eliza had only a vague sense, picked up from slivers of the news, from dinner parties with her mother’s friends, that AIDS was seething in the lower quadrants of her city—the gay neighborhoods, the junkie neighborhoods, those unshaved regions of New York’s anatomy that she didn’t quite care to inspect. She couldn’t help that it didn’t concern her, and she was not prepared for the intensity of loathing on Johnny’s face. He walked on, even more briskly now, swinging her shoes.

“Do you even know anyone with AIDS, Eliza?”

“No.” It hadn’t occurred to her that this was something to be ashamed of. Or that Johnny himself might know people with AIDS. “What, you want a medal for every friend with AIDS?”

Now Johnny stopped in the middle of the street. First Street and First Avenue. She’d never been on this corner before. It felt like the nerve center of the city. The muscle in Johnny’s jaw hardened, and his hands tightened around her shoes. For a moment, she expected him to hit her with one of them. She almost welcomed it.

“You’re a stupid girl,” he said quietly, looking her in the eye. “You don’t know one goddamn thing.” Then he turned and crossed to the sidewalk. Eliza trotted after him.

“I don’t need this shit!” she said, catching up. “I don’t need your help.”

“Fine, Eliza. I have other things to worry about. If you don’t need my help, go home and call your mom.”

“Maybe I will.” Why not? He was the one who said her mother couldn’t force her to give up the baby.

“Wonderful. Enjoy your trust fund. I hope you sleep tight in your eight-million thread count, Egyptian cotton—”

“I haven’t
slept
since I was fifteen.”

“What does—”

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m pregnant! I can’t sleep.” She stopped walking, exhausted. “I just
lie
there.” Her voice was small. She grabbed two fistfuls of sweaty hair. She wanted to pull it out at the root. “I just lie there,
thinking
. . .”

“Put your shoes on.”

“I
can’t,
” she moaned. “My feet are the size of—”

“Put your shoes on, Eliza.” He dropped her loafers on the sidewalk. “We’re here.”

She looked up at the yellow brick building in front of them. The small sign that hung beside the entrance said
PLANNED PARENTHOOD MARGARET SANGER CENTER.

“This is it?”

Still barefoot, she padded over to the door and peeked in. The glass was cool on her hands. Inside were the same front desk, the same metal detector.

Your handbag, miss.

It seemed like a long time ago. On the way to the clinic in New Jersey, she had been sick in the bathroom on the train. What was growing inside her had made her sick. Or what she was about to do had made her sick. If she had handed over her bag, if she had walked through the metal detector.

“Don’t tell me you’re too good for Planned Parenthood.”

“I’m not going in. Not here.” She spoke quietly, and Johnny matched his voice to hers.

“Eliza, I know you’ve been doing drugs, and I don’t want to know how much, or what kind. You’ll be lucky if that baby doesn’t have brain damage. You are going inside.”

They were standing very close. Eliza could see the beads of sweat above his lip. Then the door to the clinic opened, and they stepped out of the way. Johnny hurried to hold it while a girl stepped out. She was alone, not visibly pregnant. Johnny and Eliza watched as she walked to the curb, put on a set of headphones, and lit a cigarette. Perhaps she was waiting for a ride.

To Johnny, Eliza said, “I was going to get an abortion. I could have.”

This did not seem to surprise him. But saying it aloud brought the nausea rushing back. Her body was boiling hot, but her arms were trembling with goose bumps. Johnny was still holding open the door, and the air-conditioning rushed out at them.

“Do you know why I didn’t?”

He let the door fall closed. His face was drawn. He already knew, but he didn’t want to hear her say it.

“The same reason you married me. Because your brother’s dead.”

“Eliza—”

“If he was alive, I wouldn’t be stuck with this baby, and you wouldn’t be stuck with me.”

She turned and walked to the curb, where the other girl was waiting. A taxi passed by, and Eliza raised her arm, but it kept driving.

“Eliza, where are you going?”

Another taxi approached, and this one slowed for her.

“Take your shoes!” Johnny rushed over and held out the loafers, one forefinger hooked inside each heel. She didn’t want them. She didn’t want anything from him.

“Give them to one of your friends,” she said, and got into the car.

J
ohnny walked south.

He dropped the shoes in a trash can and kept walking until the island ended and the water opened before him. It was blindingly white. Far across it, the ferry floated on its surface, life jacket orange. Now he wished he’d kept the shoes so he could throw them into the water. He wanted to throw something into the water, but he had nothing to throw.