June 2011
Sometimes Jude thought he was dazzled in love not just with Ella, but with her mom as well. Not the same way, of course, but she made him feel protected somehow. He had liked her immediately, at the first dinner, and that feeling never changed. She acted like he was worth her while, that he might even be special. And more importantly, she treated him like family. Sometimes it was difficult, because it made him remember his own mother, and then he’d feel himself crumbling. He’d walk out of the room to compose himself, and Helen always noticed, saying something like, “Hey, where you going? I have fresh muffins here.”
“Stay over,” she’d always say, making up the couch for him, turning on a nightlight so that he wouldn’t have to stumble if he wanted water or the bathroom. For the first time in years, he had known deep, dreamless sleep.
It was summer now and he didn’t have to work, and Ella didn’t have a job either, other than Helen’s insistence that she finish her summer reading, which she had mostly done her first week out of school.
Helen gave him a drawer in a dresser for his things, so he didn’t have to worry about clean underwear. She began buying things he liked: ingredients for oatmeal raisin cookies, hard pretzels with extra salt. “Make yourself at home,” she told him, and he did, and he loved it.
Ella, though, wasn’t so happy. She was always pulling him away from Helen, grabbing for his hand at dinner, kissing him on the mouth in front of her. He tried to explain it: “It’s so peaceful with her,” he said. “I love your home.”
“This dump?”
“It’s a home. Unlike my dad’s place, it looks lived in. I love how the stove doesn’t always go on the first time you hit the gas. I love the feel of this apartment, like I belong here.” He hesitated. “I love the way your mother makes me feel. Like I’m a good person.”
“You love my mom?”
“As a mom,” he said. “I love you as my girl.”
“Your girl,” Ella said, blushing. “I can be your girl and my mom can be your mom, then.”
BEING IN LOVE made Jude careless. The world now felt so shined up, so brand new. When he returned to his townhouse the next day, his father started yelling about dishes being in the sink, about responsibility. His father’s voice had a twang to it, and Jude knew he had been drinking. He crept upstairs while his father was still shouting and closed himself in his bedroom, sprawling on his bed.
His father would eventually get silent. Then he might drink more. Or he might fall asleep. But either way, Jude was safe up here.
The drinking hadn’t always been an issue, and Jude knew it was his fault. It had started after his mother died. Jude’s father would polish off whole bottles of wine every night. And then he moved on to harder stuff. One drink. Then two and then three. Drinking had turned Andrew Stein into a person Jude didn’t recognize. Once drunk, he would become violent, tearing apart the house. He would curse and weep until he’d fall asleep with one of his wife’s dresses in his arms. As the months wore on, he began to turn his anger on Jude.
The beatings never lasted long, especially if Jude curled himself into a ball, his face protected by his arms. Sometimes his father would stop abruptly, his whole body shaking, as if suddenly realizing what he was doing. He would apologize, ashamed, and then he would try to help Jude get cleaned up, assessing the damage evenly, the way he would have considered a case. “You’re fine now,” his father always said.
People kept telling them that the grief would ease, the pain would loosen, but it never really did. Two months passed, then six, and his father was still coming apart. Andrew had even sold the Woodstock house because it was too painful to return to the place where he felt his life had ended.
One night Jude had heard his dad sobbing, cries knotted with pain. He looked from the top floor down at Andrew, who had Jude’s mother’s dress, a favorite red-and-white floral, clutched in his hands.
“Come back,” his father had cried into the dress. “Come back.”
Listening to the sobs, Jude had gone into the bathroom and pulled the blade out of a razor and sliced two horizontal cuts across his wrists. Mesmerized, he watched as the blood flowed. Then he felt two hands grabbing him.
“Jesus, Jude!” his dad said, his face leached of color. “We’re going to the hospital.”
The doctor there patched him up and asked him if he wanted to talk to someone, and all he could think was, yes, he would, but that person would be his mother.
The doctor sighed. “You know,” he said. “Life is precious. Don’t fuck it up.”
He stood to leave, lingered in the doorway, then turned. “But I don’t think you wanted to. Not really.”
“Why not?” Jude asked.
“Because if you had, you would have cut deeper.”
Defeated, Jude crept back to his father in the waiting room. He hadn’t killed himself. He had ruined even that.
NOW, JUDE STRETCHED on the bed. The house was silent. He was tired but hungry, and he made the mistake of creeping into the kitchen. His father was still there, glowering.
“Dad—” he said.
His father turned and slapped him across the face so hard, Jude stumbled, hitting his arm against the island. Jude’s father covered his own face and then began sobbing, turning away from his son.
Jude left the townhouse, limping out into a heavy rain, rolling his sleeves down to hide the new bruises that were already forming. He wanted kindness now. He wanted Ella. He wanted Helen. He wanted to be with them, but how could he go there? They’d want to know what had happened and why. They’d find out and they wouldn’t want him around anymore. He’d ruin everything all over again.
But maybe it was better to go now, to get it over with, to put a finish on it and sink back into his own misery, alone. All he knew was that he had to see Ella. He had to talk to her, to be with her, no matter the cost.
The subways were running late, and they were crowded. He stood the whole time, leaning against a pole, wet and miserable without a seat. As the adrenaline wore off, he started to feel the full weight of the damage inflicted on his body. He doubled over and hugged himself.
By the time he got to Ella’s, he was crying. As he approached the apartment building, his cell buzzed. A text from his father. Call me. Wherever you are.
Fuck you, Jude thought, and put the cell back in his pocket. He pressed the buzzer to be let in.
He climbed the stairs, wincing, and there was Ella at her door. She looked shocked to see him in such a condition, and pulled him inside. “What happened?” she cried, and he shook his head and wrapped an arm around her for support.
“Is Helen here?” he asked, newly afraid. Ella knowing was one thing, but telling Helen was another. How could he know whose side she might take? If she knew the reason for his beatings—what he had done to his mother—might she blame him too?
Ella shook her head. “She’s not here. Working late,” she said, and he grew weak with relief. She guided him to a kitchen chair.
Ella got a dishtowel and wet it, and then gently cleaned his face. “Who did this?” she asked. Then she crouched beside him and took one of his hands in hers. “It’s okay. We’ll call the cops. They know these kids in the neighborhood—”
Jude lifted his face. It would be so easy to lie, but there she was in front of him, her body leaning toward him. “It wasn’t kids,” he said.
“Adults did this?” she said, shocked. “Why? Oh my God—”
“It was my father,” he said, shaking his head.
“What?” Ella held his hand tighter.
“It’s only when he drinks,” Jude said. “My dad cares about me. He doesn’t mean to do this.”
Ella’s body seemed to harden. “Then why does he do it?”
He couldn’t answer that. He couldn’t tell her the why, couldn’t tell her the whole story because then she’d know that his father wasn’t the only monster, and she might turn from him, and he couldn’t bear that.
Jude said, “Please. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“He can’t do this to you. We need to go to the cops.”
Jude snorted. “The cops. My father’s a judge. He has the system in his pocket.”
“Maybe if they saw you. Maybe if they talked to him or saw him—”
“Saw him do what? He’s a drunk, but in the outside world no one knows he’s like this. Everyone loves him.”
“I don’t—or, didn’t,” she said. “And if they see you, no one can say this didn’t happen.”
Jude shook his head again.
“Then what do we do?”
Jude pressed his forehead against Ella’s. Here it comes. This is when it all ends. “He beats me because I was responsible for my mom’s death.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she said, and then he told her, like a test, sure this would end things, and when he was done, she leaned forward and hugged him for a long time.
“No way was that your fault,” she said quietly into his ear. “You can’t ever think that it was. And I’m so sorry. That all sounds horrible.”
“I wish I wasn’t alive,” he whispered.
Alarmed, she touched his face. “You can’t say that. You can’t ever say that.”
“I tried before.” He pulled up a sleeve and showed her the ridged marks, the scars he had told her were an accident when he was trying to carve something out of soap, just for fun. The scars she had kissed because she had believed him.
“What? Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you tell me the truth?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Because life got too hard,” he said finally. “Because I was afraid.”
“If you die, then I die, too,” she said.
“Sometimes, after he hits me, I think about killing myself, but then I think about you.”
“Keep thinking about me, and then you won’t do it. And it’s your dad who needs punishing, not you. I wish the cops would get him.”
“I could kill him sometimes,” Jude said.
“I know,” she said, smoothing his hair back from his head. “I think I could, too. I hate that he’s been doing this to you.” She kissed his face, his neck, the tips of his fingers. He leaned against her.
“Maybe he’ll stumble on the stairs when he’s drunk and break his neck. Maybe he’ll choke on a fish bone,” she said, kissing him again.
“He has a bad ticker. Maybe he’ll take too many heart pills,” Jude said. “Or his heart will give out. Nature will do what we can’t.”
“I knew something was going on with you, something deep, and I hoped that you’d trust me enough one day to tell me.”
“How?”
“Because I imagine that relationships are easy when everything is all lovely and bright. It’s when there’s real trouble that your true self comes out. Hardship, not joy, makes love deeper.” She placed a hand on his cheek. “I love your true self. I want us always to tell each other the truth.”
“Please,” he said. “Please don’t tell anyone. Not Helen. Not anyone.”
“Are you sure? Maybe she could help—”
“No. It has to be just us. You and me.”
“Just us,” she repeated. “Helen isn’t a part of this.”
They cleaned the kitchen, and then Jude slipped out, promising her he’d be okay now, that his father was done for the night.
He had been gone only half an hour when Helen came home, and there was Ella at the kitchen table, thinking about Jude.
“Everything all good?” Helen asked cheerfully.
“Everything’s great,” Ella said.
IT WASN’T, OF course. Jude’s father began to notice how often Jude was out with “that girl.” He kept warning Jude, his voice taut with anger. Now, not even the refuge of his bedroom offered him a buffer from his father’s rage.
“Get down here,” Judge Stein routinely shouted up the stairs. “I’m tired of you not listening to me.” And then things would always escalate into another beating. His father made his apologies in the form of gifts: video consoles, a ten-speed bike, a new computer. But still he would wind back to his old self and say yet again, “I don’t want you seeing that girl.”
Jude left the gifts untouched.
No matter what his father thought, Jude and Ella were meant to be together. Jude knew it. Ella knew it. Maybe Helen knew it too, but Jude never asked her. As soon as they were eighteen, they’d get married. Nothing special, just a justice of the peace with Helen as a witness, and Ella in a filmy dress that Helen would have hand-sewn especially for her. They’d buy some land upstate and have a little farm; they could even open a stand to sell their excess produce.
“We can have dogs,” Jude told her. “And cats and goats and make cheese and sell that, too.”
“How many kids?” Ella said. “Still six?”
“Two. One with your face. One with mine. Or two with your face because it’s so gorgeous. And mine is just funny.”
His father couldn’t stop them. No one and nothing could.
AND THEN, AT the end of July, Jude’s father made an announcement.
“We’re moving,” he said. “I have a new job in Philadelphia.”
“What?” Jude said. “When?”
“Early September. Right before your school starts.”
“I don’t want to move. Why are we moving?”
“I’m stepping down from my seat on the bench. They’ve hired me as dean of Carey Law School at Penn.”
“Why can’t you teach here in New York?”
“Because I don’t want to. Because we both could use a fresh start. Things will be better. You’ll see. You’ll be able to start your junior year fresh.”
“We can’t move,” Jude said, panicking, thinking about Ella.
“It’s a done deal. We’re leaving in six weeks. The semester starts right after Labor Day, but we need to get settled.”
Jude felt a dizzying shift under his feet. He tried to convince his father to let him stay here, that he could live at Ella’s, that Helen would be thrilled to have him, that she thought of him as her own son. He would continue school with his friends at Dalton.
“That’s not going to happen,” his father said dryly. “You are not her son.”
He told his father that maybe Ella could come with them, that she wouldn’t be any trouble.
“There will be plenty of other girls in Philadelphia. You’ll forget her.”
“Is this why you changed jobs?” Jude asked.
“This isn’t up for discussion,” Judge Stein told him. “This is what I want. And you and the girl are too young. This is a good move for us all.”
“That’s what you think,” Jude said, storming upstairs. His father didn’t bother to stop him.
JUDE GRABBED SOME cash he had stuffed in his sock drawer and took a cab to Ella’s. Crying the whole long way, he thought of how he’d tell her. When he arrived, she wrapped herself around him.
“This can’t happen,” she said.
“I’ll never leave you,” he told her. “He can’t make me do this.”
“We’ll talk to my mom. She won’t let you leave, and neither will I,” Ella promised. “She’ll go talk to him. He’ll listen to another adult.”
They went to Helen, who was beading a dress.
“What happened?” she said. “You look like you lost your best friend.” She put her sewing down beside her.
As Ella told the story, her mother’s face puckered with confusion.
“You could talk to my dad,” Jude said. “You could tell him I could live with you, that I could finish school here and that I’d visit him all the time—”
“Did your dad say that would be okay with him?”
Jude and Ella were both silent, and Helen sighed.
“I know he doesn’t want you two together,” she said. “He came to the apartment to tell me, in no uncertain terms.”
“What? My father came here?”
“It’s okay. It was okay. I asked him to leave,” Helen said.
“And you didn’t listen—” Ella said. “You love Jude. I know you do.”
“Yes, I do. But this is different. I can’t just take in his son without his permission.”
“What if I go live with them?”
Helen knit her brows. “I can’t let that happen.”
“We’ll find another way,” Ella told Jude.
Helen sighed heavily, her eyes full of sorrow.
THEY WENT OUT to the garden behind the apartment building. “Philadelphia isn’t that far away,” Ella said. “It’s a short train ride.”
“But it will be difficult,” Jude said. “It’ll be harder for us to spend the night together—almost impossible.” Frantic, Jude shoved his hair back from his face. “I wish he would just die.”
Ella watched him, silent.
“Maybe one of the criminals he put away will off him,” Jude said.
Ella half smiled. “That’s just in the movies,” she said.
“Or maybe he’ll forget that you aren’t supposed to stick a fork in a plugged-in toaster.”
Ella brightened. “Or maybe he’ll be walking to the car and a rabid dog will bite him.”
“He’s going to fall down the stairs,” Jude whispered.
“We’ll run away. We’ll find a way. If he touches you again, I will kill him myself. All I know is you can’t leave me.”
Plotting his death was a fantasy.
Until it wasn’t.