"I'll go to h.e.l.l if I kill you."

"You can confess."

"They'll throw me in prison. This time I won't get out."

"I mean confess to a priest."

"They'll blame me." She keeps patting the couch beside her, and I keep backing away.

"n.o.body'll blame you. I'm old and sick and they'll think I died in my sleep."

"No, they'll accuse me of killing you for your money."

"Who'll accuse you?"

"The cops."

"You don't have to tell them a d.a.m.n thing."

"They're smart and they've got tricks. This time they'll gas me."

"No, no, no. Listen to me, G.o.ddammit. You're making me cuss. You're making me lose my soul. Is that what you want? You want to condemn me to h.e.l.l?" she hollers. "Okay! I'll do it myself and you'll have that on your conscience because you're too selfish."

She mashes the pillow over her nose and mouth. Her arms shake, and she moans like I do.

"Stop!" I grab the pillow, but she won't let go. I lift her clean off the couch. She weighs nothing and has no strength so she loses her grip and falls to the floor. I bend down to help her up, but she comes at me like a sidewinder, hissing, "You son of a b.i.t.c.h. Gimme back my pillow!"

I run to the front door. She's on her feet now, following me. Her gla.s.ses hang c.o.c.keyed off her nose, and her fists clench to wallop me. I keep on going outside, through the rosebushes and onto the dead gra.s.s in the yard. The pillow is still in my hand. Mom hobbles onto the porch in her slippers and housecoat. The door slams behind her and she hollers, "You G.o.dd.a.m.n killer r.e.t.a.r.d. Now look what you made me do."

Up and down the block, her yelling brings people to their windows and doors. Their worried faces turn our way. Next thing they'll be dialing 911 because Mom's screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder. Then she runs at me, stepping right out of her slippers. I let go of the pillow and hurry into the trees left over from the woods where I caught frogs and lizards. Those that aren't dead are underground for winter. The creek is underground forever. But I know a path and a place to hide at the tree where I had a house, a little box that Dad nailed to the branches. It's gone now, and the hammer marks on the oak have healed over into scars, so the tree looks wounded. I catch my breath and as soon as I'm sure Mom isn't after me, I run on out the other side of the woods.

Candy

As a girl, I dreamed about becoming a nurse. Because of Maury. It never dawned on me to become a doctor. Girls didn't do that in my day. But being a nurse, I believed, I'd learn what was wrong with him and how to cure it. The closest I've come is working in a dentist's office, which at least led me to Lawrence. G.o.d works in strange ways.

When by the end of the day Maury hasn't called the office, I drive to the townhouse where Quinn's in the kitchen opening a bottle of wine with a brand new Screwpull. The label reads pinot noir, which I know means black, but the wine is ruby red. He pours himself a gla.s.s and drinks it off in a single gulp.

"Thought you were going cold turkey," I say.

"The road to home is paved with good intentions."

He sets out a gla.s.s for me, and I signal him to pour an inch. That's my limit. Since I have to pick up Maury I'm afraid to drink too much.

The kitchen's fluorescent lights don't flatter Quinn. He looks haggard, like this might not be his first drink of the day. His black-and-gray outfit, which I guess is fashionable in London, gives him the grim appearance of a funeral director.

"How was work?" he asks.

"Work's the easy part. I get to be with Lawrence."

"That's nice." Deep weariness dulls his voice.

"What about you? How'd you spend the day?" I ask.

"Hanging out at the mall. Judging by the crowd, it's a regular elephant burial ground for retirees. They loll around the fountain listening to the slow drip. I browsed at Barnes & n.o.ble, had a latte at Starbucks and made up my mind not to spend my golden years in Maryland."

"Do actors retire?"

"Not if they can help it. In England there's a tradition of dying onstage. Literally. But if you don't get parts, it's as bad as being dead already."

"You get parts," I say.

"That's another thing I did today-I called my agent. I'm up for a role in a BBC special. A trilogy of Greek plays."

"Great!"

"Maybe not so great. There's been some complaining that Aeschylus might be too depressing. Probably they'll perk up the script by putting kittens and puppies in the House of Atreus."

Now I have no doubt Quinn's been drinking.

"It won't be long," he says, "before I'm cast as an aging uncle or doddering grandfather."

"Doesn't sound bad to me. I'd like to be a grandmother." I don't add the obvious-that I'd love to have been a mother. "At least you've got that to look forward to. You could have kids, then grandkids."

His response is to pour himself a second gla.s.s of wine.

"Ever think of that?" I prompt him, even though, honestly, I've never imagined him married with children. I can't picture him in a domestic setting.

"Recently I haven't done much thinking about the future. I've been preoccupied with the past."

"I know you're writing your memoirs. But you have to live in the present."

"The past is the present, isn't it?" he asks in a voice that convinces me he's quoting somebody. "It's the future too."

I tip the wine to my lips and have to resist the urge to chug it down. This is something I hadn't counted on-that Quinn might come home and fall apart, rather than rescue me.

"I have a young girl working for me, doing research," he rambles on. "I asked her to find a literary quote about mothers who abuse their children. One from the woman's point of view."

"I thought this book was going to be about your career."

"Who knows what it'll be about? Now it's piles of notes and scenes. My researcher, Tamzin, that's her name, turned up a pa.s.sage from Faulkner. The gist of it is a woman speaking from the grave, confessing how she beat her kids to brand them as her property forever. Do you think that's what Mom had in mind?"

"Why go over it again? Half the time she doesn't even remember hitting us."

"But you remember. I do. I bet Maury does."

"I wouldn't say she abused us." I'm having trouble hiding my irritation. I take another taste of the wine, and it's warm, almost body temperature. "She was a single mother with no money and a bunch of stress and sometimes she lost her temper. That's all."

"That's enough, isn't it? I mean, it's worse being knocked around by your mother than your father."

"A man would pack a harder wallop," I remind him.

"But you don't expect it from your mother. Anyway, for me it was never about how hard she hit or how often. It was why why. What was so wrong with me?"

"Listen, Quinn, nothing was wrong with you. It was just her and her moods. It's too late to change the past. We need to discuss what to do with her now."

"You think packing her off to a.s.sisted living is the answer? That's supposed to solve everything?"

"Not everything!" My voice cracks. I lean toward him across the table and start over again quieter. "But it'll solve the one thing we have to deal with here and now."

"You want to talk about here and now? Okay, here and now, I love Mom and I hate her." He leans across the table, too, his head nearly touching mine. "I blame her and I forgive her. I'm grateful for what she gave me and I regret everything I never had."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" I explode. "This is me, Candy, your sister you're talking to. Not your researcher. Not your shrink."

Quinn's face goes in an instant from agony to absolute blankness. Unlike Mom, whose expression shows every step of anger from mild exasperation to total fury, he kills the light in his eyes and brings down the curtain.

I hold his hand. "Let's not fight. In this family, you're all I have. The only one I can talk to. I'm sorry about how you feel."

Again his response is to refill his gla.s.s, then mine. Because he's pouring left-handed, the bottle shakes and a few drops splash the Formica.

"I should call Mom," I say. "She must be finished with Maury by now." But the moment I reach for the phone, somebody bangs at the front door. So I go to answer it. A black man in sweat pants and an XXL Redskins jersey has his beefy arm around Mom's scrawny shoulders. She's shivering in her housecoat and hugging a pillow to her chest.

"Is this you momma?" he asks.

"My G.o.d, yes."

"Found her in the yard, in her slippers and such. Said she's locked outta her house."

Mom appears to be frozen speechless until she sees Quinn step out of the kitchen. "It was a mistake," she whimpers. "A misunderstanding."

"I live next door to her," the man says. "Lucky I do. She coulda caught pneumonia wandering around outside."

"I wasn't wandering," Mom protests. "I was hunting for Maury."

"Where is he?" Quinn asks.

"He ran off and I couldn't find him."

"Ran off?" I ask.

"We had an argument." She shrugs off the man's arm and shuffles into the house.

"She oughta hide a key under the doormat," the man says. "Case of an emergency."

"Thanks for your help," Quinn says.

I take Mom's hand-it's like ice-and lead her to the kitchen. She can't stop shivering. Or maybe shaking with rage. "G.o.dd.a.m.n Maury," she fumes. "He gets a bug up his a.s.s and there's no reasoning with him." Then she spots the bottle of pinot noir, and that steams her more. "Are you two drinking in the middle of the day?"

"It's evening," says Quinn, joining us. "Have a gla.s.s. It'll thaw you out."

"d.a.m.ned if I will. I had to deal with your father drunk at all hours. Now it's my kids." She removes her foggy gla.s.ses and polishes them on the pillowcase.

"What's the pillow for?" Quinn asks.

"I grabbed it when I went after Maury. I was going to slap him silly."

He chuckles. "That's not your style-a powder puff. Where's the hairbrush or that stick you used on me?"

"You're lucky I don't have it now," she snaps, but without her gla.s.ses her eyes are watery and mild.

"What were you and Maury fighting about?" I ask.

"It wasn't a fight. More a disagreement. I asked him to do me a favor. He turned me down flat and slammed out of the house."

"Did you say something mean?"

"I said, 'Do me a favor.' That's what I said."

"What favor?"

"That's between him and me." She thrusts the gla.s.ses back on and looks her normal belligerent self.

"Where did he go?"

"Into the woods. d.a.m.ned if I'd chase him there and twist an ankle in a snake hole."

"I'd better look for him," Quinn says.

"No, I'll do it," I say. "I've got a key to Mom's house. You two stay here where it's warm."

"Don't believe a word he tells you," Mom calls after me. "And bring my cigarettes when you come back."

"Anything else, Your Highness?"

"You two are crocked. How many gla.s.ses have you had?"

As I limp out to the car, my leg aches, my heart hammers off-key, my breath comes quick and shallow. The state I'm in, it's a miracle I don't swerve off the highway and into the homebound lane of traffic. Still, I'm glad I'm the one looking for Maury-and not just because Quinn's drunk and shouldn't drive. I'm afraid of what Mom said to Maury. I'm afraid the favor she asked of him is the one she's hinted at with me.

On Mom's street the other houses look lived in-lights in the windows, jungle gyms and sliding boards out front, new cars in the driveway. But hers has that zombie stillness of a "silent neighbor," one of those pretend houses where the power company stores its meters and equipment. All that's missing is a Keep Out sign with the red stick figure of an electrocuted man.

I pray Maury will be waiting, shamefaced, on the front porch. He's not. I check the broken-down Chevy Nova in case he climbed into it to escape the freezing wind. He's not there either. I leave the sidewalk and cross the lawn. The ground plays tricks on me, and I stub my boots on tufted gra.s.s.

I hesitate at the edge of the backyard thicket of blackberry and honeysuckle vines where Maury burrowed caves as a kid. In this season the dead vines drape like spiderwebs from the trees. I don't relish stumbling around in there any more than Mom did. So I stand at the edge and shout, "Maury, it's me. Everything's okay. You don't need to be scared."

I'm the one that sounds scared. Scared of the shadows in this creepy place. Scared Maury may have hurt himself. Scared of what Mom asked him to do.