She opened her eyes but didn't move a muscle for a good thirty seconds. Then she yelled out, "A lesbian! Mother of G.o.d. Frank, your daughter's a lesbian."

My father squinted at Valerie. "Is that my tie you've got on?"

"You have a lot of nerve," my mother said, still on her back on the floor. "All those years when you were normal and had a husband, you lived in California. And now that you're here you turn into a lesbian. Isn't it enough your sister shoots people? What kind of a family is this?"

"I hardly ever shoot anyone," I said.

"I bet there are lots of good things to being a lesbian," Grandma said. "If you marry a lesbian you never have to worry about someone leaving the toilet seat up."

I got under one arm and Valerie got under the other and we got my mother to her feet.

"There you go," Valerie said, all chipper. "Feeling better?"

"Better?" my mother said. "Better?"

"Well, we're going now," Valerie said, retreating to the foyer. "Don't wait up. I've got a key."

My mother excused herself, went to the kitchen, and smashed another plate.

"I've never known her to smash plates," I said to Grandma.

"I'm going to lock up all the knives tonight, just to be safe," Grandma said.

I followed my mother into the kitchen and helped pick up the pieces.

"It slipped out of my hand," my mother said.

"That's what I thought."

Nothing ever seems to change in my parents' house. The kitchen feels just as it did when I was a little girl. The walls get repainted and the curtains replaced. New linoleum was laid down last year. Appliances get swapped out as they became unrepairable. That's the extent of the renovation. My mother has been cooking potatoes in the same pot for thirty-five years. The smells are the same, too. Cabbage, applesauce, chocolate pudding, roast lamb. And the rituals are the same. Sitting at the small kitchen table for lunch.

Valerie and I did our homework on the kitchen table, under my mother's watchful eye. And now I imagine Angie and Mary Alice keep my mother company in the kitchen.

It's hard to feel like a grown-up when nothing ever changes in your mother's kitchen. It's like time stands still. I come into the kitchen and I want my sandwiches cut into triangles.

"Do you ever get tired of your life?" I asked my mother. "Is there ever a time when you'd like to do something new?"

"You mean like get in the car and just keep driving until I get to the Pacific Ocean? Or take a wrecking ball to this kitchen? Or divorce your father and marry Tom Jones? No, I never think about those things." She took the top off the cake plate and looked at her cupcakes. Half chocolate with white icing and half yellow with chocolate icing. Multicolored spinkles on the white icing. She mumbled something that sounded a little like f.u.c.king cupcakes f.u.c.king cupcakes.

"What?" I asked. "I couldn't hear you."

"I didn't say anything. Just go in and sit down."

"I was hoping you could give me a ride to the funeral parlor tonight," Grandma said to me. "Rusty Kuharchek is laid out at Stiva's. I went to school with Rusty. It's going to be a real good viewing."

It wasn't like I had anything else to do. "Sure," I said, "but you'll have to wear slacks. I've got the Harley."

"A Harley? Since when do you have a Harley?" Grandma wanted to know.

"There was a problem with my car, so Vinnie loaned me a motorcycle."

"You are not not taking your grandmother on a motorcycle," my mother said. "She'll fall off and kill herself." taking your grandmother on a motorcycle," my mother said. "She'll fall off and kill herself."

My father very wisely didn't say anything.

"She'll be okay," I said. "I've got an extra helmet."

"You're responsible," my mother said. "If anything happens to her, you're you're the one who's going to be visiting her in the nursing home." the one who's going to be visiting her in the nursing home."

"Maybe I could get a motorcycle," Grandma said. "When they take away your car driving license does that include motorcycles?"

"Yes!" we all said in unison. No one wanted Grandma Mazur back on the road.

Mary Alice had been eating her dinner with her face down on her plate because horses don't have hands. When she picked her face up it was covered with smashed potatoes and gravy. "What's a lesbian?" she asked.

We all sat frozen.

"It's when girls have girlfriends instead of boyfriends," Grandma said.

Angie reached for her milk. "h.o.m.os.e.xuality is thought to be the result of an aberrant chromosome."

"I was going to say that next," Grandma said.

"What about horses?" Mary Alice asked. "Are there lesbian horses?"

We all looked at one another. We were stumped.

I stood at my seat. "Who wants a cupcake?"

GRANDMA USUALLY GETS dressed up for an evening viewing. She has a preference for black patent pumps and swirly skirts just in case there's some beefcake present. As a concession to the motorcycle, she was wearing slacks and tennis shoes tonight.

"I need some biker clothes," she said. "I just got my Social Security check, and first thing tomorrow I'm going shopping, now that I know you've got this Harley."

I straddled the bike. And my father helped Grandma get on behind me. I turned the key in the ignition, revved the engine, and the vibrations rumbled through the pipes.

"Ready?" I yelled at Grandma.

"Ready," she yelled back.

I went straight up Roosevelt Street to Hamilton Avenue, and in a short time we were at Stiva's, parked in the lot.

I helped Grandma off and removed her helmet. She stepped away from the bike and straightened her clothes. "I can see why people like these Harleys," she said. "They really wake you up down there down there, don't they?"

Rusty Kuharchek was in Slumber Room number three, the positioning of Rusty indicating that his relatives had cheaped out on his casket. Horrific deaths and those purchasing the top-of-the-line hand-carved, lead-lined, mahogany eternity vessel got laid out in room number one.

I left Grandma with Rusty and told her I'd be back at Stiva's in an hour and I'd meet her by the cookie table.

It was a nice night, and I wanted to walk. I wandered down Hamilton and cut into the Burg. It wasn't quite dark. In another month people would be sitting on porches at this time of night. I told myself I was walking to relax, maybe to think about things. But before long I found myself standing in front of Eddie DeChooch's house, and I wasn't feeling relaxed at all. I was feeling annoyed that I hadn't made my capture.

The DeChooch half looked utterly abandoned. The Marguchi half was blasting out a game show. I marched up to Mrs. Marguchi's door and knocked.

"What a nice surprise," she said when she saw me. "I've been wondering how things are going with you and Chooch."

"He's still out there," I said.

Angela made a tsch tsch sound. "He's a wily one." sound. "He's a wily one."

"Have you seen him? Have you heard any activity next door?"

"It's like he dropped off the face of the earth. I never even hear the phone ringing."

"Maybe I'll just poke around a little."

I walked around the perimeter of the house, looked in the garage, paused at the shed. I had Chooch's house key with one, so I let myself in. There was no sign that DeChooch had visited. A stack of unopened mail sprawled across the kitchen counter.

I knocked on Angela's door again. "Are you taking DeChooch's mail in?"

"Yes. I bring the mail in each day and make sure everything's okay over there. I don't know what else to do. I thought Ronald might have come around to get the mail, but I haven't seen him."

When I got back to Stiva's, Grandma was at the cookie table talking to Mooner and Dougie.

"Dude," Mooner said.

"Are you here to see someone?" I asked.

"Negative. We're here for the cookies."

"The hour just zipped by," Grandma said. "There's lots of people here I didn't get to visit with. Are you in a rush to get home?" she asked me.

"We could take you home," Dougie said to Grandma. "We never leave before nine because that's when Stiva puts out the cookies with the chocolate inside."

I was torn. I didn't want to stay, but I didn't know if I could entrust Grandma to Dougie and Mooner.

I took Dougie aside. "I don't want anybody smoking pot."

"No pot," Dougie said.

"And I don't want Grandma going to strip bars."

"No strip bars."

"I don't want her involved in any hijackings, either."

"Hey, I'm a reformed man," Dougie said.

"Okay," I said, "I'm counting on you."

AT TEN O'CLOCK I got a phone call from my another.

"Where's your grandmother?" she wanted to know. "And why aren't you with her?"

"She was supposed to go home with friends."

"What friends? Have you lost your grandmother again?"

d.a.m.n. "I'll get back to you."

I hung up and another call came in. It was Grandma.

"I've got him!" she said.

"Who?"

"Eddie DeChooch. All of a sudden at the funeral parlor I had this brainstorm, and I knew where Choochy would be tonight."

"Where?"

"Picking up his Social Security check. Everybody in the Burg gets their check on the same day. And it was yesterday, only yesterday DeChooch was busy wrecking his car. So I said to myself he's going to wait until it gets dark, and then he's going to ride by and get his check today. And sure enough that's just what he did."

"Where is he now?"

"Well, that's the complicated part. He went into his house to get his mail and when we tried to arrest him he got a gun and we all got scared and ran away. Except Mooner didn't run fast enough and now he has Mooner."

I thunked my head down on the kitchen counter. I thought it might feel good to just keep banging it like that. Thunk, thunk, thunk Thunk, thunk, thunk with my head against the kitchen counter. with my head against the kitchen counter.

"Have you called the police?" I asked.

"We didn't know if that was such a good thing to do, being that Mooner might have some controlled substances on him. I think Dougie mentioned something about a certain package in Mooner's shoe."

Great. "I'll be right there," I said. "Don't do anything anything until I get there." until I get there."

I grabbed my bag, ran down the hall and the stairs, out the door, and jumped on the bike. I skidded to a stop in Angela Marguchi's driveway and looked around for Grandma, spotting her and Dougie hiding behind a car on the opposite side of the street. They were wearing Super Suits and they had bath towels pinned around their necks like capes.

"Nice touch with the towels," I said.

"We're crime-fighters," Grandma said.

"Are they still in there?" I asked.