You can guess this is how men have been handling Eva's hos­tility for her whole life. Just distract her. Get through the mo­ment. Avoid confrontation. Run away.

That's pretty much how we get through our own lives, watch­ing television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our own attention. Jacking off. Denial.

Her whole body leaning forward, her little stick finger trem­bles in the air at me.

Screw it.

She's already pretty much engaged to become Mrs. Death.

"Yeah, Eva," I say. "I boned you." And I yawn. "Yup. Every chance I got, I stuck it in you and humped out a load."

They call this psychodrama. You could call it just another kind of granny dumping.

Her twisted little finger wilts, and she settles back between the arms of her wheelchair. "So you finally admit it," she says.

"Hell yes," I say. "You're a great piece of ass, baby sis."

She looks off at a blank spot on the linoleum floor and says, "After all these years, he admits it."

This is role-playing therapy, only Eva doesn't know it's not for real.

Her head still loops in little circles, but her eyes come back to me. "And you're not sorry?" she says.

Well, I guess if Jesus could die for my sins, I suppose I can soak up a few for other people. We all get our chance to play scapegoat. Take the blame.

The martyrdom of Saint Me.

The sins of every man in history landing square on my back.

"Eva," I say. "Baby, sweetheart, little sister, love of my life, of course I'm sorry. I was a pig," I say and look at my watch. "You were just such a hot tamale that I was out of control."

Like I need this shit to deal with. Eva just stares at me with her big hyperthyroid eyes until a big tear splurts out of one eye and cuts through the powder on her wrinkled cheek.

I roll my eyes at the ceiling and say, "Okay, I hurt your little woo-woo, but that was eighty frigging years ago, so get over it. Move on with your life."

Then her horrible hands come up, wasted and veined as tree roots or old carrots, and they cover her face. "Oh, Colin," she says behind them. "Oh, Colin."

She takes her hands away, and her face is hosed with eye juice. "Oh, Colin," she whispers, "I forgive you." And her face nods toward her chest, bobbing with short breaths and sniffs, and her terrible hands bring the edge of her bib up to wipe at her eyes.

We just sit there. Jeez, I wish I had some chewing gum. My watch says twelve thirty-five.

She wipes her eyes and sniffs and looks up a little. "Colin," she says. "Do you still love me?"

These frigging old people. Jesus H.

And just in case you're wondering, I'm not a monster.

Just like something in a frigging book, for real I say, "Yeah, Eva." I say, "Yeah, for sure, I guess I can probably still love you."

Eva sobs now, her face hanging over her lap, her whole body rocking. "I'm so glad," she says, her tears dropping straight, gray stuff from her nose dripping right into her empty hands.

She says, "I'm so glad," and she's still crying, and you can smell the chewed-up Salisbury steak squirreled away in her shoe, the chewed mushroom chicken in the pocket of her smock. That, and the damn nurse is never going to get my mom back from her shower, and I have to be back at work in the eighteenth century by one o'clock.

It's hard enough remembering my own past so I can do my fourth step. Now it's mixed up with the past of these other peo­ple. Which defense attorney I am, today, I can't remember. I look at my fingernails. I ask Eva, "Is Dr. Marshall here, do you think?" I ask, "Do you know if she's married?"

The truth about myself, who I really am, my father and everything, if my mom knows then she's too freaked out with guilt to tell.

I ask Eva, "Could you maybe cry somewhere else?"

Then it's too late. The Blue Jay starts singing.

And Eva, she still won't shut up, crying and rocking, her bib pressed to her face, the plastic bracelet trembling around one wrist, she's saying, "I forgive you, Colin. I forgive you. I forgive you. Oh, Colin, I forgive ..."

Chapter 9

It was one afternoon when our stupid little boy and his foster mother were in a shopping mall that they heard the announce­ment. This was summer, and they were shopping for back to school, the year he was going to be in fifth grade. The year you had to wear shirts with stripes to really fit in. This was years and years ago. This was only his first foster mother.

Up-and-down stripes, he was telling her when they heard it.

The announcement:

"Would Dr. Paul Ward," the voice told everybody, "please meet your wife in the cosmetics department of Woolworth's."

This was the first time the Mommy came back to claim him.

"Dr. Ward, please meet your wife in the cosmetics depart­ment of Woolworth's."

That was the secret signal.

So the kid lied and said he needed to find the bathroom and instead he went to Woolworth's, and there, opening boxes of hair color, was the Mommy. She had a big yellow wig that made her face look too small and smelled like cigarettes. With her finger­nails, she opened each box and took out the dark brown bottle of dye inside. She'd open another box and take out the other bottle. She put the one bottle in the other box and put it back on the shelf. She opened another box.

"This one's pretty," the Mommy said, looking at the picture of a woman smiling on the box. She switched the bottle inside with another bottle. All the bottles the same dark brown glass.

Opening another box, she said, "Do you think she's pretty?"

And the kid's so stupid he says, "Who?"

"You know who," the Mommy said. "She's young, too. I just saw the two of you looking at clothes. You were holding her hand, so don't lie."

And the kid was so stupid he didn't know to just run away. He couldn't begin to even think about the very definite terms of her parole or the restraining order or why she'd been in jail for the past three months.

And switching bottles of blond into boxes for redheads and bottles of black into boxes for blondes, the Mommy said, "So do you like her?"

"You mean Mrs. Jenkins?" the boy said.

Not closing the boxes just perfect, the Mommy was putting them back on the shelf a little messed up, a little faster, and she said, "Do you like her?"

And like this is going to help, our little stooge said, "She's just a foster mom."

And not looking at the kid, still looking at the woman smil­ing on the box in her hand, the Mommy said, "I asked you if you liked her."

A shopping cart rattled up next to them in the aisle and a blond lady reached past to take a bottle with a blond picture but a bottle of some other color inside it. This lady put the box in her cart and got away.

"She thinks of herself as a blonde," the Mommy said. "What we have to do is mess with people's little identity paradigms."

What the Mommy used to call "Beauty Industry Terrorism."

The little boy looked after the lady until she was too far away to help.