He flicks a glossy eye at me, sighs. 'The home's strictest rule is non-disclosure of carers' identities. If they found out about this, I could be prevented from giving in future. I don't know if I could survive a month without visiting my special girls. It means – I'll have to move along.'

There's a stunned silence. Then my ole lady implodes. 'Well God, Lally, no, I mean – no, God…'

'I'm sorry, Doris. This is bigger than the two of us.'

'But we can disconnect the phone, change the number… Lalito? You can't walk out after this whole month of bliss.'

'Week of bliss,' corrects Lally. 'I'm sorry. Maybe if Vernon hadn't called the home, maybe if he didn't harbor such a grudge – but no. Things'll only get more challenging after I call the sheriff.'

'Shoot,' says George, 'I'd call him myself if he wasn't tied up at the Barn meeting.'

Trickles then torrents of blood and vein soak through the bottom of Mom's legs, her brownest organs sweat through her pores. In the end just these pleading eyes poke up, the eyes of a well-kicked dog. Squished Kitten even.

Leona watches her quiver become a sob, then turns to Lally. 'There's space at my place.'

'My God,' he says. 'The pure charity of this town…'

Mom's eyes pop. 'Well, but, but, the home might find you there, as well – that woman, she could just as easy find you at Leona's as here…'

'I'm unlisted,' says Leona with a shrug. 'I have call-screening and closed-circuit security.'

Mom's eyes fall to the tan-line where her wedding ring once sat. 'Well but Vernon could just as easily give that number to the patients, you saw his behavior – couldn't you, Vernon, just give Leona's number to the home…?'

'Ma, the guy's a goddam psycho, I swear to God.'

'Well see? He could call them right now, see his attitude? I think Lally and I should take a room at the Seldome for a while… Lalito? And do all those other things you want to do, around town…?'

'Tch, the Seldome's full.'

'Well but they'd always find space for me, I mean, I was married at the Seldome.'

Leona picks her bag off the sofa and fishes in it for her keys. 'Offer's open.'

My ole lady's already halfway across the room. 'What's the Seldome's number?'

Lally reaches out to stop her. ' Doris – that's not all.' He fumbles in his shirt pocket and pulls out two crumpled joints. ' Vernon didn't do such a good job hiding these.'

'Cigarettes?' asks Mom.

'Illegal drugs. You'll understand now why I can't be associated with the boy.' He throws the spliffs scornfully onto the coffee table, leaning past me to whisper, 'Thanks for the story.'

In the background you hear Leona's car keys drop into George's lap. 'I guess I'll ride with Lally. Take the Eldorado when you're ready – it'll need some gas.'

'We have a spare room,' says Betty. 'We haven't used Myron's studio since he died.'

Lally and Leona clack out through the screen into a dirty afternoon. A promise of rain on dust puffs through the door behind them. To Mom I know it smells of their sex.

'I'll be back for my stuff,' calls Lally. Mom's skin has all melted together. Her face drips down her arms onto her lap.

I run a step after him. 'How'd you know it said Gutierrez on the card, motherfucker? How'd you know it said Ledesma Gutierrez, when you didn't even look at the card?' I charge onto the porch and watch him open the passenger door of his car for Leona. Then you see the Lechugas' drapes twitch open a crack. Leona flaps a little wave towards it, from behind her back. The drapes close.

I'm a kid whose best friend took a gun into his mouth and blew off his hair, whose classmates are dead, who's being blamed for it all, who just broke his mama's heart – and as I drag myself inside under the weight of these slabs of moldy truth, into my dark, brown ole life – another learning flutters down to perch on top. A learning like a joke, that kicks the last breath from my system. The Lechugas' drapes. It's how Mom's so-called friends coordinate their uncannily timed assaults on my home. They still have a hotline to Nancie Lechuga's.

eleven

I stand on the porch this Sunday evening and try to force Mexico to appear in front of me. I tried it all day from the living-room window, but it didn't work. By this time tonight I imagined cactus, fiestas, and salty breath. The howls of men in the back of whose lives lurked women called Maria. Instead there's a house like Mrs Porter's across the street, a willow like the Lechugas' and a pump-jack next door, dressed as a mantis; pump, pump, pump. Vernon Gridlock Little.

'Lord God in heaven please let me have a side-by-side, let me open my eyes and it be there…'

Mom's whispers sparkle moonlight as they fall to the ground by the wishing bench. Then Kurt barks from Mrs Porter's yard. Kurt is in trouble with Mrs Porter. He spent all day on the wrong side of the fence from the Hoovers ' sausage sizzle, and eventually destroyed Mrs Porter's sofa out of frustration. Fucken Kurt, boy. His barks cover the creaking of planks as I step off the porch. It's a well-upholstered barking circuit tonight, on account of the Bar-B-Chew Barn hayride. A hayride, gimme a break. We don't even have fucken hay around here, they probably had to buy it on the web or something. But no, now it's the traditional Martirio Hayride.

'Oh Lord God, bring Lally back, bring Lally back, bring Lally back…'

It's been a long day. Cameras pinned me in the house since Lally left yesterday. Now they went to cover the hayride. Mom senses me approaching her willow; she sobs louder, and gets a hysterical edge to her voice, to make sure I don't miss the implication of things. A large flying bug scoots behind the mantis as I step close.

'Wishing bench is airborne this end,' I say, to break the ice. 'Like the dirt's caving in underneath.'

'Well Vernon just shutup! – you did this to me, all this – all this fucking shit.'

She cussed me, boy. Hell. I study her ole hunched body. Her hair is sucked back into a helmet again, and she wears her regular toweling slippers with the butterflies on top, their rubber wings torn off by the white cat she used to have, before the Lechugas ran it over. I'm compelled to reach out and touch her. I touch her where the flab from her back dams under her armpit, and feel the clammy weight of her ole miserable shell, all warm and spent. She cries so cleanly you'd think her body was a drum full of tears that just spill out through the holes.

I sit down beside her. 'Ma, I'm sorry.'

She gives an ironic kind of laugh, I guess it's ironic when you laugh while you sob. After that she just stays sobbing. I look around at the night; things are liquid-clear, warm and dewy, with a snow of moths and bugs around the porch lights, and distant music from the hayride.

'Papa always said I'd amount to nothing.'

'Don't say that, Ma.'

'Well it's true, look at me. It's always been true. "Just plain ungainly," Papa used to say, "Ornery and ungainly." Everyone was head of the cheerleading squad, and homecoming queen, and class president. Everyone was Betty, all sparkling and fresh…'

'Betty Pritchard? Gimme a break.'

'Well Vernon, you just know everything, don't you! Betty was class president in the fourth grade you know, and had all the bubbly parts in school plays – she never cussed or smoked or drank like the rest of us; bright as sunshine, she used to be. Until she started getting beaten black and blue by her father, whipped till she bled. So while you're all critical, and know everything about everyone, just remember the rest of us are only human. It's cause and effect, Vernon, you just don't realize – even Leona was relaxed and sweet, before her first husband went, you know – the other way.'