I slog through the forms before I pause at my favorite question: What firearm will you be using today?

I leave that one blank. I give the forms back to the receptionist with a flurry of nervous lies. I'm so paranoid that she's already made an a.s.sessment of my true nature, my true quest, that I try to make it look like I'm a different kind of psycho than I really am.

"So, I just wanted to sign up for some cla.s.ses, or something. I'm also thinking of taking a martial arts cla.s.s. I'm really interested in the empowerment of women? I sort of think that gun ownership is a feminist issue." I almost choke on my corn-dog pomposity: certainly Catherine Bennett feels very empowered to treat women in whatever way she pleases. "Primarily I'm interested in self-defense!"

Self-defense. I say it brightly and it has that high and lonesome sound of a mammoth lie: the dog ate my homework!

"Sure," the receptionist says. She picks up the phone and presses a b.u.t.ton. "Hey, sweetie, we've got someone out front"-she pauses to smile up at me-"a nice young woman who's interested in a lesson if you've got a few minutes."

I hold up my hand and interrupt her, whispering, "No, no, I didn't mean ... right now.... I meant like, in the future. Maybe next week?"

"Sure, hon." It's unclear whether she's talking to me or the person on the phone. She pumps some lotion out of an economy-sized bottle-Jergens Shea b.u.t.ter-and smooths it over her hands.

And then there's a buzz, the metal door to the back swings open, and a bony, birdlike woman with a sporty coiffed auburn hairdo emerges, all aflutter, the sleeves of her silk blouse flashing lavender and lime-green ovals and rectangles.

As if seen though a handheld kaleidoscope, the print of her blouse fractures and turns into the paisley print of Catherine Bennett's slip. I close my eyes for a second and then open them again, trying to clear the image from my mind.

"h.e.l.lo! I'm Shirley, the range master. Tell me what I can help you with. And by the way, you're so pretty. Your hair is darling! Aren't you a doll?" She turns and stage-whispers to the receptionist, "What a living doll!"

I smile, suckered by her compliments. "Thanks. I just wanted to learn a little bit about self-defense. I just thought I would be proactive. There are a lot of burglaries in my neighborhood."

"This is the place! Did you bring your own firearm or do you want to rent one?"

I answer her question with my own: "I'll rent one? I guess?"

"We'll get it done," Shirley says.

And G.o.d bless America, I can rent a handgun simply by filling out another form and plunking down my Visa card. In my past life, the one that ended Monday, I could never have imagined a gun-rental charge showing up on my bill. The thought of the stack of unopened mail on the kitchen table gives me a burst of anxiety-last month I forgot to pay the Discover bill, a costly mistake with all the added-on fees. Even with the electric bill and the water bill paid directly out of my mother's savings account-out of my savings account-every month, there's still the problem of making sure I dig my cell-phone bill out of the stack, my home phone bill, the Internet bill. How did my mother find the time to deal with all these shockingly boring details? I have the vague memory of us in line at the courthouse last summer, my mother with cash in hand to pay for her car registration and tags, looking warm and wearied, like she felt the weight of the monotonous tasks of adult life.

Shirley punches the keypad next to the metal door and we're off and walking down a skinny corridor with Shirley leading the way; she has a slight limp.

"Post-polio syndrome," she says, turning back to me and pointing to her left leg, which is a mystery beneath her voluminous pants. She gives me a big smile.

I smile back and offer up a Post-polio syndrome! Well, what are you gonna do? shrug. The smell of hot metal makes me think of life in an iron lung, and I'm starting to lose my nerve. But then a middle-aged couple in matching kelly-green sweat suits jostle past us and in unison say, "Thank G.o.d it's Friday!"

"You two have a good night," Shirley tells them, "and don't do anything I wouldn't do!" It's as if we are at a random block party, not a narrow hallway where the couple could take guns from their Jack and Jill leather bags-his blue, hers baby pink-and blow our heads off. The social contract of the pistol range involves a great deal of trust.

"Here we go," Shirley says. She leads me into a Plexiglas stall and clamps a pair of headphones over her ears, then hands me a pair. "Dang things squish my hair down," she says. I nod. Then it's a pair of safety goggles for her and for me, and the spent-bullet smell of smoke and gunpowder. Tears sting my eyes behind my safety goggles. Because the pistol range smells like a soldering iron touching metal, like the airless room at the Parks and Rec center where my mother and I took a stained-gla.s.s cla.s.s when I was ten. The cla.s.s was on Wednesday afternoon and my stomach always hurt from the long day at school, from Caitlin P. and Kendra J. hating my hair, but soon came the smell of hot metal, the soothing voice of the pantsuited retiree who taught the cla.s.s. We made a wall hanging of a clutch of pink and purple pansies, the bright candy-colored gla.s.s encased in metal petals. My mother found it relaxing too; she loved the moment where the soldering iron touched the metal rings and the heat turned the metal rings to nougat.

Shirley hands me another clipboard, and I fill out yet another form, with my safety goggles on, as if I am in chemistry cla.s.s. Shirley explains to me that once she loads the pistol, I am to point it away from my body and her body at all times, and that I need to concentrate, that I need to pay attention. Once she takes the safety off, I need to be both focused and relaxed as I aim at the target.

Focused and relaxed: a tricky oxymoron. But I will try, G.o.d knows I will try.

Shirley turns and looks out beyond the Plexiglas. Like in a bowling alley, the expanse is a long, skinny rectangle, except unlike in a bowling alley, there is a paper target with the outline of a body at the end.

She hands me the gun and it's so much heavier than my own pink and cream one. She shows me how to hold it and how to position my shoulders to account for the weight of it; she tells me how the gun will kick a little when it is fired, and that I need to hold it steady and stay calm and pay attention pay attention pay attention.

Which is not a problem for a girl like me.

I hold my rented gun-snub nosed, black with copper flourishes-and yes, I'm amazed: last year at this time it was my mother and I, our regular life of school and work and cooking and errands and planning our year in Europe. On Monday morning it was all "Welcome to the week, people, please try to finish War and Peace for the quiz on Tuesday," and by Friday night it's shooting ranges. By Friday it's me studying the paper target-the outline of a man wearing a suit-before I slowly pull the trigger, my forefingers flexing slowly, slowly, unsure of how much pressure is needed to make it happen. By Friday it's Shirley letting loose with a low whistle the first time I fire the gun and rip the radiant center of the paper target, the circular black heart. I feel the shot radiate inside me, shocking my sore rib. I get my latent a.s.skisser's thrill from Shirley's approval. "You're a natural, girl."

And so I have talent for this. I shoot for fifteen minutes-it's best to keep it short the first time-and then it's a flurry of signing papers to give the gun back to Shirley, and her telling me to sign up for the cla.s.ses, and giving me her pink business card embossed with a gun and a chrysanthemum and fancy font: Shirley Campbell-Price, Range Master. And it's good to know that I have a talent for this. Even though I don't think I'll need more than the one cla.s.s, now I know that I could do it, can do it, would do it, will do it, the verbs so close to my heart.

And so it's all smiley thanks to Shirley Campbell-Price and of course I'll be back and bye-bye now as I drive off through the new snow-a girl with a new skill set, my mouth set in the harshest dog smile, so dry that my top lip hooks on my gums-to Woodrow Wilson High School.

So many lost moments! My mind in OCD overdrive as I cruise down the highway. So many times I could have said something! I think of seeing Alecia and her mother at Target, how her mother said that Catherine Bennett was "tough but good!" Why didn't I turn to her and ask, "Are you on crack, my good lady?"

Alecia's misguided mother.

In the cart, she had a package of Blendy pens tucked under a box of Cheerios, and I thought that later she might surprise Alecia, maybe tuck the pens under her pillow or put them in a craft cabinet, where Alecia would randomly find them and shriek in delight. But what good was her mother's kindness if she was going to be so duped? Did she not have an ounce of intuition, a bit of motherf.u.c.king horse sense?

And, for that matter, why didn't I tell my own mother how Mrs. Bennett treated Alecia when I had the chance? In that dreamworld chasm between the first day of school and the day my mother was killed? Because I could see it on the first day of cla.s.s, Mrs. Bennett's peculiar interest, her savage joking: "Alecia! Sit right here! Alecia, I'll have to keep my eye on you, won't I?"

My mother hated a bully more than anything; surely she would have been outraged by Mrs. Bennett's behavior. My mother would have told Alecia's mother. My mother would have done something to help. Wouldn't she? Do something? Have done something?

The sadness of tense yet again as I turn into the student parking lot at Woodrow Wilson, hoping there are a few cars, a few people meeting up before they head out into the night. But the parking lot is dead, there's nothing and n.o.body, no weed-smokin' stragglers, there's just me, suddenly missing my locker, remembering things I left behind in that metal tomb. In my mind's eye I open my locker-right, 11; left, 14; right, 8-and see a bruised banana on the top shelf drawing gnats in the marshy semidarkness, a tube of hair gel, chocolate-brown eyeliner, a Diet c.o.ke, a stack of random school papers, and in the rectangular heart of my locker is a black boiled-wool cardigan from the sixties, and a soft, fabric-covered book that is my journal for English cla.s.s, my history book, a heart-shaped mirror with a sticker that says WHO YOU LOOKIN' AT?

It's the journal that gets me, the journal my mother made for my birthday, a journal that involved a trip to the heirloom fabric store-a print of red Lenten roses, a blank journal purchased at the dollar store, and a glue gun. In the cold car I close my eyes and hear the sweet shear-shear-shear of her sewing scissors cutting the fabric, and my insides feel warmed and softened, and so I sit with my caramelized heart and my chilly hands on the steering wheel before I open the glove box.

I take out my gun. I tap it against my window. And look out at the school. Surely they must be wondering where I am. Not overly concerned, that much I know. But in the way of pa.s.sively waiting: Will Sandinista ever come back to school? Is she going to tell anyone this happened? Did the teacher hurt Sandinista when she kicked her desk? Of course, the only adult who knows anything about that is Mrs. Bennett herself, and my guess is she isn't terribly worried about my welfare.

I push the mouth of my gun into the pa.s.senger seat for a second. It leaves a soft oval indentation on the gray fabric. I do it again. The fabric is mottled with stains and spills: lipstick, coffee, blue pen, carrot-ginger soup, strawberry smoothie. My mother longed for leather; she rued the thrift of the car's original owner.

Even though the gun is unloaded, the bullets safe in their box in the glove compartment, I imagine the gun accidentally going off, how it would give the wrong impression.

The school would be sweetly official: Sandinista has a record of skipping school, so we weren't terribly concerned when she missed a week. And here the school would be correct, because my mother had a loose policy about school attendance, her thought being that if she homeschooled me, I would never have to go to school, so what was so wrong about a girl taking a day off to go to the museum, or to read J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories, or to go for a hike during September's monarch migration? Plus, the school would have a pretty big out: Her mother died in the fall. Naturally she was upset. Apparently she never recovered. All the while relief warming the duplicitous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like whiskey straight from the bottle. Ahhh, in front of a bonfire on a winter night: Now she won't complain. Not that she mattered. But still, now we are in the clear. That warms the old bones! Such a troubled girl, such bad luck! Well, maybe she's in a better place.

Ha! Go f.u.c.k yourselves. I'd never do it.

My mother told me each and every night of my life: "There will never be anyone more precious to me than you, Sandinista. I love you more than anyone in the universe." The saccharine burden of it annoyed me.

I pop my gun back into the glove box. I love you more than anyone in the universe. I put on fresh lipstick-a matte brown-pink called Ashes of Roses-and press my lips together. I give myself a crazy smile in the rearview mirror to check for lipstick tracks. I clear my throat as if I'm about to make a speech. I love you more than anyone in the universe.

And then I drive home, slowly and carefully, as if I'm a chubby suburban mom in sweatpants driving a van with a Baby on Board sign in the window; over the icy patches I go, slowly and surely, as if I'm worth being saved.

SAt.u.r.dAY.

G.o.d'S GUIDE TO GETTIN' IT ON

Sat.u.r.day used to be the best day. My mom and I would go for pancakes and heavily creamed coffee at the diner, and then we would hit the thrift stores, the library for travel books, the grocery stores, a matinee, maybe popcorn and pie for dinner, sometimes a fancy dinner-my mother tying on her red and orange Ugandan ap.r.o.n and making pad thai and lemongra.s.s soup, and then having friends over for Scrabble or going out into the night for more adventure, a concert, a drive under the stars. It was always the longest day, the most packed day of adventure, of the pure pleasure of no work or school, a day so reliably lovely that it would always inspire the Sunday blues.

But. Good-bye to all that.

Stepping out of my car on Thirty-Eighth Street, I have the jittery, dirt-gray feeling of no sleep and no phone calls and too many cigarettes. But at least I have the solace of work, if work is a candied shop with gleaming oak floors and racks of lovely clothes. And of course there is Bradley, Bradley taking the money, Bradley judiciously mocking those and only those who severely deserve it, Bradley who is reliably kind to the polite, to the downtrodden. And he has a lot of work to do, too, what with being the unwitting juxtaposition for the doom of my unringing phone, that seismic quiet, for Catherine Bennett, and for my whorl of pink-gun thoughts. My perpetual Oh! What's a girl to do, what's a girl to do! Well, to answer my own question, I suppose I could pay attention; I could sit up straight and listen carefully. I could look all the shining and heavily deluded people of this world in the eye and smile!

And now I am the proud owner of this brilliant little epiphany, which really should have been clear from the onset to anyone with a pulse: I know the school will not call. And it burns burns burns, but still I have something. I think of the words highlighted in my mother's white leatherette Bible from St. Scholastica's: I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you.

Because I have a gun in my glove box, and my eyes are open, people, open, though weighted with heavy mascara, my long lashes fluttering like texturized spider legs. I wear a short skirt with irregularly s.p.a.ced pear-green squares and arrows on a creamy tweed background, a black mohair sweater with a keyhole neckline (the black camisole beneath rescuing me from hoochie territory), black opaque tights and some big-a.s.s shoes: four-inch platforms that give me the buoyancy of a moonwalker and pinch my baby toes, those poor little piggies that went wee wee wee all the way home.

The shop is busy-Sat.u.r.day busy-which means no lunch hour, which means just Bradley zipping out the back for weed patrol and me eating a few poisoned circus peanuts before I smoke a cigarette out front. Henry Charbonneau is driving through obscure towns, hitting the estate sales with his new lovah, so this Sat.u.r.day is just Bradley and me and the Pale Circus makes three. And despite my bleak week there are moments of real happiness: listening to Bradley hum John Henry was a steel-drivin' man as he rings up a studded leather jacket; watching a gray-haired woman bring her hand fluttering to her neck with delight when she steps out of the dressing room in a violet-blue c.o.c.ktail dress she swore would make her look just ridiculous.

But always there is the metal sh.e.l.l of my dread, my heart a bronzed baby bootie of f.u.c.k me f.u.c.k me f.u.c.k me.

By afternoon I lose my resolve to be cool and realistic; I lose my vibe of the school will not call and that is okay, or, that it really is not okay at all, but like many a morning gin drinker, G.o.d has granted me the knowledge to know the difference between what I can change and what I cannot change or whatever that alcoholic wisdom is.

A girl with an auburn bob tries on a dove-gray dress with a fitted bodice that flares into layers and layers of moth-eaten tulle buoyed by a crinoline. When she looks at herself in the three-way mirror it is with pleasure, her eyes widening slowly, as if to modestly say: Well, now. Wow. She smiles. Her teeth are the ruined oyster gray of a bulimic, and I am sad to see that she is a cutter, sad to see the thin raised scars striping her calves and inner arms.

Bradley is squatted down, straightening shoes so that they are equally s.p.a.ced. He looks up at the girl in the gray dress and says, "Oh, that is great on you. Just great." And it's the second heartfelt great that gets us both-the girl looks stricken and I know for sure that his kindness is doing something to my own heart, trying to tamp down both my sorrow and my girl-with-the-gun-in-the-glove-box bravado. And so I wonder-and I can tell that the girl wonders too, her face private and pensive-can the semi-okay people of the earth not build some kind of army? Could we live in a commune, a cloister, protected from all the world is so quick to offer up?

My mind is hazy and soft, as if lined with toxic velveteen, and the hours, the hours, all the f.u.c.ked-up or sublime hours, go too fast. Soon it is six o'clock and Bradley locks up and that's all there is, there isn't anymore-except for me wishing and wishing I had a cot in the back room.

I Windex and I clean the bathroom; I bag the trash and I straighten the racks, Swiffer the floor and dust the baseboards. Bradley does the cash register totals, his hand one with the calculator b.u.t.tons as he adds up the checks, little pastel flags zipping between his fingers. He looks up at me and says, "Are you doing anything tonight?"

" 'Washing my hair,' she said coquettishly." I twirl the feather duster in my hands, a peac.o.c.k's swishing tail of silver and black and cobalt blue.

Instead of laughing Bradley merely gives me a rueful little smile.

I shrug. "I never do anything. Why?"

"I need a hit."

"Really?" I say. "Thinking of ... a hit of ... moi?" I twirl the feather duster again, but this time it is quite lame, a forced and awkward gesture.

"Yeah, baby," he says, plunging an imaginary hypodermic needle into the crook of his arm while making Bambi eyes at me.

"You'll have to try something in a different vein, no pun intended. I'm not interested in a shopgirl romance."

Bradley smiles but there is something dry and tired about our shopgirl humor, the jokey facade. The backbone of our forced humor is shrinking away, an osteoporosis of good cheer. I move the duster over the cash desk, over the cash register.

"I need my Jesus-hit."

"Oh."

Bradley rubber-bands the checks; he puts them in the bank bag with the cash. Henry Charbonneau will go to the bank first thing Monday morning; Henry Charbonneau is the moneyman.

"I know it's weird to ask someone to go to church with you, it's all evangelical and s.h.i.t. Just so you know: I don't even believe in G.o.d. I'm a cultural Catholic to the extreme."

I steal a look at the crucifix tattoo on his thumb. That's a lot of culture, I think.

"But if you're not doing anything else tonight-"

"Bradley, I'm not. I never do anything."

Bradley locks the doors of the Pale Circus and we are out into the world, which has the cold, stinging look of Hey, Mom, I think it's going to snow. That old hurtful dreamscape. I daydream a brighter snow day, a snow day where the children laugh and play and Frosty does not melt away, where the mothers live forever and where there is hot chocolate and warm shortbread and the hard-a.s.sed individuality of snowflakes, their ephemeral p.r.o.nged crystals.

Except I know that Catherine Bennett would ruin the snowy dreamscape of winter wonderland, that she would appear in her beige snow boots and nylon parka and yell out to Alecia Hardaway, Alecia, yoo-hoo! Alecia! What is the substance that comes from the sky? It rhymes with "toe"! And there would be Alecia in a striped stocking cap sprouting a festive ta.s.sel. She would be squinting as the snowflakes landed on her face. Alecia would knit her holly-green gloved hands together and try to puzzle it out.

I feel more mentally ill than usual and realize that I've had nothing but coffee, cigarettes and germy candy for the past twenty-four hours, that I'm not only internally jittery but physically trembling. When Bradley asks if he can drive-well, precisely what he says is "I'm good to drive," with a solemn nod-I am grateful to get in on the pa.s.senger side, to have a different point of view.

Mostly I like to be the person who is not in charge.

And so Bradley drives, and the car heater kicks on, and I am warm and sleepy, traveling with a safe person. I close my eyes and have the fantasy that Bradley is an escaped convict who is kidnapping me, and how completely, completely great that would be: Route 66, diners with strawberry malts and fat, crisp onion rings, motels with flamingos and vinyl lounge chairs arranged in a listless pattern around drained swimming pools, a homicidal front-desk clerk with a lazy eye working crossword puzzles. It would be entirely preferable to summer vacation, to burned noses and the hot, webbed plastic of the lounge chairs biting our bare calves. Bradley and I would sit in our winter coats by the empty pool, reading and daydreaming and smoking, watching the snow fall.

But wait, look who's ruining our bliss: there stands Catherine Bennett at the outdoor vending machine, wiggling her dollar bill into the silver slot, working hard for a stale Mars Bar.

I must doze off for five full minutes or more, because when I open my eyes, we are off the interstate and driving slowly through Mission Hills, an old-money suburb with Tudor houses sweet as fairy-tale castles. When I watch a black Lab being chased through a snowy yard by happy doll-children in colorful ski gear, I'm disgusted and envious.

"This neighborhood is really lovely, in a completely bourgeois way," I say. "It shows how capitalism works beautifully for the top tier of society." The words just pop out, and I realize this is precisely the freelance social commentary my mother indulged in: basically correct, though vexingly self-righteous.

"Thanks." Bradley chuckles.

"What?"

He drives a half block and then points to a cream and red brick Tudor on the left. "That's my house."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" We both crack up at my faux pas. I wonder, though, about Bradley: he seems not just a mere college guy home from the dorm, enjoying the aesthetic pleasures-I imagine a library inside, a stone fireplace, many a built-in walnut bookcase-in his family home.

The snow starts again, a breezy powder on the windshield fine as baker's sugar. When I squint, I see my mother lying on her stomach on the hood of the car. With her chin resting on one hand and her feet crossed, she looks as casual as if she is stretched out on the living room floor watching TV. My mother smiles at me, snow glittering her dark hair, the briefest veil of diamonds.

The Clash song "Train in Vain" comes on the radio, and Bradley says, "Sooo, Sandinista, tell me, do you feel a spiritual connection to Joe Strummer? Since your mom clearly picked the name for a reason and probably not just because she liked the song, but ... wait!" He turns and does a dramatic double take.

In Darth Vader's breathy evil voice he says, "Sandinista, Joe Strummer is your father."

"Nope," I say. "I mean, he could be, for all I know. But since Joe Strummer is dead, it's kind of a losing deal either way."

"Right," he says. He glances in the rearview mirror, looking troubled by this new information. "I kind of wondered, just being at your house. I didn't see any pictures of men-"

"Does Johnny Depp not count? Did you not see the vintage 21 Jump Street poster on the back of my door?"

"Oh, he counts; he counts double."

As we pull up in front of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception-my mother called it Our Lady of Mercedes-it seems that I might be inherently Catholic, because I am more than a little okay with the whole idea of an immaculate conception, of holy sperm and egg scrambled in that great petri dish in the sky-it is, in fact, my preference to the idea of my mother hooking up with a guy at a Cure concert.

Bradley is making a sharp right into the church parking lot and I am sad to be done sailing along the snowy streets, but here we are: the steeple shooting up into the gray sky, the tasteful red brick, the arched windows covered with a milky gray substance. All around us families are getting out of their SUVs and sparkling charcoal-gray wagons, a tableau of shiny swinging hair and dark wool coats and gleaming teeth. Everyone is white. If not for the upscale vibe, it could be a Ku Klux Klan rally. The Catholic church in my neighborhood is Our Lady of Guadalupe, so I am not used to this sea of white Catholics slip-sliding across the parking lot. They grab hands like strings of cut-paper dolls before they take hold of the handrail and parade up the stone steps.