One Door From Heaven

making an effort to keep her anger sheathed and to let her stubbornness rest in its scabbard. Now she said, "Just milk, Aunt Gen."
        This evening wasn't about Micky Bellsong, anyway, not about what she wanted or whether she was self-destructive, or whether she would be able to pull her life out of the fire into which she herself had cast it. This evening had become all about Leilani Klonk, if it had not actually been about the girl from the start, and Micky had never in her memory been less focused on her own interests or needs-or resentments.
        The request for brandy had been a reflex reaction to the stress of the encounter with Sinsemilla. Over the years, alcohol had become a reliable part of her arsenal, as useful for keeping life at bay as were anger and pigheadedness. Too useful.
        Returning to her chair, Geneva said, "So, Micky, will we all be getting together for a neighborly barbecue anytime soon?"
        "The woman is either nuts or higher than a Navajo shaman with a one-pound-a-day peyote habit."
        Poking her pie with a fork, Leilani said, "It's both, actually. Though not peyote. Like I told you-tonight it's crack cocaine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, much enhanced by old Sinsemilla's patented brand of lunatic charm."
        Micky had no appetite. She left the pie untouched. "She really was in an institution once, wasn't she?"
        " I told you yesterday. They shot like six hundred thousand volts of electricity through her head-"
        "You said fifty or a hundred thousand."
        "Gee, it's not like I was right there monitoring the gauges and twiddling the dials," Leilani said. "You've got to allow me a little literary license."
        "Where was she institutionalized?"
        "We lived in San Francisco then."
        "When?"
        "Over two years ago. I was seven going on eight."
        "Who did you live with while she was hospitalized?"
        "Dr. Doom. They've been together four and a half years now. See, there's even kismet for crackpots. Anyway, the headshrinkers shot like nine hundred thousand volts through old Sinsemilla's noggin, unless you want to nitpick my figures, and it didn't help her any way whatsoever, though the feedback of lunacy from her brain probably blew out power-company transformers all over the Bay Area. Great pie, Mrs. D!"
        "Thank you, dear. It’s a Martha Stewart recipe. Not that she gave it to me personally. I took it down from her TV show."
        Micky said, "Leilani, for God's sake, is your mother always like that-the way 1 just saw her?"
        "No, no. Sometimes she's simply impossible."
        "This isn't funny, Leilani."
        "You're wrong. It's hilarious."
        "The woman is a menace."
        "To be fair," Leilani said, forking pie into her mouth as she talked, "my dear mater isn't always drugged out of her mind the way you just saw her. She saves that for special evenings-birthdays, anniversaries, when the moon is in the seventh house, when Jupiter is aligned with Mars, that kind of thing. Most of the time, she's satisfied with takin' on a joint, keeping a nice light buzz, maybe floating on a Quaalude. She even goes clean and straight some days, though that's when the depression sets in."
        Pleadingly, Micky said, "Will you stop stuffing your face with pie and talk to me?"
        "I can talk around the pie, even if it isn't polite. I haven't belched all evening, so I ought to have some etiquette points to my credit. I'm not going to miss out on one bite of this. Old Sinsemilla couldn't bake up anything this good if her life depended on it-not that she's ever likely to face a pie-or-die threat."
        "What sort of baking does your mother do?" Geneva asked.
        "She made an earthworm pie once," Leilani said. "That was when she was deep in a passionate natural-foods phase that stretched the definition of natural to include things like chocolate-covered ants, pickled slugs, and crushed-insect protein. The earthworm pie sort of put an end to all that. I'm absolutely sure it wasn't a Martha Stewart recipe."
        Micky finished her coffee in long swallows, as though she had forgotten it wasn't spiked, and though she most definitely didn't need a caffeine jolt. Her hands were shaking. The cup rattled against the saucer when she put it down.
        "Leilani, you can't go on living with her."
        "With who?"
        "Old Sinsemilla. Who else? She's psychotic. As they say