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herself, an inconsolable girl.
    Sissy’s bottom lip protrudes slightly, and Eva knows that a serious tantrum is about to come on, as quick and violent as a summer storm.
She’s been brewing this,
Eva thinks.
She’s been brewing this up all day.
    Sissy gives an exasperated kick, one directed toward Eva’s shin, and one that lands, miraculously, squarely where she intends. A wave of pain travels through Eva before she swoops forward and smacks Sissy’s face. Then she catches herself. She steps back suddenly, saying, “I’m sorry baby. I didn’t really mean to do that.”
    Too stunned to answer, Sissy wipes her nose with the back of her hand.
    “For Christ’s sake,” Eva says, bending over, “don’t cry.”
    But it is too late, and crying is exactly what Sissy does, although this is not what she wanted to do at all. To cry is to admit that you are wrong, or that you have managed to find yourself somehow terribly alone. When she cries, Eva tells her to toughen up. When she cries, her mother is leaving again. When she cries, she hurts all over, for everything. She chokes back her tears, and, indignantly, says: “You’re
trying
to kill me. You’re trying to goddamn
kill me.”
    Eva rights herself. It is senseless, she knows, to argue. “Goddamn kill you, Sissy Kiss?”
    “Goddamn it all to hell,” Sissy says, and kicks at the ground. She notices a cicada crawling there. She stomps it with her foot, feeling a guilty pleasure.
    “Goddamn it all,” Eva ventures, “to
mother-fucking
hell.”
    Sissy’s eyes widen, and Eva senses Sissy will not press the limits offoul language as far as
that,
despite however much Eva might encourage it behind their father’s back.
    Eva takes Sissy’s arm and pulls her closer. With her free hand she straightens Sissy’s KISS T-shirt; it has managed to crawl up on one side, simultaneously scrunching Gene Simmons’s face and revealing skinny flesh and rib. “If I were trying to kill you, Sissy, you’d already be dead by now.”
    “Thanks a lot, jerk.”
    “Don’t be a Neanderthal.”
    “Don’t use big words.”
    Eva steps back again and looks Sissy over. Something in her chest constricts and she feels it then—obligation, a pestering love. “You’ll be fine,” she says. “No permanent damage.” She sighs the sigh of the ages and looks over Sissy’s shoulder, down the yard, and out to the alley. “Forget the chores,” she says, finally. “I’ll make up some excuse with Dad. Just go—go inside. There are franks in the fridge. I’m going out.”
    “Where?” Sissy asks. “Are you going out with Greg?”
    “Absolutely not,” Eva tells her. “And where is none of your business. And God no, not Greg. He’s a juvenile delinquent, practically. Just because
you
adore him—”
    “I don’t,” Sissy says. But she has already daydreamed what she has deemed an inevitable wedding: white streamers and pink frosting on the cake (peonies, perhaps, or roses) and Greg’s light blue tuxedo trimmed with velvet, Sissy in tulle, and her father in the back of the reception hall, passing out cigars.
    “Earth to sister,” Eva says.
    “What?”
    “Good God, never mind.” She heads inside, and Sissy follows.
    “Eva?”
    “What?”
    “Is it him? Are you going to meet
him
?” She has come to think of him as the mystery man, the man of magic—lean with a pleasant, wideface and smile. Only a week ago, he pulled up in the alley, got out of his van, and hugged Eva, who was waiting for him. He presented her with a flower he had hidden behind his back. “Is it him?”
    “I told you that’s a secret,” Eva says quietly. “You promised not to tell.”
    “I won’t tell. I’m just asking.”
    “Not him,” Eva lies.
    “Are you mad at me?”
    “Do you know you drive me crazy with questions?”
    “Are you mad?”
    “No, not really. Are you going to tell?”
    “No.”
    In the kitchen, Eva pulls out a soda from the refrigerator, opens the can, and pours a glass of