“In the end it didn’t matter how much I had, I could always smell her all over him, her cheap perfume and cigarettes. In the end, he didn’t even try to hide it from me. The signs were everywhere.”

“Ma—”

“He had the gall to tell me I was the one who needed help, can you imagine? After I sat up with you all those nights. I took you to church!” She jerked her head upward, throat tendons stretching the loose flesh in webs. “How you cried for him, Stevie, night after night, wanted him to come home. It got to the point where you couldn’t sleep unless I…”

“Unless you what?”

“Nothing.” She turned slowly around, dragging her IV pole on its squeaking wheels. Calhoun caught up to her.

“Unless you what, Ma?”

“I only gave you little sips,” she said. “Just enough to make you sleepy. Some nights it took more than others.”

“For how long?”

“Go ahead, blame your mother. That’s the thing now, isn’t it?”

“For how many nights, Ma?”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault poor little Stevie needs to be drunk by sunset just to make it through the night.” One crooked eyebrow, badly in need of plucking, arched up. “Poor little Stevie, tell yourself it’s not your fault. Even if poor little Stevie had been sober tonight it wouldn’t have mattered. That doctor would have taken his keys anyhow.”

Calhoun shook his head. “What doctor?”

“Oh, please. Why do you think he wanted you in that room with him tonight, because you were so important?”

“Why would Dr. Walker take my keys?”

“You’ve always been the Judas goat. Why should tonight be any different? Dr. Walker has business with Frank Snow. He knew you’d be too drunk to stop him.”

“What business?”

“What business? What business is there?” She grinned, lips splitting so Calhoun could count all her remaining teeth, two on the top, three on the bottom, and Calhoun realized that this wasn’t his mother at all. It was a cruel imposter generated by this place, the hospital itself, product of the unholy union of tonight’s events. When she spoke again, her voice was thick and suety. “The business between a man and a woman, the business between God and the devil, the business between the tree and the ax. Glork!”

Calhoun could only stare at her. It was what he’d been reduced to.

“It’s okay, honey. You don’t have to understand. Here.” She slipped her hand into the pocket of her gown, brought out a flat unlabeled pint of something brown and translucent, and pressed it in his hand. “Mama make it all better.”

“Put that away.”

“Too good for it now?” She picked up the flashlight and shined it through the bottle. “Look closer.”