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But on that joyous morning, after her examination by Dr. Crew Cut, she had no idea she’d been randomly chosen for anything besides the privilege of becoming a mother. She’d gotten the all clear! She was going to have, at last, a baby! She sat up on the examining table, bare legs dangling from the mint green gown with the baby rattles pattern on it, breathing so deeply she felt light-headed, and then a nurse waltzed in and gave her a cold metal cup of pink fizzy liquid that smelled like strawberries and iron and told her to drink up quickly, that it was a vitamin cocktail to keep her baby healthy!

In her mind, many times Marylou has said, “No thank you,” or asked, “What, exactly, is in this so-called cocktail?” Or thrown the drink in the nurse’s face, screaming obscenities, or leaped on the nurse and forced her to drink it, or just jumped up and ran, bare assed and barefoot, out of the examining room and down the hall and out of the hospital and into the late September sunshine. Safe!

But no. No, no, and no again. What she actually did was drink the poison while the nurse, who wore a name tag reading Betty Bordner, watched her with big blue eyes and what became, in Marylou’s memory, a greedy and sinister smile. The drink tasted so bitter that Marylou’s eyes were watering when she handed the cup back to the nurse, and just as she did a young doctor passing in the hall paused in the doorway of her examining room. He had longish hair and wore round tortoiseshell glasses and a bow tie. Foppish. Pretentious. A dandy.

“Oh, Dr. Spriggs!” gushed the nurse. “This is Mrs. Ahearn, one of our pregnant women!” At the time Marylou thought this was an odd thing to say, but so what? Medical people said all kinds of odd things, in her experience: Have we had a movement lately? Have we had any nervous imaginings?

“We appreciate your cooperation, honey,” the doctor said to Marylou, nodding at the empty metal cup.

What the hell did that mean? Who knew?

“Back atcha, Doc,” Marylou said, acting like a smart aleck because she was twenty-three and happy. Also, although it made her sick later to admit it to herself, she was flirting with him. She knew she looked cute, sitting there bare legged in her gown, and, she supposed, she must’ve been attracted to him, God knows why.

Betty Bordner turned to Marylou, clutching the metal cup between her pointed bosoms, nearly cross-eyed with reproach. “Dr. Spriggs is in charge of the entire clinic. He’s head of our study! He hardly ever comes down here!”

“What study?” Marylou had the presence of mind to ask.

The nurse flushed and went silent, her gooey orange lips working nervously, and she fixed her eyes pleadingly on the great Spriggs.

“I’m in charge of all kinds of studies,” he said, and clearly, as his manner indicated, this was rightfully so.

The nurse set the metal cup down on the counter with a clunk. “How are you today, Doctor?” she said, and Marylou thought, Calm down, Nurse Bosom, you’re twenty years too old for the baby genius.

Dr. Spriggs spoke no more—their time in his presence was up. He smiled, gave a silly wave, and disappeared; and that little scene with nurse and doctor was the only thing Marylou remembered distinctly about that day, although she knew that she and Teddy had later gone for a stroll beside the Mississippi River and then to Checkers Barbeque to celebrate.

And now, in 2006, there he was again, standing at the bottom of his pollen-covered driveway waving the garden hose, like a drooping old penis, over his azalea bushes. Still tall and lean, but no longer foppish! No visible ass. A sailor hat and thick glasses and ugly orthopedic shoes.

Marylou’s ankle ached and sweat slunk sheepishly down between her drooping breasts.

If she had a gun, she could just walk up to him and say: “This is for what you did to me and Helen and those seven hundred and ninety-nine other women and their children, you son of a bitch,” and shoot him. Would it really matter