I guzzled some aspirins with my coffee and held my head, swore to give up drinking again, thought of making myself a nice Bloody Mary or screwdriver just to take the edge off. Then I shook my head. I'd sworn off the stuff.

My husband was asleep on the couch, but passed out was a bit more accurate. He reeked of alcohol. He drank so much it came out of his pores.

Johnny wasn't around but that wasn't unusual. It was the weekend so he was probably up at his friends' house, the kids who lived up the street.

When I was sober, with the awful pulsing pounding beat of a hangover, I felt primarily three things about my son. Guilt, and love, and a thankfulness that he wasn't a no count hoodlum. God knows he hung around with them, those kids always stealing, jumping people, boosting cars, getting thrown in jail. But Johnny wasn't like that somehow.

There were other times, after a couple of shots of whatever whiskey was handy, that I felt different things. That I couldn't help but blame him for making me marry his father, that goddamn bum. And Johnny was just so needy, always underfoot, I never had any space.

There was a tentative knock on the door.

"Cindy?" My neighbor Alice. Her voice was cautious. She was aware, as the neighborhood was aware, that there was usually fighting at my house. Knock down drag out fights, and Johnny would slink out, or just not come home at all. But in the morning things were usually calm.

"Yeah?"

"Have you seen the paper?" She held the paper under her arm and looked through the mesh of the screen.

I passed my husband in the living room, careful not to wake him. Stepped outside and slipped a cigarette from my pocket, handed it to Alice, then lit one for myself. We stood shivering on the stoop, both of us hugging ourselves in the cold morning air.

Alice cleared her throat, looked around nervously.

"Um, you haven't seen it?" she said. I puffed on my cigarette, considered going in for a jacket but didn't want to risk waking the monster.

"No, why?" We didn't get the paper delivered anymore, one too many times we stiffed the paperboy.

"It's, uh, it's Johnny,"

I felt for a minute nothing. I saw the deep concern in Alice's eyes and it isn't like I expected Johnny to be in the paper for anything good, like those rich south side kids. Because, as they said, I knew the score. My son may not have been a no count hoodlum but he sure as shit hung around with them. And if he got in the paper it wouldn't be for no merit badge.

"What did he do?"

"He killed someone,"

The information wouldn't quite register, like she had spoken suddenly in Parisian French, or Japanese, or Greek.

"What?"

"He killed someone," Said so softly but it rang loud and clear that time. He killed someone? My son, who wouldn't fight back no matter how hard his father hit him, who had never hurt anyone…that boy who was so quiet, so calm…had killed someone?

"He what? Who? Who did he kill?"

"A kid. A teenager. A rich one,"

Oh Mary Jesus and Joseph. He was fucked now.