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‘queer’ is not a word you should be using.”
    What I didn’t tell her was that “queer” was a word I had stopped using anywhere near Leonard—not in the same sentence, not in the same room, not in the same thought. Words like “faggot,” also “fruit loop” or “poofta,” “fairy-pants,” “sissy,” “girlyboy,” “freakazoid,” “nellie,” “big Nell-box,” “Nancy,” “Mary,” and “Margaret Anne” were, for the time being, also off-limits. I had forbidden myself to even consider what these words meant—especially since the kids at school had started using them in broad daylight.
    Leonard, on the other hand, never seemed to mind. Whenever I happened to be walking with him and someone lobbed a word bomb like “queenie-boo” in his direction, he acted as if there were a faint electrical buzzing in the air, one that had no discernible source to bother complaining about. Once, Leonard just looked at me, sighed, and then drew my attention to the shine coming off his new oxblood penny loafers.
    â€œDo you think these shoes make my feet look small?” he asked, oblivious to the threat that was breathing down his neck.
    At moments like that, I couldn’t tell whether I wanted to hug him or to step all over his new shoes. I suppose if I had been a better person, I would have found the nerve to stand up to the local bullies. I would have told them to their faces that they couldn’t go around terrorizing people who were posing as my cousin. But the last thing I needed was to get a reputation as a smart-mouthed do-gooder and defender of the local queenie-boos.
    â€œStop turning around in your seat,” my mother said to Leonard.
    â€œI know. But I really shouldn’t be sitting with my back to the door,” Leonard said.
    Whenever we went out to a restaurant, Leonard insisted on a seat facing the front door of the restaurant. He claimed that it was an old Italian custom.
    â€œYou never know who could walk through the door,” he told us.
    But that night at the Fin & Claw, my mother put her foot down and made him sit across from her with his back to the door.
    â€œYou aren’t even remotely Italian, Leonard,” she told him, “so don’t start.”
    He raised his little eyebrows (I swear he plucked them) and said, “Haven’t you ever heard of it happening? Middle-aged men in sweat suits get shot over a plate of spaghetti all the time. They forget to watch their backs.”
    â€œLeonard, you’ve been watching way too much TV,” was all I had to say on the subject.
    Just then all the blood drained from Mom’s face and her features seemed to disappear. She looked as though she had just spotted a hit man toting a machine gun the moment before he opened fire. We all stopped breathing.
    When you are connected to a person by blood or by the force of love, it’s as if you had some kind of internal Geiger counter that begins to tick quicker, louder, whenever that person gets close to you. At that moment, mine was ticking like crazy, and even without turning around, I knew my father had just walked into the restaurant and he was coming toward us.
    â€œGo get Deirdre,” my mother said without looking at me directly. “We’re leaving right this minute.”
    I got up from the table, raced across the dining room toward the ladies’ room, and bumped into Aunt Bet (who is not our actual aunt); her small, compact body was right in my path, and it didn’t look like she was going anywhere fast. Aunt Bet had an apple-shaped face and a pear-shaped body; her hair, which had been permed and tinted a pale champagne color by my mother, always looked a little crooked on her head. She locked me in her gaze and then shot me a smile that was entirely false.
    â€œHo there. Where’s the fire, young lady?” she asked, putting on