Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow

trouble. Let me bring a pizza. You like pizza?
    â€œSure. My twin sister’s here. She likes pizza too. Sixty-five Mapleshade Lane, a mile past the Valley of Children Daycare Center.”
    â€œThe building with the big wooden clown out front?”
    â€œRight. My sister runs the place. I designed it for her.”
    â€œYou’re an architect?”
    â€œDon’t I wish. Commercial illustrator. Trading cards, mostly, like kids buy in the drugstore.”
    â€œBubble-gum cards?”
    â€œWe call them trading cards.”
    â€œYou design the clown too?”
    â€œOne of Angela’s clients is a sculptor.”
    â€œA four-year-old sculptor?”
    â€œThe father. After he went to all that trouble, Angela had to accept the thing. The children seem to like it.”
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    The clown who guarded the Valley of Children was even more grotesque than he’d remembered, its twelve-foot-high emaciated form looming over Mapleshade Lane like the trademark of a fast-food restaurant catering to anorexics. Slowing down, he flicked on the turn signal and pulled into the driveway of number sixty-five, a stout Victorian mansion boasting a greenhouse in the side yard and a gazebo on the front lawn. Patricia’s exhusband was evidently rich. Martin parked, got out, and limped to the door carrying two pizzas, the dough’s sultry moisture seeping through the cardboard and wetting his palms.
    Angela Zabor, Patricia’s twin, resembled her sister the way a symphony played on a piano resembles the full orchestral treatment. The themes are the same, but the depth is missing. Martin found her instantly annoying; he wished she weren’t there. Seated at the hardwood counter dominating Patricia’s kitchen, the three of them speedily devoured pizza number one.
    â€œYou own this place?” he asked.
    â€œBooty from the divorce settlement.” Patricia opened the second pizza box, revealing a fetus-shaped stain on the underside of the lid. “I got the house, a few bucks, and Brandon. Paul got what he wanted. Out.”
    â€œWealthy man?”
    â€œSpiritually impoverished,” said Angela.
    â€œTenured professor at Villanova,” said Patricia. “My sister receives nine thousand dollars a year for working with kids when they’re most malleable. Paul receives seventy thousand for working with them when it no longer makes any difference. Angela teaches reading readiness. Paul teaches fucking Aristotle. Did you love your wife?”
    â€œVery much.”
    â€œGood for you.” Patricia lifted a slice from pizza number two, batting at the tendrils of cheese connecting it to the parent pie. “Brandon shouldn’t be dead.”
    â€œOf course not,” said Martin.
    â€œNo, I mean it was a fluke. He needed to have his V-P shunt replaced, a routine thing with spina-bifida kids—most of them have hydrocephalus—and after the surgery he got an infection, resistant to penicillin and everything else.”
    â€œThat’s awful.”
    â€œThere’s no justice,” said Angela.
    Martin shifted on his bar stool and bit into a discarded pizza crust, wincing as a cancer pain exploded in his hip. “Sometimes, in my little courtroom . . . not always, but sometimes—on a good day—there’s justice.”
    â€œI was in your courtroom once,” said Angela.
    â€œYou were?”
    â€œTwo years ago. You’d summoned me. I’d witnessed a guy running a stop sign and plowing into two fat ladies rolling a piano down the street. Nobody got hurt. The piano was totaled.”
    â€œI remember the case.”
    â€œYou made the dork buy them a new one. Good decision.” Angela slid off her bar stool. “If you need me, Pat, I’m doing the laundry.”
    As Angela marched out of the kitchen, Patricia tore away another pizza slice. “I’d like to know . . . I mean . . . if you don’t mind my asking