Good Graces

by Lesley Kagen

  “C my name is Carol and I come from California with a carload of candy,” Troo sings.

  “Wait a sec,” I tell her when she dribbles past our old duplex. There’s a Yellow Taxi parked out front of 5081 Vliet Street, which is something you don’t ever see around here. This is the closest I’ve ever come to one. The trunk is open and there are some suitcases jammed in. “Something’s goin’ on at the Goldmans’.”

  Troo doesn’t glance up. She just keeps on singing in her high soprano voice that she inherited from Mother, “D my name is Denise and I come from . . . come from . . . damn it all, Sally, look what you made me do? Now I can’t think of a place that starts with D.” She spikes the ball. If you mess up you gotta start over and even hell-with-the-rules Troo O’Malley plays by that one. “Who gives a crap about the Goldmans anyway?”

  “I do,” I say, feeling bad again about letting our old landlady down. I promised Mrs. Goldman I would stay her friend even after we moved out of this house, but I haven’t.

  She is standing on her front porch in a crisp blue shirt and a pleated black skirt, her special sturdy shoes in size 10 peeking out from beneath the hem. Her dark curls used to be braided and wound around her head but now her hair looks pixie cute. She is instructing a man in a T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves, “Careful vis it. Careful.”

  I wait until the man passes me by carrying a big black trunk and grunting something under his breath to call out to her, “Yavol!”

  Mrs. Goldman brings her hands up to her cheeks and says, “Liebchen!”

  Her calling me sweetheart in her language is making me feel even worse about not showing up the way I told her I would, but she looks happy to see me, so I race up the house steps two at a time and wrap my arms around her spongy waist.

  “Mein Gott, how you’ve grown,” she ho . . . ho . . . hos. “Your legs—”

  “I know, I know,” I say, looking the long way down.

  “And vere is your sister the Trooper?”

  Everyone always asks me that if they come across me when I’m alone because they’re used to seeing the O’Malleys roaming the neighborhood’s nooks and crannies together.

  “She’s right down there. See? Hey, Troo!” I excitedly point to Mrs. Goldman like we’ve been searching for her for months. “Look who I found!”

  “Top o’ the morning,” our old landlady yells down to the curb. (I taught her that.)

  Troo gives her a blank-eyed stare. My sister is still holding it against our old landlady for liking me better than she likes her, and also for not letting our dog Butchy live with us so he had to stay in the country with peeing Jerry Amberson, who lived on the farm next to ours and would hose you down with his wiener for no reason. Dave drove out and got Butchy back for Troo last summer, which I thought was so nice, but Butchy didn’t. That dog couldn’t get used to living in the city. He broke through two chains and ripped Mimi Latour’s pants right off her body when she tried to pet him, so he had to go back to live with the Ambersons, which made Troo hate Dave even more and call him an Indian giver.

  There are also some other people in the neighborhood that have grudges against our old landlords; my sister isn’t the only one. Even though we come from different countries and like different food, there is one special thing that holds us together. We’re all Catholics. The Goldmans aren’t. They are Jewish, and everybody seems ticked off at them in general for killing Christ, but I think that’s unfair. That’d be like blaming me for the Great Potato Famine starving all those people or Eric the Red pillaging all those towns.

  “How did your schooling go this year, Liebchen?” she asks.

  Mrs. Goldman was a teacher at a college before she came to this country. So she’s smart. She knows that bad things can happen when you least expect them. Her daughter got taken away by these people called the Nazis and they never brought her back again. Her name was Gretchen. She died taking a shower, which broke my heart, but didn’t shock me. (If you watch Mr. Wizard as much as I do, you learn that many accidents take place in the bathroom.)

  “Sixth grade wasn’t too bad,” I tell her. “I got all As except for a D in arithmetic. I don’t really have a head for those problems. I’m not good at them.”

  “You are good enough,” she says, patting me on the head. “And vhat about your sister? How is she doing in her studies?”

  “She’s . . .” I don’t want to tell Mrs. Goldman that Troo might be getting kicked out of Mother of Good Hope School for her impure behavior. “She’s doin’ great in gym class.”

  Mrs. Goldman is gazing down at the curb at my sister’s back. “Are you keeping the vatchful eye on her?”

  “Tryin’ to.” Troo cannot stay still for long. She is throwing at car tires when they pass by, timing it so the ball bounces back to her.

  “That is good,” Mrs. Goldman says. “And how is your mutter feeling these days?”

  I picture her this morning in the shade of the garden with her TV tray in front of her and our collie licking her toes. “I wouldn’t say that she’s a hundred percent in the pink yet, but she’s better. She does jigsaw puzzles to pass the time until her legs get built back up.”

  Mrs. Goldman says, “It makes me glad to hear that Helen is on the mend. I like those puzzles, too.”

  “Really?” I get a bright idea. I’m gonna bring some of Mother’s old ones over to Mrs. Goldman to make up for being such a bad friend to her. There’s a bunch of those kitties playing with yarn puzzles gathering dust on the shelf in our front closet. “Do you like cats? ’Cause if you do, I might have a big surprise in store for you.”

  Mrs. Goldman says in a more serious voice, “I like the katze but am not much for surprises . . . but for this . . . the one you have given me today, I am so very glad. So happy that you have come to see me. I have missed your curious mind.” She picks up my hands in hers. She has numbers tattooed on her arm. “Your coming to see me today . . . it is kismet.”

  I never heard that word before. “Kismet?”

  “Schicksal,” she says. “Fate. You understand the meaning of this?”

  “Ohhh, yeah, sure,” I say, glad. I don’t like it when I don’t get what somebody is talking about. They could be saying something important that I should be paying attention to and it’s flying right over my head. “They teach us all about fate in Catechism class. It means that God’s got everything already planned out for us. That our life is in His hands.”

  I think if that really is true, then God must have the worst case of butterfingers. There is no other explanation why He would let Bobby Brophy lick the inside of my ear. And make Daddy crash on the way home from a baseball game. And take Mrs. Goldman’s little daughter away from her. I know He’s supposed to work in mysterious ways, but I don’t think that’s mysterious. He’s being a bully and I know all about them.

  The grunting man who was lugging the trunk down to the taxicab comes halfway back up the steps, mops his forehead with the bottom of his T-shirt and says to Mrs. Goldman, “That all of it?” and you can tell he sure as heck hopes it is. He’s the color of boiled rhubarb.

  Mrs. Goldman says, “Thank you. That is it. Vee vill be right there.”

  I got so caught up in becoming friends with her again that I put what she’s doing out of my mind. “You’re leavin’,” I say, feeling the bottom drop out of my heart.

  “Ja. Mr. Goldman and I are taking of a trip,” she says. “To Rheinland.”

  “Rhinelander?” I say, completely astounded. That’s the home of Camp Towering Pines. “Troo and me just got back from there!”

  For a person who doesn’t like surprises, my old friend is in for one of the worst of her life. I’m about to warn her when she says, “I think perhaps you misunderstand me, Liebchen. Otto and I are returning to the Motherland. To Germany.”

  “Oooh.” Otto has been the man of her dreams for over forty years. I’ve heard him speaking from behind the curtains lots of times, but I have never actually laid eyes on him. Troo thinks he doesn’t come out of
the house much because he’s a hunchback, but I think it’s because he’s shy about his English not being so good.

  “My brother . . . he is ill and vee are going back to run Hans’s clock shop for him until he is feeling better.”

  She’s got a bellowing grandfather clock and some silly cuckoos and there’s another that chimes like the bells at church. I could really count on those clocks to get me through the night when we lived upstairs. Now I know where they came from.

  “I’m so sorry your brother’s sick,” I say. It is my responsibility as a Catholic to try to make her feel better even if I can’t count it as a charitable work. Doing a good deed for a Jew is frowned upon. I don’t think it’s an actual sin to do something nice for them, but it could be. “Is there anything I can do to help you? I’m really good at packing. I watched Mother get ready for the hospital. She put tissue paper between the layers so her clothes didn’t get wrinkled and sprinkled perfume on them so she’d smell good and not like shots when she came home.”

  “Nein, thank you for the kindness offer, but the packing it is finished. But there is something that occurred to me the moment you appeared on this porch, Liebchen.” She raises her finger straight above her head. “Vere you familiar vith the Peterson family that vas renting of the upstairs?”

  “Not really.” We heard they didn’t have any kids so nobody really bothered with them.

  “The husband lost his job at the cookie factory. It is empty now.”

  Lots of times it felt that way when we were living there so I don’t look up at the second-story windows.

  “I entrusted this job to Officer Rasmussen, but he is very busy with being a detective and his new family.” Mrs. Goldman winks at me and it is so adorable because she is not very good at it. “I know what good attention you pay. Do you think you could assist your father? Keep your eye on the house while vee are gone?”

  She’s right. This is fate. And such a great way to make everything up to her. “Sure I could help watch the house. Don’t worry about a thing. What about the garden?”

  When I still lived here, me and Mrs. Goldman planted tiny seeds together in the backyard and soon juicy red tomatoes rounded on the vines and carrot tops pushed up so determined, which has always made me wonder how something so delicate could at the same time be so strong. We also put in purple pansies and yellow daisies. Daddy only grew crops but Mrs. Goldman thinks that while having good things to eat is important, something lovely to look at fills you up in a different kind of way. She also taught me on those early mornings that people are a lot like a garden. Not everybody is beautiful or scrumptious. There are some weeds that you’ve gotta watch out for that would be happy to choke the life out of you and she was right.

  “Do you want me to pull out the dandelions?” I ask her. “What about the caterpillars? Should I pick them off the vines?”

  “Ach. I’m afraid there is no garden this summer.” She shows me her knobby knuckles. They’ve gotten worse than they were.

  “Sally!” Troo shouts the way she does when she wants me to be at her beck and call.

  Mrs. Goldman says, “Before you go . . . the key to the house.” She rummages around her skirt pocket until she finds what she’s looking for. “It opens both doors up and down. In case of the emergency.” She sets the key in the palm of my hand. “Vhen vee get back from our trip, I vill pay you five dollars for your hard vork.”

  “No joke?” I know I should tell her, Oh no, thank you, I’m happy to do this favor for you without getting paid to make up for letting you down, but I have been saving up for bus fare to go see Sampson at the new zoo. I went over to the old one yesterday to see what was left.

  Troo was getting punished for lipping back, so she had to stay in her room and write a hundred times on a piece of paper, I am not the Queen of Sheba, and Mary Lane was nowhere to be found, so that’s the reason I went all by myself.

  Three yellow bulldozers were lined up, getting ready to wreck everything, but Daddy’s and my bench was still there. It’s old and pretty heavy. I wanted to drag it back to our house a little at a time every day, but I didn’t feel strong enough to get it more than a few feet. The whole time, I kept looking over at Sampson’s enclosure expecting to see him waving or hear him singing, but all that was left were the orange rocks and his favorite blue ball floating in the murky pool.

  The money I would get from Mrs. Goldman to watch over her house could buy me a bus pass. I tell her, so she knows how much Sampson and me would appreciate it, “Five whole bucks? Thank you! That’s a mint!”

  She pulls me close and gives me one of her good schnitzel-smelling hugs. “What a special girl you are,” she says, somewhat proud, but also somewhat something else. Sad?

  Troo yells something, but I can’t make it out. I back out of Mrs. Goldman’s arms even though I don’t want to and shout down to the curb, “What?”

  My sister makes this obnoxious sound like I’m a contestant on Beat the Clock and my time is up.

  “Marta,” Mr. Goldman calls to his wife from behind the drawn curtains. “Vee must go. The meter it is running.”

  “Well, I guess we both gotta hit the trail,” I say. “You have a safe trip. I’ll say a rosary for your brother to get better fast and come look at the house every day. Remember to check the stove and unplug your iron before you go.” Mother always makes sure she does that before she leaves the house. “And . . .” I don’t think Mrs. Goldman has any fancy jewelry that could get stolen, she never wears any, but she could have some guns from the war or a shoebox full of cash hidden away, which are some of the things that have already gotten taken out of people’s houses, according to Dave. Of course, everybody is talking about the burglaries and how worried they are that they could be the next to get hit, but since Mrs. Goldman doesn’t go to Mass or the baseball games or bowling, she might not have heard the scuttlebutt. “There’s been a cat burglar prowlin’ around the neighborhood. Lock up extra tight.”

  “This is good advice.” When she says that, she is not looking at me. She is watching Troo bounce her ball up the block very ferociously. “All of us must vork hard to keep vhat is valuable to us safe. Promise me you vill keep a good vatch, Liebchen.”

  “You can count on me.” I don’t say this time, but that’s what I’m thinking. “See ya when ya get back. A lot more often. Aufedersein,” I say, hurrying off the porch to catch up with my still-buzzing sister.

  Chapter Nine

  The sign hanging above the store says in peeling white letters:KENFIELD’S FIVE AND DIME . . . WE HAVE WHAT YOU NEED!

  That’s not tooting their own horn. They really do.

  The floors are a yellow color and the aisles are close together but packed high with bottles of bubble bath and sewing needles and erasers and, well, just about everything under the sun. There’s pets, too. Chatty budgies and whisker-twitching mice and lovebirds that have to be kept in different cages because they don’t actually get along that well and all sorts of different kinds of fish. This is where Dave bought me the aquarium that’s on top of the dresser in our bedroom. The pet aisle reminds me of living out on the farm, but the rest of the Five and Dime smells like popcorn. There is a machine up front that pumps it out all day long. You can get a small bag for two cents and a bigger bag with butter for a nickel and the salt is free.

  The best part of the store, though, has gotta be the candy case. It’s the first thing you see when you come in and it’s even better now that it’s been new and improved! My favorite used to be pink and green Buttons, but I got sick from swallowing too much paper, so I switched over to Oh Henry! bars in honor of you know who. Troo’s favorite used to be licorice, but now she goes silly for those lips made out of wax because she has gotten very interested in kissing recently. The Frenchy way, less lips, more tongue, which I tried to explain to her is just asking for trench mouth, but would she listen?

  Our old Vliet Street neighbor, Mrs. Kenfield, lifts up her head to greet whoever just walked into her store, but when
she sees that it’s Troo and me, she mutters, “The O’Malley sisters,” like somebody just asked her to name the last two kids in the world she’d like to have come through her doors this morning. She goes back to spritzing Windex on the counter and rubbing it off with a blue rag until the smudges disappear, maybe wishing she could do the same to me, and for sure Troo. “How’s your mother?”

  Of course, Mrs. Kenfield sees her at choir practice and up at the Kroger when she goes on Wednesdays, which is the day they hand out extra S&H Green Stamps, but just like Mrs. Goldman and Mr. Fitzpatrick, whenever anybody in the neighborhood runs into Troo and me they automatically ask how our mother’s doing because they really can’t believe she’s not dead and sometimes I can’t either. That’s why I kneel next to her bed in the middle of the night and watch her chest go up and down. I set my head against hers on the pillow and breathe in her leftover powder and perfume, just for a little while, just to make sure.

  “Mother’s feelin’ better and better,” I tell Mrs. Kenfield as Troo disappears down aisle two. What is she doing? Kleenex for flowers is in aisle four. “Gettin’ stronger and stronger by the minute.”

  Mrs. Kenfield says, “Glad to hear Helen’s on the mend,” but she doesn’t sound it and I don’t blame her. I don’t care what the Bible says about loving your neighbors more than you love yourself. I think it’s hard to even like people when your own family is going belly-up the way ours was last summer. You can’t help but wish you had what they had.

  The reason she’s so grumpy is because her husband, Mr. Chuck Kenfield, is going down the drain. His daughter, Dottie, the one he used to wail over and maybe still does, had some of the sex when she was still in high school. She got pregnant so he had to send her away to a special home in Chicago to live with some other girls who did the same thing. What Dottie was supposed to do was have her baby and leave it there for somebody who was married to come by and pick it up so she could go back to her regular life, but that’s not what happened. Grown-ups gossip about this after Mass all the time. Dottie’s disappearance is still piping hot news because she snuck out of the Chicago hospital when the nurses weren’t looking, so now it’s both her and the baby that’re missing. I heard she had a little girl.