Good Graces

by Lesley Kagen

  Like always, Italian opera music is coming from outta the Fazios’. Fast Susie’s grandma is singing along to Rickie Caruso while she’s cooking, which is pretty much all she does besides casting spells on people. She is a Strega Nana . . . an Italian witch! But an excellent cook for such a small person.

  The reason I know that is because it was another one of Troo’s genius plans last summer that we should just show up over here around suppertime because nobody was feeding us at home. Hall was spending day and night up at Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl and Nell quit taking care of us the way Mother told her she was supposed to so she could have more time to exercise with Eddie.

  Even though we pulled chairs up to their kitchen table at least once a week, I still don’t know the names of all the Fazio kids because there’s ten of them. I do know Fast Susie’s oldest brother, Johnny, everybody does. He’s a singer in a band called the Do Wops. They’ll play at the Fourth of July celebration at the park and the crowning of the King and Queen of the Playground Festival the same way they do every summer.

  Fast Susie’s mother likes to be called Jane; I don’t know why. Her real name is Angelica. Every afternoon, Jane lies in her robe on the davenport in the living room and watches “her shows,” which I have seen with her a few times when Troo wants to spend time yakking with Fast Susie and I don’t. The one called Guiding Light reminds me of our neighborhood because so many things go wrong . . . zip . . . bang . . . boom. And Queen for a Day I like because after those down-on-their-luck women are done telling the host, Jack Bailey, how crummy their lives are, I feel really grateful that we have our own washing machine.

  As far as Fast Susie’s father goes, I have only seen him at supper a few times and Mass every so often because he’s got an important job. His name is Tony. He sells silverware, which he must do really well because he wears shoes made outta alligators and suits made outta sharkskin. Mr. Fazio works with a man called Frankie the Knife.

  When we come into her backyard, Fast Susie says, “O’Malleys!” This is almost where she always is during the summer, lying on a greasy white sheet. Next to her, there is a bottle of baby oil with iodine in it. She slathers it all over her arms and legs, the whole hairy mess.

  My sister plops down next to her and says with a load of admiration, “Zowie.” Troo isn’t talking about the two-piece bathing suit Fast Susie’s barely got on. She’s impressed by her bosoms. She is very interested in them in general and can’t wait until hers come in. Every morning she stands in front of the mirror on the back of our bedroom door to check to see if they’ve grown during the night.

  Fast Susie beams down at the polka-dotted suit top that’s standing out about a foot from her body. “It’s like that song. An itsy bitsy teenie weenie,” she says, bouncing.

  She inherited her bosoms from her grandmother the same way I inherited my long legs from Dave. Back in the old days Nana’s musta looked like freshly filled water balloons, too, but now she has to strap them down with a belt when she’s cooking so they don’t accidentally dangle into a pot of spaghetti and I hope the same thing happens to Fast Susie. She’s mean to me. She thinks I’m not cool. Not the way Troo is.

  Fast Susie says, “Funny you two should show up. A little birdie told me something that might interest the both of ya.”

  For once, I think I know which little birdie she’s talking about, so I say, “If it’s about Greasy Al escapin’ from reform school, Henry Fitzpatrick already told us.” Even though it’s the worst news, I’m proud of him. It really is something if you hear neighborhood gossip before Fast Susie does. Mother calls her the Hedda Hopper of Vliet Street.

  Fast Susie pops up and says, “Fitzpatrick told you? That . . . that Casper Milquetoast?”

  I take a step back from her waving arms. You gotta watch out for her all the time, but especially when she gets mad because the Fazios aren’t only Italians, they’re a special type called Sicilians, who are a people from the south side of Italy who are famous for paying you back for anything mean you’ve ever done to them even if they die trying. In their language, this is called having a vendetta.

  Fast Susie says, “Ya better watch out, Troo. When Greasy Al shows up, you’re morto.”

  She runs her pointer finger across her throat and makes this awful gagging sound.

  I gasp, but my sister says, “I’m shakin’ in my boots,” only she isn’t. Her sides are splitting. “Greasy Al can sit on a screwdriver and rotate.”

  I don’t like where this is heading. “Ethel’s waitin’, Troo.” All I want to do is go see my good friend and read to Mrs. Galecki. We are in the middle of the best Nancy Drew and if I never hear the words Molinari and morto again in my entire life, that would be fine by me.

  “Did that little soda jerk also tell ya that one of the orphan kids ran away?” Fast Susie asks me, taking another stab at breaking news.

  “No, it wasn’t Henry. I heard that from . . .” I almost tell her that it was Artie Latour who told us that Charlie ran off, but that might make her have a vendetta for Artie, which is the last thing in the world that kid needs. Troo is still too busy staring at Fast Susie’s bosoms to notice much of anything else, so I know she won’t disagree with me when I say, “Nope. Haven’t heard a thing about any orphan runnin’ away.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Fast Susie says, unclenching her fists, feeling better now that she’s finally got a scoop. “Charlie Fitch took off from St. Jude’s in the middle of the night.”

  “No kiddin’,” I say, doing my best to act amazed. “Do you know why? I mean, did ya hear if it was something that Artie Latour did that caused him to run away?”

  “Naw,” she says. “Fartie didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.” After Artie Latour eats certain kinds of foods . . . he toots. A ton. That’s why Fast Susie and some of the other kids have started calling him that nickname, which may not be charitable, but is unfortunately correct. “Fitch ran off ’cause he got caught stealin’ money outta the poor box at church.”

  “He did?” I say, dumbfounded. Even though I didn’t know Charlie all that well, I was positive he was a good kid. Even after Mary Lane told me that no-tripper story about how he might be the kind of orphan that kills people and strings them up in his living room to drip-dry. Now here’s Fast Susie telling us Charlie’s a thief. How am I ever going to protect Troo when I can’t tell the good guys from the bad ones?

  I ask, “How . . . who caught him stealin’?”

  Fast Susie picks her suit out of her crotch and says with a smile, “Father Mickey.”

  I say, “Oh,” and look over at Troo to see what she thinks about all this because she’s always interested in any news about our pastor, but she’s still staring at those Italian cantaloupe bosoms.

  “Hey . . . I just thoughta something. You two . . . wanna stay over one a these nights?” Fast Susie says, all of a sudden like we’re her best friends. (That’s the other thing you have to watch out for in Italians. They can turn on a dime.)

  “Ah . . . thanks. I can’t. I’m . . . ah, busy,” I tell her.

  Troo, finally breaking free of the spell Fast Susie’s chest has put on her, says, “I want to!”

  I knew she’d say that because Fast Susie is her idol, but I despise staying overnight at the Fazios’. We have to sleep in her spooky attic, which is bad enough, but then Fast Susie will tell us a bedtime story she knows will scare the underpants offa me. Like the one she told us the last time we stayed over, the one about Count Dracula. How after he sucked everybody dry in his Transylvania neighborhood, he’d turn into a bat and fly off to somebody else’s neighborhood to quench his blood thirstiness. A neighborhood just like ours. All I could picture was Henry sleeping in his bed on 49th Street with the window open. He would be like finding a pot at the end of the rainbow for the Count. That vampire would lick his bat lips and open up my boyfriend’s hemofeelya neck like he was the drink spigot at the soda fountain. The time we stayed over and Fast Susie told us about Frankenstein stealing body parts was ba
d, too. I had to go home in the middle of the night because I couldn’t stand hearing that story for a minute longer. I should’ve waited until the sun came up because that was the first time Bobby came after me. I didn’t know it was him. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, only his pink-and-green argyle socks from under the Kenfields’ bushes where I hid.

  “Aw, c’mon, ya gotta stay over, Sally,” Fast Susie says. “I wanna tell you all about this movie Tommy took me to see last week.” She’s going steady with Tommy Molinari, who is one of Greasy Al’s brothers, but is mostly known as The Mangling Meatball. “You’d love Psycho. It’s all about this square who takes extra good care of his mother!”

  Troo, really keyed up now, says, “Can we eat over, too?” She adores all of Nana Fazio’s cooking, but especially her cannolis, which are these creamy little rolled-up sandwiches.

  I check Daddy’s watch on my wrist for the third time. “Troo, I’m goin’.” I nudge her with my foot. “Did you hear me?”

  She nudges me back in the ankle much harder and shouts, “Do I look deaf?” She reaches into her shorts and slides a pack of L&M’s out of her pocket.

  I say, “You know where I am if you change your mind,” and then I run out of that backyard because when her and Fast Susie light up those cigarettes and start puffing away, Nana Fazio starts shouting some crazy-sounding Italian curse out of the kitchen window and Fast Susie yells something back that sounds like “Basta or pasta” and Troo begins her French hunh . . . hunhing and more than anything, all I want to do is be with somebody who speaks my own language.

  Chapter Eleven

  Where ya been, Miss Sally? I was gettin’ ready to send a posse out for ya,” Ethel says when I come barging through Mrs. Galecki’s back door.

  My other best friend is standing at the sink barefoot to give her bunions some breathing room while she’s popping the tops off juicy red strawberries and running them under cool tap water, never hot. That would suck the sweetness right out of them. There’s an angel food cake baking in the oven. She makes one every week around this time. Later on, she’ll whip a bowl of cream ’til, as she says, “It’s cryin’ for mercy.” Strawberry shortcake is Mrs. Galecki’s favorite dessert. Because she’s so long in the tooth, she gets to have it whenever she wants.

  Ethel’s wearing her white nurse dress that she’s always got on when she’s working. It sets off her skin that is almost the exact same color of chocolate pudding after you pour milk over it and mix it all together. Ethel is tall and solid, like the Kelvinator. Once she knows you some and likes you more, she’ll let you pat the top of her hair. It feels like a new mattress because it’s got a lotta bounce to it. Though she says a lady never tells her age, I know that she is thirty-six years old because I always give her a green lanyard on her birthday, which falls on St. Patrick’s Day.

  Ethel has been taking care of Mrs. Galecki for . . . I’m not sure how long. Mrs. Galecki’s husband died in a war so she lived alone in the house next door to Dave’s until she got a bum ticker. That’s when Mrs. Galecki’s son, Gary, who lives in California, hired Ethel to come and take care of her. Ethel has nursing experience and is also a great baker. Mrs. Galecki needs medicine and appreciates a flaky crust, so they scratch each other’s backs.

  I say, “Sorry I’m late,” and slide out the three-step ladder she keeps next to the sink for me. This is almost always where I get situated when we have what Ethel calls a rockin’ chair visit minus the rockin’ chair.

  “Apology accepted.” Ethel wipes her wet hands on the yellow dish towel and says, “Peanut ’n marshmella?” That’s Troo’s and my favorite sandwich in the world.

  “No, thank you.” My stomach is still not calmed down from what Mother served us last night at supper. She called it jellied moose. “But I’d love some Ovaltine.” That’s Troo’s and my favorite drink in the world.

  Ethel says, “Sure ’nuff,” and gets up on her toes and gets down my favorite lilac metal glass off of the top shelf of the cupboard and takes out two of her famous Mississippi blond brownies from the cookie jar in case I change my mind about eating something, which I already have once I get a load of the melt-in-your-mouth buttery squares on the clean white plate.

  “Where’s your sister?” Ethel asks in that accent of hers that sounds less like talking and more like crooning. If Frank Sinatra came from Calhoun County he would sound just like her. He wouldn’t be so skinny either.

  I say, “Troo’s over at the Fazios’ talkin’ to Fast Susie.”

  “That’s fine, long as she ain’t listenin’ to her.” Ethel shakes her head. “That Fazio girl had one good idea it’d die from loneliness.”

  She said that to make me feel better because she knows how much Fast Susie razzes me. It’s Ethel’s way of sticking up for me. That’s the kind of person she is. True blue. And not only to me. She takes such good care of Mrs. Galecki and that’s why she deserves exactly what’s coming to her. When Mrs. Galecki passes away, Ethel is going to get a bunch of money from her Last Will and Testament. Ethel doesn’t know that though. The reason I don’t tell her is because she loves a good surprise, and second off, Mr. Gary Galecki made Troo and me promise not to tell a soul when he let that inheritance secret slip because he had too many Tom Collins cocktails on his screened porch last summer during his yearly visit. Mr. Gary adores Ethel and he doesn’t need any of his mother’s money. Just like Dave, Mr. Gary has a thick wallet. He’s in the movie business. I want Ethel to open a bakery with that money she gets, but one of her dreams for the future is to open a school for Negro kids, so that’s what she’ll probably do. She should call the place Miss Ethel’s School of Manners and Everyday Advice. She’s smart at those things and a lot of others. She studies both the morning and evening newspapers and never misses the Reader’s Digest.

  I ask, “How’s Mrs. G been feelin’?”

  Ethel sighs hard enough to flutter the curtain above the windowsill where Mrs. Galecki’s medicines, over ten bottles, are lined up.

  She says, “Her gut’s still actin’ up. Gotta go pick up some more Pepto. That’s what Mr. Lou recommended for this sorta thing.”

  My future father-in-law and Ethel Jenkins are friendly because she has to go to the drugstore all the time to get the pills Mrs. Galecki needs to take every day to keep her going, which Ethel doesn’t mind because Henry’s father acts toward her the same way he acts toward everybody else. Gentlemanly. Not like the vegetable man at the Kroger. He treats Ethel like she’s week-old cabbage.

  “Would you say hello to Henry for me when you go?” I miss him and our visits. Next time I know that Troo can’t get into anything she shouldn’t, when she’s locked in our room for disobeying Mother again, that’s where I’m heading. “Please tell him I’ll get over there really soon to count Ramblers.”

  “Will do,” Ethel says, stirring my Ovaltine. She is such a great cook. Gets all that malty grit to dissolve just perfect so there’s only smoothness going down your throat. “Ya heard anything more’bout the orphan boy that disappeared?”

  That’s the way it is in the neighborhood. It’s like living with a hundred Chet Brinkleys. No matter where you go—the park, the playground, Mass, the Five and Dime, the library—you can’t get away from the hottest subject. Even if the last thing you want to do is think about it anymore, rotsa ruck. Everybody’ll be flapping their lips about Charlie’s running away from us and Greasy Al running toward us—well, limping toward us—until another disaster happens, which could be at any minute. When we lived in the country, all I ever had to pay attention to was not getting too close to the chickens, who have the worst personalities, but here in the city . . . it’s the people you gotta watch out for in more ways than one. They can egg your worry on and even if you are doing your absolute best to keep it under control, they won’t let you with all their jibber jabber.

  “Thank you,” I say, when Ethel sets down the lilac glass that’s sweating as bad as the both of us. “All I heard about Charlie is that he’s still missin’.
” I pull up the neck of my T-shirt to dry myself off and Ethel uses her arm on her forehead because she’s already got her hands full. She’s taken the blue bowl of strawberries to the counter and is holding a small sharp knife to slice them up real thinly between her fingers.

  “Miss Bertha’s friends with Sister Jean from the orphanage,” Ethel says. “She come over for a visit and was real broke up. Told us that boy was really something. And how the Honeywells are so disappointed to have lost him. Father Mickey is tryin’ to put some men together to go lookin’ for him.”

  I don’t tell her that Father Mickey probably doesn’t give a hoot about some orphan kid, he just wants the poor-box money back. The church loves moo-la-la. If it isn’t paper drives, it’s fish fries or Bingo. They’re always asking to give until it hurts. Especially lately. Father Mickey says we need to build more classrooms onto the school. All the money that gets taken in will go to finishing the new wing, but even if that’s a good cause, I notice people’s pinched faces when they drop dollars into the collection plate on Sunday. They have to work hard for their money, almost all of them at the cookie factory.

  Ethel says, “That Father Mickey sure is something. Easy on the eyes, too.” Music is coming out of her bedroom. I can’t barely hear it, but her body is having no trouble keeping the beat. It’s swaying. “Ya know what I been thinkin’, Miss Sally?”

  “What, Ethel?” I say, snitching a berry out of the bowl.

  “I been thinkin’ I’m gonna switch myself over to the Catholics.”

  “Oooh . . . nooo . . . nooo . . . I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say, in the same no-nonsense voice she uses on me when I come up with an idea that she thinks stinks. “That . . . that would be like takin’ that shiny orange dress of yours and tradin’ it in for a . . . burlap sack.”

  Mother lets Ethel take me down to her church on 4th and Walnut Street sometimes. It’s in an old store that has the sign: JOE KOOL’S SMALL AND LARGE APPLIANCES FOR THE DISCRIMINATING hanging above the door. The basement windows of the church are stained, not with glass, but who cares? The whole congregation dances and shouts even when the Reverend Joe Willow is sermonizing. I have already decided that when I grow up, that’s what I’m gonna be. A Baptist. Mary Lane said she’d do it with me. I’m sure more for her hungry tummy than her hungry soul. She went down there with me and Ethel a coupla times so she knows all about the fried chicken and colored greens they put out after the service.