Good Graces

by Lesley Kagen

  Troo says, “Remember the day we went up to the Five and Dime and ran into Aunt Betty?”

  She means the time Mother sent me up there to get her a Snirkle and Troo went skulking around the aisles and I found out from Aunt Betty that Father Mickey was originally from the neighborhood, but what does that have to do with . . . “Ohhhh, I get it. You took some glue and that’s what’s keepin’ them together.”

  She says, “Yup. Once we got the sticks stuck together and they got all dried out and could stand on their own, I painted the movie title on the front.” She musta been asked this question by everybody and their brother today because the words roll outta her mouth like a multiplication table.

  A couple of blankets down I can hear Mrs. Latour telling her daughter to pipe down. Wendy won’t stop yelling, “Thally, Thally, me thee you, Thally.” I know if I tell her I see her, too, she’s gonna come crawling over everybody asking me to witch laugh and as much as I like her, I need to talk to my sister, so I act like I don’t hear her, which is impossible. Just like her mother, who has to call a dozen kids to supper every night, Wendy’s got a set of lungs on her.

  “Where did you do all the work on it?” I ask Troo about her costume.

  “Granny’s garage.”

  I give her a gentle noogie in the arm. “So that’s where you’ve been disappearin’ to, you little banshee.”

  Her keeping something this big from me makes me wonder what else she’s been up to that I don’t know about. She hasn’t been giving me the slip just during the day. She disappeared in the middle of the night those coupla times. She couldn’t have gone over to Granny’s garage to work on the costume then because Uncle Paulie is up at Jerbak’s setting pins in the wee hours. I want to ask her again where she snuck off to, but the timing isn’t right. I don’t want to rain on her parade.

  Troo rests her head against mine. “I couldn’t tell you about the costume. I . . . I wanted to surprise everybody,” she says. She really does love a good bushwhack. Next to scaring people, that’s her favorite.

  “So, you must like him a lot better now,” I say, rolling over onto my side so I can get a better look at her.

  “Who?”

  “Uncle Paulie.” I sure would if I were her. That costume is going to go down in neighborhood history.

  “He’s all right.” Troo plucks a fat blade of grass, positions it between her thumbs and makes that kazoo sound you can get out of it sometimes. “He’s better than he used to be. Don’t ya think?”

  I say, “Sure,” but I’m not. That was nice of him to help Troo out with her costume, but I haven’t forgotten what Ethel told me about Paulie Riley in the old days being “nastier than chicken poop on a pump handle.” And also how Granny says, “A leopard can’t change his spots,” or maybe she says, “A leper can’t change his spots,” oh, I don’t know. She’s got so many of those darn sayings and most of them don’t even make sense. Who would want to skin a cat in the first place?

  I look back to check on Mother and Dave, but they aren’t paying us a bit of attention. They’re tapping their feet to the sounds of the Do Wops who are playing Be Bop A Lula Be My Baby.

  I pick up Troo’s hand and twine her fingers in mine. “I need to talk to you about what you did.”

  “Whatta ya mean?” she says, clamping down.

  “Givin’ Artie the coonskin cap back. You can definitely write that in your ‘How I Spent My Charitable Summer’ story.”

  “Oh, that,” she says, going limp again. “You bonehead.”

  From out on the lagoon island, there’s a high whistle and a boom . . . deboom. . . . boom and after the explosion, the first firework rains down red. From around the lagoon, our neighbors say all together, “Aaaa,” the same way we all say, “Aaaamen” together at Mass at the end of a prayer.

  “Just so ya know, I’ve been keepin’ a coupla other secrets from you, too,” Troo says.

  “What kind a other secrets?” I ask her even though I’m sure she’s about to fess up about how she slipped outta our bed and wandered the neighborhood looking for Greasy Al, which is great because now I won’t have to pry it outta her.

  Troo sneaks a peek at Dave and Mother to make sure they aren’t listening, which they aren’t. They’re locking lips. “Father Mickey is doin’ something with the altar boys that he shouldn’t be doin’.”

  Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

  Down at the creek today when they were gabbing away, I was afraid Artie was telling Troo the same thing he told me that night in the Kenfields’ backyard about Father Mickey commiting a bad sin with the altar boys.

  I tell her, “I know you’re happy that ya got back together with Artie, but . . . but you can’t listen to what he’s saying about Father.” I’d like to wring Latour’s scrawny neck right about now and that’s not like me at all. “He’s not thinkin’ straight lately because he’s upset about Charlie Fitch vanishin’ and he was jealous about you spendin’ so much time with Father Mickey. Artie’s imagination, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, has taken a long walk off a short pier.”

  Another firework goes off, but I don’t look up. I’ve still got my head turned to Troo. That’s when I see him out of the corner of my eye. About ten feet behind and to the left of us, Father Mickey is leaning against a tree pretending to listen to one of his parishioners, but he’s not. He’s watching us, staring straight at Troo and me.

  My sister says, “I know ya left Artie a jar of cod liver oil on his porch, but he doesn’t need it. He’s not imaginin’ anything. He’s not a fanatic like you. What he told ya about Father Mickey bein’ up to no good is the truth. I got proof.” Troo must feel the priest’s eyes screwing into the back of her neck the same way I can because she scootches up closer to me, slides her hand down to the front of her shorts and takes something out that she keeps balled up in her grubby hand. “If I show ya this,” she whispers, “ya gotta promise ya won’t tell a soul and especially not Dave.”

  Since I take them so to heart, I don’t ever promise anybody anything if I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. Except for my sister.

  “Promise.”

  She wiggles even closer, her warm skeeter-bit arm presses against mine. When she opens her hand, Mrs. Galecki’s missing emerald necklace is lying in her palm, just glimmering.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  For the past two weeks, things couldn’t be more topsy-turvy around here.

  Me and my sister are doing the dishes together, trying to guess what mystery food Mother made us tonight. When she placed it down on the table, she said, “Ta-daaa” and called it “Brains a la King,” but she had to be kidding around. That’s how good of a mood she’s been in. She sings along in her warbly voice when a tune she likes comes on the radio and she hasn’t done that for the longest time. Her newest favorite, she goes giddy when she hears it, is Puppy Love. She stops whatever she’s doing and makes Lizzie get up on her hind feet so they can dance around the kitchen. She’s not doing her puzzles in the backyard on the TV tray anymore. Mother has been spending most of her day cutting pictures out of magazines and driving around in her new red Studebaker. She looks mouthwatering in that car. After tying a chiffon scarf around her hair and knotting it in back, off she goes to expand her horizons. She’s in her bedroom right this minute getting ready to go pick up Aunt Betty. They’re driving downtown to Chapman’s, which is the fancy store Mother’s been wanting to shop at for the longest time.

  “That Helen,” Troo says, handing me a sorta rinsed-off plate outta the dishpan. “Brains a la King. What a kidder,” she says, not doing her hunhing but her regular old Chopstick laugh that sounds just like when she plays it on the piano. Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha.

  Just like Mother, Troo’s mood has been fabulous, too, these last couple of weeks. She had the gall to say to me yesterday when we were taking out the garbage, “Boy, I feel happy! You should try it sometime, Sal.”

  My sister wants us all to believe that she’s turn
ed over a new leaf since the Fourth of July. She’s not making me call her Leeze anymore. And when Dave and Mother discuss the wedding, which is going to take place on September 24th, Troo doesn’t look like she’s about to burst a blood vessel. She’s doing her chores before she’s asked and once this week—this was really awful—she rubbed my back when I got done rubbing hers. Even worse than this Shirley Temple mood she’s been in, my sister has this annoying smile plastered on her face all the time. Even when she’s sleeping, she’s dreaming about something that makes her look like a cat that ate a canary and two of its cousins.

  Her acting so cheerful is terrible, but what’s driving me most up the wall is that no matter how much I badger her, she won’t cough up how she got her hands on Mrs. Galecki’s green necklace. I’ve tried about a hundred times to get it out of her, but each and every time she reminds me of the promise I made her at the lagoon on fireworks night not to tell a soul, especially not Dave. And then she says mysteriously, “Soon aaalll will be revealed,” sounding very much like the fortune-teller up at the State Fair.

  I think my sister snuck next door and took Mrs. Galecki’s necklace, but I don’t know why she would do something like that. Since she is so light-fingered in general, it even crossed my mind that Troo could be the cat burglar. So I looked and looked, but did not find a candelabra or any other stolen loot stashed around our bedroom. That’s why I’m still 99.9 percent positive it’s Mary Lane who’s been taking stuff out of people’s houses. It’s gotta be.

  Even though Troo’s not acting like it on the outside, of course she can’t fool me. She’s still spitting mad at Father Mickey for getting Mother the annulment. She hasn’t asked me to smooch her with the red wax lips and doesn’t swoon anymore when she hears Father’s name. And she has stopped going up to the rectory for her extra religious instruction. Mother and Dave haven’t noticed that she’s been skipping. Their spirits are too high to pay much attention to Troo and me these days. Both of them are on cloud nine.

  And so are a lotta other people in the neighborhood. The burglaries have stopped. The cops are still looking, but the high-top footprints they found outside the Holzhauers’ house ended up belonging to Hank Holzhauer, the kid who lives there, so that was a dead end. Since no more valuables are being stolen on a weekly basis, the search for the cat seems to have taken a backseat. (That talk I gave to Mary Lane in the library lavatory musta done some good.)

  So leaving to go look for the burglar is not why Dave told Mother he was going to skip supper tonight and grab something up at the Milky Way, the lucky dog. He went over to the house of his sister, Betsy, and her husband, whose name is Richie Piaskowski, to take the sheets off their furniture and spruce the place up a bit. They’re coming for a visit and Dave hopes he can convince them to stay longer than a week at their house on 56th Street across from the church where their daughter, Junie, had her funeral. I can see her grave when I go to sit next to Daddy’s at Holy Cross Cemetery every Saturday. How they could bear leaving their girl beneath that mound of dirt, I don’t know. Dave takes his niece a bouquet on all the holidays except at Christmas, when he brings her a wreath trimmed with angel hair and blue bulbs to decorate her gravestone, but that’s not the same. I could never move away from Daddy, not even for a little while, but I am not going to throw stones at their house. They’re my aunt Betsy and uncle Richie now and they could be Troo’s, too, if she’d let them, which she won’t because they’re related to Dave. (Since their last name ends in ski, after meeting them she’ll right off the bat tell a huge Polack joke. I’m gonna have to take them around a corner and explain that they shouldn’t take it personally.)

  Well, my sister can stand next to me here at the kitchen sink and tap-dance all she wants, but I know her. Below all her bubbliness, she’s coming up with another one of her Troo genius revenge plans because she had to give up on the capturing Greasy Al one. Of course, she’s disappointed that she can’t use the reward money to buy the Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist doll, but Troo’s not stupid. She figured out that if Molinari was coming back, he woulda showed up by now. I would have to agree with her. I think he escaped for good, too. Maybe to Brooklyn, where Willie O’Hara used to live. He told me that city has loads of Italians and pizza parlors. Molinari could blend right in like a greasy chameleon. Dave has not recently mentioned to me a thing about his “imminent capture,” so that’s another reason I believe that dago is gone forever.

  After I set the white plate carefully in the drying rack, my sister tells me, “After we’re done here we gotta go straight over to the Latours. I got a surprise for you.”

  “I can’t,” I say, rubbing off the bowl she hands me with the green checked dish towel. “I told Dave I’d water the garden and after I’m done doin’ that I’m gonna work on my charitable summer story and some other stuff.”

  Troo and Artie are still back together. Them spending so much time by themselves hasn’t been all bad. Even if Artie’s imagination has gotten the best of him, I know I can count on him to keep her out of trouble. Not having to watch her every second has let me take a breather. I paid Henry a couple of visits, and I found the time to work on a new imitation. I can do a Wizard of Oz munchkin now. I haven’t tried it out on Wendy Latour yet, but I think she’ll go bonkers when she hears me singing the We Represent the Lollypop Guild song at the talent contest next month. That’s the only idea I had that worked out. I checked out a magic book from the library, but none of my shirts have sleeves long enough to hide a rabbit. I also asked Willie to loan me some of his jokes, but he told me he couldn’t share his “material,” so I guess he changed his mind about being a comedian and is now going to be a tailor when he grows up.

  I tell Troo, “I also gotta go over to the Goldmans’ to check on the house.” I look above the sink, where I taped Mrs. Goldman’s postcard that came all the way from the Alps. The snowy mountains look very refreshing when Troo and me are slaving over a hot sink.

  On the back of the card is the sweetest note that also lifts my spirits:Dearest Liebchen,

  Hans is feeling better. Please to say hello to your sister for me.

  Sincerely, your friend,

  Mrs. Marta Goldman

  P.S. We will be home in the middle of September.

  It’s too bad that she won’t be back for the end-of-the-summer party, but I’m glad she has not been killed by an avalanche. When she gets home, Mrs. Goldman is gonna give me that five dollars for keeping my eye on her house. The first thing I’m going to do is rush up to the toy store and put that ventriloquist doll on layaway for Troo. I’m also going to take the bus to the new zoo to see Sampson on some pretty Sunday with Ethel. Mary Lane took that picture of him the way she promised she would with her Brownie camera, but it’s not taped up next to the postcard from Mrs. Goldman. I got it under my pillow, the same way Troo keeps Daddy’s sky-blue shirt under hers. Like everybody else around here, even Sampson seems thrilled with himself in that snapshot. He’s got a smile on his face and one of his long arms looped around a tire that hangs from the ceiling looking like he just came back from a night on the town.

  Up to her elbows in bubbles, my sister bosses, “You’re not gonna water the garden or work on your charitable story or go over to the Goldmans’ or . . . or anything else boneheaded.” She unplunges her hands from the dishwater and gets me by the wrist. “I been plannin’ this for weeks. You, Mary Lane and Artie and me are havin’ an important powwow over at the Latours tonight.”

  I say, “Okay, okay,” because Troo looks like she means Indian burn business and it’s such a relief to see her being her old ornery self. “But I gotta water the garden real quick. The corn . . . I promised Dad . . . Dave, that I would.”

  “Girls?” Mother says, making a sweeping entrance into the kitchen that reminds me so much of Loretta Young on her television show. She’s wearing seamed nylons on her legs, which are making a strong recovery, and a shirtwaist dress the same color as a plum with a flipped-up collar and a wide white belt and high hee
ls that match. She smells different, but still divine. She’s started wearing a perfume called Chanel No. 5 that also comes from France, but I think is a cut above Evening in Paris. That’s how she acts anyway when she dabs it on. She jiggles the car keys our way. “I’ll be back late. Dave should be home from his sister’s around ten.”

  Soon as we hear her heels clicking on the dining room floor, Troo bends back and calls, “No hurry, Helen, dear. Take your time. Say hi to Aunt Betty for me and have oodles of fun!”

  My sister telling her to have oodles of anything should’ve made an alarm bell go off in our mother’s head no matter how excited she is about shopping for her wedding, but she doesn’t miss a step.

  When the front screen door slams shut and we hear the Studebacker’s engine start up, Troo wipes her hands down the front of her shorts and says, “You finish up. I’ll meet ya over at the Latours’.”

  “Are we gonna play a new game?” I ask, trying to figure out what “surprise” she has in store for us tonight.

  “No, we’re gonna . . .” She stops on the porch step, looks back at me very crafty and says, “Yeah. I got a new game to show ya,” and off she goes into the night, laughing. Not her airy Chopsticks tinkle or even a deep French hunh . . . hunh . . . hunh. That laugh is badder sounding than the time she stabbed Jeffie Lewis in the arm with a pencil after he called her “Clarabelle Hair” one too many times. It is even more wicked than the one Troo gave after she tricked Mimi Latour into petting ankle-biting Butchy when she found out that Willie liked Mimi more than he liked her. The laugh might be even more devilish than the one my sister did when she came up with a way to capture Bobby over at the playground shed and that was the worst one ever.

  That laugh—the one that is still echoing around our empty house and filling my heart with the worst kind of scared—that is my sister’s revenge laugh.