Sticky Fingers

by Nancy Martin

  After our days in Catholic school, Irene became one of those dutiful daughters who stayed behind to take care of her parents after her siblings fled the neighborhood. As far as I knew she spent her days driving her mother around in a beige Buick to the grocery store and the salon. Irene also tended to dress like she was part of her mother’s generation. And talking with her—she could go into excruciating detail about how to choose a standing rib roast—could be like trying to make conversation with drywall.

  But I took a closer look and decided Irene had changed lately. She was wearing jeans, a manly sort of orange parka, and combat boots instead of the standard beige London Fog with beige Naturalizers and beige pants with an elastic waist. I wasn’t sure what the transformation meant. Her hair–usually neatly permed into a helmet like her mother’s—was now long and frizzy.

  It looked to me like Irene had untied the apron strings at last. I stayed at the stove, stirring. “Hey, Irene. Your mom okay?”

  “She’s fine. I just dropped her off at the bingo game.”

  “So what’s new?”

  “Not much. Except I got a job managing the Greentree gun range.”

  “Gun range? You mean, like, shooting?”

  “Yeah, ducking bullets, that’s me.” Irene gave me a cheerful grin. “Today I had a guy who complained to me about his new gun. Said the weapon kept dropping parts every time he fired it. Turns out, it was the shell casings.”

  “Wow,” I said. “What an idiot.”

  “Scary who’s allowed to carry a firearm.”

  “I’ll say.”

  I stayed at the stove, but took a look at Irene’s parka. I wondered if she was packing while she delivered cookies.

  Brightly, Irene said, “How’s your uncle Carmine?”

  “Carmine? Fine, I guess.”

  “I heard he’s been sick lately.”

  I shrugged. “Could be. I don’t talk to him much.”

  “No? Too busy? I could look in on him once in a while, if you want.”

  Lots of folks in the old neighborhood still looked up to Carmine for the crime boss he used to be. Even people who never asked him for a favor or to bet on a baseball game thought he was Robin Hood or something. Sure, he used to give a few bucks to old ladies who couldn’t pay their rent, but mostly Carmine preyed on the weak and the stupid. If people knew how he’d cheated their fathers or taken advantage of their neighbors? Believe me, they wouldn’t act like he was such a great guy.

  But if he kissed the bride at a wedding and tucked a hundred-dollar bill into her hand, people talked about it for years.

  And here was Irene Stossel looking eager to take him chicken soup.

  “Sure,” I said. “Knock yourself out.”

  Loretta came back and took the remaining containers from Irene. “There you go, dear. Tell your mother I’m so relieved she could contribute. I don’t know what I’d have done without her.”

  “You know Mom,” Irene said, still standing on the rug. “She’ll make cookies for anybody, anytime.”

  “That’s a blessing. See you at the wedding?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I might have to work. I have a job at the gun range now.”

  “Goodness,” Loretta said. “Does your mother know?”

  “Yeah, she thinks it’s great. She wants a Glock for Christmas.”

  “Happy holidays,” I said.

  Loretta shot me a dirty look. But she said to Irene, “Just be careful, dear. And thanks for the cookies!”

  I noticed Loretta didn’t invite Irene to sit down at the table for a cup of coffee and a biscotti. She practically shoved Irene out the door. “Bye, now!”

  “Jeez,” I said. “What happened to Irene? She finally get laid, do you think?”

  “Don’t talk like that.” Loretta went straight to the sink and washed her hands. “She’s a nice girl. Devoted to her mother. But … all right, she’s a little strange. Why would she take a job shooting guns when she could have worked at her grandfather’s bakery? He always has those pizzelles in the window—they’re so popular. Come to think of it, why hasn’t he sent any pizzelles for the wedding? I should give him a call. Here, let me stir.”

  I handed over the wooden spoon and peeked into the goop in the saucepan, wrinkling my nose. “What kind of cookies are these? It doesn’t smell like anything I recognize.”

  “It’s not cookie, it’s depilatory wax.”

  I backed up fast and clamped one hand over my upper lip. “I don’t have a mustache!”

  “Wait until menopause. It’s not for you. Your aunt Roberta is here.” Loretta pointed at the powder room door, closed, but with a bead of light shining under the door.

  I relaxed, glad not to be tonight’s victim. “Has she moved in? I thought I saw her Dodge Neon parked outside.”

  “She’s staying here for a little while. Tonight we decided to try getting rid of a few dark hairs.”

  “A few? Loretta, in dim light, she’d pass for Uncle Salvatore.”

  Aunt Roberta wasn’t really my aunt, but a cousin of Loretta’s. She was a former nun, known in the family as Sister Bob. Which explained the Dodge Neon—the car all nuns drive, for some reason. For years, she’d worked as some kind of bigwig hospital administrator, but the hospital was sold to a conglomerate and Sister Bob was asked to retire.

  Instead, Sister Bob suddenly turned in her rosary and quit the nun gig. Since then, she moved from family household to family household, and everybody was working on Sister Bob’s appearance. The crazy hope that at sixty-two she might still find happiness as a married housewife burned as brightly as a candle in church.

  I said, “Is she praying for courage in there?”

  “I think so.”

  At that moment, Rooney nosed the back door open and rushed past me. He’d probably been pooping in the neighbor’s yard. Or maybe killing their Chihuahua. In a flurry of slippery paws, the dog skidded to a stop and parked his butt at Loretta’s feet. He fixed her with an adoring stare and dropped a splat of drool on her clean floor.

  “What does the baby boy want?” Loretta cooed, blind to the drool. “He’s such a good puppy! He loves his aunt Loretta, doesn’t he, sweet puppy?”

  A hundred-plus pounds of pit bull, rottweiler, and mastiff mix quivered and whined. The mutual admiration society.

  Loretta stopped stirring the wax long enough to drop Rooney a piece of cookie, which he snatched out of the air the way a frog zaps a fly over a lily pond.

  I reached for a cookie, too, but Loretta slapped my hand away.

  “Not that one! Have an oatmeal raisin.” She pointed down the counter at a collection of misshapen lumps. “Mary Pat Caravello brought those over. Poor thing doesn’t even know oatmeal raisin cookies don’t belong on a cookie table.”

  “Why does Rooney get a cookie and I don’t?”

  “Because you don’t deserve it.”

  “Why the hell not? What have I done?”

  Loretta’s mouth tightened, and for a second I thought she was going to hold back. But with a tart snap in her voice, she said, “I hear you tricked Gino into leaving his girlfriend’s apartment in his underwear.”

  Aha. I’d sensed a certain chilly air in Loretta’s manner from the moment I stepped into the house. She’d given Irene Stossel a welcome kiss, but not me.

  I said, “How’d you hear about that?”

  “Gino’s sister told Mary Pat at the Shop ’n’ Save, who told me last night at the ladies auxiliary meeting.” Loretta fixed me with a stern stare. “Roxy, Gino’s an important man in the neighborhood. What were you thinking?”

  I said, “First of all, he’s married. And second, she wasn’t his girlfriend, Loretta. Gino was banging a fifteen-year-old.”

  “Don’t say things like— Wait. A fifteen-year-old?”

  “Yeah, one of Sage’s friends, in fact. Gino Martinelli is a slimeball, and the rest of the Martinellis ought to throw his ass in the river before he gives away the bride on Saturday.”

  Loretta crossed he
rself as if she’d just had a whiff of the devil. “Where did you hear such a rumor?”

  “It’s no rumor. I saw the girl myself. Talked to her. Dropped her off at her babysitting job.” I munched the cookie. “She’s fifteen, and Gino is scum.”

  Okay, maybe Kiley Seranelli was one of those oversexed fifteen-year-olds who took the impact of Britney Spears on American culture very seriously. When I’d gone back and dragged her out of Gino Martinelli’s love nest, Kiley had been smoking a postcoital cigarette with the aplomb of Marlene Dietrich. But you can’t blame a fifteen-year-old for fornicating with a middle-aged man. He’s the one who’s supposed to know the difference between right and wrong.

  Loretta took her hand from her mouth. “So it’s true? What you did?”

  I wouldn’t have gone after Gino Martinelli purely to regain Uncle Carmine’s investment. But when Sage told me her friend was sneaking away from basketball practice to hook up with an older guy, I’d done some snooping. I learned Gino kept an off-campus apartment where he and his jagoff sons regularly took very young girls for afternoons of marijuana-fueled corruption of minors. So I took it upon myself to bust the party.

  After I’d tossed Gino out of my truck, I’d gone back to rescue Kiley—only to find she really didn’t want rescuing. She was smoking and weeping because Gino had removed her belly button ring. With his tongue. She couldn’t figure out how to put it back in place.

  “Yeah, Gino and I had a meeting of the minds,” I said. “I think he’ll stay away from little girls for a while.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “There’s nothing heavenly about Gino.”

  Frowning, Loretta went back to tending the saucepan. “So are you going to the wedding?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “If you don’t go, everyone will assume you were the one in the wrong.”

  “It’ll just make Gino mad if I show up. Plus, all those Martinelli aunts will make comments about my hair.”

  “I can take care of that.” Loretta lifted her spoon and with a critical eye watched a long ribbon of wax dribble back into the saucepan. “I could use my influence and make you an appointment at Valentino’s for Friday.”

  “They hate me at Valentino’s!”

  “They hate your hair,” she corrected, sounding gentler. “Not you. Big difference.”

  I wasn’t so sure. The neighborhood beauty salon was the kind of place where I was talked about, not talked to. But complaining to Loretta was only going to result in me going to bed hungry. So I said, “I’ll check my schedule.”

  “If I make an appointment, you’ll rearrange your schedule. An hour at Valentino’s is hard to get on a Friday. I don’t want to waste my influence.”

  “I’ll think about it.” I opened the refrigerator. “Is there any real food for people to eat?”

  Loretta went back to the stove. “There’s egg salad on the middle shelf. I’ve been too busy to make anything else for dinner.”

  It took a big event for Loretta to skip making dinner.

  After my mother died, it was Loretta—my father’s cousin—who came to rescue me in Jersey. Loretta found me in foster care, packed my clothes into her car, buckled my seatbelt, and drove me three hundred miles across the Pennsylvania Turnpike to her home. I didn’t said a word on the trip, she told me later, but I remember that at the first meal she cooked for me—pasta shells stuffed with a savory mixture of ricotta, cream, and gently steamed spinach, unlike anything my own mother threw on the table—I cried like a baby. Since then, she’d raised me pretty much as her own daughter—or as close to it as I’d allow.

  The idea of egg salad wasn’t very satisfying, though, so I closed the refrigerator door.

  As I did so, the powder room door burst open, and Sister Bob bustled into the kitchen. She stood five feet tall and was shaped like a beer barrel. Since I’d seen her last, her gray hair had been poufed, her wardrobe primped. She was wearing a purple velour track suit with racing stripes down the outside of her chubby legs—an outfit I’m pretty sure even the most progressive convent would veto.

  “Roxana Marie! Where have you been keeping yourself?”

  “Hi, Sister Bob.”

  Sister Bob gave me an exuberant hug, squeezed my face, and planted noisy kisses on my cheeks. Her mustache prickled, but she gave me a sparkly-eyed smile. “I heard what you did to Gino Martinelli. Bless you, dear! That man is a weasel.”

  “How on earth do you know about Gino?” Loretta demanded.

  “What? You think the nuns can resist listening in on confession sometimes?” She had a raucous laugh. “Just kidding. That’s convent humor. I volunteer at the public library now. Kids talk there, and they say the most awful things. Gino deserves worse than what Roxy gave him. He should escort his daughter down the aisle with a black eye.”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “That’s pretty Old Testament, Sister Bob.”

  “Darn tootin’,” she replied. “If you need backup next time you decide to administer some street justice, you can count on me.”

  “Thanks.” Dirty Harry had nothing on Sister Bob.

  “I’m not listening,” Loretta said. “I’m an officer of the court. I’m not hearing a thing. Vigilantes simply get in the way of the judicial system.”

  Sister Bob winked at me. “Don’t listen to Loretta. If that man went after Sage, she’d be first in line with an ax and garbage bags.”

  “Yeow.” I dusted cookie crumbs from my hands into the sink. “Where is Sage, by the way?”

  “In the living room.” Loretta lifted her spoon again to judge whether the wax was ready, and she sent me a glance that said I’d better hightail it out of the kitchen before I got stuck helping with Sister Bob’s mustache. “Go make sure she isn’t doing something she shouldn’t be doing with That Boy.”

  “Zack Cleary is here?”

  “Yes,” Loretta said darkly.

  Sister Bob said, “He looks very sweet to me.”

  I snorted.

  A year ago, Loretta and I wouldn’t have worried about what Sage was doing, because she was either studying or playing basketball. But in the last several months, Sage had found love—or something like it—with Zack Cleary, a kid a few years older who was going to cop school.

  We’d already had one pregnancy scare, and none of us wanted to go through that again.

  So when I exited the kitchen and caught sight of Zack Cleary with his tongue in my daughter’s ear, I blew a fuse.

  4

  I could have grabbed a table lamp and clonked my daughter’s boyfriend over his crewcut head. Or used the extension cord to strangle him.

  But at the last second I caught sight of the untouched Italian sub sitting on its waxed paper on the coffee table, and my heart did a happy dance.

  “Is that sandwich from Bruno’s?” I asked.

  Sage and Zack sprang apart, and Sage flushed the color of a pomegranate. Zack, the horndog, sat back, stretched his arms out on the back of the sofa, and smiled at me.

  “Yep,” he said. “Capicola and mozzarella. With hot peppers. You hungry, Mrs. A?”

  Zack Cleary had been a skinny, long-haired sneak a couple of years ago—the youngest of seven, who rebelled against his father, the city’s chief of police, by shoplifting cigarettes at convenience stores. But after two years of college, Zack must have drunk the family Kool-Aid, because he suddenly quit school, cut his hair short, put on some muscle, and got himself into the police academy, where he was working hard—to hear the neighborhood tell it—at getting into the Cleary family trade.

  The fact that my daughter was dating the chief of police’s kid had given me more than a few sleepless hours.

  Sage, on the other hand, seemed as happy as any teenage girl coming into her own. Instead of a T-shirt, basketball shorts, and sneakers, she was lounging around the house in black tights and a long shirt with a bunch of bracelets on one wrist. She wore hoop earrings, too, tangled in the curls of her glossy dark hair.

  I said, “You forgot
your pants, Sage.”

  She rolled her eyes. “This is a dress, Mom.”

  “It’s too short for a dress.”

  “It’s fashion. As if you’d know anything about that.”

  “I know you need to go put on your jeans before your butt falls out of that outfit.”

  “At least I won’t be humiliated by my mother.”

  “Say, what?”

  Sage had a hard look in her eye. “Kiley Seranelli, that’s what. Mom, did you have to make a spectacle of her boyfriend?”

  “Boyfriend? Do you know who her so-called boyfriend is?”

  “No, but she said—”

  “He’s Gino Martinelli. Shelby’s dad.”

  “What?” The information shook the disdain out of Sage’s attitude.

  “Yes, and he’s old enough to be Kiley’s— Hell, he’s a statutory rapist, that’s what he is. And you were the one who told me about it!”

  Sage clamped her mouth into a severe line. “I didn’t tell you so you’d go off like a crazy woman on him.”

  “Oh, no? I was supposed to wait for Gino to grow a conscience? Or your friend to reach legal age?”

  “Mom, everybody in school heard about what you did. Somebody’s cousin even took pictures with her cell phone.”

  “Good,” I said. “Let’s hope the photos are admissible in court.”

  “Kiley can’t go to court!” Sage cried. “Her mom would kill her! Her whole life is practically ruined now.”

  “All I care about is Gino getting punished. For Kiley, things will blow over.”

  “No, they won’t. She’s already talking about transferring to a whole different school. We need her for basketball season! Mom, you really screwed up this time.”

  Being the mother of a teenager, I had learned, means screwing up all the time. There is no winning with teenagers—only staying one step ahead of them if you’re really vigilant. One day you’re up, maybe, but the next day you’re the lowest form of life known to man.