Good Graces

Chapter Seventeen

There’s a spot in our backyard where you can sit and breathe in all the good. We’ve got a glider and a shiny new bench back here that I’m hoping to replace with the old one that’s in front of Sampson’s cage if I can figure out a way to ask Dave that won’t hurt his sensitive feelings. In June, the peony flowers smell great. So do the two purple lilac trees and red and white roses. The vegetable garden is planted with radishes and carrots and cucumbers and something new Dave put in this year. He planted four rows of corn along the fence. I think he did that for me and Troo, like a tribute to Daddy. Dave doesn’t understand that when the O’Malley sisters hear the rustle of stalks coming through our bedroom window on a breezy August night, it will make me tear up and even though Troo will call me a crybaby, she’ll feel Daddy’s goneness, too. She’ll go out to that corn in the middle of the night to run the silky tassles across her lips. They were always her and Daddy’s favorite part.

Every branch of the garden bushes and tendril of the vines fills me with the most peaceful feeling, better even than Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But the part that soothes me the most is the teepee. It looks just like a real one, only smaller, and instead of buffalo fur or cattle skin, we’ve got green beans racing up the poles. There’s room inside for two. (I was worried that after my horrible camp experience that I wouldn’t feel the same way about the teepee this summer, but thank goodness, I still adore it.)

Troo came out with me tonight because a storm is coming. She won’t leave my side when there’s one rolling in. I told her she could French inhale to steady her nerves. I just had to get out of the house. Troo likes listening to them fight, but I couldn’t take hearing Mother snip little pieces off of Dave for one more minute. There’s been another burglary. This time the cat snuck into the Holzhauers’, who live on 53rd.

I say to Troo after we crawl in, “I’ve been meanin’ to tell you. Artie Latour likes you again. A lot.”

“Oh, yeah?” she says. When she reaches into her back pocket, I can smell Mother’s Midnight in Paris perfume. Troo’s got on her red lipstick, too, and around her wrist there’s the charm bracelet that Daddy gave Mother for their second wedding anniversary. Mother is too upset with Dave to notice that Troo’s been in her things and my sister knows that. “Too bad for Fartie. I got other fish to fry.”

I don’t ask her who that fish might be because she would never tell me. Poor Artie. I think of him pining away for Troo and his yo-yoing friend, Charlie Fitch, and what bad condition he is in overall. The bible says, Suffer, you little children, but how much more can one kid take? I left a baby jar of cod liver oil on the Latours’ porch last night with Artie’s name on it. I haven’t blabbed to anybody what he told me about Father Mickey committing a bad sin. Not even Troo. That wouldn’t be right. Ethel taught me that. “You should never repeat what a body tells ya when they’re barin’ their heart and soul,” she said. “That’s the worst kind of betrayal there is. That’s takin’ advantage of them when they’re already down.”

“How’s it goin’ with Father Mickey?” I ask Troo. Since it’s Tuesday, she had her religious instruction tonight. She never complains about having to go up there right after supper, so I thought she might be ditching the meetings. That’s why I secretly followed her last week. Other than stopping to throw an egg at the Heckes’ front window, she went straight to the rectory. I was impressed. It’s not like her to be so obedient. She must want to go back to Mother of Good Hope School in September as much as I want her to, which really does my heart good. “Does he make you study the same borin’ catechism we learn in school or do you talk about more interestin’ stuff?”

Troo smiles like our old barn cat would when he was lapping up a puddle of spilled cream. “He… ah… more interestin’ stuff,” she says, lighting a match to use on her cigarette, but blowing it out when Mother comes slamming outta the back door.

“Maybe I should start breakin’ into people’s houses,” Mother rants. “It’s the only way I’m going to get to spend any time with you.” And then she goes on a rip about how long it’s taking to get permission from the Pope so they can get married and how she can’t wait forever and how she wants Dave to buy her things. Not later. Now! These fights are like listening to the Moriaritys’ dog barking over and over. “When are you going to get me my own car?” Mother wants to drive downtown to the museum and buy her clothes at Chapman’s, not Gimbels. She wants to “Soak up some culture and look good doing it.” And especially she wants to get away from the neighborhood “riffraff.” Everybody is talking behind her back about how she’s living in sin. Even though she’ll tell you she couldn’t care less what people say about her, she does.

Dave is trying to calm her down in his always-cool Danish way. “I know I haven’t been around much lately, Lennie, but I think… that might change soon.”

She doesn’t tonight because we’re being secretive, but Troo usually laughs when she hears him call her that. Lennie was Mother’s nickname when they were the prom king and queen. (When Mother showed us the pictures of them on their matching thrones in the high school gym, Troo whispered to me, “Just like I thought. She’s always been a royal pain in the ass.”)

“We got a break in the case,” Dave tells Mother, but he doesn’t sound happy like the television detectives do when that happens to them and I wonder why.

Mother answers snippy, “Oh, really,” because even though this is great news, once she gets this worked up she can’t just shrug it off. Her mad clings to her worse than a slip when it comes outta our new dryer.

Their voices have gotten closer-sounding, so I know they moved over to the shiny new bench.

Dave says, “We found footprints under the bushes at the Holzhauers’ place and they don’t belong to either Bill or Heidi.”

“Can you… will you be able to tell who’s stealing… how does that work?” Mother doesn’t know anything about detecting. She doesn’t like to talk to Dave about his work the way I do and her favorite show on television isn’t 77 Sunset Strip the way it is ours. She likes This Is Your Life and just like Mrs. Fazio, Queen for a Day is also one of her favorites. “Can you tell who’s doing the burglaries by looking at the footprints?”

“No. Not until we catch a suspect to compare them to,” Dave answers.

“So what did you mean about getting a break in the case?” Mother asks.

“I meant that we’ve narrowed the suspect pool down. I think… we think… we’re pretty sure a kid is doing the burglaries.”

My throat goes skinny and Troo starts licking her lips.

Mother says, “A kid?” All the hope that she was feeling about getting to spend more time with Dave is replaced by a sore-loser laugh. “Who came up with that dumb idea? No, don’t tell me. It had to be that weasel Joe Riordan.”

She’s not thrilled that Detective Riordan has been romancing her best friend, Mrs. “Aunt Betty” Callahan. Detective Riordan has the reputation as a love-’em-and-leave-’em type. I would have to agree with Mother on this. I’d say I don’t like Detective Riordan about the same as I don’t like Father Mickey and it’s not just because he is such a Romeo. Detective Riordan splashes on too much of a cologne called English Leather and once when I caught him staring at Nell’s bosoms, his eyes looked like two sewer-hole covers and oh, I don’t know. Maybe Ethel is right. Maybe I do have a problem with men in uniforms. But if that was true, then I woulda immediately started liking Dave’s partner a lot more when he became a regular-clothes detective and I still think he stinks.

Mother asks, “What would a kid do with the paintings and silver and… that doesn’t make sense. Joe Riordan wants that sergeant’s job. He’s trying to make you look bad.” I notice that Mother doesn’t doubt for a second that kids would do something so terrible. She just can’t figure out what we’d do with the loot. “Did it ever cross your mind that the burglar could be a small-footed man? It… it could be Paulie.”

That’s not nice to think your own brother could be guilty of burglary, but they have never gotten along. Even before his brain got damaged, she never liked him, but other than that, she’s right. My uncle’s feet are not much bigger than mine and Granny did mention during the SOS supper that he’s been keeping odd hours.

Troo mouths to me in a very exaggerated way at the exact same time Mother says to Dave, “Or… it could be Harvey Charles.”

Mother can’t stand Mr. Charles, who is the Tick Tock Club’s manager. He fired her when she worked there as a singing hostess before she met Daddy. She blames everything on him.

“Harvey’s got those teeny feet to match his teeny mind and… and something else that is probably very teeny, too.”

“Len…” Dave sounds like he’s working hard not to smile, which is smart of him. Mother might tell him to wipe that smirk off his face or she’ll wipe it off for him. “A small-footed adult is a good theory, but Paulie’s much too damaged to pull off something like this. And as far as Harvey goes… have you ever seen him wearing a pair of Converse?”

Of course she hasn’t. Only kids wear those. I don’t have any, but Troo’s got some white ones and… and sweet baby Jesus in heaven, that’s the only kind of shoes Mary Lane wears! It’ll be just a matter of time now before the cops figure out that it’s one of our best friends who is breaking into those houses. I gotta tell Mary Lane to stop being a cat burglar immediately, before Dave and the other cops start going door-to-door asking to look at kids’ shoes like… like some kinda crime-busting Prince Charmings.

“I have to go. They’re waiting for me. I’m sorry,” Dave says to Mother. “I tell you what… how about this weekend we look at a car? Flip Johnson’s got his red Studebaker for sale and it’s a beaut.”

When I can’t hear their voices anymore, I peek through the green beans. I thought Mother mighta coldcocked Dave because I know she really wants a Pontiac, but they’re kissing. When they finally come apart, he puts his arm around her small waist and they go back into the house, so for now they have come to a meeting of Mother’s mind.

I should turn Mary Lane in to Dave right this minute. If I do that, Mother will stop acting like a fire-breathing dragon toward him because he won’t have to spend all his nights looking for the cat burglar instead of massaging her feet, and next to keeping Troo safe, I want more than anything to see in their eyes that melting look of love. But how can I hand my other best friend to him on a platter?

What I need is some good advice and nobody is better at giving it than the smartest woman I know, Ethel Jenkins. She is out on her screened-in porch next door soaking her “dogs” in the white pan. I know that she’s off duty because I’m not hearing the bouncy rhythm-and-blues music Ethel listens to when she’s tending to Mrs. Galecki. After she’s done for the day, after the sun goes down, my good friend listens to broken-heart songs that have the sweetest, saddest sounding horn called a saxophone in them and sometimes a singer named Billie Holiday.

But if I’m going to hop over there, I need to be quick about it. The sky is getting noisier than Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl on a Saturday night. Not right above us, but it’s coming our way.

My sister blows a smoke ring at me. “Doesn’t seem like things are goin’ so swell for Helen and Dave. If she gets worked up enough, she might even call off the weddin’. Gee, that’d be too bad,” she says, not meaning it.

Troo hasn’t thought this out. It really would be too bad. Mother doesn’t have any money of her own. What would we do? We couldn’t go live with Granny. There’s not enough room in her little bungalow house. Her bigness and Uncle Paulie’s weirdness take up a lotta space. Mother would have to get a job at the cookie factory to put a roof over our heads the way Aunt Betty had to.

From over the fence, Ethel’s voice comes pouring thick and sweet. “That you O’Malley sisters ponderin’ the questions of the universe in that bean teepee?”

She knows it is. Who else would it be? Ethel’s just using her fine southern manners. I open up my mouth to ask how her evening has been going and tell her that I’ll be right over for some good advice and how I’ll help her look some more for Mrs. Galecki’s lost jewelry that hasn’t turned up yet, but Troo shakes her head and scowls. She loves Ethel as much as I do and would normally be halfway over there by now, but that’s the kind of mood she is in tonight and most nights, come to think of it. If I say black, she’ll say white. If I say go, she’ll say no.

“I got a little something-something waitin’ on you,” Ethel drawls out. That means she’s got something good to eat.

When the first lightning flashes, I can see Troo even more perfectly. She’s got the L &M dangling from her lips so she can use her hand to rub her bad arm that got hurt in the crash. What I should do is take her back into the house, get under the bed and plug her ears with cotton balls like I usually do when a storm kicks up, but I don’t.

I shout back to Ethel, “Be there in two shakes.”

The heck with Troo. If she wants to stay in here smoking and gloating over how Mother and Dave are barely getting along instead of stretching out in Mrs. Galecki’s porch with our other best friend eating a little something-something, then let her. Mother made us sweetbreads for supper tonight and they didn’t taste like cinnamon toast the way I thought they would. I’m so darn hungry. My stomach feels like a wishing well.

I’ve crawled almost all the way outta the teepee when Mother yells out the back window with all she’s got, “Girls? You out there? Get in this house. It’s about to pour.”

Dang.

I call back across the yard, “Ethel?”

“Ya girls listen to your mama. I’ll see y’all on Wednesday. Lessin’ Miss Troo stunts her growth from smokin’ them weeds and shrinks herself to the size of a gnat, then a course it’ll just be you I’ll be seein’, Miss Sally.”

That’s a good one. That makes me laugh. “Sweet dreams, Ethel. Watch out for those bedbugs,” I say, feeling a splotch of rain landing on my bare arm when I turn toward the house.

I call back to her, “Trooper?”

I wait, but nothing comes outta the teepee but a wisp rising through the top like a smoke signal. I know I should go back in there, snub out that cigarette and drag my sister into the house, but I am just so tired of her digging in her heels. All I’m ever trying to do is honor my promise to Daddy to keep her safe and all she’s ever trying to do is run me ragged. I wish… I wish the teepee would get struck by lightning and those sparks would come flying down the poles and flow through Troo just enough to make her go woozy for the rest of the summer. I would prop her up on the backyard bench and always know where she was. She could do some jigsaw puzzles with Mother. They could be two peas in the pod again the way they used to be instead of…

(Sorry again, Daddy. Mea, mea culpa.)