Good Graces

Chapter Eighteen

Troo and me are at another best place in the neighborhood this morning. The Finney Library. Mary Lane and my sister come up here every Monday so they can check to see how the Billy the Bookworm contest is going. I tag along so I can pick up a new Nancy Drew to read to Mrs. Galecki and to make sure the two of them don’t kill each other. I’m also here because I need to talk to Mary Lane about a couple of important things I have on my mind. We didn’t get to see her all last week because she was up at the new zoo helping out. At least once every summer the rhino steps on her dad’s foot, so she helps him hobble around like his own personal cane.

“Can you believe the nerve of this kid?” my sister says, jabbing at the Bookworm chart the second we come through the library doors. She wants to win the prize in the worst way because she really adores going to the movies and, of course, ending up on top of the chart is another something she can lord over our other best friend. “Look at how high Lane’s worm has crawled! She’s gotta be cheatin’.” If we weren’t in the library, she would hawk a loogie. She still might. “I’m gonna go tell Kambowski on her.”

When Troo storms off to complain to the head librarian at the front desk, I go looking for Mary Lane. I find her right away browsing down one of the aisles and pull her into the lavatory with me.

“Don’t ever let your mother give you a home permanent again,” I tell her once we get in there. “You look like the Bride of Frankenstein.”

“Cool,” Mary Lane says, turning toward the mirror above the sink and making the same face the actress in the movie did right after she got electrified back to life. Head cocked to the left and then to the right, glaring at the doctor with the kind of look that says, What the heck did you do to me, you mad scientist you?

“And you gotta stop stealin’ immediately,” I say. “I’m not jokin’. Dave is hot on your trail for being the cat burglar. I’ll help you get rid of the evidence.” I’ve given this a lot of thought. “We’re gonna tie a rock around your All Stars and throw them into the lagoon. Then we’ll go to all the houses you stole from in the middle of the night. We’ll put their precious things on their front porches, the ones you haven’t already taken to the pawnshop. I’ll make apology notes by cuttin’ words out of a magazine so no one will recognize my handwritin’. The way they do in movies, ya know, like a ransom note only in reverse.”

When I get done with my spiel, Mary Lane laughs and says, “You been eatin’ too many nuts, O’Malley. They musta gone to your brain. You ever seen me steal?” She has a book called Blaze and the Forest Fire and another one called The Terrible Tale of Mata Hari in her arms, so just for a second I believe her, because I mean, I never have seen her steal and there are only so many hours in the day and she’s already pretty busy with her other two hobbies.

“You sure you’re not the cat?” I ask.

Mary Lane sets her books down and boosts herself up onto the counter next to the sink. “I think I’d know if I was breakin’ into people’s houses, don’t you?” She answers so la de da that it makes me go back to thinking she’s lying after all. If somebody accused me of a crime that I didn’t do, I’d get my feelings hurt, but Mary Lane, all she says is, “Boy… do I got some juicy news for you.”

I head into the stall, hardly listening to her because I don’t like tinkling anywhere except at home, but I gotta go really, really bad.

Mary Lane says, “This week on Hawaiian Eye Cricket got herself in a real fix, but then she got outta it.” She loves that show. I used to, too, but every time I try to watch it lately all I can think about is finding a leper eyeball in the pocket of one of Granny’s muu-muus. Mary Lane keeps me up to date. “And a man at the new zoo has been showin’ me how to drive the train they got out there, which is not that hard, so I’m thinkin’ if bein’ a fireman doesn’t work out I’m gonna be a conductor aaand… you’re never gonna guess who I peeped on,” she says on the other side of the toilet door that has telephone numbers and other stuff scribbled over it. Like who’s available if you’re looking for a good time. (Fast Susie Fazio.)

I rip the toilet paper off the roll and carefully lay it down, making sure all of the black is covered in a crisscross pattern. Troo told me you could get pregnant if you let your private parts touch the seat. She’s sure that’s what musta happened to Dottie Kenfield and even though I don’t agree with her-I think whoever gave Dottie that ruby ring is the culprit-I can see why that makes sense to my sister. It’s nearly impossible to keep a piece of juicy news quiet around here and nobody has said a word to me or anybody else I know about who the father of Dottie’s baby is so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she had an Immaculate Conception caused by a toilet seat. Nothing in heaven and earth is impossible. It happened to the Virgin Mother, it could happen to Dottie Kenfield.

“I was over at the old bottling plant on Burleigh Street the other night,” Mary Lane says. “Scoutin’ it out.”

Scouting it out is the same as saying that she is planning to set that abandoned building on fire the same way she did the tire store on North Avenue last summer. And the old TV repair shop a few weeks ago. She could never put that in her summer story, but I think it’s kinda charitable when she burns those buildings down. They’re such eyesores. They put up a spiffy appliance shop where the tire store used to be. Maybe they’ll open a new dress store where the bottling plant was. Something really fancy. Mother would like that.

“Geeze, O’Malley. What’d ya drink this mornin’?” Mary Lane says. “Peewaukee Lake?”

After I flush, I come out and turn on the sink water. I don’t look so good in the mirror. Sometimes I barely recognize myself anymore. The dark half moons under my eyes look permanent and my hair is so bleached out from all the time I’ve been spending under this hot summer sun, it’s almost white.

“So who did you peep on?” I say, acting interested because that’s the polite thing to do.

“Father Mickey!” Mary Lane says, thrilled and wiggly.

I don’t know why she’s so excited. You’d think this would be getting old to her by now. Her favorite people to peep on are nuns and priests. Last summer, she caught our ex-pastor, Father Jim, dancing around the rectory in a white dress and high heels to Some Enchanted Evening.

“Father Mickey was at the abandoned bottlin’ plant last night?” I ask, drying off my hands on the towel thingie.

“Yup,” Mary Lane says. “He was in a black car talkin’ with you’re-never-gonna-believe-who.”

There is an excellent chance of that.

“Who?” I ask.

“Mr. Tony Fazio!”

What would the two of them be doing at that old plant together? That doesn’t sound right. Mary Lane must be winding up to tell me one of her famous no-tripper stories.

“Did you hear what they were talkin’ about?” I am trying not to sound like a doubting Thomas, but not doing such a good job.

“I couldn’t make out all the words, but Mr. Fazio was yellin’ at Father something about bein’ overdue and then Father started yellin’ back at him,” she says.

Yeah, this is one of her stories for sure. Nobody would yell at a priest. And I have never seen Mr. Fazio at the library, so what does he care if Father is late getting a book back.

Just to be polite, I’m about to ask Mary Lane to tell me what else she mighta heard Mr. Fazio and Father discussing when my sister comes barging through the lavatory door shouting, “Where is that fuzzy-haired drip?” Spotting her, Troo shoves past me and yanks Mary Lane off the sink counter. “You’re gonna beat me on the Bookworm!”

Mary Lane pinches Troo hard on the nose and yells back, “Tough titty, kitty,” and their yelling echoes off all that green tile so loud that Mrs. Kambowski comes rushing in.

“What in God’s name is going on in here?” the head librarian asks. She gets the both of them by the scruff of their necks and gives them a good shake.

Mary Lane mumbles something, and Troo acts contrite and tells the librarian, “Pardonnez-moi,” but the second we get through the library’s front doors, she throws herself on top of Mary Lane piggyback-style and they end up wrestling around on the grass like they always do until I can’t take it anymore and pull Troo off.

“Let go a me!” She shoves me down to the ground next to Mary Lane, screws up her face and screams like a she-cat, “Fuck the both of ya,” then she hops on her bike and takes off without me on the handlebars.

Mary Lane and me watch Troo darting in and out of cars down Sherman Boulevard with held breaths. After my sister turns toward the park and we can’t see her anymore, Mary Lane rubs her leg where Troo kicked her. She’s not laughing like she usually would after one of their wrestling matches. She’s got a hurt look on her face and question marks in her eyes. She’s wondering why my sister has been acting even wilder than she usually does.

I could tell Mary Lane that Troo is acting worse because we’re half sisters now instead of whole ones or because Dave and Mother want to get married or because she’s having a hard time finding Greasy Al or maybe it’s because she’s falling behind on the Bookworm chart, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. I think it’s more than that. Something else is making my sister go around the bend.

Mary Lane helps me up off the grass and says, “What’s her problem?”

I wish I knew. I’d give anything for the answer to that sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.