Good Graces

Chapter Twenty-nine

By the time the church bell rings eight times, all that’s left is the four of us.

We had to wait to get the plan underway until after the janitors took the tables back into the cafeteria and cleaned up the playground mess. I can hear the last of our neighbors’ voices calling to each other down the block. Anybody who drove a car is already at the park staking out a good spot on the grass for the concert.

Artie and Mary Lane are at the back of the rectory. They should be crouching outside Father Mickey’s office window by now and I’m where I’m supposed to be, too. In the nook of the school, dying to poke my head out and call to Troo, who is on the porch, Pretty please with sugar on top, let’s forget this whole thing and go listen to Music Under the Stars. I’ll give you my root beer and my leather coin purses and anything else you want for the rest of our lives, but my sister doesn’t get my mental telepathy, or maybe she does and rings the rectory doorbell anyway. I can hear the chimes, that’s how close I am.

From somewhere inside, a light goes on and Father Mickey calls out, “Come in, my child,” and that’s just what Troo does, making sure that she leaves the front door open a crack so it’s easier for her to make a getaway.

I’m watching the minutes tick by on Daddy’s watch and when it gets quarter past the hour, I think that Troo’s been in there way too long. I’m sure the plan isn’t going the way she thought it would. What if she needs my help and I’m standing here twiddling my thumbs? The only way I have of hearing what’s happening inside with her and Father Mickey is by leaving my hiding spot and going to listen in. Because of the heat that feels like somebody is holding a feather pillow over my face in the shower, every single one of the rectory windows is open as far as they go. When I press my ear against the screen of the nearest one, the one next to the front door, I can make out voices, but not clearly. Artie and Mary Lane, who are on the opposite side of the building, are closer to the action and must be getting an earful and hopefully soon a good picture of Father Mickey trying to choke Troo and then we can meet up in the confessional and all of us can go over to the park.

“Thally! Thally! Hi! Hi! Hi!”

I think at first that it’s my guilty conscience making me hear Wendy because I told her I’d swing with her later and didn’t. But when I come away from the window and look in the direction I hear her croaky voice coming from, I can make her out in the full moonlight.

“I thee you.”

Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, no, no, no. I watched her leave the fish fry, throwing her Dinah Shore kisses to me all the way down the block. But Wendy, she can be an escape artist. Especially when the whole Latour family is together somewhere, she can get away from her mother so easy because she gets lost in the crowd and that’s just what she’s done.

“Thally! Thally! Thally!”

She’s on the middle of the three school swings, pumping with all her might. I can’t yell at her across the playground to hush up, Father Mickey might hear me. And what if he hears her? She could wreck Troo’s whole plan. But I can’t just ignore her either. Wendy doesn’t understand ignoring. I know from years of experience that she’ll yell louder and louder the higher and higher she goes, so I do the only thing I can think of. I peel across the blacktop and try to talk her down.

“Wendy, you gotta stop,” I pant out as she swings past me. “You gotta be quiet. Please. Tapioca, tapioca, tapioca.” I never know how much of what I say she really understands so this is always a shot in the dark. “You should go be with your mom. She’s callin’ you. She’s gonna be mad if you don’t.” That’s worked a couple of times in the past. “See? She’s right over there.” Wendy doesn’t look where I’m pointing. She throws her head back and looks up and then so do I. The moon that was so bright just a few seconds ago is wrapped up in black clouds and the wind is picking up enough that the trees are rustling. “Uh-oh. You know what that means. A storm’s comin’.” Just like Troo, Wendy is not nuts about thunder and lightning. “It could even be a tornado. You don’t want that. Remember what happened to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz?”

“With flyin’, Sally,” Wendy says, pumping harder.

“Yup… yup, that’s really good witch flying, but you…” I’m trying to get ahold of the swing chain and drag her to a stop, but she’s really high and weighs a lot more than I do, and that’s not even counting how strong she is. The last time I tried to do this over at the playground, she spun around to get away from me and when she twisted back she knocked me down.

“Be with, Thally,” she yells. “With… with… with.”

“Wendy… no… please, please… shush… shush… shhh.” She’s asking me to do my impression of the Wicked Witch of the West that makes her laugh so hard, but once I start, she’ll want more… more… more! I don’t have time for that. I have to get back to where I’m supposed to be over in the nook of the school. Troo is going to come charging out that rectory door any minute and if I’m not there to do my part, to be the decoy, Father is going to catch her. “All right. Okay,” I tell Wendy. “You stay and swing and… ah… if you’re real quiet, I’ll come right back in a little while and be the witch, okay?”

When I take off, Wendy doesn’t do exactly what I asked her to. She yells again, “Thally! Thally!” but I can’t help that. I can’t stop.

I hurry to listen in the window again. I can hear much better now. Things are really heating up inside the rectory. Troo is yelling and Father Mickey is, too, then my sister shouts even louder and something breaks and then everything goes quiet. There’s a flash, which must be Mary Lane’s Brownie bulb, and then Troo comes dashing out the rectory door much faster than when we practiced. She didn’t give me the chance to get back to my hiding spot.

My sister whizzes past me, yelling, “Run, Sal, run!”

From inside the house, Father Mickey roars, “Fuckin’ kids!” and just like Troo thought he would, he comes charging out the door, which is supposed to be my cue to run across the playground and lose him in the neighborhood, but I barely get five feet when he grabs me from behind, spins me around by my braid and slaps me across the face so hard that I feel my front tooth break on his ring. He is cursing and trying to pull me back up off the ground by my right arm. In the light of the rectory hall that’s spilling out behind him, Father Mickey looks rabid. His hair is standing on end and his black Irish eyes look frantic above his mouth that’s pulled back into a snarl.

“Help! Help!” I yell, hoping that Troo or Mary Lane or Artie will hear me and come back to rescue me, but they’re already too far away.

But there’s somebody else who isn’t.

His back is to her, so Father can’t see Wendy running her crazy windmill way toward us the way I can. Even the lightning that flashes right over our heads doesn’t slow her down. She understands that Father Mickey is hurting me, twisting my arm so hard that I think it’s going to break. She’s coming fast like she did over at the Vliet Street playground the time Buddy Deitrich was bullying me.

Father Mickey barks at me, “I’m going to teach you and your snotty sister a lesson about minding your own business. Where’d she go? And the other kid… the kid with the camera. Get up, get up!” He yanks me again, and Wendy, she’s almost right on top of us.

I try to shout, “No!” but she bowls into Father Mickey from behind like she’s a ball and he’s a pin up at Jerbak’s. I try to reach out to break his fall, but I’m not fast enough and he goes down hard. His head bounces off the side of one of the poles that are set around the DANGER hole where the foundation is getting poured tomorrow for our new school wing.

I don’t know what to do. This is nothing like Troo’s plan. Father Mickey is sprawled out next to me. Out for the count.

It takes me a minute or so to get my wits about me, but when I finally get up on my knees and say, “Hello?” my tongue brushes against my front tooth that feels jaggedy and tastes like an iron railing because of the blood. “Father Mickey, ah… you… you okay?” He’s lying tummy down, blending into the blacktop, but his white face is cocked my way. I’m not sure if I should be trying to wake him up. I’m scared about what he’s going to do to us when he comes to. Maybe Wendy and me should just run off and leave him. When he wakes up he might have amnesia and forget all about what happened. You can get that if you hit your head as hard as he did. That’s the best we can hope for. I try again. “Father?” He doesn’t groan. He doesn’t thrash around or move at all and once I lean down closer to him, I think that he’s not ever going to again. Wendy didn’t knock him out cold just for a little while. I’m pretty sure Wendy mighta knocked him out cold forever.

I’ve seen plenty of dead people. Daddy. Granny O’Malley. I saw Bobby after he fell into Sampson’s pit over at the zoo. And the longer I stare at Father, the surer I’m getting that it’s too late to run inside the rectory, find the telephone and call the operator so she can send one skinny and one fat ambulance man to come put Father Mickey on their stretcher and take him up to St. Joe’s with the siren blaring. But I gotta be positive. It takes me three tries to put my two fingers on his neck the same way I’ve seen Ethel do so many times to Mrs. Galecki when she has one of her spells. His skin is warm and soft under his stubbly beard, but nothing is pounding beneath my fingertips. I think I must be doing it wrong and move down to his wrist. Not a beat. I don’t see any other marks on him. He’s only bleeding a little from where his head hit the concrete post. I’m not sure why he’s dead. It could have something to do with his neck. It doesn’t look right.

From behind me, Wendy says, “Thwing now, Thally?”

She doesn’t know what she’s done. She doesn’t understand death. She swats skeeters and waits for them to fly off again. That’s when it really hits me that Wendy Latour has accidentally killed Father Mickey because she was protecting me and the tears come gushing. My whole body is shaking and my mind, it feels like it’s spinning away from me and I can’t catch up to it. I don’t know if I’m grateful or scared or relieved, maybe all of them. So many feelings are whirling around inside of me and I can’t tell one from the other. I don’t think there’s any sadness, though. Not for Father anyway. A good Catholic should be feeling sorrowful about his death, but I’m not. I’m not rejoicing, but I’m not broken up either. I feel something every time I look at him, I just don’t know what the word for it is.

“Thally?” Wendy comes up behind me and cups her hands under my arms and lifts me up to my feet. She lays her head on my shoulder and gives me a gentle honey bear hug. I can smell fish sticks and fruit on her T-shirt when she gives me a couple of hard pats on the back. “Don’ cry. Don’ cry, Thally O’Malley,” she says, licking the tears off my cheek. “All better now.”

We stay there together, rocking back and forth like we are slow dancing under the darkening sky. The wind pushes a piece of trash across the playground and the swings are twisting and the flagpole is making a clink… clink… sound. It seems like we are in each other’s arms forever until I realize I gotta do something and even longer before I figure out what.

“Wendy?” I whisper.

“Yeth?”

“I wanna play a game, do you?”

“Yeth, Thally,” she says, unlocking her arms.

I pick up the rhinestone tiara that got knocked off when she tackled Father Mickey and set it back where it belongs on her shiny black hair. “We’re gonna play hide-and-seek. You remember that one?”

She nods really fast, but she doesn’t. Every single time we play a game I have to go over the rules with her.

“Go into that little nook.” I point to the part of the school where I was supposed to hide and wait for Father Mickey. “I want you to put your hands over your eyes and start countin’ very, very slow and I’m going to hide and then you can come find me.”

“Then thwing?”

“Yup… then we’ll swing.”

“With laugh.”

“And witch laugh. Go on now.”

This time Wendy does exactly what I tell her to do and while she’s counting around the corner with her wide face in her chubby fingers, “One… free… nine…” I squat down and push with everything I got. When he flips over… Father’s face… he still looks so handsome.

I know what I’m about to do is against the law. You’re supposed to tell the police if someone dies, even if it’s an accident. I also know that according to the Church, I’m committing a sacrilege. Horrible as he was, Father Mickey deserves a proper burial. But this isn’t the first time I’ve examined my conscience. I’ve spent countless sleepless nights questioning what’s right and what’s wrong. I finally decided that knowing bad from good isn’t always so black-and-white. I mean, there are times when you know you’re about to do something that maybe you shouldn’t so you stop yourself, but there are other times when you know you’re committing a sin but have no choice except to go full speed ahead. You can’t always pick what’s right. Sometimes you can only pick what’s less wrong.

This is one of those times.

I can’t leave Father Mickey here to be found in the morning by one of the old neighborhood ladies. When he doesn’t show up for eight o’clock Mass, they’ll come storming up to the rectory. The police will be called in and all sorts of questions will be asked. Dave will remember that after the fish fry, Troo and me stayed up here for her religious instruction. My sister will be cool, but when Dave questions me, I will put up a good fight at first, but the love I have for him will eventually win out and I’ll confess everything. In nothing flat, what happened here tonight will fly through our neighborhood.

No one will believe me when I try to explain that what Wendy did was an accident. No matter how hard I try to convince our neighbors that she didn’t mean to murder Father, that she was only trying to save me, I know what will happen. They will not watch Wendy’s loping run or hear her funny way of talking or remember her swinging at the playground with her blouse off and smile to themselves the way they do now. Our neighbors won’t even feel sorry for her. Every time they look at her, all they will see is the girl who ended the life of the best pastor we ever had. Her picture will be in the newspaper and on television. She might even have to go to jail or reform school. I can’t let that happen. I won’t. Mongoloids don’t live as long as the rest of us and over my dead body is Wendy Latour spending whatever time she’s got left on earth where there aren’t any swings.

She calls over from the school corner, “Ready or no, here I go, Thally!”

I shout back, “No, stay there, Wendy! Gimme a minute.”

I’m sure God wouldn’t have let Wendy tackle Father Mickey hard enough to kill him if that wasn’t part of His plan. Our fate is in His hands, right? Even though I’m positive that what I’m about to do really is for the best, it wouldn’t hurt to get a second opinion.

I bow my head and pray:

DEAR LORD, I KNOW THAT I HAVE NOT BEEN THAT GOOD LATELY, SO I PROBABLY DON’T DESERVE ONE, BUT YA KNOW, IF YOU COULD JUST GIVE ME A SIGN THAT WHAT I’M ABOUT TO DO IS OKAY WITH YOU, THAT’D BE GREAT. AMEN.

When I open my eyes and look to the heavens for my answer, the wind that was blowing suddenly stops and the dark clouds that were so threatening break apart to let the moon shine down on me again. That’s all I need to know. This is His celestial way of giving me two thumbs-up. God is letting me know that I am in His good graces. It’s not my imagination. How could it be?

Wendy calls to me again from around the corner in her croaking voice, “Now, Thally?”

“Almost,” I holler back.

All it takes is a couple of strong pushes to roll Father Mickey into the deep hole, where he lands with a soft thump.

When I get up off my knees and scurry around the corner to hide so Wendy can seek, I think about how tomorrow bright and early, after the cement trucks come and pour their load, Father will become part of the foundation for the new school. After I call out, “Ready!” I also think how the next time somebody tells me that the Almighty works in mysterious ways, I will have to agree with them.