Good Graces (20 page)

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
.)

T
roo 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
aaa
nd . . . 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.)