Good Graces (6 page)

“Yeah, sure,” she says, tossing him a piece of Dubble-Bubble that she always has plenty of in her pocket because she takes other things from the drugstore besides cigarettes and that’s one of them.

But nothing we’re saying or giving Artie seems to be helping much. Such sadness is shooting out of his eyeballs. The kind that holds you in place, you can barely swallow, that’s how bad it gets you around the throat. I know how he’s feeling. He’s about to start choke-crying.

The only one still moving through the thick, hot air is swinging Wendy and even she’s dragging her feet across the blacktop to slow down. “Artie, Artie.” She cocks her head to one side and calls to me, “Thad?”

When I nod, she jumps off the swing and lopes over to hug him. Her brother steps away, which is not like him at all. He loves Wendy and she looks up to him like he’s all the stars in the sky.

Artie says, “Father Mickey—”

Troo perks up. “What about him?”

My sister worships the ground Father walks on. And so does everybody else. Attendance at church has been way up since he became our new pastor. The ladies of the parish get all dolled up and cram themselves into the front pews at his ten o’clock Sunday Mass, and after church, when he’s greeting everybody out on the steps, the mothers bring him plates of devil’s food cake and make jokes about that. Even the nuns smile creakily at him when he stops by a classroom to tell us a parable. Father Mickey is not my cup of tea, I don’t know why. But I
am
grateful that he’s taking time out of his busy life to give Troo extra religious instruction up at the rectory this summer. She’s gonna get kicked outta Mother of Good Hope School for her impure behavior if she doesn’t get holier by September, so Father better do a good job. I couldn’t stand being without her.

Artie says, “Father Mickey told Charlie that he was one of the chosen few and . . .” Whatever he’s trying to tell us isn’t coming out so he just gives up, stoops to pick up Wendy’s yellow blouse where she threw it and says to her, “Tapioca,” and this time she listens.

“What are ya waitin’ for, Sally?” Mary Lane hollers at me from the tetherball pole line. “The second comin’ of Christ? You’re up!”

I know I should go after Artie and offer to help him go look for Charlie because that would be the charitable thing to do, but I have been waiting for over a half hour for my ups and just in case I’m right and we find that orphan over in Jack Hoyt woods hanging from a tree by a noose or in an alley strangled with his yo-yo string, I don’t want to see another dead kid. I’ve already gone to one funeral. I didn’t even know they made caskets that small.

I tell Troo, “C’mon,” but she doesn’t. She’s watching Wendy and her beloved big brother making their way home hand-in-hand.

When she turns back my way, she’s got the kind of look on her face that I can only describe as the same one she gets when she stares at the picture we have of Daddy hanging on the wall in our bedroom. She points over her shoulder and says, “We’re not like them anymore. We’re not whole. You’re only a half sister to me now.”

She’s been saying this a lot lately. “You know that’s not true. We belong a hundred percent to each other forever, no matter who our fathers are. Bein’ sisters . . . that doesn’t have nothin’ to do with how much of the same blood we have.”

Troo bumps into me real hard before she runs across the blacktop, yelling, “Spilled milk.”

I shout after her, “No, it’s not. Wait up!” But when I take off after her, I can’t stop myself from crying even if it is no use.

E
very night at five thirty, before she calls out, “Supper is served,” Mother puts on a freshly ironed Peter Pan–collar blouse and a record on the turntable. The Hi-Fi is her most prized possession. Dave gave it to her for her birthday. It has a diamond needle. She told us she’ll cut off Troo’s and my hands if we ever touch it and I don’t think she’s messing around because she doesn’t have a very good sense of humor anymore. What she does have is a nice collection of albums and some 45s that she used to like to warble along with. She could’ve been a professional singer with a big band if she didn’t have kids, which is why I think she looks so sad when she listens to the record she made at Beihoff’s Music in a soundproof booth. Her favorites are Peggy Lee when it comes to females, and for the men, it’s Perry Como, who she thinks is also an excellent dresser. She loves his sweater style. He’s the one serenading us tonight.
“Hot diggity dog ziggity boom whatcha do to me.”

Dave and Troo and me are expected to have washed our hands and combed our hair and be seated at the yellow formica kitchen table by the time Mother sets the main course down and we are holding up our end. She is looking especially glamorous tonight. A lot like that movie actress, Maureen O’Hara. Last-of-the-day rays are streaming through the kitchen curtains and hitting her long hair that is bundled up at her neck with a white ribbon that I want to tug on. I’d love to run my hands through her loose red waves, but she doesn’t really go in for that sort of thing.

She sits in the chair next to Dave and tells him, “Say grace, please.”

Dave clasps his hands together, bows his head, and I think the same thing I think every night at this time when I see the top of his thick blond hair that matches mine. I’m not 100 percent Irish anymore. I got half of Dave’s blood in me now and a sneaking suspicion that Danish people are not known for being lucky, only for making delicious sweet rolls.

Dave mumbles, “Bless us, oh Lord, for these gifts which we are about to receive . . .”

Because of mental telepathy, I know exactly what’s going on in Troo’s mind and it’s not how handsome Dave looks in his button-down white shirt. She’s thinking about how much she can’t stand to be sitting across this table from him and that what we’re having for supper tonight is
not
a gift and she’ll do whatever she needs
not
to receive it.

“. . . through the bounty of Christ our Lord, amen,” Dave finishes up.

After we all make the sign of the cross, Mother tells him in a charming voice we don’t get to hear very often, “It’s so nice to have you home tonight.” It really is. Dave’s been so busy chasing the cat burglar that he’s had to skip suppers with us more than a couple of times every week. “Now . . . who’d like to begin this evening’s stimulating conversation?”

Mother has recently started making us talk at the table about important events while we listen to the music and chew with our mouths closed. Dave and her usually chat about what’s going on in the neighborhood, but lately they are very keen on discussing what is going on in our nation’s capital. Both of them really like John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who is an Irish political man, and more important—a Catholic. Dave and Mother think Mr. Kennedy might become president of the United States if he plays his cards right. I like Ike, so I don’t care who the next president is just so long as it isn’t that man, Nixon. I saw him give a talk on television. I know from going to the movies that heavy sweating and darting eyes make a person suspicious. That man is a twofer.

“Pass everything,” our granny bosses.

Granny doesn’t usually eat over unless it’s Sunday, but the potluck up at church got cancelled because of the heat making the cafeteria stink even worse than it usually does, so Dave drove over to 59th Street and got her out of her small house where she lives with our brain-damaged uncle who isn’t here. Uncle Paulie probably stayed in his bedroom to finish off his newest Popsicle-stick house or he went early to his job setting pins at Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl, which is at least one thing to be grateful for. He doesn’t sing, “Peek-a-boo, Troo, Peek-a-boo, Daddy,” every two seconds the way he used to, but just looking at him makes Troo remember the crash. (Our uncle was in the car coming home from the game, too. I think peek-a-boo is the last thing he remembers hearing before he flew outta the windshield.)

Granny’s name is Alice. Her and Mother don’t get along all that good except at church and on holidays. Granny thinks her daughter is too uppity for a girl that grew up across the street from the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory and will ask her, “When will you learn that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Helen?” if she thinks Mother is getting above herself. Granny is largish, especially in her underarm area, which looks like a sheet on a clothesline flapping on a windy day, but her face hardly has any wrinkles considering how old she is—eighty-five. Her hair is Wonder Bread white and she wears it in a page boy. If you ever met her, you would immediately think you’d seen her somewhere before. That’s because she looks a lot like George Washington on the dollar bill. Except for her clothes. She used to wear regular dotted Swiss old lady dresses, but lately she’s always got on a
muu-muu.
Mother buys them for her out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. I think the dresses are a bribe so Granny will like her more than she does and Mother may finally be wearing her down because, I’m not kidding, my grandmother goes ape for these flowery dresses. I thought she looked kinda cute in them, too, when I still thought they were spelled
moo-moos
and made by some nice 4-H ladies who could use the extra money because their husbands are farmers and every little bit helps.

It was Mrs. Kambowski who once again wrecked it all.

Dave dropped Granny and me at the Finney Library a few weeks ago so we could get something new to read. She likes books about love and death. All Irish people adore those subjects. And whiskey. I picked up another Nancy Drew story, which I’ve started loving. (Her father musta told her to pay attention, too, because that girl doesn’t seem to miss a thing.)

When we were checking out, Mrs. Kambowski complimented Granny on her
ensemble
and then, because she can
never
leave well enough alone and just
has
to teach you something every time she runs into you, the head librarian said, “Do you know that your grandmama’s dress comes all the way from the Hawaiian Islands, Sally?”

I told her, “No,” a little snippy because her always teaching my sister French gets my Irish up.

“
Muu-muu
means
amputated
in their language,” Mrs. Kambowski told us.

Granny said, “You learn something new every day,” but I said, “Am . . . pu . . . ta . . . ted?” and felt pretty queasy. “Doesn’t that mean not having an arm or a leg?”

Mrs. Kambowski said, “A gold star for you, Sally.”

So that means the purple-and-pink parrot one Granny’s got on tonight was probably made by some of the most famous armless and legless people there are—lepers, who live with the most famous of all Hawaiians, Father Damien, on an island called Molokai. We learn all about lepers at school. This is a big subject. How those poor people gotta walk around and yell, “Unclean” if they still got legs. Since they can’t work in a store or some kind of factory because they are so contagious, lepers must earn money by sewing
muu-muus
for Sears and Roebuck. That’s why I’m relieved Granny is sitting on the other end of the table tonight. Part of those lepers could have fallen off into her dress and I don’t need that disease to hop out of a hem and onto me. I got enough on my hands keeping Troo safe. And getting this supper down.

I am sorry to have to say this, but my mother is the worst cook in the neighborhood, maybe on the whole west side or the world. They don’t even ask her to contribute to the Pagan Baby Cake Walks at school anymore because the last time she did three people had to get their stomachs pumped out at St. Joe’s. That was the only good thing about her being in the hospital almost all of last summer. We didn’t have to eat her cooking. She made us SOS tonight. Shit on a Shingle. (Help us, o mighty God.)

Granny reaches across the table and scoops a heaping ladle of the slop onto her plate. Her eyes are always bigger than her stomach. She has a medical condition called a thyroid so her peepers look like two ping-pong balls.

“Did you hear about the boy who ran away from the orphanage?” Granny asks, starting off tonight’s stimulating dinner conversation.

I
cough
. . .
cough
. . .
cough
and say, “That’s . . . they’re talkin’ about Charlie Fitch. Did you hear
why
he ran away?” I am hoping it’s for some reason other than Artie Latour not listening to him. I’d love to be the one to tell him his best friend’s leaving wasn’t his fault.

Granny says, “All Sister Jean told me at morning Mass is that the boy took off in the middle of the night. Hand me the succotash, Sally.”

That’s okay. She may not have the scoop now, but she will hear some more about Charlie’s taking off sooner or later. Our granny
always
finds out what’s going on in the neighborhood, the really secret stuff. Like how Mrs. Delancey who owns the grocery store down the block from her, the one our half sister Nell’s apartment is over, used to work in a nightclub dancing with snakes. Granny drinks six bottles of Coca-Cola a day that she gets free from Mrs. Delancey to keep her mouth shut.

I lift another forkful to my mouth and
cough
some more into my napkin.

Dave says, “Gosh, Sally, you’re doing a lot of that tonight. Are you feeling all right?”

“Did you catch a cold?” Troo asks, seeing an opening. “A fever? Let me check.” When she reaches to put her hand to my forehead, she accidentally on purpose brushes her spoon down to the linoleum.

This was another one of her Troo genius plans. Coming up with this coughing-into-my-napkin trick and her dropping-the-spoon trick to avoid having to eat Mother’s food. Thank goodness for our little collie, Lizzie. She’s lying openmouthed at our feet like she got invited to an all-you-can-eat dog buffet the same way she does every night except for the ones Dave cooks.

Mother says to me, “You don’t look flushed.”

“I’m fine. It’s just that . . .” She has no idea how disgusting her food is. She thinks she’s the next Betty Crocker. I want to tell her the truth because how is she ever going to improve if somebody doesn’t, but I don’t think that would go over so big. I look over at Granny, who you can usually depend on to point out Mother’s faults, but her mouth is full, so I say, “I’m only coughing ’cause . . . I can’t swallow the SOS down fast enough.”