Dave sticks his head out of the bathroom, sighs and shrugs, and I do the same back to him. She knows darn well he can’t stay to cuddle up with her while they watch The Tonight Show. He’s gotta leave and do his detecting job. Mother’s trying to make him feel like he is letting her down. Again. This is something that she is astoundingly good at. She could be the Eighth Wonder of the World when it comes to letting you know how much you disappoint her.
“There’s been another burglary,” Dave says, down in the mouth. “That was the station calling.”
Mother says like this is the first time the thought has crossed her mind, “The station?”
“I’m sorry. I know you made plans, but I’ve got a responsibility to—”
“But you promised,” Mother says. “You told me that . . .”
Dave must apologize to her five times a day and I don’t want to hear him doing it one more time. She was so happy when they first got together again and moved into this house with the white shutters and window boxes that my father keeps filled with red geraniums because that’s her favorite flower, but nowadays, most of the time all Mother does is complain. Especially about him working such long hours since he really doesn’t need to have a job at all. You wouldn’t know it because he doesn’t drive a Lincoln Continental or swing a gold watch on a chain, but Dave is filthy rich. He won’t get his money stolen by the cat burglar though, because it’s not here in the house. He keeps it in something called a trust fund, which I really like the sound of.
After I found out that Dave was my father, I had so many questions. Especially about my other grandparents that I never met. I went straight to Granny’s little house. I knew she wouldn’t get worked up the way Mother would if I wanted answers and I was right. When I asked her to fill me in, Granny didn’t even mention how curiosity killed the cat. She arranged melba toast on a plate and poured me a cuppa out of her copper kettle that she brought all the way from the old country. (A cuppa is what she calls a cup of tea chock-full of milk and sugar.)
“So, Sally m’girl, you want to know more about the other half of your family?” Granny asked, across from me at the kitchen table. “The Danish side?”
“Yes, please,” I said, sipping and nibbling, wondering like I always do why the dickens she loves melba toast so much. It tastes like shingles.
Warming up to the idea since she’s got the gift of gab, Granny said, “You wouldn’t have liked your other grandmother. Before she died from tuberculosis, Gertie was very vain about her legs, which were nice, but not that nice.” Granny’s eyes went even more bulgy than usual. “But your grandfather, Ernie, now there was a horse of a different color. The man had a heart of gold and the Midas touch. He got a lotta dough for the cookie factory when it sold,” she told me, which was a pretty funny, so I laughed, too.
What am I thinking? What am I doing?
Troo.
Where is she? I didn’t see her follow Mother back into the house. Maybe she’s in our bedroom.
“You in here?” I whisper-call. Except for Daddy looking down on me from the wall and baby doll Annie’s legs sticking out from under her pillow, it’s empty.
I take a couple of steps backward into Mother’s bedroom. My sister likes to come in here, but usually when our mother isn’t home. Troo’ll sit at the dressing table and dab perfume behind her ears and smooth on lipstick, smacking her poofy lips in the mirror when she’s got it just right. She also loves to snoop. She’s always looking through my “How I Spent My Charitable Summer” notebook and under Granny’s bed and over at Nell’s, she’ll rifle through the closets. She especially likes rooting around in Mother’s drawers. I’m not sure what she’s looking for.
Back in the hall, I call out, not too loud, “Stop messin’ around.” I’m getting frantic, but if Mother hears me, she’ll shout that upper-class people do not raise their voices indoors.
Going through the dining room on my way to the front door, I’m thinking Troo might be out on the porch steps shouting rude stuff at the neighbors when they go by after the game, which is something she really likes to do, but out of the corner of my eye I see her. The floor in here doesn’t have the luxurious gold shag carpeting like the rest of the house does. When you press your cheek down on the wood it’s almost as cool as the linoleum in the kitchen, but Troo’s not doing that tonight. She’s on her back. Dead Junie Piaskowski in a golden frame is hanging on the dining room wall right above her. A little light that Dave never turns off shines down on the picture. Junie was his niece who I only knew a little before Bobby Brophy got his hands on her. She’s wearing her Holy Communion dress in the picture. The rosary draped over her praying hands was supposed to keep her safe.
Junie’s mother and father are living out of the neighborhood now in Appleton. Even though they aren’t trying to sell their house anymore the way they were right after Junie got murdered, I don’t think they’re ever coming back. Dave told me they will, but it’s been almost two years. It just about kills me when I see the look in his eye when he goes over to their place to mow the lawn in the summer and shovel the walk in the winter. I feel even worse awful when his eyes go to the little birdhouse that he and Junie made together that’s still hanging from the rain gutter. She loved birds, especially bluebirds. She called them happiness with wings. That’s another one of the things I really like about Dave. He doesn’t let bygones be bygones, same as me.
“So?” my sister says. Even though she’s got her eyes closed, she can hear my footsteps on the loose board in front of the hutch where Mother keeps her fancy dishes displayed. “Whatta ya think of my imitation?”
I study her. “Who’re you supposed to be?”
“Your dead cousin.”
“Troo! For godsakes.”
I know what she’s doing. She’s trying to rattle my cage, but I will not fall for that.
I ask, “How about playin’ Battleship?” She loves that game. She always beats me at it. Because of our mental telepathy, my mind tells her mind where I’ve hidden all my ships, but I don’t understand why it’s never vicey versa. “I’ll go get the paper and pencils. Meet you in the livin’ room.”
I offer my hand to her, but she says, “Scram. I’m busy workin’ on my revenge plan.”
Just like I knew she would be after we walked past Molinaris’ house. This is one of those times in life when it doesn’t feel so great to be right.
“Please, please, don’t do that . . . you gotta leave him to . . .” I almost slip and say, Dave, but bringing his name into this wouldn’t be smart. She’ll batten down her hatches. I gotta try another tactic. “I don’t know why you’d wanna waste your precious time. Greasy Al is probably halfway to . . . to . . .” I can’t think of any place where he’d run that isn’t where Troo is.
“Nice try,” she says. “And for your information, I don’t wanna go after him, I gotta go after him. And not just to settle the score the way you’re thinkin’.”
I look at the picture of Junie. From up in heaven, she knows all about somebody going after somebody.
“Then why?” I ask.
“I need a dummy for my ventriloquist show.”
Is she telling me that after she catches Greasy Al she’s going to ask him to sit on her lap? No, that can’t be right.
“Whatta ya mean?” I ask.
“Mary Lane told me the cops give big rewards for catchin’ wanted people. If I could capture Molinari, I . . . I could use that money to buy a professional dummy like the one Edgar Bergen’s got.”
“Ohhh . . . that kind of dummy. Like what’s his name . . . Charlie McCarthy.”
Troo nods with brimming eyes that I’m never supposed to notice. “They got one for sale called Jerry Mahoney up at the toy store. It’s got a cute suit and a bow tie and . . . it’s crème de la crème, Sal.” Her bottom lip is quivering. “They’re addin’ something new onto the Queen of the Playground competition this year and I gotta be ready.”
“What something new?”
I haven’t hear
d anything about that. Every year since we’ve been here it’s been just the announcing of the winner and then they go up on the stage to get the tiara placed on their head and we get to stay up late and stuff ourselves with the food the mothers bring and dance to the Do Wops ’til our heels blister.
Troo says, “I told the counselors they should put a talent part in this summer like we had up at camp and Debbie thought that was a fantastic idea. So unless ya can do ventriloquism or sing as good as me or . . .”
She knows that I can’t throw my voice, and songs sound good in my brain, but by the time they come out of my mouth they go flat. I tried tap lessons at Marsha’s Dance and Baton Studio on North Avenue. I loved the shoes with cleats, but I couldn’t get the hang of the shuffle-ball-change. I wasn’t a terrible twirler, but not good enough to stand out from the pack. If I’m going to have a chance to win the tiara this year, I need to make a talent splash. Maybe I could do some magic tricks. Find a book at the library that would teach me how to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Or practice some new imitations before the Queen of the Playground party.
“And . . . and I’m gonna win the Fourth of July contest, too,” Troo says. “Just you wait and see.”
I’m having a hard time stopping myself from kneeling down to wipe her tears off the same way I do when she’s sleeping. When she wakes up in the morning, she’d feel the dried saltiness on her cheeks if I didn’t use my pillowcase to blot her cheeks. It’s so important to her to win. To be the best. No ties. She wasn’t always like this. Not this bad anyway. She’d fall down and pretend she’d sprained her ankle during a race that I was gonna win by a mile or get hiccups if we were having a hold-your-breath competition. Little things, ya know. They got much bigger after Daddy died. Everything became a contest.
“A course you’re gonna win for decorating, Trooper. Not a doubt in my mind,” I say, not believing it for a minute.
Usually by this time our bedroom would look like the cemetery, blanketed with carnations. Not the real ones, the Kleenex kind. Her blue bike should already have a bunch of those fluffy flowers taped to the handlebars and fenders, but when I checked today to see how it was coming along, I found it leaning against the side of the garage looking not ready at all.
In the hallway, I can hear Dave still trying to smooth things over with Mother. He calls to her, “I’ll be home as soon as I can. It shouldn’t take long. Riordan’s already over there.”
Mother slams a pot down on the counter.
Needing to cheer Troo up, I tell her, “If you don’t want to play Battleship, let’s play War.” She’ll kill me at that, too. Any kind of game that has fighting in it is something she’s great at. “I’ll get the cards. You wait for me here, okay?”
I’m sure she’s going to be contrary like she always is when something isn’t her idea, but she says, “Okay, but only if ya kiss me first. I need to practice.” She opens up one of her hands to reveal a pair of those red wax lips I get for her at the Five and Dime. She slips in the lips and closes her eyes. In her mind, she’s smooching with somebody better than her sister. Somebody named Rhett Butler. She adored Gone with the Wind when we saw it at the Uptown Theatre during old-timey movie week. We cracked open our piggy bank and went four times so that’s how come I can do an imitation of Rhett that is “damn” good if I do say so myself.
“Fine,” I tell her. “I’ll kiss ya, but keep your tongue to yourself. No pullin’ any of that Frenchie stuff.”
“You gotta say the words, too,” she answers, muffled by the lips.
Troo is asking me to repeat what Rhett says to Scarlett O’Hara when he comes to visit her at her magnificent house. That’s my sister’s favorite part of the movie. She swooned all four times we saw it.
I kneel over her, lower my voice and do the accent that Rhett has, which is a little like Ethel’s, but not quite as much. “ ‘You should be kissed, and often, Scarlett. By someone who knows how.’ ”
When I’m done pressing down, Troo slips the lips outta her mouth and says, “Don’t you think Father Mickey looks a lot like Clark Gable?”
Father Mickey? How the heck did he get into this?
He wears his hair slicked and parted so he does kinda look like Clark Gable without a mustache. Father Mickey also has those kinda eyes that look like half-raised window shades and . . . well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I know what’s going on here. Troo’s got a fat crush on Father! She’s been bitten by the same lovebug everybody else has around here!
I snatch the wax lips out of her hand and scold her, “You better get to confession soon as you can. You’ve been playin’ too much rummy with Mrs. Callahan. You’re gettin’ hotter to trot than she is!”
Chapter Sixteen
Tonight the old Vliet Street gang is gathered out front of Willie’s house the way we usually are if there isn’t something else big going on in the neighborhood. The O’Haras have the most steps and they live across from the playground, so if we don’t get a big enough group together for a decent game of red light, green light or kick the can, we can cross the street and play tetherball. I never like going over to the playground once it gets dark, so I’m hoping more kids show up before the sun goes all the way down.
“Good evenin’, ladies and germs,” chubby Willie O’Hara says to us in his Brooklyn accent. When he grows up he wants to be something called a stand-up comic, which is a person who doesn’t sit down and tells jokes for a living. Like Henny Youngman. Willie needs to practice all the time if he wants to get on the Ed Sullivan Show someday. “A funny thing happened to me on the way to the steps tonight. I thought of a really good joke,” he says.
This is the way he always starts out. I don’t know where Willie gets them, but he always has a new one all warmed up for us.
“What does it say on the bottom of a Polish Coke bottle?” Willie says.
“What?” we ask like we’re half of the choir at Mother of Good Hope, which we are.
“Open other end,” Willie says.
Everybody laughs louder than the kid sitting next to them.
Maybe that’s what I could do for the talent part of The Queen of the Playground contest. Being funny always goes over good around here. I would have to ask Willie to teach me a coupla new jokes, though, because everybody already knows what’s black and white and red all over. (A nun with a bloody nose.)
Troo’s not supposed to be lying out on the step in front of me with her feet up on the iron railing. She snuck out of our bedroom, where she is supposed to be right this minute saying a rosary on her knees. Mother found a pack of squishy cigarettes in Troo’s shorts when she was doing the wash after supper. She came up the basement steps, yelling, “Margaret O’Malley! Goddamn it all!” Once she got a hold of her, she slapped Troo on the back and sent her to our room. My sister’s French laughing did not help matters and neither did her teasing Mother the way she does at least once a day about not getting her annulment letter yet. “Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage? Uh-oh. Looks like your horse fell down and broke its leg, Helen. Ya know what they do when that happens, right? Bang . . . bang.”
I’m smooshed between Artie and Wendy Latour on the steps. Because there are thirteen of them, the Latour kids always outnumber us no matter what we’re doing. Artie lacks luster. Wendy is her normal smiley self. She has her tiara pinned in her hair that is freshly washed and almost looks waxed, it’s so shiny. If Wendy wasn’t a Mongoloid she could be a Breck girl. Mimi Latour, who is planning on being another kind of sister when she grows up, is two steps down, right below Troo. They’re in the same grade together, one back from me.
There is plenty of room on the step, but Mary Lane is crowding Mimi. She’s trying to talk her into giving her some of her grape Popsicle. She’s always asking you for some of whatever you got.
She tells Mimi, “They don’t let greedy girls into the convent, ya know. That’s their number one rule. They even got a sign posted out front that says no selfish brats allowed. You bet
ter gimme some of that before it’s too late.”
I’m watching Mimi struggling to crack the melting Popsicle in two, when Artie Latour taps my shoulder and points up the block. Uncle Paulie is coming toward us on his way to work at at the Beer’n Bowl. His head is down like it always is and he’s whistling Pop Goes the Weasel, which is his all-time favorite song.
My sister gets the oddest look on her face when she sees our uncle coming our way. She looks sorta . . . guilty? She must be feeling bad about making him a half-wit, but she’s never seemed remorseful before. I always thought she knew that in a funny kinda way she saved him.
When he gets in front of where we’re hanging out, Uncle Paulie stops and stares with his mouth open. He’s wearing blue jeans and a white shirt that’s got Jerbak’s embroidered above the pocket in gold. He’s got a load of freckles on his pretzel-skinny arms, but he’s not bad-looking elsewhere. You can tell he’s related to us. To Troo anyway. His hair is thick red, but our uncle’s starts back farther so you can also tell he is related to Peggy Sure, who also has one heck of a forehead.
Mary Lane, who can pick a Popsicle clean faster than a piranha fish, hands over the leftover stick to him and says, “Don’t spend it all in one place,” when my uncle shoves it in with the other ones that are making his back pocket bulge.
Troo says, “Bone sware, Uncle Paulie.”
That’s a new one on me. Maybe where she’s been sneaking off to is the library to move herself up on the Bookworm ladder and get extra instruction from Mrs. Kambowski in the language of love. I’ve already lost track of her two times this week during the day and once in the middle of the night. (Sorry, Daddy. I’m trying my hardest, but as you know, your Trooper can be so darn slippery.)
“Ooo la la, Leeze,” our uncle says back to Troo and that’s just great, real great. Now I have to say, “Hi,” not because I want to, I just don’t want him to get mad at me.
Even though Uncle Paulie does not seem like the same rancid person he used to be before the accident, somewhere inside of him he still could be. He used to be a bookie. (This is not somebody who works at the Finney Library. This is somebody who gambles for a living and wants as many people as he can get to do it, too.) Ethel told me that in the old days my uncle had the worst temper. He wasn’t a nice brother to Mother, and Granny went meek around him. He hurt other people, too. He broke a man’s leg in half when the guy didn’t vigorously pay what he owed on a gambling bet. Then he took advantage of the man’s wife all the way down to the skin. He was gonna go to jail for doing that, but his brain getting damaged in the crash saved the day. So that’s why, if ya ask me, our uncle owes a big merci beaucoup to Mademoiselle Troo for playing peek-a-boo with Daddy on the way home from the game.