Using her mental telepathy on me, Troo asks, “You told Mary Lane about the cops knowin’ the cat burglar is a kid, right?” You’d have to have known her her whole life to tell, but she’s worried. I know my sister can really go after Mary Lane, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t one of her best friends. That’s just how those two are together. Pick. Pick. Pick. “I’m sure it’s her, aren’t you?”
I was positive, but ever since I told Mary Lane in the library lavatory that she better quit leading a life of crime and she acted like I was two Hail Marys short of a rosary, I just don’t know what to think anymore.
I say, “She told me she wasn’t the cat, but I still mostly think she is. I’m gonna remind her again at the park tomorrow to knock it off. She missed the playground party but she wouldn’t miss the picnic, right?”
Troo doesn’t say, Are ya kiddin’ me? Mary Lane wouldn’t miss all that free food if the world was coming to an end. She flips over without a word. I rub her neck between my fingers until I’m sure she really is asleep. How I can tell is by hearing her choo-choo snoring and her sucking the two middle fingers of her right hand that she quit last summer but for some reason has started up again.
I check Daddy’s Timex at ten after ten, so that means I’ve got at least seven more hours to keep watch over Troo. I’m gonna pass the time by making shadow puppets. I can do a bird and another kind of bird and a bunny, and when I get done with that, I’ll put my feet up on the wall and I’ll imagine myself walking to see Sampson at his new home. Maybe I’ll go out to the bean teepee once I’m sure that Mother and Dave have gone to bed, which won’t be long now. I heard the front door open and shut, which means that Dave is back from work, and from out in the living room I can hear muffled talking. I hope Mother doesn’t start complaining again because hearing her going after Dave is bad enough during the day, but at night, the hot words that come pouring out of her mouth make my sweaty skin go clammy. I know that her wanting Dave to buy her so many things is not the only reason she gets after him. Mother has never completely forgotten about him jilting her way back when his mother told him to. You know what they say about forgiveness? Mother and Troo are not at all divine at it. They can’t help it. It’s their 100 percent Irish blood. Same goes for Granny. She held a grudge against a boy in the old country for ten years because he made fun of the sack dress she wore to school. (She won’t tell me what she did to even the score, only that the kid was known from that day on as Toothless Tom.)
I would adore seeing Dave even if it’s just for a minute. It’s been a tough day guarding Troo and the sight of my father makes me feel better, so I scootch down to the end of the bed. When I open our bedroom door a crack, I have a straight shot into the living room, but it isn’t Dave next to Mother on the davenport. This man’s hair isn’t light, it’s dark. All of him is black, even his shoes. It’s Father Mickey! I can’t hear what they’re saying because my ears feel like Niagara Falls is rushing through them, but I’m thinking that Mrs. Kenfield told Father about Troo stealing out of the Five and Dime and now he’s come to tell Mother. But why does he have a letter in his hand? He wouldn’t write it down if he was here to tattle on Troo, he would just . . . oh. That letter . . . it’s gotta be the annulment from the Pope that Mother’s been waiting for!
Father Mickey is tilting forward, offering it to Mother, but when she’s just about got it, he snatches it away.
“Knock it off, Mick,” she says, loudly. “Get it over with.”
She must be so scared that it says:Dear Helen,
So sorry to hear that your husband Hall Gustafson is a beer-bottle killer, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to give you an annulment at this time. Try again later.
Holiest regards,
Pope John the twenty-third
Father Mickey mumbles something and Mother shakes her head so he unfolds the letter and reads it out loud. When he’s done, a beaming smile comes onto her face and that is such a rare thing to see that I gasp and hope they don’t hear me. Father puts his arms around her and moves closer. Mother stops him with a hand to his chest and starts to cry, and that is such another rare thing. This is not sadness breaking loose from my mother’s heart. This is the kind of crying you do after you think that you’re for-sure dead, but then somebody brings you back to life. The kind of sobbing that Lazurus probably did on Jesus’s shoulder. The same way I cried that night at the zoo when Daddy told me to fly like the wind away from Bobby.
Mother takes in a breath and presses her Matador Red lips to the white sheet of paper from the Pope that has just told her probably in Italian and maybe some Latin:Dear Helen,
Greetings from the Vatican!
I have granted you an annulment so anytime you want to, you can start picking the flowers out for your wedding.
Dominus vobiscum
Your friend in Christ, the Pope
Mother has asked and she has received. His Holiness has decreed that she is no longer married to that murdering Swede and, matter of fact, never has been. Granny told me that an annulment in the Catholic Church isn’t like a divorce a Lutheran gets. An annulment erases everything like it never even happened. It’s like getting matrimonial amnesia.
After closing the bedroom door and slipping back into bed next to Troo, I’m feeling relieved that she didn’t slip out the bedroom window when I was watching the goings-on in the living room and that the fighting between Dave and Mother is finally gonna stop, but that’s not the only thing I’m feeling. Never a rose without a prick is what Granny would say if she was here right now. I would have to agree with her. Tomorrow morning when my sleeping beauty sister finds out that the Pope has given two thumbs-up to Dave and Mother’s wedding plans, she’s gonna erupt like Mount Vesuvius all over the place.
And it’s not only for Troo that I’m feeling the worst kind of worry there is. I haven’t told Dave out loud because I can hardly believe it myself, but I think I am beginning to love him at least half as much as I loved Daddy. I don’t think I can stand to lose both of them, which I probably will. I have been worried about this almost from the first day I found out he was my real father and that Mother wanted to marry him. On a picture-perfect afternoon in the not-too-distant future, they will stand toe-to-toe at the altar to commit the holy sacrament of marriage. The groom in his best blue suit and wing-tip shoes will slip that gold band on his bride-to-be’s finger and say:I, David,
Take you, Helen,
To be my wife,
To have and to hold,
From this day forward,
As long as we both shall live.
It’s the last line of that vow that’s been tying my tummy into a knot.
Isn’t Dave concerned the same way I’ve been that if he marries Helen Riley Durand O’Malley Gustafson, he could be taking his life into his own hands? He’s a detective, for goodness sakes. He should’ve noticed by now what terrible fatal luck Mother has in the husband department. First off, Nell’s father died smelling ammonia. Then Daddy was killed in the car crash. And Hall will probably get electrocuted in the chair.
People are always saying that bad things happen in threes, but what if they’re wrong? What if bad things happen in fours?
Chapter Twenty
The Fourth of July is served up sizzling hot on a blue plate, sunny-side up.
Mother has been cracking “Independence Day” jokes all through breakfast. Troo is next to me at the table in her usual spot, plucking the streusel topping off the cream-filled coffee cake we get from Meurer’s Bakery on special occasions. My sister doesn’t suspect a thing. My leg is bouncing under the table and sweat is trickling down my sides. I can’t take this. Troo never thought that Mother and Dave would ever really get hitched, not in her heart of hearts. She is usually very good at getting her way and has done everything she can to throw a monkey wrench into the wedding works. I should’ve rolled over in bed this morning and whispered the news so she’d be prepared. This . . . just sitting by . . . this is like twirling your thumbs when
the fatted calf gets led to slaughter.
Dave, who is dressed this morning in a red checkered shirt, takes a sip of his Sanka, checks the cat clock over the sink and says, “Gosh, it’s almost seven. I’ve got to get over to the park. Do you have something you’d like to tell the girls before we head over, dear?”
Mother plays along. She gives him a what-in-the-world-are-you-talking-about look and says, “Gee, I don’t think so.” She’s got on a scoop-neck navy blue top and a gold ribbon in her hair that makes her seem ready to set sail. “Oh, wait a sec.”
This is it. This is the moment I’ve been dreading. I prayed last night that Mother wouldn’t spring this life-changing news on my sister like she’s about to. That she would take her to Daddy’s grave late in the afternoon. Troo is always more willing to listen there. Mother could bring carnations for him and they could sit in the grass next to his headstone. She could tell her daughter how Daddy would want her to be happy. He forgave her for doing what she did with Dave, and so Troo should, too. And when the sky started turning the color of raspberries and oranges, my sister’s most favorite time of day, Mother could pick Troo’s hands up in hers, kiss her fingertips and tell her in her kindest of all voices how Dave and her are getting married.
But once again, God turns a deaf ear to me because Mother didn’t do any of that.
She says cutely, “How silly of me. I’m getting as absentminded as Bertha Galecki. Thank you for reminding me, honey, there is a little something I wanted to bring up to the girls.” She reaches down into the front pocket of her white capris and when she draws her hand out from under the table she’s got on a ring and it’s not little. It’s by far the fanciest, shiniest diamond I have ever seen.
“Surprise! Father Mickey brought over the annulment papers last night! We’re getting married at the end of September after it cools off. I’m going to wear a tailored suit from Marshall Field’s and we’ll have a reception party and take our honeymoon in Miami Beach,” Mother says, like she can see it all now. “Lying on the sand under a starry night, those warm waves rolling over us . . .” She puts her head down on Dave’s shoulder. “We’ll be like Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity!”
“No, you won’t! You will not!” Troo shoves her chair back so hard that it wenches my arm that I was using to hold her in place. This reminds me so much of the night out on the farm when Mother told us she was going to marry Hall. “You can’t! He said . . . he promised me that if—”
Mother thinks she’s being funny, but what she’s really doing is throwing a humble pie into my sister’s face when she starts humming the “Love and Marriage” song. The one that Troo’s been taunting her with every chance she gets.
“Trooper . . . you know what we can do . . . we can . . .” I’m trying to think of something to tell her, to give her, anything that is gonna make this all better, but she sweeps her breakfast off the table and barges out the screen door.
“Wait up!” I yell, but Dave stops me on my way to catch up with her.
“Let her be, Sally. She needs to blow off some steam,” he says, bending down and picking up the plate pieces.
“But . . . she’s gonna . . .” I don’t know what she’s gonna do exactly, but it won’t be good, it never is.
Dave says, “You can catch up with her at the park. She just needs a little time to take this all in.”
My neck skin crawls at the sound of his always-cool Danish voice, his everything-is-going-to-be-okay-just-you-wait-and-see way of looking at everything. His green eyes. My green eyes. His long legs like mine. Dave being sensitive just like me. That was so nice for a while. It made me feel like I belonged, that I was a pea in his pod, but all of a sudden, I don’t care about any of that. I want to shake Dave and shout, Stop bein’ such a cold fish! Be fiery for once! Bring Troo back!
“Wait’ll they get a load a this at the park today,” Mother says, holding up the ring so she can admire it from a distance. The sunlight coming through the kitchen window catches the diamond and a hundred tiny squares of dancing light surround us. It is just blinding.
This has gotta be the biggest Fourth party ever.
The grassy part of the park is jammed with kids of all sizes and ages. Everybody’s got a bike or coaster wagon or a baby carriage decorated to the nines. After the contests are over there will be games, and then everybody in the neighborhood will sit down together at picnic tables to eat hamburgers and hot dogs, kielbasa sausage, brat-wurst and Dixie cups of ice cream and as much free lemonade as they want.
Dave brought along a folding chair for Mother and set it at the edge of Jack Hoyt Woods next to Mrs. Callahan, who saved her a spot.
Dave pins on his judge’s badge and disappears into the crowd after giving me a chuck on the chin and Mother a kiss on the cheek. I would usually stick close to her, make sure that she had one of my lanyards around her neck so she could whistle for me to get her whatever she needs, but I’m not ready to forgive her yet for what she did to Troo. So I leave her there basking in the shade with her best friend, who right away starts salivating over the diamond engagement ring and says, “Jesus H. Christ . . . it’s . . . it’s the size of . . . you must give one helluva—”
Mother scolds, “Betty!” but she laughs louder than I have heard since Daddy was alive.
I’ve worked my way over to the edge of the crowd of jammed-together kids. I’m jumping up and down on my tiptoes, but I can’t see Troo, who I can usually spot easy because of her hair.
I would love to see Henry, too, but my boyfriend can’t come to the festivities because he could get stuck in the eye with a flag on a stick, which really happened once. Henry started bleeding and went white, and then a little blue around the mouth. The nurses at St. Joe’s gave him a special decorating badge before they sent him home with some extra blood. So he can’t come for the decorating and eating part of the party, but he can see the fireworks from the safety of the drugstore stoop. I’ll stop by on our way home and we can talk about our favorites.
Thank goodness, there’s Ethel. She really sticks out because she is so big and brown. She’s not with the other grown-ups, who are lounging around the refreshment booths. She’s up on the hill, looking down at where the zoo used to be. I’m dreading seeing what she’s seeing, but I really need to talk to the smartest woman I know. I also might be able to see Troo from up there. I know her. My sister wouldn’t skip one of the biggest bashes of the year even if she is, as Ethel would say, “fit to be tied” over the annulment news.
Ethel’s not in her white nursing dress. She’s got on a skirt of some kind of print I’ve never seen before. It’s many shades of green and very jungly. On her top half, she’s wearing a pale pink blouse that sets off her skin below her broad-brimmed hat that’s got fruit hanging off it. She looks scrumptious. I bet her boyfriend, who is standing next to her, would love to take a bite outta her. His entire name is Raymond Buckland Johnson, but he lets Troo and me call him Ray Buck the same way Ethel does. He is almost too handsome to look at without blinders. His hair doesn’t have coiled bounce the way Ethel’s does. He wears it parted on the side, slicked with something that looks like it’s never gonna dry out called pomade, which is the colored version of Brylcreem. Ray Buck is the snappiest dresser. Crackling crisp, always. Today he’s got on a snowy white shirt and matching pants and loafers that are a cool blue. Ray Buck goes over the moon for shoes. He doesn’t get them at Shuster’s, though. Negroes have their own shoe shops in the Core.
“Happy Fourth!” I shout to them when I’m a few feet away. Ethel spins around at the sound of my voice and says, “Well, look who we got here, Ray Buck.” She plants her hands on my shoulders and doesn’t seem surprised to run into me even though she is pretending she is. “Don’t you look like a breath a mountain air this mornin’, Miss Sally?”
She expects me to answer, “How kind of you to say so,” which I do, even though I probably look more like a breath of midnight in the swamp in my seen-better-days cutoff shorts and
wrinkly yellow T-shirt. In all the excitement, Mother didn’t remember to braid my hair so it’s loose and snarled up. Ethel is just being polite, as always. When she opens up her school with her secret inheritance that she’s gonna get from Mrs. Galecki’s Last Will and Testament, by the time she’s through with them, the children who are lucky enough to attend will be able to beat out Miss Emily Post when it comes to manners.
“How do, Miss Sally,” Ray Buck says with a little bow and I go swoozy. If Ethel didn’t adore him and I hadn’t already promised to marry Henry Fitzpatrick, I would ask this bus driver to wait for me even though that is dreaming a dream that can never come true. Negroes cannot marry white people, but if they could, I would be the first in line. Ray Buck is from the South the same way Ethel is, but not from Mississippi. She calls him her “Georgia Peach,” and I would have to agree with her. He just oozes with juice. If Troo can have a crush on Rhett Butler and Father Mickey, I can have one on Ray Buck. Not only is he good-looking, he tickles my funny bone. When he stands sideways, because he is a little hunched over on top, he looks like a question mark, which makes him look curious all the time and that cracks me up.
I got a new vocabulary word I have been waiting to use on them. “You look ravishing this morning, Ethel. Simply ravishing. You, too, Ray Buck.”