Good Graces (10 page)

“This is good advice.” When she says that, she is not looking at me. She is watching Troo bounce her ball up the block very ferociously. “All of us must vork hard to keep vhat is valuable to us safe. Promise me you vill keep a good vatch,
Liebchen.
”

“You can count on me.” I don’t say
this time
, but that’s what I’m thinking. “See ya when ya get back. A lot more often.
Aufedersein,”
I say, hurrying off the porch to catch up with my still-buzzing sister.

T
he sign hanging above the store says in peeling white letters:

That’s not tooting their own horn. They really do.

The floors are a yellow color and the aisles are close together but packed high with bottles of bubble bath and sewing needles and erasers and, well, just about everything under the sun. There’s pets, too. Chatty budgies and whisker-twitching mice and lovebirds that have to be kept in different cages because they don’t actually get along that well and all sorts of different kinds of fish. This is where Dave bought me the aquarium that’s on top of the dresser in our bedroom. The pet aisle reminds me of living out on the farm, but the rest of the Five and Dime smells like popcorn. There is a machine up front that pumps it out all day long. You can get a small bag for two cents and a bigger bag with butter for a nickel and the salt is free.

The best part of the store, though, has gotta be the candy case. It’s the first thing you see when you come in and it’s even better now that it’s been new and improved! My favorite used to be pink and green Buttons, but I got sick from swallowing too much paper, so I switched over to Oh Henry! bars in honor of you know who. Troo’s favorite used to be licorice, but now she goes silly for those lips made out of wax because she has gotten very interested in kissing recently. The Frenchy way, less lips, more tongue, which I tried to explain to her is just asking for trench mouth, but would she listen?

Our old Vliet Street neighbor, Mrs. Kenfield, lifts up her head to greet whoever just walked into her store, but when she sees that it’s Troo and me, she mutters, “The O’Malley sisters,” like somebody just asked her to name the last two kids in the world she’d like to have come through her doors this morning. She goes back to spritzing Windex on the counter and rubbing it off with a blue rag until the smudges disappear, maybe wishing she could do the same to me, and for sure Troo. “How’s your mother?”

Of course, Mrs. Kenfield sees her at choir practice and up at the Kroger when she goes on Wednesdays, which is the day they hand out extra S&H Green Stamps, but just like Mrs. Goldman and Mr. Fitzpatrick, whenever anybody in the neighborhood runs into Troo and me they automatically ask how our mother’s doing because they really can’t believe she’s not dead and sometimes I can’t either. That’s why I kneel next to her bed in the middle of the night and watch her chest go up and down. I set my head against hers on the pillow and breathe in her leftover powder and perfume, just for a little while, just to make sure.

“Mother’s feelin’ better and better,” I tell Mrs. Kenfield as Troo disappears down aisle two. What is she doing? Kleenex for flowers is in aisle four. “Gettin’ stronger and stronger by the minute.”

Mrs. Kenfield says, “Glad to hear Helen’s on the mend,” but she doesn’t sound it and I don’t blame her. I don’t care what the Bible says about loving your neighbors more than you love yourself. I think it’s hard to even
like
people when your own family is going belly-up the way ours was last summer. You can’t help but wish you had what they had.

The reason she’s so grumpy is because her husband, Mr. Chuck Kenfield, is going down the drain. His daughter, Dottie, the one he used to wail over and maybe still does, had some of the sex when she was still in high school. She got pregnant so he had to send her away to a special home in Chicago to live with some other girls who did the same thing. What Dottie was supposed to do was have her baby and leave it there for somebody who was married to come by and pick it up so she could go back to her regular life, but that’s not what happened. Grown-ups gossip about this after Mass all the time. Dottie’s disappearance is still piping hot news because she snuck out of the Chicago hospital when the nurses weren’t looking, so now it’s both her
and
the baby that’re missing. I heard she had a little girl.

The reason Dottie had to go away like that to Chicago is because around here it’s a mortal sin to do what she did. I think the Kenfields just should’ve packed up and moved to another neighborhood. Or maybe Dottie could’ve done what Nell did when she got knocked up last summer by Eddie Callahan. Get married when nobody is paying attention. When the baby came out of the oven in April instead of June, Dottie could tell nosy buttinskis that her kid is just a real go-getter. “Early bird gets the worm!” is what Nell chirped to visitors until Troo told her to shut the hell up.

Missing Dottie, that’s why Mr. Kenfield has become so sloshy that Mrs. Kenfield has to run the Five and Dime all by herself now. You can tell that being on her feet all day is hard on her. She has gotten very close veins in her legs. She doesn’t complain out loud, of course not. The Kenfields are English. They are a people who like to keep a stiff upper lip, which means they don’t like to show you any of what they are feeling. I see them in the movies. They usually wear clothes that are clean and full of starch, but I’m positive this is the same shirtwaist Mrs. Kenfield had on the last time we were up here and the part in her hair looks like a dandruff plantation and she’s got pimples on her chin that she put some Clearasil on and forgot to wash off this morning.

I’m about to ask the same exact question I always do when I come up here. Even though her husband and me don’t spend a lotta time together the way we used to, outta sight does not mean outta mind for me. I still think of him often as my good friend. “How has Mr. Kenfield been?”

Wiping the glass counter even harder, Mrs. Kenfield says, “I’ll tell him that you asked after him, Sally.” That’s what she always says.

“Oh, don’t bother,” I say, coming up with something else I can put in my charitable summer story. “I’ve been plannin’ to stop by one of these nights so we can talk on the porch swing like we did last—”

“Don’t you dare!” Mrs. Kenfield practically bites my head off. “You remind him of . . . I mean . . .” She swallows and says quieter, “That wouldn’t be a good idea. Chuck . . . Mr. Kenfield has been feeling under the weather. I wouldn’t want you to catch what he’s got.”

I would have to agree with her.

“Hellooo!”

A new customer breezes into the Five and Dime on shiny red high-heeled shoes, seamed nylons, a skirt higher than her knees and a blouse that looks like it got shrunk in the wash. It’s Mrs. Callahan, Mother’s best friend since they were little and living across the street from the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory. She won’t ask me how Mother is feeling because she already knows. They chat every night on the telephone for hours. She didn’t use to be, but Mrs. Callahan is related to us now. She is the mother of Eddie Callahan, who got Nell in the family way. (When I heard the two of them groaning in her bedroom on Vliet Street last summer, my half sister told me that they were doing their Royal Canadian Air Force exercises, but my niece is living proof those two were touching a lot more than their toes.)

Mrs. Callahan parks herself in front of the small fan that’s whirring on the Five and Dime’s front counter.

“Where’s your sister?” she asks. She likes Troo better than she likes me. They play rummy for pennies.

“She’s ah—”

“Hi, Aunt Betty,” Troo calls from somewhere in the back of the store, not even trying to be secretive.

“What’s the score, Eleanor?” Aunt Betty shouts back friendly, but to me she says real urgent, “Forget whatever it was the two of you were doin’ next Friday night. Eddie’s gonna take Nell to the drive-in and I told them I would watch the baby, but . . .” She really has to work on improving her aim. Her cherry smile would be nice if she didn’t draw so much outta the lines. “Detective Riordan just asked me out to dinner at Frenchy’s!”

“That’s great!” I say, because Aunt Betty really does need another husband. Her original one got flattened by a cookie press four years ago. I heard her complaining to Mother not long ago, “I despise the smell of those goddamn cookies. It’s bad enough we’ve had to breathe it in since the day we were born . . . I can’t stand it for one more minute, Helen. I gotta get outta there. I need a new man. Pronto.”

I don’t blame her for hating it up at the factory where she has to work in the packaging area to make ends meet. Those cookies don’t make her
Feel Good the Way a Cookie Should
, the way they’re supposed to. Those cookies killed her husband.

I ask her, “What time do you want us to go over to the apartment on Friday?” I was planning to work on my charitable summer story, but I guess that’s gonna have to wait.

“Seven thirty. Bring your pj’s and your church clothes. By the time the movies are over, it’ll be too late for Eddie to drive you home.”

She means he will be too shnockered to drive us home. Him and Nell like to swig beer at that passion pit.

“Wait . . . maybe you better come a little earlier,” Aunt Betty adds on. “I just remembered they’re not going to the 41 Twin like they usually do. They’re drivin’ out to the one on Bluemound Road to see the Hitchcock movie everybody’s talkin’ about.”

This has gotta be another sign from God! The new zoo is on Bluemound Road. Maybe right next door to the drive-in. If I could talk Nell and Eddie into letting Troo and me come along to the movies with the baby in her basket, I might get a glimpse of Sampson.

Troo calls to me from the back of the store, “Floor it,” which means she’s gotten whatever she came for.

Aunt Betty reminds me, “Tie a string around your finger, Sally. Next Friday. Seven thirty.” Then she says to Mrs. Kenfield, “Did that new Max Factor rouge—?”

“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I need some of those wax lips really bad.” I point to the third row in the new and improved candy case. “The red ones.”

Troo musta been watching, waiting for me to distract Mrs. Kenfield because that’s when she makes her getaway. I hear the back door of the dime store that lets out into the alley slam shut. That would be my job normally, to make sure it doesn’t.

Mrs. Kenfield hands me the wax lips with a dirty look on her face. “That’ll be four cents. I’ll add whatever your sister stole and settle up later with Detective Rasmussen.”

“Ya gotta give it to her,” Mrs. Betty Callahan snorts. “The kid’s got moxie.”

Mrs. Kenfield puffs out her cheeks and says, “Honestly, Betty. Don’t encourage them. I plan to speak to Father Mickey about Margaret’s stealing soon as I get the chance.”

I beg, “No . . . please, please don’t do that. Father Mickey will tell Mother and she has enough on her mind with gettin’ better from her sickness and waitin’ for her letter from the Pope and . . . I think Troo took some pencils and paper so she could start writing her ‘How I Spent My Charitable Summer’ story and that’s a good cause, right? I’ll pay you back.”

Mrs. Kenfield waves me off because unlike Aunt Betty, she
is
very religious. She wears a girdle to keep her wiggle in check and doesn’t go to church only on Sundays. Even during snowstorms, she’s up there. All Mother of Good Hope kids have to go to Mass every morning when we’re in school, so I’ve seen her kneeling, always in the same pew. The one that’s closest to the St. Christopher statue. He’s the saint that keeps people safe when they’re traveling.

“And don’t think you’re getting off scot-free either, Sally,” Mrs. Kenfield adds on. “I’ll see that Father Mickey knows the part you play in these little escapades.”

The second his name is mentioned, Aunt Betty gets that same goofy look on her face that all the girls and women get when the subject of Father Mickey comes up. “Michael Patrick Gillespie,” she sighs like Sandra Dee. “You’re only a coupla years older than me, Joyce. You knew Mickey back in high school, didn’t you?”

“From what I heard, not nearly as well as you did, Betty,” she says, looking down her long nose at her.

Aunty Betty throws her head back and laughs. Ladies are always whispering behind their hands about her being “a hot patootie,” so she’s used to it. I really admire how she takes those snippy comments as compliments about how good-looking she is. That is making the best of a bad situation.

Aunt Betty says with a fond-memory voice, “I remember this one time Helen and I came across Mickey and Paulie down at Honey Creek—”

“Paulie? Our Uncle Paulie?” I’m shocked. “I didn’t know that he knew Father in the olden days.”

Mrs. Callahan brings her hand to her bosoms and says, “They were best friends. Those two boys gave your granny her gray hair.”

I already know that our uncle was hell on wheels because Ethel Jenkins told me all about him last summer, but this is the first time I heard that Father Mickey was a troublemaker from around here.

“When did Father Mickey move away?” I ask.

Mrs. Callahan closes her eyes. She always does that when she tries to come up with an answer to a question. I can do a pretty good imitation of her if I borrow some of Mother’s blue eye shadow. “Well, let me see . . . after he was ordained, Mickey was assigned to St. Stan’s and then some small town in Illinois and soon after that the church sent him all the way to the jungles of the Congo to do some missionary work with the little Pygmy people. That’s when I stopped gettin’ postcards from him, ’til he showed up here again.”

Sounds to me like she’s been keeping close track of him.

“You want to know something else, Sally?” she says. I really don’t think I do, but there is no stopping her when she gets this naughty smile on her face. She reminds me a lot of this kid from Vliet Street, Fast Susie Fazio, when it comes to spreading hairraising facts. “I wouldn’t say that Mickey had what’s known as a true calling to the priesthood.”