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
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
“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.”
I know what she means by that. They’re always trying to convince girls to be nuns and boys to be priests up at school. To keep their ears open for a call from Jesus.
I say, “Kenny Schultz was told to join up in a dream. He went to St. Nazianz seminary right after high school.”
“Yeah, that’s how it goes for most boys, but M.P.G… well, he wasn’t most boys.” I must look like I lost track of the conversation. “That was Mickey’s nickname back then. Ya know, his initials? M.P.G. Miles per gallon?” She rumble laughs deep in her throat. “That boy could give a girl the ride of her life and… hey, don’t take my word for it. Ask your mother,” she says, with a wink.
“That’s quite enough, Betty!” Mrs. Kenfield smacks her hand down on the glass case. Then to me, she says, “Make no mistake about it, I’m reporting you and your sister to Father the first chance I get.”
“Oh, for chrissakes.” Mrs. Callahan throws up her hands. “The kid’s not responsible for her sister, isn’t that right, Sally?”
“I… I…” Don’t agree with her. And neither did Daddy.
“I am my brother’s keeper,” Mrs. Kenfield says, holding her teeth closed so tight that I can’t believe the words got through them. “I believe the Lord would have the same apply to sisters.”
“Oh, you do, do you? You got a direct line to Him now?” Aunt Betty says, losing her cool. “Outta anybody in the neighborhood… you should know ya can’t take heat for whatever foolishness somebody in your family is doin’, Joyce. Get off your sanctimonious horse. You used to be the life of the party. When’d ya get that goddamn stick up your butt?”
Not waiting to hear Mrs. Kenfield’s answer, which I was interested in because I would like to avoid that sort of thing happening to me, Mrs. Callahan spins toward me and says, “I’ll tell ya what I’m gonna do, Sally. I’m gonna give you an advance on your baby-sittin’ money and a few pennies more for what I lost to Troo playing rummy a coupla nights ago.” She snaps open her shiny black pocketbook. On the bottom, I can see the peppermint schnapps she keeps in there. She tells people it’s just to freshen her breath. She sets the bottle carefully on the top of the candy counter, slips out her coin purse, which is one of the leather ones Troo made at camp, and slaps down two quarters. Looking her right in the eye, Aunt Betty flicks them with her pointy red fingernail too hard toward Mrs. Kenfield, who doesn’t put up her hands to block them. The coins go tumbling down to the floor. One of them rolls away for a long, long time. “And
It goes midnight-in-a-cemetery quiet. The parakeets stop chirping and even the corn has stopped popping. All I want to do is get out of there and catch up with Troo and be on our merry way, but then I remember why I got sent
