Good Graces

questions of the universe in that bean teepee?”

She knows it is. Who else would it be? Ethel’s just using her fine southern manners. I open up my mouth to ask how her evening has been going and tell her that I’ll be right over for some good advice and how I’ll help her look some more for Mrs. Galecki’s lost jewelry that hasn’t turned up yet, but Troo shakes her head and scowls. She loves Ethel as much as I do and would normally be halfway over there by now, but that’s the kind of mood she is in tonight and most nights, come to think of it. If I say black, she’ll say white. If I say go, she’ll say no.

“I got a little something-something waitin’ on you,” Ethel drawls out. That means she’s got something good to eat.

When the first lightning flashes, I can see Troo even more perfectly. She’s got the L &M dangling from her lips so she can use her hand to rub her bad arm that got hurt in the crash. What I should do is take her back into the house, get under the bed and plug her ears with cotton balls like I usually do when a storm kicks up, but I don’t.

I shout back to Ethel, “Be there in two shakes.”

The heck with Troo. If she wants to stay in here smoking and gloating over how Mother and Dave are barely getting along instead of stretching out in Mrs. Galecki’s porch with our other best friend eating a little something- something, then let her. Mother made us sweetbreads for supper tonight and they didn’t taste like cinnamon toast the way I thought they would. I’m so darn hungry. My stomach feels like a wishing well.

I’ve crawled almost all the way outta the teepee when Mother yells out the back window with all she’s got, “Girls? You out there? Get in this house. It’s about to pour.”

Dang.

I call back across the yard, “Ethel?”

“Ya girls listen to your mama. I’ll see y’all on Wednesday. Lessin’ Miss Troo stunts her growth from smokin’ them weeds and shrinks herself to the size of a gnat, then a course it’ll just be you I’ll be seein’, Miss Sally.”

That’s a good one. That makes me laugh. “Sweet dreams, Ethel. Watch out for those bedbugs,” I say, feeling a splotch of rain landing on my bare arm when I turn toward the house.

I call back to her, “Trooper?”

I wait, but nothing comes outta the teepee but a wisp rising through the top like a smoke signal. I know I should go back in there, snub out that cigarette and drag my sister into the house, but I am just so tired of her digging in her heels. All I’m ever trying to do is honor my promise to Daddy to keep her safe and all she’s ever trying to do is run me ragged. I wish… I wish the teepee would get struck by lightning and those sparks would come flying down the poles and flow through Troo just enough to make her go woozy for the rest of the summer. I would prop her up on the backyard bench and always know where she was. She could do some jigsaw puzzles with Mother. They could be two peas in the pod again the way they used to be instead of…

(Sorry again, Daddy. Mea, mea culpa.)

Chapter Eighteen

Troo and me are at another best place in the neighborhood this morning. The Finney Library. Mary Lane and my sister come up here every Monday so they can check to see how the Billy the Bookworm contest is going. I tag along so I can pick up a new Nancy Drew to read to Mrs. Galecki and to make sure the two of them don’t kill each other. I’m also here because I need to talk to Mary Lane about a couple of important things I have on my mind. We didn’t get to see her all last week because she was up at the new zoo helping out. At least once every summer the rhino steps on her dad’s foot, so she helps him hobble around like his own personal cane.

“Can you believe the nerve of this kid?” my sister says, jabbing at the Bookworm chart the second we come through the library doors. She wants to win the prize in the worst way because she really adores going to the movies and, of course, ending up on top of the chart is another something she can lord over our other best friend. “Look at how high Lane’s worm has crawled! She’s gotta be cheatin’.” If we weren’t in the library, she would hawk a loogie. She still might. “I’m gonna go tell Kambowski on her.”

When Troo storms off to complain to the head librarian at the front desk, I go looking for Mary Lane. I find her right away browsing down one of the aisles and pull her into the lavatory with me.

“Don’t ever let your mother give you a home permanent again,” I tell her once we get in there. “You look like the Bride of Frankenstein.”

“Cool,” Mary Lane says, turning toward the mirror above the sink and making the same face the actress in the movie did right after she got electrified back to life. Head cocked to the left and then to the right, glaring at the doctor with the kind of look that says, What the heck did you do to me, you mad scientist you?

“And you gotta stop stealin’ immediately,” I say. “I’m not jokin’. Dave is hot on your trail for being the cat burglar. I’ll help you get rid of the evidence.” I’ve given this a lot of thought. “We’re gonna tie a rock around your All Stars and throw them into the lagoon. Then we’ll go to all the houses you stole from in the middle of the night. We’ll put their precious things on their front porches, the ones you haven’t already taken to the pawnshop. I’ll make apology notes by cuttin’ words out of a magazine so no one will recognize my handwritin’. The way they do in movies, ya know, like a ransom note only in reverse.”

When I get done with my spiel, Mary Lane laughs and says, “You been eatin’ too many nuts, O’Malley. They musta gone to your brain. You ever seen me steal?” She has a book called Blaze and the Forest Fire and another one called The Terrible Tale of Mata Hari in her arms, so just for a second I believe her, because I mean, I never have seen her steal and there are only so many hours in the day and she’s already pretty busy with her other two hobbies.

“You sure you’re not the cat?” I ask.

Mary Lane sets her books down and boosts herself up onto the counter next to the sink. “I think I’d know if I was breakin’ into people’s houses, don’t you?” She answers so la de da that it makes me go back to thinking she’s lying after all. If somebody accused me of a crime that I didn’t do, I’d get my feelings hurt, but Mary Lane, all she says is, “Boy… do I got some juicy news for you.”

I head into the stall, hardly listening to her because I don’t like tinkling anywhere except at home, but I gotta go really, really bad.

Mary Lane says, “This week on Hawaiian Eye Cricket got herself in a real fix, but then she got outta it.” She loves that show. I used to, too, but every time I try to watch it lately all I can think about is finding a leper eyeball in the pocket of one of Granny’s muu-muus. Mary Lane keeps me up to date. “And a man at the new zoo has been showin’ me how to drive the train they got out there, which is not that hard, so I’m thinkin’ if bein’ a fireman doesn’t work out I’m gonna be a conductor aaand… you’re never gonna guess who I peeped on,” she says on the other side of the toilet door that has telephone numbers and other stuff scribbled over it. Like who’s available if you’re looking for a good time. (Fast Susie Fazio.)

I rip the toilet paper off the roll and carefully lay it down, making sure all of the black is covered in a crisscross pattern. Troo told me you could get pregnant if you let your private parts touch the seat. She’s sure that’s what musta happened to Dottie Kenfield and even though I don’t agree with her-I think whoever gave Dottie that ruby ring is the culprit-I can see why that makes sense to my sister. It’s nearly impossible to keep a piece of juicy news quiet around here and nobody has said a word to me or anybody else I know about who the father of Dottie’s baby is so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that she had an Immaculate Conception caused by a toilet seat. Nothing in heaven and earth is impossible. It happened to the Virgin Mother, it could happen to Dottie Kenfield.

“I was over at the old bottling plant on Burleigh Street the other night,” Mary Lane says. “Scoutin’ it out.”

Scouting it out is the same as saying that she is planning to set that abandoned building on fire the same way she did the tire store on North Avenue last summer. And the old TV repair shop a few weeks ago. She could never put that in her summer story, but I think it’s kinda charitable when she burns those buildings down. They’re such eyesores. They put up a spiffy appliance shop where the tire store used to be. Maybe