Good Graces

they’ll open a new dress store where the bottling plant was. Something really fancy. Mother would like that.

“Geeze, O’Malley. What’d ya drink this mornin’?” Mary Lane says. “Peewaukee Lake?”

After I flush, I come out and turn on the sink water. I don’t look so good in the mirror. Sometimes I barely recognize myself anymore. The dark half moons under my eyes look permanent and my hair is so bleached out from all the time I’ve been spending under this hot summer sun, it’s almost white.

“So who did you peep on?” I say, acting interested because that’s the polite thing to do.

“Father Mickey!” Mary Lane says, thrilled and wiggly.

I don’t know why she’s so excited. You’d think this would be getting old to her by now. Her favorite people to peep on are nuns and priests. Last summer, she caught our ex-pastor, Father Jim, dancing around the rectory in a white dress and high heels to Some Enchanted Evening.

“Father Mickey was at the abandoned bottlin’ plant last night?” I ask, drying off my hands on the towel thingie.

“Yup,” Mary Lane says. “He was in a black car talkin’ with you’re-never-gonna-believe-who.”

There is an excellent chance of that.

“Who?” I ask.

“Mr. Tony Fazio!”

What would the two of them be doing at that old plant together? That doesn’t sound right. Mary Lane must be winding up to tell me one of her famous no-tripper stories.

“Did you hear what they were talkin’ about?” I am trying not to sound like a doubting Thomas, but not doing such a good job.

“I couldn’t make out all the words, but Mr. Fazio was yellin’ at Father something about bein’ overdue and then Father started yellin’ back at him,” she says.

Yeah, this is one of her stories for sure. Nobody would yell at a priest. And I have never seen Mr. Fazio at the library, so what does he care if Father is late getting a book back.

Just to be polite, I’m about to ask Mary Lane to tell me what else she mighta heard Mr. Fazio and Father discussing when my sister comes barging through the lavatory door shouting, “Where is that fuzzy-haired drip?” Spotting her, Troo shoves past me and yanks Mary Lane off the sink counter. “You’re gonna beat me on the Bookworm!”

Mary Lane pinches Troo hard on the nose and yells back, “Tough titty, kitty,” and their yelling echoes off all that green tile so loud that Mrs. Kambowski comes rushing in.

“What in God’s name is going on in here?” the head librarian asks. She gets the both of them by the scruff of their necks and gives them a good shake.

Mary Lane mumbles something, and Troo acts contrite and tells the librarian, “Pardonnez- moi,” but the second we get through the library’s front doors, she throws herself on top of Mary Lane piggyback-style and they end up wrestling around on the grass like they always do until I can’t take it anymore and pull Troo off.

“Let go a me!” She shoves me down to the ground next to Mary Lane, screws up her face and screams like a she-cat, “Fuck the both of ya,” then she hops on her bike and takes off without me on the handlebars.

Mary Lane and me watch Troo darting in and out of cars down Sherman Boulevard with held breaths. After my sister turns toward the park and we can’t see her anymore, Mary Lane rubs her leg where Troo kicked her. She’s not laughing like she usually would after one of their wrestling matches. She’s got a hurt look on her face and question marks in her eyes. She’s wondering why my sister has been acting even wilder than she usually does.

I could tell Mary Lane that Troo is acting worse because we’re half sisters now instead of whole ones or because Dave and Mother want to get married or because she’s having a hard time finding Greasy Al or maybe it’s because she’s falling behind on the Bookworm chart, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. I think it’s more than that. Something else is making my sister go around the bend.

Mary Lane helps me up off the grass and says, “What’s her problem?”

I wish I knew. I’d give anything for the answer to that sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

Chapter Nineteen

How I Spent My Charitable Summer

By Sally Elizabeth O’Malley

I went to Granny’s every Friday and washed out Uncle Paulie’s socks, which might not sound like such a sacrifice, but believe me it is. His socks smell like old bowling shoes from not just one person’s feet, but from a lot of persons’ feet, which made me think of Mary Magdalene drying Jesus’s toes off with her hair. That was so nice of her because from walking barefoot in Galilee and around lost sheep, the Son of God’s feet had to be really raunchy. Or maybe they weren’t because He also spent a lot of time walking on water. And I was really charitable to Wendy Latour. I have done so much wicked-witch laughing for her that I lost my voice for a week. I was also kind to her brother, Artie. When his best friend disappeared, I gave him one of my leather coin purses that I made eleven of at camp because that is the number of Apostles minus Judas, who I want nothing to do with. I’d also like to mention here for your holy consideration that my sister, Margaret, also gave Artie a piece of gum and hasn’t missed one of her religious visits with Father Mickey. I helped Mother clean behind the stove, painted her toenails and got her nummies. She has not gotten boils yet for living in sin with Dave Rasmussen the way you told me she would.

That’s where I left off after Troo and me got back from listening to Music Under the Stars over at the park with Mother tonight. I’ll get extra credit points for using Mary Magdalene’s hair and Jesus’s feet and the Apostles. The reason I crossed out that part about keeping an eye on the Goldmans’ house is because even though I am doing that, they are Jewish. Sister Raphael would take off my extra points to even the murdering Jesus score.

When I used the key Mrs. Goldman gave me to go into their house yesterday to turn off the light I saw glowing on the stove and bring her the kitty puzzles, I wound all her clocks, too. A clock that isn’t ticking is as sad as dead flowers. Normally I don’t like being anywhere without Troo, but it felt kinda nice to be alone for a change. I opened a window because it was such a hotbox in there and sat down on Mrs. Goldman’s davenport and started thinking about how sad it was that she couldn’t plant a garden this summer and how charitable it would be for me to go up to the Five and Dime tomorrow and get some seeds and stick them in for her. When she came back home from her trip, that’d be one surprise she would really like. She’d see her blooming backyard and wrap me in her arms and say, “Oh, Liebchen. What a special girl you are. Danke schoen!” And the next thing I knew her cuckoo clock woke me up. I don’t know why, but I felt like I got my hand caught in the brown-sugar cookie jar. I dashed out the door and didn’t stop running until I got home.

When I can’t sleep at night, when my mind goes from one thing to another and back again, sometimes I can stop it for a little while by using some of Ethel’s good advice. I read. Or write. That’s what I wanted to do tonight, add something else onto the charitable summer story under the covers after I got Troo to sleep, but that’s not gonna happen. My sister’s up to something.

“Harder,” she says from her side of the bed. “Over to the left more, between my shoulder blades.” The pages of my notebook that I set on top of our dresser are getting flapped by the fan while I rub her back. They grab her attention. “You’re workin’ on your story already?”

“I thought I better before-”

“You’re such a brownnose.” I can’t see her face, but I know that she’s sneering. (She usually waits until the night before school starts and copies off my story.)

I say, “Maybe you could try to start a little earl-”

“Holy cow, I’m beat,” she says, pulling her back away from my fingers and punching her pillow. “You better turn in, too. Tomorrow is a big day.”