Good Graces

straight over to the Latours. I got a surprise for you.”

“I can’t,” I say, rubbing off the bowl she hands me with the green checked dish towel. “I told Dave I’d water the garden and after I’m done doin’ that I’m gonna work on my charitable summer story and some other stuff.”

Troo and Artie are still back together. Them spending so much time by themselves hasn’t been all bad. Even if Artie’s imagination has gotten the best of him, I know I can count on him to keep her out of trouble. Not having to watch her every second has let me take a breather. I paid Henry a couple of visits, and I found the time to work on a new imitation. I can do a Wizard of Oz munchkin now. I haven’t tried it out on Wendy Latour yet, but I think she’ll go bonkers when she hears me singing the We Represent the Lollypop Guild song at the talent contest next month. That’s the only idea I had that worked out. I checked out a magic book from the library, but none of my shirts have sleeves long enough to hide a rabbit. I also asked Willie to loan me some of his jokes, but he told me he couldn’t share his “material,” so I guess he changed his mind about being a comedian and is now going to be a tailor when he grows up.

I tell Troo, “I also gotta go over to the Goldmans’ to check on the house.” I look above the sink, where I taped Mrs. Goldman’s postcard that came all the way from the Alps. The snowy mountains look very refreshing when Troo and me are slaving over a hot sink.

On the back of the card is the sweetest note that also lifts my spirits:

Dearest Liebchen,

Hans is feeling better. Please to say hello to your sister for me.

Sincerely, your friend,

Mrs. Marta Goldman

P.S. We will be home in the middle of September.

It’s too bad that she won’t be back for the end-of-the-summer party, but I’m glad she has not been killed by an avalanche. When she gets home, Mrs. Goldman is gonna give me that five dollars for keeping my eye on her house. The first thing I’m going to do is rush up to the toy store and put that ventriloquist doll on layaway for Troo. I’m also going to take the bus to the new zoo to see Sampson on some pretty Sunday with Ethel. Mary Lane took that picture of him the way she promised she would with her Brownie camera, but it’s not taped up next to the postcard from Mrs. Goldman. I got it under my pillow, the same way Troo keeps Daddy’s sky-blue shirt under hers. Like everybody else around here, even Sampson seems thrilled with himself in that snapshot. He’s got a smile on his face and one of his long arms looped around a tire that hangs from the ceiling looking like he just came back from a night on the town.

Up to her elbows in bubbles, my sister bosses, “You’re not gonna water the garden or work on your charitable story or go over to the Goldmans’ or… or anything else boneheaded.” She unplunges her hands from the dishwater and gets me by the wrist. “I been plannin’ this for weeks. You, Mary Lane and Artie and me are havin’ an important powwow over at the Latours tonight.”

I say, “Okay, okay,” because Troo looks like she means Indian burn business and it’s such a relief to see her being her old ornery self. “But I gotta water the garden real quick. The corn… I promised Dad… Dave, that I would.”

“Girls?” Mother says, making a sweeping entrance into the kitchen that reminds me so much of Loretta Young on her television show. She’s wearing seamed nylons on her legs, which are making a strong recovery, and a shirtwaist dress the same color as a plum with a flipped-up collar and a wide white belt and high heels that match. She smells different, but still divine. She’s started wearing a perfume called Chanel No. 5 that also comes from France, but I think is a cut above Evening in Paris. That’s how she acts anyway when she dabs it on. She jiggles the car keys our way. “I’ll be back late. Dave should be home from his sister’s around ten.”

Soon as we hear her heels clicking on the dining room floor, Troo bends back and calls, “No hurry, Helen, dear. Take your time. Say hi to Aunt Betty for me and have oodles of fun!”

My sister telling her to have oodles of anything should’ve made an alarm bell go off in our mother’s head no matter how excited she is about shopping for her wedding, but she doesn’t miss a step.

When the front screen door slams shut and we hear the Studebacker’s engine start up, Troo wipes her hands down the front of her shorts and says, “You finish up. I’ll meet ya over at the Latours’.”

“Are we gonna play a new game?” I ask, trying to figure out what “surprise” she has in store for us tonight.

“No, we’re gonna…” She stops on the porch step, looks back at me very crafty and says, “Yeah. I got a new game to show ya,” and off she goes into the night, laughing. Not her airy Chopsticks tinkle or even a deep French hunh… hunh… hunh. That laugh is badder sounding than the time she stabbed Jeffie Lewis in the arm with a pencil after he called her “Clarabelle Hair” one too many times. It is even more wicked than the one Troo gave after she tricked Mimi Latour into petting ankle-biting Butchy when she found out that Willie liked Mimi more than he liked her. The laugh might be even more devilish than the one my sister did when she came up with a way to capture Bobby over at the playground shed and that was the worst one ever.

That laugh-the one that is still echoing around our empty house and filling my heart with the worst kind of scared-that is my sister’s revenge laugh.

Whatever genius plan she’s been brewing for the past couple of weeks, I knew it would bubble up to the surface eventually and I was right. Tonight at the Latours’ is when aaalll will be revealed. Somebody who has done my sister wrong but good is about to get theirs and even though I can’t be sure, I think I know who Troo’s got in mind. God help us all.

Chapter Twenty-three

I’m not going over to the Latours’ the way Troo told me to. I don’t want to hear her plan. I’m afraid to hear her plan. That’s why I’m running over to the Piaskowskis’ as fast as I can. Dave’s still over there getting his sister’s house up to snuff for her return.

One part of me wants to rush in the front door of the house and tell Dave that he has got to drop whatever he’s doing because Troo is right this minute preparing to seek revenge, but the other part of me knows if I rat Troo out, she’ll never forgive me. Ever. Even after she’s dead. And I couldn’t really blame her. It’s bad enough to rat out your sister, but to tattle to Dave, the man who took Daddy’s place? I can’t even begin to think what she’d do to me. But what about keeping her safe the way I promised Daddy I would?

I’m still going back and forth, listening to an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, not sure which is which, when I come round the corner of 56th and Lloyd and one of the other places where everyone in the neighborhood spends so much of their time looms over me.

Mother of Good Hope Church.

Next to Gesu, which is downtown and so fancy that it makes you feel sorry for people who aren’t Catholics, our church is one of the most beautiful ones in all of Milwaukee. It’s got two spires, a bell that peals every hour and lots of windows with stained-glass pictures of sheep and saints and the inside is gorgeous, too. There’s row after row of pews with red leather kneelers. The confessionals are made out of cherry-colored wood. They’re where you have to go and tell on yourself at least once a week if you’re me, more if you’re Troo. The altar up front is white marble and there’s lots of gold dripping off everything and Jesus is hanging on the cross, blood oozing down his forehead from his crown of thorns. Votive candles are always flickering with ten-cents-a-pop prayers in front of statues that have got these special kinds of eyes. Like the ones in the stuffed deer head that hangs behind Jerbak’s bar, those eyes follow you around no matter what direction you go in like it’s all your fault they’re dead. The exception to that rule is the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her eyes are chipped and she’s got outstretched blue arms that, if nobody is around, you can climb between and breathe in the incense that sticks to her cloak, especially around her neck.

Behind the church is the school that’s two stories high and made of red bricks, same as Vliet Street School. Father Mickey kept telling everybody that we’d outgrown it and needed more classrooms so that’s why there’s a giant hole next to the cafeteria that has DANGER signs hanging off the rope around it, which is just asking for