made that up, about there being a play and how Mary Lane should keep it secret so she wouldn’t wreck the surprise. I didn’t tell anybody else about there not being a Men’s Club play because Father Jim had once given me a holy card of St. Patrick, who was my favorite saint, and he never gave me very long penances after confession. I really didn’t know why Father Jim got dressed up so pretty like that, but it made me glad that it was none of my beeswax.
The funeral crowd was just about gone when Mr. Gary drove up to the curb in front of the church and ran up the hill toward Father Jim. Mr. Gary said something to him and then Father Jim yelled and kinda cried, “No matter how you look at it, it’s a mortal sin, Gary. A mortal sin.”
Granny always said that funerals were hard on everybody and the word
Nell poked me in the ribs with her elbow and said, “Did you hear me, Sally?”
“What?” I was still looking at Mr. Gary, who had put his arm around Father Jim’s shoulders and was walking him back toward the rectory. Father was a little bent over at the waist and his arms were out to the side like he was walking on a circus tightrope, like if he made one false step he would tumble down to the ground and never get up again.
Nell said, “We’re gonna go see Mother.”
Eddie said in a very proud voice, “Aunt Margie arranged it. She said your mother is getting better.”
For a second I couldn’t think of one thing to say because in my heart I had already accepted that Mother was going to die, even after Rasmussen told me she wasn’t.
Troo yelled out, “Hip, hip hooray!”
“Really, Eddie?” I asked.
“Aunt Margie said your mother is gonna be okay. Not right away, but she’s not gonna die.”
Mother had been gone almost all of June and five days of July and now she was coming back to us. My breath was taken right out of my body. Mother was going to be okay. Just like Rasmussen said. I looked over at Troo. She was hopping like mad from foot to foot.
“Eddie is going to take us right over to St. Joe’s,” Nell said as we walked toward the parking lot. “I had a long visit with Mother last night and she can’t wait to see the O’Malley sisters.”
After we got in the Chevy and drove a few blocks I was surprised by how the world looked so much better than it did yesterday. The sidewalks seemed cleaner and the cars shinier and even Paul Anka on the radio sounded better than usual.
Nell flipped down that visor above the windshield and looked at me and Troo in the backseat after she checked her makeup. “And I got some more good news.”
“So your bosoms
She turned toward us and put her hands on the seat. “Eddie and I are getting married.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Troo said in her absolutely amazed voice.
Eddie started laughing and Nell said, “We’re engaged.” She lifted her left hand up close to my face and there was a little golden Irish ring on it with hands that met in the middle. “It was Mrs. Callahan’s engagement ring. She gave it to Eddie to give to me.”
I felt like I’d just gotten off that Tilt-A-Whirl ride they had up at the state fair, my head spinning and everything looking cattywampus. I really didn’t believe one more thing could happen this summer. But it had. Now Nell was getting married.
When we turned down Fifty-ninth Street, I said, “We should stop real quick at Granny’s and tell her about Mother getting better.”
Eddie said, “Okey-dokey,” and turned down the block that took us to Granny’s, first stopping at Delancey’s Corner Store to get some Camel cigarettes for himself and Cokes all around. Nell went in with him because it seemed like she wouldn’t let go of his hand anymore, which Eddie didn’t seem to mind. I guessed Eddie decided that he liked Nell’s bosoms better than Melinda’s because he couldn’t take his eyes off her “thirty-six deelightfuls,” as he called them. Nell was proud of those bosoms, too. So the two of them had liking those bosoms in common. Just like me and Henry had our books and chocolate phosphates and airplanes in common. Mother shoulda never married Hall, because I couldn’t see one thing they had in common.
When Nell and Eddie went in to Delancey’s, Troo leaned over and said, “You just go tell Granny by yourself, okay?”
“Sure.” I knew she was feeling so happy about Mother not dying and us living at Rasmussen’s until she got home and Hall going to jail that she didn’t want to wreck all that happiness by seeing Uncle Paulie and playing peek-a-boo with him. Or by looking at those Popsicle stick houses, which could really get anybody feeling bad since before the accident Uncle Paulie had been a carpenter.
I thought right then was as good a time as ever. Maybe the best time because I had not seen Troo this happy for so long that I sorta wanted to be a shiny bow on her happiness package. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” I was getting ready to tell her what Daddy had told me. That the car crash wasn’t her fault.
Troo was looking out the window at some kids playing one two three O’Larry outside Delancey’s. “Just forget it,” she said. “I’m not listening anymore to your imagination about Rasmussen. He’s not the murderer and molester.” And then Troo turned to face me and came in real close with both hands on my cheeks, and whispered, “But I think I know who is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
When Eddie and Nell hopped down Delancey’s Corner Store steps, Troo turned a pretend key on her lips and threw it out the window. It was her way of telling me to keep my mouth locked up tight about her knowing who the murderer and molester was. A warning not to say anything to Nell or Eddie. She wanted to keep it hush-hush between the O’Malley sisters.
Eddie handed me and Troo a Coke through the car window and then the other two that were left in the carton. “Give those to Granny and Uncle Paulie.” I guessed that getting married agreed with Eddie, because he was sure acting more grown-up. Almost like Mr. Anderson in
He drove down ten houses and parked the Chevy under the big oak tree in front of Granny’s house that she called a bungalow, which is just another word for the smallest kind of place that a person could live in. Granny could’ve used a much larger house because she was a big woman both up and out, especially in her arms, which had a lot of flappy skin hangin’ off of them. But her face hardly had any lines and her hair was thick and white like homemade bread and she kept it in a pageboy. She also had perfect teeth that she kept in a glass full of water when she wasn’t using them. If you ever met her you might think to yourself that she reminded you a lot of that guy on the dollar bill.
“Don’t take too long, we have to be at the hospital by eleven,” Nell called after I’d gotten out of the car. “Dr. Sullivan is going to meet us there and tell us all about Mother. And don’t tell Granny about Eddie and me, I want to surprise her.”
Seemed like nobody wanted me to tell anybody about nothin’.
I knocked on Granny’s front door that coulda used some paint and waited for Uncle Paulie to answer it, which he always did, because Granny moved so slow with her crippled knees that you could be sitting on that porch until the cows came home if you waited for her. When he pushed open the screen door, I said, “Hi, Uncle Paulie.”
He had on what he always had on, tan pants and a white T-shirt that showed off his pretzel-rod arms with the most pale freckles of anybody I’d ever seen. His hair was thick red and started back on his head a bit and looked like it should belong to an entirely different person.
“Peek-a-boo, Troo.”
“No, I’m Sally, remember, Uncle Paulie? Troo has red hair just like yours.” I sort of pushed past him and went looking for Granny. She was in the kitchen filling up her copper teapot with water.
“Hi, Granny. Got a present for you.” I pulled open her refrigerator and put the Cokes inside for later. Granny loved Coca-Cola. Drank almost a whole six-pack every day. It gave her vim and vigor, she said.
Granny’s thyroid-condition eyes got bigger when she said, “Well, hello there, Sally. What a nice surprise. Care
