Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [122]
My mother and Dave will no longer be living in sin after September 24th because they’re getting married. Dave took all of us to the State Fair in West Allis and we ate cream puffs. I brought two back for Ethel Jenkins, who had a pretty rough summer. She really needed some creamy filling. Troo and me rode the Tilt-a-Whirl and the roller coaster. Dave won Mother a teddy bear and also won me a couple of goldfish for my fish tank by throwing ping-pong balls that looked exactly like Granny’s eyeballs into little jars. Troo also got to go to the Freak Show to pay her regular visit to the fat lady named Vera from Moline, Illinois. Troo told Vera that she was looking like she had lost some weight, so that was also charitable. We also talked to the fortune-teller, Rhonda of the Seven Veils, who told us just like she does every year, “Soon aaalll will be revealed.”
Just thinking that Rhonda might be right makes me shiver on this hottest of hot nights. Troo and me may think we are home free, but just like Granny always says, “The best laid plans of mice and men,” which I take to mean that somebody could have the most genius plan in the world and you could still find yourself caught in a trap. I’m worried about Wendy Latour blowing it. She could say something after church one of these days like, “Father Mickey . . . fall down go boom,” but since nobody really pays attention to her except Artie and me and her mother, who is real busy with the rest of her brood, that should be all right. And me, I’m worried about me. I know from experience that it’s hard to keep a secret this big even if it’s for the best of all reasons. I would like to tell Dave the whole kit and kaboodle about what happened to Father Mickey. Maybe someday I will. After Wendy Latour passes away. Right after her funeral, once I can walk and talk again, I could come clean as long as Dave promises on his life not to tell Troo that I told him. We’ll see.
Dave opens the screen door and calls, “Sally?”
Like I’m caught doing something that I shouldn’t, I jump and say, “What?”
I’m surprised he’s back from Mrs. Goldman’s so soon. I’m a little bit disappointed, too, when I see that he is empty-handed. I was hoping he’d stop at Fitzpatrick’s and bring me back a quart of Peaches ’n Cream. He is usually very thoughtful about things like that.
“Could you come in here, please?” he says. “We have visitors.”
“In a minute, okay?”
Aunt Betsy and Uncle Richie must have stopped by, which is good news. I haven’t had a chance to get up to visit with them as much as I’d like to, but Nell has been spending almost every day there except for when she’s cutting hair. Nell and Aunt Betsy have really hit it off. Wait, that’s not exactly right. Dave told me that Peggy Sure and Aunt Betsy have really hit it off, which makes a lot more sense. It must feel so good for the mother of dead Junie to hold a little girl in her arms again.
I close my notebook and call next door, “See ya tomorrow at the block party?” I’d love for Ray Buck to come, but it’s especially important that Ethel doesn’t skip it. I want her to see the fruits of our labor.
“Wouldn’t miss it for all the barbeque in Mississippi,” she drawls back. “Sleep tight, Miss Sally. Don’t let them bedbugs bite and if they do . . .”
“I’ll beat them with my shoe, Ethel. Night, you two lovebirds,” I say, wishing when I tug on the back screen door that it was me and Ray Buck lazing around that porch together, only he’d be a lot younger or I’d be a lot older. I’d be a lot browner or he’d be a lot lighter. I know it’s just a crush, Henry doesn’t have a thing to worry about, but I got to say, that man is the answer to the Who Wrote the Book of Love? question. Ray Buck makes my toes curl.
When he hears the door slam shut, Dave calls out to me, “We’re in the living room,” and that’s followed up by a baby crying, so