Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [39]
I ask, “How’s Mrs. G been feelin’?”
Ethel sighs hard enough to flutter the curtain above the windowsill where Mrs. Galecki’s medicines, over ten bottles, are lined up.
She says, “Her gut’s still actin’ up. Gotta go pick up some more Pepto. That’s what Mr. Lou recommended for this sorta thing.”
My future father-in-law and Ethel Jenkins are friendly because she has to go to the drugstore all the time to get the pills Mrs. Galecki needs to take every day to keep her going, which Ethel doesn’t mind because Henry’s father acts toward her the same way he acts toward everybody else. Gentlemanly. Not like the vegetable man at the Kroger. He treats Ethel like she’s week-old cabbage.
“Would you say hello to Henry for me when you go?” I miss him and our visits. Next time I know that Troo can’t get into anything she shouldn’t, when she’s locked in our room for disobeying Mother again, that’s where I’m heading. “Please tell him I’ll get over there really soon to count Ramblers.”
“Will do,” Ethel says, stirring my Ovaltine. She is such a great cook. Gets all that malty grit to dissolve just perfect so there’s only smoothness going down your throat. “Ya heard anything more’bout the orphan boy that disappeared?”
That’s the way it is in the neighborhood. It’s like living with a hundred Chet Brinkleys. No matter where you go—the park, the playground, Mass, the Five and Dime, the library—you can’t get away from the hottest subject. Even if the last thing you want to do is think about it anymore, rotsa ruck. Everybody’ll be flapping their lips about Charlie’s running away from us and Greasy Al running toward us—well, limping toward us—until another disaster happens, which could be at any minute. When we lived in the country, all I ever had to pay attention to was not getting too close to the chickens, who have the worst personalities, but here in the city . . . it’s the people you gotta watch out for in more ways than one. They can egg your worry on and even if you are doing your absolute best to keep it under control, they won’t let you with all their jibber jabber.
“Thank you,” I say, when Ethel sets down the lilac glass that’s sweating as bad as the both of us. “All I heard about Charlie is that he’s still missin’.” I pull up the neck of my T-shirt to dry myself off and Ethel uses her arm on her forehead because she’s already got her hands full. She’s taken the blue bowl of strawberries to the counter and is holding a small sharp knife to slice them up real thinly between her fingers.
“Miss Bertha’s friends with Sister Jean from the orphanage,” Ethel says. “She come over for a visit and was real broke up. Told us that boy was really something. And how the Honeywells are so disappointed to have lost him. Father Mickey is tryin’ to put some men together to go lookin’ for him.”
I don’t tell her that Father Mickey probably doesn’t give a hoot about some orphan kid, he just wants the poor-box money back. The church loves moo-la-la. If it isn’t paper drives, it’s fish fries or Bingo. They’re always asking to give until it hurts. Especially lately. Father Mickey says we need to build more classrooms onto the school. All the money that gets taken in will go to finishing the new wing, but