Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [49]
Eddie Callahan is a big fat drip, but I understand why he’s going up to the drive-in for supper. Nell learned to cook from Mother and the Milky Way . . . Our Food is Out of This World has the best grub with nifty outer space names like the Giant Galaxy Burger and Uranus Fries brought to you by girls with classy chassis who wear silvery skirts, and on their heads, glittery antennae bob back and forth when they glide on their roller skates between the cars to loud rock ’n’ roll music. And since I heard that large, not long bosoms are a very big deal to boys, Nell’s probably right about her husband feeling up Melinda the skating waitress. Even I noticed that her chest is high and mighty. (If Eddie’s so nuts about outer space bosoms, I think he could give Nell a little credit. At least part of hers look like flying saucers.)
When Troo and me got back home from the apartment, I ran straight into Mother’s bedroom and told her how awful Nell looked and how she suspected Eddie was being moony over an outer space skank. Mother was perched at her dressing table, brushing her glimmering hair with her golden brush. I thought she’d be understanding and so sympathetic because the same thing happened to her. Hall Gustafson stepped out with a cocktail waitress at the Beer ’n Bowl when Mother was supposed to be dying up at St. Joe’s. But Mother didn’t take her eyes off the mirror when she said, “Your sister made her bed, Sally, now she’s got to lie in it. Let this be a lesson to you.”
The cop side goes up on their feet when Mr. Kollasch hits a high fly ball that sails over Eddie’s head in right field.
“Where do you think Dottie is right this minute?” Nell asks me, not even noticing that her husband let a run get driven in. “Out dancin’ in a new dress with her hair done up in a bow?”
Nell and Dottie Kenfield were in the same class in high school together so they knew each other, but didn’t have much in common back then. Dottie was on the honor roll, and Nell . . . like Troo says, most of her brain is in her bra. Nell only started bringing up Dottie all the time after she heard that she escaped from the hospital with her baby in Chicago. She’s sure that Dottie’s living the high life in some fancy supper club and wishes she could be, too.
“How am I supposed to know where Dottie is?” I feel sorry for Nell, but I am getting as tired as Troo is of her asking us what we think has become of Dottie, so I answer her the same way she does minus her special f word. “Do I look like a map?”
“Ya know, being a mother isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Nell spits back. “Tell your sister that. I see those looks she’s been givin’ me.”
Just like her, I can easily see Troo sticking out in the crowd. There’s other redheads in the neighborhood, but none like my sister. She’s giving Nell dagger eyes. She’s never liked her and she hates it when I go outta my way to be nice to her. She’s also giving me the c’mere finger.
“Well, nice chattin’ with you. I gotta go,” I say, kissing freshly diapered Peggy Sure on her nose and handing her back to Nell, who takes all that pinkness back into her arms like she’s a piece of Dubble-Bubble I clawed out from underneath the bleachers.
“Oh, where oh where has my little Dot gone, oh where oh where could she be?” Nell starts singing, not to Peggy Sure.
She’s been acting like this since she got home from St. Joe’s with her bundle of joy. I think she caught a disease in the hospital that is making bats fly out of her belfry. That is not just my opinion, I know something about this. Troo reminds me all the time that people who have big imaginations can go off their rockers the same way Virginia Cunningham did in The Snake Pit movie, so I have memorized the signs to watch out for:
1.