Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [63]
“Thanks for nothin’, O’Malley.” Artie stumbles up to his feet. “If anybody was gonna believe me around here, I figured it’d be you,” he says, charging off into the darkness.
Wendy looks up when her brother disappears down the alley. “Arthie?” she says. “Me . . . go?”
“No, you stay here with me, okay?” I’m afraid she’s gonna cause a commotion if she chases after him, so I give her another cherry Life Saver to keep her busy and part the thick hedge the best I can. All I need to do is take a quick look at Mrs. Goldman’s house so this whole time won’t be spent for nothing.
My eyes start at the front of the Goldmans’ house and move backward past the living room and dining room windows. It looks like nobody is home the way it’s supposed to, but when I look to where I know the kitchen is, the stove light is on. Mrs. Goldman musta forgot to turn it off after she was baking some of her excellent brown sugar cookies to take to her sick brother in Germany. I’ve been checking the house only during the day, so that’s why I haven’t noticed it before now. Tomorrow I’m gonna have to use the key she gave me in case of an emergency to go switch it off. Electricity is expensive.
“C’mon. This way,” I say, tugging on Wendy’s T-shirt sleeve and pointing. We’re gonna go back through the Kenfields’ side yard because I don’t want Wendy to forget I told her the hose isn’t a snake, which she will. I have to remind her to be sneaky every single time we play Captain May I or else she’ll just run up and shove the Captain down. “Watch me.” I get up on my toes and show her how to crouch over to make herself smaller.
When we creep past the Kenfields’ living room window, I can’t stop myself from looking in. I’m not a peeper like Mary Lane. I don’t get real close and watch for an hour. I just like to see people when they’re in their houses at night, drying their supper dishes or working at their sewing machines or playing a game of Pinochle. Even some teasing is fine. Seeing them gives me hope that no matter what horrible stuff happens to a person, life just keeps going on.
I can see perfectly the Kenfields sitting on their davenport. No lamps are switched on, but the televison is throwing light on their faces and on the wall above them where a picture of a beautiful girl with brunette hair takes my breath away. The picture used to hang up in her bedroom that I could see from my room when we still lived next door. Dottie’s got on her mint-colored senior dance dress and her hair is swirled up on top of her head like a Carvel cone and there’s a ruby going-steady ring around her neck. I have been thinking for a long time that whoever she had some of the sex with musta given her that red ring.
Because the Kenfields’ windows are open like everybody else’s on the block are I can hear Perry Mason shouting out of the TV, “Objection, objection, Your Honor!” But even louder than that lawyer, I can hear Mr. Kenfield making the same sound I used to hear when I’d stay awake in my old bed and listen for Dottie’s ghost. That horrible moaning sound.
When I say to Wendy, “Let’s go,” and we head off down the block, I vow to myself not to peek in on people for a while, especially never again on the Kenfields. What I saw in there, Mr. Kenfield’s head in his wife’s lap .