Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [72]
I check Daddy’s Timex at ten after ten, so that means I’ve got at least seven more hours to keep watch over Troo. I’m gonna pass the time by making shadow puppets. I can do a bird and another kind of bird and a bunny, and when I get done with that, I’ll put my feet up on the wall and I’ll imagine myself walking to see Sampson at his new home. Maybe I’ll go out to the bean teepee once I’m sure that Mother and Dave have gone to bed, which won’t be long now. I heard the front door open and shut, which means that Dave is back from work, and from out in the living room I can hear muffled talking. I hope Mother doesn’t start complaining again because hearing her going after Dave is bad enough during the day, but at night, the hot words that come pouring out of her mouth make my sweaty skin go clammy. I know that her wanting Dave to buy her so many things is not the only reason she gets after him. Mother has never completely forgotten about him jilting her way back when his mother told him to. You know what they say about forgiveness? Mother and Troo are not at all divine at it. They can’t help it. It’s their 100 percent Irish blood. Same goes for Granny. She held a grudge against a boy in the old country for ten years because he made fun of the sack dress she wore to school. (She won’t tell me what she did to even the score, only that the kid was known from that day on as Toothless Tom.)
I would adore seeing Dave even if it’s just for a minute. It’s been a tough day guarding Troo and the sight of my father makes me feel better, so I scootch down to the end of the bed. When I open our bedroom door a crack, I have a straight shot into the living room, but it isn’t Dave next to Mother on the davenport. This man’s hair isn’t light, it’s dark. All of him is black, even his shoes. It’s Father Mickey! I can’t hear what they’re saying because my ears feel like Niagara Falls is rushing through them, but I’m thinking that Mrs. Kenfield told Father about Troo stealing out of the Five and Dime and now he’s come to tell Mother. But why does he have a letter in his hand? He wouldn’t write it down if he was here to tattle on Troo, he would just . . . oh. That letter . . . it’s gotta be the annulment from the Pope that Mother’s been waiting for!
Father Mickey is tilting forward, offering it to Mother, but when she’s just about got it, he snatches it away.
“Knock it off, Mick,” she says, loudly. “Get it over with.”
She must be so scared that it says:
Dear Helen,
So sorry to hear that your husband Hall Gustafson is a beer-bottle killer, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to give you an annulment at this time. Try again later.
Holiest regards,
Pope John the twenty-third
Father Mickey mumbles something and Mother shakes her head so he unfolds the letter and reads it out loud. When he’s done, a beaming smile comes onto her face and that is such a rare thing to see that I gasp and hope they don’t hear me. Father puts his arms around her and moves closer. Mother stops him with a hand to his chest and starts to cry, and that is such another rare thing. This is not sadness breaking loose from my mother’s heart. This is the kind of crying you do after you think that you’re for-sure dead, but then somebody brings you back to life. The kind of sobbing that Lazurus probably did on Jesus’s shoulder. The same way I cried that night at the zoo when Daddy told me to fly like the wind away from Bobby.
Mother takes in a breath and presses her Matador Red lips to the white sheet of paper from the Pope that has just told her probably in Italian and maybe some Latin:
Dear Helen,
Greetings from the Vatican!
I have granted you an annulment so anytime you want to, you can start picking the flowers out for your wedding.
Dominus vobiscum