Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [80]
Father Mickey stops to say hello to the O’Malley sisters, too. I say, “Hi,” back, but Troo doesn’t. She doesn’t even say thank-you when he compliments her on her winning costume.
I know why. She’s holding him responsible for getting Dave and Mother permission to get married. I bet Troo has already added Father Mickey’s name on the top of what she calls her “Shit List,” which is already over a foot long.
This is another one of those times when I think God really does have a plan because Father Mickey getting the annulment letter worked out really good for Troo in the long run. I’m almost positive she’s moved her crushing feelings off the priest and back to her old flame, Artie Latour, because he was definitely wearing the coonskin cap. It was flat as Troo’s beret from being under our mattress for so long, but it still looked good. Artie was also Troo’s partner in the egg-on-a-spoon and three-legged races and they dangled their feet in the Honey Creek during the afternoon, talking, talking, talking. When I took three Dreamsicles down and tried to join in with them, they told me, “Thanks,” but they clammed up about whatever it was they were chatting about.
My sister and me are lying on our stomachs, which we barely can do because of all the apple pie we ate. She’s tuckered out after her big winning day. I adore her all the time, but a little bit more when she gets sleepy like this. That’s when she’s more like olden-days Troo. Still whistling in the dark, but not as as loud. Her blue decorating ribbon and two more for winning the games are hanging off her neck, swinging like the pendulum on Mrs. Goldman’s grandfather clock. That reminds me. I’ve gotta get over there soon to check on her house. I’ve been slacking.
I look over to where Troo set her Eiffel Tower costume against a tree. It’s still blinking.
“How’d ya get the lights to stay on like that?” I ask.
“Batteries,” she says. She doesn’t smell like an Evening in Paris. She smells sticky with everything we ate today, mostly sweet. “Uncle Paulie was in charge of that part.”
“No kiddin’.” For a man who once went to work with his boxer shorts on the outside of his pants, that is a smart invention. “Did he figure out how to get all those sticks to stay together like that, too?” I say, wondering if someone’s brain can grow back. Some worms can do that if you split them in two.
Troo says, “Remember the day we went up to the Five and Dime and ran into Aunt Betty?”
She means the time Mother sent me up there to get her a Snirkle and Troo went skulking around the aisles and I found out from Aunt Betty that Father Mickey was originally from the neighborhood, but what does that have to do with . . . “Ohhhh, I get it. You took some glue and that’s what’s keepin’ them together.”
She says, “Yup. Once we got the sticks stuck together and they got all dried out and could stand on their own, I painted the movie title on the front.” She musta been asked this question by everybody and their brother today because the words roll outta her mouth like a multiplication table.
A couple of blankets down I can hear Mrs. Latour telling her daughter to pipe down. Wendy won’t stop yelling, “Thally, Thally, me thee you, Thally.” I know if I tell her I see her, too, she’s gonna come crawling over everybody asking me to witch laugh and as much as I like her, I need to talk to my sister, so I act like I don’t hear her, which is impossible. Just like her mother, who has to call a dozen kids to supper every night, Wendy’s got a set of lungs on her.
“Where did you do all the work on it?” I ask Troo about her costume.
“Granny’s garage.”
I give her a gentle noogie in the arm. “So that’s where you’ve been disappearin’ to, you little banshee.”
Her keeping something this big from me makes me wonder what else she’s been up to that I don’t know about. She hasn