Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [82]
Since I take them so to heart, I don’t ever promise anybody anything if I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. Except for my sister.
“Promise.”
She wiggles even closer, her warm skeeter-bit arm presses against mine. When she opens her hand, Mrs. Galecki’s missing emerald necklace is lying in her palm, just glimmering.
Chapter Twenty-two
For the past two weeks, things couldn’t be more topsy-turvy around here.
Me and my sister are doing the dishes together, trying to guess what mystery food Mother made us tonight. When she placed it down on the table, she said, “Ta-daaa” and called it “Brains a la King,” but she had to be kidding around. That’s how good of a mood she’s been in. She sings along in her warbly voice when a tune she likes comes on the radio and she hasn’t done that for the longest time. Her newest favorite, she goes giddy when she hears it, is Puppy Love. She stops whatever she’s doing and makes Lizzie get up on her hind feet so they can dance around the kitchen. She’s not doing her puzzles in the backyard on the TV tray anymore. Mother has been spending most of her day cutting pictures out of magazines and driving around in her new red Studebaker. She looks mouthwatering in that car. After tying a chiffon scarf around her hair and knotting it in back, off she goes to expand her horizons. She’s in her bedroom right this minute getting ready to go pick up Aunt Betty. They’re driving downtown to Chapman’s, which is the fancy store Mother’s been wanting to shop at for the longest time.
“That Helen,” Troo says, handing me a sorta rinsed-off plate outta the dishpan. “Brains a la King. What a kidder,” she says, not doing her hunhing but her regular old Chopstick laugh that sounds just like when she plays it on the piano. Ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha.
Just like Mother, Troo’s mood has been fabulous, too, these last couple of weeks. She had the gall to say to me yesterday when we were taking out the garbage, “Boy, I feel happy! You should try it sometime, Sal.”
My sister wants us all to believe that she’s turned over a new leaf since the Fourth of July. She’s not making me call her Leeze anymore. And when Dave and Mother discuss the wedding, which is going to take place on September 24th, Troo doesn’t look like she’s about to burst a blood vessel. She’s doing her chores before she’s asked and once this week—this was really awful—she rubbed my back when I got done rubbing hers. Even worse than this Shirley Temple mood she’s been in, my sister has this annoying smile plastered on her face all the time. Even when she’s sleeping, she’s dreaming about something that makes her look like a cat that ate a canary and two of its cousins.
Her acting so cheerful is terrible, but what’s driving me most up the wall is that no matter how much I badger her, she won’t cough up how she got her hands on Mrs. Galecki’s green necklace. I’ve tried about a hundred times to get it out of her, but each and every time she reminds me of the promise I made her at the lagoon on fireworks night not to tell a soul, especially not Dave. And then she says mysteriously, “Soon aaalll will be revealed,” sounding very much like the fortune-teller up at the State Fair.
I think my sister snuck next door and took Mrs. Galecki’s necklace, but I don’t know why she would do something like that. Since she is so light-fingered in general, it even crossed my mind that Troo could be the cat burglar. So I looked and looked, but did not find a candelabra or any other stolen loot stashed around our bedroom. That’s why I’m still 99.9 percent positive it’s Mary Lane who’s been taking stuff out of people’s houses. It’s gotta be.
Even though Troo’s not acting like it on the outside, of course she can