Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [84]
I tell Troo, “I also gotta go over to the Goldmans’ to check on the house.” I look above the sink, where I taped Mrs. Goldman’s postcard that came all the way from the Alps. The snowy mountains look very refreshing when Troo and me are slaving over a hot sink.
On the back of the card is the sweetest note that also lifts my spirits:
Dearest Liebchen,
Hans is feeling better. Please to say hello to your sister for me.
Sincerely, your friend,
Mrs. Marta Goldman
P.S. We will be home in the middle of September.
It’s too bad that she won’t be back for the end-of-the-summer party, but I’m glad she has not been killed by an avalanche. When she gets home, Mrs. Goldman is gonna give me that five dollars for keeping my eye on her house. The first thing I’m going to do is rush up to the toy store and put that ventriloquist doll on layaway for Troo. I’m also going to take the bus to the new zoo to see Sampson on some pretty Sunday with Ethel. Mary Lane took that picture of him the way she promised she would with her Brownie camera, but it’s not taped up next to the postcard from Mrs. Goldman. I got it under my pillow, the same way Troo keeps Daddy’s sky-blue shirt under hers. Like everybody else around here, even Sampson seems thrilled with himself in that snapshot. He’s got a smile on his face and one of his long arms looped around a tire that hangs from the ceiling looking like he just came back from a night on the town.
Up to her elbows in bubbles, my sister bosses, “You’re not gonna water the garden or work on your charitable story or go over to the Goldmans’ or . . . or anything else boneheaded.” She unplunges her hands from the dishwater and gets me by the wrist. “I been plannin’ this for weeks. You, Mary Lane and Artie and me are havin’ an important powwow over at the Latours tonight.”
I say, “Okay, okay,” because Troo looks like she means Indian burn business and it’s such a relief to see her being her old ornery self. “But I gotta water the garden real quick. The corn . . . I promised Dad . . . Dave, that I would.”
“Girls?” Mother says, making a sweeping entrance into the kitchen that reminds me so much of Loretta Young on her television show. She’s wearing seamed nylons on her legs, which are making a strong recovery, and a shirtwaist dress the same color as a plum with a flipped-up collar and a wide white belt and high heels that match. She smells different, but still divine. She’s started wearing a perfume called Chanel No. 5 that also comes from France, but I think is a cut above Evening in Paris. That’s how she acts anyway when she dabs it on. She jiggles the car keys our way. “I’ll be back late. Dave should be home from his sister’s around ten.”
Soon as we hear her heels clicking on the dining room floor, Troo bends back and calls, “No hurry, Helen, dear. Take your time. Say hi to Aunt Betty for me and have oodles of fun!”
My sister telling her to have oodles of anything should’ve made an alarm bell go off in our mother’s head no matter how excited she is about shopping for her wedding, but she doesn’t miss a step.
When the front screen door slams shut and we hear the Studebacker’s engine start up, Troo wipes her hands down the front of her shorts and says, “You finish up. I’ll meet ya over at the Latours’.”
“Are we gonna play a new game?” I ask, trying to figure out what “surprise” she has in store for us tonight.
“No, we’re gonna . . .” She stops on the porch step, looks back at me very crafty and says, “Yeah. I got a new game to show ya,” and off she goes into the night, laughing. Not her airy Chopsticks tinkle or even a deep French hunh . . . hunh . . . hunh. That laugh is badder sounding than the time she stabbed Jeffie Lewis in the arm with a pencil after he called her “Clarabelle Hair