Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [97]
After I think some more about everything she’s been telling me, I come up with one more question. “But why didn’t the altar boys just tell their mothers or fathers or . . . or the police that Father Mickey was makin’ them steal against their will?” We’re not exactly big on that kind of thing around here, we’re supposed to fight our own battles, but this is sort of a special situation where you might want to call in the cavalry.
“The altar boys are dumb, but they’re not that stupid,” Troo says, flicking her cigarette into the grass. “They knew nobody would take their word over a priest’s.”
She’s right, of course. Even if they gave confessions signed in blood. The boys also had to know that their parents would punish them within an inch of their lives just for saying something so bad about Father. No one would believe the four of us either if we wanted to tell on him. Mary Lane is a famous no-tripper storyteller and I have a problem with flights of imagination and Troo, everybody thinks she is the next Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde, and Artie Latour, they’d say anything he heard from Charlie Fitch about Father Mickey was wrong due to him being a half-deaf mess.
Even Dave, who is the fairest person I know, wouldn’t take us seriously. He couldn’t believe us over Father Mickey even if he wanted to. It’s against his religion. If I got up off this bench and marched into the kitchen to tell him everything Troo just told me, he’d look helplessly across the table at Mother and she would say, “Get out the cod liver oil and a serving spoon,” or she might slap me across the face. That’s what she did when I told her that I hated God after Daddy died. And when Troo came home from school rubbing the back of her noggin, complaining that Sister Imelda whacked her so hard with the back of a geography book that she was still seeing the Canary Islands, Mother told her, “Take out the garbage.”
They can’t help it. The Lord thy God comes before all others and the same goes for anybody who works for Him.
Completely tuckered out from all this telling, Troo drops her head into my lap and stares up at the sky. I am feeling ashamed of myself as I pet the top of Daddy’s and my bench. When Troo disappeared outta our bed those nights, I thought at first that she was out looking for Greasy Al. Then I was positive that she was stealing. I was so sure she was up to no good. It never crossed my mind she could be up to good.
Troo asks, “You believe me?”
“Yeah.”
My sister lets out a sigh that lets me know that’s a real load off her mind.
“Mary Lane told me that Mr. Fazio is a gangster and she thinks Father owes him money for gamblin’,” I ask. “Do you think that’s true?”
My sister says, “I know it is. I didn’t understand what I was seein’ when I went through Father Mickey’s desk drawer, but in those notebooks I found . . . there was a long list of all these numbers with dollar signs and dates. They had to be bets. Uncle Paulie used to have a notebook just like that. Remember?”
I didn’t until just now. It was blue. He always had it with him before the crash. When he was a bookie and not a pin setter. So many times, I watched him slide it in and out of his back pocket where he keeps his Popsicle sticks now.
Troo says, “I . . . we can’t let Father get away with this. Not just for lyin’ to me, but the altar boys and . . . everybody in the parish. He betrayed all of us, Sal. The same way Judas did Jesus.”
I know where she’s headed and it’s not down the straight-and-narrow path. Father Mickey is who I suspected Troo was going after with a vengeance because he got Mother the annulment, but now she’s got even more reasons to balance the scales.
I bring my face down to hers and use my strictest voice. “I know what he did was bad, but you can’t go after him. He’s a priest. What if he—”
Troo cuts me off with, “I already decided.” She’s got that steely glint in her eyes. “I got me a plan.”
Those are the exact same words she used when she told Mary Lane and me last summer that she wanted to go after Bobby Brophy and we all know