Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [98]
“You with me?” she asks.
Even though I know whatever revenge scheme she’s come up with to get back at Father Mickey doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Miami Beach, I stroke her hair and tell her the way I always do, the way a good sister should, “Always and forever.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Having our excellent friend, Mr. Gary Galecki, come all the way from California for his summer visit is a huge deal for the O’Malley sisters. That’s why Troo shoved whatever plan she’s cooking up to get back at Father Mickey onto a back burner for the time being. So we can spend some time with Mr. Gary. (Believe me, she has not forgotten her revenge. She’s just put a temporary lid on it.)
Unlike he usually does, Mrs. Galecki’s son has not come back to the neighborhood to have his usual visit with his mother during the first week of August. The two of them won’t be reading the paper and eating jam and toast and talking around the kitchen table like they always do. Instead of putting her up on a pedestal, the poor man has been spending most of his time up at the hospital. His mother is not dead, but she isn’t exactly alive either. Dave told me our old neighbor is in something called a coma, which means she’s neither here nor there, which sounds an awful lot like purgatory.
Right after Mr. Gary arrived, Troo and me wanted to rush over and welcome him home, but Mother told us we could not intrude on his grief. That we had to wait until he came to us. So when he knocked on our back door tonight and asked if the two of us were available to play cards, we jumped at the chance and followed him over here.
Outta habit, I came straight into the kitchen, but Ethel isn’t in here puttering around like she normally would be. Since today is her day off, she went to spend it at her Baptist church down in the Core to pray for her coma friend with Ray Buck. I wanted to go along this morning the way she lets me sometimes, but she pinned on her hat, picked up her handbag and said, “Not today, Miss Sally. Got me some things to take care a. Maybe next time.” She didn’t say so because she wants to spare my sensitive feelings, but the both of us know there might not be a next time. I bet she’s already looking for a new place to live and somebody else to nurse just in case things turn for the worse for Mrs. Galecki, which they will, they always seem to.
Ethel left blond brownies on the kitchen counter, and in the sink there is a coffee cup rimmed in bright pink lipstick, a new shade she was excited about trying. Seeing that cup, that souvenir of her, makes me want to go into her bedroom and put my head down on her feather pillow that always smells of fresh-cut strawberries and think of the good old days. Ethel hasn’t been herself lately. She’s been spending her time dusting and crying over Mrs. Galecki’s sickness and nothing I say to her makes any difference. Even radish sandwiches or reading her Nancy Drew doesn’t put a smile on her face.
“You better get out here. I’m dealing, Sally,” Mr. Gary calls to me from the porch.
Troo and me have gotten too big for Old Maid, but Mr. Gary loves this game and we’re his guests. Ethel would be ashamed of me if I didn’t play along. My sister and me are the only friends this poor man’s got left in the neighborhood.
The reason his name is mud around here is because when he went back to California after his visit last summer, he took our old pastor, Father Jim, with him so they could grow flowers together, not fruits, like everybody keeps saying. I really miss Father Jim. He always gave the easiest penances after confession and his fingernails weren’t shiny like Father Mickey’s are. Father Jim’s were always dirty. I used to help him pot plants in his gardening shed the Men’s Club built for him behind the rectory.