“Harder,” she says from her side of the bed. “Over to the left more, between my shoulder blades.” The pages of my notebook that I set on top of our dresser are getting flapped by the fan while I rub her back. They grab her attention. “You’re workin’ on your story already?”
“I thought I better before-”
“You’re such a brownnose.” I can’t see her face, but I know that she’s sneering. (She usually waits until the night before school starts and copies off my story.)
I say, “Maybe you could try to start a little earl-”
“Holy cow, I’m beat,” she says, pulling her back away from my fingers and punching her pillow. “You better turn in, too. Tomorrow is a big day.”
One of the biggest. When we wake up, it will be the Fourth of July.
After we do our butterfly kissing and mentioning of Lew Burdette having a hell of an arm, my sister right away starts breathing slow. She’s trying to fool me, but I can hear her fast-licking her lips the way she does when she gets nervous or excited. That can only mean one thing. Even though she’s stretched out like a cartoon cat, she’s planning on sneaking out of our bed. For a kid that prides herself on her trickiness, she’s gonna have to try harder. She didn’t even put on her nightie after our bath. She slipped on the same pair of shorts she had on all day and her sneakers are waiting for her next to the bedroom door.
I am going to bide my time by watching what’s going on in the aquarium Dave bought me until she tries to make her move. I adore the angelfish with the feathering fins that glides through the water not paying attention to the littler fish. If they had noses they would be stuck up in the air and if they had shoulders, they would wear a ritzy fox fur draped over them. They remind me of Mother. There is a pirate ship sunk on the bottom of the tank and next to the anchor is a treasure chest mostly buried in the pink gravel. That reminds me of Troo. The skeleton with the Jolly Roger hat reminds me of Nell. Same smile. I called her on the telephone after supper. I didn’t talk. I just breathed heavy so she would think that at least somebody thought she was still lush enough to make a dirty phone call to. Nell cried into the phone, “Eddie? Is that you? Please come home.”
That didn’t work out exactly the way I planned it, so that’s why I’m extra determined that I will not fail Troo. I’ve got important work to do. I’m being a lifeguard.
My sister slowly opens one of her eyes to see if I fell asleep.
“You can stop pretendin’ now,” I tell her.
She giggles and props her head up on her hand. Her hair is waving down the sides of her face like the red velvet curtain over at the Uptown Theatre. She picks up a piece of my hair and twirls it around her finger. That’s another thing she does to help her fall asleep.
I don’t ask where she was planning on running off to because she would never answer that. I ask her something else that’s really been bugging me. “Tell me how come you didn’t decorate anything this year for the Fourth contest.”
If she wants to win the blue ribbon so bad, what is she thinking? Those Kleenex flowers aren’t gonna get folded and stuck on the Schwinn all by themselves. We spent the whole afternoon at the playground-decorating party that Debbie told us about. Troo had every chance in the world to bring her bike over, but she sat next to me with our backs pressing against the school bricks and didn’t lift a finger. Mary Lane didn’t either. She never even showed up. Dollars to donuts, she skipped the party because she didn’t want to give counselor Debbie Weatherly the satisfaction of knowing that she doesn’t have eight bikes after all, not even one.
Using her mental telepathy on me, Troo asks, “You told Mary Lane about the cops knowin’ the cat burglar is a kid, right?” You’d have to have known her her whole life to tell, but she’s worried. I know my sister can really go after Mary Lane, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t one of her best friends. That’s just how those two are together. Pick. Pick. Pick. “I’m sure it’s her, aren’t you?”
I was positive, but ever since I told Mary Lane in the library lavatory that she better quit leading a life of crime and she acted like I was two Hail Marys short of a rosary, I just don’t know what to think anymore.
I say, “She told me she wasn’t the cat, but I still mostly think she is. I’m gonna remind her again at the park tomorrow to knock it off. She missed the playground party but she wouldn’t miss the picnic, right?”
Troo doesn’t say, Are ya kiddin’ me? Mary Lane wouldn’t miss all that free food if the world was coming to an end. She flips over without a word. I rub her neck between my fingers until I’m sure she really is asleep. How I can tell is by hearing her choo-choo snoring and her sucking the two middle fingers of her right hand that she quit last summer but for some reason has started up again.
I check Daddy’s Timex at ten after ten, so that means I’ve got at least seven more hours to keep watch over Troo. I’m gonna pass the time by making shadow puppets. I can do a bird and another kind of bird and a bunny, and when I get done with that, I’ll put my feet up on the wall and I’ll imagine myself walking to see Sampson at his new home. Maybe I’ll go out to the bean teepee once I’m sure that Mother and Dave have gone to bed, which won’t be long now. I heard the front door open and shut, which means that Dave is back from work, and from out in the living room I can hear muffled talking. I hope Mother doesn’t start complaining again because hearing her going after Dave is bad enough during the day, but at night, the hot words that come pouring out of her mouth make my sweaty skin go clammy. I know that her wanting Dave to buy her so many things is not the only reason she gets after him. Mother has never completely forgotten about him jilting her way back when his mother told him to. You know what they say about forgiveness? Mother and Troo are not at all divine at it. They can’t help it. It’s their 100 percent Irish blood. Same goes for Granny. She held a grudge against a boy in the old country for ten years because he made fun of the sack dress she wore to school. (She won’t tell me what she did to even the score, only that the kid was known from that day on as Toothless Tom.)
I would adore seeing Dave even if it’s just for a minute. It’s been a tough day guarding Troo and the sight of my father makes me feel better, so I scootch down to the end of the bed. When I open our bedroom door a crack, I have a straight shot into the living room, but it isn’t Dave next to Mother on the davenport. This man’s hair isn’t light, it’s dark. All of him is black, even his shoes. It’s Father Mickey! I can’t hear what they’re saying because my ears feel like Niagara Falls is rushing through them, but I’m thinking that Mrs. Kenfield told Father about Troo stealing out of the Five and Dime and now he’s come to tell Mother. But why does he have a letter in his hand? He wouldn’t write it down if he was here to tattle on Troo, he would just… oh. That letter… it’s gotta be the annulment from the Pope that Mother’s been waiting for!
Father Mickey is tilting forward, offering it to Mother, but when she’s just about got it, he snatches it away.
“Knock it off, Mick,” she says, loudly. “Get it over with.”
She must be so scared that it says:
Dear Helen,
So sorry to hear that your husband Hall Gustafson is a beer-bottle killer, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to give you an annulment at this time. Try again later.
Holiest regards,