“But… I went back to look for it and it was gone,” I say. Those kids in Fatima who were paid the miracle visitation by the Blessed Virgin couldn’t have felt any more awestruck than I do. “I… I thought it got destroyed by the men with the bulldozers.”
“I know you did.” Troo is puffed up. “Mary Lane and me… we went and got it. Her dad told us they were just gonna throw it out, so we carried it all the way down Lloyd Street in the middle of the night so nobody would see us and blab the surprise. Onree let us keep it behind the drugstore for a while and then last week all three of us brought it the rest of the way,” she says. “Dave told me it was okay to keep it in the garage.” When I don’t get up right away because all the amazement I am feeling seems to have settled in my heinie, she shoves me on the shoulder and says, “Whatcha waitin’ for?”
After I get up from the glider and ease down in the middle of the bench, leaving the spot empty where Daddy always sat, Troo quickly curls up on the other side of me and says, “Feelin’ better?” She reaches up to pat me on the top of my head. “I sure am.” Of course she is. There’s just about nothing in the whole world that Troo adores more next to scaring the life outta somebody and bushwacks than having a plan and making it stick. “It’s good you’re sittin’ down. I gotta tell you something really bad,” she says.
She’s finally gonna come clean about her cat-stealing. They’re always telling us at church that confession is good for the soul so I should let her get it off her chest, but I’ve got Troo in one of her once-in-a-blue-moon generous moods. “Before you do that, could you do one more really nice thing for me?”
That catches her off guard. I don’t usually ask her for favors because the chance of getting one is too slim.
Troo says, “But… I need to… fine. I’ll go out to the new zoo to see that dumb gorilla with you, but if you start cryin’ and wavin’ at him, I’m warnin’ you, I’ll… I’ll…”
I hook a chunk of her hair that’s fallen in her eyes behind her ear and say, “That’s really sweet, but that’s not what I was gonna ask you.” I have thought this through already over ten times. I let it out in a rush so Troo can’t interrupt. “I want you to climb through our bedroom window, get Mrs. Galecki’s emerald necklace out of your sock and stick it back under her bed. Nobody’d have to know that you stole it.”
“What?!” Troo flies up off the bench, flapping her arms, legs going every which way. “What… what are you talkin’ about? Who told you I stole it?”
“I… I…” Nobody did. I was just so sure, but now… the look on her face, she can’t fake that one. That’s her genuine, you-better-not-be-callin’-me-a-liar-or-I’ll-sock-you-in-the-breadbox look. “Didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Then who did?”
“That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to tell you, if you’d shut up and listen!” She is so agitated, she can barely get out, “Father Mickey. He stole the necklace.”
“Trooper,” I say, shaking my head low and slow. She’s mad at him, and trying to shift the blame onto somebody else the way she always does when she gets caught doing something bad. Father Mickey couldn’ta snuck into Mrs. Galecki’s bedroom to take the necklace because Ethel’s got eyes in back of her head. But then I remember that’s not exactly true. She isn’t watching every minute of every day. When Mrs. Galecki goes down for her long afternoon nap, Ethel leaves to do grocery shopping at the Kroger or over to the drugstore to get the medicines. During one of Father Mickey’s visits would be another good time to get those errands done.
Still flapping, Troo says, “I thought you already knew about… Mary Lane bragged that she filled you in when she ran into you up near church, didn’t she?”
I nod. Reluctantly. She’s gonna blow a gasket when she hears me admit that.
“Goddamn it all! That bigmouth Lane, she’s always trying to prove she’s better than…” My sister is pacing fast in front of the bench, punching her fist into her hand. “I was gonna tell you all about the altar boys and Father Mickey and… and the rest of it over at the Latours’ last night, but you never showed up and now-”
“Shhh, shhh, you gotta lower your voice. They’re gonna hear you.” I point to the house. The kitchen curtains are closed, but the light is on above the sink so we can see the outlines of Dave, Mother and Ethel sitting around the table. “Why don’t you…” I pat the bench.
Troo takes her time, but when she sits back down, she shoots me a hurt look that you never see much on her face anymore and takes one of her L &M’s from her shorts’ back pocket. I almost ask her for one. Cigarettes might smell like a cat box, but they seem to round the rough edges for everyone and I think I’m going to need a little smoothing.
“I bet Mary Lane didn’t tell me everything,” I say. “Start at the very beginning.”
Troo strikes a match, thinks about that for a minute and says, “The first time I went up to the rectory for my extra religious instructions, the doorbell rang and when Father Mickey went to answer it, I did, ya know, what I do.” She means she snooped like she always does in Mother’s dressing table and my notebooks and Nell’s closet and only God knows where else. “I pulled out the drawers of Father’s desk and in the top two there was only notebooks, but in the bottom one, I found Mr. Livingston’s fancy silver belt buckle.”
I gasp. “Did he… did Father catch you looking through his stuff?” The thought of him coming up on her from behind the way Bobby did last summer makes the whole backyard feel like it dived underwater. I can barely breathe.
Troo shakes her head and says, “By the time he came back from paying the paper boy, I was already back in the chair memorizing the parts of the missal he gave me to learn.”
“Didn’t you wonder what he was doin’ with Mr. Livingston’s buckle?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I figured Father found it in church or something and was goin’ to give it back, but then I heard that it’d been stolen and I… I didn’t know what to think.”
My sister has gone pale. I dab the sweat beads off her forehead with my fingertips. I don’t want to upset her more than she already is and she can get snooty if you push her, so I’m going to try and let her unravel what she’s got to tell me in her own time.
“After that first visit, Father and me never studied religion again.” Troo lets out the longest exhale. “We played hangman and tic-tac-toe and he made me cherry Kool-Aid, but mostly… we talked.”
“You talked? About what?” I ask, finding that a little hard to believe. Priests don’t usually have conversations with kids. They just tell them they’re going to hell if they aren’t good and obey their parents and stuff like that.
Troo says, “He seemed so interested in me, Sal. He wanted to know what I thought about this and that. Like the Braves. The neighborhood. We talked about everything. Even Daddy.” She takes an extra long drag off her L &M. “I told him how much I hated Dave and how mad I was at Helen and…” She probably cried, but she’d never tell me if she did. “He gave me a hug and promised that he’d make sure that Mother never got the annulment letter and… I believed him.”
The heart of the matter, that’s what this is.
Troo says, “That’s how come when Father asked me to keep my ears open around Dave and report back to him what was goin’ on in the cat burglar investigation, I told him I would.”
“Didn’t you think that was kinda weird?” I ask. I sure do. Usually when somebody asks her to do anything she tells them where to go.
“Kinda,” Troo says, puffing away. “Until he explained to me that the reason he was so interested in the burglaries was because he studies wrongdoing. He told me it’s important to know thy enemy.”