“Bertha? Bertha?” Ethel shrieks. She pops up and presses her ear down to her boss’s lilac blouse. I am not worried. This happens all the time. At least once a week, Ethel is sure that Mrs. G has sucked in her last breath.
While Ethel’s still down on her chest, Mrs. Galecki’s eyes fly open and she says in the meanest voice, “What’re you doing? Trying to steal my locket like everything else?”
That completely flabbergasts me. How dare she say something so cruel about the woman who gives her bubble baths and wipes the drool off her mouth and sometimes her heinie?
Before I can suggest to Mrs. Galecki that she should count her blessings, Ethel lifts her head off her chest and says back so kindly, “Locket’s safe, Miss Bertha.” My good friend stands and pulls me a few steps away. “She’s been gettin’ more and more confused the last coupla weeks. This mornin’ she went yelly about how her emerald necklace was missin’.”
I don’t understand why this is bothering her so much. Being a nurse, Ethel should know the same way I do that old ladies’ brains can really go to pot when their arteries get hard. Our other granny changed her name from Margie O’Malley to Marie Antoinette on her eighty-sixth birthday.
“Where did ya end up findin’ it?” I ask.
“Tha’s the funny thing. I looked and looked for that necklace, but it weren’t in the hatbox under the bed where it usually is or nowheres else. Bertha didn’t come right out and say so, but…” Ethel shrugs. “I think she’s believin’ I’m the cat burglar who’s been sneakin’ around.”
I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Ethel is way too big to sneak around anywhere. When she’s somewhere, you know it.
I remind her, “Once somebody’s mind takes a turn around the bend like that, not only do their memories get backed up, but they can start sayin’ strange things.” What I’m trying to tell her as politely as I can is that Mrs. Galecki’s brain has gone as stiff as her hair. “Granny Marie Antoinette used to misplace stuff all the time and then blame her husband, Louie, for stealin’ it. Her husband’s name was Alvin.”
Ethel looks at me and, for the first time ever since I have known her, she doesn’t have anything to say. Her eyes that are usually gentle brown pools look stirred up when she returns to Mrs. Galecki’s side and places her strong hands on the chair that she starts pushing carefully toward the back door of the house so her patient, who is snoozing again, doesn’t get a bumpy ride. “She was real attached to that necklace,” Ethel tells me. “Her husband gave it to her the night ’fore he went off to the war.”
I lay one of my hands on top of hers. “Don’t you worry. It’ll turn up.” I scurry over to open the screen door so Ethel can push the wheelchair past me. “I’ll help ya look the next time I’m over,” I say once she’s inside. “You know how great I am at findin’ things.”
Out of the dark hallway of the house, my beacon of light, my Land Ho! my Ethel says, “That’d be fine, Miss Sally,” but she doesn’t sound like she means it. She sounds like the wind has gone outta her sails.
Chapter Twelve
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,” Troo and me mumble by the side of our bed. I’ve been meaning to talk to her about saying something else before we turn in. That prayer does not help me keep my sunny side up at all.
Troo rolls onto the sheet and reaches for Daddy’s sky-blue work shirt that I used to keep under my pillow when we lived on Vliet Street. After we moved over to Dave’s, I knew she needed it more than me, so I slipped it under hers.
Once I’m over on to my side of the bed that’s closest to the wall, my sister leans over to give me a butterfly kiss on my cheek. That’s what Daddy always did when he tucked us in. “Night, Sal, my gal,” she says. “We’re gonna win the pennant this year.”
I flutter-kiss her back and say, “Night, Trooper. Lew Burdette has a hell of an arm,” and just like everything else Daddy said, he was right. The Braves beat the Yanks in the World Series two months after he got buried. Mr. Burdette pitched three times and won them all. That’s what I was told anyway. I bought a bag of salty peanuts and tried to listen to the games, but just couldn’t.
Troo rolls away from me and I get ready to do what I do every night. We used to take turns, but she gave up rubbing my back for Lent and didn’t start up again the way she was supposed to after the Resurrection. That’s fine. I don’t mind. She may have Daddy’s shirt in one hand and her Annie doll in the other, but I got her to soothe me. She feels like a baby blanket. Especially around her edges, which are usually satiny. But in this kind of heat that is making the O’Malley sisters feel like cookies baking away at the Feelin’ Good factory, I gotta sprinkle some of the powder I keep on the windowsill over Troo’s back. My hand won’t glide if I don’t.
Her snoring tonight is reminding me so much of the Hiawatha train that chugged down the tracks that ran behind our farm. Between that good sound and the steamy night and how tired I’ve gotten from chasing her, I can feel myself falling into dreamland face first, which is not like me at all.
When I wake up in the dark, I feel dopey and confused. That’s why I don’t right away shake Troo awake when I hear the clawing noise. I tell myself it must be left over from a nightmare. Bobby Brophy’s long fingernails made that kind of raking noise across his shorts zipper after he set me down in the lagoon grass. But once I hold my breath and listen, no matter how hard I try to convince myself, I know the sound isn’t part of a bad dream that’s going to fade away. That awful noise is in the here and now. And so is the putrid smell. Both of them are coming from right outside our bedroom window.
My heart is galloping, but I can’t move my arms or legs, and my mouth won’t make words. It feels like I’m being held down to the sheet by the rough hands of an invisible bully. It’s not until the clawing sound finally goes away, taking some of my scared away with it, that I can reach for my sister and say into her ear, “Wake up! Wake up!”
Troo answers back, thick and groggy, “What?”
I lift my nose into the air and say, “Do you smell that?” When she doesn’t say she does, I tell her louder, “Breathe in, breathe in,” and give a little jab to her ribs to wake her up even more.
Troo bats my arm away and says, “I don’t smell nothin’ ’cept for the cookies. And you. Did you wet the bed again?” She slides her hand sleepily down the sheet to check.
“No… I… there was a clawin’ sound on the screen and the smell of…” I think again and realize it wasn’t exactly the smell of pepperoni I breathed in, but close enough. Maybe it was some other kind of Italian sausage. “I’m sure it was Greasy Al tryin’ to get in here. I gotta go wake up Mother and tell her to go get Dave and his gun outta bed right away!”
I try to hop over her, but Troo wraps both of her arms around me and says, “Don’t you dare. She’ll get mad and tomorrow she’ll be worse crabby than she usually is. It was just your dumb imagination.” She pushs me off and starts her choo… choo snoring again in no time.
The longer I lie here and think about it, the more I know Troo is right. If I wake Mother up, she won’t rush upstairs to knock on Dave’s door and tell him to go after Greasy Al. Just like my sister, my mother will think it’s my imagination, she always does no matter what I tell her, but she especially won’t believe me in the middle of the night.
What I need is some kinda proof that Greasy Al was about to break in and murder Troo.
I slide on my tummy to the end of the bed, tiptoe through the kitchen and out the back door. I’m trembling so hard that I can barely keep a hold of my under-the-covers reading flashlight when I take baby steps around the corner of the house. I need to make sure. I promised to keep Troo safe.