Lesley Kagen - Good Graces

“Wouldn’t miss it for all the barbeque in Mississippi,” she drawls back. “Sleep tight, Miss Sally. Don’t let them bedbugs bite and if they do…”

“I’ll beat them with my shoe, Ethel. Night, you two lovebirds,” I say, wishing when I tug on the back screen door that it was me and Ray Buck lazing around that porch together, only he’d be a lot younger or I’d be a lot older. I’d be a lot browner or he’d be a lot lighter. I know it’s just a crush, Henry doesn’t have a thing to worry about, but I got to say, that man is the answer to the Who Wrote the Book of Love? question. Ray Buck makes my toes curl.

When he hears the door slam shut, Dave calls out to me, “We’re in the living room,” and that’s followed up by a baby crying, so it must be Nell and Peggy Sure paying a visit and not my aunt and uncle like I thought. That’s okay with me. Troo and me bumped into Nell last week at the Five and Dime. I think she might be getting a little better from whatever she had. She didn’t look like she was going to win any beauty pageants soon, but her teeth were brushed and she wasn’t talking to the hot pads in aisle six or singing to herself, which is a step in the right direction. (I have been making dirty phone calls to her on a regular basis so maybe that could be what’s picking up her spirits. I heard her tell Mother that she has a “secret admirer.”)

I say, “Hi, Nell,” as I push open the swinging kitchen door.

I can see through the dining room straight into the living room. There’s a baby in there all right, only it’s not Peggy Sure. This baby is chubbier with lots of dark hair and it’s not sitting in Nell’s lap, but is getting bounced on the knee of somebody I thought was gone forever. Somebody who I was sure escaped a dragnet and moved to Brooklyn to work in a pizza palace. Somebody who is Greasy Al Molinari!

Sitting next to Greasy Al on our davenport, I’m shocked to see somebody else I thought I would never see again as long as I lived. Dottie Kenfield! So that baby… that’s got to be the one she was supposed to leave in the unwed mother’s home in Chicago!

Dave says, “Come in, Sally.”

I don’t. That wouldn’t be safe. I’m sure fugitive-from-justice Greasy Al must have a gun on Dave’s back like in that Humphrey Bogart movie when he was holding that nice man against his will, but then I think that can’t be right. Mother and Dave look calm and Dottie seems content and the baby’s quit crying and… and this is something I never saw before. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Greasy Al Molinari is grinning from ear to ear!

Dave smiles and pats the seat of the red velvet wingback chair, but I don’t move from the kitchen doorway. If he’s not here to hold Dave hostage, the only other reason I can think of to explain why Molinari’s sitting in our living room is that’s he’s piping mad about the poison-pen letters Troo wrote him in reform school every Friday. He’s come to get his revenge by ratting Troo out.

I’m trying to come up with a good explanation so my sister doesn’t get in trouble when Mother tells me, “Stop acting like such a ninny. Get in here. You’re embarassing me.”

Edging closer, I don’t take my eyes off of Molinari for one step. He looks so different. His hair is cut shorter and isn’t even that greasy and he doesn’t smell like pepperoni, more like… like schnitzel ? I haven’t seen Dottie in the longest time in real life, but she looks the same as she does in her picture that is hanging in the Kenfields’ living room. The one she had taken in her mint-green senior-dance dress. She’s not wearing that, she’s got on a pair of white pedal pushers and a blue gingham blouse, but the ruby ring is still hanging around her neck on a gold chain.

What are these two doing here? Together?

Dave, who I am sure is getting mental telepathy with me the same way Troo does, says, “Sally, I’d like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Molinari and their daughter, Sophia.”

Greasy Al musta slipped something into Dave’s drink that made him say something so goofy. These two can’t be married. They don’t have a thing in common the way they’re supposed to. Greasy Al dropped out of high school to spend all his time stealing hubcaps and kids’ bikes and siphoning gas outta cars. Dottie Kenfield was the apple of her mom’s and dad’s eyes and on the honor roll at school and would help out at the Five and Dime on the weekends. The two of them being married would be like… like the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Julie Adams getting hitched!

Greasy Al hands the baby over to Dottie and stands up when I finally make it all the way into the room. “Thanks for leavin’ the Goldmans’ back door open, kid,” he says, very politely. “We’ll pay them back for the food.”

I gotta grab on to the arm of the wing chair to steady myself. Did I do that? After I promised Mrs. Goldman that I would keep such a good watch on her house? The afternoon I fell asleep… ran out… Oh, for the love of Mike.

I say to Dave, who musta found them over there when he went to fix the stove light, “I’m really, really sorry. I went to bring Mrs. Goldman a couple of Mother’s old kitty puzzles and I… I… was gonna lie down just for a minute and I guess I didn’t lock her place back up again and-” I never went back inside the house after that one time, only checked it from the sidewalk.

Dave says, “Calm down, Sally,” the same way he does in the middle of the night after one of my nightmares that a lot of the time feature a certain goombah who is sitting across from me.

Mother shoots me a look, but says to her guests like she’s been reading every issue of Good Housekeeping , “May I offer the two of you something to drink?”

Dottie, who’s patting the baby’s back, says, “I’d love a glass of ginger ale if you’ve got it, Mrs. O’Malley. I mean…”

“You can call me Helen, honey. I won’t be Mrs. Rasmussen for a few more weeks. And how about you, Alfred?”

Oh, if Troo was only here to see this and not over at Fast Susie’s! My sister’s never gonna believe me when I tell her. She’s going to roll her eyes and say something mean about my lunatic imagination.

“Ginger ale sounds good,” Greasy Al says. “Thank you.”

Dave, who is watching me rubbing and blinking my eyes, tells me, “They’ve been getting some help from Alfred’s youngest brother for the past few weeks. He’s been bringing formula and diapers and whatever else they need over to the Goldmans’ once the neighborhood settles down for the night.”

Moochie Molinari is on the smallish side and sneakier than an Indian about to raid a wagon train, so I don’t doubt for a second that he could creep around these blocks without getting spotted.

“But… but why aren’t you arrestin’ him?” I ask Dave. “He escaped from reform school! He’s wanted! He popped a guard!”

“I didn’t wanna hit Mr. Franklin,” Greasy Al says, forgetting his new manners and using his old bully voice. “I only did it ’cause I had to.”

Dottie places her hand on his knee and gives him a pat. That must be some sort of secret signal she gives her husband when she wants him to pipe down. Mother gives signals like that to Dave, too. She scratches her nose when she wants him to change subjects.

“The baby and I were alone in Chicago and she got sick with scarlet fever,” Dottie slowly explains to me. “I needed Alfred’s help.”

“But once the baby got better, why didn’t the both of you stay hidden down there?” I ask. That’s what I woulda done if I was them. “Why’d you come back?”

Dottie’s eyes go moist when she says, “I… my mom and daddy… the baby…”