I fake-yawn and ask Louise very ho-hum, “When will you be home for supper?”
“I won’t be,” she says as she brushes one more coat of polish on the last of her nails. Usually she chooses something eye-catching, but I guess clear polish must be better for cashiers than Revlon’s Matador Cape. “Mister Gallagher and I are going out to Mama Mia’s to celebrate my first day on the job.”
Hmmm. It’s good news that she’s going to be gone all day and into the night, because it gives my sister and me lots of time to do our snooping. And usually I’d also be 100% glad that we wouldn’t be saying Grace tonight over one of her revolting “gourmet” meals, but I am not happy one iota about her going out to eat with what’s-his-name at Mama Mia’s Ristorante. The last time the Finley family ate there together, we had such a swell time. We were celebrating ten years of Louise and Daddy’s being married. She was still called Mom then, and her and him slurped spaghetti like Lady and the Tramp, and on the drive home, I laughed so hard at Daddy’s jokes that I got the hiccups and Birdie stuck her head out of the woody car window and lapped the fast air the way she loves to, and Louise sang “That’s Amore” and didn’t even mind that her hair got mussed when her husband pulled her closer.
I haven’t figured out yet how to stop memories of the good old days from squeezing my heart so hard, so the missing sadness jumps out of the shadows and bushwhacks my heart again. It travels up my throat and wants to come out of my eyes, but I’m trying with every ounce of strength I got not to break our mother’s #2 Commandment—“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”—because blubbering could tick her off enough to sentence us to Gert’s porch for the whole day, too.
So I swallow, snort back the sad, and ask her, “If you’re goin’ out, what are Robin and me supposed to eat for supper?”
“TV dinners.”
At that news, Daddy’s “little dreamboat”—another nickname he called my sister, whose brain doesn’t have an anchor, so she tends to drift off to parts unknown—shouts, “Ship . . . ship . . . hurray!” because she really adores the gummy brownie that comes in Swanson’s fried chicken dinner and she is not at all good at remembering famous sayings.
“Theresa.” Louise snaps her gold compact shut and drops it into her red pocketbook. “Missus Klement has agreed to check in on you two until I get home tonight, and if she has to call me at work to report that you and your sister left the house for any reason other than to take the garbage out or go to confession—” The ah-OO-ga horn that belongs to her new boyfriend’s Chevy blares below the bedroom window. “Do not climb over the cemetery fence or peek in people’s windows or . . . or get yourselves into any other fixes, or I’ll . . .” It must be a wave in the mirror or my eyes playing tricks on me or something, because her reflection looks sad when she says, “I’ll have to take away your Three Musketeers bars for an entire month, Robin.”
Uh-oh.
Birdie’s “all for one and one for all” bars are almost as important to her as Daddy’s Swiss Army Knife is to me, because besides being delicious “The Three Musketeers” is a nickname he used to describe him and his girls when we’d snuggle in bed or be up at Lonnigan’s Bar together or gazing at the constellation called Orion on our back porch or anyplace else Louise wasn’t.
But instead of Birdie doing her impression of a chicken about to have its head cut off after Louise threatened to take away her most important candy the way I was almost sure she would, the unpredictable kid whips her hand out of mine, jumps to her feet, and shouts at our mother at the top of her opera lungs, “You are so, so, so, so beautiful! You remind me of Ida Lupino!”
Oh, for the love of God.
Just once, once, couldn’t she remember that Louise despises Ida Lupino?!
“She meant to say that you remind her of Maureen O’Hara,” I quickly tell our mother as I wrap my hand around my sister’s bony leg, pull her down, and slap a pillow over her mouth before she can stick her other foot in it.