But then, what about Mrs. Merchant, who used to show up on our front porch in the middle of the night when her husband busted her nose or broke her rib? And no matter how many shifts Mr. Ellis worked at the dairy, his wife shared her displeasure on payday with anyone who was within screaming distance.
I guess about the only thing I knew for sure about love and marriage was, if our aunt and uncle had fallen for each other, the girls and I wouldn’t be trying on flower girl dresses at Suzy’s Bridal Shop. Aunt Jane May would never say “I do” and move into his bungalow on Chestnut Street, not in the near future anyway. She’d stepped into her sister’s shoes to raise me and tend to her brother-in-law’s hearth and home and she’d never relinquish those commitments.
And what would happen after she said no to Uncle Walt’s proposal? Would he drop her and break her heart? If another man pulled a stunt like that, the Tree Musketeers would come up with a suitable punishment for the louse, but would that same principle apply to a member of our family? Who would the girls and I owe our allegiance to? Both of them? If so, that could turn into a mess of biblical proportions. I could almost see Solomon’s sword hanging over—
“Elizabeth Augusta Buchanan!” Judging by how hard Aunt Jane May kicked my foot under the dining room table, it wasn’t the first time. “Have you gone stone-deaf?”
I snapped to. “No, ma’am.”
“Then do what I told you to.”
I’d been a million miles away and had no idea what she was talking about. I was tempted to compliment her, the way Viv would have, but I wasn’t fast on my feet like she was. “Sorry,” I said. “Come again?”
“We’re waiting on you to fetch the pie from the kitchen,” Aunt Jane May said through clenched teeth. “The way I asked you to five minutes ago and three before that.”
I should’ve been mortified that she’d reprimanded me in front of my father and uncle, but I was grateful she’d brought me back to the here and now, and I jumped out of my chair and said, “Back in two shakes!”
I’d spent entirely too much time plying my uncle for information about the emergency meeting and imagining a dire future for Aunt Jane May, and not nearly enough time rehearsing my lines for a command performance that might take place after supper. If I didn’t play my part to Viv’s satisfaction, she might start practicing her noose-making again. Only this time, she’d have my neck in mind.
Chapter Six
Despite the unpredictability swirling around the girls and me, there were some things we could still count on.
We knew that once Doc and Uncle Walt made quick work of their cherry pie slices, as was their custom after every Sunday supper, they’d excuse themselves. They’d go out back to smoke cigars and talk brother to brother in bentwood chairs set beneath a sycamore tree because Aunt Jane May wouldn’t let them smoke in the house.
Soon as they were out of the picture, I did what I’d promised the girls I’d do before we parted ways that afternoon. After Aunt Jane May and I cleared the dishes off the dining room table, as was our custom, she filled the kitchen sink with hot water, and I got busy trying to change her mind while she washed and I dried.
“Father Casey told us at Mass this morning that he expected everyone to attend the emergency meeting and … what if one of us gets run over by a car when we’re playin’ kick the can tonight?” I said. “We’d go straight to hell for disobeying a direct order from a priest. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?”
Aunt Jane May nudged a curl off her cheek with the back of her soapy hand and said with a bemused snort, “Think you girls will ever get it through your heads that when I say no I don’t mean maybe?” She passed me a slippery china saucer. “That day ever comes, be sure to let me know, all right? I’m plannin’ on contacting Ripley’s Believe it or Not.”
About the time I was stacking the last of the dishes, Frankie and Viv must’ve smelled Doc’s and Uncle Walt’s smoke signal. Usually, when the cigar fumes floated over to their yards on Sunday nights, they’d come grab me, and we’d play a board game in the hideout until Ed Sullivan’s show came on because we really liked jugglers and Viv was trying to learn ventriloquism from Señor Wences.
But that Sunday night, the girls were standing outside the screen door to find out if I’d succeeded in obtaining Aunt Jane May’s approval to attend the town hall meeting. After I snuck my hand out from behind the dish towel and gave them the thumbs down, the plan Viv had come up with to discover what Mulrooney had up her sleeve was set in motion.
Besides striking beauty and a superior intellect, Frankie had better than twenty/twenty vision, so she always served as our lookout and scout. She jumped off the back porch and skipped toward the tire Uncle Walt had hung from a branch of the hideout tree with a thick nautical rope. Per Viv’s direction, Frankie was to act like she was having a gay old time, but what she was really doing—her ulterior motive—was keeping her eye on the Buchanan brothers. When they snubbed their cigars out, it’d mean they were about to head back to Doc’s study for their post-dinner whiskey before they left for the meeting. Frankie’s job was to let Viv and me know when they were on the move. If we heard her whippoorwill whistle, we were to drop whatever we were doing, meet her out front of the house, and run like hell.
Viv’s role was to mislead Aunt Jane May about where we’d be when she and Doc and the sheriff were at the meeting and our little actress played it to the hilt. She came bursting through the screen door, snatched a shortbread cookie out of the jar, and delivered her opening line with one of those toothy smiles of hers. “Mmm … mmm … mmm. If you don’t enter these cookies in the County Fair this year, Auntie, I swear I will.” She turned toward me then and said so smoothly, so convincingly, that for a moment I thought she’d called the plan off, “I heard the Olly Olly Oxen call on my way over here. If we don’t want ’em to start without us, we gotta get a move on. Go change your clothes, and I’ll grab Frankie.”
We couldn’t risk my family seeing us heading downtown instead of up the block, so the next part of Viv’s plan called for us to say our good nights and then conceal ourselves behind the six-foot hedge that separated the Buchanans’ property from the Maniachis’. After we heard Aunt Jane May, the sheriff, and Doc leave for the town hall, so would we.
That all went without a hitch, and we were so pleased with our efforts that instead of staying focused on the job at hand, we acted like the three eleven-year-olds we were. We were doing this little celebratory bunny hop dance we did after things went our way when Viv suddenly stopped, pointed toward the lush vegetable garden in the Maniachis’ backyard, and said, “Aww, damnit to hell and back. I forgot about Uncle Sally.”
Not factoring him into the plan was flat out negligent on Viv’s part, and Frankie and I should’ve taken him into consideration, too, because it wasn’t like he’d ambushed us. During the warm months, we could almost always find him in his backyard garden that time of night watering or pinching suckers off his tomato plants and singing an Enrico Caruso aria or an Ole Blue Eyes tune.
With his wavy dark hair and wide shoulders, Sally Maniachi bore a strong resemblance to Aunt Jane May’s favorite boxer Rocky Marciano, only he liked to eat more than fight. I’d seen folks sitting next to him at church change pews because they found his ever-present pungent aroma off-putting, but the girls and I thought that on the off chance a vampire did show up in the hideout and our crucifix didn’t do the trick, we’d run next door and his garlic breath would be our saving grace.