Rohn Federbush - Sally Bianco 02 - The Appropriate Way by Rohn Federbush Page A

shoulders. “That wasn’t love, Sally. It was a thing without affection. It consumed his mind and body, leaving no place for his soul to rest.”
    “You’re right.” Sally tried to calm his fierceness. Nevertheless, as she got into her second-hand car to drive home, she judged Tony to be a romantic because he grieved so much for his lost mate. Without thinking of her words effect on Art’s nerves, she said, “Black swans die within twenty-four hours of the other swan’s death. Their hearts stop.”
    “He wants to die.”
    “I never understood Jill. Once when I was talking to the boys in my study hall, she took me aside. She told me not to waste my time on them. They couldn’t afford cars.” Art didn’t respond. “And another time after Mrs. Forbes invited the Latin Club over for Christmas, Jill estimated the cost of every lamp in the place.”
    “Her first love,” Art said.
    “Money?”
    “My dad called,” Art said, once they turned north on to Route 66 heading for St. Charles. “He’s arranged for me to work at DuKane, in Customer Relations.”
    “Wow.” Sally kept her eyes on the scant rural traffic.
    “He’s not happy.”
    Rich people seldom are, Sally’s head replayed Daddy’s saying. Then she offered Art an invitation, one guaranteed to please Mother. “Could we stop off in Bloomington and say hello to my grandmother?”
    “It’s your car.”
    “She’ll love you.”
    Grandmother Kerner could be counted on to hug the poor guy and fill him full of soup, certainly enough cookies to raise his sugar level out of any depression. “Do you like oatmeal-raison or pecan ice-box cookies?”
    “Both.” Art smiled slightly.
    When they stopped for gas, Sally called her grandmother to say she was bringing a friend to taste-test cookies. “I’ve got’ta plenty in the freezer,” Grandma Kerner said. “Bring more milk if you want any.”
    Grandma’s German accent struck a chord of homesickness in Sally. She wanted to be eight years old again without a care in the world to fully enjoy her share of Grandma’s hugs and cookies. For an entire summer she stayed in Bloomington, when her mother broke her pelvis in a fall from a barn’s hayloft in Algonquin, Illinois. Loretta came too, but Loretta was put to work helping with Aunt Rosie’s brood of nine. Loretta could bake bread and iron by the age of eleven. Sally only dusted the steps up to the bedrooms every day with a damp cloth for Grandma with a pat on the behind if she missed a speck. Somehow, her grandmother convinced Sally in those four summer months that she was a lovable and wanted person, not like at home.
    Rejudging the brown, tar-shingled house of her grandmother, Sally tried to see the house from Art’s viewpoint. The grape arbor in the side yard stood ugly with its cap of dripping snow. The window boxes on the front porch were empty of flowers. Art Woods started up the front steps. “No, no,” Sally called. “Come this way.”
    As Sally opened the side door, the familiar odors of a tomato and cabbage soup reached her. The dark stairway up to the kitchen needed guidance. She held Art’s hand until they stepped into the bright kitchen. “Hello,” she called and heard a muffled reply. She went around the refrigerator to open the door to the bedrooms’ stairwell.
    “I’m on the throne,” Grandma called.
    “She’ll be right down.” Before Sally found a place in the packed refrigerator for the milk, Grandma appeared...even shorter than she recalled.
    Grandma peered up at Art, after the introduction. At four-foot eleven and shrinking, Sally thought her grandma would be impressed with Art’s six feet two inches. “I’ve got three grandchildren taller than you.” Grandma cut Art down to size. “Are you a good Catholic boy, hanging around our Sally?”
    “No, Ma’am.” Art sat down to get eye to eye. “I’m Protestant.”
    “Go to church?”
    “No, Ma’am.”
    “Sally, you take this boy in hand now.”
    Sally intended