Lesley Kagen - Good Graces

I know that Dave and Mother mean well, but they can never, will never, understand what I’m feeling twenty thousand leagues deep. Only my sister does.

Troo snuck off and stuck me with the supper dishes again. By the time I get over to the playground, she’s already made her way through the line of kids waiting to take their turn at the pole, which has become the biggest challenge. Last year it was dodgeball and before that it was box hockey, but this summer, everybody has gone cuckoo for tetherball. Anyone who can runs over here straight after supper because if you’re the last one serving when they turn off the lights for the night, the counselors will congratulate you and give you a box of free Wheaties, which is the Breakfast of Champions and very popular.

My sister is squaring off against beefy Willie O’Hara. Just like us, Willie isn’t from around here originally. He moved to Vliet Street from Brooklyn, New York, with his mother the same summer we did because his father ran off with his hubba-hubba secretary. Mrs. O’Hara has relatives around here who are helping her get back on her feet. Willie used to be Troo’s boyfriend, but he’s moved on to greener pastures.

Trotting over to stand with the rest of the kids who are watching the game, I shout, “Go, Troo, go!” and wish that Debbie the counselor would quit hovering over us and do a somersault or the splits or something else really cheerful to distract Troo. My sister looks like she is about to charge at Willie and take a big bite out of him. That’s what he looks like with his bright red hair and chubby tummy. A juicy burger with ketchup.

“Why’s she got her undies in a bundle?” Mary Lane, who left the front of the line and came back to keep me company, says over my shoulder. “Molinari?”

I’m pretending that I am so interested in watching the game that I don’t hear her.

“Hey. Helen Keller.” She stabs me in the back with a bony finger. “I know ya know that Greasy Al broke out of reform school. Troo just told me.”

If only that juvenile delinquent would’ve stayed put like he was supposed to. I already started writing a letter to that school with some reform ideas of my own:

Dear Mr. Warden,

Have you ever heard of gun towers? Guard dogs? The gas chamber?

Mary Lane says, “I bet you’re havin’ a conniption.”

I am . And not just about Greasy Al escaping.

The day we got back from camp, even though I have lost almost all of my faith, I right away went up to church and lit candles. I prayed for the kind of summer days where you can stick your nose into a peony bush and breathe so deep that everything goes pink. Or spend a whole morning reading under a shady tree or making lanyard after lanyard at the playground. But here we are only three weeks into summer and there’s a convict on the loose and a cat burglar and Troo is acting like a wilder animal and Sampson is gone and Mother is sulky and we’ve got a runaway kid.

What is God thinking? Hasn’t He ever heard of good news?

Before Mary Lane can start in on how Molinari is going to make mincemeat out of Troo when he catches her, I’m gonna ask her if she heard any details about Charlie Fitch’s disappearance. She has to know more than me. She’s a peeper who lives two houses down from the Honeywells. I’d like to help out. It bothers me to see Artie looking like the Lone Ranger without his Tonto.

“You got any idea why Charlie Fitch ran off?” I ask her.

“Uh-uh.”

“Do you think Mr. and Mrs. Honeywell coulda changed their minds about takin’ him in and that was more than he could stand?” That’s still the only reason I can think of why he’d run away right before he was going to get adopted. Our Brownie troop went up to the orphanage at Christmas and brought those poor kids bars of soap and holy cards wrapped with red curly ribbon. Their eyes lit up over those crummy presents, that’s how desperate they are for someone to take them home.

Mary Lane says, “The last time I peeped on ’em the Honeywells seemed all set. They fixed up their spare room and it looked really good with pennants on the wall and two new yo-yos were sitting on the madras bedspread.” She shrugs. “I guess it’s possible they coulda found out between then and now that Fitch was bad news. Ya never know what you’re gettin’ with an orphan.” She hitches up her shorts because they’re always falling down. “There was that kid who was livin’ up there for a while before he got adopted. Teddy Jaeger? He picked his boogers and ate ’em. I know mosta them kids are nice at St. Jude’s and all that, but there could be a few bad apples just like everywhere else in the neighborhood.”

I would have to agree with her. Teddy Jaeger was a booger-eating orphan and there are a few people around here that are rotten to the core. The entire Molinari family, for instance.

Mary Lane says, “Maybe right before the Honeywells were headin’ over to St. Jude’s to bring Charlie home somebody knocked on their door and told ’em something terrible about him.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like… like he was the long-lost son of Ed Gein or something.”

“Ed who?” I ask, not recognizing the name. “What block does he live on?”

“Gein , ” Mary Lane says. “He’s not from around here. He killed a buncha women around the state capitol and took ’em home and hung ’em upside down in his living room like they were deer until all the blood drained outta them. Then he peeled off their skin and made lampshades out of it and a little suit he wore around the house and he was a grave robber, too. The cops found shriveled heads at his house and skulls on his bedpost and…”

This is one of her no-tripper stories. Next she’ll go on about how Charlie didn’t run away from the orphanage. That he was kidnapped by gypsies. Somehow she’ll work wienies into the story. I don’t know why, but a lot of Mary Lane’s stories are about gypsy kidnappings and wienies and my tummy already is not feeling so great.

I turn back to the game, put two fingers in my mouth and whistle good and loud. Dave taught me how. “You got him where you want him, Troo.” She is punching the tetherball two-fisted and springing for it when it comes whipping back. Even with all her sweat and wild hair she is a beautiful kid.

Mary Lane must be thinking the same thing that I am because she props her chin on my shoulder and says, “Too bad Molinari’s gonna rearrange her face when he shows up.”

“But… how would he get back here?” I ask. I’ve given this a lot of thought in the middle of the night. “Ya know, his polio leg.”

Mary Lane pulls out one of the bananas she’s always got in her shorts pocket and says, “Well, he for sure couldn’t walk all the way here. Green Bay is really far away. My father took me to a Packers game up there once and we had to stop three times on the way so I could go to the bathroom.”

That’s such a relief to hear. That makes me breathe a lot easier.

“But you know what could happen?” Mary Lane says, after taking a big banana bite. “A Good Samaritan could see that greaseball hunch limpin’ along the highway and offer him a ride.”

“But-”

“Go, O’Malley,” and “Ya sissy, O’Hara. Ya can’t beat a girl?” the kids watching shout.

The tetherball rope is wound around the pole close to the top and Troo’s got her victory smile on.

Needing to get Mary Lane off the subject of Greasy Al before she tells me something else I don’t want to hear, I make a whew sound and brag to her, “Looks like she’s got it in the bag. Thank God.” Her and just about everybody in the neighborhood knows what a sore loser my sister is. She hates ties, too.