Lesley Kagen: Whistling in the Dark

Mother got up off the bench and said in her sternest voice, “While I’m gone, the O’Malley sisters better mind their p’s and q’s, because when I come home, if I hear you gave anybody any trouble at all, I’ll give you a spanking that you’ll never forget.” And then she walked away like she’d just remembered what that better thing was that she had to do.

I waited until the screen door slammed behind her and then I said to Troo, “She’s probably gonna die just like Daddy, don’t you think?” I didn’t used to worry a lot, but I started up after Daddy died and now it was something that I did almost all the time. Because if you coulda seen my daddy. He was strong and brave with big hands and black hairy arms and wide shoulders. He was never even sick, my Sky King. So that just shows you what can happen when you least expect it.

Troo was holding a chubby blade of grass up to her mouth and trying to make it do that kazoo sound you can get out of it sometimes. “Nah,” she said. “She’s not gonna die. Helen’s too ornery to die.”

Troo never worried and had hardly cried when Daddy died, which I thought was a little weird. Because although Daddy loved me very, very much, so much that I’d never forget him in a million years, he loved Troo just a little bit more. That hurt my feelings for a while, but when you had a sister like Troo, well, you just had to expect these things.

Troo was also right as rain about Mother. She wasn’t ornery when Daddy was alive, but nowadays she was and I knew whose fault that was. So that night I planned to say extra prayers that Hall would forget to look both ways before he ran across North Avenue on his way to Shuster’s Shoes because that would give Mother another chance at marrying someone else who didn’t talk with his mouth full. If she came back from the hospital. Which she probably wouldn’t. Like I said, I didn’t have a lot of faith in Dr. Sullivan. His breath, and I’m sorry to have to say this, his breath alone could just about kill you.

Hall and Mother getting married was another perfect example of what could happen when you least expected it.

A month after Daddy died, we went to Milwaukee and brought flowers from the farm to put on his grave up at Holy Cross Cemetery, where Daddy was buried next to his daddy. I laid down in the grass next to him and didn’t want to leave, but Mother told me to get up and quit making a cryin’ scene or she’d make me regret I was born. Later, we had ham sandwiches and Ovaltine at Granny’s. Troo washed and I dried, Nell changed the sheets on the beds, and Mother laid a piece of shirt cardboard down on the wobbly kitchen table. She used Granny’s laundry pen to write out-For Sale. 525-6788.

When Troo asked Mother, “Why you making that sign?” Granny answered, “No life insurance.”

Mother made her mouth look like a minus sign and started looking in the mess drawer for Scotch tape. (I already knew we were just about out of money because Mother kept it in her sock drawer, and when I put her laundry away that morning I noticed that sock was pretty flat.)

Troo and me followed Mother outside and watched while she stuck the sign to the back window of our Plymouth. When the edges were all smoothed down to her liking, Mother jiggled her car keys above our heads and said, “O’Malley sisters, I’m taking you over to Shuster’s for new school shoes.” Uncle Paulie walked past us on the way to his job up at Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl, and Troo muttered under her breath, “Thank God for small favors,” which meant she was happy Uncle Paulie was leaving. Mother thought Troo was being thankful for the new shoes or she woulda said something to Troo about bad manners, even though she herself could hardly bring herself to say “Pass the mashed potatoes” to her own brother. Was that why Troo didn’t like Uncle Paulie? Because Mother didn’t?

“No matter how poor we are,” Mother said, backing into the parking space in front of Shuster’s Shoes up on North Avenue, “we still need shoes.” She winked at us. “They’re important to our souls.” Troo and me were bustin’ a gut but stopped real fast when a Mr. Hall Gustafson met us at the shoe store door and said in an overly friendly way, “And what can I do for you beautiful young ladies today?” He was smiling at Mother like a rabid dog and just about drooling when he slipped a pair of pumps on her pretty feet. She didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Mother and Hall went out that night to a movie called Vertigo that starred Jimmy Stewart. On the ride back out to the farm, Mother told us all about the movie and how Jimmy was afraid of heights and he would get an attack if he went up too high. I remember worrying that maybe Mother had caught vertigo. That’s how dizzy she sounded when she went on and on about Hall buying her popcorn and Jujubes and wasn’t he the nicest guy?

After that, Hall started coming out to the farm for supper almost every night. He’d tell us about his days as a sailor and how many shoes he sold that day, gobs of Mother’s tuna noodle casserole peeking out of his mouth. And he always burped so loud when he was done with dessert that Troo’s old dog, Butchy, growled at him like he was a thunderstorm.

“Hear ye… hear ye. I’ve got an announcement to make,” Hall said two months after their first date. Oleo was dripping off his chin.

We all quieted down, except Butchy was still growling.

“I have asked your mother to marry me,” Hall said, grinning at Mother. His teeth were the same color as the oleo.

Nell and I were struck dumber than dirt, but Troo jumped up out of her chair and asked Mother in her best disgusted voice, “You didn’t say yes, did you?”

Mother told Troo to sit back down and Hall said, “We’re getting hitched next week and then we’re all moving into the city.”

Troo and me shouted like Siamese twins, “No!” We could not leave Daddy’s fields. Nell didn’t say anything. She just looked choked up.

Going on in a bossy voice, Hall said, “I’m gonna be your new father and what I say goes. You’re movin’ into the city. I got a dependable job at Shuster’s and I already got us a place to live.” Then he drained his beer bottle and smacked it down on the kitchen table and bent down right into Troo’s face. “Don’t you know children should be seen and not heard? Quit complainin’ before I give ya something to complain about.” Then he straightened up and grinned yel lowly at Mother, like he had just been joking around. But he wasn’t.

And even though us sisters got down on our hands and knees and begged Mother that night, she didn’t call Hall up on the telephone and tell him that we didn’t want to move into the city. When she tucked Troo and me in, she told us, “Someday you’ll understand.” Her eyes started watering up and she swiped at them and said, “Damn hay fever,” and left.

I suspected that a little part of Mother wanted to move to the city, too. Daddy not being there for the harvest, that had to have been as hard on her as it had been on me. And I also suspected Mother was looking forward to living closer to Daddy’s grave and Granny and Uncle Paulie. Well, Daddy and Granny anyways.

So, on Halloween of ’57, Hall and Mother got married at the white courthouse in Waukesha. After the ceremony, Nell whispered to me, “I think Mother might be letting herself in for more trick than treat, don’t you?” The next week we moved to Vliet Street.

Out on the farm, me and Troo had mostly hung around with Jerry Amberson, who lived down at the end of our gravel road and peed on my leg once after we got done swimming in his pond in the woods. All the other kids we went to school with lived on farms just like ours that you could just about die of tiredness walking to. So if we wanted to play hide-and-seek or some other game like kick the can, where you had to have more than two kids, we were stuck with peeing Jerry Amberson, like it or not.