Lesley Kagen - Whistling in the Dark

Fast Susie said, “Naw, I don’t think it was Reese. If it was, Officer Rasmussen woulda come by and taken Reese off in handcuffs, and I been lyin’ here all morning and woulda seen him come by.”

I still thought Troo was right. It was Reese. And when Mr. Dave came home tonight from the police station, I would tell him that. He probably hadn’t thought it through all the way because of his excitement about me being his new daughter and everything.

“Troo,” I said, crossing over into the Latours’ yard, “I’ll be right back. I’m gonna go over and check on Wendy.”

“I’m goin’ over to the playground and celebrate Greasy Al going to reform school. Come over there when you’re done, Thally O’Malley.” Troo could do an imitation of Wendy that was so close I had to smile. Even though it wasn’t very nice of her, it was still a good imitation.

When I was almost to the Latours’ front door, Fast Susie called over to me, “You know what, O’Malley?” I turned back. “You’re a nice kid. A square, but a nice kid.” And then she turned her radio up so she could sing along to “Splish Splash, I Was Taking a Bath.”

That was a nice thing for Fast Susie to say. I was feeling pretty nice. Very happy that Reese would no longer be able to murder or molest anybody ever again. Especially me. And maybe up north Greasy Al would get reformed, and when he came home he would not be such a bully. And Mother hadn’t died and Mr. Dave’s house was much more wonderful than our old one. Nell and Eddie were getting married. And Ethel was going to be my next-door neighbor with visits from Mr. Gary every summer. I even felt better about Uncle Paulie being brain damaged because according to Ethel he was a real pain in the patootie before the crash.

So I felt… I didn’t know how to describe it exactly. Maybe… light? A lot lighter than I had for a long time. Like sunshine could get into me now.

Feeling that way, I made the worst mistake ever. I stopped paying attention to the details. And by the time I remembered what Daddy’d warned me about, it was too late.

After Wendy’s mother came to the door and told me she wasn’t home, I started to look for her, and then I saw her over on the swings at the playground. She was having one of her nude wanderings and was swinging so high that I could hear the chains snapping from across the street. By the time I got over there, Bobby, the playground counselor, was screaming, “Stop that, you’re gonna go over the top!”

Wendy was smiling and not listening to Bobby, but when she saw me she yelled, “Thally O’Malley, look me. Wendy bird.”

Bobby said, “What a moron,” and walked off.

Gee, what was wrong with Bobby? It wasn’t at all like him to say something so mean. Maybe he was feeling out of sorts. This kind of bad summer heat could do that to a person. I wanted to chase after him and say, “Wendy is not a moron, she’s just celebrating because Reese has been mean to her all her life and now he is going to the Big House once Mr. Dave grills him tonight.” But I didn’t say that because Bobby was not one of us. When the playground closed down next month, he would be gone back to his college and wouldn’t be coming back again until next summer. So it really wasn’t any of Bobby’s beeswax. It was Vliet Street beeswax.

“Wendy Latour, stop swinging and I’ll give you a candy bar,” I shouted.

That got her attention, because Wendy loved candy more than sticks of butter or old hot dogs on the ground. Wendy adored candy. Troo came over and watched Wendy slowing down. “She’s just the happiest girl in the world, isn’t she?” she said in a sad, admiring way.

“Everything is going to work out okay, Trooper, you’ll see,” I said.

When Wendy came to a stop, I gave her the Three Musketeers bar I had in my pocket and then watched her while she sat there enjoying it, naked on the swing.

“O’Malleys,” somebody hollered behind me. I turned to see Mary Lane making her way across the playground. She was looking unbelievably skinny. With her big black high-tops and white socks, she looked like an exclamation point! Troo and me hadn’t seen her since the Fourth, so when she came up next to me I was so happy to see her that I almost gave her a hug, but I didn’t because Mary Lane was wiry and would beat the hell out of you. The only person I’d ever seen beat Mary Lane in a fight was Troo, and that was only because Troo was fighting Irish.

“What ya been doin’?” I asked, not sniffing Mary Lane’s usual stale potato chip smell but something a lot stronger.

“Been secretly helpin’ my dad with the animal feeding because one of those goddamn flamingos bit him in the hand.” Mary Lane spat on the ground. “Goddamn it to hell, I hate those birds. They look so pretty but then when you get to know them they have the worst personalities. Kind of like somebody else around here.” She was watching Bobby turning rope for some little girls jumping double Dutch. Mary Lane despised Bobby.

I looked back at Wendy, who had stuffed the Three Musketeers, that whole bar, in her mouth, and I realized that even though she was a Mongoloid, her bosoms had begun to grow. And since she was naked I could also see that she had some hair down below, and that was a very odd thing to me. Wendy’s body was growing up without her.

I yelled over to Artie Latour, who was playing tetherball on the other end of the playground. “Artiiieee…” He didn’t hear me, of course, because of his ear that Reese had hit so hard, but then he just happened to look our way when he was changing sides and he came running.

“Time to go home to Ma, Wendy.” As Artie helped his sister off the swing, he looked over at Troo and smiled. He still had the hots for her.

Troo said, “We heard about Reese going away.”

Artie’s smile smeared across his face like the chocolate did on Wendy’s. “Yeah, that’s something, ain’t it?”

The three of us watched as he led his naked-as-a-jaybird sister toward home. Halfway across the street, Wendy got loose from Artie’s hand and ran back and grabbed me into one of her large hugs. When I could breathe again, I said to her, “So it was Reese that pushed you down the Spencers’ steps?”

Wendy let go of me, looked me right in the eye and did something I didn’t know that a Mongoloid could do, something I’d never seen her do before. Wendy Latour gave me a huge wink! And in that moment, I knew for positive that Wendy had just fallen down the Spencers’ steps during one of her wanderings. She hadn’t been pushed. She’d just told her ma that made-up story about Reese so he would get blamed. Oh, Wendy! You stinker! I looked at her closely again just to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. She smiled and took off back toward her Artie. That girl had rescued her beloved brother from the always-evil Reese. I wondered if Artie knew that. I knew that. No matter what. That was not a flight of my imagination. That wink had said it all. And Wendy’s sly smile was like the amen on the end of a prayer.

Sorta.

Because then I realized that if Reese hadn’t pushed Wendy down the Spencers’ cellar steps, then he probably wasn’t the one who’d chased me down the alley that same night or grabbed at me in the Fazios’ backyard. There couldn’t be two loonies running around, could there? Naw. Troo had been wrong. Reese Latour wasn’t the murderer and molester after all. I didn’t want to wreck her afternoon. I didn’t want to tell her she was mistaken. She already had too much else on her mind what with Mr. Dave being her new father. I’d wait to tell her when the timing was right.

After Troo and Mary Lane and me got onto the swings, Mary Lane said, “Did you hear about Father Jim and Mr. Gary Galecki?”