Lesley Kagen: Whistling in the Dark

“You look just like her,” I said, staring at her reflection.

Troo smiled and got some of the lipstick on her teeth and said, “I know.”

I pulled out another drawer and saw a picture of Daddy laying on top of Mother’s white chiffon scarf. It was the picture from when he just got back from the Air Force and he had his uniform on and you could tell he was so happy to be home. Next to him, Mother was looking off into the distance like she hadn’t even realized he was there.

“Let’s go,” I said, because I was starting to feel worried about Mother, and maybe if we went to the front window we could see her walking over to the hospital and we could yell something out to her like get well soon!

I let Daddy’s watch slide off my wrist and set it back in the drawer. “You should wipe off that lipstick.”

“No,” Troo said, and plumped out her lips even more.

“Troo.”

“I ain’t takin’ it off.”

“Troo!” We weren’t ever supposed to say ain’t. That was something Mother told us the riffraff said.

Troo laughed and pulled on a pair of short white gloves she found in the drawer. So I walked to the living room by myself and stuck my head out the window. I could smell pink peonies mixed in with the chocolate chip cookie smell coming from the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory. Mother was small up on the corner of North Avenue. I was sure that would be the last time I’d ever see her again because look what happened to Daddy when he was in the same hospital. So I started to yell to her to please come back! But then she turned the corner and was gone. And she didn’t come home in a week or so like she said.

We were on our way to meet Mary Lane the next morning at one of our usual summer hangouts. Washington Park was 1,747 steps away from our front door and had everything a person could ever want or need. There was that lagoon that we skated on in the winter and fished in during the summer and where they’d found Junie. There was also a band shell that looked like a giant clam where we could go hear Music Under the Stars and a swimming pool that had a high dive. And best of all, on the far side of the park, there was my absolute favorite. The zoo!

We were almost to the park, right in front of Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore, when Troo bent down to tie her shoe and said out of the blue, “I’m thinkin’ about running away to France,” and didn’t say anything else.

I looked into the drugstore and wished I had a dime for a soda because even though it was still early morning, it was already so hot that my eyeballs were sweating. “France?”

I had no idea where she got this idea of France from. Probably out of a book at the Finney Library, where they were giving away these passes to the Uptown to the kid who read the most books. The librarian kept track of our names and how many books we’d read on this worm body that was called Billy the Bookworm and hung outside the boys’ bathroom. Troo’s most favorite thing was going to the movies, so she moved her name up the bookworm’s body when the librarian, Mrs. Esther Kambowski (Polish-a real break for Troo) wasn’t looking. Troo didn’t give a damn if she cheated. I didn’t feel that same way, but I almost never disagreed with her because of that promise I’d made to Daddy in the hospital. I still hadn’t told Troo what he’d said about the car crash not being her fault, because she always got so mad when I brought it up and Troo, you didn’t like to get her mad. Her mad was tall. And deep. Like a volcano, she could blow when you least expected it.

Mary Lane knew Troo was cheating on that bookworm ladder and had threatened to tell Mrs. Kambowski. Thank God it was Mary Lane because nobody woulda believed her anyway, because everybody knew that she told the biggest and fattest lies around.

One time she told us that her father’s weenie did not look like a weenie at all but more like a bratwurst. Mary Lane said she knew that because she saw her mother and father having some of the sex on the bathroom floor, probably right after they had their baths. So not only was she a huge liar, Mary Lane was a peeper, which was a person who really, really, really liked to spy on people in their houses. She liked to light fires, too. Not because she liked fires but because she was just nuts about the fire trucks that showed up after she lit the fires. She was my and Troo’s best friend. (We always called her Mary Lane because almost every family on the block had a kid named Mary so you had to find a way to tell them apart.) Mary Lane was also the skinniest person alive. I mean, you have never seen a person who was not a pagan baby living in Africa who was this skinny. Troo and me figured that’s because she had six brothers who probably ate all the food in the house when her father went to work and her mother did the wash.

And even though Troo thought Mrs. Kambowski wouldn’t believe lying Mary Lane if she really did rat her out about cheating on the Bookworm, Troo still came up with one of her famous plans. Just in case.

“We are having what is known as a rendezvous . That’s the French word for meeting up with someone,” Troo said. We’d climbed up onto different branches in our favorite zoo tree across from Sampson the gorilla’s pit and were watching Mary Lane coming down that zoo path. Her wrinkled white shorts and dirty red-checkered shirt waving off her body made her look kinda like a flagpole. “I’m just gonna push her into Sampson’s pit.” Troo wiggled to the end of the branch. “I gotta win those movie passes.”

I was pretty sure she was just talkin’ big and wouldn’t really push Mary Lane in. Pretty sure. Ever since Daddy’s car crash I couldn’t always tell what Troo would do. Sometimes I even thought my sister got a little brain damaged in that accident just like Uncle Paulie.

We hopped down from the tree and were leaning over the black iron railing just staring at Sampson, acting like we didn’t know Mary Lane had arrived even though we knew she did because she always smelled like stale potato chips.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” Mary Lane asked, coming up next to us.

Sampson. I adored Sampson. Really adored him. Daddy used to bring me and Troo to this zoo after we’d drive in from the farm to pay a Sunday afternoon visit to Granny. Daddy adored Sampson as well and would sit and watch him and laugh right along. So I’d known Sampson practically since I was born. And now I always came to Sampson when I was feelin’ out of sorts. I would imagine Daddy sitting next to me on my park bench and putting his arm around me and saying in his deep voice, “Sal, my gal, a lot of people say that the lion is the King of the Jungle. But I would have to disagree with those people.” Then Daddy’d point at the gorilla and beat his chest and his voice would come out all stuttery. “I would have to say that Sampson is the King. Just look at him. He is magnificent!” I would look back at Sampson and nod my head like I was agreeing with him, but I was secretly thinking to myself that it was my daddy who was the King. Of the sky and the land. And he was magnificent!

Troo said loudly to Mary Lane, “Sampson’s got something he wants to show you, but you gotta get closer. He’s hidin’ it behind his back. Just climb over the railing and lean over and you’ll see it perfectly clearly.”

Always ready for any kind of peeping, Mary Lane hopped right over and walked to the edge of the grass next to the pit. Troo turned and grinned at me and then climbed over the railing to join her. I didn’t think that gorillas ate people, but the fall alone woulda killed skinny Mary Lane. Break her in half like a piece of cold gum.

Sampson was watching us carefully, foot tapping. I always thought he was singing to himself “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” That was one of Ethel Jenkins’s favorite songs and she taught it to me. Ethel lived over on Fifty-second Street with Mrs. Galecki and was my and Troo’s other best friend.