Lesley Kagen - Whistling in the Dark

I wished we were all going up and down at the same time but we weren’t. I was in the middle and Troo was on my right and Mary Lane was on my left and we were all pumping like crazy but at different times, so I had to wait until our swings crossed to say, “What about Father Jim and Mr. Gary?”

Mary Lane said, passing by me, “They are light in the loafers together.”

“What?” Troo yelled across from me. “What did you just say?”

Mary Lane was the biggest, fattest liar. She could only go so long without tellin’ one, like she just had to do it or she would burst into flames, which probably woulda been okay with her. Next thing she’d say was that Mr. Gary kidnapped Father Jim and they were going to go make pot holders with Germans next to a big lake with slimy trout up in Rhinelander.

“Father Jim and Gary Galecki run off together to Rhine… I mean, California, to get married,” Mary Lane yelled back to Troo. “I heard Ethel tellin’ Mr. Fitzpatrick at the drugstore this morning.” Mary Lane put on an Ethel voice and waggled a finger like Ethel did. “ ‘I had my ’spi cions ’bout Mr. Gary bein’ a little too dear to his mother, if you get my understandin’. Now everybody’s gonna know. That boy is a royal queen.’ ” Mary Lane looked at me and made a funny face, like what the hell is that supposed to mean? “Father Jim left a note in the sacristy saying he was sorry but he couldn’t help himself and that he knew it was a mortal sin but he was in love and runnin’ off with Gary Galecki to California.”

Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Was that what Ethel’d meant when she said there’d been a little somethin’ somethin’ with Mr. Gary? I almost ran over to Mrs. Galecki’s to ask her, to see if Mary Lane was lying. But then Mary Lane said, “And you know what else?”

She’d stopped swinging and so did me and Troo because Mary Lane was telling us some fantastic stuff and we wanted to pay very close attention.

“What else?” Troo asked.

“Big-shot Bobby is up to something,” Mary Lane said.

Her hatred for Bobby had been going on for the last two summers. Bobby started it all one day when she was hanging upside down on the monkey bars and he said to her in a jokey kind of way, “Look at Mary Lane hangin’ around her home away from home.” And then he set a banana down on the ground and walked away scratching under his arms. Okay, I’m sorry to have to say this, but Mary Lane truly did look like a chimp with her skinny little body and long arms and spread-out nose, but Bobby shouldn’t have told her that. He musta been outta sorts that day, too.

I asked, “What do you mean Bobby is up to something?” just to be polite, because after all Mary Lane was our best friend. I was pretty sure that this was gonna be another one of her whoppers.

Mary Lane said, “I was peepin’ on him when he was in the shed yesterday and he was going through this Kroger bag.”

“So?” Troo said.

“He was touchin’ himself.”

My head whipped toward Mary Lane. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Like Reese Latour is always doin’.” Mary Lane put her hand down to the front of her shorts.

Troo was leaning way back in the swing, her hair almost draggin’ on the ground. “What was in the bag?” I could tell Troo didn’t believe her and was just humoring her.

Across the playground, Bobby must’ve felt me staring at him because he looked over at me.

Mary Lane said, “He was takin’ stuff out of the bag and puttin’ it on the wooden table in there and lookin’ at it like it was something special.”

“What was in the bag?” I asked her again.

Bobby had set the jump rope down and was walking toward us.

“You know the shed window is kinda dirty so it was hard to see real clear, but I’m sure there was a shoe.”

“What kind of shoe?” I was getting a very bad feeling.

“A tennis shoe.”

I shot out of that swing and knelt down in front of Mary Lane and said, “No kiddin’. You sure about that?”

She nodded. “Now shut your trap about it, he’s comin’ this way.”

I shoulda run over to Mr. Dave’s house right then and called him on his telephone at the police station and told him I knew who the murderer and molester was. But then again, I’d just about had it with everybody telling me that I had to get my imagination under control and maybe so did Mary Lane. Everybody calling her liar liar pants on fire. But I had to also face facts that Mary Lane could be telling one of her whopper weenie lies. There was just no way of knowing for sure.

I got back into my swing to think it through. Bobby’d stopped walking toward us and was getting a drink at the bubbler. I felt guilty about suspecting him. He was a good egg even if he was a little out of sorts today. He was usually such a terrific friend to all of us and always dressed clean and nice. Mary Lane had to be making it up.

“Are you really, really sure about this?” I asked her again. I’d started to doubt her even more because she had just told us that story about Father Jim and Mr. Gary, and that was such an out-and-out lie. Father Jim and Gary Galecki? Light in their loafers? But then I remembered Father Jim’s fluffy white dress with the petticoats and high heels. And Mr. Gary’s smooth skin and high voice. According to Willie O’Hara, that was how you could tell if someone was light in their loafers. Because his mother knew a lot of loafer-light people who seemed to be on the artistic side. Smooth skin, high voice, and then Willie made his wrist floppy and said, “And that’s what they do with their hands. And oh yeah, they really like flowers.” Flowers? Mr. Gary love flowers. So did Father Jim! He’d planted over ten purple snowball bushes in the rectory backyard. Oh boy. I had to talk to Ethel.

“You’re not making this one up, are you, about Bobby?” I asked Mary Lane again, keeping my eye on Bobby, who was up on the balls of his feet, bouncing along toward us with his electric energy.

“No,” she said. “And I didn’t make that up about Father Jim and Gary Galecki either. Go over to Ethel’s and see.”

So maybe Mary Lane was lying, and maybe she wasn’t. Bobby was about a hundred feet away and taking giant steps toward us.

It was just too hard to believe that Bobby with hair that went in tight curls on his head like a soprano choirboy would have a Kroger bag with Sara Heinemann’s tennis shoe in it. Nobody would believe us. I wouldn’t. And for sure Mr. Dave wouldn’t. And I really wanted to get off on the right foot with him and not get him sad that he let Troo and me move in with him, or maybe he would change his mind and then what would we do? Mother would be so mad.

“What’s buzzin’, cuzzin? Anybody up for a game of tetherball?” Bobby asked when he got to us. “Or maybe you wanna head over to the monkey bars?” He smirked at Mary Lane.

Troo said, “Ah… thanks. But we were just talkin’ about headin’ over to the zoo.”

Bobby was so handsome. So ooh la la , Troo said. He looked at the three of us one at a time in a strange kind of way, and then said, “Maybe when you get back?”

“That sounds great,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, backing up, “catch you later.”

“Boy, I hate him,” Mary Lane said once he was out of earshot. “He reminds me of a boa constrictor, all cold and slithery. Did you know that over in Africa boas grow so big that one of those things can swallow a child whole?”

I sighed and started doubting her all over again, about what she’d said about Bobby and Mr. Gary and Father Jim. “That’s not true.”

“Is too.”

“Is not.”

The three of us got up off the swings and started walking toward the end of the playground through the waves of shimmery heat that were like in that French Foreign Legion movie we saw over at the Uptown.