Lesley Kagen: Whistling in the Dark

Before I knew it, August was coming to a close. Before long Sister Imelda would be standing in front of our classroom with that ruler in her hand. So when I wasn’t messin’ around with Troo or Mary Lane or sittin’ out in the backyard with Mother reading to her out of my Secret Garden book (which I would highly recommend to anyone) or helping Mr. Dave pull weeds and water, I finished off my essay.

“How I Spent My Charitable Summer” by Sally Elizabeth O’Malley (Part 2)

There were a lot of charitable things going on this summer on Vliet Street. Mr. Dave took Troo and me to the state fair and we had the best time. The freak show was excellent this year with a woman who was 106 years old and a man that had no legs but could walk on his hands. Troo spent a lot of the night talking to the fat lady, who she learned was a really nice woman named Vera from Moline, Illinois, who said she was just born fat so she made being fat her job. Wasn’t that the best occupation? Troo asked me later over cotton candy. So I think Troo has given up on being a carhop up at The Milky Way or a ventriloquist or Sal Mineo and now wants to be a fat lady when she grows up. Mr. Dave won both of us huge matching teddy bears by knocking over milk bottles. And we went on the roller coaster and the Whip and the Tilt-A-Whirl and my favorite, the horses on the merry-go-round. Mr. Dave bought Troo and me our own box of cream puffs that they made at the state fair and only the state fair and he bought another box for Ethel and Mrs. Galecki. And, of course, we got a cream puff for Mother, who did not end up dying after all. Which was very charitable of her. And me. (Because I really, really wanted to eat Mother’s cream puff on the way home from the fair.)

Nell and Eddie are going to get married after she graduates from Yvonne’s School of Beauty, and they have a surprise package being delivered who they are going to call Elvis if it’s a boy and Peggy Sue if it’s a girl.

I think Mother and Mr. Dave are also going to get married after they have a talk with the Pope, but they are not planning on having a baby. Mother has been home from the hospital for two weeks, resting in the special room Mr. Dave set up in our house for her. It is downstairs because she is still weak and has to rest and maybe she might never walk again, Dr. Sullivan says, because her legs got too shrunk up, but I don’t believe him because he does not know how ornery Mother can be. Her room overlooks the yard that has lots of sun and flowers, especially red geraniums that Mr. Dave knew all along were Mother’s favorite. Mr. Kenfield came over to visit Mother and brought over a paper sack full of candy bars and said we had to give one to Mother every day to fatten her back up since they had gone to high school together. They also had a long talk and I think it was about Dottie.

And one more thing that I did that was charitable this summer was I wrote a letter to Hall, who murdered Fritz Jerbak’s father with a beer bottle.

DEAR HALL,

SORRY TO HEAR THAT YOU ARE IN THE SLAMMER. COULD YOU PLEASE WRITE BACK AND TELL ME WHAT YOUR WHOLE NAME IS? TROO SAYS IT’S HALLITOSIS AND BET ME A CAT’S-EYE.

THANK YOU,

SALLY O’MALLEY

Mrs. Kambowski found out that Troo cheated on the Bookworm ladder but gave her the movie passes to the Uptown Theater anyway and said, “C’est la vie.” I never did understand why. We snuck Mary Lane in through the Emergency Door. The Tingler was the scariest movie I’d ever seen, and in that part when the doctor, who was played by the very scary Vincent Price, told us that the Tingler had escaped in the movie theater, my seat started buzzing and I screamed so loud. Mary Lane didn’t scream at all because she isn’t a screaming kind of person. Troo didn’t scream either, but she pinched my arm so hard it left a mark that I think might be permanent.

And, of course, we went to the zoo and visited Sampson and it was funny that I didn’t hear him singing “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Maybe he was just feeling better about everything because the zoo had gotten him a girlfriend, whose name was Lola, and it looked like they were getting married because they had something in common. They spent a lot of time picking things off each other.

Troo and me even started going back to the playground. Barb was the boss now and she mentioned Bobby a couple of times in conversation until Troo said to her in her lava mad voice, “Let sleeping dogs die.” Barb never brought Bobby up again.

Soon the leaves would be turning and before we knew it we’d be drinking warm Ovaltine instead of cold. Ethel had taken us that morning to get new pairs of loafers up at Shuster’s and then over to Kenfield’s to the going-back-to-school aisle to get pencils and erasers and crayons. And then the three of us took some Coca-Cola over to Granny, who stuck shiny gold pennies into the crackling brown shoes and said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

After lunch, Troo and me and Barb were sitting on a playground bench, enjoying the last day of vacation. Barb asked, “You girls ready for the block party tonight?”

Troo’s tongue tip was sticking between her lips but she still said, “Yup.” She tied her knot off down on the bottom of her lanyard and held it up to inspect it. It was white and gold. We were both making new lanyards for Mother so she could attach a whistle to it and call us whenever she needed us to bring her anything, since she couldn’t walk too good with her shrunken-up legs.

“So… who you think’s gonna be Queen of the Playground?” Barb asked, in a teasing way.

“Mr. Gary?” Troo said.

Barb laughed and laughed at that until Troo said, “Sally is going to be Queen this year.” Then she flashed Barb one of her danger looks and said, “She better be anyway. Or there will be hell to pay.”

Both ends of Vliet Street were closed off with yellow blockades. And folding tables were stacked with food up and down the block. Mr. Gary had called Ethel all the way from California and told her to hire Johnny Fazio’s band the Do Wops for the block party. Mr. Gary could afford to do that because, like Ethel said, “He may be light in his loafers, gals, but he ain’t so light in his wallet.” Then she leaned down to me and whispered, “Tol’ ya that boy had some fanciful ideas.”

So that night there were Christmas lights hanging from everybody’s front porches and all of us were glad because now we could go back to the way we were before there was a murderer and molester, which was a big relief. Like when the war was over, Mr. Dave said. The night was bittersweet, he said.

The band had a little stage over on the baseball diamond and they were playing some good rock ’n’ roll by Chuck Berry called “Johnny Be Good,” which made all the girls swoon at Johnny Fazio. Mother came to watch for a while but she couldn’t dance. Mr. Dave was taking good care of her, though. He’d bought her a nice pair of pink open-toed shoes she liked so much from Jim the brownnose salesman, who was the top dog of Shuster’s Shoes now that Hall was in jail. And around Mother’s finger was that ring I’d found down in the hidey-hole. That cookie wrapper ring. Mr. Dave had given it to Mother when they were engaged and she had kept it all those years.

I sat next to her on one of the wooden benches when Mr. Dave went to get her a plate of food. “Are you happy now?” I asked her.

I didn’t think she heard me at first so I was going to ask again but then she said, “Happy? Well, for a while there I didn’t think I was going to get to see you and Troo grow up and…” She didn’t give me one of those sad looks like she used to, but there was some sadness in her voice. “You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you? Let bygones be bygones?”