Whistling In the Dark

by Lesley Kagen

  Mother smiled at the sound of Sampson’s name. She knew how I felt about him and why. It used to make her sort of mad, but that night she said, “Looks like the King was watching over you tonight, Baby.”

  I didn’t tell her how I’d heard Daddy’s voice telling me to fly like the wind. Thought I’d keep that between the two of us.

  And then Nell came into the hospital room. And Eddie. And, of course, Mr. Dave. After Mother fell asleep and the old nurse told us to go, Mr. Dave took me and Troo back to our new house and ran some water for baths and put in some of that vanilla smelling Avon bubble bath. When Troo was in the tub singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” Mr. Dave had me sit out on the back porch with him. We were next to each other on the top step. Our legs were touching. He smelled just like freshly squeezed orange juice. And that made me think of Mr. Gary and his orange tree that grew in his backyard in California.

  I said, “Mary Lane told me that Father Jim and Mr. Gary are in love and ran away to California together to get married. Is that true?”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute. “Yeah . . . it is.”

  “Do you think that’s okay?”

  “Not sure. How ’bout you?”

  I thought for a bit. “I think it’s okay to be with somebody you love. Even if other people think it’s not okay.”

  Mr. Dave musta gotten something in his eyes ’cause he took out his handkerchief and took some time to wipe ’em off. “You know, you were really brave today. But the next time you need somebody to believe you, come to me.”

  “But I wasn’t brave,” I said sadly. “I was scared to death.”

  “Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, Sally.” He was stroking my braid. “Brave means you’re scared and you do it anyway. Everybody gets scared.”

  “Do you?”

  “I was scared for a long, long time,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “But I’m feeling a whole lot better now.”

  The crickets were going crazy, and next door Ethel was humming some low tune while she was doing the supper dishes. I hoped Mrs. Galecki thought it was okay about her boy being in love with Father Jim. I was pretty sure she would be. Mrs. Galecki loved her late-blooming Gary, and when you love somebody you’re supposed to love them no matter what, right? Even if they are light in their loafers or what Ethel said—a royal queen.

  “What’s gonna happen to Bobby?” I asked.

  Mr. Dave stared up to the sky for a bit and then said softly, “He’s dead, Sal. We think the fall broke Bobby’s neck.” He looked down at me with our green eyes. “Sampson took Bobby up to the top of the cage and wouldn’t let him go, like he was holding on to him for us. Mr. Lane had to shoot him with a sleeping dart so the ambulance drivers could get Bobby’s body out of there.”

  Sampson. You are magnificent!

  I didn’t feel bad for Bobby at all. He got just what he had comin’ to him. Maybe I felt a little bad for him because that would be the charitable thing to do, but then I remembered how he growled at me and how he murdered and molested Junie and Sara and what he’d done to Troo’s head and I thought, aw, the heck with being charitable.

  We sat there some more and didn’t talk. Then Mr. Dave gently put his arm around me and pulled me closer to him. That was the first time he’d ever done that and it hardly felt weird at all.

  Later, after I’d had my bath, Troo and me were spooned under the sheets that smelled sun sweet in our new bed with a wooden headboard and a white chenille spread. And across the room there was something I’d always wanted, and I wondered how Mr. Dave knew to get it for me. It was an aquarium that had a small chest of gold half buried in some shockingly pink gravel and loads of minnow-looking fish and a few called angelfish, which were my favorite. It was a lot like Dottie’s aquarium, so Mr. Dave musta gone up to the Five and Dime.

  I was rubbing Troo’s back and staring at the tank and thinking about Dottie and how sad she must be without her mother and father. And how sad they were without her and why, just why did people do some of the things they did?

  “This has really been a summer to remember, right, Sal?”

  “Right, Troo.”

  “You know, Rasmussen’s not even close to being as good as Daddy.”

  “I know.”

  “Not even close.”

  “Not even close.”

  Next door, Ethel had moved out to the screened-in porch with Ray Buck. They were listening to some of that jazzy music and every once in a while the two of them laughed and the sound of ice knocked around in their tall metal glasses.

  Troo yawned and said, “Night, Sal.”

  “Night, Troo.”

  One of these summer nights, my sister had stopped sucking her fingers, but she still had her baby doll clutched in her hand. As Troo’s sleeping breath filled the room, Annie and I watched as the fish swam back and forth through that glimmery aquarium water and over that little golden chest, not knowing at all what was inside. I dreamt that I discovered buried treasure that night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  After the newspapermen came and took our pictures and Dr. Sullivan got rid of Mary Lane’s tapeworm, which it turned out was why she was so skinny (she wanted to tell us every icky detail until Troo and me couldn’t stand it another minute), the rest of the summer days unwound just the way they had before we’d started locking our doors.

  The Vliet Street kids went back to playing red light, green light, even Fast Susie Fazio, who’d decided she wasn’t too old after all and told us a fantastic story on the O’Haras’ steps about Barb the counselor and her brother Johnny, who she’d caught up in the attic playing “hide the salami.”

  We walked over to the lagoon a couple of times so Troo could hide under the weeping willow tree and I could do a little fishing. Troo wasn’t smoking anymore. Mother had smelled it on her and told her if she ever caught her again she’d be smoking on another part of her body. Her derriere. While I fished, not far from the red rowboats, which the park said they weren’t gonna have anymore after that summer because they were just too rotted, I thought of Sara and Junie. Especially Junie and how if she was still alive she’d be me and Troo’s cousin and we didn’t have any of those and now we never would.

  Troo was still not adjusting so great to Mr. Dave even though they both loved that little dog Lizzie, which I found out had been named after me, Sally Elizabeth O’Malley. But you know what Mr. Dave did, even though Troo was giving him such a hard time? He went out to peeing Jerry Amberson’s house and got Butchy back for her. And now Butchy had the hots for Lizzy.

  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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  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?”

  “Yes,” I said, even though it wasn’t the complete truth. I had forgiven her. Mr. Dave, too. But I had one last thing to do before I could let bygones be bygones.

  “That reminds me. I got a little early birthday present for you.” Mother dug around in her skirt pocket and came out with Daddy’s Timex. “He’d want you to have it.”

  She dropped it into the palm of my hand. It looked smaller than it used to.

  “Go on, put it on,” she said. “I had it sized for you. It’ll grow with you.”

  I slid the stretchy silver band over my wrist and put it up to my ear and remembered how the sound of it had always made me feel safe when I’d rest my cheek against Daddy’s hand.

  Then Mr. Dave came back with plates full of food for both of us. He sat down on the other side of me and said, “Gosh, I’ll be darned. I seem to have forgotten my watch. Anybody know what time it is?”

  I held up my hand so he could see. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, I thought.

  And then we settled in and ate and watched everybody dancing their heads off. You should have seen Ethel and Ray Buck goin’ at it. They were really something! Better even than Justine and Tony on American Bandstand, in my opinion. Ethel brought Mrs. Galecki in her wheelchair for a little while, even though everybody was talking behind their hands about how Mr. Gary had run off with Father Jim and how they were gonna go to hell, but I could tell that didn’t bother Mrs. Galecki at all, or maybe it was the new medicine that made her smile so much.

  That night Troo was well on her way for her new fat lady job, me too, that’s how much food we ate. Nana Fazio’s spaghetti and meatballs and Mrs. O’Hara’s (who was about to become Mrs. Officer Riordan) corned beef and Mrs. Latour’s slumgoodie. Nell had even made Mother’s special tuna noodle casserole with the potato chips on top. (It was still kinda black, but a lot less black than the last time she’d made it.) Of course, Ethel brought her Mississippi blond brownies. And Mrs. Goldman brought us some beautiful tomatoes from her garden in a s
traw basket. Mrs. Kenfield came alone and empty-handed.

  While everybody was dancing the Stroll, I was having some growing pains and felt a need to stretch my legs. It was dark by then and the crickets had started up and, I knew, so had the creak creak creak of the swing. I missed hearing it even though it had always made me feel lonely. I could hear Troo’s “Chopsticks” laugh and Nana Fazio yelling something in Italian and everybody clapping along with the music as I stood in front of the Kenfields’. But when I looked up to the porch and saw him there, the bulk of him, I wondered what the devil had come over me. I turned to go back to the party, but Mr. Kenfield called out of the dark, “Come here, Sally.”

  I climbed the steps and just for a second I thought I’d take off, but then he patted the other side of the swing and so I sorta had to do it because I didn’t want to be rude. But my heart, it started knocking against my ribs like it’d been locked out in a storm. I was afraid of Mr. Kenfield. And I could not ever remember him talking to me before. He probably was going to have a big talk with me about how me and Troo were always stealing stuff from his store or maybe he would even call Mr. Dave down from the party and tell him that he thought I should be sent to Juvenile Hall.

  I sat down next to him and looked at his hands. His nails were bitten down to the half moons. “How come you aren’t at the block party, Mr. Kenfield?”

  He threw his cigarette into the bushes. “Don’t feel much like celebrating.”

  “Is it because of Dottie?”

  In the glow of his porch light I could see his face get real mad and it looked like he was about to yell something, but then he quieted down.