“Sorry ’bout that livin’ in sin crack,” Mary Lane leans in and says to me in a much nicer voice. She didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, just Troo’s. Mary Lane hasn’t figured out yet that’s impossible. On both counts.
Sampson is getting very riled up. He musta heard Troo calling me names because he’s started putting on a show. Beating his chest and waving.
I wave back at him like I always do, only much slower and sadder.
Troo swats my hand down. “How many times do I gotta tell ya? He’s not . . . he’s just a stupid gorilla shooin’ away flies and . . . and don’t start up with how he’s singin’ Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
Mary Lane pushes her flat face into my sister’s beautiful one and says, “You got the heart of a jackal,” and then she shoves Troo, who shoves her back and two pokes later they are rolling around on the grass behind the bench. Mary Lane can pound the snot outta most anybody and Troo likes to fight more than ever, so I can count on these kinds of wrestling matches happening at least once a day. I normally try to break them up, but I’m too busy being a captive audience. Sampson is singing to me loud and clear.
After she gets Troo to yell “Oncle,” Mary Lane plops back down next to me and says, “I’m gonna stick around and help my dad. Ya wanna?”
I run my hand across the part of the bench where Daddy rested his strong shoulders.
I’ve been meaning to ask Mary Lane, Do you know what they’re gonna do with this beat-up bench? If they’re just gonna chuck it out, we might have a place in our garden for it, but the words get stuck in my mouth, which is the first sign that I’m gonna start choke crying and if I do that, my sister’s gonna start hunh . . . hunh . . . hunhing again, so as much as I want to spend what little time there is left with my magnificent king, I tell her, “Thanks, but no thanks. I gotta”—I point behind me to my sister—“you know.”
Troo has already brushed the grass off her knees, adjusted her beret and is making her way down the path out of the zoo. The shopping bag with the talent trophy is making her lean a little to the right.
Mary Lane cups her hands and shouts, “Bon voyage, Leeze,” making it sound like the worst kind of insult.
When my sister stops in her tracks, I’m sure she’s gonna come barreling back to tackle our best friend around her knobby knees, but what she does instead is reach into the shopping bag and pull out her talent trophy. She lifts the Golden Tomahawk high above her head and with her other hand, she slowly, slowly flips Mary Lane the bird.
Our best friend doesn’t go after her, she’s not even mad. Mary Lane laughs and says, “What a card,” because even though her and Troo throw themselves on the ground faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, they are alike in more ways than one. “Ya sure ya don’t wanna stay and help out? We’re gonna load up the rest of the animal food and what not. It’d be a good thing to put in your charitable summer story.”
I really, really want to, but my sister is getting smaller on the path by the second. “I can’t.”
“Suit yourself,” Mary Lane says, skipping off toward the cage where they used to keep the grizzly bears.
After I catch up to Troo, I have to remember to tell her that she was right about one thing at least. Sampson’s not tapping his foot and singing to me Don’t Get Around Much Anymore the way he used to. Of course he’s not, because that’s not true anymore.
I can barely stand to leave him. I get up off the bench on feet that are having a hard time feeling the ground and shuffle down the zoo path. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop myself from looking back at him one last time.
He’s at the edge of the pit, down on one knee, serenading me with Daddy’s and my most favorite song of all: It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game . . . game . . . game . . . game.
Chapter Four
Helen is such a pain . . . Helen is such a pain . . . Helen . . .” Troo’s been singsonging since we left the zoo. She’s purposely stepping on the sidewalk cracks, which you’re not supposed to do unless you want to break your mother’s back, but that’s the kind of kid she is. The two of them used to be two peas in a pod, but now my sister fights with her most of the time and calls her Helen all of the time. Poor Mother. She only knows the half of it. If she knew the whole truth about Troo’s smoking and stealing and swearing and all the other wild things she does, she would lock her in our room and throw away the key, which would be so helpful in my efforts to keep track of her that I am tempted at least once a day to tattle on her. If I didn’t know how much my sister despises squealers, I would sit Mother down and tell her that Troo is more and more every day becoming the kid the other mothers in the neighborhood don’t want their kids to play with and honestly, as much as I love her, I don’t blame them. Who wants their nice Catholic daughter playing four-square with a future gun moll?
When the O’Malley sisters were just about to leave through the back door this morning, Dave gave us each a dime and told us to buy ourselves something cold to drink because he thinks this summer might go down in the record books as the hottest ever. That goes to show how thoughtful he is no matter what my sister says about him. (Dave and me have a lot in common, which I’ve been told is one of the building blocks of any relationship.)
So on our way back home, Troo and me are gonna stop at Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore. You can buy Geritol and hot-water bottles there, but the best part is the ice cream cones with jimmies and brown cows and all the other good stuff you can get at the super-duper soda fountain.
Just like the sticker on the drugstore door says, it feels better than good to be in this “Cool as an igloo” air and not only because my T-shirt feels wallpapered to me. It’s because Henry Fitzpatrick is behind the soda counter, right where he’s supposed to be. He’s listening to WOKY, singing into a cookie cone and snapping his fingers to Mack the Knife, which is kinda funny because Henry has to stay away from sharp objects at all costs. Maybe singing about one is like taking a walk on the wild side for him because he has to lead such a sheltered life. He has a sickness. I thought for the longest time that what he had wrong with him was called homofeelya and so did everybody else in the neighborhood, which is why some of the kids nicknamed him Homo Henry. Turns out his sickness is called hemofeelya. That means Henry has to be careful. He wishes he could, but he can’t come to the playground and play Mumbly Peg with the other boys because if he cuts himself an ambulance has to come before he bleeds all over the place.
“Henry?” I say loud, because he’s really wailing into that cookie cone.
“Oh . . . hi, Sally,” he says, spinning my way. “I . . . I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Bonjour, Onree,” Troo says, not following me over to the soda fountain. She’s taking her sweet time, loitering near the front of the store where they keep the gum and L&M cigarettes.
“Bonjour, Leeze,” Henry calls courteously back to my sister, but he only has eyes for me.
His are hazel with lashes that are thick enough to paint a picture. In my book, that more than makes up for what he lacks in the blood department. Another thing that I like about him is that he isn’t rowdy like a lot of the other boys. When we went to see Old Yeller together at the Uptown, in the part where that rabid wolf bit Yeller and the boy had to take him out back and shoot him? I thought Henry might croak from a broken heart. He loves dogs and wants one of his own so bad, but his parents won’t get him one because when he pets them his eyes tear up like crazy. Even though Henry doesn’t agree with me, I think not getting a pooch works out for the best. (Under no circumstances are boys supposed to bawl. I wouldn’t want that homo rumor hitting the mill again.)
I give him my deepest dimples smile when I boost myself up onto my favorite stool that gives me the best view of the front of the store so I can keep my eye on Troo in the wide mirror that hangs behind the fountain.
“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” I say. It always makes Henry blush when I talk hepcat like that, which makes him look a little more a
live, so I try to do it as much as I can. “I’ll have my regular chocolate phosphate, please.”
“Hi there, Sally. How’s your mother feeling?” Mr. Fitzpatrick calls out to me from where he almost always is, on a stool in a window at the back of the store counting pills below the Coca-Cola clock.
He is much nicer than most of the other fathers around here who work at the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory and sing Danny Boy or That’s Amore at the top of their lungs when their beer bottles get empty out on their front steps. Henry’s mother is also a very sweet person who does crossword puzzles during Mass. I think she musta lost her faith in God, too, so we’ll have a lot to talk about when she comes to our future house for a chicken dinner and a game of Sheepshead every Sunday.
“Hi, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” I say back. “Mother is gettin’ better by the day. Thank you for askin’.”
When he notices my sister messing around up at the front of the store, Mr. Fitzpatrick calls out in a sterner, but still kind way, “Can I help you find something, Margaret?”
Troo shoves her hands into her back shorts pockets. “Oh, no, thank you, sir.” She says that real pleasantly but when she sits down at the counter, she bosses Henry, “Gimme whatever Sally’s havin’.”
“You got it,” he says. “Two cp’s comin’ up on the double!”
(I just adore it when he talks soda fountain lingo like that.)
After Henry gets done stirring the long spoon in the tall glasses and it makes that great clanking sound, he sets our phosphates down in front of us. Mine looks especially scrumptious. Because he is my boyfriend, he gave me extra squirts of chocolate.
He bends across the counter and says quietly, “Have you guys heard about Greasy Al Molinari?”
“For cryin’ out loud, Henry,” I say. “You know we have.”
Henry was there when Greasy Al jumped Troo last summer in front of the drugstore after the Fourth of July celebration. Molinari has a gimpy polio leg, but his arms are the size of a side of beef. That bully punched my sister and almost broke her nose when he was trying to steal her bike. The only reason she wasn’t beaten to a pulp is because Henry took a gun outta the cash register and waved it in Greasy Al’s pepperoni-smelling face and Mr. Fitzpatrick, who heard me screaming, came rushing outta the store and called Officer Dave Rasmussen and he had Molinari sent to reform school.
Dave’s always coming up with good ideas like that. He’s also the one who suggested that Troo and me should make a list of ideas on how to spend our vacation.
My THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER list is:
1. Never, ever take my eyes off Troo.
2. Practice not blinking.
3. Help Mother.
4. Write my charitable story.
5. Read to Mrs. Galecki on Wednesdays.
6. Visit Granny every Friday.
7. Spend as much time as I can with Henry.
8. Try not to have so many flights of imagination. Pay attention to the details!
9. Work harder to keep my sunny side up!
My sister’s THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER list is:
1. Figure out more ways to get back at Molinari.
Troo used to do that by standing in front of Molinari’s house and singing the Banana Boat song, changing the words to: Daaago . . . da . . . da . . . da . . . daaago, but since Greasy Al got shipped off to reform school she can’t do that anymore, so she came up with the next best way to torture him. She writes to him every Friday, she hasn’t missed once. Her letters always say the same thing. So she doesn’t get writer’s cramp, Troo uses carbon paper:Dear Greasy Al,
I hope you get polio again and somebody kicks the plug out of your iron lung in the middle of the night.
Fuck you for all eternity.
Troo O’Malley
My sister rips the top off a straw wrapper with her teeth and asks Henry very ho-hum, “What about that goombah?” but she can’t fool me. She may be acting cool, daddy, cool, but Molinari is the most important subject there is to her.
Henry takes a quick peek to the back of the store and says, “I heard something about him at the game last night.” Since there are no pharmacists teams, his father plays catcher on the police baseball team with a “special dispensation” like you can get up at church when you want to do something that’s not allowed by the rules. I wanted to go last night because I knew that Henry would be there, but Troo didn’t want to stare at Dave for an hour and a half so we stayed home. “Officer Rasmussen told my pops something about—”
Troo blows the straw wrapper at Henry and hits him in the forehead. “Don’t you mean Detective Rasmussen?” she says, snotty that Dave doesn’t walk around our neighborhood in a blue uniform anymore wearing badge number 343. He wears shirts open at the neck and sits behind a desk at the police station until something worse than kids ringing doorbells or a dog biting a mailman happens and it makes my sister so mad he got that promotion.
“I . . . I . . . I . . .” Henry stutters when he gets nervous.
“Say it, don’t spray it,” Troo says, wiping her arms off like he spit on her, which he mighta, just a little. His teeth don’t exactly match up in the front.
“I . . . I . . . don’t know if I should . . . I . . .”
“C’mon, Onree. Cough it up,” Troo says.
I give Henry a go-ahead nod because really, whatever he heard at the game, how bad could it be?
Henry takes a shuddering breath, the same kind he takes when he dives into the deep end of the park pool, and says, “I heard Detective Rasmussen tell Pops last night at the game that . . . that Greasy Al . . . escaped!”
“What?!” I have to grab on to the counter so I don’t fall off my stool. This is the worst news ever!
Before they shipped him off to Green Bay, Molinari told his brothers, Moochie and Tommy, that he’d get back at Troo someday for getting him sent to reform school and they made sure we heard that, too. Beady-eyed Greasy Al musta been marking on his cell calendar the days until he could come back to the neighborhood to give Troo what he thinks she deserves, but then one of her ironlung letters came and . . . and he busted out because he couldn’t wait a minute longer to get his hands around her neck.
“When?” I ask Henry, barely able.
“Like I told you . . . at . . . at . . . the game.”
“No, I don’t mean when did you . . . when did Greasy Al escape?” My hands are shaking, but Troo’s aren’t. I don’t think I have ever seen her get really scared. She is very much like Doris Day. A que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be person.
“I was sittin’ a few seats away in the bleachers so I couldn’t hear so good,” Henry says. “But I . . . I think Officer . . . I mean, Detective Rasmussen, said he got away a few days ago. They’re lookin’ for him everywhere. He . . . he hit a guard.” He turns to my sister. “Remember what . . . what happened last summer. You gotta be careful, Tr . . . Leeze.”
I press my cheek down on the chilly marble counter. I’m not sure how many miles away Green Bay is. I’m hoping it’s too far for Molinari to polio-limp walk all the way back here. Because if he did, I know the first person he would pay a murderous visit to. She’s twirling round and round on the stool next to me like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
Henry brings his head down to mine and says in a soft voice that he hopes Troo won’t hear, “You okay, Peaches ’n Cream?” His breath smells like vanilla and strawberry and chocolate all mixed together because Neapolitan is his favorite ice cream flavor and the name he called me is mine. “Maybe I shouldn’ta told ya.”
“A course you shoulda told us and a course she’s okay,” Troo says with a slap on my back. “She’s from fine pheasant stock, isn’t that right, Sal.”
I am just about to tell Henry that I don’t think I am fine and the O’Malley sisters are from what Granny calls fine peasant stock and to please hand me some ice out of the freezer to run across the back of my neck because I am not a Doris Day que sera, sera person. I am much more like Perry Como, a catch a fall
ing star and put in your pocket, save it for a rainy day person.
Mr. Fitzpatrick calls from the back of the store, “Henry? Could you come here for a minute, please?”
Henry ducks out from behind the counter, comes to my side and picks up one of my hands in his pale ones that are also trembling. “See ya later?”
That would be so nice. To do what I hoped to do this summer when I wasn’t busy minding Troo. I’d love to come back this afternoon and read together on the drugstore step or count Ramblers whizzing past because they’re our favorite car and the one we will buy when we’re married, but now it looks like I’m going to have to erase Spend as much time as I can with Henry off my THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER list and put on Keep my eyes open for Greasy Al instead.
I try never to lie to Henry, so I don’t tell him, I doubt very much if I’ll be seeing you again anytime soon because I’m going to be too busy protecting my sister every minute of every day. I don’t want him to get upset because he sometimes gets a nosebleed if he does, so I say to him the same thing I always do after one of our visits, “Thanks for the phosphate. It’s the best I ever had.”
When Troo doesn’t pay Henry a compliment the way she should, I nudge her.
“Thanks for the soda, Onree,” she says. “It wasn’t that bad.” She’s got a chocolate mustache, but I don’t lick my finger and dab it off the way a good sister should. I have had just about all I can take from Troo O’Malley this morning. (Sorry, Daddy. I know you’re watching, but enough is enough.)