Whistling in the Dark

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Everybody from the neighborhood was there to pay their respects. The Kenfields and the Mahlbergs and the O’Haras and the Fazios and just about anybody who belonged to Mother of Good Hope. Even Bobby and Barb the counselors from the playground came, which was very thoughtful of them. Bobby smiled at me from the pew across the aisle and Barb gave me a peppy wave like she was trying to cheer me up.

After Father Jim said mass, we all stood and sang “Holy Holy Holy,” which Mrs. Heinemann told the congregation was Sara’s favorite hymn, and just about everybody in church started bawling right along with Mrs. Heinemann. Except for Troo. She was just staring up at the ceiling and licking her lips. I couldn’t blame her. I was also feeling so worried that I got bossy with the Virgin Mary, told her she better help the cops catch the murderer and molester real soon or else the next funeral she would be watchin’ over would be mine.

When the whole sad thing wrapped up, Ethel put her sopping wet handkerchief back into her snap purse and said to me, “That was a real nice send-off.” I could tell she had something she wanted to say because she had her I’ve-got-a-secret smile on her face. Once we got outside, Ethel asked, “Did Mr. Rasmussen have a talk with you?”

“He told me all about how Hall is in a heap of trouble and how Mother is getting better and how he wants us to go live with him.”

“You’ll be okay now.” Ethel wrapped her arms around me and squeezed. “Mr. Dave is givin’ me a ride back home. Go find Nell. I think she’s got somethin’ else to tell you.” Ethel took off down the sidewalk toward the parking lot, humming “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Her flying saucer hat bobbed in the breeze and her hips were goin’ up and down like a teeter-totter. There was just such an importance to her. Like she would never die or get sick or leave anybody ever. Ethel Jenkins was the cool side of my pillow when I had a fever.

“See ya, Ethel,” I called after her. She didn’t turn around, just waved, her white-as-a-marshmallow gloved hand atop her cocoa-colored arm against the blue-plate-special sky.

Troo and me were standing on top of the hill outside the church doors that looked down into the street. People were getting into long black cars. Henry Fitzpatrick looked up at me and gave a little salute like he was already a fighter pilot. I saluted him back.

And as I watched the car pull away toward the cemetery, the little white funeral flag waving good-bye, I felt blessed to be breathing, to have my heart beating. I knew this would be a day I would never forget. Just like I’d never forget Junie’s funeral. Today another little girl would get buried in a small white coffin with pink carnations on top.

I turned to go look for Nell, but Reese Latour came up behind me and Troo, and cut me off. He started singing with his scrapple breath, “Did you ever think as a hearse goes by, that you might be the next to die? They wrap you up in a big white sheet, and bury you down about six feet deep. The worms crawl in the worms crawl out…” When Mrs. Latour heard him, she grabbed him by the ear and pulled him away and smacked him one on his back. That miserable excuse for a kid just laughed and kept singing. Troo gave Reese this little hand signal that Fast Susie had taught her, a flicking of her fingers under her chin that meant something dirty. Troo was becoming so Italian and French. More like the salad dressing aisle up at Kroger than an Irish girl. When Mother got out of the hospital, she’d put an end to that.

I spotted Nell and Eddie on the church steps. They were just finishing up talking to some girls I didn’t know. All of their hair had been sprayed into beehives with about a can of Aqua Net and did not blow around at all so I guessed they were girls from Yvonne’s School of Beauty. I watched Nell’s little feet, so small for a girl her size, sink into the wet grass on her way toward me. Would Nell be coming to live at Rasmussen’s house, too?

“I have some more good news for the O’Malley sisters,” Nell said with Eddie in tow.

“Let me guess,” Troo said. “Your bosoms have stopped growing?”

Eddie bent over and laughed like a donkey. I did too, but stopped real fast because I didn’t think it was right to laugh on the day a little girl would be set to sleep forever in the ground.

“You’re as funny as a rubber crutch, you know that, Troo?” Nell said.

After the hearse pulled away from the curb, I thought about how Rasmussen had looked when he and Mr. Fitzpatrick and two other men I didn’t know carried Sara’s little coffin down the main aisle of the church. Rasmussen looked like what Granny called world-weary. And poor Mrs. Heinemann. She walked behind the casket of her only daughter with a handkerchief up to her face, making a sound that I never hope to make.

As I watched Father Jim shushing Sara’s mother now, I imagined him in that fluffy white dress with the petticoats and those high heels that Mary Lane told us he was wearing on that peeping night up at the church. And I felt worried for him. Because the Men’s Club didn’t put on plays. I’d asked Granny and she knew because her husband Char-lie, my grampa, used to be the president of the Mother of Good Hope Men’s Club. Granny told me that the men sat around and smoked cigars and told jokes about traveling salesmen and drank lots and lots of Irish whisky and Italian wine and German beer, but there was never a mention of putting on plays. Father Jim had just made that up, about there being a play and how Mary Lane should keep it secret so she wouldn’t wreck the surprise. I didn’t tell anybody else about there not being a Men’s Club play because Father Jim had once given me a holy card of St. Patrick, who was my favorite saint, and he never gave me very long penances after confession. I really didn’t know why Father Jim got dressed up so pretty like that, but it made me glad that it was none of my beeswax.

The funeral crowd was just about gone when Mr. Gary drove up to the curb in front of the church and ran up the hill toward Father Jim. Mr. Gary said something to him and then Father Jim yelled and kinda cried, “No matter how you look at it, it’s a mortal sin, Gary. A mortal sin.”

Granny always said that funerals were hard on everybody and the word fun should not start them out.

Nell poked me in the ribs with her elbow and said, “Did you hear me, Sally?”

“What?” I was still looking at Mr. Gary, who had put his arm around Father Jim’s shoulders and was walking him back toward the rectory. Father was a little bent over at the waist and his arms were out to the side like he was walking on a circus tightrope, like if he made one false step he would tumble down to the ground and never get up again.

Nell said, “We’re gonna go see Mother.”

Eddie said in a very proud voice, “Aunt Margie arranged it. She said your mother is getting better.”

For a second I couldn’t think of one thing to say because in my heart I had already accepted that Mother was going to die, even after Rasmussen told me she wasn’t.

Troo yelled out, “Hip, hip hooray!”

“Really, Eddie?” I asked.

“Aunt Margie said your mother is gonna be okay. Not right away, but she’s not gonna die.”

Mother had been gone almost all of June and five days of July and now she was coming back to us. My breath was taken right out of my body. Mother was going to be okay. Just like Rasmussen said. I looked over at Troo. She was hopping like mad from foot to foot.

“Eddie is going to take us right over to St. Joe’s,” Nell said as we walked toward the parking lot. “I had a long visit with Mother last night and she can’t wait to see the O’Malley sisters.”

After we got in the Chevy and drove a few blocks I was surprised by how the world looked so much better than it did yesterday. The sidewalks seemed cleaner and the cars shinier and even Paul Anka on the radio sounded better than usual.

Nell flipped down that visor above the windshield and looked at me and Troo in the backseat after she checked her makeup. “And I got some more good news.”

“So your bosoms have stopped growing?” Troo said again. See how funny Troo could be? Even Nell laughed.

She turned toward us and put her hands on the seat. “Eddie and I are getting married.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Troo said in her absolutely amazed voice.

Eddie started laughing and Nell said, “We’re engaged.” She lifted her left hand up close to my face and there was a little golden Irish ring on it with hands that met in the middle. “It was Mrs. Callahan’s engagement ring. She gave it to Eddie to give to me.”

I felt like I’d just gotten off that Tilt-A-Whirl ride they had up at the state fair, my head spinning and everything looking cattywampus. I really didn’t believe one more thing could happen this summer. But it had. Now Nell was getting married.

When we turned down Fifty-ninth Street, I said, “We should stop real quick at Granny’s and tell her about Mother getting better.”

Eddie said, “Okey-dokey,” and turned down the block that took us to Granny’s, first stopping at Delancey’s Corner Store to get some Camel cigarettes for himself and Cokes all around. Nell went in with him because it seemed like she wouldn’t let go of his hand anymore, which Eddie didn’t seem to mind. I guessed Eddie decided that he liked Nell’s bosoms better than Melinda’s because he couldn’t take his eyes off her “thirty-six deelightfuls,” as he called them. Nell was proud of those bosoms, too. So the two of them had liking those bosoms in common. Just like me and Henry had our books and chocolate phosphates and airplanes in common. Mother shoulda never married Hall, because I couldn’t see one thing they had in common.

When Nell and Eddie went in to Delancey’s, Troo leaned over and said, “You just go tell Granny by yourself, okay?”

“Sure.” I knew she was feeling so happy about Mother not dying and us living at Rasmussen’s until she got home and Hall going to jail that she didn’t want to wreck all that happiness by seeing Uncle Paulie and playing peek-a-boo with him. Or by looking at those Popsicle stick houses, which could really get anybody feeling bad since before the accident Uncle Paulie had been a carpenter.

I thought right then was as good a time as ever. Maybe the best time because I had not seen Troo this happy for so long that I sorta wanted to be a shiny bow on her happiness package. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” I was getting ready to tell her what Daddy had told me. That the car crash wasn’t her fault.

Troo was looking out the window at some kids playing one two three O’Larry outside Delancey’s. “Just forget it,” she said. “I’m not listening anymore to your imagination about Rasmussen. He’s not the murderer and molester.” And then Troo turned to face me and came in real close with both hands on my cheeks, and whispered, “But I think I know who is.”