Whistling in the Dark

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.