Whistling In the Dark (26 page)

Just like I’d never, ever forget the look on Daddy’s face on August 2, 1959.

“I’m disappointed in you, Sal,” he’d said that morning. He was angrily pulling weeds out of the little vegetable garden I had begged him to plow for me. “Instead of going to the ballpark with me today, you’re gonna stay home and work on your garden. I’m takin’ Troo instead.”

“But, Daddy,” I cried. “I’ve been looking forward to this game all week.” We were going to sit in the hot sun and eat salty peanuts and hot dogs with mustard and relish and sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretches. It was a double-header against the Cards.

“I guess you shoulda spent less time looking forward and more time weeding. By the time I get home, it better look like somebody tends this garden. Like somebody cares about it.” He wiped his hands off on his overalls and stomped off toward the house.

I yelled at his back, “But you promised.”

He stopped for a second like he’d changed his mind, but then he just kept going toward the house.

“I hate you,” I yelled to his back. “I wish I had another daddy.”

The screen door slammed behind him.

I had visited that secret so much since he died that sometimes I worried it had left my heart in tatters that would never get mended.

Granny kept telling me time heals all wounds. I didn’t know about that.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Mother always said a house was nothing but a reflection of its occupants. She was right, because Rasmussen’s house also reminded me of a chocolate-covered cherry, even better on the inside than the outside. It was clean and organized like a classroom. Only it didn’t smell like books or poster paint or rubber boots. It smelled like all those flowers Rasmussen had growing in his garden and like that puppy dog Lizzie.

While we carried our clothes boxes through Rasmussen’s front door, Nell told us that he and Eddie would move some other stuff, like our dresser and the little lamp, later on, and for tonight we could sleep over in Mrs. Galecki’s screened porch. That was something everybody knew we really loved to do, especially Troo, who liked to watch the fireflies when she fell asleep, like they were a nightlight that made her feel safe and just so. Nell said that Rasmussen told her that me and Troo could each have our own bedroom, but I told her to tell Rasmussen no thank you, because I didn’t think either one of us could fall asleep if we didn’t rub each other’s backs. But really, I was probably just being sinfully selfish because I just couldn’t wake up in the middle of the night like I did sometimes with the Creature of the Black Lagoon chasin’ me all over the place and not have Troo next to me, making that noise she made when she sucked on her fingers, her baby doll Annie looking at me with those wide-open eyes like we’d just met.

So just like that, like we had been shot through space to another planet, the next morning we were sitting at Rasmussen’s very modern yellow Formica kitchen table that I knew Troo just adored even though you would have to chain her down and drip water on her forehead for six days to get her to admit it. Troo felt happy about being Daddy’s only girl now. But Troo wasn’t so happy about Rasmussen being my father and the boss of this house. Like she might have to be second in command around here and she wasn’t going to say something nice about any of it.

For breakfast, he’d made us waffles with real maple syrup from up north that were gone in two seconds. And lots of bacon, too, done nice and crispy.

Rasmussen wasn’t sitting down with us; he was drinking a cup of percolated coffee and leaning against the sink in his policeman’s uniform. “So how does heading over to the state fair tomorrow night sound to the both of you?”

Mother must’ve told him how much Troo loved the freak show and he was trying to be nice. Troo found those freaks fascinating as all get-out. I thought they were a little on the sad side, on display like that, all boxed up, but Troo said no, they were different from everybody else and deserving of extra attention, which was unusually charitable of her.

“The fair sounds good,” I answered.

“Okay then. We’ll head over there tomorrow night and you two can get cotton candy and go on some rides and . . .” Rasmussen was clearing his throat about every five seconds, which was a sure way to tell if someone was jumpy. “Does that sound good to you, Troo?”

She looked up at him and I could practically see the mad lava coming out of her ears. “My name is Margaret.”

Rasmussen did not miss a beat. “So how does going to the fair sound to you, Margaret?”

Before Troo could go spouting off, I said quickly, “Goin’ to the fair sounds good to her, Officer Rasmussen.”

He looked right at me and showed his dimples that were a lot like mine only larger and I looked right back at him, right into his green eyes. Two peas in a pod. Suddenly it all made sense. Why he had always looked at me the way he had. He’d been missing me. That was hard for me to take in because it meant so many things at the same time.

He rinsed his coffee cup out in the sink and dried it off with a red terry-cloth towel that looked brand-new from aisle two at the Five and Dime. “You two can just call me Dave, okay?”

Troo said in a voice I had never heard her use before, a voice so cold that it gave my goose bumps goose bumps, “Shouldn’t Sally call you
Daddy
?”

It got so quiet then that all you could hear was the ticking of the kitchen clock that hung on the wall behind the stove and looked like a black cat.

Rasmussen said, “Your sister can call me Dave. I think that would be fine for now, don’t you, Sally?”

I just nodded because I was imagining how it would be to call Rasmussen Daddy. I never called Hall Daddy. I just called him Hall. And sometimes when he couldn’t hear me, a couple of other names that I would have to confess since he was going to be in jail for a long time now. I probably would never, ever do that, call Rasmussen Daddy. Maybe after a while I would call him Mr. Dave. Because Daddy was still my Sky King no matter what anybody said, and I would never, ever let bygones be bygones.

“I have to head over to the station now.” Rasmussen noticed that I was staring at the gun on his hip. I’d never seen one up close like that. “The first rule in this house, girls. You stay away from this.” He patted the holster and then plopped his police hat on top of his head. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, Troo, I mean . . . ah . . . Margaret, you don’t have to worry anymore about Greasy Al, I mean . . . Albert Molinari. I’ve taken care of that subject.” And like he’d turned a page in a book, he said real happy like, “It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you two head over to the playground? And if you could later, take Lizzie for a walk. Her leash is hanging in the back hall.”

I looked up at him and his tallness. And then I looked down at my fly-like-the-wind long legs. I looked at his green eyes again. I’m sorry to have to say this, but I thought it all felt sort of good because right then, for the first time in my life, I finally looked like somebody. So because of that, and because he was being very nice, making us waffles and crispy bacon and saying he’d take us to the fair, I said, “See you later, Mr. Dave.”

I could tell he liked that by the look on his face. “See you later, Sally.” He started to leave the bright kitchen but then said very seriously, “You keep in mind what happened to Sara and Junie. I know how you two like Sampson, but I don’t want you going over to the zoo or anywhere else in the park for a while. Not until we catch this guy. Okay?”

I said, “Okay.” But Troo didn’t.

“If you need anything when I am at work, you can call me. The number is over there next to the phone. And also Ethel will help you out.” He looked back at me real quick and watercolor pink came into his cheeks when the screen door slammed shut.

Troo was sitting with her elbows on the table, her hands underneath her chin. “So Daddy really said that? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“That it wasn’t my fault, the crash? You swear?”

“I swear.” I made the sign of the cross over my heart. “Want some Ovaltine?”

Rasmussen had pointed out where he kept the Ovaltine in the cupboard. Ethel musta told him how much me and Troo went nuts for it.

She set her face down on the yellow kitchen table and said with some wonder, “So I can quit feeling that it was all my fault that I killed Daddy?”

“Yup.” I opened the new refrigerator that was a lot larger than our old one and packed with fruit and cold cuts and Graf ’s cherry soda. Brimming up like the food could just jump out at you. I had never seen a refrigerator so full up. I reached in for the milk bottle and smelled it. “You didn’t kill Daddy. You had an accident and that is two completely different things.”

“But what about Uncle Paulie? I made his brain damaged and he doesn’t forgive me,” Troo said with a heavy heart. “That’s why he keeps saying peek-a-boo all the time.”

I didn’t know what to say because that
was
what happened to Uncle Paulie. And he always
did
say peek-a-boo, which made me realize now why Troo didn’t like him. “Well, maybe you could . . .”

Ethel yelled over from Mrs. Galecki’s backyard, “O’Malley sisters?”

Thank goodness, because I couldn’t think of one darn thing to say that would make Troo feel better about weird Uncle Paulie and his damaged brain.

“You decent?” Ethel laughed, and came through the screen door.

“Mornin’,” I said. It was so great that Ethel was now our next-door neighbor. She gave us each a hug and said she was glad to see us looking so nice and clean because as everyone knows cleanliness is next to godliness. I didn’t know where Rasmussen kept the glasses so Ethel showed me and then took three out of the cupboard. I mixed us up three servings of Ovaltine and set them down on the table. Ethel was dressed in the white housecoat that she always wore when she was on duty at Mrs. Galecki’s. She also had on a couple of the lanyards that Troo and me had made her, which was one of the many reasons I loved Ethel. She was sensitive like me to people’s feelings and she knew seeing those lanyards would make us feel better because really, we had a big, secret, shocking day yesterday, moving into Rasmussen’s and all. Ethel only knew the half of it, so while she braided my hair I told her the other half. Everything. About Daddy’s forgiving Mother and what’d happened in the car crash with Troo and how Rasmussen was my father.

When I was done, Ethel said, “My gracious, y’all have had quite the summer.”

I woulda bet my best steely boulder that Ethel had known all along that Rasmussen was my daddy because I had turned around to check her eyebrows and they hadn’t gone up at all when I’d told her that part, which was what her eyebrows always did when she was surprised. After all, Miss Ethel Jenkins from Calhoun County, Mississippi, was the smartest woman I knew, and once you saw me and Mr. Dave together you’d probably know right away that we were related, if you paid attention to the details and were looking for that sort of thing.

Ethel leaned over the table toward Troo and said, “You know, Miss Troo, you just gotta let that go with your daddy’s accident. Chil’ren, they don’t know what the heck they’s doin’ so it don’t count what they do in God’s eyes like a bad thing ’til they get much, much older and they
know
when they’s doin’ a bad thing. And I know that Mr. Rasmussen, he can’t replace your other daddy, but . . .” Ethel took a sip of her Ovaltine and it left a mustache on her lip that she licked off with her startling pink tongue. “If I know anything at all about Miss Sally, it’s that she’s very good at sharin’.”

Troo looked over at me and I nodded so she’d know what Ethel said was right. I
was
good at sharing and would be happy to share Mr. Dave with Troo equal equal. After all, Troo had shared Sky King with me. Not knowing. But she did. I think even if she had known, she would’ve. Maybe not right at first, because that was something Trooper could use some work on, but she would eventually. I think.

And since she, like me, thought Ethel was the smartest person we knew, Troo asked her the same thing she asked me earlier, which was exactly what I was hoping she’d do. “But what about Uncle Paulie? I made him into a brain-damaged person and now he just builds Popsicle stick houses and can’t be a carpenter like he was.”

“Paulie a carpenter? Wherever did you get that idea from?” Ethel said, frowning. “Your uncle Paulie weren’t no carpenter. Paulie was a bookie.”

I was the one who told Troo that Uncle Paulie was a carpenter because I could have sworn I heard Mr. Jerbak call him a carpenter before the crash, when Uncle Paulie was gonna give me a ride home back to the farm after a visit at Granny’s. We’d stopped up at Jerbak’s Beer ’n Bowl on the way because he said he had some business to attend to. When we walked into the dark room that smelled of Vitalis and beer and chocolate chip cookies, from behind the bar Mr. Jerbak hollered, “Hey, lookee who’s here. If it ain’t Paulie the carpenter. The guy who nails more broads than Jesus nailed boards.” And all the men at the bar laughed and laughed and I had three kiddie cocktails while some of the men gave Uncle Paulie their money. So maybe Ethel was mixed up.

“Do you know what that is? A bookie?” Ethel asked.

Troo and me said together, “No.”

“A bookie is somebody who takes bets for other people,” Ethel said.

Troo asked, “Bets on what?”

“Well, it really don’t matter no more, does it? But that was what your uncle Paulie were. A bookie.”

Ethel took another long drink from her sweaty lavender metal glass and then set it back down on the kitchen table. “I’ll tell you one thing, Miss Troo, something I really noticed about your uncle after that crash. I knew him pretty good before that crash because I was keepin’ company with a gentleman around that time who had a fondness for the ponies.”