Troo looped the string around her fingers into a cat’s cradle and said like she had a bad taste in her mouth, “Is it like the Creature from the Black Lagoon?”
“Cut it out.” I counted on Troo to believe me. But I swear, it seemed sometimes that I loved her a lot more than she loved me. I didn’t bring up what Mother said to her about working on her charitable works and I could’ve. Maybe I should’ve. I darn well wanted to.
Troo breathed in deeply just like Mother did, like it was the last bit of air that was left on the planet Earth and she wanted it all for herself. “You know how Wendy wanders off sometimes and they find her at the zoo or down at the creek and that one time over on North Avenue at the record store dancing around?”
She was using her explaining voice, which wasn’t one of my favorites.
“Well, that’s all that happened,” Troo said. “Wendy wandered off and maybe fell down and hit her head or something in the Spencers’ root cellar.”
I nodded, not because I was going along with this idea but because I didn’t want to get in a fight with her.
“Remember that time Wendy came to our house and ate that stick of butter out of the refrigerator when Mother was in the bathtub?” Troo threw her head back and giggled.
I started to cry.
“Awww . . . c’mon.” Troo swatted me on the arm. “Wendy’s gonna be fine. Don’t be so dang sensitive.”
That’s what Mother always said. That I was too dang sensitive, and that and a dime could buy me a cup of coffee, which was too bad for me since I couldn’t stand coffee.
Troo held the cat’s cradle up to my face. It was just this white string she got off a bakery box, but by holding it around your fingers and moving it around it turned into something completely new and beautiful.
I pinched two of the string’s edges and brought them into the middle.
“You’ll see,” Troo said. “Wendy’ll be back home lickety split, runnin’ around without her clothes on again.”
Wendy did that. Forgot to put her clothes on sometimes and then got out of the house when Mrs. Latour was looking after the other twelve kids, and there Wendy’d be on the playground swings sportin’ her birthday suit. So one of us would take her home and Mrs. Latour would shake her head at her daughter and Wendy would say, “Thorry, Mama.” And then she’d give her mama a big hug and not let go because Wendy
loved
to hug anything, but especially her mama, and for some reason . . . me, Thally O’Malley.
Troo took her turn on the cat’s cradle, lifting it off my fingers into a diamond shape.
No matter what Troo said, I knew that Rasmussen had somehow hurt Wendy. There was just something about him that seemed so suspicious. Like how he was extra polite to everybody, not like any of the other fathers or brothers that lived in the neighborhood except for Mr. Fitzpatrick, who owned Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore, who was also a very polite man. Seemed like all the other men on the block were always mad about something until they had a couple of beers in them, and then some of them got madder and some of them got nicer and would start singing “Danny Boy” or “Be Bop A Lula” and try to put their hands all over their wives’ heinies.
So maybe last night Rasmussen got mad because I had hidden from him under the Kenfields’ bushes and he ran back down the alley and saw Wendy during one of her wanderings and pushed her down the Spencers’ cellar stairs and maybe even tried to murder and molest her. It would be all my fault if sweet and silly Wendy Latour never wanted to give anybody a hug again.
CHAPTER NINE
The next morning over our Breakfast of Champions, I tried again with Troo. “I’m telling you, Rasmussen was on a murderous rampage and when he couldn’t murder me he tried to murder Wendy instead.” The milk had gone clumpy so we ate the Wheaties dry. And the house, even Nell’s room, smelled like something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something like you’d smell over at the zoo.
Troo was trying to make her spoon stick to her nose the way Willie O’Hara could. “You know, you’re beginning to remind me more and more of Virginia Cunningham in that
Snake Pit
movie.”
That was so cruddy of Troo. She knew I worried sometimes that that was how I would end up because of my imagination. Looney people imagine things. Virginia Cunningham had and that’s why they put her out in that mental hospital and the guys in the white coats made her take hot baths all day long even though she was plenty clean. Just for a second, I wanted to haul back and smack Troo just like Hall had. Knock that spoon right off her pretty little nose.
What a completely awful person I was to think such a thing. Thank goodness she beat me to it. She threw the spoon down and said, “C’mon, I wanna play tetherball. Last one there’s a rotten egg.”
The Vliet Street School was right across from our house. It was where the kids in the neighborhood that weren’t Catholic went. But during the summer the city had this program on the playground that any kid could go to, no matter what country they’d originally come from or what religion they were.
There were swings and monkey bars and baseball diamonds. Four squares and hopscotches were painted right onto the asphalt in yellow paint. And you could play running games all day long, like red rover or dodgeball. Or standing games, like Captain May I and tetherball. And when you got worn out in the afternoon, you could sit down for a while on a green bench with a checkerboard painted right on it and watch everybody else get sweaty.
And there were these playground counselors that showed up year after year named Bobby Brophy and Barb Kircher who were not from Vliet Street. Bobby was the boss of the playground and Barb was his helper. Bobby was going to college to become a gym teacher so he loved to play tetherball and four square with us. Barb was going to college to be a cheerleader and meet somebody like Bobby, she said. Barb was extremely spunky. She was also the expert on lanyard making and had shown all us kids how to braid this long plastic stuff into a kind of necklace that you could attach keys to or anything you wanted, and wear it with any
ensemble
, which was what Troo had started calling her clothes. Troo and me had about fifty of these lanyards, that’s how much we loved them. The luscious colors and especially the clean smell and how they felt. Slippery and cool to the touch. We could hardly stand it when Bobby would go into the shed behind the school that only the counselors were allowed in and after what seemed like a day or so he would come out with these colored plastics behind his back, telling us to choose one of his hands and not giving them to us until we had. That Bobby was a real card.
At the end of August, a King and Queen of the Playground would be crowned at a big summer block party with soda and food and music. Last summer, even though we’d only lived on Vliet Street for less than a year, Troo got to be the Queen. That’s how outgoing she was. I was so jealous I didn’t talk to her for a full week. (Sorry, Daddy.) I have a plan to be more outgoing this summer so I might be able to be the Queen as well.
Of course, I beat Troo over to the playground with my fly-like-the-wind speed and, of course, she never said anything about being a rotten egg.
I was already swaying on one of the swings when Troo came up and said, “I spy with my little eye . . .” She pointed over at the monkey bars.
Wendy Latour was laying flat on top of the bars, licking on a cherry Popsicle, a big gauze bandage half falling off her forehead.
“Big deal,” I said. “Just because she’s not dead doesn’t mean that Rasmussen didn’t
try
to murder her.”
“Well, haven’t seen the two of you in a while,” Bobby the counselor said, appearing out of nowhere. He bounced one of those red rubber playground balls my way. “Fast Susie and Mary Lane have been lookin’ for you. They wanna play four square.”
Bobby Brophy was easy to look at, with his sandy crew-cut hair and blue eyes and a smile that showed teeth that were whiter than typing paper in his toast-colored face.
“Did you hear what happened to Wendy Latour?” I asked him. “Somebody pushed her down the Spencers’ cellar stairs and she had to go to the hospital in an ambulance.”
Troo snorted through her nose at me. “She
fell
down the Spencers’ cellar stairs.”
Bobby turned to look over at the monkey bars. “Like she doesn’t have enough problems already.”
I hadn’t noticed her at first, probably because she was so darn skinny, but there was Mary Lane hanging right below Wendy. When she saw me, she jumped down and skipped over to Fast Susie, who was over near the bubbler waving her arms around at some older boy I didn’t know. Mary Lane said something to Fast Susie and pointed at me and Troo.
“How about a game later, Sally?” Bobby asked.
He’d recently begun to teach me how to play chess, which was not at all like checkers even though it looked like it might be. I loved it when we played. How he’d bounce his legs up and down and rub his hands together like they were cold and he’d think so hard, like capturing my queen was so important that his forehead got papery lines in it.
I said, “Chess sounds great.”
“It’s a date.” Bobby laughed, because he laughed almost all the time, that’s how cheerful and full of energy he was, and then he walked off toward the baseball diamond where some kids were screaming at him to come over because it looked like they needed a pitcher. What a good egg Bobby was! So different from the other boys his age in the neighborhood. When I was grown up enough to go out on a real date, I was planning to take the bus over to the east side of town where Bobby was from. These west side boys, they could be trouble.
Mary Lane came up and knocked the red rubber ball out of my hand. “What was jerky Bobby talking to you about?”
Fast Susie was standing next to Mary Lane with her hands on her hips. Staring at Bobby’s back, which was very long since he was pretty tall, Fast Susie whistled,
whoot woo
, and said, “I wouldn’t throw that cat outta bed.”
“When did you get a cat?” I asked.
Fast Susie looked back at me and shook her head and said, “Boy, you are such a square, O’Malley,” and then she pulled me toward the yellow box. “Get it?” she said. “Square.” She pointed down at the box. “Square.” She pointed at me. “Get it?”
Fast Susie was always making fun of me like that because I didn’t get half of her jokes. Troo said that was because Fast Susie was
très chic
and I was not at all
très chic
. I would have to agree with her because I didn’t feel at all
très chic
, and I thought I would know if I did. I wondered where the heck Troo was coming up with all these new words. She was starting to sound an awful lot like a French librarian.
Fast Susie got into the server’s box. “Did you hear that Sara Heinemann’s mother sent her over to Delancey’s for some milk, and guess what?” She smacked the red ball right at me, her long black hair going every which way, the sun sliding off it like a newly waxed car.
“What?” I asked, and smacked it right back at her.
“Sara disappeared into thin air. Poof!” Fast Susie caught the ball and threw it up high and waited for it to come down before she said, “Remind you of anybody?”
She meant Dottie Kenfield, but I didn’t want to say that because then it made it seem true.
“When it got dark and Sara didn’t come home,” Fast Susie went on, “Mrs. Heinemann called the cops to start lookin’. They’ve been searching everywhere for her.”
Mary Lane musta been eating something yellow, cuz when she stuck her tongue out at me it looked like that iguana’s tongue up at the zoo. “Told ya,” she said.
Fast Susie said, “And ya know what that means, right?” She dropped the ball and walked over to Mary Lane and put her hands around her neck and started choking her. They all laughed. Not me. I knew better than anyone that Fast Susie was probably right. Sara Heinemann was probably dead. And they might never find her, because I would bet my bottom dollar that one of the cops that Mrs. Heinemann had called to go looking for her daughter’s choked body was Rasmussen. The murderer and molester himself.
After a long day of braiding lanyards with Barb, playing chess with Bobby and a wild all-playground game of red rover, we headed over to the Fazios’ for some of Nana’s excellent lasagna. During supper, Troo and Nana had a very big discussion about Doris Day movies and Nana got all silly over the actor Rock Hudson. After we’d helped Fast Susie dry the dishes, Troo and me left and didn’t say much on the walk home because I thought we both regretted having to leave that nice Italian kitchen with good smells and arms waving all over the place like they were directing downtown traffic.
We found the door to our house wide open, but when I called up the stairs, “Hello? Anybody home?” there wasn’t. Hall had definitely taken a long walk off a short pier. I figured it was because Mother was dying. But then that didn’t seem right either because Hall and Mother were fighting and taking the Lord’s name in vain all the time before she went into the hospital, so what did he care if she died.
Troo and me didn’t bother washing up because the last time we’d tried, the water came out all warm and orange. We just took off our clothes and laid down in our bed and listened to the
creak creak creak
of our neighbors’ porch swing. Mr. Kenfield sat out there by himself almost every summer night, just rocking and smoking. The sound and the smell always traveled up to our bedroom window and reminded me of loneliness. Especially that night, because me and Troo were all by ourselves and it felt so much like that was how it would be from now on.
Troo rolled onto her stomach and pulled up her T-shirt, letting me know she wanted me to rub her back, which was something I’d done every single night since I could remember. “Do you know why Fast Susie is called Fast Susie?” she asked.
I thought about that afternoon. “Because she is an excellent person to have on your team for red rover?”