Good Graces Page 2

  At the start of the trip, Troo was by my side counting license plates and singing along with the rest of the kids the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall song, but I didn’t open my mouth. I was afraid I might toss my cookies again. I already did once and my sister’s mad at me for “stinkin’ up the joint,” so that’s why she moved to the seat behind me and is telling everybody that we got on at different stops.

  When the bus pulls into the campground, I turn to tell Troo, “I . . . I changed my mind . . . I’m sorry . . . we gotta go back home right away. I can’t . . .” but she’s already gone. She rushed right past me outta the bus. Through the window, I can see her bouncing and smiling, looking the happiest I’ve seen her in over a year.

  What choice do I have?

  Once the counselors get me and Troo and the rest of the girls lined up in front of the main wigwam, they hold up their palms to each and every one of us, saying “How” over and over and over again when they stick feathers in our hair that still have part of the bird left on ’em. After that, they hand out our Indian maiden names that we are to be known by for the rest of the week. They call me Minihaha. (Mother made me get a haircut from our eight-years-older-than-me half sister, Nell, who, even though she is a graduate of Yvonne’s School of Beauty, made my bangs too short because she’s a basket case, so even I gotta admit, I look a little funny.

  Troo is to be known as Lovely Princess Floating Gently Down the Stream of Unending Happiness Beneath a Rainbow.

  Every day is torture. Every night couldn’t be worse.

  In the morning, we’re supposed to swim in Lake Freezing Cold but I can barely do the dead man’s float. When the triangle bell rings at noon, we have to go to the mess hall and eat a lunch of beans and wienies and drink the juice of bugs. After that, we gotta do crafts. Forced to make leather coin purses. There’s skeeters the size of dragonflies, an outhouse that anybody could fall into and once the sun sets, those counselors always got a grisly story all warmed up. Their favorite is this one about an escaped lunatic with a hook who goes after couples who are watching the submarine races on Lovers’ Lane. After they douse the campfire, one of the counselors always reminds us to pretend we’re not kids from the city sleeping in bunk beds in a cabin in the woods of Wisconsin, but real Indian children curled up in teepees on a wide open plain. But even me, who has no problem imagining just about anything, can’t feature that. What I can picture so clearly is that lunatic with the hook deciding that a pretty little redheaded girl is right up his alley so he rows one-handed from the other side of the lake after midnight, crawls into our cabin, snatches my sister and runs off with her into the woods. The next morning, Lovely Princess would no longer be Floating Gently Down the Stream of Unending Happiness Beneath a Rainbow but found under one of those Christmas trees like a ripped-open present.

  That’s why I’ve been spending my nights tossing and turning even worse than I usually do, which I didn’t think was humanly possible. Standing watch over my sister is never easy and she hasn’t been any help at all. She giggles along with the other girls when they tease me about the dark circles I’ve got under my eyes. No matter how deep I stick my fingers in my ears, I can hear them calling me “Smudgy” and telling each other how camp is the greatest and that they never want to go home, which makes me feel even more like the odd maiden out because that’s all I want to do. I miss . . . everything. Troo doesn’t. She’s been having a gay old time making sit-upons and new friends and practicing her ventriloquist act for The Heap Big Talent Show, which is tonight.

  I know that I’m not good at a lot of things, not like Troo is, but I do my best after my sister drags me up on the camp stage and growls into my ear, “You’re embarassin’ me. Again. Do one of your dumb imitations.”

  So I try to perform my best Edgar G. Robinson, “You dirty rat,” but my tongue gets so twisted up that it comes out sounding like, “You thirty brats,” which makes everybody boo, and one kid, who is my sister, throws a stick of beef jerky at me. Of course, after all is said and done, Troo wins the top talent prize, The Golden Tomahawk, hands down. Nobody even cares that her lips moved.

  By the time Sunday comes, I am very weak, almost floppy. I got a nose ache from pressing it against the cabin window counting the minutes until Dave’s woody station wagon comes roaring up the camp drive to rescue me.

  When I finally spot him, I try to yell, “He’s here! He’s here!” but I hardly have enough air left in me to sigh out to Troo, “We’re goin’ home.”

  “You are. I don’t got a home anymore,” she hollers on her run out the cabin door.

  She hides in a tree and refuses to budge, but Dave is brave and tells her that she has until the count of three to get down. That takes a lotta guts on his part because he knows Troo will give him the cold shoulder all the way home. Or maybe that’s why he nixed the staying-longer-at-camp idea in the first place. Just to shut her up. I love my sister, I would die for her, but a spade is a spade. Troo is a smart alec, most especially to Dave, who she reminds, “You’re not my real father,” in case he forgot after she said it a half hour ago.

  On the drive home, once Troo falls asleep against my shoulder hugging The Golden Tomahawk, I tap Dave on the shoulder and tell him, “Thank you for sendin’ us! That was really something!”

  The reason I am not telling him that camp was the fourth-worst experience of my life behind losing Daddy and Mother almost dying and Bobby trying to murder me is because I don’t want to hurt his feelings. Dave is a lot like me in the personality department. That’s who I get it from. Not from my mother, who says, “Being sensitive and a dime will get you a cup of coffee.”

  But when he parks the woody station wagon in front of our house on 52nd Street, since he is a police detective, Dave mighta deduced that I didn’t tell him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but about my camping experience. Because after Troo stomps off in a huff, I can’t stop myself from leaping out of the car, sinking down on my knees and kissing our front lawn, that’s how grateful I am to get back to the city where I know who lives in what house, which shortcuts we shouldn’t take and, most important, all the best hiding places.

  Chapter Three

  The first day back home, my sister and me and one of our best friends, Mary Lane, are having what Troo calls a rendezvous at Washington Park, the most important place to everybody in the neighborhood next to Mother of Good Hope Church. The park’s got everything.

  Like the lagoon.

  I used to love standing under the weeping willow and throwing in a hook, but I had to give that up. Instead of whiling away an afternoon dreaming about what I’m gonna catch, all I can think about these days are the innocent little fish swimming below the surface, so overjoyed to see that friendly worm waving in the water that they don’t even stop to wonder at their good luck. The lagoon is where the police found the two dead girls with pink undies tied around their necks in pretty bows. First one summer and then the next, Junie Piaskowski and Sara Marie Heinemann were laid out next to the rotting red rowboats you can rent for a dollar and I was almost spread out there, too. I could hear the muddy lagoon water lapping onto the rocks when Bobby Brophy ripped his shirt off over his head.

  The park also has a swimming pool. I just about go dead in the water watching Troo climb up those silvery high-dive steps and run to the end of the board screaming, “Geronimo,” which she will probably do even louder now after all the practice she got at camp.

  The Jack Hoyt Woods are a big relief. When you can’t take the sun beating down on you for one more second, you can eat a peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwich in a leafy branch or get your ankles wet when you look for leeches under slimy rocks in the Honey Creek that runs through it.

  There’s also a band shell, but it’s not much good until after it gets dark. That’s why it’s called Music Under the Stars. Once a week you can lie out on a blanket and hear an orchestra perform something like Rhapsody in Blue by Mr. George Gershwin (one of Mother and Dave’s favorites) and drink cup afte
r cup of Graf’s Root Beer (Troo guzzles it) while you search for the Big and Little Dippers in the western sky (Daddy went nuts for them). When the show’s all over, everybody in the neighborhood gathers their stuff and walks back home, laughing and calling to each other, or sometimes there’s a scuffle because they mighta had too much Pabst Blue Ribbon Under the Stars.

  And it’s not only during the months of June, July and August when this park is the star of the show. When it gets cold and snowy, you can take a leap onto your flying saucer on Statue Hill. Or bundle up and go skating. I feel much better being around the lagoon once it freezes over. I can’t do spins or jumps or anything else fancy like that, but I like the feel of the chilly air on my forehead and the blades cutting through the ice sound like I mean business.

  But the absolute best part of the park, no matter what time of the year it is, has always been right where we are. The zoo. Sitting on the bench under our favorite climbing tree in front of Sampson the gorilla’s enclosure. Daddy and I used to sit at this exact same spot together. He’d point at Sampson and say, “Some people say the lion is the king of the jungle, but I’d have to disagree with them. Just look at him, Sal! He is magnificent!” I would nod my head, but what I was secretly thinking was No, Daddy, you are the king. Of the land and the sky. It’s you who is magnificent.

  That was in the good old days. Before the night Bobby the counselor set me down on the grass near the lagoon. Before I heard Daddy’s voice call to me from on high—Now, Sal, now . . . fly like the wind—and I ripped down the zoo path and jumped over the black iron fence in front of Sampson’s enclosure. When Bobby caught up to me, he gave me the same winning smile I loved when we played chess together at the playground. Only that night he didn’t say, “Checkmate. Better luck next time.” He ran the tip of his tongue over his top lip so slowly and whispered, “Gotcha,” and I was sure that he did. But when he leaped over the fence, the air came off his body and his arms became wings. I waited until the timing was right and I ducked. Bobby flew over my head like Sky King’s Songbird and crashed down into Sampson’s pit. He died, so the only one he’s playing chess with now is Lucifer.

  The reason we came here today is so I can say one last good-bye to Sampson. On one side of me on the zoo bench this morning is Mary Lane. (We have to call her by her first and last name like that because around here if you just shout out “Mary” you could get trampled to death since it is the most popular name there is due to the Blessed Virgin.) Mary Lane is wearing her usual high-top tennis shoes and just like us, shorts and a T-shirt. She smells like stale potato chips. She always does. On my other side is my sister. Troo couldn’t care less about saying au revoir to Sampson if she tried. She only came along so she can bug Mary Lane. My sister’s got on her navy blue beret. It’s a flat hat perched high on top of her hair, which our beautifying half sister, Nell, has shown her how to put into a French twist.

  “Just ’cause they’re movin’ the zoo doesn’t mean ya ain’t never gonna see Sampson again,” Mary Lane tells me.

  She doesn’t take up much room on the bench. Even after Doc Sullivan pulled that tapeworm out of her, she is still the skinniest kid you’ve ever seen. She’d probably go invisible if her zookeeper father didn’t give her bananas for free. She is also a peeper. She lights fires, too. And I secretly think that she is the cat burglar that’s been prowling around the neighborhood for over two months now. (This is not a person who steals pets, which is what most people think until somebody sets them straight. A cat burglar is what you call somebody who gets dressed in black and comes into your house sneaky to steal something precious.) Mary Lane could easily slip through a barely open kitchen window, especially if she smelled a pot roast cooking on the other side, and she spends a ton of time at the zoo so she knows how tigers and leopards move like they’re doing you a big favor by setting their feet down and really, she is sort of hard up and doesn’t have a very big conscience so it makes sense that she is the one breaking one of the Commandments and coveting her neighbors’ valuables out of their houses. She could hock them at Gerald’s Pawnshop on North Avenue to get money for food.

  I haven’t told my suspicions about Mary Lane to Troo. She would find some way to use that against her and make fun of my imagination while she was doing it. I know I should, but I haven’t told Dave either. He’s the cop in charge of hunting the cat burglar down. Mary Lane is one of my two best friends and I’m no stool pigeon, but even if I was, what a waste of time that’d be. Even if Dave caught her and threw her in jail, how would they ever keep her skinny self behind bars?

  Mary Lane says, “My dad’s been goin’ out to the new zoo every day to get things set up for when it opens. He told me that Bluemound Road is pretty far away, but not that far.”

  Mr. Lane, who works at the zoo feeding the animals and doing other odd jobs, told us that they will all be packed up by tomorrow and then the bulldozers will come and knock down the buildings to put in a new expressway. The birds are already gone. Of course, the swans put up a fuss. They always remind me of Troo. Gorgeous to look at, but what a mouth they got on ’em. While we were away at camp, the chimps got taken away from Monkey Island in black zipper bags after they got sleeping shots. The reptile house has been boarded up for a while, which is no skin offa my nose. Mary Lane kept telling me last summer that Bobby Brophy reminded her of a boa constrictor, which is a kind of snake that can swallow a kid whole. If only I’d listened to her.

  “Hey,” Mary Lane says, flicking me on the arm. “Ya havin’ one a your flights of imagination?”

  This is one of the reasons she is my best friend. Mary Lane understands that my mind flies around sometimes without me and I understand that she’s got a problem with getting her facts straight when she tells a story, so that works out good for both of us.

  “Sorry?” I answer.

  “I was just sayin’ that you’d probably need to take at least three buses to get out to the new zoo to see Sampson.”

  “Really?” I ask. I’m never sure if what she’s telling me is the whole truth or not. You really do have to be careful with her. I used to think she was the biggest, fattest liar around, but she isn’t. Not exactly. Mary Lane is what my other best friend, Ethel Jenkins, describes as “a no-tripper.” That’s what Mississippi folks call somebody who doesn’t let the truth trip them up when they’re telling you a story.

  “Yeah, at least three buses,” Mary Lane says, picking at a scab on her knee. “Maybe four, but it could be as many as seven.”

  “What do ya think?” I ask Troo, who isn’t really paying attention.

  Now that she’s done one-upping Mary Lane about getting to go to Camp Towering Pines this summer, going so far as to bring her Golden Tomahawk talent trophy in a shopping bag so she can shove it in our best friend’s face, my sister is paging through a book she got yesterday from the Finney Library. She’s not actually reading Around the World in Eighty Days because according to her, books are for boneheads like me. Troo’s looking at the pictures to get the idea of the story so she can tell it to Mrs. Kambowski. You can’t hardly go anywhere these days without hearing a joke about how dumb the Polacks are, so that’s why there’s not a doubt in my mind the librarian will fall for my sister’s plan. Troo wants to win the Billy the Bookworm prize this summer in the worst way. She got the free movie passes to the Uptown Theatre last summer even though she didn’t really win them fair and square; Mary Lane did. For some dopey reason, Mrs. Kambowski gave my sister the prize anyway.

  “What do I think about what?” Troo says, turning the page.

  “Could we take three buses or more to visit Sampson out on Bluemound Road?” I say, trying, but not able, to keep the shakiness out of my voice.

  “H-E-double hockey sticks,” Troo says, slamming the book down on the bench. “I knew this was gonna happen. I just knew it! You bein’ a wet blanket at camp wasn’t bad enough, now you’re gonna be cryin’ and worryin’ about that dumb ape . . . and anything else you can dream up for the rest of the s
ummer, aren’t you?” Troo laughs mean out of her nose that funny French way she does now. “Hunh . . . hunh . . . hunh. You’re goin’ loonier by the second, Sally.”

  “Shut your trap, O’Malley,” Mary Lane shouts as she springs up off the bench. “Her missin’ Sampson is not any loonier than you tellin’ everybody to call you Leeze.”

  Troo made Mary Lane and me go see An American in Paris with her during old-timey movie week up at the Uptown Theatre. My sister’s French problem got even worse after that. She wants all of us to call her Leeze now, which was the name of the girl star in that movie, and if we don’t, she’ll give you an Indian burn that’ll sting for days because that’s another thing she perfected at camp.

  “Fuck you, Lane,” Troo says. She loves all words that begin with the letter f but this is her absolute favorite. “You’re always stickin’ your monkey nose in where it don’t belong.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Mary Lane yells. “If my ma wasn’t already married, she . . . she wouldn’t be livin’ in sin the way yours is, I can tell ya that.”

  Mary Lane’s not the only one, a lotta people in the neighborhood are saying that about Mother because her and Dave are living under the same roof and aren’t married. Not yet anyway. They were supposed to get hitched right after high school, but that wedding got called off because Dave’s mother, who was dying from tuberculosis at the time, thought that our mother was just another Mick in an ankle bracelet and wasn’t good enough for her Danish boy. Ignoring the orders of an about-to-die person is the worst thing you can do in life. I should know. Dave had to honor his mother’s wishes and not just because he didn’t want to be haunted; it’s the Fourth Commandment. So better late than never. They’re planning to say their I do’s right after the annulment letter from the Pope comes in the mail. They need the go-ahead from His Holiness because Mother can’t get a divorce. Not the way Lutherans do. The only other thing a Catholic woman can do if she doesn’t want to be married anymore to a louse like Hall Gustafson is to pray that he gets stabbed in the neck with a fork when he’s serving his time.