Whistling In the Dark Page 25

  “You know,” I said, resting my hand on top of his since it looked so forgotten about and coulda used a little Jergens lotion. “Like my mother always says, ‘It’s best to forgive and forget. Let bygones be bygones.’ ”

  He said gruffly, “You’re your mother’s daughter, all right. The apple didn’t fall far from that tree.”

  Mr. Kenfield reached deep down into his trouser’s pocket and took something out. It was a picture of Dottie. You could tell he looked at it a lot because it was sort of worn down and grayish, like him. Dottie was sitting on this very same swing, smiling so big with her hands behind her head.

  “You know who that is?” He pointed at the photograph.

  I looked up into his face. There was a shadow across his eyes. “Yes.”

  “You know what she did?”

  “Yes.” She’d done the same thing Mother had. Fallen in love and had a baby with someone she wasn’t supposed to.

  “It’s a mortal sin. Some things you can’t forgive and forget.”

  “You’re wrong about that, Mr. Kenfield. You should let Dottie and her little baby come home because I know how much you miss them. I don’t think God would mind that at all.”

  He put his hands up to his face then so I wouldn’t see, but I recognized that sound. Mrs. Goldman had been wrong. It hadn’t been Mrs. Kenfield, crying every night in Dottie’s room. It was her daddy. Who did not have a stiff upper lip after all.

  I got up and left then. Because that sound, that weeping from the heart, I knew that sound. And I also knew there was nothing I could say that would make him feel better. Nothing else hurts worse in the world as much as tears for the missing.

  “Test . . . test . . . one . . . two . . . three,” Barb said up on the stage in front of the microphone. “Could I have your the stage in front of the microphone. ”Could I have your attention, please? It’s the time you’ve all been waiting for. Test one . . . two . . . three.” The microphone made a high screechy sound. Barb laughed when we put our hands over our ears. She was standing on the stage next to Johnny Fazio and you could see plain as the nose on your face that Johnny Fazio had the hots for her.

  Barb announced, “It’s time now to reveal the name of the girl who is this year’s Queen of the Playground.” She turned toward Johnny and said very seriously, “May I have a drum roll.” She looked back at the crowd, holding the gorgeous rhinestone crown up to the stage lights. It was so beautiful that no words could describe it.

  Troo picked up my hand and squeezed it. I knew it was me. Had to be. But just as Barb said, “The Queen of the Playground this year is . . . ,” and looked over at me . . . I looked over at Wendy Latour. She was holding Artie’s hand and smiling so purely. She was dressed in a pink party dress with lace on the neck and had some rouge on her cheeks and something shiny on her lips.

  And for the second time that night, I didn’t understand what came over me, but I jumped right on that stage and took the microphone out of Barb’s hand and said into it, “The Queen of the Playground this year is . . . Wendy Latour.”

  When I thought later about why I did that, I figured it was because of that plastic Cracker Jack ring Wendy always wore on her wedding finger. She needed to be Queen more than I did. I knew I would go on in life and I would get married and have kids, maybe even marry a pharmacist someday. But for Wendy . . . well, at least she would always have that rhinestone crown.

  When Artie brought her up to the stage to be crowned, Wendy gave me one of her huge hugs and then started throwing those Dinah Shore kisses at everyone. Just like a Queen should. Barb announced Teddy Mahlberg as the King and Wendy gave him a royal hug as well, which he took pretty well. Then everybody started going nuts with their hooting and hollering, but that was also because they were, a lot of them anyway, three sheets to the wind, and I had noticed that this generally improves people’s moods.

  All of us got a partner when Johnny Fazio sang the last song of the night called “That’s Amore,” which Nana Fazio told me was Italian for love and was certainly the right song to sing because there sure was a lot of love dancing going on. Including me and Henry Fitzpatrick, who gave me my first on the lips smooch after we got done with the box-step waltz. His lips tasted like black licorice, which I never liked, but the rest of it wasn’t half bad.

  Seeing us all there like that, I thought of how much my lush daddy would’ve loved the party. I wished he was there. If he was, I knew he woulda given me two thumbs up. And when I tried to say, “I’m sorry for saying what I said . . . ,” he would just hug me close with his tan hairy arms and tell me he knew I hadn’t meant those awful things I said on the day of the crash. And how proud he was of me for doing what he had asked me to do. Keep my promises. Tend my garden.

  After the party was all over, the Vliet Street kids called to each other, “See ya tomorrow at school.” I walked home by myself, gazing up at the great beyond, thinking about how love never really dies. It’s always out there, leaving a twinkling trail to another place where you can go and rest when you need to forget that things really do happen when you least expect them. And sometimes, those things can change your life forever. But what Daddy hadn’t gotten around to telling me, and what I figured out that night all by myself, was that no matter what horrible things happen . . . you have to go on with your life with all the stick-to-itiveness that you can muster up.

  So with the fireflies flashing and the chocolate chip cookies smelling and the Moriaritys’ dog barking two streets over, I sat down on the O’Haras’ front steps and looked up and said in my most certain voice, “To the clear blue of the western sky, it’s me, Sal your gal, telling my Sky King, my magnificent Sky King . . . roger, wilco and out.”

  Lesley Kagen is a writer, actress, voice-over talent, and restaurateur. The owner of Restaurant Hama, one of Milwaukee’s top restaurants, Ms. Kagen lives with her husband and two children in Mequon, Wisconsin. Visit her Web site at www.lesleykagen.com.

  CONVERSATION GUIDE

  WISTLING IN THE DARK

  lesley kagen

  This Conversation Guide is intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

  CONVERSATION GUIDE

  A CONVERSATION WITH LESLEY KAGEN

  Q. Whistling in the Dark is set in Milwaukee. Did you grow up there?

  A. Yup. I grew up on the west side in a neighborhood that had the same sort of feel Vliet Street does. Irish and German Catholic families jammed into duplexes. A cadre of kids playing kick the can or red light, green light when the streetlights came on. It was a wonderful setting for a childhood. As an adult, I’ve lived in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, but I brought my children back to Milwaukee to raise them. I think it might’ve been an attempt on my part to recapture the flavors of my childhood. Especially that Bavarian cream-filled coffee cake.

  Q. The book is set in the summer of 1959. I’m wondering about authenticity. May I ask how old you are?

  A. I was ten in 1959. That makes me thirty-nine.

  Q. Actually, that makes you fifty-seven.

  A. Oh.

  Q. Where did you get the idea for the book?

  A. I think we all reach a point in our lives when our childhood memories become old friends we would just love to hang out with again. I don’t think for a minute that I am the only woman on the planet who has become overwhelmed with the pace of life nowadays. I began to yearn for summers on the stoop. Cherry Popsicles. Secret hiding places. My sister snoring softly beside me. I needed to experience those feelings again.

  Q. How much of this story is based on real-life experience?

  A. Quite a bit. My father was killed in a car accident when I was four. Left penniless, my mother quickly remarried to a man who, while not a drunken sot, did share other personality traits with Hall. My mother almost died of a staph infection when I was ten, leaving us girls essentially on our own while she recovered in the hospital. I have two sist
ers. Sally is based on my younger sister, Ellie. Nell is modeled after my older sister, Ronney. And Troo and I have quite a bit in common.

  Q. I was quite taken by the dichotomy of the time period. There was such innocence and yet . . .

  A. Exactly. While talking to other women my age about their memories, so many of them remembered jumping double Dutch and Fabian and cloud watching and all those sorts of dreamy good times. But inevitably they’d pause, and shyly mention being flashed by their next-door neighbor. Or an older brother’s nighttime visitations. Or an uncle who may have touched them in a certain way. So many of those traumas were swept under the fifties carpet. Children, especially girl children, have more value now. Thank God.

  Q. My heart went out to the girls’ mother. She was a victim of the times as well.

  A. I don’t know if that has changed all that much. I know many women still feel trapped in loveless marriages. They’re simply too afraid to leave, unsure if they can provide for their children, for themselves.

  Q. Who is your favorite character in the novel?

  A. That’s like asking who my favorite child is.

  Q. Okay, how about your least favorite character in the novel.

  A. That’s like asking who my least favorite child is.

  Q. Give it a shot.

  A. I am quite fond of Sally. Her unflagging sweetness. Her deep-seated sense of responsibility. And her desperate need to protect Troo. I find these winning qualities. On the flip side, I like Hall the least. Of course, Bobby is de le, but Hall abandoned two small girls who needed tender loving care.

  Q. Ethel is a wonderful character. Why did you introduce a Southern Baptist woman into fifties Milwaukee?

  A. Because she deserved to be there and wasn’t. Not unlike today, Milwaukee in the fifties was a very segregated city. The only time I would see someone of color was on our way to the beach, when we drove through the Core. Until the summer I was thirteen, and my stepfather brought home an eighteen-year-old kid to mow the lawn. I was stunned. The enamel blackness of his skin, his bouncy natty hair. Teddy’s mere presence in our backyard stirred me in a truly elemental way. That electric smile of his, the one that promised a girl could get into a little trouble if she wanted to? My oh my. What were you saying?

  Q. Ethel?

  A. Oh, yeah. I love Ethel. She has that no-nonsense, I’m gonna run you ragged, but only because I love you to death Southern sensibility about her. I adore that. Always have. I think it all goes back to my utter idolization of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. When your father dies when you are young, a girl looks for a replacement. He was mine.

  Q. This is your first novel. What took you so long?

  A. My award-winning fourth-grade poem, “I Am the Sun,” is hanging in my daughter’s room. I followed up that early success by writing a script for 77 Sunset Strip when I was eleven. I am still waiting for my royalties. I studied writing in college and wrote ad copy for years. After my daughter left for college, and my teenage son made it clear that he would rather stick a knife in his kidney than spend any more time with me than it took for the cheese to brown on his pizza, I made a dash for my computer. Mostly I played Solitaire for a month because the thought of setting forth down the novel road just about scared the bejesus out of me.

  Q. In what way?

  A. It’s a little like that old Rooney-Garland line, “Let’s put on a show!” It sounds fun, we’ve got a couple actors here, but wait just a cotton pickin’ minute . . . how the heck do you go about something like that? I had no idea of the craft involved in writing a novel.

  Q. How did you get around that?

  A. I studied the works of other writers I admire to see how they constructed their stories. I analyzed movies. I also had the help of good early readers like my husband, Pete, who edited my everyday musings and said, “This is a nice story, dear. I like the characters. But when are they actually going to do something? They are spending quite a lot of time just, well, feeling.” It was tough for me to learn how to integrate plot and character, humor and tragedy. To find that balance.

  Q. Humor plays an important part in this story, which is primarily about loss. Why?

  A. All of our lives are tough. We lose people, we lose love, we lose jobs, we lose our health. Humor is the only thing I know besides spirituality that helps transcend pain.

  Q. Why did you choose to write the story from a ten-year-old’s perspective?

  A. I didn’t really choose too much of anything. It’s a funny thing, writing. For me it starts with the whispery voice of my main character, nudging me awake at night. Asking me to listen to a story.

  Q. I know many authors outline their books before setting down to write. How about you?

  A. (Laughing uncontrollably.) I’m lucky to get my grocery list straight. I just get up in the morning, drink four cups of tea, light a cigarette (I know, I know), and hope for the best. As I get to know the characters better, I’m able to apply an actual thought process. But when I start out, writing is completely about the characters.

  Q. How did you feel when you completed the book?

  A. Unbearably sad. I love those two little girls. I need two fluffy dogs named Sally and Troo. That’s how much I want to keep them close. To love them up.

  Q. How did you feel when you found out that your story would be published?

  A. It took me about a year to finish Whistling in the Dark. Three hundred and sixty-five morning mantras of . . . Lesley, you are a complete and utter moron. Shouldn’t you be spending the morning doing something a bit more productive? Don’t you have socks to sort? Writing is a solitary activity. There is no one in the next cubicle over, ready to tell you, good job! And no matter how many times my friends and family mentioned that they absolutely loved what I was coming up with, and how sure they were that I’d eventually get published . . . well, being the sunny, glass-half-fuller person that I am . . . let’s just say I’m pretty relieved that someone other than my cousin Joyce in Sheboygan thinks I write okay.

  Q. What’s next?

  A. I can’t wait to meet readers via my Web site and bookstore appearances. I’m anxious to hear their impressions, their thoughts, their memories. I’m also quite busy running my sushi restaurant, getting my son, Riley, off to college in the fall, and my daughter, Casey, is getting married next summer. I’m still doing commercial voice-overs. And, of course, I’m pecking away on my next novel.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. Did the book transport you back to the fifties? Share some of your best or worst memories of that time. Or of your own childhood in the sixties, seventies or beyond.

  2. Young women are treated differently now than they were back then. They’re encouraged to have careers. To take care of themselves financially. To stand on their own two feet. Back in the fifties, a girl’s primary goal was to find a man to take care of her. How do you think these changing mores have affected women? Are these changes all positive? If not, what are the negatives?

  3. Sally and Troo forge a bond based on loss and guilt. Do you have any relationships/friendships like this?

  4. Sally and Troo experienced a deep sense of abandonment after the death of their daddy. They manifested that sense of loss differently. How do you think the loss of a parent at any early stage of a child’s life affects their emotional growth?

  5. After her husband’s death, Mother decided the only way to put food on the table was to marry Hall, a man she had little or no feelings for. What would you do if you found yourself in her position?

  6. Sally is the product of an adulterous affair. Did you feel differently about her when this was revealed?

  7. Mother hid her affair with Dave Rasmussen from her husband and children. Some women, after committing such an indiscretion, would confess and beg for forgiveness. What would you do?

  8. Would you have a relationship with your sibling if they weren’t your family?

  9. The story touches upon teenage pregnancy when Sally discovers that h
er next-door neighbor, Dottie Kenfield, was sent away to have her baby. Nowadays young girls are allowed to continue high school and, in fact, many schools provide child care. Do you think this glamorizes teen pregnancy? Why do you think times have changed in regard to this once social taboo? What would you do if your teenage daughter became pregnant?

  10. Troo appears to take Sally’s “mothering” in stride. Why do you think that is?

  11. Fear is a main theme of the book. Fear of our feelings. Fear of what other people think. Fear of the unknown. What are you afraid of?