Good Graces

kinds of wrestling matches happening at least once a day. I normally try to break them up, but I’m too busy being a captive audience. Sampson is singing to me loud and clear.

After she gets Troo to yell “Oncle,” Mary Lane plops back down next to me and says, “I’m gonna stick around and help my dad. Ya wanna?”

I run my hand across the part of the bench where Daddy rested his strong shoulders.

I’ve been meaning to ask Mary Lane, Do you know what they’re gonna do with this beat-up bench? If they’re just gonna chuck it out, we might have a place in our garden for it, but the words get stuck in my mouth, which is the first sign that I’m gonna start choke crying and if I do that, my sister’s gonna start hunh… hunh… hunhing again, so as much as I want to spend what little time there is left with my magnificent king, I tell her, “Thanks, but no thanks. I gotta”-I point behind me to my sister-“you know.”

Troo has already brushed the grass off her knees, adjusted her beret and is making her way down the path out of the zoo. The shopping bag with the talent trophy is making her lean a little to the right.

Mary Lane cups her hands and shouts, “Bon voyage, Leeze,” making it sound like the worst kind of insult.

When my sister stops in her tracks, I’m sure she’s gonna come barreling back to tackle our best friend around her knobby knees, but what she does instead is reach into the shopping bag and pull out her talent trophy. She lifts the Golden Tomahawk high above her head and with her other hand, she slowly, slowly flips Mary Lane the bird.

Our best friend doesn’t go after her, she’s not even mad. Mary Lane laughs and says, “What a card,” because even though her and Troo throw themselves on the ground faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, they are alike in more ways than one. “Ya sure ya don’t wanna stay and help out? We’re gonna load up the rest of the animal food and what not. It’d be a good thing to put in your charitable summer story.”

I really, really want to, but my sister is getting smaller on the path by the second. “I can’t.”

“Suit yourself,” Mary Lane says, skipping off toward the cage where they used to keep the grizzly bears.

After I catch up to Troo, I have to remember to tell her that she was right about one thing at least. Sampson’s not tapping his foot and singing to me Don’t Get Around Much Anymore the way he used to. Of course he’s not, because that’s not true anymore.

I can barely stand to leave him. I get up off the bench on feet that are having a hard time feeling the ground and shuffle down the zoo path. I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t stop myself from looking back at him one last time.

He’s at the edge of the pit, down on one knee, serenading me with Daddy’s and my most favorite song of all: It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game… game… game… game.

Chapter Four

Helen is such a pain… Helen is such a pain… Helen…” Troo’s been singsonging since we left the zoo. She’s purposely stepping on the sidewalk cracks, which you’re not supposed to do unless you want to break your mother’s back, but that’s the kind of kid she is. The two of them used to be two peas in a pod, but now my sister fights with her most of the time and calls her Helen all of the time. Poor Mother. She only knows the half of it. If she knew the whole truth about Troo’s smoking and stealing and swearing and all the other wild things she does, she would lock her in our room and throw away the key, which would be so helpful in my efforts to keep track of her that I am tempted at least once a day to tattle on her. If I didn’t know how much my sister despises squealers, I would sit Mother down and tell her that Troo is more and more every day becoming the kid the other mothers in the neighborhood don’t want their kids to play with and honestly, as much as I love her, I don’t blame them. Who wants their nice Catholic daughter playing four-square with a future gun moll?

When the O’Malley sisters were just about to leave through the back door this morning, Dave gave us each a dime and told us to buy ourselves something cold to drink because he thinks this summer might go down in the record books as the hottest ever. That goes to show how thoughtful he is no matter what my sister says about him. (Dave and me have a lot in common, which I’ve been told is one of the building blocks of any relationship.)

So on our way back home, Troo and me are gonna stop at Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore. You can buy Geritol and hot-water bottles there, but the best part is the ice cream cones with jimmies and brown cows and all the other good stuff you can get at the super-duper soda fountain.

Just like the sticker on the drugstore door says, it feels better than good to be in this “Cool as an igloo” air and not only because my T-shirt feels wallpapered to me. It’s because Henry Fitzpatrick is behind the soda counter, right where he’s supposed to be. He’s listening to WOKY, singing into a cookie cone and snapping his fingers to Mack the Knife, which is kinda funny because Henry has to stay away from sharp objects at all costs. Maybe singing about one is like taking a walk on the wild side for him because he has to lead such a sheltered life. He has a sickness. I thought for the longest time that what he had wrong with him was called homofeelya and so did everybody else in the neighborhood, which is why some of the kids nicknamed him Homo Henry. Turns out his sickness is called hemofeelya. That means Henry has to be careful. He wishes he could, but he can’t come to the playground and play Mumbly Peg with the other boys because if he cuts himself an ambulance has to come before he bleeds all over the place.

“Henry?” I say loud, because he’s really wailing into that cookie cone.

“Oh… hi, Sally,” he says, spinning my way. “I… I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Bonjour, Onree,” Troo says, not following me over to the soda fountain. She’s taking her sweet time, loitering near the front of the store where they keep the gum and L &M cigarettes.

“Bonjour, Leeze,” Henry calls courteously back to my sister, but he only has eyes for me.

His are hazel with lashes that are thick enough to paint a picture. In my book, that more than makes up for what he lacks in the blood department. Another thing that I like about him is that he isn’t rowdy like a lot of the other boys. When we went to see Old Yeller together at the Uptown, in the part where that rabid wolf bit Yeller and the boy had to take him out back and shoot him? I thought Henry might croak from a broken heart. He loves dogs and wants one of his own so bad, but his parents won’t get him one because when he pets them his eyes tear up like crazy. Even though Henry doesn’t agree with me, I think not getting a pooch works out for the best. (Under no circumstances are boys supposed to bawl. I wouldn’t want that homo rumor hitting the mill again.)

I give him my deepest dimples smile when I boost myself up onto my favorite stool that gives me the best view of the front of the store so I can keep my eye on Troo in the wide mirror that hangs behind the fountain.

“What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” I say. It always makes Henry blush when I talk hepcat like that, which makes him look a little more alive, so I try to do it as much as I can. “I’ll have my regular chocolate phosphate, please.”

“Hi there, Sally. How’s your mother feeling?” Mr. Fitzpatrick calls out to me from where he almost always is, on a stool in a window at the back of the store counting pills below the Coca-Cola clock.

He is much nicer than most of the other fathers around here who work at the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory and sing Danny Boy or That’s Amore at the top of their lungs when their beer bottles get empty out on their front steps. Henry’s mother is also a very sweet person who does crossword puzzles during Mass. I think she musta lost her faith in God, too, so we’ll have a lot to talk about when she comes to our future house for a chicken dinner and a game of Sheepshead every Sunday.

“Hi, Mr. Fitzpatrick,” I say back. “Mother is gettin’ better by the day. Thank you for askin’.”

When he notices my sister messing around up at the front of the store, Mr. Fitzpatrick calls out in a sterner, but still kind way, “Can I help you find something, Margaret?”

Troo shoves her hands into her back shorts pockets. “Oh, no, thank you, sir.” She says that real pleasantly but when she sits down at the counter, she bosses Henry, “Gimme whatever Sally’s havin’.”

“You got it,” he says. “Two cp’s comin’ up on the double!”

(I just adore it when he talks soda fountain lingo like that.)