Good Graces

somewhere inside of him he still could be. He used to be a bookie. (This is not somebody who works at the Finney Library. This is somebody who gambles for a living and wants as many people as he can get to do it, too.) Ethel told me that in the old days my uncle had the worst temper. He wasn’t a nice brother to Mother, and Granny went meek around him. He hurt other people, too. He broke a man’s leg in half when the guy didn’t vigorously pay what he owed on a gambling bet. Then he took advantage of the man’s wife all the way down to the skin. He was gonna go to jail for doing that, but his brain getting damaged in the crash saved the day. So that’s why, if ya ask me, our uncle owes a big merci beaucoup to Mademoiselle Troo for playing peek-a-boo with Daddy on the way home from the game.

Wendy Latour announces loud in her froggy voice, “You in gutter, Paulie.”

“Wendy!” I’m shocked. I can’t ever remember her saying something mean like that. “That’s not a nice thing to tell somebody when they’re down on their luck,” I say, shaking my finger at her. “Say you’re sorry.”

“Thorry, Thally, thorry, thorry, thorry.”

Artie leans in close to me. “Just so ya know, she wasn’t being rude. My mom’s been takin’ her up to the bowling alley every Monday afternoon. Mom thinks if your uncle can do that job settin’ pins then maybe Wendy can someday, too. He’s been showin’ her the ropes.”

Uncle Paulie grins at Wendy and says, “Balls, balls, gutter balls,” and walks off toward North Avenue to punch his time clock.

He’ll be up at Jerbak’s late. ’Til after three in the morning if business is hopping. I’ve heard him when I’m lying awake in bed waiting for the dawn to come. As a shortcut, Uncle Paulie takes the alley behind our house back to Granny’s. Pop Goes the Weasel sure sounds a lot different when you listen to it in the dead of night. Maybe I was wrong about Greasy Al. It coulda been our uncle who scratched on our bedroom window that night smelling like pepperoni. They serve pizza at the bowling alley and sometimes Uncle Paulie does some really creepy things. (I saw him bury something in Granny’s backyard once. I’m dying to know what, but I’m too much of a coward to go dig it up.)

“So… what yous wanna do?” Willie O’Hara asks us.

Troo grumbles, “Put you on a slow boat to China.”

She’s got a bone to pick with him because Mimi Latour is his girlfriend now instead of her. I know this is another not-charitable way to feel, but I would have to agree with Willie’s choice this time around. Mimi is much easier to work with. She reminds me of a piece of Play-Doh. Troo is more like a stone. A boulder. The Rocky Mountains.

O’Hara tries again. “Ya wanna play kick the can?”

Troo throws down a loogie that lands an inch away from Willie’s sneaker. “Red light, green light.”

All of us know that unless she gets her way, she will make sure we have a cruddy game of kick the can, so we all just say, “Red light, green light’s good.”

Willie asks, “My way or yours?”

A coupla summers ago we let him show us how they play this game in Brooklyn, where they call it Ghost in the Graveyard. In his version, instead of us hiding and the ghost looking for us, the ghost hides and we go looking for him. I like Willie’s way more, so I speak up and say, “Vliet Street rules” because I know Troo will be her stubborn self and say, “Naw, let’s play the Flatbush rules,” and she doesn’t let me down.

“Okay, Ghooost in the Graveyard it is,” I say, doing my spooky imitation to get everybody in the mood. “The steps are the entrance to the cemetery like alwaaays.”

A coupla other kids have wandered over from the playground the way I wished they would. I don’t know all their names except for the boy with ringworm. Everybody calls him Yul now. His real name is Peter Von Knappen. He was my boyfriend before I liked Henry, so I hope his hair grows back someday.

Willie O’Hara throws his heftiness around and says, “Guess I’ll be it.”

Troo hops up off the step and goes toe-to-toe with him, or as close as she can get. “Guess again, lard butt. I challenge you.”

After Willie told that great Polack joke, I was pretty sure she would challenge him. Like a lotta other things that go on around here, this never happened when we lived out in the country. By the time we’d walk over to somebody else’s farm, we’d be too worn out to see who can jump from the top of the silo without breaking their leg or try to milk a cow blindfolded, but these challenges happen all the time in the neighborhood. One kid goes up against another kid to determine who’s the best at something. Anything. You can get challenged to steal pumpkins in October out of old man Moriarity’s garden or to say the Stations of the Cross in under half an hour. Sometimes the challenges can even be death defying. Like who can run in front of a car without getting hit or hold your breath and then blow on your thumbs until you faint and smash your head on the sidewalk. One time Timmy Maddox challenged Howie Teske to play something he called Rushing Roulette with his father’s gun and ended up getting shot in the elbow.

Even talent can be challenged. Like when they have battles of the bands up in the gym.

That’s what this one is. Comedian versus ventriloquist.

Willie fires the first shot. “So… ya heard the one about the Polack and the ventriloquist, O’Malley?”

Troo shakes her head and doesn’t put up a fuss. She knows the rules. If you don’t play along, the other kid automatically wins. Period.

Willie says, “Well… there’s this ventriloquist who tells a Polack joke during his supper club show. After he’s done for the night, a big drunk Polack comes up to the stage and tells him, ‘Ya know, I’m sick and tired of these jokes. I’m gonna knock the shit outta ya.’ The ventriloquist says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, it was all in good fun.’ And then the Polack says back to him, ‘I wasn’t talkin’ to you, mister. I was talkin’ to the little asshole on your knee.’ ”

It takes a couple of seconds for all of us to get that one, but when we do, we start chuckling like crazy. Even Troo.

She says, “Fine, you win,” and doesn’t even try to beat him. She couldn’t even if she wanted to. She’s laughing too hard to keep her lips closed.

“You’re a handful, O’Malley,” Willie tells her.

My sister grabs one of the jelly rolls hanging over his shorts and says, “Takes one to know one, O’Hara.”

“Go on, be the ghost, ya little pisser,” Willie says gruff, but he’s smiling.

His mean-sounding accent hurts my ears and he’s got pimples on his forehead that he insists on showing you on a daily basis, but being a bossy gentleman is also part of Willie’s personality. Most of the time I like the way he takes the bull by the horns, but not tonight. I don’t want Troo to be the ghost and run off into the dark without me. I want her to be by my side. Permanently attached. (I’m asking for a pair of handcuffs this Christmas just like Dave’s got.)

Willie and all the rest of us turn our backs and start counting, “One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock…”

I cover my eyes, but don’t join in because I can barely swallow my own spit. There is just no telling with Troo. What if she’s pulling a switcheroo? What if she runs right over to the Molinaris’ to search for Greasy Al? I turn and peek between my fingers. She’s not heading that way. She’s sprinting toward the Latours’ backyard, so that’s good. That means she’s gonna hide in their bomb shelter if it’s unlocked. It’s supposed to be off-limits, but Troo doesn’t care. When she rises outta the ground and grabs you by the ankle, it’s like a buried body resurrecting out of a grave and she adores that. Scaring the ever-loving heck out of people is one of her hobbies.

“Thick o’clock, tree o’clock, leben o’clock,” Wendy Latour says next to me. She’s got her pudgy hands over her face, but her fingers are as wide open as her eyes.

Once we get to twelve o’clock we’re supposed to go walking around in the dark chanting, “Midnight, midnight, hope we don’t see a ghost tonight.”

We’ll go between houses and into the alley and yards. When we get close to where Troo is hiding she’ll jump out, or if she’s hiding in the bomb shelter, she’ll rise up and chase you. If you make it back to the graveyard-the O’Haras’ steps-you’re safe to live another day, but if Troo catches you, you gotta be the ghost the next time around.

“Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock… midnight!” Willie shouts. “Ready or not, here we come.”

Everybody dashes off in different directions except for Wendy and Artie.

“Thally, me go you? Paulie not gutter ball. Thorry,” droopy-eyed Wendy says, wrapping her strong arms around me.

“Sure, a course ya can come with me,” I say. “Just like always.” I feel like such a pill for yelling at the sweetest kid in the world. She’s a hunk of burnin’ love, that’s what our Wendy is. And so protective of me, which is a quality I