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