“But… how would he get back here?” I ask. I’ve given this a lot of thought in the middle of the night. “Ya know, his polio leg.”
Mary Lane pulls out one of the bananas she’s always got in her shorts pocket and says, “Well, he for sure couldn’t walk all the way here. Green Bay is really far away. My father took me to a Packers game up there once and we had to stop three times on the way so I could go to the bathroom.”
That’s such a relief to hear. That makes me breathe a lot easier.
“But you know what could happen?” Mary Lane says, after taking a big banana bite. “A Good Samaritan could see that greaseball hunch limpin’ along the highway and offer him a ride.”
“But-”
“Go, O’Malley,” and “Ya sissy, O’Hara. Ya can’t beat a girl?” the kids watching shout.
The tetherball rope is wound around the pole close to the top and Troo’s got her victory smile on.
Needing to get Mary Lane off the subject of Greasy Al before she tells me something else I don’t want to hear, I make a whew sound and brag to her, “Looks like she’s got it in the bag. Thank God.” Her and just about everybody in the neighborhood knows what a sore loser my sister is. She hates ties, too.
Mary Lane chuckles. “’Member how my dad had to break up her and Artie at the Fourth picnic last year?”
Of course I do. Troo tied with Artie Latour for best costume. He grabbed the genuine Davy Crockett cap off the prize table before she could so the two of them got into one of those roll-around-on-the-ground wrestling matches. After he pried them apart, Mr. Lane, who was one of the judges, awarded Troo the cap. Artie has tried plenty of times to get it back, but she tells him she lost it, which is not the truth. It’s under our mattress. See, it’s not about the cap for my sister or even winning. It’s about having something somebody else wants with all their heart that is the real prize for Troo.
Mary Lane licks her fingers clean and shoves the banana peel back into her pocket. “What’re ya doin’ for the parade this year?” she asks. “Are ya just gonna watch or are ya gonna find something to decorate?”
Before I can answer, the new counselor, perky Debbie Weatherly, juts her head in between us and says, “Were you girls just talking about the Fourth?” She knows darn well we were. She’s been buzzing around us like we’re daisies and she’s a bee. Like we’re Mouseketeers and she’s Roy. “Did you hear that we’re having a party the day before the parade and there’s going to be plenty of decorating and it’s all free!”
“Free?” Mary Lane says with a lot of suspicion, but because I’m her best friend, I can also hear the hope in her voice. I don’t know why, but her family seems poorer than the rest of ours. “Ya givin’ away bikes, too?”
The counselor slaps the top of her legs and yips, “Free bikes? Ha… ha… ha. You slay me.”
Peppy Debbie doesn’t know how close to the truth that is. You don’t ever want to be the one crossing Mary Lane. While I like her for her patience with my flights of imagination and her love of animals and we both watch the same television shows, the part of her that makes her Troo’s best friend is what they have in common-a love of revenge.
Mary Lane shoots back at Debbie, “For your information, I don’t need a bike. I was just makin’ sure ya weren’t givin’ any away. I’d have to tell my butler to build another room onto the mansion to keep it in if you were.” (By butler, she means her father, whose middle name really is Butler so she uses that one a lot. And by mansion, she means the drafty old Lane house, which is on the largish side, but needs a ton of repairs.)
Debbie’s face goes blank. I’ve seen this happen before. Mary Lane’s no-tripper stories can hypnotize you if you’re not used to them. People’s eyes go glassy, and if they have a slack jaw like Debbie does, it will go as unhinged as the Latours’ back gate.
“You New York turd,” my sister yells from behind me. “Quit hittin’ so high over my head!”
The tide has turned at the tetherball pole. Willie’s got my sister right where he wants her and it’s making her foot-stomping mad. It’s never a good idea for Troo to get so worked up. I’ll have to rub her back for over an hour tonight and she’ll make me sneak into the kitchen to get cookies out of the jar and will eat them on my side of the bed if I don’t do something. I step up to her side and start helping her out against big-boned Willie.
Between hits, O’Hara shouts, “Two against one! Do something, Debbie!”
A gasp goes through the line of kids. What I’m doing is against playground rules, but what Willie just said is worse. He knows better than to ask an outsider for help.
Snapping out of the trance that Mary Lane’s story put her in, Debbie is about step in and referee. But when she comes marching toward Troo and me, Mary Lane takes the banana peel out of her pocket, tosses it on the ground and up, up Debbie goes. She doesn’t fall down, but her arms are flapping like mad when she stumbles back to Mary Lane and asks, “Why… what did you do that for?” like she can’t imagine, and really, she can’t. I don’t think she understands us Westsiders. We aren’t like the rich people who live on the opposite side of the city like she does. We can get especially hard to deal with during the summer when we get even hotter under our collars. We don’t have Lake Michigan to cool us off the way Eastsiders do.
“I’m tellin’ ya for the last time,” Mary Lane warns Debbie. “Keep your stuck-up nose outta our business. We don’t need your help. We fight our own battles around here.”
Willie O’Hara hollers again, “But… they’re cheatin’!” and smashes the tetherball with all he’s got.
No matter how hard we’re hitting, the O’Malley sisters are just not strong enough to keep the ball from winding up to the top of the pole with a mean sounding snap!
So fast, the crowd of kids goes quiet. They know the same way I do that something bad is about to happen. Like in a gunfight in an OK Corral movie, they’re watching and waiting the way the townspeople do to see whose side they should jump over to, except for Mary Lane who is rubbing her hands together, getting fired up to pound the daylights out of whoever she thinks needs it the most. She’s eyeballing Debbie.
Troo breaks the silence by saying, “Just so you know, O’Hara, I let you win… ya fat cow.” She spins toward the rest of the gang. “And you… all of ya… you’re not fit to lick my boots. You’re nothin’ but… cookie factory riffraff.”
Now, if we really were in the Old West, these kids would already be throwing bottles at my sister from a saloon window or from the alley next to the blacksmith’s barn and, honestly, as much as I adore her, I might pick up a rusty horseshoe and toss it at her, too-when she wasn’t looking, of course.
My sister gets a kick out of my imitations every so often and it’s all I can think to do before a rumble starts. These factory kids know how to fight.
I lower my voice as far as I can, and say just like John Wayne does to his sidekick when they’re in trouble, “I got your backside, Troo.”
Mary Lane and a couple of the other kids in the crowd chuckle, but my sister doesn’t. She shoves her beret to the back of her head and tells me very ornery, “What did ya say?”
She’s got excellent hearing, so I don’t get what she means at first, but then I do. I waddle around the pole the way Mr. Wayne would, like he’s wearing a diaper that needs changing. “I mean… I got your derriere, Leeze.”
For the longest time, all I can hear is my fast breathing and my heart knocking against my ribs, but then my sister starts hunh… hunh… hunhing and yells, “Fuck all a ya and…” She elbows me.