“Shut your trap, O’Malley,” Mary Lane shouts as she springs up off the bench. “Her missin’ Sampson is not any loonier than you tellin’ everybody to call you Leeze.”
Troo made Mary Lane and me go see An American in Paris with her during old-timey movie week up at the Uptown Theatre. My sister’s French problem got even worse after that. She wants all of us to call her Leeze now, which was the name of the girl star in that movie, and if we don’t, she’ll give you an Indian burn that’ll sting for days because that’s another thing she perfected at camp.
“Fuck you, Lane,” Troo says. She loves all words that begin with the letter f but this is her absolute favorite. “You’re always stickin’ your monkey nose in where it don’t belong.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mary Lane yells. “If my ma wasn’t already married, she… she wouldn’t be livin’ in sin the way yours is, I can tell ya that.”
Mary Lane’s not the only one, a lotta people in the neighborhood are saying that about Mother because her and Dave are living under the same roof and aren’t married. Not yet anyway. They were supposed to get hitched right after high school, but that wedding got called off because Dave’s mother, who was dying from tuberculosis at the time, thought that our mother was just another Mick in an ankle bracelet and wasn’t good enough for her Danish boy. Ignoring the orders of an about-to-die person is the worst thing you can do in life. I should know. Dave had to honor his mother’s wishes and not just because he didn’t want to be haunted; it’s the Fourth Commandment. So better late than never. They’re planning to say their I do’s right after the annulment letter from the Pope comes in the mail. They need the go-ahead from His Holiness because Mother can’t get a divorce. Not the way Lutherans do. The only other thing a Catholic woman can do if she doesn’t want to be married anymore to a louse like Hall Gustafson is to pray that he gets stabbed in the neck with a fork when he’s serving his time.
“Sorry ’bout that livin’ in sin crack,” Mary Lane leans in and says to me in a much nicer voice. She didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, just Troo’s. Mary Lane hasn’t figured out yet that’s impossible. On both counts.
Sampson is getting very riled up. He musta heard Troo calling me names because he’s started putting on a show. Beating his chest and waving.
I wave back at him like I always do, only much slower and sadder.
Troo swats my hand down. “How many times do I gotta tell ya? He’s not… he’s just a stupid gorilla shooin’ away flies and… and don’t start up with how he’s singin’ Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
Mary Lane pushes her flat face into my sister’s beautiful one and says, “You got the heart of a jackal,” and then she shoves Troo, who shoves her back and two pokes later they are rolling around on the grass behind the bench. Mary Lane can pound the snot outta most anybody and Troo likes to fight more than ever, so I can count on these 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 alclass="underline" 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.)