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.)
After Henry gets done stirring the long spoon in the tall glasses and it makes that great clanking sound, he sets our phosphates down in front of us. Mine looks especially scrumptious. Because he is my boyfriend, he gave me extra squirts of chocolate.
He bends across the counter and says quietly, “Have you guys heard about Greasy Al Molinari?”
“For cryin’ out loud, Henry,” I say. “You know we have.”
Henry was there when Greasy Al jumped Troo last summer in front of the drugstore after the Fourth of July celebration. Molinari has a gimpy polio leg, but his arms are the size of a side of beef. That bully punched my sister and almost broke her nose when he was trying to steal her bike. The only reason she wasn’t beaten to a pulp is because Henry took a gun outta the cash register and waved it in Greasy Al’s pepperoni-smelling face and Mr. Fitzpatrick, who heard me screaming, came rushing outta the store and called Officer Dave Rasmussen and he had Molinari sent to reform school.
Dave’s always coming up with good ideas like that. He’s also the one who suggested that Troo and me should make a list of ideas on how to spend our vacation.
My THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER list is:
1. Never, ever take my eyes off Troo.
2. Practice not blinking.
3. Help Mother.
4. Write my charitable story.
5. Read to Mrs. Galecki on Wednesdays.
6. Visit Granny every Friday.
7. Spend as much time as I can with Henry.
8. Try not to have so many flights of imagination. Pay attention to the details!
9. Work harder to keep my sunny side up!
My sister’s THINGS TO DO THIS SUMMER list is:
1. Figure out more ways to get back at Molinari.
Troo used to do that by standing in front of Molinari’s house and singing the Banana Boat song, changing the words to: Daaago… da… da… da… daaago, but since Greasy Al got shipped off to reform school she can’t do that anymore, so she came up with the next best way to torture him. She writes to him every Friday, she hasn’t missed once. Her letters always say the same thing. So she doesn’t get writer’s cramp, Troo uses carbon paper:
Dear Greasy Al,
I hope you get polio again and somebody kicks the plug out of your iron lung in the middle of the night.
Fuck you for all eternity.
Troo O’Malley
My sister rips the top off a straw wrapper with her teeth and asks Henry very ho-hum, “What about that goombah?” but she can’t fool me. She may be acting cool, daddy, cool, but Molinari is the most important subject there is to her.
Henry takes a quick peek to the back of the store and says, “I heard something about him at the game last night.” Since there are no pharmacists teams, his father plays catcher on the police baseball team with a “special dispensation” like you can get up at church when you want to do something that’s not allowed by the rules. I wanted to go last night because I knew that Henry would be there, but Troo didn’t want to stare at Dave for an hour and a half so we stayed home. “Officer Rasmussen told my pops something about-”
Troo blows the straw wrapper at Henry and hits him in the forehead. “Don’t you mean Detective Rasmussen?” she says, snotty that Dave doesn’t walk around our neighborhood in a blue uniform anymore wearing badge number 343. He wears shirts open at the neck and sits behind a desk at the police station until something worse than kids ringing doorbells or a dog biting a mailman happens and it makes my sister so mad he got that promotion.