I said, “Mary Lane told me that Father Jim and Mr. Gary are in love and ran away to California together to get married. Is that true?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. “Yeah… it is.”
“Do you think that’s okay?”
“Not sure. How ’bout you?”
I thought for a bit. “I think it’s okay to be with somebody you love. Even if other people think it’s not okay.”
Mr. Dave musta gotten something in his eyes ’cause he took out his handkerchief and took some time to wipe ’em off. “You know, you were really brave today. But the next time you need somebody to believe you, come to me.”
“But I wasn’t brave,” I said sadly. “I was scared to death.”
“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, Sally.” He was stroking my braid. “Brave means you’re scared and you do it anyway. Everybody gets scared.”
“Do you?”
“I was scared for a long, long time,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “But I’m feeling a whole lot better now.”
The crickets were going crazy, and next door Ethel was humming some low tune while she was doing the supper dishes. I hoped Mrs. Galecki thought it was okay about her boy being in love with Father Jim. I was pretty sure she would be. Mrs. Galecki loved her late-blooming Gary, and when you love somebody you’re supposed to love them no matter what, right? Even if they are light in their loafers or what Ethel said-a royal queen.
“What’s gonna happen to Bobby?” I asked.
Mr. Dave stared up to the sky for a bit and then said softly, “He’s dead, Sal. We think the fall broke Bobby’s neck.” He looked down at me with our green eyes. “Sampson took Bobby up to the top of the cage and wouldn’t let him go, like he was holding on to him for us. Mr. Lane had to shoot him with a sleeping dart so the ambulance drivers could get Bobby’s body out of there.”
Sampson. You are magnificent!
I didn’t feel bad for Bobby at all. He got just what he had comin’ to him. Maybe I felt a little bad for him because that would be the charitable thing to do, but then I remembered how he growled at me and how he murdered and molested Junie and Sara and what he’d done to Troo’s head and I thought, aw, the heck with being charitable.
We sat there some more and didn’t talk. Then Mr. Dave gently put his arm around me and pulled me closer to him. That was the first time he’d ever done that and it hardly felt weird at all.
Later, after I’d had my bath, Troo and me were spooned under the sheets that smelled sun sweet in our new bed with a wooden headboard and a white chenille spread. And across the room there was something I’d always wanted, and I wondered how Mr. Dave knew to get it for me. It was an aquarium that had a small chest of gold half buried in some shockingly pink gravel and loads of minnow-looking fish and a few called angelfish, which were my favorite. It was a lot like Dottie’s aquarium, so Mr. Dave musta gone up to the Five and Dime.
I was rubbing Troo’s back and staring at the tank and thinking about Dottie and how sad she must be without her mother and father. And how sad they were without her and why, just why did people do some of the things they did?
“This has really been a summer to remember, right, Sal?”
“Right, Troo.”
“You know, Rasmussen’s not even close to being as good as Daddy.”
“I know.”
“Not even close.”
“Not even close.”
Next door, Ethel had moved out to the screened-in porch with Ray Buck. They were listening to some of that jazzy music and every once in a while the two of them laughed and the sound of ice knocked around in their tall metal glasses.
Troo yawned and said, “Night, Sal.”
“Night, Troo.”
One of these summer nights, my sister had stopped sucking her fingers, but she still had her baby doll clutched in her hand. As Troo’s sleeping breath filled the room, Annie and I watched as the fish swam back and forth through that glimmery aquarium water and over that little golden chest, not knowing at all what was inside. I dreamt that I discovered buried treasure that night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
After the newspapermen came and took our pictures and Dr. Sullivan got rid of Mary Lane’s tapeworm, which it turned out was why she was so skinny (she wanted to tell us every icky detail until Troo and me couldn’t stand it another minute), the rest of the summer days unwound just the way they had before we’d started locking our doors.
The Vliet Street kids went back to playing red light, green light, even Fast Susie Fazio, who’d decided she wasn’t too old after all and told us a fantastic story on the O’Haras’ steps about Barb the counselor and her brother Johnny, who she’d caught up in the attic playing “hide the salami.”
We walked over to the lagoon a couple of times so Troo could hide under the weeping willow tree and I could do a little fishing. Troo wasn’t smoking anymore. Mother had smelled it on her and told her if she ever caught her again she’d be smoking on another part of her body. Her derriere. While I fished, not far from the red rowboats, which the park said they weren’t gonna have anymore after that summer because they were just too rotted, I thought of Sara and Junie. Especially Junie and how if she was still alive she’d be me and Troo’s cousin and we didn’t have any of those and now we never would.
Troo was still not adjusting so great to Mr. Dave even though they both loved that little dog Lizzie, which I found out had been named after me, Sally Elizabeth O’Malley. But you know what Mr. Dave did, even though Troo was giving him such a hard time? He went out to peeing Jerry Amberson’s house and got Butchy back for her. And now Butchy had the hots for Lizzy.
Before I knew it, August was coming to a close. Before long Sister Imelda would be standing in front of our classroom with that ruler in her hand. So when I wasn’t messin’ around with Troo or Mary Lane or sittin’ out in the backyard with Mother reading to her out of my Secret Garden book (which I would highly recommend to anyone) or helping Mr. Dave pull weeds and water, I finished off my essay.
“How I Spent My Charitable Summer” by Sally Elizabeth O’Malley (Part 2)
There were a lot of charitable things going on this summer on Vliet Street. Mr. Dave took Troo and me to the state fair and we had the best time. The freak show was excellent this year with a woman who was 106 years old and a man that had no legs but could walk on his hands. Troo spent a lot of the night talking to the fat lady, who she learned was a really nice woman named Vera from Moline, Illinois, who said she was just born fat so she made being fat her job. Wasn’t that the best occupation? Troo asked me later over cotton candy. So I think Troo has given up on being a carhop up at The Milky Way or a ventriloquist or Sal Mineo and now wants to be a fat lady when she grows up. Mr. Dave won both of us huge matching teddy bears by knocking over milk bottles. And we went on the roller coaster and the Whip and the Tilt-A-Whirl and my favorite, the horses on the merry-go-round. Mr. Dave bought Troo and me our own box of cream puffs that they made at the state fair and only the state fair and he bought another box for Ethel and Mrs. Galecki. And, of course, we got a cream puff for Mother, who did not end up dying after all. Which was very charitable of her. And me. (Because I really, really wanted to eat Mother’s cream puff on the way home from the fair.)
Nell and Eddie are going to get married after she graduates from Yvonne’s School of Beauty, and they have a surprise package being delivered who they are going to call Elvis if it’s a boy and Peggy Sue if it’s a girl.
I think Mother and Mr. Dave are also going to get married after they have a talk with the Pope, but they are not planning on having a baby. Mother has been home from the hospital for two weeks, resting in the special room Mr. Dave set up in our house for her. It is downstairs because she is still weak and has to rest and maybe she might never walk again, Dr. Sullivan says, because her legs got too shrunk up, but I don’t believe him because he does not know how ornery Mother can be. Her room overlooks the yard that has lots of sun and flowers, especially red geraniums that Mr. Dave knew all along were Mother’s favorite. Mr. Kenfield came over to visit Mother and brought over a paper sack full of candy bars and said we had to give one to Mother every day to fatten her back up since they had gone to high school together. They also had a long talk and I think it was about Dottie.