Sampson was watching us carefully, foot tapping. I always thought he was singing to himself “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” That was one of Ethel Jenkins’s favorite songs and she taught it to me. Ethel lived over on Fifty-second Street with Mrs. Galecki and was my and Troo’s other best friend.
“Hey, Mary Lane, you know about that Bookworm ladder? You really aren’t gonna tell Kambowski that I cheated, are you?” Troo asked this real sweetly, like she can when she wants something real bad. Granny calls it her dolly voice.
Mary Lane turned toward Troo. “Yeah, I am.”
The lion roared and a couple of flamingos ran for cover.
Troo said, “Are you sure you want to do that? I’d feel real bad if you accidentally fell into the pit and they didn’t find you until feeding time. Or if Sampson was hungry right this minute”-she lowered her voice-“they might never find anything but your bones.”
So I guess gorillas did eat people but Sampson would be pretty disappointed if he ate Mary Lane, who had as much meat on her as a coat hanger.
Troo nudged Mary Lane a little closer until the tips of her half-undone high-top black tennis shoes, the ones she always had on, were half over the pit and half on the grass.
“You ain’t gonna push me in, are you?” she asked. Troo was up close behind her so she couldn’t escape.
“Thinkin’ about it,” Troo said, spitting her gum down toward the pit so Mary Lane would completely understand exactly how far she would fall. (I wouldn’t have let Troo push her in, just so you know that about me.)
“Go ahead,” Mary Lane said, and squished her eyes closed.
“Are you tellin’ me you don’t care if I push you in this pit and you’d probably die and go to purgatory for all eternity for the millions of lies you told?” Troo asked, amazed.
“I never been to a movie theater and I want them passes and the popcorn and soda.” Mary Lane took a big breath and held it. “I’ll die to defend them. And I never told a lie in my life, Troo O’Malley.”
“That’s your biggest lie ever,” Troo said, and she looked at me and I looked at her and we both turned our heads back to Mary Lane, who was beginning to remind me very much of St. Joan of Arc.
“Okay, okay, I was just kiddin’ around.” Troo laughed and pulled Mary Lane away from the edge. “Go ahead, tell Kambowski.” Right away, because of the mental telepathy, I knew that Troo was workin’ on another one of her plans that would involve a librarian and an obituary.
Mary Lane stepped back and looked over at Troo like nothing at all had just happened. “You know who Sara Heinemann is?”
“Of course,” Troo said, and then we went to sit down on the green park bench across from Sampson. Troo handed out pieces of Dubble Bubble that she always seemed to have.
Mary Lane stuck the gum in her mouth and said, “She’s missing.”
“W hatta ya mean?” I asked, trying to read the Pud comic that came in the gum.
“Just what I said. Sara’s missing. Been gone for a couple of days now,” Mary Lane said. “My dad told me not to talk to any strangers.”
I closed my eyes, trying to picture the girl I thought might be Sara Heinemann. “She the third-grader with the blond ponytail that likes dodgeball so much?”
Mary Lane nodded. “She lives four houses down from me, right next to Judy Big Head. (Mary Lane was not being uncharitable. That really was Judy’s last name. She was an Indian.) “Sara’s probably been kidnapped just like I was.”
Troo rolled her eyeballs at me. Last summer, Mary Lane had told us that she’d been kidnapped by Germans who wore hardly any clothing and they forced her to make pot-holders all day long and she only escaped by swimming across a huge lake full of slimy trout. What really happened is her parents sent her to camp up in Rhinelander. So this story about Sara Heinemann missing was just another one of her big fibs that you had to expect from her. For some reason I could never figure out, a lot of Mary Lane’s lies were about kidnapping. And weenies.
“She’ll probably turn up, she probably just got lost. That happens all the time,” I said. But what I was really thinking was that if Mary Lane was right and Sara really did get kidnapped, they probably would never find her alive again. That’s how it’d been with Junie. First she went missing and then they found her dead body over at the lagoon. I worried for a while after Junie’s funeral that somebody would kidnap Troo. Granny took me home and made me cinnamon toast and told me not to be such a worrywart. That murders like that, like what happened to Junie Piaskowski, that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Granny was usually never wrong. Then again, like she always said, there’s a first time for everything.
“You know what I’d like to do?” I said, looking at Sampson’s sad eyes. “I’d like to kidnap him and take him back to his family.”
Mary Lane laughed and said, “You know, O’Malley, that’s a weird kid thing to say. Kidnapping a gorilla and taking him home. That’s weird.”
She should talk about weird.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Troo said. “And on the way there, we could stop in France.”
Mary Lane started laughing again until Troo smacked her a good one and said, “What’s so funny about France?”
“What the hell do you know about France?” Mary Lane asked, not rubbing her arm.
“As a matter of fact,” Troo said, “I know quite a bit about France.”
“Sure you do.” Mary Lane slid off the bench, outta Troo’s reach.
“France is where they speak the language of love,” I said, staring at Sampson.
“Oui,” Troo said quietly.
“We what?” Mary Lane said.
“Aw, shut up,” Troo said, “before I change my mind about pushin’ you in the pit.” They were up on their feet now, toe to toe. Mary Lane shoved Troo and took off. I held Troo’s arms behind her back so she couldn’t go chase after her. She was madder than a hatter. When she finally broke loose, she spun around and got up real close to my face and yelled, “Sally O’Malley… your days are numbered.”
As usual, my Troo genius was right.
CHAPTER SIX
That tasted like crap,” Hall hollered. He was sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, the ash falling onto the nice white plates that Mother had saved S &H Green Stamps for a whole year to buy. Nell had tried to make us supper again, but the tuna noodle casserole with potato chips on top ended up very black and the peas in the can she had cooked on the stove had no water in them and even the applesauce didn’t taste right.
Mother had been in the hospital for over two weeks and she’d always done all the talking to Hall, so the three of us didn’t know what to say to him. Mostly, I just tried not to look at his white T-shirt that didn’t have sleeves so you could see that MOTHER tattoo laying against the muscles in his arm. His wavy Swedish hair looked like it did right when he woke up in the morning. And the sweat in the silky hair under his arms smelled like all the beer he’d been drinking.
Hall had another puff of his cigarette and said to us like we were deaf, “You know, I don’t hafta take care of the three of you. You’re not even mine.”
Nell said, “May I be excused?” and tried to stand up to clear the dishes, but Hall grabbed her arm and grumbled, “Sit your ass back down.” But then he changed his mind and said, “Never mind, go get me a beer,” and he shoved Nell so hard that she fell against the stove and her daisy sundress went up around her waist.
My eyes started to burn and Troo was looking down at the floor and licking her lips hard and fast, like she did when she got nervous. She musta been sneakin’ into Mother’s room because I could see a bit of that cherry red lipstick stuck in the corners of her mouth and I could smell Evening in Paris. Nell’s face looked like she had a fever when she pulled her dress down and then got up and opened the refrigerator. There was nothing much in there so that Pabst Blue Ribbon was easy to find. Hall wasn’t giving Nell hardly any grocery money. “It’s not my fault,” she’d shouted last night. Troo’d been getting so cranky about eating nothing but pigs in a blanket that she’d thrown one at Nell and gotten mustard all over her poodle skirt so it looked like it piddled.