Whistling In The Dark Part 13

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

When Eddie and Nell hopped down Delancey's Corner Store steps, Troo turned a pretend key on her lips and threw it out the window. It was her way of telling me to keep my mouth locked up tight about her knowing who the murderer and molester was. A warning not to say anything to Nell or Eddie. She wanted to keep it hush-hush between the O'Malley sisters.

Eddie handed me and Troo a c.o.ke through the car window and then the other two that were left in the carton. "Give those to Granny and Uncle Paulie." I guessed that getting married agreed with Eddie, because he was sure acting more grown-up. Almost like Mr. Anderson in Father Knows Best.

He drove down ten houses and parked the Chevy under the big oak tree in front of Granny's house that she called a bungalow, which is just another word for the smallest kind of place that a person could live in. Granny could've used a much larger house because she was a big woman both up and out, especially in her arms, which had a lot of flappy skin hangin' off of them. But her face hardly had any lines and her hair was thick and white like homemade bread and she kept it in a pageboy. She also had perfect teeth that she kept in a gla.s.s full of water when she wasn't using them. If you ever met her you might think to yourself that she reminded you a lot of that guy on the dollar bill.

"Don't take too long, we have to be at the hospital by eleven," Nell called after I'd gotten out of the car. "Dr. Sullivan is going to meet us there and tell us all about Mother. And don't tell Granny about Eddie and me, I want to surprise her."

Seemed like n.o.body wanted me to tell anybody about nothin'.

I knocked on Granny's front door that coulda used some paint and waited for Uncle Paulie to answer it, which he always did, because Granny moved so slow with her crippled knees that you could be sitting on that porch until the cows came home if you waited for her. When he pushed open the screen door, I said, "Hi, Uncle Paulie."

He had on what he always had on, tan pants and a white T-s.h.i.+rt that showed off his pretzel-rod arms with the most pale freckles of anybody I'd ever seen. His hair was thick red and started back on his head a bit and looked like it should belong to an entirely different person.

"Peek-a-boo, Troo."

"No, I'm Sally, remember, Uncle Paulie? Troo has red hair just like yours." I sort of pushed past him and went looking for Granny. She was in the kitchen filling up her copper teapot with water.

"Hi, Granny. Got a present for you." I pulled open her refrigerator and put the c.o.kes inside for later. Granny loved Coca-Cola. Drank almost a whole six-pack every day. It gave her vim and vigor, she said.

Granny's thyroid-condition eyes got bigger when she said, "Well, h.e.l.lo there, Sally. What a nice surprise. Care for a cuppa?" She didn't hug me or anything. Granny didn't go in for hugs.

"No, thank you. I can't stay long. Troo and Eddie and Nell are waiting for me in the car. We're going to see-"

"Peek-a-boo, Troo! Peek-a-boo, Daddy!" Uncle Paulie came up behind and put his hands over my eyes.

I peeled off his fingers that smelled of glue and sort of laughed out of politeness, but I was thinking that Uncle Paulie was getting weirder and weirder by the minute and maybe Granny should put him in the orphanage up on Lisbon Avenue.

"That's enough now, son," Granny said. "You go back into your room and work on your houses."

Uncle Paulie said down to the floor, "Okay, Ma."

Granny waited until Uncle Paulie shuffled off and then said, "So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

"Mother is getting better. Nell says she is over the hump," I said, excited to tell her such good news about her sick daughter.

"You're a day late and a dollar short, Sally m'girl." Granny reached up to the cupboard and took out one of those dainty teacups she had that were from the old country. "Officer Rasmussen has stopped by almost every day that your mother has been in the hospital to tell me how she was doing."

I must've made quite the face because Granny smiled.

"Why'd he do that?" I asked.

The copper pot whistled and Granny switched the burner off. "I thought you knew that Dave Rasmussen and your mother were friends."

That was one of the main things I really loved about Granny. She knew a lot of stuff about everybody who lived in the neighborhood and she was never shy about telling you. Like the fact that Brownie McDonald got kicked out of the seminary for drinking up all the Communion wine and that Mrs. Delancey from the corner store used to be Sh.e.l.ly the Snake Girl in a dancing club downtown. (I think that's why Mrs. Delancey gave Granny half off on her Coca-Cola, to keep that to herself.) "So Officer Rasmussen, he's a good egg?" I asked her.

"Always has been. Even if he is Danish." Granny didn't have much use for anybody that wasn't Irish. "And his father was a good egg, too. Ernie, his name was."

Watching her pour that water over her tea bag, I suddenly realized how much I'd been missing her. It felt so nice to sit at her little kitchen table with the uneven legs and listen to her go on and on about the people we knew. Just like the good old days. I so wished for a minute that Granny was the hugging kind.

"You know the Rasmussen family used to own the cookie factory," Granny said. "Sold it to some big company from out East in fifty-five."

I could hear Eddie beeping his ah oooga horn.

Granny stuck her spoon down into her sugar bear three heaping times and stirred it into her cup. "You knew that Dave and Helen were engaged a long time ago, right?"

I did not! Being friends was one thing. Rasmussen and Mother engaged? Like Nell and Eddie? Granny must have that wrong. "Engaged to be married?"

"Oh, yes. They had the wedding date all picked out. But Dave's mother, Gertie, who always thought too highly of herself, by the way, told Dave that he could do better than Helen. That Helen wasn't high-cla.s.s enough for him." Granny made a tsking noise. "Never did like Gertie Rasmussen. Always lording her money over everybody. And very vain about her legs, which were quite nice, but not that nice."

Granny poured a little milk into the cup until it was creamy tan and then came and sat down next to me. "But then Dave broke it off because as much as he loved Helen, he didn't think it would be right to go against his mother's wishes since Gertie was sick with tuberculosis by then. So your mother married Nell's father, instead."

Once again, for the millionth time, I was so amazed by the way grown-ups knew things that kids didn't and how good they were at keeping those things on the q.t.

Uncle Paulie was whistling "Pop Goes the Weasel" in his bedroom. And Eddie honked his horn again.

"I thought after Nell's father died that Helen and Dave would get married then," Granny said, blowing on her tea.

"But your mother married your daddy instead because she was still mad at Dave for not going against Gertie."

You had to watch Granny sometimes. She could give you blarney and I thought I'd caught her. "If that's all true, then why didn't Mother marry Rasmussen after Daddy died?"

"Well, like I always say, my girl Helen can be as ornery as a pack mule with a bad back. She got that from her father, by the way. Stubborn runs worse in the Riley family than a pair of cheap nylons." She took a nice full sip from her cup. "In other words, Sally, your mother was too proud. She was having a lot of money problems because your daddy didn't leave her anything but a pile of bills and you girls. Helen didn't want Dave to know how bad off she was. A slice of humble pie right about then would've solved all her problems."

Granny let loose a long Irish sigh. "Helen always was willing to cut off her nose to spite her face."

Why, for G.o.d's sake, would Mother cut off her nose? "Then Hall showed up," Granny grumbled.Mop "Then Hall showed up," Granny grumbled.

Oh boy. This was goin' to take a while. Granny couldn't stand Hall. "Think of how desperate your mother must've been to marry a shoe salesman she only knew for two months. You'd think she would've been a little marriage shy by that time, eh?" She gave me a sip of her tea. "You know what I always say about that marriage, Sal?"

Yes, I did. Over and over again. "Once bitten, twice shy?"

The car horn beeped again and you could tell by how long he held it down that Eddie was getting really sick and tired of waiting.

"Exactly." Granny heard the horn, too. "Sounds like Eddie is having a hard time keepin' his s.h.i.+rt on." And then under her breath, it sounded like she said, "And his pants." She held up her hands. "Before you go, just rinse out those socks in the bathroom sink. My arthritis is really acting up today." Her hands did look like claws or something so I knew she wasn't faking, which she did sometimes. When she didn't want to do something, she'd tell me she was having "palpitations," and since there was no way I could tell if she was having palpitations, I did it because I didn't want to think about what kind of trouble I'd be in if Granny got palpitated to death. "Paulie needs them socks for work tonight, so hurry it up," she said, pus.h.i.+ng me on the back toward the little hall. Granny was so dang bossy. This was who Mother inherited it from. Troo, too. And also that do-you-smell-dog-p.o.o.p look that she was givin' me.

"Okay, okay." I had that dumb feeling in my stomach about not getting over to see Granny more often and also thinking mean thoughts about Uncle Paulie's weirdness, so I walked into the bathroom and stuck my hands into the cold gray water. I took out the first black sock and wrung it and hung it on this wooden drying stick Granny had in the tub. Then I reached down into the water again and pulled out another, and when I did I happened to get a look at myself in the mirror above the sink. My nose was sunburned and my hair had gotten almost as white as Granny's. I looked a little older, I thought. Eddie beeped again, this one so long that it got into my head and that was all I could hear, so I hurried and squeezed the water out of the next sock and turned to hang it up on the . . . Oh my G.o.d. Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph! It was a pink-and-green argyle.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

Uncle Paulie is not a murderer and a molester," Troo said, trying not to let her poofy lips move. She'd seen this ventriloquist on The Perry Como Show and had changed her mind about working up at The Milky Way. Now when she grew up Troo wanted to be either Edgar Bergen or Sal Mineo. Either or. But with a leaning toward Edgar Bergen since Troo said that all that drumming might give you a headache and it would be real funny to be able to throw your voice like that. You could get some people in trouble if you could do that.

We were sitting on these plastic chairs with metal legs over in the waiting area. Nell and Eddie were talking to the desk lady in the lobby of St. Joe's. Troo had her Nell tattletale list rolled up in her hand.

"Big deal if Uncle Paulie has some of those socks," Troo said. "Lots of people have pink-and-green argyles. Willie had some on last week. And Johnny Fazio had some on at supper last night. Even Bobby at the playground wears 'em."

"Yeah, but . . . ," I tried to say.

"I think the murderer is . . ." Troo swiveled her head around to make sure n.o.body had snuck up on her, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that even if they did, they probably wouldn't be able to understand a darn thing she was saying. I sure couldn't. "I think it's Reese Latour. It's just bubbling inside him, trying to get out. Reese is evil, Sal. Real honest to devil evil." She ran her hands down her arms, trying to warm up her goose pimples. "Did I tell you that he pulled Fast Susie's bikini top down last week when she was suntanning in the backyard?"

I shook my head.

She s.h.i.+vered. "Reese could murder and molest with his eyes closed."

"Yeah, well, we'll just see," I said quietly, because Nell and Eddie were coming back and I didn't want to make too big a deal out of it because now I was pretty sure that Rasmussen was not the guilty party and I had been so sure he was. So I figured if I might be wrong about Rasmussen, I might be wrong about Uncle Paulie. I didn't want to get everybody all riled up. Especially since Troo was right about Reese Latour. If you opened him up and looked inside, his heart would not be red and bursting with love. It would be rotting maggot hateful black. Reese would murder and molest in a breeze. I hoped Troo was right. Everybody would be a lot better off if Reese went to jail. Especially poor Artie, who wouldn't have to listen to Reese telling people that he was a harelip, like they couldn't see that for themselves. And even worse than that was the way Reese treated Wendy and called her the idiot and made fun of the way she talked. And that was not even taking into account the way Reese always looked at Troo, like he had the hots for her . . . it gave me the honest-to-G.o.d skin-crawling creeps. Yeah, Reese Latour could definitely be the murderer and molester.

"Okay, we're gonna meet Dr. Sullivan upstairs," Nell called over to us from the information desk.

We got in the elevator and Nell pressed the number three b.u.t.ton. She looked so grown-up in her A-line dress and made-up face. Eddie had gotten fancy for the funeral, too. He had on a checkered sports coat that was way too big for him and a tie with a Chevy car on it, but he didn't stink of gas like he usually did. Instead he stunk of English Leather. And then the elevator doors slid open, and for a second I was afraid to get out. This was the floor that Daddy and Troo had been on after the crash. I remembered the picture of Jesus and his bleeding heart that was hanging on the wall outside the elevator. Troo did too, because she picked up my hand and squeezed it hard.

There was the tock tock tock of Nell's squash heels going down the hall, and that medicine smell, and the floor so s.h.i.+ny, and the sound of those nurses' thick white shoes. We turned into a room called a solarium that had magazines on tables and pictures of flowers on the walls. Sitting over by the big window was Mother in a wheelchair. I knew it was Mother because of her hair, but that's the only way I would've been able to tell because she looked skinnier than Mary Lane, which I woulda thought was humanly impossible. Not tan or strong at all. And something else seemed really different about her, not just the way she looked because she'd been sick.

"O'Malley sisters," Mother said real softly. She had on a pink robe that I'd never seen before and slippers with little pink pom-poms on them and her hair was tied back with a s.h.i.+ny pink ribbon. Dr. Sullivan was standing next to her, like he was protecting a newborn chicken.

Troo said, "Hi, Mother," but you could tell she was fantastically nervous by how hard she was licking her lips. "Nell did not take good care of me and Sally. I got a list I wanna show you."

Mother held her arms out to us and I didn't want to go into them because she looked so bony, but then I did and so did Troo. I couldn't even talk, tell her how glad I was that she hadn't died, that was how hard I was crying. Of course, Troo didn't cry. Not one teardrop.

"Doesn't she look in the pink?" Dr. Sullivan laughed at his joke and I thought it was a pretty good one considering how Mother was decked out. "Just terrific!"

Dr. Sullivan needed new peepers because Mother definitely looked a long way off from terrific, but I was just so glad to have her back that I hugged the doctor around his fat stomach, which was a lot harder than it looked.

"Why, thank you, Sally," the doctor said. (I'm sorry to have to say this, but his breath had not improved.) "How is that imagination of yours coming along?"

"Fine, Dr. Sullivan. Just fine." I really wished he had not brought that up in front of Mother. I was sort of mad now that I'd given him that hug.

He looked down at his watch that he kept hidden in his pocket on a chain and then out the solarium windows. Clouds that looked like fists had started to roll in. "It's going to rain again," he said. "Can't remember a summer we've had so much rain." Then he clapped his hands. "Well, I think that's quite enough excitement for one day. Let's get Helen back to bed. That was a close call, a very close call, girls. When your mother comes home, you're going to have to take very good care of her. Doctor's orders." And then he disappeared out the solarium door doing that penguin walk.

Nell put her hands on the back of the wheelchair and began to push, but Mother held up her hand to stop and said in a weak voice, "Nell, take Troo downstairs. I need to talk to Sally in private for a minute."

"Okay, but not too long," Nell scolded. "You heard what the doctor said." She kissed Mother on the head and said in a cute little voice, "I'm almost a hairdresser. When you come home I can wash and set your hair for you."

"That would be nice." Mother patted at her hair because she was sorta proud about it and had to know that it looked a little ratty. "Go on now, Nell."

"But what about my list?" Troo whined.

Mother said, "Give it to me, Troo. I'll look at it later." Troo handed her the tattle list, which was pretty ripped and dirty from all the use it was getting, then she gave me a jealousy look and shook Mother's hand good-bye, which was kinda funny.

Eddie stood up from the checkered couch that looked so much like his jacket that I forgot for a second he was even there. "Nice to see you again, Mrs. Gustafson." That was Hall's last name. Maybe Mother could change it back again to O'Malley now that Hall was going to the slammer.

"It's all right if you call me Mother." Helen put her hand on Nell's tummy. "After all, we're going to be family soon, Eddie." Nell's smile put sun back into the solarium. Eddie just shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the s.h.i.+ny floor and grinned.

"Okay, let's get this show on the road," Nell said, trying to pick up Troo's hand. Troo yanked it out, gave me one more jealousy look and then turned on her heel in a huff. Troo really couldn't stand coming in second place. A minute later Nell was yelling, "Troo O'Malley, you get your heinie back here," from down the hall, and I'd just bet Troo was givin' her the finger. Another new thing she learned from Fast Susie.

Mother and me were alone and I heard some thunder. "Sally, come closer." I had been standing a little ways away from her so I could pay attention to the details, like you do when you want to get a really good look at something. I sat down in a brown chair that had a plastic cover over it, right across from Mother.

"I have something to tell you," she said. Her eyes were sorta das.h.i.+ng around like the minnows in the cold lake near dead Gramma's house. That was a detail I would never miss because I had never seen Mother nervous before. It was probably because she was in the hospital, which could make anybody jittery. My own stomach felt like I had swallowed a handful of those Mexican jumping beans they just got in up at Kenfield's Five and Dime. I grabbed on to the arms of the chair and got prepared for Mother to give me a good talking-to about my imagination. Somebody musta told her that I was having a hard time with it. I was in for it now.

"I should've told you this a long time ago." Mother sighed one of those big sighs she always did. "And I'm still not sure the timing is right."

It was not like Mother to be not sure. She was always sure in a mad kind of way.

She gave me that sad-eyed look that she gave me when she thought I wasn't looking and then said, "Sometimes women get lonely when their husbands are away."

Mother looked so breakable, it made me feel protective of her like I did with Troo. I needed to make her feel stronger right away, so I announced nice and loud, "Daddy told me to tell you that he forgives you."

She turned her head my way. "What did you just say?"

"Right before Daddy died he told me to tell you that he forgives you and I'm sorry I haven't told you before this, but like you always say, timing is everything and I just couldn't find the time." I hunched up in my shoulders and sunk down farther into the brown chair, getting ready for her to yell at me. I figured out too late that was a bad idea, telling her Daddy forgave her, because she was not smiling or acting at all like this was good news. In fact, Mother did the most amazing thing. I had heard it at night, but I had never seen it. She started to cry. And it wasn't just a little sobbing . . . it was a great big gully washer. Right into her hands. The wedding ring that Hall had given her was gone, but there was a little green mark on her finger where it used to be.

I placed my hands on her knees, which felt like two tennis b.a.l.l.s, and just said, "Shhh . . . shhh . . . shhh."

Mother cried for a long, long time, her tears sliding down all over her face. But finally, she sort of sputtered out, "Thank you for telling me. That makes all the difference in the world." I was so relieved she wasn't gonna start hollering at me that I dug around in my pocket and found one of Troo's Kleenex carnation flowers and gave it to her.

"I've got a secret, too. This might be a big shock to you, Sal. A big shock. So be prepared." The clouds had let loose and the rain was attacking the windows and dying in squig gly lines. "I'm going to tell you why Officer Rasmussen has a picture of you in his wallet."

Oh no! Now I was going to have to tell her my suspicions about Rasmussen and she had already made these plans that we would go live with him and it was going to ruin everything when I told her I still thought, not as much as before, but it was still a very good possibility, that Rasmussen, her high school friend, had turned into a murderer and a molester.

She grabbed for my hands like I was an edge of a cliff she was falling off and said, "Dave Rasmussen is your father."

I waited for her to say something else, but she was just looking at me with her blue crater eyes and white, white face. "Oh, Mother, that's silly." I laughed even though I didn't think it was a very funny joke.

She opened her eyes wider and gave me the look where her mouth goes into a straight line. Her deadly serious look.

"Mother?" I got really afraid then and slid off that plastic-covered chair.

"Sally Elizabeth . . ."

Oh my Sky King. I need you!

Mother said real fast now, her words chasing each other out of her mouth, "I'm so sorry. I should have told you a long time ago . . . but for the longest time I wasn't even sure myself. It wasn't until you got a little older and . . . started to look so much like Dave . . . you have green eyes . . . but so did your aunt Faye . . . but then your blonde hair and dimples and . . . your daddy suspected . . . he didn't know for sure but . . ." She took my hands and pulled me back down into the chair and said in a whisper like it hurt her so bad to talk, "Paulie must've told Donny on the way home from the baseball game, the day of the crash . . . he must've . . ."

I was not Daddy's gal Sal. I was Rasmussen's gal Sal. "That doesn't change how much Daddy loved you." Mother dabbed at her eyes with Troo's carnation.

Rasmussen's gal Sal. With green eyes. Which were rare, Mother had always told me. Rasmussen had green eyes? Like mine?

"When Daddy was in the air force, Officer Rasmussen and I . . . well . . ." Mother gave me a sorry smile. "We just fell in love again. Do you know what that means?"

I stared at the window, at the rain starting and stopping and changing direction. Yes, I knew what it meant. Mother and Rasmussen sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage . . . then comes Sally in a baby carriage. I wanted to run down the hallway into the elevator and out of the hospital and onto the street and throw myself in front of that number 23 bus.