Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [61]
“Yeth, Thally O’Malley. No dawdlin’.”
When I make a dash for it, I can hear Artie panting right behind me, but I realize too late that there’s not a peep coming from where Wendy’s supposed to be. When I turn around to see what happened to her, she’s in the middle of the Kenfields’ yard, hopping from foot to foot.
“Wendy . . . c’mon.” I wave my arm and whisper-yell.
She looks up at me and then back down at the grass and then back at me and starts yelling, “Thnake . . . thnake!” really, really, loud.
Keeping my eye on the house, I hurry to her. “No . . . no . . . shhh . . . shhh . . . shhh. It’s not a snake. See? It’s not movin’.” I kick at the garden hose that shoulda been wound up nice and neat next to the house and push Wendy fast back to the hedge where Artie is crouching at the exact same time that the back porch light flicks on.
Mr. Kenfield comes banging out the door, weaving in his boxer shorts. He doesn’t have on a shirt or shoes, just a beer can in his hand. I don’t think he can see us because the porch light reaches only so far and I bet his eyes are blurry from drinking, but when he cocks his head at the hedge, I’m sure it’s because he must hear my heart beating.
“Who’s out there?” he says, slurry. “I . . . iden . . . identi . . . who’s there?”
I press my hand even harder over Wendy’s mouth so she can’t jump up and holler, “Thee the U Eth A in your Thevrolet.”
“Dottie?” Mr. Kenfield calls out again, not mad-sounding this time. More like the way you would call out if you were lost in the woods and given up all hope of ever being rescued, but then you spotted a plane flying overhead. “That you, sweetheart?” he says, coming down the steps on legs that look delicate.
Since we spent so many nights together in the olden days, I’m not hard on him like the other kids are. I don’t fill a grocery bag up with Lizzie’s poop and set it on fire on his steps. I don’t call him names like Loopy Lou or In the Can Kenfield behind his back either. I am just about to call out, It’s not Dottie, sir. It’s your old friend Sally O’Malley. Sorry for bothering you, but his wife doesn’t give me the chance.
She shouts from inside the house, “Chuck? What’re you doin’ out there? The show’s back on.”
He looks around his yard one more time, squinting especially hard into the hedge shadows where we’re hiding. “Goddamn kids,” he says, throwing down the beer can and going back into the house hunched over. He forgot to switch off the porch light. Two moths are circling it.
I take my hand off Wendy’s mouth and wipe it on my shorts. She licked me. She always does that. She thinks I taste good.
Artie whispers, “Geeze, that was close.”
To the bone. I especially understand how Mr. Kenfield is feeling and Troo does, too. It’s so hard to lose someone you love. Our hearts growl for Daddy the same way our tummies do when we’re hungry. It must be even worse for Mr. Kenfield. I know my daddy’s gone forever in the deep blue of the western sky. I’ll never hear the sound of his voice again or feel his late-day whiskers on my cheek or spend time after supper curled up on his lap listening to his happy shouts when Hank Aaron hits a homer on the radio. But Mr. Kenfield’s daughter is not dead. She’s out there somewhere. I bet if my old neighbor had it to do all over again, he wouldn’t have sent Dottie away to the unwed mothers’ home the way the church told him to do. He doesn’t even go to Mass anymore.
“We gotta get back,” I tell Artie, when I hear screams coming from up the block. “Sounds like Troo’s tagged someone.”
I spring up to peek at the Goldmans’ house to check to make sure everything’s okay, but he yanks me back down before I can see a thing.
“What’re you doin’?” I say, jerking my arm away.
“I . . . I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . I need to tell you something in the worst way,” Artie says. “I already tried once, but you didn’t answer me.”
He did not. I haven’t hardly seen him at the playground or anywhere