The Mutual Admiration Society(12)

“Why?” I gulped. “What’d ya hear?”

“Gimme a dollar.” After I dug a crumpled buck out of my pocket and handed it over, my confidential informant told me really fast, because she always talks like she’s a desperado who’s got a posse closing in on her, “What I heard is that Gert Klement’s been openin’ her fat trap at Wednesday’s knitting circle. Tellin’ all the gals how they gotta say novenas for your ma ’cause it was bad enough that your old man fooled around with Suzie LaPelt, but then he had the nerve to kick the bucket without leaving her any dough, and even worse . . .” Kitten swiveled her head around the drugstore to make sure nobody was listening because she is in the information business and does not believe in handing out free samples. “I’m about to tell ya the really bad part now, Finley, so get a grip on yourself.” That’s when I ripped open the Tums and chewed three on the spot, because if Kitten Jablonski tells you something is really bad, God help me, it really is. “Ya already know that battle-ax is tryin’ to get you shipped off to St. Anne’s, but what Gert’s been spreadin’ around lately is that if your ma ever hopes to get hitched again that she should put The Bird in a home with her own kind, too, because no man wants to raise another man’s kids.”

Along with a very smart brain and a very coordinated body, I got born with the personality of a trampoline so most of the ratty stuff people say about me bounces right off. And I already knew that Gert didn’t like Daddy—I saw the way she always stared daggers at him over her hedge and across the aisle at Mass on Sundays—so it didn’t surprise me when Kitten told me how our neighbor was cutting him down at her knitting circle for “fooling around” with Suzie LaPelt. That was so dumb, because of course “Good Time Eddie” Finley fooled around with his barmaid when they were working a shift together at Lonnigan’s Bar. He was the most fun-loving bartender in the whole neighborhood.

But that other information Kitten told me about what Gert and her knit-one, pearl-two cronies were saying about my Birdie, that hit me hard in the breadbasket. I doubled over and went so wobbly and woozy that I had to sit down on Dalinsky’s cold tile floor with my head between my knees, because my sister getting sent to a “home” to be with her own kind isn’t far-fetched. Kids can disappear around here when they get to be too much to handle or if they’re too different. Mrs. Fontaine sent her sweet daughter, Gail Ann, who had straight black hair, ate gum offa the sidewalk, and every once in a while pranced around the neighborhood in her birthday suit when it wasn’t her birthday, to her new “home” in Mongolia. And the Jabos kid? The one whose real name was Doris but all the kids called Ducky because of those webbed fingers of hers? Her mother told everyone that she sent her daughter to “camp for the summer up north,” but when school started, Ducky still hadn’t flown south to start sixth grade with the rest of us. (No joke.)

But according to Kitten, the “home” that Gert Klement has been yakking about sending Birdie off to with those needle wielders in the church basement is not on the other side of the world or near Green Bay, Wisconsin. I looked it up in the telephone book, then I took the #7 bus to 10073 W. Plankinton Rd. and you know what I saw when I stepped off? They can call it County Hospital all they want, but I know a loony bin when I see one, and it’d be over my dead body that I let anybody keep me from doing #1 on my most important list.



TO-DO

Take tender loving care of Birdie.



Make Gert Klement think her arteries are going as hard as her heart.



Catch whoever stole over $200 out of the Pagan Baby collection box.



Practice your Miss America routine.



Learn how to swim.



Be a good dry-martini-making fiancée to Charlie.



Do not get caught blackmailing or spying.



Just think about making a real confession to Father Ted, before it’s too late.





“Top o’ the morning!” Louise calls back over the hedge to Gert in the pretty soprano that she leads St. Kate’s choir with. “Thanks a bushel for keeping an eye on the girls last night.” Whenever our mother leaves the house for any reason, she asks the worst next-door neighbor in the world if she’ll keep tabs on Birdie and me, which, of course, our meddling mortal enemy is only more than happy to do. “Say good morning to Missus Klement, children.”

Birdie follows directions, a lot nicer than me, because along with all of my sister’s other “problems,” she is an overly friendly and overly affectionate kid, a real tail-wagger.

“I was going to check in with you when I got home, but all your lights were out,” Louise tells Gert. “Everything go hunky-dory last night?”

Our neighbor raises one of her penciled, black-as-a-funeral eyebrows up to her bone-colored hair and slowly repeats the way she does when she wants to make a point, which is almost always, “Did . . . everything . . . go . . . hunky . . . dory . . . last . . . night?” She looks right at me and sneer-laughs. “Far from it.”

Damnation!

Did she see us?

I was so keen on working on #3 on my TO-DO list that I forgot all about doing what Modern Detection calls “reconnaissance” before we took off last night to do our snooping.