The Mutual Admiration Society(26)
That famous saying about pride goeth-ing before a fall is very correct, because I’m so busy giving myself a pat on the back for thinking up that whopper that when my sister starts looking even more agitated and begins shaking her head low and slow, it takes me a second to figure out why the confession lie didn’t calm her down the way it shoulda.
I could just kick myself! It’s too late now, but I should’ve come up with a different fib about a subject that Birdie is not so dang touchy about.
Sure enough, sadder sounding than the seagulls who circled over my head on the day Daddy drowned, my sister reminds me about #9 on my TO-DO list. “Please just think about making a real confession to Father Ted before it’s too late, Tessie.”
Her and me agree on most topics of conversation, but on this particular one, the Finley sisters are more parted than the Red Sea.
Every night lately after we kneel next to our bed to say, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take,” Birdie throws her arms around my neck and cries on my shoulder.
Dying in the middle of the night must happen all the time to Catholic kids or there wouldn’t be a prayer to ward it off, so I understand why she gets herself all hot and bothered. We already lost Daddy, and my sister is petrified that she’s going to lose me, too, not just in this lifetime, but for all eternity if I should croak in the middle of night when I’m slipping my hand under her heinie every once in a while to make sure she hasn’t wet the bed, working on my lists, shadowboxing, practicing my impressions and a couple of sure-fire jokes that are sure to get the crowd going before I sing the “Favorite Things” song that I’m going to perform for the talent portion of Miss America someday in honor of our father.
Birdie is positive that instead of the Lord showing up to return my soul to its heavenly home, Lucifer will appear in our room to stab my soul with his pitchfork and drag it down to his place. The reason I haven’t been able to come up with anything yet to convince her that she’s wrong is because she isn’t. I was counting on her forgetting when I told her, but for some unknown reason, she perfectly remembers that my filthy-with-sin soul hasn’t been scrubbed clean in the longest time, since I stopped telling Father Ted my real sins in my real voice every week in the confessional and started telling him fake sins in my Shirley Temple voice, because for godssake, who wouldn’t believe anything that tap-dancing, yodeling kid told them?
FACT: I got my reasons.
PROOF: Loose lips sink ships.
Sure, priests are supposed to keep what you tell them a secret, but it’d be pretty dumb of me to confess the whole truth and nothing but in my easy-to-identify voice to a regular at Lonnigan’s Bar who is known to knock back way too many glasses of Communion wine.
Now, I’m not saying that I’m 100% sure that Father Ted would go blabbing my top snooping and blackmailing secrets to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the parish. All I’m saying is that I need to BE PREPARED that half-in-the-bag priest could go blabbing my top snooping and blackmailing secrets to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the parish. Gossip spreads faster around here than German measles and if our mother ever got wind of what my sister and me been up to, she’ll get out one of the only possessions she hasn’t given away of Daddy’s to Goodwill Industries. His brown leather belt. Birdie and me wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week. (That’s what is known as an understatement. No joke.) Even worse, Louise could get so steamed when she heard about our detecting and blackmail shenanigans that she’d lock us in our room and telephone St. Anne’s Home for Wayward Girls and the county loony bin and tell them to drop everything and come get the Finley sisters ASAP! (That’s what is known as being screwed. Also no joke.)
“Please, honey,” I say to my ants-in-her-pants sister, who could blow our caper at any second if she gets any more worked up. “You’ve gotta try really hard now to stop thinkin’ about me kickin’ the bucket in the middle of the night and going to Hell. Maybe . . . maybe you could think about something yummy instead! Something like . . .” I reach behind me and wave her favorite Red Owl grocery bag that’s got the P B and M inside that I just realized sounds more like something you’d do on a visit to the little girls’ room, and maybe Birdie, who I suspect can ESP my mind, just realized that, too, because she turns her nose up at the sandwich, which isn’t like her at all. Not giving up, I bring up another one of her favorite subjects to convince her to chow down, which will keep her mouth busy with something other than squawking. “Remember how Daddy used to tell everyone up at Lonnigan’s, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry—’”
“For tomorrow we all could die.”
“No, no, no, no, you’re not remembering that right. What Daddy used to say is, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we all could . . . ahhh . . . spy!’”
Feeling pretty good about that lie, I take one more look through the branches to make sure Gert is still on our back porch or on the way back to her house, but my sister must’ve moved around enough to draw her attention our way, because that old buffalo is stampeding straight toward the bushes we’re hiding in with an I-got-you-now look on her ugly puss. Of course, she can’t climb the cemetery fence to grab us, she’s too decrepit, but if she makes it to the fence, she will be able to look through the black bars and down into the bushes.