The Mutual Admiration Society(29)

Figuring the only way my sister would ever know for sure that Daddy was in a better position to do some deep-sea fishing than she’d let herself believe, I was positive that seeing his pretend grave with her own eyes would do the trick. Since our mother wouldn’t help us out, I went to our friend, who also happens to be Birdie’s and my godfather, by the way, Mr. McGinty. After I explained to him the awful pickle I was in, I begged him to take me to where Daddy’s casket had been sunk, but he told me that he was sorry, that it wasn’t “his place,” which really hurt my feelings, because if Holy Cross is anybody’s place, it’s his.

I spent every minute I could searching the cemetery for Daddy all by myself, but it’s so big and very hard to find what you’re looking for when your eyes are watering and the tombstones start to bleed together, so the Finley sisters were really down for the count. There Birdie was, feeling like her daddy would be home any second with a sandy tan and a pointy-nosed fish to fry up for supper, and I was feeling so sad and so bad about not saving him and worried to death about Louise finding out about my sister’s undying belief in his Boca Raton amnesia that I was about two ticks away from saying goodbye cruel world and diving into the closest open grave.

But . . . see?

That only goes to show you how smart Daddy was when he’d punch his bag and make our basement floor slippery with sweat and tell me his most famous saying of all, “No matter how bad things get, Tessie, you gotta always remember, come Hell or high water, a Finley never, ever throws in the towel,” because just when I was about to do just that . . . lo and behold . . . we found him!



EDWARD ALFRED FINLEY

REST IN PEACE

SEPTEMBER 2, 1931–AUGUST 1, 1959



Half-Irish kids like Birdie and me are only half-lucky, so us being led to his tombstone by a flock of fireflies during a crackling storm that lit up the night sky with so many lightning forks that it looked like God’s silverware drawer, well, need I say more?

FACT: Miracles happen to Catholic kids.

PROOF: The Blessed Virgin Mary magically appeared to three shepherd children in a place called Fatima, Portugal, and she also stopped in to say hello to a girl named Bernadette in Lourdes, France, so fireflies showing up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one night to light up the way to our daddy’s pretend grave is something that really could happen, and did.

9:51 a.m. When I see our all-time favorite tombstone in the distance, I get a good grip on Birdie’s hand when she starts to veer that way, and tell her, “Honey, hold up,” and then I remind her about how important good timing is and our life-changing, great-good-luck murder and our Mutual Admiration meeting. “Sorry, but before we go visit Daddy, we need to swing by the Gilgood mausoleum to look for clues like footprints or something like . . . ummm . . .” I probably shouldn’t tell her that we might find Sister Margaret Mary’s dead body back there. I’m not sure how’d she take that because she’s so fragile and this has never come up before. “And what about Charlie? The poor guy is probably already sitting under the willow tree waiting for us to show up for our meeting.” I swipe her too-long bangs out of her slightly bulging eyes that are looking a tad sad. “But I sister-promise, we’ll pick up those chocolate-covered cherries offa Mister Lindley’s grave and then we’ll visit Daddy for as long as you want on our way home instead, s’awright?”

Se?or Wences from The Ed Sullivan Show is another one of Birdie’s favorite impressions of mine. She gets such a kick out of that little hand man that I was pretty sure she would do what she always does whenever I imitate him, because sometimes she can be predictable.

Sure enough, Birdie belly laughs and says, “S’awright, Tessie!”—thank God.

To get us where we need to be as soon as possible, I, the president of The Mutual Admiration Society, decide that it’d be a smart idea to take a shortcut to Mr. Gilgood’s mausoleum, but I don’t want to take a completely different route than the one I watched the murderer take last night. I don’t want to screw up and miss any important clues along the way like broken branches or a torn piece of clothing, which are the first things Indians, the best trackers that ever lived, check for in the Saturday shoot-’em-ups when they’re hunting down people with forked tongues.

I hold my hand up and tell Birdie, “Wagons, whoa,” and spin back toward the house to look up at our bedroom window so I can get my bearings, and when I do, my Wigwam socks get almost clean knocked off!

I can perfectly see above the white towel Birdie hung out our window to let Charlie know the location of today’s meeting and straight into our bedroom! Clear enough to count the daisies on our wallpaper and admire the paint-by-number picture I did of the sad hobo clown in honor of Daddy that’s hanging above the Finley sisters’ bed. What an eye-opener! I never thought for a second that when I watch what’s going on in the cemetery, that someone could be doing the same thing to me.

“Look! The mausoleum!” my sister shouts. “Go, Bird, go!”

“Nooo,” I yell when she whips her hand out of mine and rabbits off. “Come back here! I . . . I gotta tell you something really, really, really, really important!”

I just got a very bad thought.

Now that I know that looking out of my bedroom room is a two-way street, that means the villain I saw last night could have seen me seeing him wading through the very gravestones that I’m up to my waist in before he disappeared behind the Gilgood mausoleum with the limp body.