The Mutual Admiration Society(57)

The night Charlie showed up to throw pebbles at my bedroom window, I slid down the double-Dutch rope to ask him just what the heck did he think he was doing disturbing me in the middle of practicing my Miss America singing routine. “You are one of m . . . m . . . my favorite things,” he told me. And when he picked up my hand and pressed it against his soft cheek, I’m not kidding, I felt the earth move under my feet and I’m pretty sure I heard heavenly harp music.

But whenever I try to bring up the evening when he put stars in my eyes or the afternoon he became a motherless child, Charlie changes the subject to his newest whittling project (funnily, he’s been trying to sell cue sticks to Jerbak’s Beer and Bowl) or he starts talking about birds, blackmails, TV shows (Zorro is his favorite, just like it is Birdie’s), movies, and books (the Hardy Boys float his boat). Or he’ll just start reciting how many times people do things, which is another hobby of his, statistically speaking. I don’t know why he won’t talk about the night he showed up under my bedroom window, but I’m pretty sure that he won’t talk to me about his mom because his father, who is very ashamed of his wife for doing away with herself, has absolutely forbidden any of his sons to speak her name again. (When I think about what mean Mr. Garfield would do if he ever found out that The Mutual Admiration Society takes the #23 bus every Saturday afternoon to the Forest Home Cemetery so Charlie can bring his mom a bunch of yellow daisies because those were her favorite and she couldn’t be laid to rest in Holy Cross on account of it being sacred ground because what she did is the worst sin for a Catholic to commit, I break out in a clammy sweat and have to gobble down four Tums.)

Yeah, before Mrs. Franny Garfield closed their garage door and started up their Pontiac, Charlie could’ve won a Most Popular Kid in the Parish contest, but my boy is nowhere near being that outgoing anymore, which is why I’m desperately working on loosening up his English stiff upper lip in more ways than one, if you get my drift.

Some other helpful hints on how to take care of the man of your dreams in the Good Housekeeping article called “Secrets of a Happy Marriage” were: “A dry martini can work wonders” and “Be a good listener.” Not to toot my own horn or nothin’, but I’m pretty good at both of those things. Daddy taught me how to mix all sorts of drinks for customers when him and Suzie LaPelt would have to go to the back room together for the longest time to fetch more bottles of booze and peanuts. I got plenty of experience sliding drinks down Lonnigan’s long mahogany bar, and over the years, I learned how booze of any kind can turn even the quietest people into real chatterboxes.

I figured what do I have to lose, so I offered to shake a dry martini up for Charlie after The Mutual Admiration Society had finished up one of our spy missions a few weeks ago. When we were putting away our TOOLS OF THE TRADE, I pointed to the bottles of vodka and vermouth I took out of our kitchen cabinet and stowed away in our garage and said, “Would you like a dry martini tonight, dear? They can really work wonders.” He smiled and said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and then he nodded down at our Radio Flyer. “I’m on the wagon.” (He can be a pretty funny sad kid sometimes.)

So for now, all I can do is grin and bear his silent treatment, which seems to be par for the course of love. According to the same Good Housekeeping magazine article, there are no matchups, not even the ones made in Heaven, that are not without “a few wrinkles that a wife will need to iron out after the honeymoon.”

FACT: One of the other bones I got to pick with Charlie is that I’m not sure how good a breadwinner he will be.

PROOF: If he wants to be a first-rate private detective who holds up his end of our family business, he needs to keep his eyes peeled and BE PREPARED at all times, which he isn’t.

Through the branches of his backyard bushes, I can see him studying the wild blue yonder along with Pyewacket, when what my fiancé should be doing is noticing me wrestling my sister around in the bushes. Of course, I could be mad, but as half owner of the Siamese and Charlie, I can’t help it. It does my heart good to see them spending time together doing their shared bird-watching hobby. Pye is snugged-up in his lap, pretending to lick away at a huge, horrible burr in her fur, but I know that’s a ruse. Because Daddy always said, “You can’t kid a kidder,” I know that she’s really on the hunt. I haven’t made up my mind yet to love her, but I do greatly admire this cat from the Orient for the way she moves so stealthily and her picky taste in people, but I am most impressed by her power to force me to give her windmill cookie crumbs with those spooky blue eyes of hers. (Knowing how to hypnotize people like that doctor in the I Was a Teenage Werewolf movie? That’d be so cool, daddy-o, cool. I’d make my sister listen to me at all times and I’d force Charlie to bare his soul to me, and if I could stand looking into Gert’s face for a few minutes I’d make her hand over her hearing aids, and one morning at the breakfast table, I’d say, Look into my eyes . . . look into my eyes, Louise Mary Fitzgerald Finley. When I snap my fingers, you will wake up and love Birdie and me as much as you did before Daddy died.)

“Let go of me, Tessie!” Birdie says, strangled-sounding, when she’s trying to worm out of the half nelson I got her in that has now become a quarter nelson. Because she’s so damn strong and slick from the heat, and when she wants to see my fiancé, she really does, with one more wiggle and a twist, she slips out of my arms.