The Mutual Admiration Society(66)
That’s very sweet of Charlie, but very dopey. First off, we only have three dollars left after I paid Kitten for information, and second off, Linda O’Brien wouldn’t tell us where our principal went even if she knows. She’d never risk that, not for all the money in the world. Believe me, nobody wants to double-cross Kitten. (There are stories floating around the neighborhood about kids who have that are too gruesome to repeat in mixed company.)
When we reach the church doors, gentlemanly Charlie opens them for Birdie and me, and I guess I must look pretty pathetic, because he finally does the something that I have been wanting and waiting for him to do for the longest time. He uses his mouth for something other than talking!
And then, I don’t know what the hell happened, because I’m not kidding, the sweet peck on my cheek from his lips that are so much softer than I ever imagined drove any bad thoughts I was having out of my brain faster than St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.
I feel lighter than air! I’m floating down the steps of St. Kate’s on cloud nine! I forget that I am a detective who was so positive that she had a kidnapping and murder case on her hands but was 100% wrong. I forget that I shook on a dare that could make my life, my sister’s, and my mother’s take a terrible turn for the worst. I even forget to miss Daddy.
It’s my little dreamboat Birdie who brings me back to earth, for a change, after we make the turn onto our block and she docks herself in front of the Tates’ house.
Birdie points and says, “Uh-oh.”
She’s talking about the new, huge sign our mother’s opponent has sticking out of her front lawn. It’s almost as big as the WORKS OF ART billboard her brother and my friend, “The Leonardo da Vinci of Undertaking,” has on top of the old Goodyear tire store on North Ave.
TWO-FOUR-SIX-EIGHT!
WHO’S NEVER MISSED A PAGAN BABY MEETING?
NANCY TATE!
Maybe Louise was right after all and her opponent really is a lame duck, because she’s wasted a piece of perfectly good poster board on a terrible slogan that isn’t even true. The gal formerly known as Mommy has many, many faults, but to the best of my knowledge, the one and only time she ever stayed home on a Thursday night was when Doc Reynolds made her, because she had a strepped throat. So if Mrs. Tate is trying to convince the voters in the parish with her new advertising sign to make her the treasurer because our mother is an undependable meeting-misser, she’s barking up the wrong—
Damnation!
Louise got so wrapped up in going out to dinner at Mama Mia Ristorante with what’s-his-name after her first day at work at the Clark station that she completely forgot all about tonight’s Pagan Baby meeting! Her not showing up at the school gym at 6:00 p.m. sharp to pack cardboard boxes with Ban deodorant, Ivory soap, Breck shampoo, and all the rest of the “gifts” a.k.a. “bribes” those gals send to the jungle will destroy her chances of being the new treasurer.
FACT: The patchwork quilts Mrs. Tate makes on her Singer sewing machine are packed in those boxes that are going to the Congo, too, but they’re not bribes. If those natives don’t right away stop voodoo worshipping and convert to worshipping Jesus, those quilts are used as torture devices.
PROOF: If the parents don’t sign on the dotted line ASAP, Kitten Jablonski told me that Gert instructs the missionaries to roll them up in those patchwork quilts and keep them there until they agree to let the priests baptize their babes in the Amazon River.
That’s how evil and eye-for-an-eye Gert Klement is!
And since she was the one who nominated Louise for the treasury job, if our mother makes her look bad in front of the whole parish by skipping the get-together in the gym tonight so she can go out for a fancy Italian dinner while all the rest of them are breaking their backs packing those boxes, mark my words, Gert will act very revengefully. In the name of the Lord, of course.
Mrs. Tate must’ve heard through the grapevine that Louise was going to be slurping up spaghetti tonight with Moron Gallagher instead of attending the meeting and she got on the stick and made up this huge advertising sign to spread the news. Or maybe it was Louise herself who smiled at the weak-chinned, shorter-than-Daddy lout at her side at Mr. Peterman’s funeral and bragged about how she was going straight from work to a supper date after one of the gals asked her where she found the gall to show up looking like Rita Hayworth on May Day when all the rest of them were looking like Bette Davis on Ash Wednesday.
This is not looking good, unless . . .
Mrs. Tate wouldn’t remind Louise about tonight’s meeting for obvious reasons, but did Kitten’s mother, Mrs. Doreen “Dory” Jablonski, happen to pull her best friend to the side at the funeral and tell her, If you want to win that election, doll, you can’t miss the meeting tonight. Ya better postpone your date to tomorrow night?
Dang, I sure hope so, for more than one reason.
Even though I can’t really spare the time because I am under so much pressure to complete the dare to find out where Sister Margaret Mary went, I have to keep my strength up. So tomorrow night, I’ll bow my head and thank St. Peter, the patron saint of fishermen, the way I always do every Friday, for providing at least one meal a week that I don’t have to spend worrying if Birdie and me are being food poisoned by Louise.
Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute.
Louise moving her date from tonight to tomorrow night could work out much better than I could ever have dreamed of! Friday Fish Fry would be the perfect place to act on one of these ideas I came up with for the guy who is trying to take Daddy’s place. #4 is what I got in mind: