The Mutual Admiration Society(69)
On the other hand . . . if we don’t go visit Mr. McGinty tonight, I’d be breaking the sister-promise I made to Birdie this afternoon when I still thought he was a kidnapping murderer and I wanted her to go, Bird, go and she wanted to stay and talk to him some more, and I can’t do that. Besides, I owe it to the poor guy whose holy lucky charm I’ve kept from him most of the day, and I owe it to myself, too. Suspecting that this old basketball-playing friend of Daddy’s, my fishing pal, a wounded veteran of the war, teacher of whittling and bird-watching to Charlie, our godfather, who has been taking such extra special care of my sister and me since we lost Daddy, was a horrible criminal all day has really taken a toll on me.
Maybe we should divide the difference. Go see the caretaker the first hour we have free tonight when Louise and Gert are at the meeting, and for the second hour, The Mutual Admiration Society will start working on the dare. Tomorrow afternoon, that’s when we’ll really ramp up looking for information about Sister Margaret Mary. During the hours Louise is busy staring at her reflection in the Clark station’s front window, Birdie and me can easily sneak out of the house to meet up with Charlie, because wretched Gert will not be around then, either, to keep us under her thumb. She’ll spend the whole afternoon proving to everyone in the parish that there’s nobody nearer to God than she by doing what she does every Friday afternoon starting at 1:00 p.m. She’ll help the nuns at St. Kate’s prepare for the fish fry in the school cafeteria with a more martyred look than St. Sebastian, who died from a very bad arrow attack followed by a clubbing to death, which, in my opinion, is a very good example of the famous saying—“Overkill.” (Joke!)
Yes, that’s a pretty decent plan, but I can’t explain it to Birdie right now because working too far into the future confuses her, so I just tell her the part that will really excite her. “We can’t go over to the cemetery right now, honey, because you-know-who’s watchin’ our every move, but after Gert leaves for her meeting tonight, just like I sister-promised you this morning, we’ll go visit Mister McGinty and give him his medal back and you can talk to him and drink Graf’s root beer and eat windmill cookies and . . . and pet Pyewacket, won’t that be fun?”
I can’t tell the caretaker how we hung on to his medal all day as evidence against him, because that would hurt his feelings, but, never fear, I already got another BE PREPARED plan that I’m 75% sure will work.
’Cause I can’t trust my sister not to blurt something dumb out to Mr. McGinty, something like the truth, I’ll have to wait until she gets some cookies and soda into her and gets busy purring along with Pye—they will take a trip to parts unknown together, they always do—then she won’t be around anymore to deny the story I’m going to tell him after I take his medal out of my pocket and place it down in front of him. When he cries out Praise be! I’ve been looking everywhere for it! Where did you find it?, because I feel so wretched for thinking the worst of him, I won’t even have to put on one of my pretend-sad looks when I answer him: So sorry, Mister McGinty. I found it in Birdie’s shorts pocket. She must’ve come across it this morning in the cemetery and picked it up, because you know how she can’t resist anything shiny, and then she forgot all about it, because of her horrible memory, ya know? Please forgive her for she knows not what she does. And hey, by the way, why are Sister Margaret Mary’s initials on the back of it?
Being extra religious, our friend will especially like me using the famous saying that will remind him how Jesus asked His Heavenly Father to forgive the people who nailed His Kid to the cross, which was pretty damn All-Big of Him, if ya ask me. (Anybody crucified me or my sister or Charlie or my grandparents or Gracie Carver or a couple other people around here that I really like, believe me, they would be #1 on my SHIT LIST for all of eternity.)
“That plan sound good to you?” I ask my sister.
“What plan?” she says as she hops off the sofa and turns on the Motorola in such a goofy way that it’s hard to believe that just minutes ago the kid told the smartest washing-machine and rosary-praying lies to Gert, but that’s just the way she is. Unpredictable. Forgetful. With a tummy that never feels full. “I’m getting really, really, really, really hungry again, Tessie. Do we have any Velveeta?”
“Sorry, honey, we’re out.” Not only of cheese, but a lot of other stuff, too. Old Mother Hubbard would feel right at home in our pantry. “Don’t you have any of the chocolate cherries left?”
She points to her protruding tummy and then down to the green shag carpet. The Stover box has been picked clean, which explains why the kid who always feels so much better when she knows where her next meal is coming from licks her lips and says, “Can I have my TV dinner now?”
Seeing my sister sitting there with her shorter bangs that Charlie cut for her sticking straight up in the air and beggar dirty while she waits for the Motorola’s picture tube to warm up, I realize that we don’t only have to clean up the house, we gotta clean up ourselves, too. After running and rolling around and sneaking and crawling and digging through leaf piles on this hot Indian summer day, the both of us are looking like something the cat dragged in, and that’s not going to go over real big with Louise when she gets home tonight from her meeting. Once she gets a whiff of us, believe me, she will not get a nose-full of sugar and spice and everything nice. She’ll figure out that we been out and about and up to no good.