The Mutual Admiration Society(80)
“Thank you for washing and ironing my habit, Jimmy,” Sister Margaret Mary says when she returns from the bedroom looking like her usual scary self in black and white. “As you said, I best be leaving before the Pagan Baby meeting ends.” She tucks the paper bag that’s got the loot and the P B and M inside under her arm. “I wouldn’t want to bump into Missus Klement while I’m returning the money.”
Charlie, my little gentleman, picks up my Roy Rogers flashlight and says, “I was planning to stop by the church to say some prayers for my mother, it’s her birthday on Saturday, so I would be happy to escort you, Sister. We don’t want you to fall into another grave with the Pagan Baby money, because statistically speaking that would be very bad timing.”
“And I have Mister Peterman to attend to,” Mr. McGinty says, “but perhaps the Finley sisters would like to accompany you as well. It’s a beautiful evening, and according to the weatherman, it might be the last one for quite a while.”
I tug Daddy’s Timex out of my shorts pocket.
7:25 p.m. I was hoping that Birdie and me would have enough time to swing by Lonnigan’s Bar to visit with Suzie “That French Slut” LaPelt, but just like Mr. McGinty, we have a grave to attend to, and we can’t do both if we want to get home before Louise does.
“Thanks for the offer, but we have a previous commitment,” I say very politely to Mr. McGinty, then I turn to Sister Margaret Mary and, yes, this kind of sentimental sloppiness usually makes me want to throw up, but I hug the nun who is letting my partner in crime off the hook, and then I do the same to her twin brother, and, of course, so does my lovey-dovey sister. I really, really, really, really want to nuzzle Charlie, too, the way Birdie did, but being an innocent, she can get away with that sort of thing. I just wink at my one and only before I pick up my sister’s hand and his “babies” take off at a run toward Daddy’s tombstone to tell him about our day and our plans for tomorrow, because that’s something we’ve done since we lost him, and we will keep doing it until the day when the good one of his daughters joins him on high and the other one of us takes a trip below . . . below . . . below.
Because even if he isn’t here in body anymore, the Finley sisters know in a certain kind of way that nobody else can ever hope to understand, that our daddy has no trouble hearing us loud and clear. His death might’ve ambushed Birdie and me, kicked us over and over again where it hurts and will continue to do so, but, believe me, it will never, ever beat the love outta us. We are all for one and one for all forever and always.
23
A CONFESSION
11:55 p.m. Friday: As usual, I’m doing what I always do in the middle of the night. Slipping my hand under my sister’s heinie every half hour to make sure she hasn’t wet the bed, working on my lists, shadowboxing, practicing my impressions, a couple of sure-fire jokes that will get the crowd going, and the “Favorite Things” song that I’m going to perform for the talent portion of Miss America someday in honor of my father.
I’m also thinking how I really don’t know if things could have gone more smoothly at the fish fry tonight, except for when Sister Margaret Mary got up to announce that our school was given a “clean bill of health.” Termites had something to do with the basement steps collapsing under Tommy “Two-Ton” Thomkins, and it wasn’t the dangerous kind of “gas” that building inspector Mr. Hopkins thought he smelled, but I was wrong, too. It wasn’t Beans and Wienies Wednesday that was causing the awful stench in the school basement. The sulphur smell was coming out of janitor Mr. Wayne “Creeper” Carlson’s little room. Turns out that just like everybody else around here, he has a hobby that makes his life worth living. Mr. Hopkins discovered Creeper’s hard-boiled egg collection in a hole in the wall behind the incinerator. According to the gossip, the eggs that were found behind the Betty-Grable-loving-the-tractor-too-much calendar were beautifully decorated with the faces of movie stars.
FACT: Painting hard-boiled eggs is a normal hobby to have during Easter time, but it’s a very weird way to spend your leisure hours during other parts of the year.
PROOF: I am definitely sending this story into Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
After hearing the back-to-school news, I usually would’ve joined in the rumble, but considering what our principal did for Birdie, and that I regular-promised her brother that I would try to go easier on her, I did not pelt Sister Margaret Mary with potato pancakes after she made the announcement at the Friday Fish Fry tonight, so I did not get instantly expelled the way half of the juvenile delinquents did, including that maniac Butch Seeback, thank you, sweet Jesus.
Because I am working very hard to follow Mr. Lynwood “My friends call me Woody and my enemies call me their worst enemy” Bellflower’s detecting directions to the letter, I reach under my pillow and pull out my detecting notebook and stubby pencil. In Chapter Seven of the best book ever written on the subject, he wrote, “Once an investigation has reached a conclusion, it is important to create a case file,” so by the light of my Roy Rogers flashlight, I jot down most of everything that happened tonight.
FACT: I bumped into Kitten Jablonski in the little girls’ room and after I stepped back far enough to make sure one of her pimples didn’t parachute down to my face, I told her what Sister Margaret Mary wrote in the note Sister Prudence found, but not why she wrote it, because her hurrying over to the cemetery to talk to her brother about the stolen Pagan Baby collection money is none of Kitten’s damn business. I just left it at, “Sister had an emergency situation to attend to.”