The Mutual Admiration Society(82)

FACT: You should’ve heard some of the other slogans that kid came up with.

PROOF: WHORE also rhymes with FOUR.

After about a hundred of the busybodies who had seen the new advertising sign on her front lawn came up to Mrs. Nancy Tate at the fish fry to ask her why she was so nuts about Mr. Horace Mertz, my mother’s opponent rushed right over to Gert Klement and told her that she changed her mind about running for treasurer and withdrew her name. (That same kid might’ve also paid two dollars to the loudest and most obnoxious kid in the church choir, baritone Bertie Buss, to follow Mrs. Nancy Tate around the cafeteria shaking those two red five and dime pom-poms while singing “Rockin’ Robin,” in case the gigantic poison-pen sign cemented into her front lawn wasn’t enough to make that lame duck waddle out of the fish fry with her tail between her legs.) (Joke!)

FACT: I think Charlie is about ready to set a date.

PROOF: He kissed me longer this time on the cheek with his buttery lips on our walk back home from the fish fry.

FACT: Mrs. Gert Klement is not happy.

PROOF: Sure, she’s glad that she got her Pagan Baby money back, but I could tell that she was crushed that she didn’t get the chance to call the cops and get Birdie and me sent away to “homes,” for now, anyway.

So all and all, as I lay here now next to my always-sweet-smelling, snoozing partner in crime, I’m thinking The Mutual Admiration Society did okay on our first kidnapping and murder case. Our investigation wasn’t perfect, but from years of experience and all the time Birdie and me spend in Holy Cross, I have long suspected that not just the Finley sisters or my Charlie, but nobody gets those and-they-all-lived-happily-ever-after fairy-tale endings. We must all BE PREPARED to have a little Grimm mixed in. (No joke.)

Until Butch Seeback gets moved permanently to the juvie home after he commits some awful Ed Gein crime, I will always have to keep my eyes out for him, and my poor sister will probably always be a weird loonatic, and buttinsky and battle-ax Gert Klement will never bury her hatchet, and Louise will more than likely start dating what’s-his-name again after his trotting clears up, and I will always miss Daddy with every beat of my heart, every breath, every lightning bolt, and every joke. Not a minute will go by in the day that I won’t wonder how I’m going to live to the next minute without him, and every single night when I stand in front of our bedroom window, I will cry when I see the curve of his headstone under the cemetery’s flickering streetlights.

On the other hand . . . like Daddy always told me when he was punching his bag and making our basement floor slippery with sweat, “No matter how bad things get, Tessie, you gotta always remember, come Hell or high water, a Finley never, ever throws in the towel.”

So . . . in the spirit of things (Joke!) I already got my brand-new list ready and raring to go when the sun peeks through the cracks of my sister’s and my bedroom window shade:



TO-DO

Take tender loving care of Birdie.



Make Gert Klement think her arteries are going as hard as her heart.



Practice your Miss America routine.



Learn how to swim.



Be a good dry-martini-making fiancée to Charlie.



Do not get caught blackmailing or spying.



Just think about making a real confession to Father Ted, before it’s too late.



Stop at Bloomers for pink roses for Daddy.



Test Birdie again to make sure that she really does have ESP and her guessing every single one of those numbers that I was thinking of tonight wasn’t half-Irish luck.



Beat Jenny Radtke to the top of the Finney Library Billy the Bookworm chart or just beat her.



Tell Birdie you found one of Louise’s L&M cigarette butts at Daddy’s pretend grave.



Learn Morris’s Code.



Steal new Halloween costumes for Birdie and me from Kenfield’s Five and Dime.



Go see Suzie “That French Slut” LaPelt at Lonnigan’s so Birdie and me can sing the “Sisters” song on the bar and play the Arabian Nights pinball game and talk to her about Daddy, and as long as you’re there, ask her for a demonstration of this ooo-la-la kissing you are hearing so much about.



Stay back after school on Monday and find Gracie Carver so you and Birdie can tell her all about what happened while she was gone. She will get such a kick out of it and laugh that relaxing Southern way.



Keep your eyes peeled for a dead body. Current second-place winner in the “Best Mourner” in the parish contest Mrs. Sophia Maniaci, who is a Sicilian—an especially vengeful type of Italian who everyone in the neighborhood knows you shouldn’t cross—hissed out to the current first-place winner, Mrs. Ann Tracy, when she was leaving the fish fry, “Il bacio della morte,” which is the kiss-of-death curse, so it shouldn’t be long before The Mutual Admiration Society has another great-good-luck murder case on our hands.





The End