by Lesley Kagen
Oh, no . . . no . . . no . . . no!
“I’d been so concerned about the report the building inspector would make to the city after he closed the school down,” Sister Margaret Mary says. “I’ve found praying to the Blessed Mother to be especially soothing, so I’d come over to the church to say a rosary, and that’s when I saw Robin.” She looks across the table at her brother and when he gives her a reassuring smile, she brings her windows of the soul back to mine. “Aware of the close relationship that you and your sister enjoy with Jimmy, the very next morning I asked him his opinion about the best way to deal with the situation. He implored me to give it a little time, because he was certain that either you or your sister would return the stolen money, which I was more than willing to do.”
“Until last night,” Mr. McGinty says.
Sister M & M says, “Yes,” and continues to tell us her side of the story. “I waited until I knew all the sisters would be sleeping, including Sister Mary Elizabeth, who suffers from a wretched case of insomnia, to call Jimmy and ask him to meet me at the mausoleum as soon as possible. I should have been more careful, but I was in such a rush and I was so worried about being seen that I was looking over my shoulder and didn’t notice Mister Peterman’s open grave until it was too late.” She touches the side of her pixie cut and winces.
I think back to when Birdie and me were behind the Gilgood mausoleum and Mr. McGinty told us in his commanding army voice this morning, “I have a matter of the utmost importance to discuss with you and it shouldn’t be put off until tonight.” At the time, I was positive that he wanted to expert-interrogate me about what I’d seen out our bedroom window, which is why I yelled, “Bee!” so my sister and me could make our getaway to the top of the cemetery hill, in case he was thinking of snipping off our heads with his sharp gardening shears, but obviously, I was wrong.
“But why was it so important for Mister McGinty to talk to Tessie and Birdie ASAP about returning the money?” Charlie asks like the questioning interviewer that he is.
“Another excellent question, Jasper,” Sister Margaret Mary says. “Time was of the essence as I’m afraid Missus Klement stopped by the parish office after last evening’s knitting circle to tell Father Ted and me that she strongly suspected that one of the Finley sisters had stolen the collection money.” My heart skips a beat just thinking of how hot that buttinsky was on my sister’s trail. “Missus Klement also informed us that if the two hundred and nine dollars wasn’t returned by the conclusion of tonight’s Pagan Baby meeting, she would be obligated to take matters into her own hands. She threatened to call her dear friend the bishop, who would’ve swiftly informed the authorities, and I—”
“There is no need for anybody to contact the authorities,” Charlie says, and when he slaps down on the card table the brown paper sack that’s got the P B and M and stolen loot inside, it kinda makes me swoon off my chair a little, because he is being a knight in shining armor fighting off a dragon. “Every dollar of the stolen Pagan Baby m . . . m . . . money is present and accounted for. I counted it m . . . m . . . myself and you know how good I am at arithmetic.”
I’d love to believe that getting the money back will be enough to smooth things over with her, but I don’t. Paying penance for your sins is such a big deal around here. So I get down on my knees and beg Sister Margaret Mary, “I know she’s a terrible reader, but please . . . you gotta understand . . . Birdie . . .” I’m fighting back tears, but losing the battle. Daddy is going to be so disappointed in me for not taking tender loving care the way I vowed I would when I stepped into his shoes. “She only took the money ’cause our family needs dough really bad and Gert . . . Missus Klement is trying to talk our mother into sending us away to homes . . . so when you call the cops, please, you gotta tell them that it was me you saw stealin’ the money out of the collection box instead of her.”
Mr. McGinty helps me back up to my feet and into my chair, then takes out his neatly folded hankie from his gray shirt and passes it to me. “Tessie, no one is calling the police on your sister, isn’t that right, Martha?”
After I wipe my eyes and blow my nose, I look over at the strictest nun I’ve ever met, expecting her to say something awful like, Even though we’re twins, I’m afraid I cannot agree with you, Jimmy. As her godfather, you have a spiritual responsibility to teach the child right from wrong and how will she ever learn if she doesn’t suffer the consequences? But much to my astonishment what she actually says is, “Calling the police under these circumstances”—she squeezes Birdie’s hand again—“is completely out of the question.”
When I start bawling all over again, this time from relief, Birdie and Charlie put their arms around me, and even Pyewacket jumps from where she’s been lounging on Sister Margaret Mary’s lap to stay for a few seconds on mine, before she leaps into Birdie’s arms, because the Siamese cat loves her most of all.
But even all the nice “there, there-ing” from the two people I love most in the world and Pye’s loud purring still doesn’t 100% convince me that our principal who eyewitnessed the stealing of the money from the collection box at St. Kate’s won’t call the police station and turn Birdie in. I’m not like Birdie and Charlie. I’m no pushover. I need to know why she’d do something so nice, so I ask her, “Are you sure you’re not going to turn her into the coppers?”
“Let me explain something to you, Tessie, that I think will help put your mind at ease,” Mr. McGinty says. “Before Martha and I moved to this neighborhood, we were raised in a small town in northern Wisconsin by a father who”—he glances over at his sister—“well, let’s just say he was not a forgiving man.”
“What happened to your m . . . m . . . mother?” Charlie asks.
“She died while giving birth to Martha and me,” Mr. McGinty tells him with lots of affection, because he knows why Charlie can’t help but ask that question.
“And what about your daddy?” I, of course, need to know. “You said he was not a forgiving man.”
“Father was killed in a lumberjacking accident many years ago,” our principal says. And I might be imagining it, because it has been a long and jam-packed day and I don’t trust my powers of observation anymore, but Sister Margaret Mary sure doesn’t sound all that broken up about her daddy getting killed by a tree. “The only family Jimmy and I have left are each other.” She picks up the brown paper bag off the table where Charlie smacked it down, peeks inside, I guess to make sure the Pagan Baby money really is in there and that we’ve haven’t been snow-jobbing her. She doesn’t pull out the wad of cash and start counting it, though. She pulls out the other something I put in the bag for Birdie before we came over for our visit that has turned out to be a lot more interesting than I could’ve guessed in a million years. “Oh, look, Jimmy! A peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich. Those were always our favorites, too.”
She’s looking pretty tenderly at the sandwich, so I’m starting to believe that she might not turn Birdie in to the cops, but because I’m still only about 75% sure of that, I’m going to bribe her the other 25% of the way. With two TV dinner suppers in her tummy and all the windmill cookies that my sister just ate, she shouldn’t go starving in the near future, so I point to the P B and M and tell Sister Margaret Mary, “Go ahead and take it as a thank-you for not squealing Birdie out.”
I elbow my sister to remind her to say thank you, too, because she forgets her manners about as often as she forgets everything else, but nobody’s home. Just like I knew would happen, the second she started running her little hand down the back of the tan and black Siamese, the two of them boarded the Orient Express to parts unknown. (Joke!)
7:18 p.m. Mr. McGinty looks up at the clock hanging on the wall above the brown sofa that he must’ve slept on last night so his sister who had gotten knocked unconscious could be comfortable in his bed until she could get her wits about her again. “It’s getting late,” he says. “If you intend to return the money to the collection box before Gert Klement’s deadline,
Marty, you should leave soon.”
With one more pat of Birdie’s hand, Sister M & M a.k.a. Martha “Marty” McGinty says, “I’ll just change,” and then she excuses herself from the card table and disappears into her brother’s bedroom, and when she does that, just for a second, that nun kind of reminds me of Clark Kent disappearing into a phone booth, because that’s about how big our friend’s bedroom is and also because it seems like our principal is being very super about not turning Birdie in.
While we wait for Sister Margaret Mary to come back, Charlie asks Mr. McGinty something that would be of big interest to a kid who keeps track of so many things and has a very unforgiving father of his own. “So who did you come to live with in the neighborhood after you got turned into an orphan?”
Maybe it’s because he is such a private person, but it sure doesn’t look at first like Mr. McGinty wants to tell him, but then he does. “Henry Michael Gilgood was my mother’s brother,” he finally says. “Marty’s and my uncle. He took us in.”
“Mister Gilgood in the mausoleum that you take such extra good care of? The guy who was the richest man in the whole neighborhood who lived in the airplane house?!” I practically shout, because hot damn!
If Mr. McGinty inherited everything in his uncle’s Last Will and Testament because his sister is a nun who has taken a vow of poverty, that explains how Daddy’s old friend could afford to buy the beautiful tombstone from Mr. Patrick Mullarkey & Sons whose business it is to carve cemetery markers with check #2315 because Louise couldn’t afford to, and also how come he’s got $201,789.05 keeping itself warm in the vault at the First Wisconsin Bank.
I never told him that I knew what he did for Daddy, and I’m not going to tell him now how I discovered his checkbook when I was looking for an envelope in his desk so I could send off for the cool booklet in the back of the Superman comics that would teach me “How to Become a Ventriloquist”—Throw Your Voice! Fool teachers, friends and family. ’Fessing up to digging through his private property, well, it might make him a little ticked off, but mostly it would embarrass the heck out of humble Mr. McGinty if he knew that I discovered what he’d done. He’s not a bragger, he’s more like Zorro. He likes to keep his mask on when he’s doing charitable work.
“Yes, our uncle Henry is entombed in the mausoleum, Tessie,” he says with the funniest look on his face. I can’t really put my finger on it. Is it the missing sadness washing over him the way it washes over me? “I’m aware of his reputation around here,” Mr. McGinty says, “but nothing could be further from the truth.”
I wouldn’t know because I never met Mr. Gilgood in the alive state, he was long gone before I was born. But the word around the neighborhood is that he was a very strange guy. A hermit. Different. Somebody also told me he was something called a “Homo” and I have no idea what old country that means he came from. All I know is that I’ve always thought the poor guy should’ve counted his lucky stars that he died before somebody in the neighborhood started talking about how they should get him sent away to a “home” for not fitting in around here.
“Uncle Henry was a wonderful man,” Mr. McGinty says with a sweet, remembering smile on his face now. “Gentle and generous, soft-spoken, an outstanding photographer, a lover of opera and architecture, and a lifelong member of the Audubon Society. These are a few of his photos.” He points over to the wall above his sofa at the beautiful framed pictures that I have always admired of woods and streams, and Birdie’s and Charlie’s favorite, three hummingbirds sipping nectar out of a flower.
Charlie, who’s acting now like he’s taking one of his surveys, asks Mr. McGinty the next question on his list, which happens to be something I’ve been wondering about, too, because of course, we’re a match made in Heaven, so we are on the same wavelength, most of the time. “You told us you were waitin’ for us and you had out our windmill cookies and root beer already when we got here. If time really was of the essence like Sister Margaret Mary said and it was so important to talk to Tessie about returning the Pagan Baby money ASAP, what if tonight turned out to be one of those nights that her and her sister and me didn’t pay you a visit? What if we’d hung around the block and played kick the can instead, or did some snoop—” I kicked him under the table, because our religious godfather would not, I repeat not approve of the blackmailing part of The Mutual Admiration Society’s business.
Mr. McGinty answers, “When I discovered the girls behind Uncle Henry’s mausoleum this morning, Tessie couldn’t get away from me fast enough, but Birdie wanted to stay and talk.” He’s referring to when I wanted to play it safer than sorrier because I thought he might be the kidnapping murderer and I feared for our lives. “Tessie sister-promised Birdie that they’d come back tonight for a visit, and where the girls go, you’re never far behind, so I knew it was just a matter of time before the three of you would show up on my doorstep tonight.”
“A sister-promise can never be broken, no matter what,” drifting Birdie lowers her anchor and says. (Joke!) Or maybe she pulls her derailed brain into the train station and says that. (Also quite funny.)
Mr. McGinty grins at Birdie and says, “Speaking of sisters . . .” He looks over at his closed bedroom door and lowers his already soft voice. “I have a favor to ask of you, Tessie. I realize that Marty can be quite . . . quite . . .” Because he’s such a good egg who follows the Golden Rule down to the letter, I think he’s trying to come up with a nice way to say that his sister can be mean as hell. “In my experience, people often grow up to treat others the way they were treated as children even though they don’t mean to.” He gets this faraway, sad look on his face. “So I’m afraid my sister has a tendency to be a little—”
“Too strict and really bossy and whip-cracking,” Charlie says.
“Yes,” Mr. McGinty admits with a sigh. “She can be a stickler for rules and at times too hard on those who don’t follow them, but as you saw tonight, her heart is in the right place.” My guts are telling me that there is a lot more to the McGinty twins’ story that I will have to drag out of him during one of our fishing trips. “So if you could just take it a little easier on her, kids, I’d appreciate it.”
Well, long as she doesn’t suddenly change her mind and become a stickler for the rule about turning thieves in to the police, I figure what the heck. I owe it to the guy who has been such a good caretaker, not only of the cemetery, but of Birdie and me and even Charlie. “I can’t sister-promise you,” I tell him, “but . . . as the president of The Mutual Admiration Society I have the authority to regular-promise that we’ll all try and be a little nicer to her from here on out.”
“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. McG
inty, 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.
