by Diane Munier
So I just get serious. I tell Abigail we have to go and I take her hand and the Caghans ride in circles near us until we’re practically home, then they take off. And they’ve popped a hundred wheelies, but we haven’t talked anymore.
“They didn’t take those kittens,” Abigail says.
“I know.”
“After they talk to Disbro, Cap will come along and give us the sign.”
“What sign?”
“The frog. Two ribbets means it wasn’t Disbro.”
“Disbro won’t tell the truth.”
“Cap says they’ll find out,” Abigail says so sure.
“Well I don’t know,” I say.
But we get close to home and Granma is waiting by the fence. I expect Aunt May to be with her, but she is not.
“What are these get-ups?” Granma says meaning our special outfits.
“We been walking,” Abigail May says, which Granma never ever buys. She tells me to never let someone else do my talking, no sir.
“We’ve been walking,” I repeat. “Looking for those kittens. We went down to the ball fields to see if any of those boys took them.”
“By yourselves? Was that wise Georgia Christine? You may go to the fire hydrant, but not off this street. You know this.”
“Yes ma’am. But we thought maybe Disbro Peak took them,” I say, knowing how thin this sounds.
We’re doing that looking at each other. It’s new. It isn’t, but something about it is. I am not telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but I’m not telling a lie either. I am sparing her. That’s all. We are on a case and we promised and rubbed our blood together. We are spies first. We sacrifice.
But there’s something else. I have a name on this cast, it’s under my arm almost. It’s Easy.
And all the names on this cast, and the broken bone itself, it’s Easy’s name I feel the most.
Once we make it to my room, and it takes about ten minutes of lectures and ‘I’m sorries,’ but once we make it, Granma is popping the corn, and probably filling her glass, and Lawrence Welk is already playing, and the only part of that we can stand is the Lennon Sisters, of course. But we finally, finally get to my room and turn on the light and I go to my mirror and raise my arm and Abigail bounces on her toes and holds her hands like a bouquet of twining fingers under her chin and we see it in the mirror at the same time, near the top almost under my arm where my cast is still unsigned and very clean, we see it penciled in small letters, all capitals, EASY, framed in a heart.
“Oh my,” Abigail whispers. And I don’t say a thing. I can’t speak about it. But I feel it. Like I said.
Darnay Road 16
We are in my window for the longest time before Cap Caghan does his froggie sound. He’s on foot cause we barely see him. Two ribbits and cross Disbro, Mike, and Bobby off the list. Cross off ourselves and there’s Ricky and Granma left.
“It’s Ricky,” I say, disappointed. I don’t see any sign of Easy.
“You just want to take the spotlight off of Granma,” Abigail May says.
But she went to the store same as me, and Granma wouldn’t be mean like that. She wouldn’t do that. She didn’t mean it, that we’d have twenty-four cats. My gran…my gran. If she took those kittens…well I might never get over it.
“It wasn’t her,” I say. My Granma is not the bad seed.
“You know we have to interview the suspects,” Abigail May says.
Yes I know that. I helped write those rules for spies, didn’t I?
“Then go on over and talk to Ricky,” I say.
I know she’s mad now.
But we watch out the window and we don’t see Cap anymore, and Easy never was there. And Cap don’t go for Ricky. Well, Ricky is mad at them and all.
“It’s not him,” Abigail says while we stare over at her house. Abigail’s house is dark so Ricky and Aunt May must be asleep. But we are so surprised when her front door opens and there are two in the doorway and one separates from the other, a man wearing all black who is situating a black hat on his head. He leaves big gray and latches the gate and walks down the sidewalk with his shoulders hunched.
Well I’ve never seen the like. Is Aunt May sick?
But we are both quiet, watching that ghostly figure walk out of sight.
“Abigail May,” I say.
“He comes sometimes,” she says.
“But where’s his car? It was there before.”
“He parks on Scutter and walks back. He likes the exercise.”
“Is he supposed to leave the rectory this late?” I check my Cinderella watch and it’s half past ten. A good spy always checks the time when she sees something fishy.
And this is fishy.
“I don’t come out when he’s there. Aunt May wouldn’t like it. She says once I go to bed I cannot get up except to bathroom.”
“But….”
“He’s her friend,” Abigail says like she’s mad at me. “I’m not supposed to tell because priests are not allowed to be friends with anybody.”
“He has Father Sukas and Jeffries though,” I say. I can’t imagine wanting to be friends with Father Anthony. What would you do? He’s always in the black outfit with those pale hands.
“Priests get very lonely,” she says hotly.
“You don’t know,” I say. “Can’t they ever see their families?”
“Sometimes they are far away like in Germany or something.”
“What about the nuns?” I say. We’ve already talked all this to death, many times. But now we need to talk about it again.
“It’s not a mystery. All right?” Abigail says then she goes to my bed and flops down.
I end up lying beside her but I don’t want to fall asleep this way, lying cross-ways. Abigail May don’t care what way we lay. She just messes the bed all up, but I like to lay with my head on my Mickey Mouse Club pillow and the covers all neatly over me.
“You can’t tell Granma. Or anyone,” she says.
“What about Ricky? Does he know?” I ask.
“He’s always out with the Hardy Boys.”
“What about tonight?” I say.
“I don’t know,” she says like Granma does when that’s the end of it. “You can’t tell,” she says again.
Why does it seem like there are more and more things I can’t tell my granma? Well part of it’s spy stuff. But now there’s other stuff.
Easy. I think of every word I know that rhymes with his name. I like breezy best. Easy-breezy. I always liked that.
So what in the world would I do at the Quick Shop? I could buy some Turkish Taffy or something. Maybe one of those slushies. Red. I’d like to try that. But I would never ever go there. Not me.
Abigail May flops over on her other side so her back is to me. Sleeping with her is never easy.
There it is again. Easy. I never knew how many times I use that word. And now I’ll always think of him probably.
I tuck my hand under my cast so I can feel that heart.
I want to see Easy’s house, that’s for sure. I say that to Abigail.
“Didn’t Granma just say you can’t leave Darnay Road unless she gives permission for something like roller skating?” Abigail says in a real sleepy voice.
“Yes,” I allow.
“Georgia? Rub my hair,” she says all sweet now.
And I have to roll a little on my side to make my arm long enough to reach her little pin-head. I rub over her little hairs, so short and dark and shiny. It about hits me then, yells into my face seems like. Her mama could come and take her away. From me. And that is just not a possibility. Without Abigail May…well I don’t know if I could live.
I feel some tears coming, but I cry real quiet, I don’t even sniff.
In no time she’s asleep.
Darnay Road 17
I am so sleepy come Sunday morning. Abigail May is bouncing around. Mass is at nine-thirty, and Aunt May drives. I groan because Abigail raises the shade all the way up and the sun is
dancing rainbow splatters right through my eyelids.
“What you looking at?” I say.
“Big gray,” she says staring out the window.
She loves that old house pretty much.
“I had the most terrible dream. In living Technicolor—a brontosaurus rising out of the river and demolishing the trestle bridge. We’d gone there to look for the kittens and it came bursting out of the water chewing on a tree,” I say.
“Did we find them?”
“What?”
“The kittens!” She runs to the bed and jumps on it jarring my arm.
“Are you even listening! One second ago I was running for my life from a brontosaurus!”
“He’s a plant-eater,” she reminds me.
“I know that,” I say. We know all about dinosaurs. I have the Golden Book set of encyclopedias, and we go to the library all year long and we’ve looked at every picture of dinosaurs we can possibly find.
“And he wouldn’t be alive in the river. He’d be spotted. He wouldn’t be underwater he’d….”
“Abigail May,” I say, my voice all raspy with sleep, “I know all that. But in my dream he was acting just like Tyrannosaurus Rex.”
“Well whenever I have a bad dream you tell me all the reasons why it isn’t true, so I’m just telling you,” she says, lying on her back so she can get her toe up to her mouth and bite on her toenail. She knows that drives me crazy.
I push her some and she straightens out and hops up laughing. She sure is happy this morning for a girl whose mama is threatening to come around and drag her all the way to Florida.
“Well thank you very much, but that man-eating dinosaur was very true while I was asleep,” I say like I’ve got the headache.
“Don’t tell Granma about Father Anthony,” she says.
We look at one another for a minute. “Don’t tell Granma about Easy signing my cast like that,” I say.
The ‘don’t tell Granmas,’ just keep piling up.
Mass takes forever and ever and ever. I put my imagination to good use and think of Easy signing my cast, the way he wrote there so carefully, holding my arm up so gently. My good hand is under my cast right now, my fingers running over that heart.
Someday when I do get a boyfriend for real, I hope he’s as nice and beautiful as Easy. Well maybe it will be him, maybe he’ll wait and I’ll grow up and be so beautiful, like Natalie Wood. And maybe we’ll have a convertible, red with white seats would be so, so fine. I’d wear a silk bandana and sunglasses and Easy, or Moondoggie, or someone so handsome will be driving us down the highway and we’ll see wonders I imagine, maybe even go to Hollywood.
Granma nudges me. It’s time to go up for communion. I get up and move out of the pew behind Abigail May. The doily on her head has blown up on one side, folded over the bobby pin she wears in the center of her head to hold her head-covering on. I reach up and smooth it flat again. God wouldn’t be punishing her now would he? I have the broken arm and she has to move? And Ricky, he’s getting punished too, and sneaking out every night, well it’s obvious to me, a true spy, that he’s in trouble.
Maybe I shouldn’t take communion. Maybe I need confession instead. I sure can’t go now. They only have it on Thursdays. Pretty soon I’m kneeling at the railing beside Abigail May, my head bowed while I watch for Father and the altar boy, one of the big boys I don’t know, make their ways down the row of us doling out the wafer we can’t bite but must let dissolve on our tongues like Fizzies, only this is a very holy thing, so holy that if you bite the wafer, it will bleed and probably cause blood to run out of your mouth and people will look at you and scream.
Now it’s my turn and I lift my head.
He says the words in Latin, “The body of Christ.”
I open my mouth and I feel Father Anthony’s wet fingers touch my tongue and for just a split second he looks at me and I look at him, and that’s a first time cause the priest always just looks at your mouth like he’s trying to aim communion right in there, so I can only think about how I saw him leaving Abigail’s house so late, and he’s friends with Aunt May when he’s not supposed to make friends.
Then he’s moving on to Granma and Aunt May and I follow in Abigail’s path, my hands folded, my steps so soft as I walk back to our pew.
One good thing. Mass is nearly over and there’s a pancake breakfast after and I’ll have a chance to watch Father Anthony and Aunt May.
And I will be watching.
Darnay Road 18
“Give me the notebook,” I say to Abigail while standing in line for our pancakes.
I am speaking very low and out of the side of my mouth the way that old actor Humphrey Bogart might speak. I don’t want Aunt May to hear me. And she doesn’t want me…or Abigail, to hear her, but I know she’s filling Granma’s ears about ‘you-know-who,’ and her brother not wanting to go, ‘you-know-where,’ with their, ‘you-know-what.’
Abigail May looks at me and rolls her eyes. We are just too deep in the spying business not to be able to figure this out.
Ricky is standing in another line. He looks like he’s part of Tim Barton’s family. He likes Tim sometimes, but not lately with the Hardy Boys around. I guess we both ditched Tim, me and Abigail too, but he shouldn’t have fallen in love with me and chased us home every night. I tried to tell him.
Then his mother had to come down and talk to Granma about it, how mean I was treating Tim, well me and that Abigail May Brody. Her little darling Poo-Poo, as Abigail May calls him now.
My Granma said, “Why Virginia I wasn’t aware that Georgia Christine was running away from your Timothy, but I imagine if he’d quit chasing her that would solve the problem.”
Of all the times I’ve eavesdropped in my whole life that is the time I almost gave myself away from the need to laugh. Mrs. Barton did not complain about me again and she was there to walk Poo-Poo home from school after that.
So I can barely look over there now. Abigail gives me the notebook and I take the pencil from the spiral and hand the book back and slide that pencil down the top of my cast and saw it up and down and around. It feels so good to itch my arm that way I almost howl like an old dog.
Then I think of all the dogs set to howling when Easy rode me past on his bike that time and I wonder what he’s doing, being a heathen but very, very handsome as he must be, wherever he is on this Sunday morning.
Finally we get up there to get our pancakes. Abigail May is in front holding her big china plate. I am surprised when Ricky appears out of nowhere to take my plate. I was waiting for Mr. Young to take mine for me as he is helping folks to the long tables and the lady serving told me to wait. Granma already went on and Abigail May never thought to look back neither, but I know Ricky is mad at Abigail and I, so the last thing I expected was for him to leave the Bartons and be a gentleman for me.
He has his plate too, and without a word he leads us to the table where our families sit. He puts my plate down and takes his back to sit with the Bartons. He never looks at me or says anything, so I don’t either because I don’t know what to say but thank you and he didn’t give me a chance.
So Abigail just shrugs and she’s already chewing because we said a big grace together before they started to serve. Now I’m looking around and then I spot him, Father Anthony wearing the hat that looks like a king’s hat only black and without the crown part, just a big snowball on the top instead.
Makes me think of my missing pom-pom. And that makes me think of the missing kittens. And that makes me think of Abigail May leaving. “You think Abigail will have to go?” I ask Aunt May.
But she doesn’t hear me, she is watching someone, and I fake cough into my hand and look quickly for where she’s looking, and she’s looking at him, the man in the dress, Father Anthony. He’s talking to Miss Amanda Dunbar. She is the other unmarried woman, almost same age as Aunt May might be—one hundred and five minus fifty or something. I can’t imagine. All I know is Abigail May says Aunt May loves, loves President
Kennedy. Well everyone does, but Aunt May has his picture hanging in the hall at big gray. Abigail May says Aunt May told Edna she wanted her hair cut like Jackie’s, but Edna said that style wouldn’t work for Aunt May as Aunt May has all that natural curl and Aunt May said, ‘do it anyway,’ and Edna was right cause you can’t really tell what Aunt May was going for. But she might be going for Father Anthony if that’s possible. He has red hair and it’s thick like the president’s, and he has that red-head skin and freckles and if you squint a little he is a little like President Kennedy. Maybe. He could be a cousin at least.
But I cough again and turn around to my food and Granma is pointing at me with her fork. “Eat,” she says.
And I cut a triangle of pancakes and poke that in my mouth and chew, chew but soon as Granma quits looking at me, I am peeking at Aunt May and she is flushing red while she looks in Father’s direction.
The thing about spying, until you do make yourself notice everything and everyone around you, you just don’t notice much. Abigail and I will sometimes give one another ‘spy tests,’ where one gets until the count of ten to look at everything in a picture in a book and then without looking at the book again you have to say as many things as were on the page.
Abigail and I almost tie most of the time.
But I look at Abigail and she is eating her syrup, which is what she always does, lays her fork in the syrup and lets it cling like honey then she licks it off. Granma says Abigail May lives on air, but I say it’s sugar she likes the most. But she’s not spying right now at all, and I know what she means about the bad seed--her mother. Sometimes it’s so close you just don’t see.
