She’s got no trouble quenching her thirst up at Lonnigan’s Bar with the guy she wants to replace our precious Daddy with. Sometimes I pretend that we need money so much that our mother is sacrificing herself by luring what’s-his-name and his payroll check into her wedding web, but it sure seems to me that she’s only thinking about herself. I have told her a million times that if she can’t pay the electric or heating bill or buy more food, that’s fine by us. Candles will do, and this winter Birdie and me can wear our coats and mittens in the house, and I can bring home school lunch in my uniform pocket for supper, but Louise won’t listen to me.
But just because she doesn’t care about Daddy anymore doesn’t mean that Birdie and me don’t and I had no problem telling her that. She had the worst tantrum I’ve ever seen the night I waited at the kitchen table for her to come home from Lonnigan’s. I just couldn’t take it anymore and she’s not the only one with a temper around here, so I accused Louise of inflicting “cruel and unusual punishment” on Birdie and me because Daddy wasn’t here anymore to protect us. She shook her finger in my face and screamed, “You want to see some cruel and unusual punishment, little girl? Try feeding two kids and . . . and paying bills and holding your head up high after your husband cheated and . . .” I hollered back at her, “Liar!” because Daddy would never cheat at cards, or approve of her keeping his two “babies” away from him, or want her to go on dates with what’s-his-name. “You’re the cheater and you will never be the boss of us! What he says still goes!” Louise slapped me across the face, which was something she had never done before, and in the morning she made French toast with cinnamon, just the way Daddy always made it.
Why can’t our mother see that Birdie and me need the cemetery? It’s not only our lifeline to Daddy, death is our #1 hobby, and her thinking that fads like Hula-Hooping or stamp collecting would be “healthier pastimes” and “less morbid” is so shortsighted. Death is never going to go out of style, and it’s not a pain in the butt to chase down the block if it gets away from you, and it also doesn’t make your mouth taste like glue.
And this is not even taking into consideration how in this beautiful cemetery that has so many trees and smells of flowers and just-mowed grass in the summer and at this time of the year burning leaves and sweet, ripe red apples, I have learned so much more than I ever have slouched over a desk in a stuffy classroom that reeks of chalk, kid sweat, and Fartin’ Marty Larson.
Death is also very educational.
The tombstone that Birdie and me are strolling past now taught us that one job we should never get if we grow up is taxicab driving. Mr. McGinty told us that this poor man got killed by a passenger who took all his money and plugged him in the head with a .45.
DARGU MALISHEWSKI
JULY 10, 1911–APRIL 22, 1957
FARE THEE WELL
Something else I’ve also learned during the many hours we’ve spent in Holy Cross is that the Finley sisters really have to watch our steps. Not just grown-ups kick the bucket, kids do, too. Here and there and all over the place.
Cute little Jody Gersh choked on an apple. (A crying shame.) Three-year-old Bucky Martin drank lighter fluid. (Heartbreaking.) And two little girls named Junie and Sara who got murdered and left next to the Washington Park Lagoon are buried side by side under a white-trunked birch tree that shades their graves. (Worst way to go.) When I asked Mr. McGinty, who understands so much about life and death, why the girls from the next parish over weren’t put in the ground near the pond, because I thought after the awful way they died they deserved to be set into the swankiest part of the cemetery, he set me straight. “The pond looks very similar to the lagoon, Tessie. When their families come to visit, it might bring back memories of where their children’s bodies were found and that would be too much to bear. Grievers’ hearts can only take so much before they bust into a million little pieces.”
After he told me that, I surprised the hell outta the both of us when I swooned to the grass and burst into bawling because that was exactly the way I felt after Daddy died. Like my heart had done a cannonball onto a slab of granite and if I never saw Lake Michigan or any other lake as long as I lived it would it be too soon for me.
Birdie didn’t feel as bad as me. Not at first, anyway.