“Okay, fine.” I drop my hands back to my sides, rock back on my heels, and say exactly as 100% ticked off as I feel, “Why isn’t the medal you found in the leaf pile one of those have-a-safe-trip-to-the-Great-Beyond medals, Birdbrain?”
She doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve lost my temper and called her that mean name, because if she had, she would’ve gotten that crushed look on her face and given in to me, not thrown back her shoulders and cleared her throat like she’s a contestant on her favorite quiz show who’s about to give the answer to the big prize package question of the day. Ha! The only game show this twerp could ever win is Queen for a Day. The audience would pin the applause meter after they heard her sob story. Hmmm. Maybe I should put on my TO-DO list: Write to master of ceremonies Mr. Jack Bailey and enter Birdie on his show. Daddy never got around to fixing ours, so we really could use a new washing machine, and I think the winner gets to keep the mink cape they wear at the end of the show and that would be a big help if our heat gets turned off, and Birdie could give the shiny crown to Louise as one of her special gifts and maybe that’d make our mother love her a lot more than she does.
“Well, Tessie,” my sister answers, so snooty, “this is a have-a-safe-trip-to-the-Great-Beyond medal, but not the kind grievers leave anymore on the gravestones of their loved ones.” She holds it up higher so I can take another gander at it. “I guess you musta forgot that they started leaving the cruddy dime store medals after kids started stealin’ the really nice ones on dares.” Birdie swings what she found into the palm of her hand and holds it about three inches away from my face with one of her irresistible smiles that the army could use to make enemies surrender, that’s how bad it can bring me to my knees. (No joke.) “I think this medal I found is made out of real gold, but, of course, far be it from me to second-guess an expert such as yourself.”
If it sounds like she knows what she’s talking about, it just so happens that this time she does. Times two.
#1: Kids were sneaking into Holy Cross and stealing the real gold medals in the middle of the night and they don’t do that anymore and I’ll never, ever forgive them.
After watching those thieves tippy-toeing out of the cemetery from our bedroom window, the Finley sisters would track them down and start charging them a pretty penny to keep our pie holes shut. Believe me, if there weren’t so many of them, and if some of them kids weren’t stealing the medals on dares they were forced into by my confidential informant, Kitten Jablonski, I’d put ’em all on my SHIT LIST.
#2: Birdie might know a lot about Atomic Fireballs to Wax Bottles and every candy in between, but I know what I’m talking about when it comes to jewelry.
I have spent many hours drooling over the diamonds and going rabid for the rubies at Howard’s Precious Gems and Jewelry store on North Ave. in case I have to heist it someday on our way out of town.
But even though my sister got lucky on those two facts, I’m still positive that she’s speeding the wrong way down a one-way street and I’d do just about anything to get her moving in the right direction, which is toward the weeping willow tree, where, hopefully, my darling Charlie is still waiting for us.
Unfortunately, I can’t put that A+ plan into action until I examine the St. Christopher medal that Birdie found or I’ll never hear the end of it, so I snatch the chain out of her hand to give it a quick look before we get under way.
“Is it real gold?” she asks me four times before I even have a chance to examine the medal, because she really stinks at waiting. During our peeping stakeouts, she always wants to catch someone in the act now . . . now . . . now . . . now! It’s gotten so bad that I have to keep a sock in our Radio Flyer wagon that I can stick in her mouth. “Is it a clue? Is it a clue? Is it a—?”
“Will you wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute!?”
When I study the medal closer, against all odds, I know right off that my sister just might be on to something. This St. Christopher does look like it’s made out of pure gold, but to be sure, I better do what jewelry man Mr. Howard Howard makes young lovers do when they stop into his shop to buy their gold wedding bands. After he gives the young lovers a misty-eyed lecture about the sanctity of the holy sacrament of marriage and how their rings will always be a symbol of their everlasting and eternal love, because he misses his one and only wife so much he has to dab at his eyes with a hankie before he sets a cheap wedding band down on the counter, unlocks the big case, and removes one of the high-quality rings that are nestled in black velvet. He wants to teach the engaged kids the difference between cruddy imitations and the real deal, so he says to them, “The rings may look similar, but all that glitters is not gold. Hold the bands in your hands. Compare the heft.”