I don’t know, ya know?
They don’t look like twins, except for how tall and strong they both are, and the fact that they got the same hair color, cow-brown eyes, and those great choppers. But I’m not stupid. I know there are those other kinds of twins that aren’t identical. I can’t remember what they’re called now, but those kinds of twins are always very alike in their personalities. Johnny and Janie Mahlberg, who are in the seventh grade, both of them have collecting bugs as a hobby. Sixth-graders David and Donna Peabody, the two of them love to play tetherball and can finish each other’s sentences. And look at the Bobsey twins! Nan and Bert, and Freddie and Flossie, they like to have adventures and sometimes solve mysteries. But other than having very religious personalities, what could the so-called McGinty “twins” have in common?
Q. Is it even humanly possible that our principal, who I can’t imagine even being born, more like ascending from Hell with strict instructions from Satan to be her meanest to kids, is related to our good and dear friend, sweet and shy Mr. McGinty?
A. It is certain.
Q. Oh, yeah? Then how come nobody told me this before?
A. Cannot predict now.
“How come you never told me you had a twin sister before?” I blurt out to Mr. McGinty.
He must not be offended by my suspicious-sounding tone, because he smiles, and says so convincingly, “But I have, Tessie. I’m certain I mentioned it on the afternoon that you and Birdie helped me plant the lilac bushes near Mister Gilgood’s mausoleum. When you told me they were your favorites, I distinctly remember telling you that my twin sister, Martha, loves them, too.”
Birdie and me talk about so many things with him when he’s working in the cemetery, and he’s very soft-spoken, and I can get easily distracted by her, so maybe he did tell me he had a twin the day he was planting lilacs near the mausoleum and I just didn’t catch it because the smell of lilacs almost puts me in a stupor, or maybe I really do need hearing aids, or maybe, for some unknown reason, him and his so-called sister are making this whole story up, and a few days from now I’ll get a picture postcard from Wisconsin Dells with Babe the Blue Ox on the front.
“Now that we’ve answered your questions, why don’t one of you start out by explaining to Martha and me,” the caretaker says, “why you thought I’d kidnapped her?”
“Tessie heard someone yellin’ last night, ‘I’m warning you! Watch your step! You’re treading on dangerous ground!’” Birdie jumps in and says. “And she also heard a bloody-murder scream and then she saw outta our bedroom window a tall, skinny guy who wasn’t Mister Howard Howard ’cause he’s short and he eats too many jelly donuts with his Jim sneak behind the Gilgood mausoleum with a limp body!”
I automatically correct her, but in a very impressed way, because I’m proud that she remembers almost to the word what she told our mother on our back porch this morning. “Mister Howard Howard eats too many jelly donuts with his joe.”
“Roger that.”
“And when Missus Klement told Tessie this morning that you”—Charlie points at our principal—“had disappeared, she assumed that you were the kidnapped murdered victim that she saw.”
“Kidnapped and murdered?” Mr. McGinty says.
“Disappeared?” our principal says, also with a surprised, puzzled look. “But I left a note for Sister Prudence explaining that I was called away on an emergency and that I’d return the following day, which she would have certainly shared with the other sisters.”
“But Sister Prudence didn’t find your note right away,” Charlie says. “So for a while today, everybody in the neighborhood, not just us, thought you had vanished.”
The McGintys look at each other across the table like they had no idea that the parish had been in such an uproar.
“I can understand how you might misinterpret what you saw out of your bedroom window last night, Tessie,” Mr. McGinty says, “but how could you believe that I’d commit a kidnapping and a murder?”
“’Cause . . . ’cause . . .”