The Undertaking of Tess

by Kagen, Lesley

  Forward.

  “But,” I say to my sister, who is now picking at a scab on her leg, “why would Daddy swim all the way to Boca Raton?” He was an excellent backstroker, but not that good. “Florida is really far away.”

  Like she’s been practicing this in her spare time, Birdie says to me very smooth, “Because after he got the amnesia, he didn’t remember anymore that he was supposed to come home and take care of us. Just like that man in Mannix who was in the car that went off the mountain and after he hit his head on the steering wheel he walked into the woods instead of going back to his family that was waiting for him to take them to church. Daddy just kept swimming and Boca Raton was just where he ended up, by accident.”

  That’s really, really dumb, and I shouldn’t “humor” her, but that’s what they do to people in the movies so they don’t jump off the ledge of a high building, which isn’t very humorous, if you ask me. But what harm would it do to let her think, at least for a little while, that Daddy is living in Boca Raton with a bad case of amnesia? She’s having such a tough time that if it makes her happy to believe that someday they will be together again, sooner rather than later, why not? I mean … hold the presses! That really could happen! Not the way that Birdie is thinking, but in another way. Look at Easter! I have not heard of another case of resurrection since you know whose, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible! Anything is. So once my sister gives up on believing that Daddy’s still alive, we’ll find his pretend grave, and then I’ll talk her into that, “He’s risen!” idea, and for a little while, I’ll tell her that he’s gonna come back like Jesus did and that will make her feel better too. I think. Like Doris Day says, “Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see.”

  Anyways, there’s no point in butting heads with Birdie over that resurrecting idea now. It took me over two months to convince her that it was the Lone Ranger not the Long Ranger, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She thinks the name of the book with the fancy French man who was kept a prisoner in a tower, but then he escapes, and comes back to get revenge on the guys who treated him like dirt is called The Count of Monte Crisco. I tried to explain to her that sounded more like a Julia Child cooking show and not a rip-roaring adventure story, but once she gets stuff in her head, it can get branded in there.

  “Stop pickin’ at yourself,” I tell her. “You get blood on those socks, Mom, I mean, Louise, is gonna get mad.” I take the Kleenex out of my pocket again and wipe off the stream that’s trickling down her leg.

  I can’t decide what to tell her right this minute about Daddy being on the postcard in Dalinsky’s, so thank the saints that she gives me a little more time to come up with something by having one of her driftings. It’s because I told her that our mother would get mad at her.

  While I’m thinking things over, a hearse pulls up in the cemetery.

  I can’t see one without the song named after them coming into my mind.

  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,

  the worms play pinochle in your snout.

  They eat your eyes, they eat your nose,

  they eat the jelly between your toes.

  For a second, I feel so glad that Daddy is at the bottom of the lake and not worm food, but that feeling doesn’t last long because I guess he’s fish food, and considering how much he liked to catch them and fry them up in butter, if I was a trout, I’d be gunning for him too.

  Trying to bring Birdie back from wherever it is she goes isn’t always easy. Sometimes she sinks into a drifting like it’s quicksand, but there are times I can run my finger down her arm and she’ll go back to being as normal as she gets if I ask her, “S’awright?” in my Señor Wences voice. He’s on the Ed Sullivan Show.

  She doesn’t answer back, “S’awright,” because she can’t do funny voices like I can. She’s better at being the audience. She just smiles and picks another card out of the Candy Land deck like nothing happened. ’Cause she doesn’t like orange, she scowls and sticks it on the bottom of the deck, and takes a blue card, which is fine by me. Who cares that she’s a little cheat? What else does the poor kid have to live for?

  After she moves four spaces, she says happily, “Someday Daddy’ll get his memory back, just like that car-crash guy did and he’ll come back to us. You’ll see.”

  I look back at the hearse and say a quick Hail Mary even though I don’t believe in God anymore, I still believe a little in his mother. I’m hoping that it’s Daddy’s pretend burial ceremony that’s about to start on the other side of the fence, for Birdie’s sake. If she could just see with her own eyes all the people saying goodbye to him, that would be so great.

  For extra holy luck, I stroke our father’s Swiss Army knife in my pocket that’s next to my TO-DO LIST, and then I bring the St. Nicholas medal that Gammy gave me up to my lips and kiss it. I wear it around my neck because besides playing Santa Claus during Christmas, St. Nick is the patron saint of children and let’s face it, Birdie and I need all the extra holy help we can get because whether you get to live or die … it’s all about luck and we don’t have that much.

  Soldiers can go to dangerous places and come back without a scratch except for leaving a leg in Italy, or being shell-shocked like Audie Murphy, or Mr. McGinty, who had to have a dinner plate put into his head after he stepped on a land mind, but you make one wrong move like going fishing on a hot summer day with your kid who loves you so much that her heart feels like it might explode at any second from the missing, and it turns out to be the kiss of death. Any moron can see that every morning you get out of bed you’re taking the chance that the Grim Reaper is waiting for you right around the corner.

  I am saving up for some binoculars that I saw in the back of a Superman comic book—I got the idea from Mr. McGinty, who has a super-duper pair—but for now all I can do is squint my eyes to see if I can recognize any of the funeral faces on the other side of the black iron fence. Everyone is waiting for the casket to be slid out of the back of the black car by the Pauls, who have pink carnations pinned to their suit coats because that’s one of the most popular funeral flowers there is. Gammy told me they stand for: I’ll never forget you.

  I don’t see one person I know, which only goes to show you how hit and miss praying is. There’s a hunched-over lady who is the saddest of the bunch. She’s making a noise that sounds like a hurt dog. I want her to please, please, shut up because that sound is so awful and my heart is soaking it up like a sponge and I can’t let that happen. One of the Finley sisters has to keep her head screwed on straight and it’s too late for Birdie.

  “Your turn,” my sister and me say at the exact same time.

  “Jinx!” I say quicker than her. “You owe me a dime!”

  Birdie turns her smile upside down because another bad thing about her is that she can be a sore loser.

  Also, a tight wad.

  She’s Got Enough Haunting Goin’ On

  Birdie doesn’t take up much room in our bed after we say our special prayer and do our spooning because she sleeps in a balled-up fist. I was not born a good sleeper, but this is another thing my sister is excellent at when she isn’t having nightmares or wetting the bed. Sun is coming through the cracks in our window shade, and I’m on my elbow studying her adorable face and feeling relieved that the sheet stayed dry last night because last week Louise hung one from the porch for the whole neighborhood to see. I am humming the special song louder and louder. I’m almost shouting it by the time she opens her eyes, that’s how deep she sleeps.

  I hook her straggly brown hair behind her ear and say, “Happy birthday, tweetheart. I got something for you.” I reach into the crack between the bed and the wall. “Sorry it’s not wrapped.” Sticking a paper tube under your T-shirt and making it all the way out of the Five and Dime without the owner of the store noticing is almost impossible. Mrs. Kenfield has eyes in the back of her head.

  When I hand over the gift, my sister makes her lips look like a tiny bird
mouth—O. The nightlight will be a big help.

  To show how much she likes her present, she gives me a butterfly kiss, my favorite. (Eskimo kisses are nice too, but can get snotty under certain conditions.) “Thank you, Tessie,” she says with a lot of gratitude. “I got something for you too.” She gets on her tummy and sticks her hand under the mattress on her side. “I know how much you wanted this.”

  It’s the framed picture of Mom and Daddy that was on top of the bedroom vanity.

  I grab it outta her hands and say, “Holy shit, Bird! Where’d you find it?”

  She turns a lighter shade than pale and gives a little shiver. “In the black trunk in the attic. Alotta pictures of Daddy are in there.”

  “You went up to the attic?” I truly can’t believe this for a couple of reasons. She is usually much too sweet to be sneaking around behind our mother’s back, and a little heavy on her feet for a kid named Birdie. “Without me?”

  I NEVER shoulda let her see The Fly. She doesn’t understand that those horror movies are pretend. Even if I try to make fun of it by chasing her around the house saying, “Help me … help me …,” in my excellent imitation of Vincent Price’s voice after he became an insect, she screams bloody murder. So going up to attic? By herself? Where there are always alotta flies lying on the floor and windowsills? That only goes to show how much she adores me to death.

  I reach over and give her a hug. “How about a joke to get our special day started off right!?”

  She smiles and nods because that’s what Daddy always did for us on our birthday.

  “You got your thinking cap on?”

  She pretends to place it on top of her head and tie it under her chin.

  “Okay.” I clear my throat that is always froggier sounding when I just wake up. “Where would you find a birthday present for a cat?”

  Birdie thinks for a minute. “The pet store on 58th Street?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ummm … I don’t know. Where would you get a birthday present for a cat?”

  I wait a beat the way Daddy taught me to before I deliver the punch line. “In the Sears and Roebuck catalog! Get it? CAT … alog?”

  It takes her a second, but then she burst into giggles, and Mom must’ve heard her because she calls out of the kitchen, “Rise and shine, birthday ghouls!”

  Calling us that lets us know that it’s gonna be a good day, at least for awhile, because she’s teasing us about our hobby instead of yelling about it. Part of her for-now happy mood is because she has always liked that Birdie and I were born on the same day one year apart—August 15th, the day of The Assumption. It’s a Catholic holiday for the Virgin Mary. Our mother doesn’t care so much about the Mother of Jesus heading up to Heaven, she’s happy because she only has to bake one birthday cake. It’s one of those killing-two-birds-with-one-stone situations since she not only hates cooking, believe me, she is no Betty Crocker. She would rather spend her precious time doing her hobbies.

  HER ROYAL HIGHNESS’S FAVORITE THINGS

  Looking at herself in the mirror or the toaster or the back of a skillet.

  Paging through Photoplay magazines and saying impolite things about Ida Lupino.

  Seeing Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies and then acting like she’s Doris for the next week.

  Going out to eat at a restaurant or supper club.

  Being witchy to Birdie and me.

  When my sister and me pad into the kitchen, our mother is already dressed and raring to go in a blue blouse and white pedal pushers. There are two packages lying next to a plate of jelly-filled donuts that she must’ve picked up from Meurer’s Bakery because they’re the best. I hope she saved the string off the white box for Birdie’s cat’s cradle game because she likes her strings fresh with the smell of sugar still on ’em.

  One of the presents is small, the other is big. There are also two cards for each of us. One is in our mother’s neat handwriting, and one is in our Gammy’s not-so-neat handwriting. She has knobs growing on her fingers so it’s hard to hold a pen.

  Birdie and me tell Mom really loud, “Thank you!” and rip into both the donuts and Gammy’s cards. Mine has a puppy on the front because I like them so much. Inside, she taped eleven dimes. Birdie’s card has a rainbow on the front because even though she really likes puppies too, our grandmother can’t send the same card to different kids, that’s just not couth. Birdie only got ten dimes, of course. On the bottom of both of our cards, she wrote the same thing:

  xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

  Wish your daddy was here.

  Our mother says, “Goddamn her,” and snubs out her cigarette on her plate. “This is exactly why I don’t want you seeing her anymore. All she ever talks about is Eddie this and Eddie that. She couldn’t let us have one day without reminding us?” And just like that, what had been looking like a sunny day goes gray, but then also, just like that, she smiles like something just dawned on her. “Open your presents!”

  I say, “Age before beauty,” and start to rip off the paper that has balloons on it. I was hoping for a tomahawk, but Mom got me a Nancy Drew book. I tell her, “Thank you! Thank you!” even though I have read the The Haunted Showboat already, it’s a better present than what she gave me last year which was a ventriloquist dummy. (Who in the hell is Charlie McCarthy?)

  Birdie says, “My turn,” and slowly takes the wrapping paper off her big present.

  I get too excited to stand it, so I yell, “Hurry … hurry!” because I was the one who told Mom how much she wanted the dress and I can’t wait to see her face. I don’t like frilly things, but my sister is very, what Gammy calls, froufrou. Birdie saw this pink dress with at least ten petticoats in the window of Shuster’s on North Avenue. The store sells regular shoes, but also ballet slippers, tap shoes, and dance costumes. She swooned down to the sidewalk and I had to prop her up all the way home, that’s how much she loved the look of that fancy dress.

  Birdie lifts up the box top with trembling fingers, separates the tissue paper, and right off by the look on her face I can tell that it’s not what she’d been praying for night and day.

  “Lemme see,” I say.

  Where the sparkles and a fluffy skirt should’ve been, there’s a white Playtex girdle.

  Somehow Birdie manages to say to our mother, “Thank you. I love it.”

  The saddest part of all of this is that Louise actually believes her. “Now nobody can call you Two-Ton Robin,” she says, even though she’s the only one who calls Birdie that. (In the tummy area, okay, my sister is a little tubby, but she doesn’t weight 2,000 pounds, that’s ridiculous.)

  “Open your cards!” Mom says. “They’re Hallmark!”

  That’s nice, because Birdie LOVES anything to do with Hallmark. Especially their Hall of Fame television shows. My card from Louise has a picture of a daisy on it which is also nice because she knows how much I like to garden with Gammy, and she can’t stand Gammy any more than Gammy can stand her.

  She signed both of our cards:

  Love, Louise

  There’s a famous saying, “Actions speak louder than words,” so I doubt that very much.

  “I’ve got another surprise for you two,” she says. “We’re going on a birthday outing!”

  “The zoo?” Birdie asks a little more chipper, because that’s only about a mile from our house and she really loves Monkey Island and, of course, the bird house makes her conceited all day long.

  Our mother says, “That’s for me to know and for you to find out. Finish up your rolls and get dressed. And don’t forget this, Robin Jean,” she says as she lifts the Playtex girdle out of the box.

  Birdie waits until we’re back in our bedroom to ask, “Do I have to wear it?”

  “Ummm … no.” I think. “Tell her you tried it on and you really, really love it, but that it was too small. No, wait … tell her that it was way, way too big.”

  Birdie looks at her birthday present with welled-up eyes and says, “She won’t believe me and then she’l
l get mad.”

  Since my sister does stink at lying, and our mother will get mad, I tell her, “Leave it up to me,” and take the ugly girdle into the bathroom with me. I’m gonna splash water on my face and brush my teeth, and then I’ll lie to Louise after I fish it out of the bowl. I’ll tell her with my saddest face, “I was admiring it, thinking how thoughtful you are and what a great present it was, and I’m so, so sorry, but it slipped out of my fingers and fell into the toilet. Sorry.”

  Birdie and me are in the backseat of the woody wagon with all the windows open because it’s always hot as hell on our birthday. Rock ’n roll music from WOKY is playing on the radio and our mother is singing along to a Bobby Daren song called Dream Lover. Maybe she’s thinking about Daddy the same way I am. I used to like to sit back here and stare at the back of his neck where his hair hit his collar, it was cute and jagged.

  My sister has her head stuck all the way out the car window because she likes the way rushing air feels on her face no matter how many times I tell her she’s gonna get her head chopped off by a passing car. This is the famous saying, “throwing caution to the wind.” For such a jumpy kid, she does this kind of thing too much for my liking. When she gets in a certain kind of mood, she can get, oh, I don’t know … a wild streak? This summer, she rang Mr. Johnson’s doorbell and ran away one night when we were doing some spying. Nobody knows him that good because he doesn’t go to our church, but every kid in the neighborhood does know that he will chase after you if you bother him. I was sweating bullets, but I could tell by the look on Birdie’s face when we were peeling down the block that she didn’t care if Mr. Johnson caught her and took her down into his basement and made her head look like the deer he has hanging in his living room because Lutherans like to stuff things for fun instead of playing bingo.