Snow Globes and Hand Grenades (11 page)

“I hope everyone has had time to think hard about any sins that might be on your conscience,” she said, “because the questioning is about to begin.” She picked up a piece of paper from her desk. “I have in my hand a list of the students the investigators want to see.” She glanced at it and looked up. “Up first is Mimi Maloney.”

A crack of thunder rattled the windows as Mimi got up. Miss Kleinschmidt told her where to go, and the class watched as Mimi walked slowly toward the door, eyes forward, with no sign of emotion. She pulled open the door, went out in the hall, and pushed it closed behind her. The bolt
clicked into the door jam, and every student looked up at Miss Kleinschmidt.

“This shouldn't take long, as long as the guilty ones admit what they've done.” Then she repeated one of her favorite complaints. “It's just a shame that a few have to ruin it for everyone.” Patrick and Tony's lips moved to her last words, which they had heard practically every day since September.

“After Mimi is done, numbers two and three will be questioned next,” she said looking at the list. “Tony Vivamano and Patrick Cantwell.” And with that a crack of lightning lit up the gloom outside followed by another low roll of window-rattling thunder.

Mimi knocked on the door of the interrogation room and waited. This was the same room where the school nurse had conducted eye exams in past years, the same room where Mimi had been taken to rest on the little cushioned bench after she had fainted during the fifth grade spelling bee. The door opened about six inches and the bulging, brown eyes of Father Ernst peered out at Mimi.

“Miss Maloney?”

“Yes?”

Father Ernst swung the door open wide. It was a recluse spider of a room, without windows and just one lamp on the nurse's desk. Detective Kurtz sat behind the desk. He rose without smiling to greet Mimi.

“Miss Maloney, won't you please sit down?” Detective Kurtz said. His tone was like a dentist about to do major drilling.

“Thank you,” she said. She sat in a straight-back wooden chair facing the desk, crossed her legs, and straightened her skirt. She looked around the room to get her bearings. Father Ernst sat down on the red leather cushion bench off to the left. On the wall above him was a poster of the human anatomy showing a naked man with a cutaway view of his tendons and organs. The only other thing on the walls was the eye chart behind the desk. Detective Kurtz grabbed the metal coil neck of the desk lamp and twisted it to cast a harsh light in Mimi's face. Then he sat down and stared into her eyes

“How are you feeling just now?” he began.

“Special.”

“Special?” Kurtz's eyes widened.

Mimi knew right away “special” had been the wrong word to start with. It sprung to her lips from her satisfaction with how well things had been going since being dumped on the golf course. Patrick had saved her from having her guts blown out by the hand grenade, and she had successfully switched the fake letters, fooling her whole family. Neither her older sister nor her younger brother could have done half so well. Not only that, Tony liked her and he and Patrick had both crowned her Number One at the top of the pyramid. For once, she was in charge of something big and even more elaborate than a Chopin piano piece or a basketball game. She was on a winning streak that put her beyond the reach of the detective or the priest. Her main problem—right this very instant—was not concealing any nervousness. She felt none. Instead she had to conceal her confidence. To her way of thinking, it was the Father Ernst and Detective Kurtz who should feel nervous. After all, they were just ordinary adults. They didn't know what kind of girl they were dealing with.

“Oh maybe that's the wrong word. Maybe I should say ‘honored'. Yes, I feel honored that you called on me first, as if I'm anybody.”

“Tell us about yourself,” Father Ernst said folding his hands in a prayerful pose.

“Me? Oh, there's not much to tell. I'm just an average girl.”

“Have you got a boyfriend?” Father Ernst asked.

“No, not me. I'm too young for all that. Besides, I've got too much homework. I want to keep my grades up because I'm going to Holy Footsteps next year.”

“Why did you raise your hand?” Detective Kurtz said suddenly. “You were the first one to raise your hand when we asked who took the snow globe.”

Mimi tipped her head left and right to look flighty and shallow. “I don't know. I've been asking myself the same question. Why? Why? Why? Whew, I guess, I just … wanted to see what the reaction would be. I get bored sometimes.”

“Bored?” Father Ernst asked. He swallowed with a dry mouth out of empathy for the nervousness he supposed Mimi was feeling.

“Yes, that's a fault of mine. I get bored. Eighth grade just doesn't seem to matter.” She sighed and held her face bored, wondering how to come up with a good explanation for her fake boredom.

“Please, tell us why you're bored,” Father Ernst said. “We want to understand what you're thinking.”

“Well, it's hard to say.” Mimi had nothing to share. But then she remembered something Patrick said on the golf course and threw that in to sound deep. “I've been thinking. It's like we're all being held up in a pen, a big stone building of a pen with different rooms, and they're moving the kids through slowly, one year at a time. Society isn't ready for eighth graders yet, so they keep us in waiting and we've been at this school for eight years, really nine years, if you count the kindergarten house out back. It can get awfully dull. So along comes this mystery about the missing snow globe, and I guess I just got so bored I raised my hand looking for some excitement.”

“Are you excited to be here now?” Detective Kurtz asked. Mimi could tell by the way he asked that he thought she was lying, and that was okay.

“Not really,” she shrugged uncrossing her legs and swinging them off the edge of the chair. “I mean this is better than history, which I'm missing, but it's not as exciting as if I really did take the snow globe. Then you could solve the crime and maybe I'd be arrested and get on the news. But nothing that good ever happens to me. I'm just an average girl, I guess.”

Father Ernst got off the bench and leaned over to whisper something to Detective Kurtz. Kurtz nodded. Then Ernst whooshed back down on the leather bench and started his own line of probing.

“What are your views on Mary?”

“On who?”

“The Blessed Mother. Surely you have some view on her after nine years at Mary Queen of Our Hearts.”

Mimi stopped to think. She knew she should probably say she was big on Mary and really admired her, because that would support the lie she was about to tell about how the snow globe got into Mary's hand. “Well, when I think of Mary, I think of that one miracle with the wine.”

“The wedding at Canaan? Jesus' first miracle,” Father Ernst said.

“Was that his first? There's so many, I forget. But for me, I think of how Mary told Jesus to do something and he did it. That shows she has a lot of pull. She probably still does. Up there in heaven, if Mary gets bored and gets an idea for a miracle, she probably walks over to Jesus and tells him she needs a favor. If she wanted to, she could ask Jesus to make that snow globe go through walls or out the open doors onto the playground. They leave the
doors open quite a bit now with the warm weather, especially after the janitor mops, you know, to dry the floor so no kids slip.”

“Miss Maloney!” Detective Kurtz barked. “Are you saying Mary—the real Mary up in heaven—told Jesus to make the snow globe float off the shelf and down the hall and out the door and through the sky up into the hand of the Mary statue?”

“Why, I never thought of it, but if that's what you think, it could be possible.”

“That is
not
what I think,” Detective Kurtz huffed.

“Well, what do you think?” Mimi asked, turning to the priest.

Father Ernst leaned forward with his hands folded around the front knee of his crossed legs. “I think if Mary wanted to do that, of course, she could manage it. But tell me, Miss Maloney—”

“Oh, please, call me Mimi.”

“Mimi, yes, why do you think she would want to do such a thing and cause so much disruption here at the school?”

Mimi looked at the Detective. He was behind the glare of the desk lamp, but she could see his face was getting red.

“I don't know. I think if Mary arranged the miracle she might have some message behind it. Maybe some symbolism.”

“Symbolism?” Father Ernst asked, sounding intrigued.

“I'm not smart about these things, but maybe it stands for something she's trying to tell the parish, or maybe the whole world. But no one yet has been able to understand. Maybe if you could write a letter to the pope and get some of his top monks on it, they could pray and not eat meat for a while, and God would reveal to them what it's all about. But I don't' know. Like I said, I'm just an average girl.”

“Tell me this,” Detective Kurtz said slapping his open palm on the nurse's desk, “What do you know about the mailman getting robbed by two boys in masks outside your home?”

Mimi rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Were they two boys? I hadn't heard that. My mother mentioned something about it at dinner last night. We had apricot chicken with rice and some of those rolls you have to crack the tube open on the countertop to make.”

“It sounds delicious,” Father Ernst said.

Detective Kurtz narrowed his eyes and cleared his throat.

“My mom's a really good cook. Maybe someday I can be like her and cook for my family.”

“Who were these boys?” Detective Kurtz demanded, “Tell us now and it will mean a lot less trouble for you later.”

Mimi shielded the light from her eyes to try to get a better look at Detective Kurtz behind the desk. “Oh, Detective, I swear, I don't know anything about that. I was at school all day yesterday. I only found out about it at dinner.”

“Where did you say you're going to high school?” Father Ernst asked.

“Holy Footsteps.”

“That's a fine school, and I'm sure you'll do well there. I have no further questions. Detective?”

Detective Kurtz moved the lamp light out of Mimi's eyes and trained it back on the desktop. He closed her file. “No further questions … for now.”

SISTER MATHILDA SAT alone her room with the door closed, unable to see anything with the black patches on her eyes. The storm raging outside was pleasant, reassuring somehow. She thought about the Cutlass Supreme, her escape module to avoid retirement as soon as she could get her sight back and drive away. After she won it in the church raffle in 1966, it sat for a long time unused because even then her cataracts made the world a glaring blur. Once, though, on a summer night, Father Maligan called the nunnery from the priest house asking for Sister Mathilda. She came to the black wall phone in the kitchen by the icebox and said hello. In his nasally, mumbled brogue, he said something about a “chicken dinner” and wanting to borrow her car, because his wouldn't start. “That sounds wonderful,” she said.

When he came by to get the keys, Father Maligan was confused that she followed him to the car and got in the passenger seat. “Let's go,” she said. He started the engine and drove at speeds of 90 miles an hour with his window down and his pipe blazing to Collinsville, Illinois—across the Mississippi River—to Fairmount Park Race Track. There, they took their seats and he bought her an orange slushy and a large cup of Budweiser for himself. Unable to see much, Sister Mathilda thought at first he had surprised her and taken her to Busch Stadium for a Cardinals game. How thoughtful of him. What good fun. She kept asking who was pitching. Finally, she heard the pounding of horse hooves around the dirt track, and was aghast at this impropriety.
Father Maligan's horse, Chicken Dinner, came in fourth that night. It was the last time Sister Mathilda ever let anyone drive her Cutlass.

Thunder and lightening crackled outside her window. She noticed the lightening slightly through her black bandages and was tempted to take them off, even though removing them was forbidden. The doctor had warned her. “Whatever you do, don't take those bandages off early, or you might cause permanent damage.” Her eyes needed total darkness for some time for her to see properly when they were healed.

“You can't trust doctors with your future,” she thought.

She got up and made her way to the door and felt for the handle. She turned the bolt so no one would come in. Then counting the steps back to her dresser, as she had for years, she reached out her hand and touched the dresser top. She pulled out the second drawer and reached under it. Her fingertips found the Cutlass Supreme car title she had Scotch taped beneath the drawer. It was still there. She shut the drawer and felt her bandages.

“As soon as the doctor takes off your bandages,” Sister Helen had told her, “we'll take you to the train station.” But she knew what the principal meant. The train tracks led to the nursing home and the nursing home led to the cemetery.