The Undertaking of Tess
Lesley Kagen
The Undertaking of Tess
“A tender yet big-hearted coming-of-age story filled with heartbreak, secrets, and humorous observations of the convoluted adult world through which two young sisters must navigate.”
—Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Me and Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
“Heart-rending, yet humorous and filled with hope, The Undertaking of Tess is a rare treat from an author who truly knows how to create unforgettable characters. Readers who loved Kagen’s Whistling in the Dark will adore Tess and Birdie in this delightful novella.”
—Sandra Kring, author of the national bestseller, The Book of Bright Ideas
“A bittersweet coming-of-age-in-the-fifties story that'll have you crying one minute and laughing out loud the next. Kagen's ability to capture children's deepest emotions never fails to impress."
—Bonnie Shimko, award-winning author of The Private Thoughts of Amelia E. Rye
Good Graces
“Good Graces deftly dwells in ’60s Milwaukee. Through her preteen narrator, Sally O’Malley, [Kagen] evokes the joys, sorrows, and complexities of growing up.”
—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Kagen does a remarkable job of balancing the goofiness of being an eleven-year-old with the sinister plot elements, creating a suspenseful yarn that still retains an air of genuine innocence.”
—Publishers Weekly
“For all the praise garnered for Whistling in the Dark, Good Graces more than lives up to its predecessor.”
—School Library Journal
“A beautifully written story…. You will weep for and cheer on the O’Malley sisters … [and] immediately miss them once the last page is turned.”
—Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of Little Mercies, The Weight of Silence, These Things Hidden, and One Breath Away
“Moving, funny, and full of unexpected delights…. Kagen crafts a gorgeous page-turner about love, loss, and loyalty, all told in the sparkling voices of two extraordinary sisters.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You
Tomorrow River
Winner of the Wisconsin Library Association Outstanding Achievement Award
“[A] stellar third novel…. Kagen not only delivers a spellbinding story but also takes a deep look into the mores, values, and shams of a small Southern community in an era of change.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The first-person narration is chirpy, determined, and upbeat…. Shenny steals the show with her brave, funny, and often disturbing patter as she tries to rescue herself and her sister from problems she won’t acknowledge.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine
“Tomorrow River … [and] the charming genuine voice of Shenny … is impossible to resist.”
—Milwaukee Magazine
“An excellent, moving story, very well written, and one that will linger in your thoughts long after you’ve finished it.”
—Historical Novels Review
“This book is packed with warmth, wit, intelligence, images savory enough to taste—and deep dark places that are all the more terrible for being surrounded by so much brightness.”
—Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Broken Harbor
Land of a Hundred Wonders
A Great Lakes Book Award Nominee
“Kagen’s winsome second novel offers laughter and bittersweet sighs.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A truly enjoyable read from cover to cover…. Miss Kagen’s moving portrayal of a unique woman finding her way in a time of change will touch your heart.”
—Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain
“I’ve been a Lesley Kagen fan ever since I read her beautifully rendered debut, Whistling in the Dark. Set against the backdrop of the small-town South of the 1970s, Land of a Hundred Wonders is by turns sensitive and rowdy, peopled with larger-than-life characters who are sure to make their own tender path into your heart.”
—Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Someone Else’s Love Story; A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty; Backseat Saint, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming; Between, Georgia; and gods in Alabama
“Gibby hooks the audience from the onset and keeps our empathy throughout…. Her commentary along with a strong support cast make for a delightful historical regional investigative tale. [Gibby] is a “shoe-in” to gain reader admiration for her can-do lifestyle.”
—The Mystery Gazette
“Lesley Kagen has crafted a story that is poignant, compelling, hilarious, real, and absolutely lovely.”
—Kris Radish, author of Gravel on the Side of the Road and Tuesday Night Miracles
Whistling in the Dark
The Midwest Booksellers Choice Award Winner
“Kagen’s debut novel sparkles with charm thanks to ten-year-old narrator Sally O’Malley, who draws readers into the story of her momentous summer in 1959. The author has an uncanny ability to visualize the world as seen by a precocious child in this unforgettable book.”
—Romantic Times Top Pick
“Innocently wise and ultimately captivating.”
—The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“I loved Whistling in the Dark. Living with the O’Malley sisters for the summer is an experience that no one will forget.”
—Flamingnet TOP CHOICE Award
“One of the summer’s hot reads.”
—The Chicago Tribune
“The plot is a humdinger … a certifiable grade-A summer read.”
—The Capital Times
“The loss of innocence can be as dramatic as the loss of a parent or the discovery that what’s perceived to be the truth can actually be a big fat lie, as shown in Kagen’s compassionate debut, a coming-of-age thriller set in Milwaukee during the summer of 1959.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Bittersweet and beautifully rendered, Whistling in the Dark is the story of two young sisters and a summer jam-packed with disillusionment and discovery. With the unrelenting optimism that only children could bring … these girls triumph. So does Kagen. Whistling in the Dark shines. Don’t miss it.”
—Sara Gruen, New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants
“Delightful … gritty and smart, profane and poetic.”
—Milwaukee Magazine
COPYRIGHT © 2014 BY LESLEY KAGEN
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,
A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC
Tempe, Arizona, USA, 85281
www.sparkpointstudio.com
The SparkPress name and logo are trademarks of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
Printed in the United States of America.
ISBN: 978-1-940716-54-1 (ebk)
Cover design © Julie Metz, Ltd. / metzdesign.com
Cover photo © Trevillion
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE UNDERTAKING OF TESS
A Novella
by
Lesley Kagen
For the forever and always loves of my life
Casey and Riley
Charlie and Hadley
Table of Contents
Before
Her Life Ain’t Ever Gonna Be the Same
A Bird’s Eye View
The Hungarians
&
nbsp; I Gotta Get to the Bottom of This Once and for All
Death Makes You Smarter and Can Taste Great Too
She’s Got Enough Haunting Goin’ On
When the Moon Hits Your Eye
Sometimes You Gotta Take Your Life into Your Hands
Most Things in Life Sound Better than They Are Except for Blackmail
Jump before You Fall!
A Friend Indeed
I’m Moving Her to the Top of My Shit List
It’s Either a Sign from God or Clark
All Your Dreams Can Come True
A Maybe Miracle
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Preview of The Resurrection of Tess
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR LESLEY KAGEN
ALSO BY LESLEY KAGEN
About SparkPress
Before
To be offered the opportunity to be of service to a soul is, and always will be, a compliment of the highest order. I should’ve felt humbled and honored when I received the invitation from the powers that be, and I assure you, I was. Problem was, accepting a role of this magnitude was not to be undertaken lightly. This extraordinary and profound friendship is an eternal commitment, and from what I could gather from the materials I received, Theresa “Tess” Finley would essentially be up the proverbial shit creek without a paddle for most of the days she spent on Earth, which had me wondering what the odds were that I’d be successful in my endeavors. Honestly? While my heart went out to the child, I could not foresee a happy ending and I’ve never much cared for tragedies.
To further complicate matters, until Tess invited me into her life—God only knows when that’d occur—I’d be befriending not only her, but her younger sister, Birdie, until reinforcements showed up. Those Finley sisters were woven together so tightly that I felt certain that I, nor anybody else for that matter, would be able to separate them without damaging their essential warp.
So, on the morning I sat back to partake of Tess’s Life Review—a collage similar to a Technicolor 4D movie complete with sounds and smells and tastes and touch that you don’t so much observe as merge with—I admit I was doing so more out of a sense of duty than genuine interest. But, as so often happens, miracles occur when one least expects them, and as her life story unfolded, I found the reticence I’d initially felt about accepting the position lift and in its place, a sacred and everlasting love for the child settled in.
While I’m longing to give you the big picture, I’m not allowed to reveal Tess’s story in its entirety at this time. After much finagling, what I have received is a special indulgence to share the following short clip from the days before I, her “imaginary friend,” materialized in her life. I’m of the belief that once you get a glimpse of the inner workings of her heart, mind, and soul, you may come to realize, the same way I did an eternity ago, that there’s just about nothing more irresistible on God’s green Earth than a tale told by a scrappy, redheaded kid who’s dodging the obstacles of the human race on her dash toward the finish line.
Her Life Ain’t Ever Gonna Be the Same
I don’t like to fish all that much and I can’t swim, so you could say that I don’t have any business being on Lake Michigan on August 1, 1959. No business other than love business, I mean. I’d do anything to spend time with Daddy.
We’re bobbing under a sky the color that I always tell my sister is named after her—Robin’s egg blue. We are also sweating a lot because this is a summer that will go down in the record books for being so hot. Usually Daddy and me fish off the banks of the cemetery pond, but today at the breakfast table he leaned over and said, “Let’s beat this heat, feel the wind on our faces this afternoon. Whatta ya think, Tessie?”
I thought that I would do anything to make him happy, and it really is steamy, so I told him that sounded like a great idea before I knew that he was gonna borrow the white motorboat called The High Life offa Joey T, his buddy at Lonnigan’s Bar on Burleigh Street, which is where Daddy works.
Maybe my kid sister would be out on the lake with us this afternoon if Mother only woulda let us nickname her Minnow—birds of a feather and all that—but she always stays away when Daddy and me go fishing because she despises any creature with gills in a way that doesn’t seem normal. Especially crappie, but who doesn’t?
Because Robin Jean Finley was so small when she was born, my fisherman daddy who is a BIG jokester started calling her Minnow after we brought her home to the cemetery house, then that turned into Minnie, but when Mom told us to cut it out because we were going to give her an inferiority complex, my father thought it over and said, “How ’bout we call her Birdie? That good by you, Tessie?” Of course, Mom hated that idea too, but I gave Daddy a thumbs up because with her fluffy hair, big eyes, and little bones, that really was a good nickname.
“What a great day to be alive and out on the lake with one of my favorite girls,” Daddy says on the seat across from me in the white motorboat. He tips his head back, takes another gulp from his brown bottle of beer, and with a smile that is so blinding that it could melt snow and an I’m-about-to-tell-you-a-joke twinkle in his dark-blue eyes that are a match for mine, he also says, “Sooo … did you hear the one about the Polack who got stuck on the escalator, Tessie?”
I hadn’t, so I tell him, “No,” and then I wait for what he calls the punch line, but I guess he musta forgotten it because we’ve been fishing under the hot sun for so many hours. Maybe he has a little heat stroke or something because he just throws back his head and laughs, drains the rest of the bottle, and tosses it in the pile with the others on the bottom of the boat. It breaks, but that doesn’t bother him, and he doesn’t care that we haven’t caught any fish yet either because he is an all-around happy-go-lucky person.
“You’re a funny one, Tessie,” he tells me, like that’s about the best thing any kid of his could be.
I stay up nights trying to think up jokes that will make him laugh, but Eddie Finley is the real card in the family. Everyone in the neighborhood thinks so.
Daddy narrows his eyes at my fishing pole and says slurry, “Looks like you need another wiggler.”
When he stands and reaches for the Campbell’s soup can where I put the worms after digging them out of the garden this morning, he wobbles, and then he throws out his arms like he’s doing an imitation of one of the Three Stooges after they slip on a banana peel. The look on his face is hilarious when he falls sideways onto the outboard motor and tumbles over the side of the boat. The splash is so big that water lands in my giggling mouth.
Daddy adores practical jokes of all kinds, but he really adores the ones that scare you before they make you laugh. Like when he jumps out of my and Birdie’s closet, or the night he put a hunk of raw meat under our bed on Halloween, that was a good one too. That’s why after he fell into the lake, I wasn’t worried at all. He is an excellent swimmer who takes his jokes very, very seriously, so I’m ready for him to stay underwater longer than Houdini before he pops back up.
I waited and waited, but Daddy never did come bubbling up, and he didn’t spurt out, “Thought I was a goner, didn’t you, Tessie. Ha … ha … ha! Gotcha!” like he always does after a really great, scary joke.
By the time the men come roaring up in their boat, the sun is gone. They shine a big light at me and yell, “Theresa Finley?”
I can only nod because when I try to talk, I get choked up.
“Where’s your father?”
When I point over the side of the motorboat and start to cry, one of the men lifts me onto their boat and wraps a scratchy gray blanket around me even though it’s still so hot. I try to take it off, but they won’t let me. They tell me that I’m shocked, but I think they only want to keep me bundled up tight because they don’t want to smell the throw up on my shirt and the pee in my shorts. I’m holding my breath too, so I can’t blame them.
On the way back to wherever they’re taking me, the one guy who is driving the blue boat and has Stan stamped on his shirt, shouts over his shoulder to the
other guy named Jim who is sitting next to me, “Poor kid. Her life ain’t never gonna be the same.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up when he says that because I think that maybe Stan, who I thought was kinda dumb because he has a bigger beetle brow than the prehistoric men in the downtown museum, might be right, because there’s this famous saying that people can be a lot smarter than they look.
A Bird’s Eye View
After someone dies, I thought it was just their body that isn’t around anymore, but it’s so, so much more than that. Here’s my list so far:
WHAT WENT MISSING THE SAME TIME DADDY DID
Bluebirds don’t sing as loud.
