by Tamar Myers
½ cup white sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
Preheat oven to 400° F. Combine caramel ingredients in the bottom of a deep dish pie pan. Place one of the pie crusts in the pan, on top of the caramel mixture. Allow the crust to extend over the rim of the pan.
Arrange apple slices in the pan. Sprinkle with sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and nutmeg. Dot evenly with thin slices of butter. Sprinkle with lemon juice.
Cover pie with top crust, trim, and crimp edge. Poke holes with fork to vent. Bake at 400° F for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 325° F. Bake an additional 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool. Approximately one-half hour before serving time return to oven for a few minutes to loosen caramel. (This may also be done by placing the pie in a microwave oven for 30 seconds or so.) Invert pie on a large plate and serve caramel side up.
Serves eight English, or three Mennonite-Amish.
Chapter Eleven
The next two days were relatively peaceful. Every morning after breakfast my guests scattered like roaches at sunlight (not that I would know, mind you). The enigmatic Dixons, the lovely Ms. Pearson, and tiresome Terry Slock roamed the countryside, Amish spotting. After the first day they no longer moved as a pack, but spread out like true hunters, the Dixons in their station wagon dubbed the Dixonmobile, and Shirley and Terry in their rented cars.
They were every bit as devoted as bird-watchers. Armed with binoculars and cameras and notebooks, they tracked every buggy spotted, photographed every bonnet. In the evenings they compared notes, and, depending on their level of civility, either implored me to arrange an official Amish visit, or berated me for not having done so—not that it was my fault.
Freni flatly refused to have her home opened as a museum for curious English eyes. “Let them stare at me in the kitchen here while they help me do the dishes,” she said. The truth be told, Freni looks down the considerable length of her nose at the Amish in Lancaster County who not only allow, but promote home visits by English.
Dr. Brack appeared to be indifferent to the Amish. At least he never talked about them. He made frequent short trips to undisclosed places but, much to my satisfaction, discovered the joys of a good rocker. Perhaps someday I will be as fortunate.
Susannah I never saw. After spending two hours on her makeup she swirled right out the front door and into Melvin’s waiting arms. She didn’t even say goodbye, much less thank me. I caught a glimpse of fifteen feet of flowing fabric, and that was it. Well, that and a lingering stench of perfume so strong that I used up half a can of Lysol trying to mask it.
My point is that had I not had the awesome responsibility of a murder investigation thrust upon my broad but thin shoulders, it would have been a relaxing two days. After all, Aaron was out of town and I was free of the connubial duties that had taken an inordinate amount of time lately—although my Pooky Bear assures me that five times a day is the norm.
It was, however, impossible to ignore Freni’s numerous complaints. She was like a Sunday school teacher chaperoning a class trip to Pittsburgh. There was something wrong everywhere she turned. Chief among Freni’s complaints were the children. Although I had made it quite clear to the Dixons on that first day that they were never to leave their children unattended, they continued to do so.
“Buck up,” I said to Freni. “We’ll charge them day care and I’ll split it with you, fifty-fifty.”
Freni’s brows bristled over baleful eyes. “All or nothing, Magdalena.”
“Easy come, easy go,” I said, and capitulated.
But even with a good chunk of change as an incentive Freni found it impossible to manage three rapscallions and cook a good meal.
“Well, there’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I said. I was not, of course, referring to her meals. “Why don’t you ask Barbara to help with the kids?”
“Which Barbara?”
“Your daughter-in-law.”
The considerable nose aimed straight for the ceiling. “She doesn’t know the first thing about children, Magdalena. She’s never had any.”
“I know, but she was one herself. And she had little brothers and sisters.”
“Ach, Matilda the milk cow has a little sister. Would you ask her to help?”
In the end Freni reluctantly agreed to my idea. As much as she despised and maligned her only daughter-in-law, she realized that she would never be a grandmother without the woman’s participation. Barbara, unfortunately, had been sterile for years, but recently a minor surgical procedure—with the bishop’s permission—had tipped the odds in favor of fertility. (Not that the poor woman, already in her late thirties, had many such years to look forward to.) At any rate, it was as if Freni believed that by exposing her daughter-in-law to the Dixon children, that Barbara might actually “catch” pregnancy.
Twins would be nice,” Freni muttered, as we watched the urchins tie up her daughter-in-law. “It would make up for lost time.”
“Boys, girls, or one of each?”
“Ach, Magdalena, how you talk! Girls, of course. Boys bring nothing but trouble. Boys …” her voice trailed off sadly.
“Marry girls?”
“A son is a son till he takes a wife,” she said fiercely, “but a daughter’s a daughter the rest of her life.”
I wondered for the millionth time what Mama would have thought of Aaron. She had known him as a youngster, of course, since he lived across the road, but she had never met Aaron the man. It pains me to say this, but Mama would probably not have approved of Aaron—or any man that I chose. Before she died she had her hat set on snagging Peter Kurtz, a devout young man who not only attended Beechy Grove Mennonite Church regularly, but who had plans for the ministry. Mama would roll over in her grave if she knew that Peter had not only left the Mennonite fold, but was now a rabbi in Tel Aviv.
The phone rang. Now, my faith frowns on delving into the paranormal, but there have been several occasions when I’ve been thinking of someone and the phone rings, and I pick it up only to find the object of my thoughts on the other end. But I assure you that I am not so far into the world that I get premonitions from overseas, and certainly not from Heaven. My caller was neither Mama nor Rabbi Kurtz, but my very own Pooky Bear from Minnesota.
“Aaron! I was just thinking about you.” The kitchen phone has a long chord and I maneuvered as far away from Freni as possible. The woman has the ears of fox, and can hear a mouse belch at fifty paces.
“Magdalena, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
That’s just what the sheriff told me the day Mama and Papa died. That was the understatement of my lifetime. Bad news is finding out that a check bounced (mine never do!) or that your car has just gone through another set of brakes (my old car was a certified brake-eater). But learning that the only link to your past has been turned into mush inside the Allegheny tunnel is not bad news. It’s catastrophic.
“Go ahead, I’m sitting down.” I was, too, and had braced myself by wedging into a corner.
My Pooky Bear had the audacity to chuckle. “It’s not that bad, sugarpeep. It’s just that it’s taking longer to tie up loose ends here than I expected. I don’t think I can make it home before the end of the week. But I’ll be bringing back that surprise, I promise.”
What I am about to say is highly confidential, but for some strange reason I felt like laughing. Maybe even cheering. It was like Friday afternoon at school and the teacher announced there would be no homework for the weekend. Of course it didn’t make any sense to me. I loved my Pooky Bear dearly, and each mile between us was a stab in the heart. Well, perhaps that is going too far, but you get what I mean. Anyway, I’m sure you can understand why I felt guilty for being elated that my husband’s return home was delayed.
“See you when you get here,” I said, hoping the cheer in my voice sounded like brave stoicis
m.
“That’s my girl,” Aaron said, the pride in his voice evident. “Your stiff upper lip could support the British Empire.” I’m sure he meant that as a compliment.
“Ta ta and all that,” I said.
“Magdalena? Don’t you miss me anymore?” he asked, taking a sudden emotional turn.
“Why, of course, Aaron. I’m just trying to make the best of it.”
But I felt like a liar when I got off the phone.
I certainly didn’t feel like talking to the reporter from the National Intruder. Of course the man didn’t announce himself as such, but I can smell a member of the pukerazzi (Aaron’s word, not mine) a mile away. Over the years I have had my share of run-ins with this species, and believe you me, they can tell some doozies. Take that pregnant rock star who has been in the news a lot lately—she was not impregnated by Michelangelo’s DNA scraped from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Who in their right mind would believe that? I have it directly from the Swiss doctor, a former guest of mine, who performed this test tube operation that the father is Hannibal, and that the DNA he left behind was found perfectly preserved in a Swiss glacier.
“They’re not here,” I said curtly to man at the door.
He had the audacity to grin. “Of course not. You expecting them back soon?”
“Actually, they checked out about an hour ago.” I honestly had no idea who he was talking about, but it certainly wasn’t any of my current guests. None of them were famous enough to warrant an in-person visit from the National Intruder.
“You rented them rooms?”
“The best.”
“How much did you charge? And where did they get the money?”
I told him my top rate for celebrities and added that it was none of his business where they got their money. Frankly, it isn’t my business, either, unless the money is nefariously earned at my inn.
“They slept in beds?” he asked stupidly.
“No, they slept standing on their heads.”
He jotted that down, the grin growing. “What did they eat?”
“Plastic. Anything plastic they could lay their hands on.”
He snickered. “I suppose they were green?”
“Hot pink with sequins. Well, that is, all of them, but one. He was orange and black.”
That part was perfectly true. I did have guests like that once. How was I to know that the Amazing Zebrina Brothers were a trio of itinerant magicians, and that Cleo, the fourth member of their party, was a full-grown Bengal tiger? Susannah, of course, knew, which is why she intercepted their application and made the arrangements herself. During the Amazing Zebrina Brothers’ weeklong stay she dated all four of them. Well, she didn’t exactly date the tiger, but she got so close to him that I actually feared for Shnookums’s life. The mangy mutt wouldn’t even have been a mouthful. Still—and it surprises me to say this—it was a rather pleasant week. The Brothers were both amusing and amazing, and as for Cleo the tiger, he was far better behaved than the Dixon children.
“Pink, orange, black.” The man from the National Intruder wrote it all down.
“Is that all then?” I asked pleasantly. Who says I can’t turn the other cheek?
“Yeah.” He started to walk away, but turned abruptly after three steps. “Here.” He slapped an envelope in my hand.
I stared at the envelope. “What’s this for?”
“Give it to the old man. Mr. Miller. This story is too hokey even for us, but hey, I’ve got a grandpa. I know what it’s like.”
I slapped the envelope back into his hand. “What?”
“You know, the old man. The one who called and said he saw some illegal Mexicans swimming in your pond.”
“Oh, that’s not my pond,” I said carelessly “And they were aliens from outer space, not—”
“So you saw it, too?”
Too late. I was trapped. Mama had warned me about my big mouth before, but she had never uttered a word about the treacherousness of the National Intruder. And there was absolutely nothing I could do. My tongue was like a barbed hook. No matter which way I twisted and turned, it was only going to get worse.
Suddenly, from behind every tree and bush on my property, popped a paparazzi. Bulbs flashed, videotape whirled, and laptops clacked. And for a long time I just stood there with my mouth wide open. It wasn’t until the Dixon children, who had tired of tying up Barbara Hostetler, wandered into the front yard to find out what all the fuss was about, that I found my voice.
“Are these alien children?” a reporter from Slime magazine asked. The nasty woman prodded the tiniest Dixon tyke with her pencil. Caitlin yelped, and some long dormant maternal feeling stirred within my meager bosom.
“They may be monsters,” I said, “but they’re mine. Touch them again and I’ll sue you so fast you won’t even have time to sit down in court.”
Granted, those were not the words of a good Mennonite, but rest assured, I paid dearly for them. Days later I saw my face, mouth wide open, plastered across the cover of every scandal sheet carried by the Bedford supermarket in which I shop. Without exception the images of the Dixon children were superimposed on my photo. Some of the adulterations were very clear, and in one picture little Caitlin appears to be clinging to my skirt.
AMISH WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO ALIEN TRIPLETS, the best of the headlines read. As for the worst—well, those are fillings in my mouth, not computer chips. I am not, nor have I ever been, an android.
All in all, both guests and family took the publicity pretty well. The Dixons appeared satisfied to learn that none of their children’s names had been mentioned in the rags. Susannah was too preoccupied with Melvin to even care. Freni made me promise that if I did ever have triplets, I’d share the secret with her daughter-in-law. Only Aaron, who saw the same covers up in Minnesota, had the nerve to raise a fuss.
“It was not a publicity stunt,” I repeated patiently. “You know I have more people on my waiting list than I know what to do with.”
“But it’s in every paper, Magdalena. Are you sure you didn’t do or say something to get this kind of attention?”
That did it. That hiked my hackles just about as high as they’d ever been. If my Pooky Bear didn’t believe me when I said I was telling the truth, then what was the point of it all?
“You have some nerve,” I said, without raising my voice, “considering it’s the old coot’s fault to begin with!”
“Make sense, Magdalena.”
“Pops,” I hissed. “It was your precious Pops who called the paparazzi.”
He had the audacity to snort with derision. “Pops? Why would he do something as stupid as that?”
“Because it was your Pops who saw the flying saucer land, that’s why!”
The silence that followed was longer than your average wait in a doctor’s office. And at long-distance prices, too.
“Are you sure?” he asked finally.
I tried willing myself to be calm, I really did. For all the good it did, I may as well have willed the sun to reverse its course. Now, I’m not claiming this as an excuse, mind you, but if I recall correctly, Grandma Yoder had a bit of a temper. So, perhaps—just maybe—it is possible that I received a mutated gene from her. Perhaps the pacifist blood that courses through the veins of my kin is not the same as my blood. Perhaps I am hematologically challenged. How else can I explain what I did next?
“Don’t you ever hang up on me again,” Aaron growled when I picked up on the tenth ring. “You slammed that receiver down so hard I’m surprised it’s still working.”
“I beg your pardon! This is my phone.”
“So, it’s come to that, has it?”
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. “Make sense, Aaron.”
“Sooner or later it had to rear its ugly head.”
“Huh?” Why were men so obsessed with sex?
“This property thing,” Aaron said. “I knew it would be an issue after all.”
“I still haven’t the sli
ghtest idea what you mean.”
“Of course you do. I came into this marriage a virtual pauper and you—well, you’re rolling in it.”
“What’s mine is yours,” I snapped. “And vice versa.”
“Sure. You share your thriving business with me, and I share my dotty daddy with you. That makes perfect sense.”
“I’m not complaining,” I said. “Besides, you get to share Susannah. That evens things up a bit.”
I was being very generous and he knew it. A wise, mature man would have been grateful enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Don’t condescend to me, Magdalena. You know it irritates you to have Pops around.”
“It does not.” It’s okay to lie to save a marriage. It’s not in the Bible in so many words, but it’s implied. Somewhere.
“Yeah, right. Well, there are some things you can’t understand because you’re a woman.”
“Such as?”
“Such as how a man might find it emasculating to rely on his wife for charity.”
“We’re talking in circles, Aaron, and I don’t want to fight anymore. You’re the most precious thing to me in the entire world. You’re my”—I struggled to get the word out—”Romeo.”
Coming from me that was as emotional an image as a bus full of nuns holding babies as it plummeted off a cliff. A reasonable man would have given me something back.
“Romeo ran around in tights,” Aaron said. “The emasculation continues.”
I decided to give him another chance. “I love you, Pooky Bear.”
After one of his interminable pauses he sighed. “Yeah, me too.”
“You—you man!” I shrieked, and slammed the phone down again.
Mere seconds later a car pulled into my driveway and someone rudely honked. I prayed for a charitable tongue.
Chapter Twelve
My heart sank when I saw that it was Zelda. No doubt she had come to enlist my help in getting her stud-muffin back. Well, she was going to be disappointed. I had caught a glimpse of my sister the day before when she sailed into the PennDutch to retrieve a few bolts of her clothing, and let me assure you of this, she was happy. I haven’t seen her shine like that since Mama rubbed her with Vicks when she had a chest cold. So you see, there was no way I was going to help Zelda come between my sister and happiness. Especially if that happiness could be found outside the PennDutch Inn.