Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

Melvin might have more faults than the State of California, but hey, he’s a Hernia boy born and bred—make that inbred. And a lapsed Mennonite to boot. I just barely had a right to criticize him; but the sheriff, and most certainly the deputy, did not.

  “Police Chief Melvin Stoltzfus is the finest man I’ve ever met,” I snapped, and then buried my nose in a hankie so they wouldn’t see it grow.

  As was my right, I presided over dinner that night at the inn like a five-foot-ten-inch Queen Victoria. I sat bolt upright like the old gal, too, thanks to a chance encounter with Dr. Brack in the parlor. Two hundred and sixty-five dollars later, including tax, I was the proud owner of a Brack’s Back Brace. Due to my injury, which had become more painful as the day progressed, I dispensed with his offer of a free trial period and plonked the money down on the spot. And let me tell you this, the fool thing actually works. One minute I was in agonizing pain, and the next I was singing Brack’s praises.

  You, like some of my guests, may wonder why it is necessary to have a sit-down supper every evening with everyone in attendance. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because American table manners disappeared along with the Edsel and the advent of the first frozen entree. Today entire families eat on the run, stuffing fast food into their faces with their fingers of all things. The proper use of cutlery is a forgotten art. Virtually no one remembers how to use a table knife correctly; I have actually seen folks cut their food using the sides of their forks!

  And believe you me, the rich and famous are not exempt from boorish behavior. One popular movie star chewed with her mouth open so wide I could see the inside view of her recent tummy-tuck. Another Hollywood figure, who shall also remain nameless, didn’t even stoop to lick his fingers after eating chicken, but instead ran them through his hair. Later that evening he got too close to a candle and his grease-soaked coiffure burst into flames. On his next visit he wore such an atrocious wig that poor Shnookums, Susannah’s pitiful pooch, fell in love with the hairpiece and attempted to do what comes naturally—at least in the animal world. It was not a successful mating.

  At any rate, my dining room table is built of solid oak and it stretches almost two-thirds of the length of the room. It was built by my great-grandfather Jacob “The Strong” Yoder from a tree that occupied the site of the original farmhouse. This table can seat twenty people comfortably, twenty-six in a pinch. Incidentally, Jacob “The Strong” and his wife, Magdalena, had sixteen children, forty-seven grandchildren, and one hundred eighty-nine great-grandchildren. The figures for great-great grandchildren keep changing, but sad to say, it looks as if Susannah and I will never add to that number.

  Contrary to some of the tabloid rumors, my guests are not forced to eat their food directly off the table. It is true, however, that I do not use tablecloths. What is the point, after all, when five minutes into the meal the linens resemble Rorschach tests? And anyway, a nice rough surface, studded with splinters, is a most effective way to ensure that elbows are kept off the table (although a long-handled fork with sharpened prongs will do the trick as well).

  Of course I always sit at the head of the table, and as a symbolic second in command, Susannah is accorded the foot. Most of the time, sad to say, it is a footless table, and on those special occasions when the foot is present, she is more likely to be playing footsie under the table, than helping me with my hostess duties.

  This particular evening my foot was in the arms of Melvin. In her place was Bradley, the oldest of the Dixon children. His sisters, Marissa and Caitlin, flanked him.

  Normally I would not have put up with such nonsense. Children at a dinner table, indeed! But normally I would not have had children to contend with, and what else was I to do? Children had to eat, I supposed, but these three couldn’t very well eat in the kitchen. Not after the day Freni had trying to teach the English how to bake a decent pie. There was nothing left to do but plunk the urchins down at the far end of the table and hope that any food that got flung was deflected by the guests seated immediately in front of me.

  Terry Slock was absent from the table. The poor man was just too tuckered to tackle tucker. An assault by a fierce bear, raging floodwaters, and a daring rescue mission had left him too pooped to pop. His words, not mine.

  But speaking of Pops, my father-in-law, God bless his soul, had accepted a supper invitation with the Amos Augsburgers, an Amish couple who live on the other side of town. With any luck, the opportunity would arise for me to speak to Shirley Pearson about his farm. Such a conversation would be impossible with Pops present. The old coot was dead set against selling the homestead, even if it was the only way he could afford to check himself into a nursing home.

  The rest were there, however. Dr. Brack, dressed in formal attire, was seated to my left, and Angus Dixon, clad insolently in an open-necked pink polyester shirt and black slacks, was on my right. To his right was Shirley Pearson, resplendent in her version of Amish evening wear. I must say, in all sincerity, that her floor-length, navy broadcloth gown with contrasting apron was rather fetching.

  On Dr. Brack’s left was Dorothy Dixon. Like her husband, she’d opted for casual. While I have nothing against casual clothes—I myself do not “dress” for dinner—a yellow halter top with purple polka dots and black spandex pants that start below the navel, are simply not acceptable. Perhaps I first cracked that evening’s can of worms by telling her just that.

  “You’ll have to change, honey,” I said kindly.

  Dorothy appeared taken aback. “I’m a writer. We’re supposed to be eccentric.”

  I pointed politely to serene Shirley. “That’s eccentric. But you”—I shook my head—”even Rahab the Harlot wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes like those.”

  To her credit, Dorothy changed, but it was hardly a change for the better. The scarlet dress she slipped into was so short that if it hadn’t been for her scarlet unmentionables, there would have been nothing left to the imagination.

  “And you call yourself a mother,” I muttered.

  She wasn’t supposed to hear that; unfortunately she did. Susannah claims my private mutterings are actually louder than my speaking voice. This is, of course, not true. And I have no idea how it is that Reverend Shrock heard me criticize his sermon last Sunday when I was seated in the last row. The truth be known, I’m glad he did. I am sure that when the Good Lord told us to tithe one-tenth of our possessions, he meant after Uncle Sam had taken his share. A just and logical God would never insist that we tithe for Uncle Sam as well.

  “I’m a damned good mother,” she growled.

  I growled back. “I will not permit swearing in my establishment, especially not in front of children.”

  The woman was without shame. “My children have heard it all before,” she said. “They’re only words— inanimate objects. They only have a bad meaning if one chooses to attach it to them.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I said.

  “Is it? A dam holds back water, right? You wouldn’t object if I used damn in that context, would you.”

  “That’s different.”

  “No it’s not. It all boils down to semantics.”

  “I don’t think so, dear.”

  “What are you, anti-semantic?”

  “Some of my best friends are Jewish,” I said, hotly offended.

  “Please, could we say grace?” Dr. Brack begged. “I’m starving.”

  “Grace, grace!” the children chanted. Not that the urchins had waited to begin—the serving bowls of children’s food Freni had placed before them had all but been licked clean. The little ones were, however, obviously quite starved for religious instruction and they appeared to love it when I prayed.

  “Amen,” I said when I was through.

  “Amen,” they chorused.

  I passed a platter of pan-fried pork chops. “How was your day?” I inquired pleasantly of Angus Dixon.

  He grimaced. “I spent it baking pies with Mrs. Hostetler. What do you think?”

  “That bad, huh?” I
plopped some parsley potatoes on my plate before passing them on.

  “When are we going to meet the Amish you talked about?”

  “Mrs. Hostetler is Amish, dear.”

  “Not her. Younger Amish”—he gestured at his children who were busy flipping peas with their knives—”ones with children.”

  “Oh, soon,” I promised. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Of course they’ll be farmers,” Shirley said. It was a question, not a statement.

  “That’s the only kind we grow around here.” I laughed politely at my little joke.

  “Ones with big farms. I mean, I’m interested in large-scale farming.”

  I gave her a charming smile. “I’m so glad you brought that up, dear. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about my father-in-law’s farm. It’s for sale, you know. Some of the best farmland in Bedford County. I’m sure the Chinese you work for will approve.”

  Angus speared a potato piece. “Chinese? I thought you worked for Silver Spoon Foods?”

  Shirley nodded. She looked super in her getup, but wearing a prayer bonnet was carrying the thing too far. Amish and more conservative Mennonites wear out of obedience to the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter eleven, verse six. As a young girl I covered my head, but when Mama died I stopped. Verses seven through ten of the same chapter were just too hard to swallow. Shirley, I’m sure, would never swallow them, either.

  “I do,” Shirley said. “Silver Spoon Foods is the inter-national division of Kakogawa Foods. My employers are Japanese.”

  “Oh.”

  “Would you like to see the property?” I asked hopefully. “I could give you a quick tour after dinner—if it isn’t too dark by then. Or we could do it first thing in the morning.”

  “How many acres?” she asked practically.

  “Eighty-seven,” I said. “All of it prime stuff.”

  “It’s not listed, is it? I didn’t see a sign of any kind, and I’ve been on the lookout for that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, that’s Pops for you. He’s selling it himself you see, and he keeps meaning—”

  I was rudely interrupted by a hard tap on my left shoulder. It was, of course, Freni Hostetler. No one else I know would dare interrupt me when I am presiding over my guests at the table.

  “Yes?” I hissed.

  “Phone, Magdalena. Didn’t you hear it?”

  Of course I heard it. I don’t have a phone in the dining room—no one should. But I do have a phone in the kitchen, and I’m afraid it is audible, even though the kitchen is properly separated from the dining room by a heavy, swinging door.

  “What’s the matter with you, Freni? You know I don’t take calls during dinner.”

  “Ach, but this is different.”

  “Tell Melvin I’ll call him back in an hour. Tell him if he gets bored, he should try arranging a bag of M&M’s in alphabetical order.” I know, it wasn’t the Christian thing to say, but it had been a long day.

  “It isn’t Melvin. It’s Aaron.”

  “My Aaron? But he knows it’s dinnertime.” And indeed he did. Dinner at six sharp every evening, whether we were hungry or not. Tight schedules rank next to cleanliness on the godliness scale.

  Freni glanced at the group, who were, of course, all staring at us just as intently as the congregation had that Sunday my sister Susannah, having given Presbyterianism a mad fling, set a tentative toe back inside the sanctuary of Beechy Grove Mennonite Church.

  “I think he’s been crying,” Freni whispered. Alas, Freni whispers louder than I mutter.

  My dinner guests’ ears perked up just as pertly as the parishoners’ ears had when the organist played her first chord, and Shnookums, who’d been smuggled into church, thanks to Susannah’s otherwise empty bra, began to howl.

  I sprinted to the phone, nearly knocking the swinging door off its hinges. “Aaron?”

  “Magdalena! Thank God you’re there.”

  Freni was right. He did sound sort of husky.

  “It’s dinnertime, Pooky Bear,” I said brightly. “Where else would I be?”

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie since I’m sure he didn’t mean it literally.

  “Magdalena, this is going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  I racked my brain for clues. Ah, but of course! My Pooky Bear had been gone for three days, and had only packed for two.

  “Be sure to separate the whites and the colors. That navy plaid shirt of yours with white stripes belongs in the color pile. Those tan slacks are kind of iffy. The navy might make them blotchy. But since they’re polyester and not likely to bleed, I’d wash them with whites.”

  There was a moment of awed silence. My Pooky Bear knew I was a woman of many talents, he just didn’t know I could read minds. Well, he’d learn. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the female brain, if allowed to develop naturally, is capable of astounding feats of intuition. Any open-minded person will agree that a hunch from a woman is worth two facts from a man.

  “I’m not talking about my damned laundry.”

  “Aaron!”

  “Sorry, Mags, but this is really important. I don’t want to waste time with your guessing games.”

  I pulled up a kitchen chair. “What is it, dear?”

  He sucked in his breath sharply. “I’m married.”

  “Of course you are, dear. I was there, remember?”

  “No, I mean married.”

  I blushed. “I know, dear. I was there for that, too. Frankly, it wasn’t quite what I expected but—”

  “Mags! Listen to me. What I’m tried to say is that I was married before I married you.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Why don’t kitchen chairs come equipped with seat belts? If I hadn’t chosen to sit right up against the corner, with a wall penning me in on either side, I would have slumped to the floor.

  “You were married before? You mean, I’m your second wife?”

  “Not exactly, Mags.”

  I gasped. “You were married twice before?”

  “Huh? No, that’s not what I mean.”

  Two times, three times, how much worse could it get? Pretty damn much worse, from what I understood. Susannah has a friend who’s been married nine times, and she’s not even in show business.

  A visiting African head of state once told me that he found our monogamy laws rather silly. “You Americans find polygamy abhorrent,” he said. “Yet you practice a form of it—serial monogamy.” He was right. Apparently more so than I knew at the time.

  “How many wives have you had?”

  “Just one.”

  “What?”

  “Just Deirdre. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And she’s still my wife.”

  “Deirdre? What kind of a name is that for a Mennonite?” The mind can take interesting turns when its main conduits have been clogged by shock.

  “She isn’t Mennonite.”

  “Amish?”

  “She isn’t anything.”

  “She has to be something!”

  “Deirdre was raised Catholic, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “All right, so she was. But it’s not important. We don’t talk about religion that much.”

  “This is all a joke, Aaron, isn’t it? You’ve gotten together with some old army buddies of yours, and they’ve convinced you to play a practical joke. Well, this one isn’t funny, Aaron. Tell them it isn’t working.”

  “Damn it, Mags, I told you this was going to be hard, didn’t I?”

  “Aaron—”

  “This isn’t a joke, Magdalena. I met Deirdre up here in Minnesota after I got out of the army. She gave me my first haircut after I got back from Vietnam. Of course that was 1970, and long hair was in. Deirdre told me to go away and not come back until I had something I could afford to cut.

  “So, I did. I mean, I stayed away for a whole year. When I went back to the shop, she was still there. We got married in August of
‘71.”

  “August? We were married in August, Aaron.”

  “Different dates,” he said dryly. “Do you want to hear the rest of it, or not?”

  “By all means.”

  “We were married for eleven years and then something went wrong. I don’t know what it was—just say we fell out of love. We went our separate ways, but we never divorced. She actually filed for one, but when the papers came, neither of us wanted to go through with it.”

  “Divorce is a sin,” I said stupidly. Whose side was I on anyway?

  “At any rate, we all but lost touch—even though we were living in the same city. Minneapolis is a big city, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Then when Pops fell and broke his hip last year, and I moved back to Hernia, I didn’t even think about Deirdre.”

  “Of course not, you met me.”

  “That’s right, I met you. Then you and I got married—but, as it happened, I was already married.”

  I intentionally slammed my head into the wall. It didn’t clear my cerebral circuits, but it did affirm that I was indeed awake, and not just dreaming the whole thing. The nightmare was real.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said calmly. “You married me when you already had a wife?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You’ve made this damn hard for me, Mags.”

  “Me? Hard?” I’ll admit, I was no longer quite so calm. To her credit, Freni closed the kitchen door again as soon as she saw that I was still in one piece.

  “This never would have happened, Magdalena, if you hadn’t pushed me into marriage.”

  “I did no such thing! You proposed, Aaron Daniel Miller. You proposed on our way home from Ohio last February.”

  “Maybe I did, but you were expecting it. In fact, your behavior demanded it.”

  “I didn’t twist your arm, buster. But I wish I had, you sap-sucking, lily-livered swamp snake! I wish I had twisted it off into a bloody stump.” The rational side of me fought to keep control of my remaining faculties. “But that isn’t the important thing—”

  “The important thing is that I am still legally married to Deirdre, and that our Hernia marriage is null and void.”