by Tamar Myers
“Absolutely.”
“How much is this raise?”
“You name it,” I said blithely. I mean, how much money could an elderly Amish woman possibly want?
“Double my salary,” Freni said without a moment’s hesitation.
I sat up abruptly, losing some of my sudsy cover. Fortunately, since I don’t have much to hide, the few remaining bubbles sufficed. Besides, Freni practically raised me.
“What?”
“You heard me, Magdalena. I want twice what you pay me now.”
I slapped my forehead as the truth dawned on me, getting soapy water in my eyes. “Oh, I get it now! You want the money to bribe Barbara.”
Beady eyes blinked. “Barbara?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, dear. You know very well whom I mean.”
“Ach, is it a sin to build your daughter-in-law her own house?”
“Her own house? You mean a separate house?” Like most Amish families, the Hostetler household consists of several generations living together. In most cases, upon reaching retirement age, the oldest generation relinquishes the main house to a married son or daughter and moves into especially built quarters adjacent to or nearby the main dwelling. This little apartment is called the Grossdawdy house, or grandfather house. There the retirees live the remainder of their lives, still independent, but close to the bosom of their loving families. In this case, however, it appeared as if Freni intended to fly in the face of tradition and reverse the order. Even worse, Barbara would be banished by herself to the grossdaddy house, and Freni would live happily ever after with her husband Mose, their son Jonathan, and the adorable triplets.
Freni hung her head which, because of her stubby neck, wasn’t very far. “She could visit the babies whenever she wants.” She thought a second. “Once a week should be plenty, yah?”
“For shame,” I said, and then scooted back down into the water. The air in the room was considerably cooler than my bath, and Shasta and Everest, as I mockingly call my female embellishments, were gaining elevation. “Freni, if you don’t watch it, one of these days Barbara is going to pack the children and move back to her people in Iowa. If that happens, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonathan went with her.”
Freni gasped. “Ach! Such a thing could never happen!” She gulped for air. “Could it?” she asked, in a much weaker voice.
“You bet your bippy, dear. Where do you think Jonathan would rather live? With his wife and children, or with his—now how do I say this kindly—controlling mother?”
Freni turned the color of her own candied apples. “But the Bible tells the son to honor his mama, yah?”
Thank heaven for my strict Mennonite upbringing and all the scripture verses I’d been forced to memorize as a girl. I repeated for Freni the passage I’d quoted to the Hamptons in my inadvertently inebriated state. You know, the one about a son leaving his parents to cleave unto his wife.
The red left Freni’s face as she muttered something so shocking that to this day I still can’t believe my ears. If I heard correctly—and I pray that I didn’t—she intimated that the Good Lord was no expert on marriage, having never been married Himself. And He certainly wasn’t, according to Freni’s tongue, an expert on daughters-in-law.
I cringed, fully expecting Freni to be struck by lightning, or at the very least turned into a pillar of salt. Since I was sitting in a tub full of water just inches away from the sinner, I wished for the salt. After all, it wasn’t me who had blasphemed, so why should I get electrocuted? Besides, we get a lot of snow here in Hernia, and good rock salt for the driveway doesn’t come cheap.
Okay, I must confess that when nothing happened to Freni, I felt a trifle disappointed. I didn’t want her to get hurt, mind you, but you have to admit that her salinization would have been an exciting thing to observe. It certainly would have given Lodema Schrock something to talk about for a while.
“Count yourself lucky,” I warned her as I wagged a long slender finger. “You could have been fried to a crisp or turned into salt.”
Freni nodded. “Yah, but the raise, you will still give it?”
“I most certainly will not. Instead, I will buy a heifer for each of your grandchildren, and will pasture them here if you like. By the time the triplets get married, they’ll have their own little herds going. But in the meantime, you get back to work.”
My cook loves her grandchildren as much as she despises their mother. The idea that each of them would someday have their own dairy herd pleased her to no end. Her face lit up like a Coleman lantern and she scurried from the room before her tongue had a chance to undermine my generosity.
“Shut the door!” I yelled.
I don’t think Freni even heard me.
I had just pulled the plug—with my toes, of course—when Darlene Townsend bounded into my tiny bathroom like a Great Dane on steroids. I couldn’t help but shriek in alarm.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” the big gal said, and sat on the edge of the tub just as naturally as if I’d offered her a seat in the parlor. “I’m a gym teacher, remember? I’ve seen it all.”
I thrashed at the water frantically to create a few new suds. “Get out!”
“Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed, Miss Yoder.”
“I said, ‘get out’!” The water was draining rapidly and I was forced to lie flat on my back to stay covered.
She didn’t budge. “You really have no reason to feel that way, if that’s the case. The human body is a thing of beauty.”
I briefly entertained the idea that my body was beautiful. Briefly. I may as well have imagined that I liked calf’s liver and mashed turnips.
“You sound like Gingko Murray,” I said as I placed my hands over strategic areas.
“Please, Miss Yoder! That woman gives me the creeps.”
“She may be an egg shy of an omelet, dear, but she has yet to invade my bathroom.”
Darlene seemed to have selective hearing. “She’s a crackpot, all right. L.A. will do it to you. I have a friend who spent six months out there and—”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Townsend, but if you don’t leave by the count of three, I’m going to splash you. One—”
“I saw Betty Quiring,” Darlene said quickly.
“What?”
“You know, Hernia’s physical education teacher. You said she likes to pull ears.”
“That’s true. Two.”
“But I pulled her ears instead.”
“Look away!” I barked. I grabbed my towel on the rack beside me and yanked it into the tub. “Now, dear, you did what?”
“I pulled her ears. I went over to see her, like I said I would, and she was really very nice at first. She invited me in. Even served me a glass of cranberry juice.”
“Get to the point, dear.”
“I am. You see, I can be clumsy at times and I accidentally spilled a drop of cranberry juice on Miss Quiring’s white rug. A drop. I mean that literally. Anyway, the woman went crazy and started pulling my ears, and yelling at me like I was a little kid. So I pulled back.”
“You go, girl!” I said, mimicking my sister Susannah. I know ear pulling is unhealthy, and violence should never be condoned. But this was Betty Quiring we were talking about!
Darlene smiled. “I thought you’d like to hear that.”
“What happened next?” I asked breathlessly.
“Well, I guess what I did kind of took her by surprise. Then we both started laughing. We got along really well after that.”
“Oh.” I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment.
“She’s a nice woman, Miss Yoder. Just a little bossy. Anyway, I asked her if she knew of any girls who were good at the game—basketball, I mean—and she suggested Dorothy Mitchell and Anna Lichty. Do you know them?”
I frowned. “Dorothy Mitchell is a Presbyterian.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, they’re almost as bad as Episcopalians. They’re allowed to drink beer. In
fact, I’ve heard rumors that some of them even bathe in beer.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “The Episcopalians, of course, bathe in wine.”
She laughed. “I’m an Episcopalian, Miss Yoder, and I don’t drink at all.”
“Well,” I sniffed, “perhaps you’re the exception to the rule. At any rate, I know of Dorothy Mitchell, but I don’t know her personally. Her parents own a dry-cleaning store over in Bedford. Anna Lichty I know quite well. She was in my sixth grade Sunday School class four or five years ago. Even then she towered above all the other kids. Come to think of it, she was almost as tall as me.”
“How tall is that?”
“Five ten.”
“Miss Yoder, that isn’t exceptionally tall by today’s standards.”
“I know, but I see Anna almost every Sunday. She’s grown since then. Now she’s a veritable giantess. Why, she’s almost as tall as you.” I bit my tongue, for having let that slip out.
Darlene merely smiled. “Do you think her parents could be persuaded to let her attend St. Daphne’s in Philadelphia?”
“I rather doubt it. We Mennonites shy away from saints.”
“Why is that?”
“Praying to all those statues, well, that’s the same as idol worship.”
Darlene laughed. I’m almost positive I heard the Bontragers’ donkey down the road bray in response.
“We don’t pray to any statues at St. Daphne’s. In fact, I don’t even know who St. Daphne was.”
“Well, in that case, you might stand a chance. The Lichtys are very reasonable people and proud of their daughter. But I have to warn you, they don’t have a lot of money.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter. If Anna qualifies, I’m prepared to offer her a full scholarship.”
I sighed. Where were the Darlene Townsends of the world when I was sixteen? I’d have given my eye teeth to get away from Hernia and—well, let’s face it—Mama.
“You’re very generous,” I said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m getting cold sitting here.”
She remained sitting, as still as my faucet. “Would you be willing to call ahead and introduce me? Miss Quiring would, but apparently she pulled Anna’s ears one too many times. Supposedly the girl hates her.”
“Okay!” I practically shouted. “If you’ll get out of my bathroom.”
“Certainly.” She took her time unfolding her long limbs. “I tried to ask you last night, but you weren’t here.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course I was here. I just went to bed early.” There was some truth in that.
She looked down at me, her eyes unblinking as a cow’s. “No, you weren’t here. I got in late from seeing Miss Quiring. It was just after ten, and as I came up Hertzler Road, I thought I saw your car driving the other way. I took a chance and knocked on your door.”
“I didn’t hear you,” I said. That certainly wasn’t a lie.
She smiled. “I knocked really loud. And your car wasn’t in the driveway. Where were you?”
The nerve of the woman! There I was, naked except for a towel, and she was quizzing me like I was her teenage daughter.
“Out!” I shouted. “Out, out, out!” I grabbed my bottle of Suave moisturizing conditioner and waved it threateningly.
Darlene ambled slowly out of the room. “Let me know when you get the introduction set up, Miss Yoder. This morning would be best but—”
I threw the bottle of conditioner, causing ten generations of pacifist Amish and Mennonite ancestors to turn over in their graves. Fortunately I didn’t hit her, and the tremors caused by all those rolling relatives ceased by the time I got dried and dressed.
The day was definitely off to a rotten start.
29
Freni made me cinnamon apple pancakes. After gorging, I went back to my room, hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, locked the door, and took a good long nap. When I awoke two plus hours later, I felt both ravenous and bloated. I also had a splitting headache. Most importantly, however, at some point during my truncated sleep cycle I’d had a dream, one which, upon awakening, still made sense. A lot of sense. Call it an epiphany if you will. The first piece in solving the puzzle of Lizzie Mast’s incongruous death by drugs had suddenly fallen into place. But in order to see if the piece did indeed fit neatly, I needed my car.
Since I can just as well be sick away from home as I can at home, I gave Susannah a call. She answered just as her machine picked up. Apparently she was giving herself an avocado facial in preparation for her first TV appearance. She sounded as if her jaws were wired shut.
“Susannah, dear,” I said cheerily, despite my pounding head, “do you still have the keys to Melvin’s cruiser?”
She hesitated. “Technically it isn’t against the law,” she finally said. “The law says the cruiser is supposed to be used for official police business, but I’m Melvin’s wife. And what’s more a Police Chief’s business than his wife?”
“Nothing, dear.”
“Cool, Mags, I think you’re finally loosening up. Hey, you want to go for a spin sometime?”
“Absolutely. How about now?”
“No can do.”
“Of course you can, dear. I just want you to drop me off at the old Berkey barn. I seem to have left my car there.”
Susannah wasn’t the least bit curious. “It’s a mask, Mags. I have to leave it on for an hour, and I just started.”
“Avocados are meant to be eaten, not worn,” I said patiently. “But since you insist on putting it on your face, instead of into it—well, it doesn’t bother me.”
“But it will bother me. If I go out now, I’ll look like a Martian.”
“I can’t believe you care,” I said bitterly.
A good deal of the cleansing hour passed in silence. “I do care,” Susannah finally said. “I’ve turned over a new leaf. I now have a reputation to uphold.”
“You do?”
“Look, Mags, I know you don’t like Melvin, so—”
“Oh, but I do,” I said. My nose itched fiercely.
“Give it a rest, Mags. You think he’s an incompetent nincompoop. You’ve said so a million times.”
“Well, I take some of that back. If Jesse Ventura can be elected as Governor of Minnesota, there is no reason Melvin couldn’t be President. He could even ask Dennis Rodman to be his running mate.”
“You mean that?”
“Truer words were never spoken.”
“Because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what kind of a First Lady I’d be. I mean, should I be a fashion plate like Jacqueline Kennedy and reintroduce elegance to the White House, or an environmentalist like Lady Bird Johnson and—”
“Susannah,” I said softly, “don’t you think you should wait at least until after Melvin wins the councilman’s seat before you install yourself in the White House?”
“Don’t be silly, Mags. Now is the time to start planning. And I’ve already picked my pet project.” She giggled mysteriously. “Don’t you want to hear about it?”
“If it will make you happy, dear.”
“You’re a pal, sis, you know that?”
“I try to be.” The truth be known, there was no way I would have listened to a woman who was unable to move her lips tell me her plans for the White House, had I not needed a favor.
“Well, I’ve decided that my number one priority will be doggy diapers.”
“What?” I quickly jiggled a pinkie in my phone ear to make sure it was in working order.
“You know, canine nappies. Poochie Pampers. And tougher leash laws. I plan to spearhead a national drive to make every dog owner responsible for cleaning up after his or her pet.”
“That’s what I thought you said. What about cat diapers?” I asked guardedly. Little Freni was, at that very moment, taking her own bath in the privacy of my brassiere.
“Naw, cats are different; they cover it up when they’re through. But whenever I take Shnookums for a walk around our neighborhood, I have
to be careful not to step in these huge piles left behind by bigger dogs. Shnookums, of course, always wears the little diapers I make for him from Melvin’s old T-shirts. It isn’t fair what the other dog owners let their dogs get away with.”
I nodded. That was certainly a cause I could get behind.
“I’ll contribute a thousand dollars to Melvin’s campaign.”
“Really?”
“You’ve got my word. Now hurry on over with the cruiser. I need to retrieve my car.”
It is undoubtedly hard to whine through an avocado mask, but she did a pretty good job. “Mags, I told you I can’t do that.”
“I’ll make that two thousand dollars then.”
“I’ll be right there,” she said and hung up.
Susannah showed up ten minutes later, even though she lives a good fifteen minutes away. Somehow she had found the time to cut eye holes in a brown paper grocery bag, which she wore over her head. Why she didn’t find that embarrassing is beyond me.
She chatted the entire way to the old Berkey barn, but the combination of mask and bag made it impossible to decipher a single word. I nodded and smiled at regular intervals and that seemed to keep her happy. To my knowledge she didn’t even ask what I was up to, but her muffled cry of joy when I said good-bye made me a tad nervous. Two thousand dollars was as much as I was willing to contribute to Melvin’s hopeless campaign.
At any rate, I was relieved to find my car exactly where I had left it, and in the same condition. I patted my Beamer lovingly—a sin, I’m sure—and spoke aloud to Little Freni.
“Ready to take a spin, dear?”
Little Freni purred. She loves my car almost as much as I do.
We got in and, after carefully negotiating the stubble in the field, pulled out on the highway just behind, of all people, Lodema Schrock. I will confess now that what I did next was purely of the devil, but I must hasten to explain that I have long since repented for the error of my ways. At any rate, just to irritate my clergyman’s meddling wife, I inched my car as close as I could to her rear bumper without actually touching it. One tap on her brakes, and our vehicles would have kissed, but I knew Lodema would never allow that to happen. She was, after all, a control freak. Besides, we at Beechy Grove Mennonite Church don’t believe in overpampering our pastors, and I knew that Buick meant as much to her as my Beamer meant to me.