by Tamar Myers
‘Well,’ said Agnes, ‘that does it for me for tonight. Remember, Your Noblenesses, we meet down here tomorrow morning at ten for the interview. They requested bright colours – something that would pop on TV. Maybe a vivid red or a royal blue. Royal blue, ha, ha. Get the joke?’
‘Not really,’ Peregrine said. I could tell that he was seeing red because even behind his monocle his blue eye looked cold enough to set a gelatine salad.
It had been a long day for Agnes, and she looked crestfallen.
‘American humour – now that’s an oxymoron,’ he said.
I decided to come to my friend’s aid. ‘Another definition for oxymoron: a castrated bull that is connected by a Spanish conjunction to France’s favourite comedian.’
No one laughed.
‘Ox – y – Jerry Lewis,’ I said. ‘Get it?’
Again, no one laughed. No one offered up as much as a courtesy snicker.
The Bible says that Satan will use anything that He can to trip us up, and that we are to be ever diligent on that account. I was well aware from experience that Satan loved using my low self-esteem and my propensity for acting punitively. It had never occurred to me, however, that Satan might put it in mind to invite my guests to church!
‘Postpone that interview until Monday, Agnes. Tomorrow is Sunday, remember? A traditional Mennonite church experience is what is scheduled.’
‘Oh, how exciting,’ Aubrey said, pressing her sculpted fingertips together in breathless anticipation.
‘Rally?’ said Sebastian. ‘Have you quite forgotten that we’re Church of England? I don’t suppose you have one of those in this godforsaken place. Also, I’m afraid we’re frightfully Low Church; Papa doesn’t go in for the smells and bells – too Papist, ha, ha. Small joke there, in case you missed it, what with your frontier sense of humour.’
‘How dare you!’ Gabriel said, ever the loyal husband. ‘As long as my soul mate is here, God has not forsaken this place.’
‘Tank you, son,’ Ida said. ‘Und I love you too.’
‘He was talking about me, Mama dearest,’ I said so sweetly that I later lost a molar on that account. ‘As for the rest of you, I have decided that the best way for you to experience Mennonite culture is to attend Magdalena Yoder’s traditional Old Order Mennonite Church. By the way, this will be followed by a potluck luncheon, which is supplied by the ladies of that church. This will offer you a tremendous opportunity to socialize with the locals; it is something to which other tourists are not privy. In the afternoon you are free do what the Lord hath commanded you to do, which is to rest – i.e. nap, stroll about the farm or take buggy rides about the countryside.’
My attention was drawn to what sounded like a snorting ox. I was somewhat relieved to see that the real creature of my concern wasn’t quite as dangerous, given that it was only Agnes, and that Mr Lewis was not in sight. Nonetheless, Agnes was pawing the floor of my dining room with her remarkably petite and overburdened feet, and her remarkably plump fists were held stiffly out at her sides (given her shape, a forty-five-degree angle was the best she could achieve).
‘Magdalena,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I am literally beside myself with frustration.’
I glanced to her right, and then her left. ‘No, you’re not.’
‘Don’t you tell me how I feel,’ she hissed, managing to hiss without that pesky ‘s.’
‘I’m not telling you how to feel,’ I said. ‘All I am saying is that you aren’t beside yourself literally. Although, who knows, maybe those award-winning mystery writers might start using that word incorrectly as well.’
‘Aargh! You know what I meant. Anyway, tomorrow is the only day that the film crew from Pittsburgh has the time to come out and film.’
‘Tomorrow is the Lord’s Day,’ I said. ‘Read your Bible if you’ve forgotten.’
‘Actually,’ Gabe said, ‘if you could read it in the original Hebrew, as I can, you would know that today, Saturday, is the Lord’s Day.’
‘Yah, dat is so,’ chimed in So-and-So, much to my everlasting irritation.
‘You no longer practice Judaism, dear,’ I said. ‘You worship the Goddess Apathia, and her lover, Entropy, which makes you a heathen and subject to stoning.’
‘Oh, my, now this rally is exciting,’ Aubrey said. ‘I must say, you Americans are frightfully entertaining. We haven’t seen a good stoning in ages.’
‘We can be frightful all right,’ I said, perhaps a wee bit annoyed that she obviously found Ida’s shenanigans more appealing than a proper church service. ‘Agnes, as tour director, I will expect you at eight tomorrow morning to help us enjoy a hearty Pennsylvania Dutch farm breakfast. Then at half past nine we will load up and depart for the church.’
‘Actually,’ Peregrine said as he lightly stroked the left tip of his moustache, ‘I shall defer on the pleasures of the Lord tomorrow and pay more attention to rest. After all, if memory serves me right, there is nothing in that passage about church.’
‘That’s not fair,’ I wailed. ‘The Ten Commandments were given in the desert, when the ancient Israelites were just a wandering tribe; churches didn’t even exist then.’
‘Say what?’ Celia said. Who knew she was even still listening, given that she had a sixteen-year-old brain, which is compelled by biology to shut down after just six words uttered by ignorant adults.
‘What?’ I said.
‘What I mean,’ she said, ‘is why did God give the Ten Commandments to those people and not us?’
‘Well—’
‘And since God didn’t give them to us, why do we have to follow them? Answer me that. I’m just asking, mind. But rally, God didn’t tell the English not to steal, did He? So suppose I was in Harrods and saw this jumper that I rally liked—’
‘Celia!’ Aubrey said with surprising sharpness. Now that really endeared the woman to me. It is one thing to raise our daughters to be strong and independent thinkers, speaking their minds under the right circumstances, but it is quite another thing to permit sacrilegious ideas to percolate through their brains like water through coffee grounds. The end result of that is anything but a stimulating beverage – it’s unadulterated swill!
The teenager obediently zipped her lip, but she rolled her eyes exactly like an American teenager. If you ask me, it isn’t music that’s the international language; it’s body language.
‘Ladies,’ said Peregrine, looking at me perhaps a wee bit reproachfully, ‘it has been a long, tiring day. If you will excuse me, I think that I shall retire to what passes for accommodation overhead.’
‘This accommodation,’ I said, ‘passed very well for our past three presidents, as well as our current Head of State.’
‘You’re joking?’ Peregrine said.
‘I never joke about business,’ I said. ‘This inn has also hosted many movie stars and people in the music industry, including Babs.’
I was met by blank stares all around except for the grin on the Babester’s face. ‘Babs,’ I said again. ‘That’s what I call her. You might know her as Barbra. She sang Mammeries!’
‘She means “Memory,”’ Agnes said drily.
‘Oh, that Barbra,’ they all chorused.
‘My wife doesn’t listen to secular music,’ Gabriel said loyally.
‘Und I dun’t leestin to sexy music eider,’ Ida said.
‘Before you go, Peregrine,’ I said, ‘we’d all like to learn what happened to you?’
‘Nothing happened to me, dear lady! I merely stepped into the woods for a moment to, er, water the undergrowth, when I became slightly disoriented. Slightly, I say. It’s not as if I thought I was back on the grounds of our estate or hunting with Prince Charles up in Balmoral. At any rate, I saw a light – not the light – and headed straight for it, as per my military training, and it led me to this so-called convent. That is where I encountered the, ahem, Mother Disjointed here.’
‘Jolly good!’ I said, for he had given me a remarkably straightforward account of h
is whereabouts while he was missing. Not only that, but he had come up with a ding-dang good name for me to add to my list of appellations for the Queen of Apathy. The erstwhile missing earl was beginning to rise on my barometer of likability.
‘Now that the mystery is solved,’ Sebastian said, ‘I’m out of here then as well.’ He stood, and then in the unabashed way of which only the truly young and naïve are capable of acting, he stretched his arms to their limit, straight up into the air. Normally I don’t pay close attentive to such matters, but Sebastian boasted an exceptionally long torso, and by adopting this stance the youth’s shirttails pulled loose from his waistband. The result was that I couldn’t help but be assaulted by an expanse of what the kids today refer to as a ‘six-pack.’ You know, tight, rippled muscles. In this case the six-pack was deeply tanned and separated into two equally erotic halves by a line of curly black hair.
‘Get behind me, Satan!’ I cried softly, surely too softly for anyone of corporal form to hear.
I am not superstitious, but Sebastian must have had the ears of a demon – I’m just saying. ‘What the heck do you mean by that?’ he said. ‘Is stretching against your religion too?’
‘Not stretching zee truce,’ Ida said.
‘She means “truth,”’ Gabe translated loyally. Despite the content of his marriage vows, and his many promises to the contrary, if Ida and I had both slipped off the deck of a ship and neither of us could swim, the first person Gabriel would try to save would be his precious Mama. That might not even bother me, if I believed that he intended to raise our son Little Jacob to put his mama before everyone else. Alas, I believe that there is a fifty–fifty chance that my son will grow up having been brainwashed into plucking the plucky Ida from the briny deep and not yours truly.
That’s when dear, sweet Aubrey jumped to my defence. ‘Well I, for one, find Magdalena utterly delightful,’ she said, ‘and I say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with embroidering one’s words in order to facilitate the conversation. I should imagine that Magdalena would have fit quite well into the salon set, don’t you, dear?’ She turned to Peregrine.
‘Oh, Mother, must you be so ridiculous?’ Celia said and left the room, although it was not she to whom the question had even been addressed.
‘Quite right, dear,’ Peregrine said, and acknowledged his wife with a glinting tilt of his monocle.
‘Well, I’m off then,’ said Sebastian, and out he strode, all nine stones of him, with his broad shoulders, washboard abs and narrow cowboy hips.
That left me with the two As: Agnes and Aubrey, current BFF and possible new BFF, knowing how fickle I can be. I’m just being honest. I am, after all, only human. What I mean is that if Agnes continued to thwart me and Aubrey continued to charm and delight me – well, I’m just saying, that’s all. Of course, it goes without saying that both Rosens remained.
I breathed a prayer for strength. ‘Agnes, would you be so kind as to give Ma a ride back to the Convent of Perpetual Pity?’
‘Da name eez Apathy,’ Ida said. ‘Und since vhen vas I your ma?’
‘I stand corrected. Agnes, could you please give Apathy a ride back to the convent for us?’
‘Mags,’ Gabe said, ‘enough with the teasing. She’s a helpless old lady, for gosh sakes.’
‘Helpless my As-ton Martin,’ Aubrey whispered just loud enough for everyone, except Ida, to hear. Even Gabe smiled.
Heaven help me, but I was one ‘s’ away from falling in love and becoming a lesbian, which, of course, I never would. But like I said before, I’m just saying.
NINE
Freni Hostetler, who is both my elderly cook and kinswoman, normally doesn’t work on Sundays. On this particular Lord’s Day, however, she refused to have it any other way.
‘If you promised them “Dutchy” food,’ she said, ‘then I will make them for to eat real Dutchy and not the pretend Dutchy, like over Lancaster way. These English-English will eat the real thing.’ By that, Freni meant that she would serve food cooked according to the recipes handed down from her mother, who got them from her mother, etc. These recipes dated back hundreds of years.
An Amish farm breakfast is a hearty meal, although not all of it is to my taste. For instance, I’m not a big fan of scrapple – or head cheese – and I didn’t suppose that our British guests would care for it either, until Agnes clued me in on haggis.
‘Just make sure to serve baked beans,’ she said. ‘The Brits have to eat baked beans with every meal.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. I simply couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to eat beans for breakfast, especially when planning to share a church pew in due order.
‘I am positive,’ Agnes said. ‘And ideally the beans must come from a tin, not from a can, and they must not be made from scratch.’
Freni scratched her head on that one. ‘Yah, but how is a tin different from a can?’
‘Semantics,’ I said softly, for her ears alone.
‘No, it’s not,’ Agnes said.
‘Harrumph,’ I said. ‘It looks like Agnes is anti-semantic.’
‘Ach!’ said Freni, genuinely horrified. ‘Gabe, Little Jacob, maybe Alison too – they are semantic, yah?’
‘You mean Semitic,’ Agnes said.
‘Yes, but you can bet your couscous, cousin,’ I said, ‘that these British-style breakfasts can get really out of hand, even when served from a tin, instead of a can – I hope you don’t mind my speaking in rhyme.’
‘I do, actually,’ said Agnes, who looked as if she’d been sucking on a pickle.
‘Harrumph,’ I said again. ‘At any rate, the British will expect marmite, vegemite and marmalade for their toast, which, by the way, can be no darker than the inside of my wrist. It is common knowledge that when Brits see our toast, all they see is a plate covered with ashes. Ah, yes, both their toast and their bacon have to be served in a weird little device called a rasher.’
‘Ach!’ squawked Freni. ‘Uncle!’ That was the secular American way of saying ‘I give up’ during physical competitions when I was a girl. Where on earth Freni picked up this phrase is beyond me, but the older I get, the more I’ve come to understand just how strange this world is, and that its mysteries are constantly unfolding.
For the most part we needn’t have worried about our breakfast selection. I served it buffet style, and the sideboard fairly groaned under the weight of the many platters and bowls it supported. I heard many appreciative ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs’ in the serving line, and when folks started eating, the compliments coming out of their mouths gave stiff competition to the food going in.
There was only one fly in the oatmeal – er, ointment. Rupert, the oldest son by two minutes, had deigned to lift his silken locks off my guest pillows and make that terrible trek downstairs to the dining room. I know, sarcasm does not become me, and I have heard it said that women are incapable of it, so I have had to check beneath my sturdy Christian underwear twice, in the telling of this, to be sure of my gender, but that young man’s arrogant behaviour really steamed my bonnet.
After all the work that my seventy-six-year-old cousin did that morning to prepare a feast fit for a king, much less a viscount, Rupert should have at least had enough good manners to say nothing rather than something hurtful. Instead, with Freni standing there at one end of the buffet, Rupert screwed up his face as if he’d also been sucking on a pickle and said: ‘I say there, have you ever seen such a disgusting display of rubbish all in one place?’
Both the Amish and we Mennonites are known for our pacifism. Many’s the time that we have been martyred for our faith. We are a humble people, even proud of our humility, and may the Good Lord forgive me but I cannot help feeling defensive when it comes to my family. Perhaps I am a closet Baptist and I don’t know it. After all, as a teenager I caught myself inadvertently wiggling my patooty to Little Richard’s Tooty Fruity, that time when I heard the tune coming from a shop doorway. That night I confessed this sin to Mama, who then gave my offending behind ten
whacks with the backside of her hairbrush.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, as Alison would say, no one, but no one, hurts dear old Freni. Even Babs couldn’t get away with a statement like Rupert’s. The only thing that prevented me from tackling the ungrateful tourist was that Agnes stood between us with her Sumo wrestler’s girth.
‘You take that back, buster!’ I roared. ‘Take it back right now or it’s off to the Tower with you!’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Rupert chirped.
‘It’s not my pardon for which you should be asking,’ I growled, ‘but Freni’s. How can you say such a hurtful thing to an old lady? Don’t you have a grandmother?’
At that Agnes manoeuvred a turn between the table and the sideboard so that she faced me. ‘Magdalena, what are you carrying on about? I don’t see how Freni enters into my private conversation with Rupert. He was showing me a picture of the garbage strike in Naples on his smartphone. It really is disgusting.’
When I used to complain about having big feet, Papa always said that God made them that way so I could think fast on them. I tried putting them to good use that morning.
‘Oh that,’ I said. ‘I must have been thinking aloud. It had to do with the dialogue I’m writing for the Christmas pantomime – you know, the one I’ll be directing for the Sunday school.’
For the record, I abhor fabrication and eschew embroidering with words, if they are meant to deceive, and/or take advantage of someone. However, I believe it is quite different if one follows through and actually performs a task that has been alluded to. That, of course, meant that I would have to set pencil to paper and prepare a script for puerile pubescent players – or else be guilty of telling a whopper on the Lord’s Day.
‘I always enjoyed acting in pantomimes,’ Rupert said. The young man was irritatingly agreeable. If it hadn’t been for his lavender shirt and his unmistakable use of rouge on his cheeks, he could well have passed for your average red-blooded American male – well, almost. Although it wasn’t any of my business, I can’t help but state that the coral shade of lipstick he was wearing not only didn’t suit his skin tone, it would have set him apart from other local youth his age.