Batter Off Dead

by MYERS, TAMAR

  “I’m talking about Ida Rosen,” I said. “My mother-in-law.”

  “No kidding!”

  “I don’t have an imagination, Doc. I couldn’t possibly have made this up.”

  “Do they have to take a vow of celibacy?”

  “Think about it, Doc. My sister, Susannah, is in charge.”

  “Oh, yeah. Shoot, I should have asked to go along—maybe as the bus driver.”

  “Doc, remember that these are women who’ve dedicated themselves to apathy. Seducing them wouldn’t be nearly as fun as you think.”

  “I could handle that; I’ve slept with Englishwomen before.”

  “TMI!”

  “What’s that mean again?”

  “Too much information. Doc, how’s your head?” Doc had been critically brutalized about the time I found out I was pregnant. His assailant was Melvin Stoltzfus, who once was our former chief of police but now is an escaped murderer. It was at Doc’s house that I confronted the menacing mantis (he really does resemble one), and that I also learned that the despicable man was my biological brother. This, of course, makes him the uncle of the world’s sweetest, most attractive baby boy.

  “I’m doing just fine, girl. It’s Old Blue you should be worrying about. This morning a chipmunk ran within six inches of her nose and she kept on sleeping.”

  “Maybe her dreams were too good for her to want to wake up. I’ve had that happen to me.”

  “Let’s hope. I don’t know what I’ll do when the time comes—” His voice cracked.

  “I’ll be there, Doc; we’ll get through it.”

  “You’re a good friend, Magdalena.”

  “Tell that to my enemies, will you?”

  “Well, you know what they say.”

  “No, what do they say, Doc?”

  “That a life lived without accruing any enemies was not a life worth living.”

  “Really? I haven’t heard that one before. Speaking of enemies, Doc, I’d like to ask you a question, but it’s kind of sensitive.”

  “Don’t listen to those women’s libbers, Magdalena; Viagra is really your friend.”

  “Doc! It isn’t about sex! It’s about Melvin. As far as the authorities know—well, they don’t seem to know anything about his whereabouts. Nada. Zip. Not one thing. He could still be in Hernia, hiding out in someone’s barn, or he could be in Timbuktu. Aren’t you afraid living out here on the edge of town all alone?”

  “I’m not alone; I’ve got Old Blue, remember?”

  “No offense, Doc, but she’s a senior citizen as well.”

  “And so was Moses when he led the Exodus. And Abraham when he became the father of a great nation. What’s your point?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “I’ve always said you were a reasonable woman, Magdalena.”

  We continued to walk in companionable silence to the house. Sure enough, the table was set for two, but since I know that he still sets it for his deceased wife, Belinda, I didn’t put too much truck in Old Blue’s ability to predict the arrival of guests. Still, there was enough food to feed two Mennonites—or two buckeyes of any faith—or four cradle Episcopalians from New England.

  I lunched on a hot roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and homemade gravy. On the side Doc served some green beans he’d canned the previous summer, as well as a carrot and raisin slaw, and pickled beets. For dessert he cut me a slab of the world’s densest butter pound cake, over which he spooned fresh strawberries, which he claimed had been flown into Pittsburgh all the way up from Chile.

  When I was stuffed to the gills he told me to belch, which I did, and then he served me a cup of hot chocolate with ladyfingers on the side. “Now, tell me why you’re here,” he said.

  “What do you mean? To see how you are, of course. You’re my friend.”

  “Yes, but I’m also a dirty old man who hits on you every time you set foot on my property. Plus, I know a story when I hear it.”

  “Okay.” I slurped loudly with forced languidness and then settled back in my chair, my left hand resting on Little Jacob’s chest. The dear baby had fallen asleep again; I’d fed him lunch just before I sat down to eat my own meal. “It’s this: the Babester has left me, and I’m having one St. Louis Airport—Concourse A—of a time trying to figure out who killed Minerva J. Jay.”

  Doc shook his head. “I see you’ve been there as well.”

  “Not me; one of the Zug wives. Anyway, Doc, I’m at the end of my rope, and it’s about to break.”

  “First things first. What’s this about that rich young doctor of yours leaving the most desirable woman in all of Hernia? When did that happen?”

  “This morning! His mother’s conversion into a devotee of apathy was apparently the last straw. That—and he thinks I’m being controlling when it comes to you-know-who.”

  “He’s right on that score,” Doc said sternly. “A man should be in charge of his own genitalia.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head again. “And really, don’t you think that now you’re a married woman you should move past cute names like you-know-who? Belinda and I—”

  “TMI to the max!” I cried, clamping my hands over my ears. “And anyway, I was referring to Little Jacob; that’s who the Babester thinks I have control over.”

  “Hmm, he may be right on that score too. Some folks, I hear, can’t even agree on how to change a diaper. Here, let me give you a little test.” Doc reached over and tossed my napkin back into my lap. “Let’s pretend for a moment that that’s a diaper. Show me how you’d fold that.”

  I stared at the square of white cotton-poly cloth. “To be honest, Doc, I wouldn’t, because I use disposables.”

  “Well, how would you fold them?”

  “You don’t fold them, Doc. They come preshaped with little tucks all around the leg holes for a snug fit so that nothing seeps out. And one doesn’t use pins anymore; the diapers self-fasten.”

  Doc rubbed the snow-white stubble on his chin. “Dang, I guess I’m further behind the times than I thought. And since I’m obviously not the genius I’d like to think I am at relationships, perhaps we should move on to the subject of Miss Jay. Now, there was a woman who could make a train jump its tracks.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I hate to speak ill of the dead, Magdalena, but Minerva J. Jay was Jezebel, Delilah, and Mata Hari rolled up in one very large package. I’m ashamed to say that no heterosexual man could possibly have resisted her.”

  “You don’t mean—you do mean! Doc, how could you?”

  “It was years ago, Magdalena. I was a much younger man, maybe just in my mid-sixties. I was still practicing veterinary medicine. At any rate, she brings in this stray kitten that’s been hanging around her garbage can. The poor thing has a broken leg that needs to be set, and even though large farm animals are my specialty, I do it. She asks me how much, and I say five dollars, on account of I don’t know what else to charge for something I’ve rarely, if ever, done. Then she notices I have a huge pile of paperwork in my so-called office and volunteers to help out—just for an hour or two on weekends.”

  “I don’t remember that!” I could practically feel my blue eyes turn the color of Irish moss.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a knot, Magdalena; it didn’t last long. She thought she noticed a bit of laxness in the way I reported my taxes and she threatened to go to the IRS.”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless we did the mattress mambo, as you so quaintly put it.”

  “You didn’t! I mean, how could you possibly perform the bedroom bossa nova with someone who was trying to blackmail you?”

  Doc recoiled in genuine surprise. “I’m a man, Magdalena. More important, I’m a mortal—unlike someone in this room.”

  I sighed. “Sorry. That really wasn’t any of my business. Anyway, Doc, Minerva was killed by a lethal combination of legal medications that somehow got into her bloodstream via our pancakes. Since only seven members of the Beech
y Grove Mennonite Church Brotherhood were stationed in the kitchen that day, it stands to reason that one of them is responsible. Right?”

  He nodded slowly. “Were the drugs altered in any way by heat? I mean, is there any chance Minerva downed them herself?”

  “No, they were in fact cooked in the pancake batter.”

  “And nobody else had access to the kitchen?”

  “The volunteer servers pretty much stayed in the fellowship hall and the platters were passed back and forth through the door. This saved a lot of bumping into one another. However, we did allow quick passage through the kitchen to those who were desperate to use the restrooms.”

  “Well, then I’d say—”

  “But Doc, my kitchen volunteers were too busy mixing batter, frying, and flipping to have put up with anyone coming close enough to drop anything in those big aluminum bowls.”

  “In that case, I’d have to say—”

  “But they think I’m being unfair, that I’m not widening the investigation enough. So they scheduled an intervention lunch! Can you believe that? Meanwhile, I thought I was going there to put the screws to the Zug wives, since I can’t seem to make heads nor tails of their husbands.”

  “Where was the intervention?”

  “Wanda Hemphopple’s Sausage Barn. Just before I came here.”

  “So you’d already eaten. I knew that lactating animals had increased appetites, but—”

  “No, I didn’t eat; the whole thing was a bust. Literally. You see, Merle Waggler split his pants. Unfortunately, he goes about without skivvies, so were all able to see that it would be more appropriate if he was named Wiggler, rather than Waggler. Other than that, it was a waste of time.”

  Doc chuckled briefly. “Who called this meeting?”

  “Apparently the handsome young Elias Whitmore.”

  “Pardon me? What did you say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You called this young fellow handsome.”

  “I most certainly did not!”

  “I may be losing some of my hearing, Magdalena, but I’m getting better at reading lips. Besides, you look practically smitten with him.”

  “What a silly thing to say!”

  “Yeah, well I’ve got a bad feeling about this kid; I’ve never liked him.”

  “How come?”

  “That house of his up on Buffalo Mountain, for one thing.”

  “But it’s beautiful!”

  “It’s crap.” Doc was at liberty to cuss, having freed himself from all religious strictures the day he joined the Marines back in the Civil War—or whenever that was.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Wrong with it? For one thing, it ruins the view from on top of Stucky Ridge. You’re not supposed to be able to see any houses on top of the mountain from up there. Nada. Not a one. And then there’s the noise. All that Holy Roller Christian rock music that kid plays, and the car lights bobbing back and forth. You can’t tell me there aren’t drugs being bought and sold.”

  “You’re equating Christian rock with drugs?”

  “Uh—well, no. But face it, Magdalena, these young people today have the morals of alley cats.”

  “Meow?”

  “Touché. But I still think this kid’s bad news, and if he’s the one who organized the so-called intervention, then I say focus your investigation on him. He’s trying to divert your attention away from the fact that he’s the one who murdered Minerva J. Jay.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “Doc, if I recall correctly, you predicted that a moon landing would lead to the moon veering out of orbit, and that it would most probably head to Earth and kill us all within two years.”

  “Yeah, but ‘one swallow doth not a summer make.’ William Wordsworth, by the way.”

  “Yes, but he was misquoting Aristotle, who said ‘one swallow does not make a spring’—of course not in English.”

  Doc grunted. “And you wonder why I find you so dang attractive. Now’s your chance, Magdalena. Get rid of that interloper from out of state, then marry me. With your looks and brains, and my life experience—the world would be our oyster.”

  “You wouldn’t need oysters, Doc—not with your libido. And in any case, I couldn’t keep up. You were born into the wrong culture; you should be living someplace where you could have a harem.”

  “Hmm, maybe I’ll look into that. More pound cake and strawberries?”

  “Thanks, but no. If I’m going to put the screws to Elias this afternoon, I need to get home and feed Little Jacob.”

  “You can feed him here if you like.”

  “Doc, he’s nursing. Feeding him here would be like waving a flank steak in front of a lion.”

  Doc sighed. “Perhaps you have a point.”

  I jumped up and gave him a kiss on top of his hoary, horny head. Immediately after that I scooped up the joy of my life and skedaddled while the going was good. I knew from experience that Doc would refuse help with the dishes, and that me lingering any longer would simply be torture for the man with the iron willy.

  There is no satisfactory way to explain marital separation to a child. Alison, as was her right, jumped to conclusions, just as quickly as I tend to do. Although I view my sudden leaps as a form of exercise, and thus defend them vigorously, I felt responsible for Alison’s frame of mind. Especially since she came down on my side of the finish line.

  “I’m never going to forgive him,” she said.

  “You what?”

  “How can I? He didn’t just walk away from ya, Mom; he walked away from me too. And my baby brother.”

  “But I’m sure that wasn’t his intent; he just needed to get away from me for a while. He’ll be back to see you two all the time. Or you can go over there.”

  “Yeah? Then why didn’t he come to school and tell me that?”

  “Because it just happened this morning. He hasn’t had time to think it through.”

  “Ya always defend him, Mom. Ya know that?”

  “Well, maybe that’s because he’s a good man.”

  “Then how come ya treat him like a baby?”

  “I most certainly do not!”

  Alison has shot up in the last year, so that now at five foot seven, while still as thin as a rotisserie spit, she can do a decent job of looking me in the eye. Her eyes, by the way, are a light Caribbean blue. One of my guests once described them as the color of a Paraiba tourmaline. When she trains those eyes on you, you realize that it’s not a matter of if you’ll get around to seeing things her way, but when.

  “Mom, ya do so treat him like a baby! Ya make fun of him because Grandma Ida cuts his meat for him.”

  “Yes, but isn’t that justifiable? I mean, a grown man! That’s just ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, but ya shouldn’t do it in public; that’s the thing.”

  “I don’t do it in public.”

  “Ya did that time at the church supper when all youse ladies was talking about your pet peas.”

  “The word is peeves, dear—Wait a minute, you heard that?”

  “Mom, the way ya were mocking Grandma Ida and her accent, the whole church heard ya.”

  I slapped the offending mouth in question. “Oops. I guess I got carried away.”

  “Yeah, well maybe she deserves it now, because I’m mad at her too.”

  “Yes, I can imagine how hurt I would be if my grandmother hadn’t said good-bye to me.” The truth is that I would have been immensely relieved if Grandma Yoder had not paid any attention to me when I was Alison’s age. The woman had passed on when I was just nine, and although her bones lay moldering in the grave atop Stucky Ridge, her controlling spirit had yet to budge an inch outside the parlor where she allegedly gave up her ghost. I couldn’t even run through that room without feeling Grandma’s icy talons digging into my shoulders and hearing her ravenlike voice cawing in my ears.

  “It ain’t me, Mom, that I’m mad for. I’m fourteen
, so I’m all growed up. I’m mad on account of Little Jacob. He ain’t never going to know what having a grandma is like—well, except for Freni. But she ain’t our grandma, ’cause she’s some kind of a cousin.”

  My heart overflowed with love for the girl I had taken in. Instead of focusing on herself, as could well have been expected, her concern was for the baby, even though he was still not legally her brother. And given the sad state of my marriage, Little Jacob might never officially be her sibling.

  “You’re darn tooting,” I said.

  “Wow, Mom, ya just swore!”

  “Just this once. And just to show you that I agree with you; you are all growed up.”

  “Mom, the word is really grown; I hope ya know that. I just say growed to get a rise out of ya. But anyway, since I am an adult and everything, can I go out tonight with Ronny Dietrich?”

  “That high school boy on the basketball team? The one whose hands hang down past his knees?”

  “Yeah, but he’s, like, only a sophomore, on account of he flunked two times in junior high.”

  It’s conversations like these with Alison that can take a reasonable woman, such as me, zooming from Point A to Point Z in a split second. “You’re not even allowed to date!”

  “But ya just agreed that I was an adult. Adults can do what they want, can’t they? Besides, I’ve decided that I’m Jewish, and when Jewish girls turn twelve, they become adults in the eyes of the community.”

  “Give it up, Alison. Even if you were allowed to date, which you’re not, I wouldn’t let you date someone that much older, and even if I did, which I won’t, it wouldn’t be Ronny Dietrich. Not after what he did at the Fifty-Second Annual Hernia Daze Picnic last summer.”

  “Youse old ladies didn’t really think that was lemonade, did ya?”

  “Mrs. Hurley almost had a heart attack after swallowing some.”

  “No offense, Mom, but Mrs. Hurley was a witch—and I mean that with a B.”

  “Don’t you dare talk like that in front of your brother!”

  You see how our conversations seem to ricochet from one subject to another? Before we knew it, we were arguing over how much bare midriff was the maximum amount any self-respecting girl (either Mennonite or Jewish) could wear to school (my answer was none), and the evening just seemed to slip away.