by Tamar Myers
“You, Magdalena. This is the first time you’ve ever darkened my doorway.”
“Very funny. I thought something was wrong. Do you always greet your guests this way?”
“You’re a guest? Wait right here while I change the soap and put out a cute little towel.”
“Nonsense. I’m here on police business.”
“Honest, officer, I didn’t mean to do it. He made me do it. But I promise to be good from now on. Just let me keep the money.”
“Excuse me?”
“Gotcha, Magdalena. Come on in.”
I followed her into a pleasant enough room, but when offered an armchair, I checked it carefully for a whoopee cushion.
“What are you doing,” she said, “looking for loose change?”
“Yes, and I found a twenty-dollar bill.” My backside was toward her, so I pretended to stuff something down the front of my dress.
“No way! Let me see.”
“Too late. Finders keepers, losers weepers.” I plopped my shapely patooty on the cushion, which was really quite comfortable, by the way.
“You didn’t really find any money—did you?”
“Maybe.”
“If you did, it’s mine.”
I screwed my face into what I hoped was a smug smile. That old saw about a smile taking fewer muscles than a frown was undoubtedly thought up by some annoyingly cheerful person on a sugar drip. Not only do my smiles require a great deal of facial exertion, but they can be downright painful at times. This was a particularly excruciating one.
“Magdalena, do you have to use the bathroom?”
“No. I’m trying to be pleasant.”
“Never afraid to try a new thing. That’s what I like about you.”
Consider the source, Mama always used to say. But she never had to interrogate a professional comedienne. I prayed for a Christian tongue.
“Alice, dear, I’m here to ask you some tough questions about your relationship with Cornelius Weaver.”
Her expression was worth any amount of annoyance. “What did you say?”
“Did you love him?”
Her face darkened. “That’s none of your business.”
“Then, you did. In that case, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“If you must know, we were going to be married.”
“But I thought he was engaged to Priscilla Livingood.”
“Cornelius promised to break it off with her just as soon as he could think of an easy way to let her down. He took me into Pittsburgh, to a high-end jewelry store, to choose the ring. It was a knockout. Over two carats, and clear too; not like the ones sold in the big chain stores at the mall that are so included you swear there’s a fly trapped inside. Anyway, they had to size it, so we left it there for a few days. That was okay with me, because our engagement party wasn’t for another two weeks. Then the night before the party he calls and tells me—over the phone—that the engagement’s off, and that he’s always loved Priscilla Livingood.”
“You must have been heartbroken.”
“Heartbroken, my asphalt road! I was livid. I would have strangled Cornelius with the phone cord, except that he was at the other end. After I’d cooled off some, I called him back and asked him what she had that I didn’t have. ’A good body and a bigger bank account.’ That’s an exact quote. Not a great body, but a good one. That implies mine isn’t even good. How mean is that?”
“Very, but I might be able to top that. My pseudo-ex-husband, Aaron Miller, dumped me for a woman he’d already been married to, and then had the chutzpah to ask me to raise their daughter.” Chutzpah is not a Pennsylvania Dutch word, by the way, but Alice seemed to know it. No doubt it was her showbiz connections.
She nodded. “So we have that in common; we’ve both been dumped. At least you’re beautiful. All I have is funny, and men don’t like it when I’m funnier than they are.”
“You really think so?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“No, I mean the part about me being beautiful.”
It was the wrong question to ask a woman who was so homely that her parents had to rent a baby to take to church. She frowned hard enough to make her bangs brush the tip of her radish nose.
“Just what the heck are you doing here anyway? My relationship with Cornelius Weaver is my business. It’s not your business, and it’s certainly not police business. Color me stupid, but I thought you were here to offer your condolences, not to give me the third degree.”
“I said I was sorry for your loss, and I meant it. But you’re wrong; this is police business. You see, the coroner has ruled that there are suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Cornelius Weaver.”
She seemed less shocked now than she had been to see me at the door. “What strange terminology you use, Magdalena. How can circumstances surround anything?”
Gritting one’s teeth can wear down precious enamel. I chose to glower, which is much kinder to one’s person, forehead lines excepted.
“He may have been murdered. But you don’t seem surprised by this news.”
“News? I would be surprised if he wasn’t murdered. You couldn’t swing a cat in Hernia without hitting one of his dumped lovers.”
“You don’t say—no, please do say!”
“What do you want? Names?”
“Now we’re cooking with gas. Spill all, dear.”
8
“Well, I only know one name.”
“Who is the skunk?”
“I think you mean skank. Anyway, that would be Caroline Sha.”
“But she has no hair!” The horrible, judgmental words just slipped out of my mouth. I blame that all on Mama and the cod liver oil she made me take. How can one be expected to exercise restraint with a slippery mouth? At any rate, Caroline suffers from alopecia areata. She is completely bald, lacking even eyelashes. In a predominately Amish and Mennonite community such as ours, having this disease is ironic, given that so many of us, thanks to the Apostle Paul, believe that hair is a woman’s crowning glory. Mama never cut her hair until she was in her forties, and that was a misguided attempt to bond with my younger sister. My hair has never been cut—well, I do have my split ends trimmed, and once I had to have a chunk hacked out in order to remove a wad of gum. I must hasten to add, lest one waste too much time feeling sorry for Caroline Sha, that she has the most beautiful face I have ever seen.
Alice shook her head, no doubt commiserating to herself that I was wasting her time by just stating the obvious. “Of course she has no hair, but that doesn’t stop her from being drop-dead gorgeous.”
“I wouldn’t say she’s all that pretty.”
“Any other woman, given her condition, would wear a scarf, or a wig, but Caroline knows that this would detract from that flawless face of hers.”
“Flawless is stretching it a bit, don’t you think?”
“Come on, Magdalena, admit it. You’re a beautiful woman, but Caroline is downright stunning.”
I sighed. “Okay already, she’s a looker. So Cornelius was seeing Caroline as well. First, how do you know that?”
“Ha! I caught them—well, how shall I say this so as not to offend your tender ears—I caught them engaged in the act.”
“For your information, my ears are not so tender.”
“Magdalena, you’re a prude. Don’t deny it.”
“Just because I’m not a tramp, like some people I know.”
“You’re a rude prude.”
Sometime it pays to swallow one’s pride, no matter how bitter the taste. “Whatever you say, dear. Can you think of any reason that Caroline might want her lover dead?”
“They weren’t lovers, for goodness’ sakes! Their relationship was purely physical.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Cornelius told me so.”
“He did? When?”
“The night he broke off our engagement. I think he was trying to let me down as easy as possible—at least from his point of view. H
e said I shouldn’t feel bad because I wasn’t the only one he’d been stringing along. There were plenty of others that would be getting the same news and feeling the same way. He wanted me to comfort myself with the knowledge that he’d actually loved me. The others, like Caroline Sha—that’s when he mentioned her name—were just notches in his belt.”
“That’s disgusting!”
“That’s Cornelius in a nutshell.”
I thanked Alice for her time, and gently pointed out that my visit might have been a tad more pleasant had she offered me some refreshments. Alice, who supposedly has a great sense of humor, was not amused.
Having skipped brunch at the Sausage Barn, and not getting even so much as a brownie from Alice, I was starving. Thank heavens there is always one place where they have to feed you, and that, of course, is home. I could smell yeast rolls baking the second I opened the kitchen door. Freni was standing at the table, her back to me, brushing shortening on a pan of rolls to make them glisten.
“Yoo-hoo,” I called pleasantly. “’Tis I, your comely, and clever, cousin.”
Freni paid no attention to me.
“Lost in thought, are we, dear?”
Still no response.
I walked over and tapped her on the shoulder. “Earth to Freni—”
That’s when my dear cousin left the earth. Freni jumped so high that, had she been a good three feet taller, she would have connected with my eight-foot ceiling.
“Ach, du lieber!” she gasped, after several gasps that were solely for oxygen intake.
“Relax. It’s only me, your very own Magdalena, as big as life and twice as ugly—no, make that beautiful.”
“For shame, Magdalena. I think maybe you use seven of my lives, yah?”
“That’s what you said the last two times I scared you. That puts you twelve lives in the hole.”
She appeared to be staring at my mouth. “And now the tricks,” she said.
“Tricks?”
“It is a child’s game, Magdalena. You move the lips only, but I know you say nothing. I have been around the blocks; I am not such a spring pullet.”
“Blocks? Chickens? What on earth are you talking about?” A split second after saying that I noticed the huge balls of dough protruding from her ears like heads of cauliflower. That just goes to show how little attention we pay to people we see on a daily basis. At any rate, I grabbed the dough ball on the left and eased it from her ear. I did the same to the one on the right.
Freni looked at me as if I were a magician and had just pulled a pair of rabbits out of her head. “Ach! What do you do now?”
“Is this the same dough that you plugged your ears with on Monday?”
She flushed, her memory coming back to her along with the ability to hear. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean by ’I don’t think so’? Is this something you do on a regular basis? And if so, why haven’t I noticed? Somewhere there is a village missing its eccentric.”
She gave me a pitying look. “Always the riddles, Magdalena. If I live to be one hundred, I will never understand the English.” To the Amish, anyone not of their faith is “English.” Because I am her kinswoman, and our denominations share some history, to Freni I am marginally English—depending on her mood. But an Amish woman from London (I’m pretty sure there aren’t any) would not be English, whereas a Buddhist from Japan would most definitely be English.
“Freni, I wasn’t asking you a riddle. I was merely inquiring whether or not sticking bread in your ears was a habit. By the way, how are the guests doing? Any complaints you need to pass on? Silly me, how could you have heard what they were saying?”
She shrugged. “Yah, but yesterday there is a complaint.”
“Oh? From whom?”
“The woman from Charleston, the one you say is uppity.”
“I did not say—let’s move on, shall we? What did she say?”
“She ask me how many threads there are in the bedsheets.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I tell her ’enough.’”
As Freni spoke, she calmly brushed melted shortening on the two rolls rescued from her ears, and plopped them in a baking pan along with some others. Waste not, want not. Freni is a woman after my heart. As for the bedsheets in my guest rooms, the thread count is low because I believe in being thrifty. Besides, coarse sheets serve to exfoliate dead skin as my guests toss and turn on their lumpy mattresses. If you ask me, folks should pay extra for the privilege of having their bodies buffed while they sleep.
“You did fine, Freni.”
I started for the door to my suite, which opens off the opposite side of the kitchen from the back door.
“Magdalena?”
“Yes?”
“How did it go with the Jewish preacher?”
“The rabbi? He seemed very nice, but I really didn’t get a chance to talk to him.”
“Yah?”
“Her.”
Freni nodded. Given the fact that she virtually lacks a neck, it looked more like a hiccup.
“I do not know which is worse, Magdalena: your mother-in-law, or my daughter-in-law.”
“She’s not my mother-in-law yet! Besides, your Barbara is the salt of the earth.”
“Too much salt makes high the blood pressure, yah?”
I laughed the laugh of a doomed woman. Several months prior I had oh-so-cleverly palmed the Babester’s mama off on Doc Shafor, a randy octogenarian friend of mine whose libido has been stuck on high for as long as I can remember. I thought it was love at first sight, and I believe they did as well. As insurance I sent them on an all-expenses-paid trip to Bora-Bora in French Polynesia, which is as far as one can get from Hernia without cooperation from NASA. But alas, twenty-six hours on an airplane, in economy class, was too much for the budding romance. The fact that they haven’t taken contracts out on each other is only because neither of them has any money.
“Just think, Freni,” I said meanly, “if she moves in here with me, you’ll have her and Barbara.”
“Ach!”
“Ach, indeed. I think you’ll soon find that your daughter-in-law is a picnic compared to Ida Rosen.”
“A picnic with low-salt food, yah?”
We laughed.
“Magdalena, I think maybe your maam would have been proud of you. But not so proud that it is a sin, yah?”
“Thank you, Freni.” I walked back to where she was standing and, bending at the waist, kissed the top of her head, just in front of her prayer bonnet. Her ears still smelled of yeast dough.
“Ach,” Freni squawked. Such overt displays of sentiment are practically unheard of in our culture, and limited to Baptists and Presbyterians, who appear to be prone to excess of all kinds. It is a little known fact that nearly seventy-eight percent of all Amish, and probably sixty-three percent of all Mennonites, lack the demonstrative gene. (Then again, since 61.2 percent of all facts are mostly made up, this statistic may be somewhat inaccurate.)
At any rate, I kissed her again.
Once in my suite, I headed straight for Big Bertha. Friends may come and go, but the pleasures of a thirty-two-jet whirlpool bath are forever. Yes, it is a sin to bathe in the middle of the day, but I was a fallen woman. Just ask any proper matron in Hernia what she thought of Magdalena Yoder’s morals. The answer, thanks to Aaron Miller, would not be pretty. Having succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh with a pseudo-husband, what more did I have to lose by releasing tension with thirty-two swivel heads?
I poured a lavish amount of gardenia-scented bubble bath into the tub and let the froth grow until the surface of the pool was covered with a meringue of bubbles two feet high. I was about to step into this earthly slice of heaven when the telephone beside my bed rang. This is my private line, and besides family, only a select few have access to me through it: Babs, Mel, Charlize, Katie, Oprah, Ben—you get the picture.
I eschew caller ID. If the Good Lord had wanted us to know who was calling, he w
ould have made us all mind readers. “Hello?” I said in my pleasant voice.
“Ma’am, we have reports that basements in your area have been flooding. We here at Squanderyore Savings can come out and give you a free damage assessment, and if your house qualifies, we can put on a complete waterproof seal for only six easy payments of ninety-nine ninety-nine. May I schedule a visit from one of our water-damage experts?”
I sighed. “I’m afraid my house won’t qualify. I’ve been nagging it to study for the last twelve years, and all it ever does is make excuses. I’ve even resorted to threats. ‘If you don’t get good grades, you’re not going to have a lock on Yale,’ I tell it. ‘And what if you can’t get into any college? What are you going to do then? Live in a trailer park? Or worse yet, live on the street as a tent?’ And wouldn’t you know, my house doesn’t even have the decency to answer.”
“Excuse me, ma’am? Are you all right?”
“Fine as frog’s hair—which is pretty ding-dang fine. Most folks don’t even know frogs have hair; that’s how fine it is. While we’re on the subject of amphibians, why would anyone in their right mind fall in love with a big blue frog? That’s almost as bad as falling in love with a muskrat—not that I’ve done that, mind you. Aaron was only a rat. But muskrat love? What’s up with that? Have you ever smelled a muskrat up close? There’s a reason for the musk part of their name. The rat part too.”
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go now.”
“Oh, no you don’t. You called me on my private line, so you’re just going to have to hear me out. Are you married?”
“Uh—I just got engaged.” The caller was a man, but the excitement in his voice was almost palpable.
“Where’s the honeymoon going to be?”
“That’s just it. My fiancée is planning the wedding, but I’m supposed to plan the honeymoon. I thought the bride was supposed to plan everything.”
“Would you like me to help you?”
“Nah—okay, I’ll bite. How?”
“Well, I know this charming little inn down in Amish country, in the mountains of southern Pennsylvania. The ambience is supposed to be out of this world. Sometimes movie companies even go there to shoot.”