Puddin' on the Blitz

by Tamar Myers

  Had any of them witnessed me slapping Gordon Gaiters? On second thought, judging by their expressions, they all had. I’d been helping Toy with his law-enforcing duties long enough to know that Gordon Gaiters could have me arrested on assault charges if he wished. But the situation could get even uglier than that, depending on how much of our conversation the three onlookers had heard? If they’d been standing there long enough, they might be able to put it into context, and draw the same conclusion that I did. What were the chances that any of them could really think that I was serious when I said that I was going to kill the editor of A Woman’s Place and his assistant?

  Give me a break! How stupid would that have been of me? How might I have done it – yank out one of my manifold number of bobby pins and stab him in the jugular vein? Right there in the stairwell/ex-lift area of my inn, right off the lobby? If one was still in doubt, then they should ask him or herself, is she the sort of person who would ruin her oak floors with a cascade of blood?

  Again, I stood there as speechless as the sheep who had been asked an algebra question. Although this time the sheep was able to answer the question correctly, before I found my tongue.

  Gordon Gaiters put his hands together in a playful pose. ‘Miss Yoder, I asked what you thought I might have been thinking when I declined your invitation to visit your bedroom, and instead suggested that we move next to that little bench and get down on the floor. I submit that you thought that I was making a sexual advance. Am I correct in my assumption?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘It is also my assumption that you didn’t really mean it when you said that you were going to kill me. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, quadruple yes,’ I said.

  ‘In that case,’ Gordon Gaiters said, tapping the tips of his folded fingers to the bottom of his chin, ‘I forgive you. In fact, I forgive you for everything rude that you’ve said to me thus far.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Now, might we finally get around to eating?’

  ‘I shall make haste!’ I was so relieved to be forgiven, and so focused on staying in Gordon Gaiters’ good graces, that I charged out of the lobby like a blindfolded bull. I didn’t even notice that Gabe was standing in the middle of the dining room door. Fortunately, he saw me in time to step aside with all the grace of a Spanish bullfighter.

  ‘Ah, just a minute,’ Gordon Gaiters called out. ‘Before dinner I am desirous of freshening up. And as I am now rather exhausted, due to my long journey, but more especially to our rather emotional exchange of words, I will be unable to haul my ancient body up your admittedly dangerous – dare I say, libellous – stairs. Therefore, please point me to the nearest downstairs bathroom.’

  That request brought me to a full stop. ‘Ahem. In the interest of authenticity – no, I cannot tell a lie. I remodelled the inn after the tornado that blew it off its foundation and into a distant cow pasture where I landed face down in a cow patty. By the way, do you know what a cow patty is?’

  Alison giggled, breaking some of the tension in the area, at least for me.

  ‘Miss Yoder,’ Gordon Gaiters said, ‘with every passing second my need grows strong. After all, I am eighty.’

  ‘But you don’t look a day over seventy-nine,’ I quipped.

  Alison giggled again, sweet girl that she is.

  ‘Tell him, Miss Yoder!’ Sarah Conway barked. ‘Why are you stalling?’

  ‘Because there are no public guest facilities on the ground floor. There was a roomy half-bath off the parlour, but I needed the space to add to my new master bedroom plan. My guests all come to experience a genuine old-time Pennsylvania Dutch experience, so they never – or seldom – complain about having to go upstairs to use the facilities. Even the English Lord and Lady who stayed here recently. It’s all in the brochure.’

  ‘What about your help?’ Sarah Conway was still barking her demands.

  ‘The help is you, dear, since you are supposed to sign up and do the cleaning. The only other help is the cook, who is Amish. For her, we maintain a very attractive outhouse on the south side of the barn. The original, built by my great-grandfather, was a six-seater. Remember the motto: “the family that prays together, stays together?” Well, great-grandfather believed that “the family that sprayed together, stayed together”.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ Sarah Conway said over Alison’s giggles.

  ‘Miss Yoder,’ Gordon Gaiters said, his legs crossed, and while hopping in place, ‘this is an emergency.’

  ‘Oh, all right. You may use our bathroom in the master suite. But don’t go snooping around and touching things unnecessarily.’

  The master suite is located downstairs, at the back of the house. For privacy sake, it can only be entered through the kitchen, and off of a secluded rear patio. This meant that I had to lead Gordon Gaiters through the dining room and through the kitchen. The problem with this was that Gabe had not had time to hide the carryout parcels of food which he’d brought home from Amish Sinsations. It’s not as if we were going to lie about the dinner’s origins – not exactly – we would just fail to disclose certain bits of information. If our guests were to ask who cooked the meal, then I would have to answer truthfully, but if they merely complimented the meal, then I would smile and thank them.

  I looked beseechingly at Gabe for advice on how to handle this dicey situation, but I needn’t have worried. To my immense relief he winked and flashed me a thumbs up.

  ‘Then don’t stand here a second longer,’ I chirped. ‘My husband there will escort you to the little boy’s room.’

  SIXTEEN

  As Gordon Gaiters hopped off, cross-legged, and trailed Gabe, I turned to Sarah Conway. ‘In the meantime, I’d like you to come meet my granny.’

  ‘Ooooooh,’ Alison said. ‘I gotta see this.’

  ‘You’re in for a treat,’ I said.

  Alison, who’d surprised me by becoming chummy with Sarah Conway, led her by the hand, and bade her sit in Granny’s favourite rocking chair. My guest took one look at the chair’s unpadded seat and clucked like an angry hen.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, girlie?’ Granny said. ‘You too proud to plop your sitter down where generations of hard-working Yoder women have sat?’

  Sarah Conway nearly jumped out of her Manolo Blahnik heels. ‘What kind of sick joke is this?’ she said angrily.

  ‘It ain’t a joke,’ Alison said. ‘Ya is a lucky woman. I can’t hear my great-granny Yoder, but Mom can. And our Chief of Police can. But most folks can’t.’

  ‘I don’t believe this manure!’ (She actually said a word that I can’t repeat!) ‘Miss Yoder, you should be ashamed of yourself. This is some of that evil sorcery that your daughter picked up from reading those Harry Potter novels. The next thing you know she’ll be casting voodoo spells and dancing naked in bars that have peanut shells on the floor. Thanks to you, the Devil might have her so tightly in his clutches by now, that he’s training her to be the Whore of Babylon!’

  ‘Ah, shut yer trap,’ Granny said.

  Sarah Conway spun around. ‘Where’s the speaker? Show me the speaker!’

  ‘T’aint no speaker,’ Alison said, then giggled. ‘What did Great-Granny say?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Sarah Conway snapped.

  ‘I can see through your clothes, girlie,’ Granny said.

  ‘You cannot!’ Sarah Conway said.

  ‘Oh yes, she can do that,’ I said. ‘She is a ghost, after all. They have X-ray vision.’

  ‘What can Granny do?’ Alison said.

  ‘She can see through clothes, dear. But you already knew that.’

  ‘Yeah. Ain’t that the reason you put on clean Christian underwear every day.’

  I frowned at my daughter. ‘That’s not the only reason that I do it; I am a clean person.’

  ‘Hey, Mom, have Granny prove to this lady that she can see through clothes.’ Alison turned to Sarah Conway. ‘Don’t worry, lady, Great-Granny don’t never leave this room.’

  ‘I don�
��t doubt that,’ Sarah Conway said smugly. ‘At least not yet, because you don’t have the speakers and whatnot set up anywhere else.’

  That did it. That hiked my hackles higher than the ones on our Rhode Island Red rooster.

  ‘OK, Granny,’ I directed her. ‘Tell us what you see.’

  Only once before has Granny Yoder’s chair rocked without a corporeal being having their tuchas planted in it. This was the second time. Granted, the movement probably wasn’t enough to soothe a colicky infant, but it was sufficient to elicit reactions from both first-time observers. Predictably, Sarah Conway patted the chair and turned it on its side, looking for electrical wires and/or mechanical devices.

  ‘Cool!’ Alison said. ‘Great-Granny, ya da best!’

  ‘Put me back, right-side up,’ Granny snapped. ‘And you’re the one who should be ashamed of yourself. That thing you’re wearing has less fabric than even half of a woman’s hanky. Why, it doesn’t even cover any of your buttocks – none of it at all. It’s like someone took a strip of banana peel to use as a pattern, laid it on a piece of cloth, cut it out, and then tied bits of string to it. Speaking of the Whore of Babylon, even she wouldn’t wear it. And oh, my gracious, look at that!’

  ‘Look at what?’ I implored Granny, because she paused a millisecond.

  ‘She has a butterfly tattoo on her left cheek,’ Granny said, ‘and a moth tattoo on her right cheek.’

  ‘It’s not a moth!’ Sarah yelled at the chair. ‘It’s another butterfly. That was my first tattoo and I didn’t do diligent research on the artist.’

  ‘Magdalena,’ Granny said, ‘you know that I always got bogged down reading those passages in the Bible about laws, but isn’t there one that forbids getting a tattoo?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  ‘B-but how did she see through my Ralph Lauren dress?’ Sarah Conway needed a place to sit and made the mistake of plonking her ample patooty on the nearest available chair.

  ‘Get off my lap, girlie.’ Because her body is buried up in Settlers’ Cemetery, Granny is literally covered in dirt, and metaphorically speaking, she is older than dirt, but she can growl like a mother grizzly when properly motivated.

  ‘I think I need a drink – I mean some aspirin, or something,’ Sarah Conway said.

  ‘I can offer you some wine,’ Gabe said from the parlour door.

  ‘It’s just because he’s Jewish,’ I said, always quick to exonerate myself.

  ‘It’s for Kaddish,’ Alison said. ‘And I’m Jewish too.’

  ‘Kaddish is the memorial prayer for the dead, honey,’ Gabe said gently. ‘Kiddush is the blessing over wine.’

  ‘Which he only does on Friday nights, and even then, sometimes he forgets,’ I said. ‘And I never touch the stuff,’ I added quickly.

  ‘That’s true,’ Gabe said. ‘Although that puzzles me, given that Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding, and this was after they’d already run through their booze supply.’

  I was mortified. ‘Please, dear, some folks believe that He turned the water into grape juice.’

  ‘Ha. Then they have no understanding of ancient near-Eastern cultures, nor any knowledge of Ancient Greek, in which that particular Gospel of John was written.’

  ‘My dad’s very smart,’ Alison proudly.

  ‘My husband’s a smart-aleck,’ I said.

  ‘Now I need that drink more than ever,’ Sarah Conway said.

  ‘Well then,’ Gabe said, ‘let’s head on into the dining room, because the food’s getting cold.’ He winked at me.

  ‘Where’s Gordon?’ Sarah Conway said.

  ‘He’s already sitting down, waiting,’ Gabe said.

  We filed in and took our rightful places. A husband and wife should always sit at the ends of the table, not along on the sides like some modernists do. A family is headed by the parents, or parent, and not by its children. Alison sat on my left, facing the kitchen door, which of course placed my guests on my right. That way they were able to look past Alison, and as it was still light outside, enjoy our wonderful view. With any luck an Amish buggy or two would come clopping along during dinner. If so, I would encourage them to rush to the windows to enhance their dining experience. They might even wish to take photos of those on their phones – assuming that they’d paid the two hundred and fifty dollars surcharge for the privilege of keeping them during their authentic Amish-lifestyle stay.

  I will give kudos to the Babester for having thought of everything. The two entrées and various side dishes that he’d brought home from Amish Sinsations were now in our tureens, bowls and platters. Thank heavens that Gordon Gaiters had taken such a long time to relieve himself in our master bath. I just hoped that he hadn’t done too much snooping while my beloved was busy being sneaky about our dinner preparations. It would be bad enough if he peeked in the cabinet over the vanity, but if he rifled through my dresser drawers, I would be livid. Just the thought of it made my heart race.

  As I said earlier, we weren’t planning to outright lie if either of them asked who cooked the food. That would be a sin. We’d rehearsed this scenario several times, mind you, so we knew what we were doing. The only possible fly in this proverbial ointment was that Gabe had brought home a variety of desserts. How on God’s green earth were our guests to believe that I baked all those sweets for them? That very day, no less? What makes the desserts at Amish Sinsations so sinfully delicious is that Barbara bakes everything fresh each morning. None of our baked goods are frozen or refrigerated for later use.

  And what’s more, my dear beloved husband had taken his selection of desserts and spread them across the sideboard against the kitchen wall. The sideboard was custom built by a local Amish man who goes by the nickname Eight Finger Dan, and it is ten feet long. That evening there wasn’t a square inch not covered by ‘potential tooth decay on a plate’. There were slices of chocolate cake, German chocolate cake, coconut cake, Devil’s food cake, strawberry cake, lemon cake, angel food cake; wedges of fruit pie, cream pies; squares of brownies with nuts, brownies without nuts; butterscotch bars, toffee bars, lemon squares; peach cobblers, blueberry cobblers, cherry cobblers, and apple brown Bettys.

  Last, but not least, there was a single slice of our speciality, a dessert called Blitz Torte. I will be the first to confess that I have a low threshold for irritability. I’ve been told that it is a character flaw that showed up shortly after I first encountered people. That said, one might understand that it annoyed me to see that two servings of Blitz Torte were already on the dining room table, placed directly in front of where our guests were to sit. That is not how things are supposed to be done. One is supposed to clean one’s plate – eat every last morsel, whilst considering the starving children in India, or China if need be. Only then is one to be rewarded with dessert. Otherwise, one is excused from the table and sent to one’s room. But that was in the old days. Now, if one’s father is named Gabe, one can get away with just about anything.

  ‘Hon, I know what you are thinking,’ said Gabe, whispering into my ear, ‘but you’ve got it wrong. The old geezer came wandering out of our bedroom when I was dashing about putting food into serving dishes. He immediately started poking into the pastry boxes. When he saw the Blitz Tortes, he asked that I put them by their plates. He wanted to make sure that no one else snapped them up. After all, I only brought three in that selection.’

  ‘You should have brought more!’

  ‘Everyone’s waiting,’ the Babester said gently. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

  I put on my hostess face and everyone under eighty sat. Although Gabe and I worship the same God, our approach is quite different. Therefore, we don’t say grace together before meals. Instead each of us offers up the prayer suitable to his or her own tradition. Alison does as she pleases, which is often nothing. That evening as soon as she was seated, she grabbed a fresh dinner roll and shoved it into her mouth.

  ‘My, you are a little heathen, aren’t you?’ Gordon Gaiters said.
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br />   ‘Cooth meh?’ Alison said. In her defence, proper diction is rather difficult with a wad of bread in the way of one’s tongue.

  ‘How absolutely revolting,’ Sarah Conway said.

  ‘Sweetie,’ Gabe said, patting our dear Alison’s arm. ‘Chew it twenty times, and then swallow.’ He then turned to Gordon Gaiters. ‘Now, what’s this about you calling my daughter a heathen?’

  The editor of A Woman’s Place was not easily intimidated. He looked the much younger man straight in the eye, and when he spoke, even his smoker’s voice lost some of its raspy quality.

  ‘She reads those Harry Portnoy books, doesn’t she?’

  ‘That’s Harry Potter. So what?’

  ‘No Christian should read them.’

  ‘She’s not a Christian,’ Gabe said.

  ‘Nevertheless, just now she started eating before saying grace. Only heathens do that.’

  ‘Say grace,’ Gabe said to Alison.

  I shot Alison a meaningful look. ‘No, dear, please don’t do it,’ I said.

  ‘But it would be my pleasure,’ Alison said, as she stood and waved her arms dramatically. ‘Rub-a-dub-dub. Thanks for the grub. Yay God!’ Then she plopped back on her chair and jammed the roll back in her mouth.

  ‘That’s sacrilegious,’ Gordon Gaiters growled, his smoker’s voice having returned.

  ‘So help me,’ Sarah Conway said, ‘if I don’t get that wine now, I think my head’s going to explode.’

  ‘Coming right up,’ Gabe said cheerily. He poured red wine into three goblets and placed two of them in front of our guests, reserving one for himself. But when Sarah Conway brought hers desperately up to her lips, Gabe stopped her.

  ‘In this house, because I’m Jewish, we pray before drinking wine. It’s in Hebrew, but it thanks God, who is King of the Universe, for creating the fruit of the vine. Alison, will you join me?’