by Tamar Myers
‘Don’t tell me it’s because you’ve had a hard life,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a hard life too, but I’ve never killed anyone.’
‘You don’t have the nerve!’
‘Wanda, the Bible says that I’m supposed to forgive you for trying to kill Alison and me. Maybe even Gabriel. But I just can’t. I pray and pray, but my thoughts hit a wall. A wall of hate. I’m supposed to love you, but instead, I hate you. I don’t want to hate you, Wanda. I sincerely believe that I could break through this wall if you asked for my forgiveness.’
Wanda snorted with derision. ‘Me? Ask forgiveness from you? No bleeping way!’
‘Please, dear. I need to move on.’
‘Ha. Look at you – begging for something from me. That’s ironic as heck, considering you always had everything, and I never had anything.’
‘What did I have that you never had?’ As soon as those words left my mouth, I wanted to catch them and stuff them back in.
‘For starters, Miss Money Bags, while I was working my butt off running a grease pit, married to a broken-down, flat-footed lush who could take out half of North Korea with his morning breath, you were married to a handsome Jewish doctor who was so fertile that he knocked you up when your womb was as dry as the Gobi Desert. Those were your words, by the way, not mine.’
‘So, you wanted Gabe?’
‘What woman in her right mind wouldn’t? That man’s a hunk.’
‘But you tried to kill him!’
Wanda smiled wickedly. ‘Precisely. Stan was supposed to make sure that Gabe got the dessert with the poison on it, but at the last moment he decided he hated his shrew of a wife more than he loved his niece. Can you imagine that?’
‘Frankly, yes.’
‘Hmph! Anyway, if I can’t have Gabe, then you shouldn’t have him either.’
My mouth opened so wide, that if I’d been wearing dentures, they’d have clattered out onto the metal table that separated us. What chutzpah! Wanda was like the man who killed his parents, and then begged the court for mercy because he was an orphan.
‘Let me remind you, dear,’ I said, ‘that you are still married to that broken-down, flat-footed lush.’
She shrugged. ‘If he’s still alive. No one’s seen hide nor hair of him since I tried to put you six feet under. By the way, I heard from a new inmate that right after you were cleared of the charges of murdering Uncle Stanislaus’s wife, Aunt Sissy Sue Sissleswitzer, your hunky husband went missing for a while. Is that true?’
‘Heavens to Betsey,’ I said in a moment of unguarded admiration for my own forthcoming cleverness. ‘Does Sissy Sue Sissleswitzer sometimes sip seltzer thru a straw?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Yes, my hunky studmuffin did take a few days off to – uh – sightsee. As you know full well, he’s not from this part of the country, and there is a lot more for him to see. Anyway, shortly after he returned, I arranged for his older sister, Cheryl, a retired psychiatrist who was living in Connecticut, to pay us a visit, and you’ll never guess what she did.’
Wanda grinned maliciously. ‘She arranged to have you committed to an insane asylum. Am I right?’
I grinned back – in the Cheshire cat sort of way. ‘Cheryl and I actually get along well. We see eye to eye on most of the big issues, like closing down the Convent of Perpetual Apathy, and integrating their mother back into a normal civilian life. To that end, Cheryl, who instantly fell in love with Hernia, bought an Arts and Crafts bungalow on Primrose Lane for herself and Ida – now the former Mother Malaise. Oh, by the way, I snapped up a cute little Cape Cod on Songbird Drive and gave it to Agnes, because she was feeling really lonely out there on Doc’s old farm.’
‘And how did she take that?’ Wanda said.
‘Not well at first,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand why it’s so much easier to give, than to receive.’
‘You’re so dense, Magdalena,’ Wanda said. ‘Don’t you see that some people are actually embarrassed by charity? There are even some crackpots who’d rather not get expensive gifts, because they don’t want to feel beholden. But not me. I’d always be happy to take your money.’
‘I have no doubt that you would. Anyway, as the elder child, you wouldn’t believe the power that Cheryl Rosen wields in that family. The convent property has already been sold, and the former nuns have, for the most part, been happily resituated. As for the Babester and I – well, he and his precious ma are in therapy, courtesy of Cheryl, and in time I am sure that Gabe and I shall be swinging from the chandeliers once more. Metaphorically, of course. Once, in the literal sense, was enough.’
‘Boring,’ Wanda said, and made a show of yawning into the camera.
‘Oh, stop that,’ I said. ‘If you keep being mean to me, who’s going to speak up on your behalf, should you ever be eligible for parole?’
Wanda appeared gobsmacked. ‘You would do that for me?’
‘No, of course not. Not the way things stand now. But in twenty years, when I’ve mellowed so much that my heart starts to ooze out though my pores, well then who knows? But in the meantime, you would do well to treat me, and my family, a tad nicer.’
Wanda clanked her handcuffs on the table again, much to the distress of the TV sound man. ‘Magdalena, did you come here just to lecture me?’
‘No. I wanted answers, and you have been surprisingly forthcoming. But I do have one more question. What was in it for your uncle? That was a huge risk for him, and now he’s going to be spending the rest of his life behind bars.’
‘Hold your horses, Magdalena. Uncle Stanislaus still hasn’t gone to trial.’
As I have a strong team of horses, I had to pull back hard on the reins. ‘That’s true. But he has been charged with murder and kidnapping.’
‘Yeah, kidnapping your kid’s nappy,’ a crew member interjected.
Laughter erupted in the room. Even Wanda smiled.
‘How is Hortense?’ she said, her tone remarkably softer.
I was startled. ‘What do you mean? Has something happened to her?’
‘How should I know?’ Wanda said, churlish again. ‘That ungrateful child hasn’t come to see me since my uncle paid you that little visit.’
Keep holding those horses, I reminded myself. ‘Hortense is doing fine, Wanda. We had to sell the restaurant—’
‘I see the news, dummy. You guys sold the restaurant to a developer who’s having it torn down, supposedly because no one in their right mind would ever eat at a place where there could still be traces of poison lurking in crevices. How stupid is that? And I heard what a big hero you were by giving my daughter every penny of your share in that place so that she can continue with her studies. What are you trying to do, supplant yourself as her mother?’
‘Absolutely not. I care about her, that’s all. She’s been given a lot to deal with—’
Wanda leaped to her feet with great force, obviously forgetting that her cuffs encircled a steel bar bolted to the table. I heard her grunt with pain even as two guards lunged at her, and a third guard hustled me out of the interview room.
Although that was the end of my participation in Breaking Even More Bad, and it had lasted only minutes, Bradley and his crew managed to flesh it out with commentary and commercials to fill up an entire hour. It aired six months after it was filmed and garnered ridiculously high ratings.
By then I’d worried myself into a tizzy over Gabe’s possible reaction to telling America that his big sister could control him and had him in therapy. Although worrying is never just a waste of energy, because it consumes calories, this time I needn’t have worried, because it seemed that Gabe heard only two words from the interview: hunky and studmuffin. Everyone in the United States who sank to the level of watching Breaking Even More Bad now knew that Gabriel Rosen of Hernia, Pennsylvania was a hunky studmuffin.
EPILOGUE
A year and two days after Agnes’s billy goat, Gruff, foiled my baby’s kidnapping, we citizens of Hernia celebrated a new holiday. As
mayor of our village, I unilaterally declared that the third Saturday in August would henceforth be known as Billy Goat Gruff Day. The holiday would be celebrated by games for both children and adults, kite flying, a public concert, a ventriloquist show, a picnic up on Stucky Ridge, and especially, the Billy Goat Gruff parade.
The parade, to my knowledge, was the only one of its kind in the country – maybe the world, and we have maintained that tradition. Gruff, who now lives on my farm now that Agnes lives in town, is the star of the parade. For three years in a row he has pulled a cart carrying Miss Hernia across the bridge that spans Slave Creek. On the village side of the creek perhaps a hundred little children dressed as trolls eagerly await Miss Hernia’s arrival. When Gruff crosses a chalk finishing line, I bring down a chequered flag and adults hand out sweets and treats of many sorts to any child who asks them to bleat like a goat.
Of course, this festival has a handful of detractors, but critical people will be with us always, just like poor. One minister claims that male goats are used in satanic rituals, and that our end-of-summer party is evocative of one. Who knew? A few have blamed their children’s poor dental hygiene on me personally. The overwhelming majority of residents who dwell within the village itself have voiced their support, and participation has grown each year.
This last Billy Goat Gruff Day, boy, oh boy, did I mess up! In an effort to be more politically correct, I substituted Hernia Citizen of the Year for Miss Hernia, as our parade honouree. As in the case of the former title winner, the latter was to be chosen by popular vote.
Tell me, how was I to know that my mother-in-law’s former cult members were still so devoted to her that they would campaign so mightily on her behalf? What did these ladies (and Agnes’s two nude uncles) expect us to celebrate about Ida, one might ask? The measly fact that Billy Goat Gruff Day was her eighty-fifth birthday! What a pitiful excuse, if you ask me, considering the fact that thanks to clean living (no smoking, drinking, or sex – while standing), many folks in Hernia have lived to surpass the century mark. But rules are rules, and I had to abide by the ones that I had come up with in hopes that someday I too might be pulled in a goat cart to face a throng of cheering people – albeit most of them children eager for a ‘sugar fix’.
As mayor of Hernia it fell to me to count the votes that put my mother-in-law in the goat cart. Let it be known that for much of the time I executed my duties in a mature manner. Meanwhile, as Ida Rosen gloated, I bit my tongue so hard and so many times that it resembled a spoon for straining soup. Honestly, only a handful of disparaging comments made it all the way past the gateway of my lips. If that still sounds like an awful lot of sin to issue forth from the mouth of a good Christian woman, you must understand the amount of stress that I was under.
Bar none, that was the worst weekend of my life, and I have lived through some real doozies. Not only did my entire family come within a hair’s breadth of pushing up daisies, so to speak, but several of Hernia’s most venerable citizens perished at the hands of a serial killer. Maybe by next year I will have recovered enough to where I can piece together my thoughts, and even share details of that day, in a book entitled Mean and Shellfish.
BARBARA HOSTETLER’S DEATH BY CHOCOLATE
(A flourless favourite at Amish Sinsations)
List of ingredients
9 ounces of 70% (or higher) dark chocolate, finely chopped
9 ounces of unsalted butter
1 ½ cups of granulated sugar
7 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon pure almond extract
Powdered sugar
Directions
1. Grease and line a 9 inch spring-form pan with parchment paper. Then grease the parchment paper.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter together in a microwave-safe bowl until the chocolate is almost completely melted. Stir until smooth. Stir in the sugar, then let the mixture cool a few minutes. Now with your pinkie take one little swipe of batter off the stirring utensil and lick it. You know you wanted to.
3. After the mixture has cooled slightly, add the eggs one at a time, fully incorporating each before adding the next, until all have been added. By now the batter should be thick and glossy. It is time to thoroughly stir in both extracts.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30–35 minutes until the torte still jiggles slightly in the middle. Remove from the oven before it is completely set. Begin checking at 30 minutes to make sure that the torte does not overbake. Let it cool in the pan for ten minutes and then unmould. Dust with powdered sugar.
WARNING: This torte is large enough to provide six generous servings to polite guests. However, for some mysterious reason, when one eats it alone, the number of servings shrinks to ‘one’.