by Tamar Myers
“Not anymore,” I said. I tried to wrench the football-size sapphire and diamond ring off my finger, but it wouldn’t budge. Oh well, it was the gesture that counted, right?
“Yes,” Ida Rosen hissed. If she got any giddier, she was in danger of floating away, like a stubby helium-filled balloon.
Gabriel had nothing more to say. However, he did help his mother carry a small mountain of food back across Hertlzer Road. It took them three trips, and it wasn’t until I heard the door slam for the fourth time that I realized the enormity of the situation. In the meantime, I sat in Granny Yoder’s rocking chair in the parlor, my head in my hands, trying to look as dejected as possible (well, except for occasional peeks out the window). With any luck Granny Yoder’s ghost would come to my rescue and knock sense into the Babester’s head. Barring that, the Babester might stick his head into the room, and seeing me look so pitiful, send his mama packing and cleave to me, and me alone, like a proper husband was meant to do. At any rate, it wasn’t until that final slam that I looked up to see Alison standing in the doorway.
“Mom,” she said quietly, “was this all my fault?”
“Heavens no, dear. That woman and I—well, Gabe will see the light. Don’t you worry.”
“You mean you’re really not breaking up with him?”
“Of course not, dear. He’s breaking up with his mother—he just doesn’t realize it yet. Men sometimes need a little push, that’s all.”
“Yeah, men. Go figure.” She sucked in her lower lip.
“Mom, I hate ta tell ya this, but we got ourselves a worse problem now than guys.”
I smiled. “And what would that be?”
“Well, I just came to tell you that some of the guests have started to pack.”
“They what?”
“They claim you’re trying ta starve them. That stuck-up old movie star says she’s already got herself motel reservations somewhere else.”
“But that’s impossible. Every motel in Bedford is booked up.”
“Yeah, but she’s willing to go all the way over to Somerset. She’s dragging those slaves of hers with her. Some of the others said they’d be going too.”
I stamped a long narrow foot so hard that I left a permanent groove in the floor. The entire house shook. If I didn’t do something about reining in my temper, one of these days the roof was going to fall down around my head—a situation most likely not covered under my homeowner’s insurance.
“We’ll just see about that!” I roared. “Alison, call your auntie Susannah and tell her to get over to Freni’s fast. Tell her she has my permission to drive like a bat out of—uh, a very hot cave. Have her tell Freni that the peasants are rebelling, and I need her help in the kitchen now.”
“But Freni is really ticked at you, Mom. She quit, remember?”
“Details, dear. Tell Auntie Susannah to tell her that I apologize. That I’m down on my hands and knees begging.”
“Cool. But why don’t you call Auntie Susannah yourself?”
“Because I’m going upstairs to put a stop to this nonsense. Guests checking out early, indeed!”
“Oh, Mom, can I watch? Please?”
“Sweetie, I’m not going to hit them or anything.”
“I know, but ya do the best hollering in the whole wide world. If ya sold tickets, ya would be famous, ya know?”
I can’t help it if my bony chest swelled with pride. My inflated thorax did not, of course, enhance my bosoms, but it did fill out my dress somewhat.
“Thank you, dear, for the compliment, but I’m not going to yell at them—well, I’m certainly not going to holler. Just the same, you go call your auntie Susannah and then you can come up and watch.”
The girl moved like lightning. I did as well. Unfortunately I went straight upstairs like I said I would. A wise Magdalena, on the other hand, would have put her bony butt behind the steering wheel of her car and taken off for a week’s R and R somewhere. Somewhere far away and really exotic, like Cincinnati, Ohio.
24
I rounded up all eight rats before they could jump ship and herded them into the parlor. If I were really a policewoman, and they were official suspects, I could simply have ordered them not to leave town. But I was only a pretend policewoman, and they were only pseudo-suspects. My only power, as usual, lay in my lingua.
To my credit I didn’t holler, but my frown muscles got such a workout that my forehead hurt as much as my hands. And with all that skin bunched above my eyes, there was hardly enough left on the lower half of my face to allow me to open my mouth. “You really don’t want to book rooms in Somerset, dears,” I grunted. “There’s a tunnel between here and there. If it gets blocked—if there’s an accident—well, it will take you forever to get to Hernia on the back roads. You’ll miss out on some of the festivities to be sure.”
“With all due respect,” Capers cooed, “the odds are against an accident in the tunnel.”
“Tell that to Mama and Papa,” I snapped. But then, because she had not meant any disrespect and was really a rather pleasant woman, I had to force my frown lines into a smile. “Whatever you think you’ll find in Somerset, I’m sure I can provide for you here.”
“How about some decent food?”
I wanted to wipe young Stanley’s smirk off his face—with a piece of sandpaper. Instead I forced the comers of my mouth into unnatural positions. No doubt I looked like a constipated fox.
“That issue is being addressed as we speak. Mrs. Hostetler will be here momentarily to fix you an authentic Pennsylvania Dutch meal.”
“Cold cuts and salads?”
So frustrated was I, that I actually thought of ripping out my own tongue and lashing the arrogant youth with it. But, of course, in order to do that, I would have had to open my mouth a lot wider.
“It will be a full, hot meal. I promise.”
Octavia Cabot-Dodge cleared her throat to speak—eight times in all. “Miss Yoder,” she finally said, “it isn’t just the food—or lack thereof—that we find unsatisfactory. Quite frankly, we are tired of your games.”
“Games?” I had yet to insist we play a rousing game of Scrabble or a death-match tournament of Chinese checkers. When it comes to games, with the exception of face cards, we Mennonites are known to excel.
“This A.L.P.O. nonsense and whatnot. The very idea of charging more to do janitorial work. These games might work on some of your unfortunate guests, but we do not find them amusing.”
My face burned with shame. “That’s because you are all descendants of Jacob—or else married to one, which is almost the same thing. Real English guests wouldn’t have minded one bit.”
Terri Mukai’s face glowed. I’m sure she was quite pleased to be included unequivocally in my ancestral clan.
“Yoder-san, may we speak privately?”
“In a minute, dear. Just as soon as we sort out this silly little matter.”
“Bilking the public is hardly trivial,” Bibi burbled.
“Yoder-san,” Terri said softly, “in my country, now would be the time to be generous.”
“Generous?”
“Perhaps a reduction in price.” She whispered this time.
“Lower my prices?” I bellowed. You would have thought I was Bibi.
Fifteen eyes fixed on me. One of Stan’s eyes remained on Terri. She was, after all, a rather attractive girl.
Buist Littleton is a very handsome man, except when he chooses to take sides against me. “The Wagon Wheel Lodge in Somerset,” he drawled, “charges only fifty-nine ninety-nine for a double. And they have cable TV.”
“Yes, but does that include meals?”
“Like your ridiculous fee does,” Octavia Cabot-Dodge mumbled.
“It does in theory,” I wailed. “I can’t help it that my cook quits at the drop of a saucepan.”
“I bet no one has ever been murdered at the Wagon Wheel Lodge,” Augusta said.
Stan smirked again and held that look until I shot him a special look of my own—one tha
t has been known to wither watermelons on a rainy day. “Mr. Porter was not murdered in this inn.”
Chuck Norton, whom I almost thought of as an ally now that we’d chased pigs together, cocked his head. “But have there been other murders here?”
“No fair! The town is full of gossips, so what? I’ll have you know that lots of people have survived their stays here.”
“Just how many murders have there been?” And I thought I could count on Capers!
“Your prices,” Terri said softly. To her credit, the girl was just trying to be helpful.
I threw up my hands in resignation. “Okay, there is no need for anyone to get their knickers in a knot—and believe you me, you all better be wearing some. I’ll cut my rates by a third, and you won’t have to pay for the privilege of cleaning your rooms.”
“Ridiculous,” someone snorted. Had there been a collection of horses present, I would have guessed it was the Clydesdale. Under the circumstances I was forced to conclude that it was the diva who was still not satisfied.
“All right,” I conceded. “You get fifty percent off, but count yourselves lucky. A lot of people are happy to pay big bucks to stay in a place where there have been so many—uh, I mean, where there is so much ambience.”
“Ha!” Bibi put her hands on her hips, which is a very un-Mennonite gesture and was therefore a testament to her mixed blood. “Either you match the Wagon Wheel’s rates—including meals and maid service, or we’re all out of here.” She turned to the others. “Right?”
They nodded in unison, even Terri. And I thought the Japanese were supposed to be polite.
“But I have no maid to service you! I can’t possibly ask a seventy-five year old Amish woman to do all that and cook.”
“Then do it yourself,” Augusta retorted.
“Moi? But I’m the proprietress!”
“You look sturdy enough to me—maybe a little on the skinny side. We’re only talking about normal, everyday housekeeping.”
For a soul-threatening second I had a vision of me mopping the floor, or perhaps scrubbing toilets, with Augusta Miller’s graying locks, her head still attached. I took a deep breath, begged the Good Lord for forgiveness, and tarried on along that narrow, restrictive road of righteousness.
“I give up,” I cried. “You have a deal. But you each have to sign a paper saying you’ll never disclose these terms to anyone. If words gets out—” Too late I clamped a plate-size paw across the lips that had just sunk my own ship.
“Yoder-san,” the Japanese Judas said, her voice still elegant and breathy, “perhaps you should let us stay for free. Otherwise there may be great temptation to—how does one say?—send you the dark mail.”
“You mean blackmail, dear?”
“Yes. And Yoder-san, there is still the matter of my clothes.”
“We’re doing what we can to recover your luggage,” I said, perhaps a bit too brusquely. “It is not my responsibility to reimburse you.”
“I’m hungry,” Stan whined.
“Supper’s coming right up, dear.”
I fled the room before I found myself in a situation in which I was supposed to pay them. Forget the waivers; my inn’s reputation would survive somehow. Sometimes it is better to settle than to fight for one’s rights. Besides, I’d fix their wagons with my chuck. I’m the first to admit that I’m a terrible cook. The only cook I ever knew whose food tasted worse than mine, died from eating her own grub. While my victuals are usually not lethal, they have been known to do permanent damage to unsuspecting taste buds.
Operation Gag was under way.
My scorched potato soup and rubbery grilled-cheese sandwiches would have done the trick nicely, had not Susannah taken me at my word. She must have driven a hundred miles an hour. Poor Freni was so shaken by her wild ride, that her knees buckled with every other step.
“Freni,” I implored, “please sit for a minute and catch your breath.”
“Ach, not if the English are revolting.”
“I heard that,” Bibi blared. The woman had the nerve to be eavesdropping on a private family conversation.
“Freni,” I chuckled, “that wasn’t such a nice thing to say, now was it?”
“Maybe. But that is what Susannah said.”
My sister rolled her eyes. “I was just repeating Alison’s message, sis.”
I shook my head. “But what I said was—ah, yes. I said that the guests were rebelling, not revolting. Revolting has more than one meaning.”
“English,” Freni muttered, referring to the language that is not quite her mother tongue. “It has too many meanings, yah?”
“We’ll discuss linguistics some other time, dear. Now, pop into the kitchen and work magic with those fingers of yours.”
Her bottle-thick lenses magnified the horror in her eyes. “Magic? Magdalena, the Bible forbids us to practice this. It is a sin.”
I sighed patiently. “I’m well aware of that. What I meant is that your fingers are capable of producing the best food in all of Bedford County.”
She gazed with awe at her own stubby digits. “Yah? You think so?”
“Without a doubt.” So perhaps it was a slight exaggeration. But what harm was there in that? The Bible also instructs us to encourage each other.
“These fingers,” she murmured. “The best cook in the county—ach! Magdalena, you lead me into temptation.”
“But you came willingly!”
“You people are weird,” Bibi said. “No wonder my branch of the family moved West.”
“Then keep moving,” I said kindly, “like to your room or the parlor, so that our cooking whiz here can do her stuff.”
Bibi’s stomach must have overruled her tongue, because she actually cooperated. And while the meal Freni whipped up couldn’t have compared favorably to one of Doc’s worst creations, it was far better than anything I could have produced—even by accident.
Much to my amazement, all eight guests went to bed satisfied. The sound of their snores—audible even from the ground floor—confirmed that at least some of them had Hochstetler blood. If not diluted too much, the Hochstetler gene has the ability to induce such sound sleep, that more than a few of the clan have confessed that they are fearful of missing the Second Coming.
The Yoder gene, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. And by the way, this is the more dominant gene of the two. When they should be sleeping, Yoders tend to replay in their heads every conversation they’d had throughout the day. A few of us, due to excessive inbreeding, are capable of recalling conversations that may, or may not, have taken place twenty years earlier.
Alas, I am one of the unfortunate who suffers from diarrhea of the mind. What sleep I might have gotten was robbed from me by a pig and a hog. The pig had hooves and squealed when I accidentally rolled over on him. The hog was my foster daughter who, thanks to her Hochstetler blood, was sound asleep the entire time and continuously wrested the covers from yours truly.
I gave up on dreamland just after four a.m. My plan was to try and grab a few winks on the love seat in the parlor. What I did not plan on was an encounter with Grandma Yoder. After all, the woman died when I was twelve.
But sure enough, there she was, sitting in a hardback chair, looking every bit as warm and welcoming as the statues on Mount Rushmore—which is about twice as friendly as she was in life. I know, you probably don’t believe in ghosts. It however, the vision was just the product of a fertile imagination, then my gray cells could make the entire Sahara desert bloom. That’s how real she seemed to me.
“Sit down, Magdalena,” she snapped. “I don’t want to have to look up at you.”
“I prefer to stand, Grandma.”
“Then stand straight, with your shoulders back. But don’t stick your chest out too much, because that would be immodest—well, I guess not in your case.”
“Grandma!”
“It’s true, child. You’ve got the Yoder mind, but not the Yoder bosoms. Must be that Lehman blood that
found its way into your mother’s side of the family. I told your father he should have married Rebecca Miller instead. Good bone structure, that girl had.”
“There was nothing wrong with Mama.”
“I didn’t come to talk about your mama, child.”
“Then what do you want, Grandma? I brush my teeth three times a day, just like you taught me, and I say my prayers every night before I go to bed.”
“Not tonight, you didn’t.”
“That’s because the English were revolting. Just ask Freni.”
“Freni doesn’t need me, child. You do.”
“I’m not a child anymore, Grandma. In fact, I’m about to get married.”
“Indeed you are. And for the second time, I might add.”
“But I didn’t know Aaron was married. Besides, since it wasn’t legal, it doesn’t count.”
“Are you telling me it’s all right to sleep with a man who isn’t your husband? Why, Magdalena, soon you’ll be telling me it’s okay to dance.”
“I never said that, Grandma!”
“Good, because it isn’t, you know. There’s a special place in You-Know-Where for folks who dance.” Grandma sighed, and she sounded like wind blowing through the Allegheny tunnel. “There used to be lots of room in You-Know-Where. Now I hear it’s getting filled up with Presbyterians.”
“Are you saying that Hell is filled with—”
“Heavens, no, child. I’m talking about Mt. Olive Retirement Home. Used to be almost all shimmying Methodists and a few hard-drinking Baptists, but now the predestination crowd is taking over.”
It was my turn to sigh. “Grandma, can we get to the point? Why are you here? I mean, don’t you have a harp lesson or something you should be attending?”
“Been there, done that. Graduated from harp school with an A+ average. I don’t start Cloud Making 101 until next week. We have plenty of time to chat.”
Since Grandma Yoder never had a funny bone in her body—I think she even lacked a humerus—she was dead serious about the classes. But she still hadn’t answered my question.
“What, specifically, is it that you want to lecture me about?”
“It’s that Jewish man.”
