Between a Wok and a Hard Place

by Tamar Myers

“Did he say I was having an affair with him?”

  “Ach, I wouldn’t have such a conversation with a stranger,” she said, temporarily forgetting her high-blown ways and lapsing into Dutch.

  “Even Jesus knew who his accusers were,” I said.

  During the ensuing pause the British learned to cook and the number of Elvis sightings in Butte, Montana, tripled.

  “Aaron Senior,” she whispered. “He said you and the doctor were carrying on like—like—”

  “Dogs in heat?”

  “Yah. He said that poor Aaron Junior couldn’t take it anymore and had to go back to Minnesota just to keep from going crazy. Aaron Senior said that Aaron would not be divorcing you—since it’s wrong—but that the marriage was essentially over. He warned me that you would deny everything. That you would pin everything on Aaron. He said I mustn’t believe a word you say.”

  I smelled cover-up just as definitively as I smelled gas whenever Aaron—my ex-Pooky Bear—ate cabbage. Pops was already off to his dinner with the Augsburgers when Aaron called. Therefore, it was not a case of him misconstruing our conversation. He had been primed beforehand, and planted at the Augsburgers to purposefully spread lies about me. It was a very clever move on Aaron’s part, turning me into the Whore of Babylon while he lollygagged around in Minnesota with his real wife.

  Turn the other cheek, the Bible says, but it also says that the truth will set us free. Since I can never remember which is my good side, I did the only thing I could and told Lilibet the truth.

  In the silence following that revelation the French learned good manners and Elvis was spotted riding a Harley Davidson through the streets of Nome, Alaska.

  “You poor dear,” she said finally.

  It was as much of an apology as she was going to freely give. If I wanted more, I was going to have to work for it.

  “My heart is broken,” I wailed, which was true. “I will never be able to hold my head up in Hernia again.” That was probably not quite so true. I have broad shoulders and a strong neck, and I knew from past experience that most pain eventually passes—either that, or you die from it. Frankly, I am not the kind who dies easily.

  “You poor, poor dear,” Lilibet said, scraping the bottom of her sympathy well. “Of course there is nothing I could do to help.”

  “Then a cobbler can’t fix shoes, dear.”

  “But—”

  “You’re at Miller’s Feed Store, right?”

  “Yes—”

  “Share my story of woe with the next person you see. Share the whole story. Tell them how Aaron married me under false pretenses and then tried to smear my reputation. But make them promise they won’t tell a single living soul.”

  “I always said you were a bright one, Magdalena. But how is it going to look for me? I believed”—she gasped—”oh my gracious, he’s here!”

  “Aaron?” I will admit, that despite everything, my heart was beating faster.

  “Aaron Senior. I forgot that he was still at my house. He said he never wanted to go back to the PennDutch—to Jezebel’s Inn, he called it. What am I going to do? He can’t stay here, Magdalena. We already have eight mouths to feed.”

  I thought fast. “Tell the old coot that Jezebel has declared a cease-fire until ten-thirty tonight. That’s when the next direct flight to Minneapolis leaves. Tell him that I’ll even spring for the ticket, but how he gets to the airport is his problem. You might suggest that he call a cab from Bedford. It’ll cost him an arm and a leg to get to the Pittsburgh airport, but hey, that’s what he gets for lying. Tell him that I’m only going to make the ticket offer once.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  I was so shocked to hear the “T” word that I nearly blew it. “But you owe me,” I said a microsecond before she hung up.

  “Anything,” she said carelessly.

  “Throw another potato or two on the stove. I’m bringing some English guests to lunch.”

  Frankly, I was quite satisfied with the way I was holding up, not to mention the way I had handled things with Lilibet Augsburger. There had indeed been a seat available on the ten-thirty flight, and what’s more, thanks to an airfare war, it was undoubtedly cheaper than Pops’ ride to the airport was going to be. I wasn’t gloating, mind you, and I certainly wasn’t feeling like I’d extracted revenge, even though I knew that Pops hated snow and the Farmer’s Almanac was predicting the worst winter in a hundred years for the Upper Midwest. It just felt good to be able to function in a situation that, just twenty-four hours earlier, I would have thought impossible to survive.

  Something caught the corner of my eye and I sat up with a start. There, not more than a foot from the end of my bed stood little Caitlin, holding her sorry doll by one arm. Lord only knows how long the urchin had been standing there, grinning at me like a Cheshire cat.

  “What on earth are you doing in here?”

  She giggled. “Wan Oou wants to say good morning.”

  “Wan Oou needs to knock before she barges into someone else’s bedroom.”

  Her laugh was an irritating mixture of joy and amusement. Mama wouldn’t have put up with it for a second.

  She laid the filthy doll on my bed. “Wan Oou thinks you’re a funny lady, Mrs. Miller.”

  “I’m glad you think so, sweetie.” Sarcasm was lost on the tyke, so I scowled appropriately. “Now scram, Wan Oou, and take your doll with you.”

  Apparently I was funnier than a barrel full of monkeys, and I had to clap my hands to get her attention. She stared at me, her pug features trying hopelessly to compose themselves, and then she burst into another fit of giggles so intense they were almost contagious.

  “You could at least let me in on your joke,” I wailed.

  “My name is Caitlin, you silly-billy! Wan Oou is my dolly!”

  Without further ado the tyke and her toy were shown the door.

  I had just finished dressing, having devoured a huge chunk of gingerbread fairly floating in lemon sauce, when my private phone rang again. It is true, I frequently jump to conclusions—it is, after all, a form of exercise—but the male caller did sound like Aaron. Perhaps I should have allowed him to say something in addition to my name.

  “You have a lot of nerve,” I shrilled. “It’s one thing to lie to me but to lie about me—that’s utterly reprehensible, you two-timing, lily-livered weasel. And don’t think your father is getting off easy. I just sent him packing to Minneapolis. You can expect him on the ten-thirty flight out of Pittsburgh. Come to think of it, you just saved me a call. And for the record, I’m paying for his flight.” I gasped for breath.

  “Since Papa died when I was three,” Melvin Stoltzfus said with remarkable alacrity, “could you send Mama to Minneapolis instead?”

  “Melvin!”

  “It’s first class, isn’t it? Mama’s gained a few pounds lately. She prefers a wider seat.”

  “They don’t make them that wide, Melvin, and besides, I wasn’t talking to you! I thought you were someone else.”

  “Oh.” He sounded genuinely disappointed.

  “What is it, Melvin?” I snapped.

  “Ah, yes. There’s been a complaint, Yoder. No, make that numerous complaints from outraged citizens. They all think it’s highly inappropriate. But it’s more than that. It’s illegal.”

  Bless the little man, mantis mandibles and all, for calling me Yoder. It felt good to be called that again—not that Melvin had ever called me anything else, of course. Perhaps the man was prophetic in his persistent refusal to use my married name. Still, what right had he to call me with complaints of impropriety? Melvin had never been married, but despite his arthropodan looks and obnoxious personality, he had known enough women in the biblical sense to make an NBA star feel inadequate.

  “I didn’t know! And I will not wear a scarlet ‘A’ unless you do as well,” I shouted.

  Believe it or not I could hear his eyes rotating in their sockets. “You’re nuts, Yoder. You know that?”

  It was time to eat cro
w. But just one, baked in a nice flaky pastry crust and served with a giblet gravy. Melvin had never been married and always, at least in my eyes—and I mean this charitably—been a loser. Perhaps I had gloated a bit too much when I married Aaron. No doubt I was being punished, and deserved every bit of scorn Melvin threw my way. Still, it was hard not to defend myself.

  “It’s his fault, Melvin. He had me totally hoodwinked. I didn’t even suspect he was married, but then again, why should I?”

  “I thought you screened them,” Melvin had the audacity to say. “Anyway, his marital status has nothing to do with it. It’s his pushiness. Selma Eichleburger says he pushed his way right into her kitchen and stripped down to the waist before she had time to blink. She says she nearly fainted when she saw it.”

  “And you think I’m crazy?” I snapped. “It’s not above his waist, dear. Even I knew that before I got married. And Selma is a widow yet!”

  “He wears a truss, too?”

  “What?”

  “Seems he’s bothered every housewife in Bedford County in the short time he’s been here.”

  “He has an insatiable appetite for it,” I wailed. There, I finally said it, even if it was to Melvin.

  “He isn’t licensed to sell that thing door to door, Yoder.”

  I gasped. “They give licenses for that?” At last the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had followed the rest of the country you-know-where in a hand basket.

  “A vendor’s license is only a couple of bucks, you know. That’s what I hate about these outsiders. Think they come in and just ignore the law, like we’re some little one-horse town.”

  “He’s no outsider,” I said, temporarily forgetting that I was no longer obliged to defend Aaron. “He was born and raised right across the street from the PennDutch Inn. Went to Hernia High just like you and I. Who would have known?”

  “Give me a break, Yoder. Your Dr. Brack did not go to Hernia High. I have all the yearbooks—”

  “Dr. Brack? Are you talking about Dr. Wilmar Brack?”

  “Are you deaf, Yoder, or do you flap your gums for exercise?”

  Of course not! I got all the exercise I needed jumping to conclusions.

  “I’ll have a stem talk with him,” I said and hung up. The crow pie could wait.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I am a woman of my word. I found Dr. Brack in the parlor examining the back of his head in the parlor mirror with the help of a little mirror. A compact, Susannah calls them. I’m sure I startled him because he dropped the little mirror. But then, barely missing a beat, he kicked it sideways underneath Grandma Yoder’s walnut burl Victorian sofa.

  “Shame on you,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “You’ve been caught red-handed.”

  “You may not understand this, Mrs. Miller, but it’s important for a man in my position to look good. Next year I’ll undoubtedly be up for the Nobel prize again, so, I was just checking to see if a hair transplant was in order. But of course it’s not. Is it?” he asked, taking me by surprise.

  “Of course not,” I said kindly. “I’m sure those three hairs you’ve trained across it help cut down the glare substantially.”

  “Madame Curie used to love running her fingers through my hair.” He sounded convincingly wistful, but I knew that Marie Curie died in 1934 when Wilmar Brack was nothing more than a gleam in his father’s eye.

  “It’s not your vanity I was talking about, dear. It’s the way you’ve been pestering everyone in the county to buy your braces. You’re obviously a man of accomplishment and means, so why do you feel compelled to go door to door like the Fuller Brush man?”

  He gently fingered the three lacquered strands. “It’s the personal contact. It revitalizes me.”

  “You’re a doctor, for pete’s sake. Don’t you have personal contact at work?”

  He stared at me. “What’s this all about? Have there been complaints about me?”

  “Apparently tons. You aren’t licensed to sell door to door and you push your way into people’s houses. If you don’t stop, you might find your belongings have been moved over to the Hernia jail. Trust me, it’s not the kind of place you want to spend your vacation.”

  He stiffened. “I’ve been in jail before. There was that time in India with the Mahatma. We shared a cell for six months. Did you know that Gandhi married when he was only thirteen?”

  I shook my head. I was as likely to get through to him as I was to Susannah. Some people are just born without a clue.

  “You’re intrusive,” I said gently. “You get under people’s skin like a polio vaccination.”

  “Ah, Jonas Salk! What a nice young man he was.”

  “And you’re a braggart, dear.”

  I made no progress except to offend my guest to the point that he refused to go with the rest of the group to the Augsburgers for lunch. Perhaps he would have declined anyway, having already made his pitch to Lilibet and failed.

  Freni was put out when I announced to her that I was taking the gang over to Lilibet’s for lunch. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. The woman flapped around the kitchen like a chicken with its head cut off. Of course I may have been partly to blame, springing it on her at the last minute, but it wasn’t like I had much warning. Besides, I was going through a very difficult time, and should be cut some slack, especially by older and wiser cousins.

  “What about my poached chicken salad?” Freni wailed.

  “It’s the best in the world,” I said, and meant it. “I’m sure our guests wouldn’t mind having it tomorrow for lunch.”

  Freni frowned fearsome furrows. “The walnuts will get soggy.”

  “Leave them out,” I said patiently.

  “I already put them in.”

  “Either take them out, or serve the salad tonight at dinner.”

  “I’ve got a roast planned.”

  “That’s perfect. Your scrumptious chicken salad will be the appetizer.”

  “Ach, the English and their meals! Whoever heard of having dinner at night?”

  “That’s because they’re not farmers, dear. They don’t need high-calorie noontime meals so that they can have strength to plow the fields. They prefer to take the bulk of their calories at night. This bunch is actually rather easy to cook for, wouldn’t you agree? I mean, at least we don’t have any macro-vegetarians to contend with this time.”

  “This bunch is meshuggah,” she said. It’s the only Yiddish that Freni knows, and it’s thanks to one of our favorite guests, a great gal with a trademark proboscis and an outstanding set of pipes. The two women seemed to hit it off.

  “You say that every time, dear, and frankly, that sounds a little proud to me. We are all a little crazy in our own way. Even you, dear.”

  “Oy gevalt,” Freni said and rolled her eyes. Apparently she and Babs were closer than I thought. So that was them in the kitchen singing tunes from Funny Girl. Who would have known that Freni could even carry a tune?

  “This attitude of yours is not in the least bit Christian,” I said sternly. “You should be ashamed of yourself, the pot calling the kettle black. You shouldn’t even have bothered with those walnuts, dear. They probably think you’re as nutty as a Christmas stolen, already.”

  “Ach, me? They should talk! That business woman snooping around our farms, making us ridiculous offers—”

  “She has?” I cried in dismay. Shirley Pearson had said nothing further about having a look-see at the Miller farm. Of course now with Pops winging his way to Minnesota, it was no longer a matter of life and death. But it was still critical. I had had no time to rustle up Amish buyers for the place, and unless I wanted a WalMart sitting in my lap, I was running out of time.

  “Yah, but she isn’t as crazy as that movie star.”

  “Former child television star,” I corrected her.

  “Whatever. He wears such ridiculous clothes, Magdalena. Everybody’s laughing. Thelma Mishler asked me yesterday if he was a refugee from Bosnia. She thought maybe that was his natio
nal costume. Frieda Gingrich said she was sure he was a Mormon missionary and wanted to know why he didn’t have a partner with him. Don’t they always travel in pairs?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I told them that this was the way people in California dressed, and they could hardly believe it. They said they felt sorry for him and wanted to donate some of their husbands’ old clothes. Do you think he would wear our style of clothes? they wanted to know. I told them I would ask him, but I haven’t seen him since he walked out of my pie-baking demonstrations. Is that crazy or what?”

  “Let me ask him about the clothes,” I said wearily. Terry Slock was not going to be happy to learn that Abigail Cobb’s creations had failed miserably. The Amish had not even recognized them as resembling their own. The Children of the Com were going to be the laughingstock of Bedford County.

  “And he can’t make a pie crust to save himself,” Freni said, on a roll.

  “Poor baking skills does not make one crazy, dear. And anyway, Dorothy Dixon bakes a decent pie, you said so yourself. So, at least one of our guests isn’t crazy.”

  “Ach, but her husband. Whoever heard of a black room yet?”

  “A what?”

  “In the cellar. He said you gave him permission for his black room.”

  “Darkroom!”

  “I just went down there to get a jar of huckleberry preserves, Magdalena, and he acted like I’d let the cows out of the barn. Is that crazy or what?”

  I shrugged. “Apparently light ruins the film. It’s a big no-no.”

  “Everyone who does evil hates the light,” she said, quoting from the Gospel of John.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Ach, don’t you read your Bible anymore, Magdalena?”

  “Of course I do. But I want to know what you mean by that.”

  But she was walking away, shaking her head and muttering to herself. “Mark my words,” was all I could make out.

  The Augsburgers live on Augsburger Lane. This fact tickles me, because we Yoders have always lived on Hertzler Lane, and the Hertzlers live on Mast Drive, the Masts on Kauffman Road, and the Kauffmans on Zweibacher Road. As for the Zweibachers, they moved into town two generations ago, gave up the faith of their fathers altogether, and joined the First Methodist Church. There is no Yoder anything that I know of within a day’s buggy drive of Hernia.