Puddin' on the Blitz

by Tamar Myers

  ‘Yah,’ said Ida, her normal colour returning. ‘I vould have.’

  Toy winked at me. ‘Don’t you normally put a credit card number on file against possible damages, or maybe further expenses? I would imagine that you at least write down driver’s license numbers.’

  Now it was my turn to have flaming cheeks. ‘Yes, to both things. Unfortunately, I was too focused on getting their stamp of approval for the restaurant. A lot of my wanting their approval was truly on behalf of Hortense Hemphopple, who is co-owner of Amish Sinsations. You see, Wanda’s daughter has also been an innocent victim of her mother’s crimes.

  ‘Yet when I search the deepest recesses of my heart, for my purest motive, I have to confess that I have been driven to make a success of Asian Sinsations, in order to show Wanda Hemphopple that I could do it. That I could take the shambles of an inheritance that she left for her daughter and turn it into a so-called “cash cow”. A veritable gold mine.’

  ‘She make long sermon, yah?’ said Ida. ‘Like crazy woman.’

  Toy stroked his chin. ‘More like a passionate woman with a strong sense of justice. The kind of woman whom I admire.’

  ‘Oy gevalt,’ Ida said, as she squirmed her way off the chair. When she reached the door, she paused. ‘Now I give Yiddish blessing to both you meshuggah peoples: May you grow like an onion, with your head in the ground, and your feet in the air.’

  Toy waited until the door closed behind Ida. ‘Didn’t that seem more like a curse than a blessing?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, ‘unless one were a carrot, or a red beet. Possibly even a potato. So now what, Toy? What are we to think of these two characters who suckered me into thinking that they were doing a story on Asian Sensations? What could their motive have been in doing that?’

  He thought a minute. ‘Well, how flattered were you? Did you give them a discounted rate on your astronomically overpriced, but very fine, establishment?’

  My cheeks burned again. ‘Actually, the moment Sarah Conway – may she rest in peace – told me the nature of their visit, I gushed all over them like Niagara Falls. Not only did I comp their stay at the inn, I instructed Agnes to comp their meals at Asian Sensations. So in the vernacular of my sister Susannah who, as you know, is wasting her life in our state prison system, these supposed guests from A Women’s Place “made out like bandits”.’

  ‘They were freeloaders,’ Toy said. ‘I’ve heard about these sorts of con games before. They didn’t ask for any money, did they? Like maybe investment in their magazine?’

  ‘No,’ I said emphatically.

  ‘Or in that mammoth, watch-the-sinners-fry amusement park?’

  ‘No, and you shouldn’t judge. The sinners have their chance to repent and believe. Right now. It’s on them if they don’t.’ Toy is one of those liberal Christians who buzzes right past the parts in the Bible that detail the excruciatingly painful consequences that will be in store for those folks who don’t accept their free gift of salvation.

  ‘Well,’ Toy said, ‘I’m not going to argue theology with a Mennonite woman who is twice my age. In any case, that theme park would be a nightmare for Hernia. It would irrevocably change its character.’

  ‘I can’t believe you said that, Toy.’

  ‘I know it for a fact, Magdalena. My Aunt Billie Rae married a fellow from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. They said it was hardly a blip on the highway until Dollywood came along—’

  ‘No, Toy, I can’t believe your reference to my age. That was rude!’

  He looked confused. ‘I was just stating a fact. It was more like a compliment, really. You’re twice my age, so you know twice as much.’

  I closed my eyes and clapped my hands over my ears. ‘Lah, lah, lah, lah, lah, lah.’

  When I finally grew up, and started acting my age again, I could see Toy shuffling papers on his desk. ‘Hey, I’ve got to run,’ he said. ‘Dorcas Moser just whacked her husband over the head with a croquet mallet.’

  ‘Not that I’m judging,’ I said, ‘but Fred Moser could use an extra whack, if you ask me. Sam says that Dorcas has come into Yoder’s Corner Market twice with black eyes, and numerous times with bruises.’

  ‘I am aware of that,’ Toy said. ‘And I have gone out there numerous times. For a small, dainty woman who moves like a cat, Dorcas Moser has got to be the clumsiest woman there is. But until Dorcas pressed charges, there was nothing that I could do.’

  We stepped out onto the sidewalk where I let out a loud groan. ‘Oy, gevalt! Now it’s going to be that no-goodnik husband of hers, Fred, who will be pressing charges.’

  ‘We’ll see, Magdalena. Maybe it was self-defence. Or just maybe Fred ran backwards into an upraised croquet mallet. Now go home. Relax. Climb into Big Bertha and take a long, hot soak. You’ll feel better, I promise. My mother always does after she uses her tub – if you get my drift.’

  Just as Toy opened the door to the police cruiser, which I paid for, by the way, something horrifying dawned on me. My knees started to buckle, and I had to grab a light post to keep from falling.

  ‘You know about Big Bertha, with her thirty-two adjustable jets of water, that when you press against them, they begin to pulsate and throb—’

  ‘Everyone in Hernia knows about her by now. Later.’ The car door slammed and off he sped.

  That left me at my wits’ end. I take that back; given my current emotional condition, it was more like my half-wit’s end.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Someone with a whole wit might have taken Toy’s advice and driven straight home. That is not what I did.

  Instead, halfwit that I am, I got a bee in my bonnet, as the old saying goes, and decided that I had to talk to Hernia’s biggest source of gossip in person. It was one thing to get it filtered through Cousin Sam, but when it came straight from the horse’s mouth, then one could observe the slandering party’s shifty eyes and shifting limbs. That’s because gossipers invariably embellish their tales, which is a form of lying, and liars can be detected by their body language. I know that to be true because, alas, whilst I’m no good at embroidering cloth, I’m quite talented at embroidering the truth.

  I was relieved to find my recent employee, Marigold Flanagan, hanging wet sheets on the clothesline out behind the cottage that she shares with her brother Isaiah. The siblings are in their mid-sixties. Isaiah is a retired postal worker. He has never been married and is what we locals call a ‘confirmed bachelor’. Both Gabe and Toy, who hail from urban areas, have tried to convince me that this term is an old-fashioned way of saying gay. If that’s true, then gay men have been around for generations, and are not the result of prayer having been taken out of our schools, as Pastor Diffledorf would have us believe.

  One thing that could be said about Marigold Flanagan’s sexuality, is that she doesn’t seem to have any. She’s not unattractive by any means. Nor is she pretty; she’s merely pleasant to look at – then again, so is a Holstein cow. She lacks spark, if you get my point. I’m not into kinky bedroom stuff of any kind, believe you me, but even my refrigerator would make a more electrifying date (were I not married, of course).

  ‘Mar-whaap,’ I said, unable to avoid the corner of the soppy wet sheet she’d thrown over the line in my direction.

  ‘Hey boss,’ she said. ‘What brings you out to the far side of town?’ Are you looking for a place to lie low? There’s a cute little Cape Cod number on Songbird Drive that’s just been listed. Southern exposure, white picket fence, grape arbour, rose garden, and you wouldn’t believe the price. But you probably didn’t come here to talk to me about houses, so what gives?’

  ‘Marigold. Do you suppose that we could go inside and have our little chat?’

  ‘Our little chat? What did I do now to displease you?’

  ‘Nothing, dear. May we go in?’

  Marigold glanced around. I’m not a mind-reader, a pastime akin to fortune-telling, which everyone knows is a sin, but I was one hundred percent sure that Marigold was hoping that someone, anyo
ne, would spot me talking to her before we went inside. If there is one thing that I’ve learned during my half century on this earth, it’s that gossips enjoy being the victim of someone else’s gossip. That’s why they write gossip columns; the mean things they write give them a notoriety that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Well, I knew a cure for her.

  ‘Now that’s a fine how-do-you-do,’ I said, in a voice loud enough to put the hens off laying in three counties in either direction. ‘Whatever happened to good manners in this town? The hospitality gene must have skipped a generation in your case. One would think that a world traveller such as Marigold Flanagan, who ran off to—’

  ‘OK, you win,’ she growled.

  Marigold led me inside her two-story, Victorian house, with the gingerbread wooden trim on the wraparound porch, and I trotted behind expectantly. Very few Hernia natives have travelled abroad, and Marigold is the only one whom I know of who has lived on the subcontinent of India. I didn’t have any definitive ideas of what I might see – but I did rather hope to see a stuffed Bengal tiger and either a mural, or a model, of the Taj Mahal. And of course, there simply must be the smell of exotic incense, preferably sandalwood. Oh, yes, I almost forgot, somewhere there needed to be a yellow silk umbrella with tiny tassels all around it, and a pair of white ceramic elephants. I really didn’t care about the floor covering, but everyone knows that Kashmiri silk carpets are exquisite, and that just the right shades of blue and orange would really set off the stuffed tiger and white ceramic elephants. That’s all I have to say about my expectations.

  Imagine my disappointment when I followed Marigold into a living room that had bare walls, painted white, and the floor was covered in a cheap brown carpet that most builders would be ashamed to install in starter homes. There was no chandelier, not even a light fixture, just a single light bulb dangling from a chord in the middle of the room. Being vertically-enhanced, as I am, I was able to read the wattage, and was not surprised to see that it read sixty.

  As for the furniture, at least I can say that all the pieces matched. All three aluminium folding lawn chairs appeared to be relatively new. Perhaps there was a fourth chair somewhere that had the extension that supported one’s legs, and which could be made to lie flat. It occurred to me that Marigold was using it as a bed in another part of the two-story house.

  ‘Don’t judge me,’ Marigold said.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘I’m merely observing.’

  ‘Ha. Everyone knows that Magdalena Yoder does nothing but judge and criticize. Just last week, Heidi Bachman’s sister told me about the time you criticized Heidi’s skirt to her face. You said it was so short and such a bright shade of red, that somewhere a clown wanted his nose back.’

  ‘But that was thirty-five years ago! I was a sophomore in high school.’

  ‘That just proves that people never change. By the way, neither has Heidi Bachman, according to Prudence Gabbard. You know that Heidi moved to Pittsburgh years ago, but Prudence ran into her last week at a mall there. Prudence says that Heidi still dresses like a slut, but now those legs have so many spider veins that they’re a virtual road map. You don’t need a GPS to find your way to San Jose, just take Heidi – or one of her legs – with you.’

  ‘That’s mean,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, if you think that’s mean, you should hear what Griselda Bowman said about Holly Jansen. If Holly didn’t shave both of her—’

  ‘I’m sure that you have to shave both of yours as well, dear,’ I said, although I had no idea what she was about to say. Could it have been her arms? Her big toes? Because I’d made it part of my spiritual discipline not to listen to gossip, I would never find out what it was that poor Holly Jansen felt compelled to shave – in pairs – and wondering about it might just keep me up at nights.

  ‘Marigold,’ I said, ‘may I finally sit. My legs are certainly not getting any younger.’

  Marigold snorted softly. ‘Sure, why not? Would you like something to drink?’

  I briefly considered the wisdom of a positive response, given her decorating scheme. ‘A glass of sky juice would be lovely. But skip the addition of frozen precipitation.’

  ‘One glass of water, without ice, coming up,’ she said. She was back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail with the beverage. To my astonishment, the glass was sparkling clean.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ I said, as I turned the glass, unable to get over how clean it was.

  ‘You think that you’re so clever, don’t you?’ Marigold said. ‘Sky juice, indeed.’

  ‘I try not to think that, because “pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”. Proverbs 16:18.’

  ‘Touché,’ Marigold said.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said, quoting Alison that time. ‘One thing I do think is that you are a very observant woman. You have a keen eye for detail, and an exceptional memory. Why, if I had any sort of imagination, I might even speculate that you were with the C.I.A., and that’s the real reason you dropped everything and took off for India.’

  ‘Ha, now that’s a laugh.’

  ‘Is it? Maybe you didn’t even go to India; maybe you went to Moscow instead. That would certainly explain the lack of exotic furnishings in your house.’

  Marigold popped to her feet. ‘You are amazingly rude! Magdalena, you need to leave. Now!’

  ‘No, I need to hush my mouth and get down to brass tacks. Did you think that Sarah Conway was Barbara Hostetler’s mother?’

  Marigold resumed sitting. ‘Do you have mad cow disease?’

  ‘What?’ I cried in disbelief. ‘No!’

  ‘Who the heck is Sarah Conway? And how should I know what Barbara Hostetler’s mother looks like? Doesn’t she live somewhere in the Midwest?’

  I rolled my inner set of eyeballs. ‘Sarah Conway was a giantess of a woman, who clomped about on mile-high heels in the company of an old man who claimed to be the editor of a monthly magazine called A Woman’s Place. Miss Conway was murdered the day before yesterday. She was poisoned. Anyway, that’s who she was.’

  ‘Oh, her.’

  I wanted to grab her with my invisible set of hands and shake her. ‘Yes, her. So, did you see a resemblance? Do you think that she could possibly have been Barbara’s mother?’

  Marigold laughed. ‘Why in the world would an Amish woman be hanging out with Wanda Hemphopple’s uncle? That man is a real sleaze-bag, from what I’ve heard. Did you know he’s already run through the fortunes of three women, and somehow found ways to dump them all? Penniless too! And for the record, Magdalena, the woman who came in with Wanda’s Uncle Stanislaus looked nothing like Barbara. That woman wasn’t any taller than I am, and I’m five feet eight. She was wearing a pair of killer heels, though – no pun intended.’

  ‘I’m sure there wasn’t.’

  ‘And no matter what people say about Barbara being pushy and overbearing, she’s not half as obnoxious as you are.’

  ‘Why, I never!’ I leaped to my feet. ‘This interrogation is over.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Marigold growled. ‘Out, out, out!’

  ‘Well done,’ I said. ‘Brava! Three “outs”. A landscaper once told me that one should always plant trees and shrubs in groupings of threes. Supposedly, it’s more pleasant to the eye. I see that you’ve applied that same theory in using just three chairs in your captivating, minimalist decorating scheme.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Marigold said. ‘Do you really like it, or are you just being snarky?’

  ‘On a scale of one to ten, which number of truth would you like, with ten being the one God would approve of?’

  Marigold thought for a moment. ‘Hmm. Seven.’

  ‘I believe that your approach to decorating could be used as a metaphor for the judicious use of the earth’s raw materials, of good stewardship. Why spend our resources on useless knick-knacks, trinkets, and thingamajigs?’

  ‘Magdalena,’ Marigold said, her eyes wide with surprise, ‘you’re not as mean-spirited as I thought.’

>   ‘Oh, then think harder, dear. I won’t disappoint.’ I stepped outside but turned right around. ‘Wait a minute. You’re positive that the old man who accompanied the deceased – a.k.a. Sarah Conway – is Wanda Hemphopple’s uncle?’

  ‘I’d stake my life on the fact that he’s Stanislaus Sissleswitzer. Uncle Stan, that’s what we kids called him then. He lived next door to us, and of course after Wanda’s parents died, he took them in. I remember that my dad, Uncle Stan and the man across the street all played golf together on Sundays over by Bedford, which really ticked my mom off. Then one day the man across the street caught his wife and Uncle Stan in flagrante delicto, in the garage of all places. That guy grabbed one of Uncle Stan’s putters and really let Uncle Stan have it. He smashed his cheek bone, and nearly blinded him in the left eye.’

  ‘What about the wife?’

  ‘He didn’t do anything to her – in public. Except yell at her to get on home. Where she stayed. And I mean stayed, because we almost never saw her outside again.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be argumentative, Marigold,’ I said, choosing my words carefully, ‘but I’ve lived in Hernia my entire life, and I’ve never heard that story. I’m not saying that it didn’t happen. I’m just saying that it’s odd that no one has talked about it.’

  Marigold’s smile barely registered. ‘Maybe’s that because my dad drove Uncle Stanislaus all the way into Pittsburgh himself that night, to one of the big hospitals there to keep the affair quiet. We kids were told that if we breathed a word to anyone we’d be spanked so hard that we wouldn’t have butts to sit on, and that Santa Claus would lose our address.’

  ‘What about Wanda and her brothers? Why did they stay quiet?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, they were all grown up by then, except for Wanda, who’d just started college. That’s where she was that night. Uncle Stan never came home from Pittsburgh, so wherever he ended up, I guess that’s where Wanda went on school vacations. Anyway, you saw the divot in his face, didn’t you?’