Butter Safe Than Sorry

by Tamar Myers

  But since they had all signed up for the full Mennonite experience, I was determined to give them just that. A proper grace—that is, a Protestant grace—should be long enough to wilt a crisp tossed salad and turn mashed potatoes into concrete. If at least one person in attendance does not come close to fainting, it fails the test. For one must not only ask the Lord to bless the food, but to calm Aunt Wendy’s eczema, cure Uncle Walter ’s halitosis, and find some way to talk some sense into Cousin Leona, to stop her from marrying that gold digger from Chile with the red toupee and the extra pinkie on his left hand.

  Finally, when the time comes to wrap it up and say amen, the attendees are so famished that they will eat anything—perhaps even one another, like the survivors of an Andean plane crash—and they are grateful putty in your hand. Oh, what delicious power! Like a skilled conductor with an orchestra, one can prolong that moment of intense anticipation until it bursts into a collective gasp, quite like that moment of marital bliss that one experiences when—

  “Magdalena!”

  “Shhh, I’m praying.”

  “Sorry, hon,” my Beloved whispered, “but the sheriff said he’s not falling for that ruse this time.”

  I opened one eye and looked down the long table that my ancestor Jacob the Strong had built in the nineteenth century. The papists along its length, like their distant cousins, the Episcopalians, were not keeping their eyes closed. Believe me, a Baptist, or a Methodist, would have to have his or her eyes pried open during a prayer, lest the Devil somehow distract him or her. If, however, they prayed that the English would adopt some gender-neutral pronouns—

  “Mags, hon, this is serious.”

  I closed my wandering eye; I never should have opened it. I was still returning thanks for the Good Lord’s bountiful goodness, by whose hand we all were fed, and had yet to even touch on familial maladies.

  “—and bless the plump little hands that kneaded this bread,” I intoned. “It is, by the way, excellent bread, even if Freni did get the loaves a wee too brown on the bottom this time around, so I fully expect that we, your grateful servants gathered here, will partake thereof. And with gusto. But as for the beef stew—Mmm, mmm, mmm, does that smell good! No need for divinely inspired gusto there, Lord.”

  “Miss Yoder?”

  “Yes, Lord?”

  At least five out of six of my guests were rude enough to laugh at that point. One can be quite sure that both my eyes flew open in righteous annoyance.

  “Over here, Miss Yoder,” said the sheriff. He was standing in the doorway of my dining room, and in so doing re- created a scene from my worst nightmare. That nightmare, of course, had to do with the day Mama and Papa died, squished to death as they were between a milk tanker and a semi- trailer truck loaded to the gills with state-of-the-art running shoes. That evening as well a sheriff had stood in the dining room of the PennDutch Inn, twisting his cap in his hands.

  “I can see you,” I said as an aside to shush the lawman up. “Now, Lord, about the mashed potatoes: it really is a shame you didn’t have potatoes in ancient Palestine. You would have loved these. They are smooth—”

  “Mags, hon,” Gabe hissed from eight feet away, “I don’t see any potatoes on the table.”

  The sheriff cleared his throat. “Tell Miss Yoder,” he said, “that if she doesn’t join me in her parlor, I am going to arrest her for obstruction of justice.”

  That was when the assemblage released their collective gasp.

  “Arrest me? You can’t barge into my home and arrest me during prayer. That’s un- American! Even a Democrat wouldn’t do that.”

  “Do you have a warrant?” the Babester asked calmly.

  The sheriff is not an unreasonable man. “Look,” he said, “all I want you to do is to stop harassing your cousin Pernicious Yoder III, over at the bank, so that I can get some peace and quiet.”

  I, however, was still quite vexed that he had barged into my home. “He’s not my cousin, and peace and quiet are redundant.”

  “What?”

  Gabe put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “She means that Pernicious is not her first cousin, but as to you being redundant—Well, you know, Magdalena; she can split hairs with the broad side of an ax.”

  “Thanks, dear,” I said. “Uh—I think.”

  “But, hon,” Gabe said, “what’s this about you pestering Pernicious? He’s not still trying to get you to donate to the Giant Ball of String Society, is he?”

  “Like I would!” That society, by the way, is about as nutty as a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard, or a jog through Clearwater, Florida—take your pick. The members are collecting bits of string from all over the world, which one unidentified woman in Charlotte, North Carolina, is supposedly tying together to form one very long string, which she keeps rolled in an ever-expanding ball. On June 17, 2019, the ball will be unrolled so that the string stretches around the world, thereby uniting all mankind in everlasting peace. Yeah, right; what a Crock- Pot full of Huafa mischt that is.

  “No,” I said quickly, “this has nothing to do with string. But speaking of which, be a dear, will you? And run back into the dining room and see how our guests are faring.”

  “Of course, dear. But what’s that got to do with string?”

  I smiled weakly. “You know, tie up loose ends—that sort of thing.”

  “I will not; I’m staying right here. Go on,” Gabe said to the sheriff. “Fill me in.”

  It isn’t pretty to see a man in a uniform flinch. “It’s not just Pernicious who’s complaining. Your wife has apparently made herself such a fixture around police headquarters that they even have a nickname reserved just for her.”

  I patted the white organza prayer cap atop my bun. This gesture is admittedly an affectation of mine that I engage in whenever I’ve been unduly flattered.

  “They do?” I said in mock surprise. “What?”

  “Rasputin.”

  I recoiled in horror. “Oh, what vile things I’ve read about that man!”

  The sheriff offered me a crooked grin in consolation. “I’m sure the guys at headquarters mean it kindly: that you have an indomitable spirit.”

  “That you do,” the Babester said proudly. “Trust me, Sheriff, it takes a hard man to dominate her.”

  “And my husband is anything but a softie,” I said just as proudly.

  “Enough with the mutual-adulation society,” the sheriff growled. “You should know, Mr. Yoder, that your wife has been running a full-scale investigation of the bank robbery on her own for some time now.”

  “Two corrections are in order,” I said, stabbing the air with a shapely index finger. “First of all, my husband is Dr. Gabriel Rosen, not Mr. Yoder—that was my father. And secondly, it was a failed bank robbery.”

  The sheriff glared at me. “Which is neither here nor there as far as you’re concerned. This matter is only of concern to the FBI and local law enforcement authorities.”

  “So then what am I, chopped liver?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a Jewish expression,” Gabe said. “What she means is—”

  “My child and I were there. My son could have gotten killed. My son—not your son, not the FBI’s son.”

  “My son too,” Gabe said plaintively.

  The sheriff took time out long enough to blow his nose on a plain white handkerchief the size of a picnic cloth. Having relieved his not inconsiderable proboscis of its contents, he rubbed it brusquely from side to side.

  “I’ll take it then that you intend to interfere at every opportunity and that I should expect to continue to find you underfoot, as I have been for the last three weeks?”

  “Three weeks?” gasped Gabe. “You told me you were taking a drawing class in Bedford.”

  I focused my gaze adoringly on the love of my life. “Darling,” I said, “I was in Bedford drawing on my life experience. You know that I have a tendency to swallow the end of my sentences.” I turned my watery blue eyes to the sheriff. “It’s
a habit I’ve developed from having to eat so much crow.”

  “I would have thought you’d have some mighty tasty recipes by now, Miss Yoder.”

  “Touché.”

  “Oy veys meer,” Gabe moaned.

  The sheriff jerked his attention back to Gabe. “What was that?”

  “Nothing, Sheriff. Really. I’m just admiring the repartee you’re have with my wife.”

  “The what?”

  “Our jolly banter, dear,” I said, as I gently pushed the much larger man toward the parlor door and the outer vestibule beyond.

  “Uh-huh. Well, I’ve known her since she was knee- high to a grasshopper,” he said without a trace of shame.

  After all, I’m ten years older than the sheriff and I used to babysit him. He was an ornery little thing too; once he put a banana up the exhaust pipe of my papa’s car, and another time he took a bite out of more than a dozen freshly baked cookies that Mama had made for the church bake sale to raise money to buy layettes for newborns in the Congo.

  I pushed harder. The sheriff stumbled backward, but he was never in any danger of actually falling on his well-upholstered hinnie. Hitherto unnoticed by me, all of my guests had gathered in the aforementioned vestibule—the better to hear our conversation.

  8

  “Well, if that doesn’t beat all,” Agnes said, as she mashed her fork tines down on the remaining crumbs of the carrot cake I’d brought. “The very fact that the sheriff came out to your place to warn you off the case is a clear sign that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

  “Sometimes there’s just a good fire sale. Agnes, dear, you do realize that you just ate an entire cake, don’t you?”

  “It’s carrot cake; it’s good for you. Think of it as another way of me getting my vegetables.”

  “And the cream cheese icing?”

  “Is really none of your business, is it, Magdalena? You brought me the cake as a gift. You said you didn’t want any. So what I did with it was my business.”

  I sighed. She was right, of course.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess it’s hard for me to switch gears from being a mommy.”

  “Oh, come off it, Magdalena; you’ve always been bossy. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, when used against others, being bossy can even be an amusing trait. Just don’t pull that stuff on me.”

  I stared at my friend. Agnes stared back through round rimless glasses. No, ding dang it, she didn’t even have the courtesy to look me in the eye, but instead appeared to be focused outside, possibly on the hillside behind me.

  “Say something erudite, Agnes,” I said. “I’m sure it will go right over my head.”

  “You were followed, Magdalena.”

  “Oh yeah, the KGB has been hot on my trail all morning.”

  “Joke if you want, my friend, but when you pulled into my driveway this morning a car passed exactly five seconds behind you, turned around, and drove by nine seconds later. Then, as I was setting out the plates for our cake, I saw this woman hiking up over the crest of that hill, and there she is right now, staring at you through a pair of binoculars.”

  I spun so fast in my seat that I came dangerously close to tipping my chair all the way over. Since Agnes is not the world’s most conscientious housekeeper, I might well have put my exposed body parts in contact with varieties of mold as yet unclassified by science. Still, it was worth the risk; sure enough there was a woman looking right at us.

  “Why, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”

  “You don’t believe in evolution, Magdalena. And you’re far too curvaceous to be an uncle. What say you we go out and confront this interloper?”

  “Let us lope away!” I cried, as I whipped my coat off the back of my chair.

  Agnes was more of a huffer and a puffer than a loper, and not wanting to confront the strange woman by myself, I pretended to twist my ankle whilst going down the steps. Now please allow me to make perfectly clear that feigning an injury to one’s own person under such circumstances is a deception of the smallest magnitude—surely, no more serious a transgression than, say, acting out a part in a school play.

  “You won’t sue me, Magdalena, will you?” Agnes had stopped moving altogether.

  “Of course not, dear; we’re bosom buddies—well, our bosoms aren’t buddies—not that there’s anything wrong with it—but your bosom, by the way, just don’t float my hovercraft.”

  “I get it, Magdalena. But you do agree that you should have watched your step, right?”

  “How can I argue with that?” I tried peering around my friend, but to no avail.

  “So you’ll promise you’ll be good and not sue?”

  “Sue, shmoo! How well do you know me? Uh—never mind, dear.”

  I tried matching my pace to that of Agnes, but even though I did my darnedest to hobble, I kept getting way ahead. Finally, I had no choice but to resort to desperate measures.

  “Yoo-hoo, up there on the hill,” I hollered. “Come on down and show yourself.”

  “And just so you know,” Agnes rasped, “we’re harmed.”

  “She means ‘armed,’ ” I said, “although personally, being the traditional Mennonite that I am, I am totally committed to a non-violent existence.”

  “Except for her tongue,” Agnes panted. “It’s as sharp as a board.”

  “She means ‘sword,’ ” I clarified through cupped hands. “It goes along with my rapier-sharp wit.”

  “You’re such a faker,” Agnes groaned. She was clutching her side by then.

  “What?”

  “You’re not even limping now.”

  “Oh that—Well, perhaps it’s the adrenaline.” I fell back, taking what for me were baby steps so that Agnes wouldn’t have a heart attack. After all, I had never gotten around to taking a CPR class, and wouldn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do if she did have a heart attack—except to scream and pray. I am, however, pretty good at both of those.

  On closer inspection, it was as if the woman on the hill had stepped out of the pages of a storybook. Never had I seen someone so splendiferously attired, nor so regal of bearing. She wasn’t tall, perhaps all of five and a half feet, but she was clad in a full-length white velvet coat, trimmed generously with white fur, and with an enormous white fur collar and matching cuffs. Through the break in her coat front, I could see that she wore white leather boots that laced up to the knees and sported gold eyelets. Her headpiece, which was half gold crown and half fur hat, set off her blue-black hair to perfection.

  “It’s the S-S-Snow Queen,” wheezed Agnes. “I knew I shouldn’t have inhaled that time I smoked pot in college.”

  “You smoked marijuana?”

  I was aghast and agog, but mostly just gaping in wonderment. Who knew that Agnes, a somewhat reclusive maiden lady, had been such a wild woman in her coed days?

  “Okay, so it was more than once. Will you get off my case already? It just goes to prove that college campuses these days are nothing more than replicas of Sodom and Gomorrah.

  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll get off your case—and not tell anyone else—if you share with me what it was like.”

  “What do you mean by that? Do you want me to find you a joint?”

  “A what?”

  “A marijuana cigarette—at least that’s what they used to call them. It’s been so long, I don’t know what they’re called anymore. But if you’re going to rat me out to the community, then by all means, I’ll drive into Pittsburgh and try to score one for you. Of course I’ll probably end up getting arrested and spend the next thirty years in prison with a ‘boyfriend’ named Betty—but don’t worry, Magdalena. I’m sure Betty will be very kind to me. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even let me write to you.”

  My eyes welled with tears. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Double space, of course; Betty won’t want me to spend that much time away from her.”

  “No, I mean that part about buying me marijuana?”

  “If it w
ill shut you up.”

  Now that was a friend. Agnes always knew when to coddle me and when to take off the gloves and give me a gentle tap on the noggin. If we had been best buddies in college, I have no doubt neither of us would have gotten much studying done; we’d have partied hardy like there was no tomorrow, and I might have well ended up a Presbyterian like Susannah.

  A soft cough ahead got my attention. The stranger was no longer peering at us through her binoculars, as we were but a scant thirty feet away. There was in her face the suggestion of Asiatic forebears—or not—but no matter, she was most definitely not the creation of some writer ’s imagination, but a flesh-and-blood human being.

  “She’s definitely not the Snow Queen,” I said.

  “Maybe not, but she is a foreigner,” Agnes said.

  “Of pleasing but ambiguous ethnicity,” I said.

  As we made our final panting approach, I bobbed slightly. “Greetings, and welcome to Hernia, O strange one,” I said. “From whence didst thou hail?”

  “Cincinnati, Ohio.”

  “Well, that certainly explains the accent,” Agnes said.

  I punched her fleshy biceps with an elbow even sharper than my tongue. “You can’t get that from just two words,” I said.

  The elegant, beautiful stranger appeared to suppress a smile. “Are you the famous Magdalena Yoder?”

  “Indeed, I am.” It was only then, after having admitted who I was, that I began to fear for my safety. “I mean, let’s just say that there are those who think I am Magdalena Yoder.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Don’t worry,” Agnes said. “She’s utterly harmless—although she did bring a giantess to her knees with a bra-cum-slingshot, and although she espouses nonviolence as her official creed, she’s not above whacking the odd villain over the head.”

  A wary glance was now cast in Agnes’s direction. “Surely, you’re joking.”