The Death of Pie

by Tamar Myers

  ‘Come on, ladies, let’s go,’ Lydia Graber said. ‘We’re just wasting our time playing her silly games. Lunch is on me at the Sausage Barn.’

  Two centuries prior to her announcement, the North American bison thundered across the Great Plains in such numbers that the ground shook, rattling the tepee poles of the Sioux Indians. On this late summer morning, the ladies of the Righteous Readers Book Club thundered to their cars with such eagerness that the pavement shook, rattling the fillings in my aching head. Seconds later, engines roared. In a New York minute the companionable but oh so handsome Pastor Nate and I were all who remained in the parking lot of the First Mennonite Church of Hernia, Pennsylvania.

  ‘Well,’ Pastor Nate said, ‘I hope you weren’t too offended by what just happened.’

  ‘Moi?’ Offended, no; embarrassed, yes. My voice sounded like a rubber squeaky toy that had been stepped on.

  ‘Would you mind coming into my office for a minute, Magdalena? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you – that is, if you have the time.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ I followed him silently, grateful as always that the voice in my head – the Devil, to be sure – could be heard only by me. ‘Pastor Nate,’ the inner Magdalena said, ‘while I don’t think that you bat for my team, you really are terribly easy on the eyes. If you were to ever bat those soulful hazel peepers simultaneously in my direction – well, I might consider dropping ten dollars in your offering plate some Sunday morning.’

  I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there is a similarity in the smell of old Protestant churches across our great land. Perhaps it comes from casseroles toted in for potluck suppers in damp basements, or slightly mouldy hymn books stored in racks behind rock-hard pews. Add to those odours the human scents of sweat, given off in fear, heat, love and commitment, and sometimes doused in cheap chemical concoctions that immediately clogs one’s nostrils.

  The windowless basement of the First Mennonite Church was a bouquet of noxious but familiar smells. The large, damp room, with the linoleum floor and concrete walls, served as the social hall. The far end was taken up by a kitchen with a pass-through window, and a door that led to the lavatories. The opposite end was dissected by a plywood partition, behind which lay Pastor Nate’s study.

  ‘Tuna casserole,’ I said as we passed through the open basement. ‘And weak decaffeinated coffee. But definitely Girdle Buster Pie for dessert. I’d estimate that it was last eaten here yesterday evening at around half past six.’

  Pastor Nate stopped dead in his tracks. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘So I was right?’

  He nodded. ‘Amy Stutzman brought it to the board meeting.’

  I tapped my famously protruding proboscis and sighed. ‘The Yoder nose is both a gift and a curse. I can smell if a melon is ripe without having to pick it up. If I’m out in a canoe and lose my paddle, all I have to do is lie on my back, face up, and the wind will push me back to shore. The flip side is that a sniffer as finely tuned as mine will, of course, pick up every scent – and not all of them are pleasant.’

  Pastor Nate chuckled. ‘I bet not,’ he said and ushered me into what was a surprisingly warm and inviting space, given its location. This room did have a window, although it was at ground level. Still, some light is a whole lot better than none, and these walls were panelled and painted. Being a simple farm woman, I lacked the vocabulary to describe the décor I beheld, but I knew enough about the world to guess that this was what magazine writers described as ‘professionally decorated.’ I’d only seen pictures of rooms like this in the battered, and sadly out-of-date, women’s journals in the waiting rooms of my doctor and dentist.

  ‘Wow,’ I said.

  ‘I did it myself,’ he said.

  ‘You did it?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you sound so surprised? Is it because I’m a man?’

  ‘It’s because you’re a Mennonite, dear – and a man.’

  ‘Well, I did have a little help – actually, quite a bit, from a friend. This is actually a good segue as any to what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  I held up an immense, but somewhat shapely hand. ‘There’s no need, Pastor Nate,’ I said kindly. ‘I am not a judgmental woman; if Jesus didn’t feel the need to comment on that particular issue, than who am I to judge?’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Pastor Nate, ‘so the rumours are true? You really do stay so slim by jumping to conclusions left and right?’

  ‘And sometimes forwards and backwards. Are you saying that you are not – I mean, that you did not – bring me down here in the belly of the whale to confess to a torrid tryst with Toy?’ I stared at the poor man for a few seconds before continuing. ‘Oh, my, I can see that I should add running-off-at-the-mouth to my list of weight-loss exercises.’

  ‘Your words, Magdalena, not mine.’

  ‘B-But, you’re not married, for crying out loud!’

  ‘Neither was our Lord. Are you suggesting that he was gay?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Oh, then was he heterosexual?’

  ‘Ick! Not that either,’ I cried. ‘He was asexual. He never had a sexual thought in his entire life.’

  ‘Not once in all of his thirty-three years and yet we are supposed to relate to the human side of him?’

  I clapped my hands over my ears. ‘Na-na-na-na-na-na – I can’t hear you!’

  Pastor Nate smiled. ‘I’m sorry; I’ll stop teasing you now. It’s just that I find it fun to yank your chain. I really do have a secret love interest – just not Toy. Although I suppose that if I did swing that way – which I don’t – the police chief would be very handy, and he is gosh darn handsome.’

  ‘Stop toying with me,’ I said.

  Pastor Nate groaned. ‘Good pun.’

  ‘It was accidental, dear, I assure you. Now please continue with your fascinating tale before the odours of your basement do me in.’

  ‘It was that lovely foreign woman, Ramat Sreym.’ Pastor Nate even rolled his ‘Rs’ in the guttural French way.

  There are moments in life when something happens that is such a huge departure from the normal that it takes us a while to process the new information and file it properly in our brains. September 11, 2001 is a case in point. This same phenomenon happened to me again when I heard this mild-mannered Mennonite minister neighbor confess to dating the bouncing blond bimbo from Baluchistan – or wherever she was from.

  I jiggled pinkies in both ears to make sure that the passageways were clear. ‘Let’s try that again,’ I said. ‘For a moment there I thought that you said that you had been dating the recently deceased. You know, the woman who tore Hernia to shreds in her novel, and then had the temerity to show up at our prestigious, annual pie festival as a judge, and then if that wasn’t enough, she had the unmitigated gall to topple over dead – plop – right on top of my apple pie.’ I gasped for air. ‘That pie was going to be my winning entry in the fair. That was my one and only chance – but a sure one – for a trophy.’

  Before he would respond, Pastor Nate had us sit in a pair of espresso-colored imitation leather chairs that faced his faux mahogany desk. Rest assured they were all of retail quality and not the cheap stuff one might ferret out from the piles of junk at a flea market.

  Pastor Nate sighed dramatically. ‘Magdalena, do I detect a severe case of xenophobia?’

  ‘Not on your xylophone, you don’t! I’ll have you know that as an innkeeper I have hosted folks from around the globe. Why, once I even hosted a lithe and lovely, albeit lackadaisical, lady from Lapland who didn’t lift a finger to help with the chores, even though I offered to charge her the most exorbitant rates imaginable – you know, my ALPO plan.’

  Pastor Nate shook his handsome head. ‘Why do you always insist on joking? I only took one college course in psychology, but I’m guessing that your constant attempts at humour stem from some deep-seated sense of insecurity. In any case, I find it annoying, not funny. Forgive me for hoping that we could have a real c
onversation.’

  Most unfortunately, the good pastor’s sharp criticism of my best asset wounded me to the quick. Therefore, I cannot be blamed for rising to my own defense, especially when I had scripture on my side.

  ‘If real is what you want, dear, then perhaps you should consider the facts: Ramat Sreym played Queen Jezebel to your King Ahab.’

  The young pastor’s expressive face appeared to be momentarily frozen. No doubt I had shocked him with my reference. Jezebel was a queen who lived in Old Testament days. She was so wicked that God decreed that she be thrown off the castle walls and consumed by dogs. There wasn’t to be enough left of this evil monarch to bury, lest she be in any way memorialized. Jezebel was married to a king (of course) whose name was Ahab. Being a man, Ahab was utterly powerless – complete putty in her hands. She led him astray, just like Eve tempted Adam.

  Pastor Nate was quiet so long that I felt the need to jog his memory. ‘You will find the story in the Second Book of Kings.’

  He blinked back to life. ‘“Judge not, that you be not judged.” The Gospel of Matthew, chapter seven, verse one.’

  I snorted – quite accidentally, but it was to be expected, given my rather horsey head and the passion with which I approach my avocation. ‘I could say the same thing to you, but since there is no point in stating the obvious, I wish to plough – I mean, proceed – with my investigation. When did you take up with the deceased?’

  ‘Take up? What is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well, you know—’

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘So why don’t you tell me.’

  ‘Uh – OK, but for the record I would like to state that I am a bit taken aback that a man of the cloth – especially a fine young Mennonite pastor such as yourself – would speak so sharply to a simple-minded laywoman like me.’

  ‘Ha, you are anything but simple-minded. Now explain yourself.’

  ‘All right, if you insist. What I meant is: when did the two of you begin dating? Or did it go beyond that?’

  ‘The answer to your first question is about a week after she showed up in Hernia on her initial visit. That’s the time she stayed at your inn while doing her research. The answer to your second question is: none of your business.’

  ‘How rude!’

  ‘Forgive me, Miss Yoder, but you are the one who is being rude.’

  ‘Miss Yoder? Has it come to that?’

  ‘Friends don’t accuse friends of murder, and they know when not to cross the line. You know, Miss Yoder, you would do yourself a favor by rereading Butter Safe Than Sorry. I’m sure that you can find a used copy on Amazon.com in the event that you have thrown yours away – which I highly doubt that you have. Anyway, in it you will find that Ramat wrote about an innkeeper named Magdalena Yoder, a woman who was as wise as Solomon, as bright as Einstein and as brave as a Navy Seal. What’s more, that woman was also a fantastic mother; her consummate love for her son is what drove the plot forward. The woman sitting here today possesses none of those qualities.’

  I popped to my oversized feet. ‘That hurts! How dare you say that I’m not a fantastic mother? No one loves her son more than I do.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Pastor Nate said. Despite being a man of God, he smirked – well, just a little. ‘Then how come you’re not home right now with your kid? Shouldn’t you be feeding him lunch or changing his nappy?’

  I have been called many things in my forty-nine years on planet Earth, but ‘unimaginative’ has never been one of them. ‘The reason I’m not home right now is because Little Jacob is having a Bar Mitzvah lesson.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Beg away! You do recall that my handsome hunk of a husband, Gabe the Babester, is Jewish, right?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You are correct: his buttocks are some of his best assets, but please, try to stay focused. You see, I promised my husband that we would raise his son in his father’s faith, and when a Jewish boy is Bar Mitzvah, he becomes a man in the eyes of his religion. Now, who better to prepare him for that than another Jewish man? Of course, you’re probably thinking that Little Jacob is a trifle young to be studying Hebrew and learning how to chant trope, but he’s a brilliant boy, if I do say so myself. He takes after his father, you know.’

  Pastor Nate was on his feet as well. Was it my fault that his face was the color of rhubarb jam? Was I to blame for the spate of sparks in his eyes, or that both temples had suddenly sprouted veins the thickness of pasta? I think not.

  ‘Your time is up, Miss Yoder,’ he said.

  ‘What a coincidence, seeing as how I was already leaving,’ I said. At the door that divided his plush office from the dank, odoriferous social hall, I paused to grace him with a ‘smile for another while.’ That is to say, the smile was genuine, but it was intended for a different occasion. ‘I will be praying for you, Pastor Nate.’

  Trust me, under the circumstances those were loaded words. The implication was that he needed to see the error of his ways, vis-à-vis his affair with that foreign woman. There isn’t an honest person alive who enjoys having their sins acknowledged by someone else, much less taken up with the Higher Power by that person. This is especially true when the buttinsky is a laywoman, and the sinner holds a degree from a theological seminary.

  I knew for a fact that Pastor Nate was not about to let me have the last word. His jaw twitched, his Adam’s apple bobbed and his lips parted. Fortunately, his insistence on the last word allowed me, the mere laywoman, to sin anon. This time I was wilfully rude; given my stilt-like legs and feet the size of jumbo jets, I was able to gallop out of earshot before his first utterance escaped him.

  Once outside the church, in the fresh warm sunlight of a late summer’s day, I considered what had just transpired. A young Mennonite pastor, previously presumed by me to be gay and closeted, was actually mourning the death of that awful Ramat Sreym! Talk about abominable behavior. What were the good folks of the First Mennonite Church of Hernia going to think about their Big Kahuna doing the Horizontal Hula with the hootchie-mama from Timbuktu – or wherever it was that she was from?

  You can bet that they were as blind to these sins as a litter of newborn kittens. I can safely say this because within five minutes of anyone at the church becoming privy to gossip this juicy, said person will make a beeline for Yoder’s Corner Market, stake a post by the cash register and remain there until everyone in town has heard the news. Believe me, this isn’t malice in action that I describe; rather, it’s a way of keeping the community informed, as well as a way for the gossiper to jockey for position in society – but in a gentle sort of way. At any rate, Cousin Sam would have called me immediately with news like this.

  Needless to say, I was rather shaken by this smarmy revelation, not to mention my earlier conversation with my cousin’s caustic wife. It is a good thing that I have long been considered a nervy woman, for many of my nerves had just been shot. So what exactly should a grumpy, gangly, galoot of a gal do at a time like that? Well, I don’t know what she should do, but what I did was open my purse and extract a jumbo-size Snickers candy bar. The peanuts perked me up with their protein and, as always, the chocolate coating held a party in my mouth.

  The identity of Ramat’s killer was still a mystery, but God’s in His Heaven and all is well in the world, just as long as a lady can cram an ooey-gooey and oh-so-chewy snack into her mouth and feel that sugar rush.

  THIRTEEN

  I try to be the best person that I can be. When I was in fourth grade, Miss Kuhnberger drilled it into our heads that we should strive for excellence in everything that we attempted. It didn’t matter if we were writing in our notebooks or tying our shoelaces. Every task was equally important, no matter how trivial. If Miss Kuhnberger sensed that we had not sufficiently applied ourselves to our respective jobs, she was more than happy to dole out a variety of punishments. Writing sentences was one of her favourites.

  Therefore one can understand why I might feel the ne
ed to be the crabbiest woman in all of Hernia, or the most judgmental person in three counties, but I struggle against these temptations hour by hour, moment by moment. It is, I think, only because I own up to having these evil thoughts that I have garnered the reputation of being somewhat hot-headed and cantankerous, with a tongue that could slice through cold cheese. The truth, however, is that I’m a pussycat who, although too skinny to be cuddly-wuddly, is nonetheless in love with the fruit of her loins.

  When I sailed through my back door and into my kitchen, I headed straight for Little Jacob. The love of my life was in his high chair, gumming a disgusting, salmon-colored paste. Globs of this particularly odoriferous baby food dotted Little Jacob’s bib, the tray of his chair and his father’s face and hair. When the Babester, the big man in my life, saw me, he practically dropped the small spoon he was using to feed our baby.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re back, Mags! Little Jacob won’t swallow; I think he hates this stuff.’

  ‘It’s no wonder; your mother brought it over. It’s something they made at the Convent of Perpetual Apathy. They want to test the market for a line of boutique baby foods. They were thinking of calling this one Babyhood Blahs. It contains liver and rutabagas.’

  ‘Yuck!’

  ‘I’ll tell her it was a huge success – in the blah department. Where’s Freni?’

  ‘Mose came by and took her home in the buggy. He said he doesn’t want her coming back to work until you stop playing snoop woman. He said last time she nearly took a bullet on account of your shenanigans.’

  ‘Snoop woman? Those were his exact words?’

  Gabe laughed, thus so did his son. Pureed liver and rutabagas never looked so disarming, nor yet so disgusting.

  ‘You know those Amish,’ he said. ‘They have quite a way with words. This reminds me – speaking of wordsmiths – today is the day our own little Alison comes home from summer camp.’

  My heart pounded and my mouth turned as dry as Nora Goodwin’s pie crust. What kind of mother was I – really – if I could forget to pick up my thirteen-year-old daughter from her first-ever experience at an away-from-home camp? Perhaps all I was fit to do was to snoop – that, and maybe also fit to be tied.