Mean and Shellfish

by Tamar Myers

  ‘Well, I think that it was delightful,’ Delphia said. ‘Tiny and I are atheists – truly America’s most hated minority – and the one thing I was dreading about this trip was having to listen to some long-winded, holier-than-thou, sanctimonious, hypocritical, chest-beating, Bible-thumping pedagogue, praying over my food before I had a chance to eat it before it got cold.’

  ‘Harrumph,’ I said. ‘During your last sentence alone the pot roast not only got cold, it climbed back on the bone, and ambled back into the pasture.’

  ‘Good one, sis,’ my sister said.

  Delphia shot Susannah daggers. ‘Shouldn’t the subject of last November’s Miss Prison be eating in the kitchen with the help, and not out here amongst decent, God-fearing folk?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘You make a good point. Would all God-fearing people please remain seated, and all atheists, please pick up your plates and cutlery, and follow my sister to the kitchen?’

  ‘Aw, come on, sis,’ Susannah whined, but when she saw Miriam start to push her wheelchair back from the table, her attitude changed immediately. She even carried Miriam’s place setting for her.

  The Hancocks, however, didn’t budge. It was my job as hostess to make them follow the rules – in this case, Delphia’s rule. Of course, it came as no surprise when Ida butted into something that was none of her business.

  ‘Nu, Magdalena,’ she said. ‘You will make the atheists go too?’

  Delphia looked at Tiny, who shook his head. ‘I would never believe in a God that I had to fear,’ he said.

  ‘He blasphemes,’ Ida said.

  ‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Rosen?’ Tiny asked softly.

  Ida shrugged. ‘Sometimes yes and sometimes no. But when I do believe, then I am afraid.’ She wagged a crooked, arthritic finger at the giant Texan. ‘But you, young man, maybe you should be afraid all of the time. I only question God, but I do not reject him.’

  ‘Oh, what a load of horse manure,’ Delphia said. ‘What is God going to do to someone who doesn’t fear him? Huh? Will He strike me dead?’

  ELEVEN

  Delphia’s answer was a crack of lightning that split one of a pair of two-hundred-year-old maple trees planted on the front lawn. The dining room has four, very tall, if somewhat narrow, windows. From my seat at the kitchen end of the table, I could see the majestic old tree be rent in twain, right down the middle. Everyone at the table at least heard the horrendously loud boom of thunder, and then the crash, as half of the tree landed on the front lawn. The top branches just brushed against the dining-room windows, even though the tree’s base was some eighty feet away.

  Susannah shrieked and dove under the table. Gabe and his mother both screamed; they can’t deny it. As for the Hancocks, they hustled their heathen behinds post-haste into the kitchen, even shoving Susannah and Miriam along in front of them.

  ‘Oh, crumpled crumpets,’ I moaned. ‘Now I have to remove the entire tree, and my landscape will look lopsided. Did you know that it was Granny’s granddad who planted that tree?’

  ‘B-b-babe,’ Gabe said, ‘how can you be so calm? That lightning strike could have killed us?’

  ‘Oh, fiddlesticks,’ I said. ‘Lightning follows the path of least resistance and strikes the tallest object around. That tree was much taller than this house. Besides, if I die, I know I’m going straight up to Heaven to be with my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and there I’ll spend all eternity singing hymns of praise at the Throne of Grace.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Ida said. ‘Just singing for billions of years.’

  ‘Ma,’ Gabe said, ‘don’t start.’

  But of course, my mother-in-law wasn’t finished. ‘As a Reform Jew I leave the afterlife up to God, but now I make a few suggestions, yah? For the first billion years, cruises. For the next billion years, Broadway shows. Then maybe Vegas—’

  ‘Enough, Ma,’ Gabe snapped.

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ I said, for I knew how hard it was for him to do, or say, anything that his mother could interpret as being critical of her.

  But instead of being upset with her son, Ida continued to look at me. ‘Nu, Magdalena, perhaps you are the right person to answer this question since you are meshuggenah too.’

  ‘Wait a minute, Ma,’ Gabe said. ‘What do you mean that Magdalena is crazy too?’

  ‘Bubeleh,’ she said, using a Yiddish term of endearment, ‘everyone knows that your wife is missing noodles in her kugel. That is no secret in this fekakta town. But your cousin Miriam, already? Now that was a surprise.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Cousin Miriam?’ Gabe whispered, keeping an eye on the kitchen door.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my noodle,’ I said tersely.

  ‘Yah?’ Ida said scornfully. ‘Your noodle is like a strudel: flaky on the outside but soft in the middle.’

  ‘Get back to Cousin Miriam,’ Gabe said in what I can only describe as a shouted whisper.

  ‘All right, all right, keep your britches on,’ Ida said. She was clearly enjoying the catbird seat. ‘This girl I have not seen for thirty years. Still, she is my flesh and blood, yah?’

  ‘Then what is the problem, Mah?’

  ‘She does not smell like a Finkleman.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like a Finkleman, like her mama and me. Or a Blumfield, like her father.’

  ‘Ma,’ Gabe said loud enough for his dead father to hear back in New York, ‘that’s the craziest thing that I ever heard.’

  I pointed with my chin at Ida. ‘I hate to agree with this one, but I know what she means. If I were blindfolded, I could pick Little Jacob out of a room full of five-year-old boys just by his smell. A mother knows. Maybe an aunt knows as well. That thing about shared genes and all that.’

  ‘But Ma isn’t a bloodhound,’ Gabe said, running his fingers through his still thick, dark hair.

  ‘Just the same,’ I said, ‘when is the last time you gave your son a sniff? Appreciatively. Like after a bath – not right after he’s been out playing and is sweaty and dirty.’

  ‘Father’s don’t do such things,’ Gabe said.

  ‘Maybe they should,’ I said.

  Ida nodded. ‘Yah, this one is right for a change. But another thing: I asked Miriam what she wanted me to do with the bar mitzvah present that her bubbe, my mother – may her memory be for a blessing – gave me to keep for Miriam until she got married. Do you know what she said?’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Spit it out, dear. I hear voices approaching.’

  ‘She said to me, she says, “Give it to someone who would have more use for it”.’

  Gabe turned a lighter shade of pale. ‘Mags, that gift was bubbe’s engagement ring. It had a flawless ten-carat blue diamond in it. That ring is worth a heap of money. It’s even got a name in the biz: the Finkleman Blue. No one in their right mind would casually give that rock away.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Gabe, how does it feel then to be one of the few sane people here tonight? We know that Susannah has a screw loose, or she wouldn’t have aided and abetted a convicted murderer, so that leaves only you and the Hancocks. Frankly, I have my doubts about Delphia. I think she’s got a burning ball of rage inside of her, and it’s going to burst out of her chest at any minute.’

  The door opened and in poured four sets of ears. ‘What’s this about my chest?’ Delphia roared.

  I prayed for guidance. Instead, the Good Lord opened the heavens and delivered a deluge the likes of which I had never seen in all my born days, bringing our conversation to an abrupt end. Truly, it was a sod-soaking, gully-washing, frog-strangling, duck-drowning, trash-moving, tree-falling, car-floating, bridge-flooding, coffin-popping event.

  When the storm had passed Chief Toy called to report that two sets of remains had washed up onto the bridge that spans Slave Creek. It is the same bridge that Ida, as Hernia’s honorary Citizen of the Year, was scheduled to cross the next day. I took the call in the parlour where, Granny notwithstanding, I had a modicum of privacy.

&nb
sp; ‘Magdalena,’ Toy said, ‘have there been any instances in these parts when coffins popped out of the ground due to heavy rain?’

  ‘I heard that it happened during the great Johnstown Flood,’ I said. ‘But in that case, it wasn’t just rain; a dam broke, killing over two thousand people. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well,’ Toy said, ‘there’s no way to put it delicately, but these remains have been dead a long time. One is a female in a very tattered yellow dress, and the other a male in trousers, and what might once have been a white shirt. But really, there’s not much left of either of them but the skeletal remains and patches of hair on the skulls.’

  I summoned my most sympathetic tone. ‘Sounds like you really have your work cut out for you this evening, dear. No TV watching for you, I guess. Well, I have to get back out to the world of the living, to see if anyone needs me.’

  ‘Boogers,’ Granny said.

  Toy laughed. ‘Miz Yoder, is that you?’

  ‘Is that the handsome chief of police that you are always pining after, Magdalena?’ Granny had a loud voice when she was alive, and it was even louder when she was dead.

  My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Perhaps the truth does hurt.

  ‘Toy, she’s just kidding. The dead don’t joke very well. Besides, you know Granny, she’s as thick as day-old cement.’

  ‘Magdalena, I wish you wouldn’t talk about your grandmother that way. I find her quite charming – like you, on your good days. And you two look enough alike to be mother and daughter.’

  ‘Granny is really my great-grandmother,’ I said tiredly. ‘She’s probably a hundred years older than I am.’

  ‘Poopy-brains,’ Granny said. ‘I am not.’

  ‘Listen Toy, I really have to go.’

  ‘But Magdalena, I need a big favour.’

  ‘Toy, I just gave you a big fat raise.’

  ‘I know, and I appreciate that, but Magdalena, it will be dark soon and coyotes, foxes, and who knows what other kinds of scavengers will be out and about. So, I need you to please send Gabe down here to help me collect and bag up these remains. We can’t expect any help from County because of the storm, which hit a lot harder in Bedford.’

  ‘Where’s your assistant? Officer Cakewalker?’

  ‘She’s working crowd control.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was Widow Detweiler, bless her lonely heart, who called me with the news, and then apparently she called everyone in the village with a phone. We’ve got sawhorses set up now to hold the crowd back, but we’d have to stay here all night to keep the remains from being molested. Really, Magdalena, we could use your husband’s help as a physician with this – uh – unpleasant situation.’

  ‘What do you expect him to do? Come and pick up the bones?’

  There was a moment of silence. ‘Yes, ma’am. I would be much obliged if he did. You come too.’

  ‘Well, figgy pudding to you,’ I said.

  ‘Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Miller Rosen!’ I heard Gabe say as he slipped between the pocket doors of the parlour. ‘You just said the “F” word!’

  ‘I did?’ For the record, acting innocent is not the same as lying. Honestly, if you pray really hard about the issue of prevarication, I’m sure the Good Lord will eventually lead you to the same conclusion that I have reached. Or maybe not.

  ‘It may not be my “F” word,’ Gabe said, ‘but it’s in place of it, so it’s the same thing.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Hon, if you’ll stop trying to be evasive, and tell me what’s going on, maybe I can help.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Toy said. ‘I couldn’t hear what Gabe said, but tell him that I agree, and then put your phone on speaker.’

  That turned out to be an excellent idea because my Dearly Beloved was actually delighted when he learned that the much younger, and very charming, chief of police needed his help in gathering up two skeletonized corpses.

  ‘Did Toy sound squeamish?’ Gabe asked.

  ‘Just overworked,’ I said.

  ‘No, wonder,’ Gabe. ‘You work him like a slave master.’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Do so,’ Gabe said.

  ‘Well, you sound jealous,’ I said.

  ‘Would that be so bad?’

  I felt an unexpected surge of happiness. ‘Every woman likes to know that her husband still desires her. Especially a tall, dark, handsome man like you.’

  ‘Booger brains with poop sauce,’ Granny said. ‘I never liked that husband of yours. He parts his hair on the left. What kind of man does that?’

  ‘A live man,’ I said, and then felt guilty about my mean-spirited retorts all the evening – or at least all the way to the bridge where Toy was waiting impatiently for us. He hadn’t been exaggerating about the crowd size, that’s for sure. What he hadn’t mentioned was its tenor.

  When we stepped out of Gabe’s car many in the crowd aimed their phones at us as they took pictures. A few even cheered. As we Mennonites are a reserved people, I assumed that the more boisterous of the onlookers were the Baptists, or Presbyterians. Perhaps even our few Methodists, because they were known to sip cocktails in the evenings.

  It didn’t take Gabe more than a few seconds to make a discovery that had Toy wishing that he had a cocktail to sip on. Thank heavens that Gabe had the presence of mind to act cool about it, and not embarrass the younger man in front of the crowd.

  ‘These aren’t skeletons,’ my doctor husband whispered. ‘Not real ones. These are high-quality resin fakes.’

  ‘No way,’ I said.

  Gabe cleared his throat. ‘You’re the one who refuses to go into the Halloween stores with me that are set up at strip malls every year. You say that they are of the devil. Well, I’m telling you that this is what I see in them these days. They used to sell plastic skeletons – they still do, I’m sure – but you can get mighty realistic ones too. Last year I did a double-take on a couple of them.’

  ‘And you had my precious son with you?’ I cried, quite loudly too. ‘In a store that celebrates demons and goblins?’

  ‘He’s my son too, hon.’ Gabe was no longer whispering.

  ‘Harrumph!’

  ‘Cranberry sauce and turkey!’ Toy said, also speaking in a loud voice. ‘I can’t believe that I was fooled so easily. If this gets back to Charlotte, I’m going to be the laughing stock of my old police academy.’ Unfortunately, his voice was loud enough to be heard by everyone, and their amusement at Toy’s mistake spread rapidly.

  Before long, the assembled crowd was having themselves a merry old time. This did not sit well with me. Ninety-eight percent of us professed to be Christians, a people who are charged to live a life of compassion and empathy for the other. Isn’t that what the parable of the Good Samaritan is all about? Yet here were my villagers, most of them local born, laughing away at a poor Southerner, Police Chief Toy Graham, who, as an Episcopalian, was a religious minority in our community. Even in the dying light I could see that the poor man’s ears were flaming red with embarrassment. What must this member of the greater Anglican community think of us normal Protestants? We who eschew wine at communion, and whom, for the large part, believe that celebrating communion weekly is by far overdoing it?

  In the deepest recesses of my mind, in my most private thoughts that I would never share with anyone, not even with my best friend Agnes, I have sometimes fantasized that I was a Joan of Arc type character. Well, a sort of Mennonite version of Joan who would never resort to violence, but who, I am quite certain, would fold in a second if threatened with as much as a hot curling iron pointed in her direction. Nonetheless, in my fantasy, I stick up for the underdogs of the world with my reputedly sharp tongue, one that is said to slice through cheese. Now it was time for me to show a little courage in real life.

  ‘Shame on you, Good Citizens of Hernia,’ I yelled, using my cupped hands as a megaphone. ‘Police Chief Graham is the best thing to have ever happened to you since the invention of machine-sliced bread. Remember t
he nitwit we had before? Melvin Stoltzfus?’

  The crowd groaned.

  I smiled. ‘Just so you folks know, that convicted murderer is still on the loose.’

  ‘Hey, isn’t he your half-brother?’ Herman Neunschwander hollered from somewhere in the shadows.

  ‘That’s right, dear,’ I said. ‘But Herman, we don’t choose our parents, do we?’

  ‘That’s a valid point,’ said Frieda Bollinger, ‘but what does that have to do with Chief Graham’s competency? If he can’t tell plastic bones from real ones, we might as well replace him with a bloodhound. Think of the money we’d save!’

  Unfortunately, Frieda has a strong, clear voice that is perpetually tuned to ‘wake the dead’ volume. Everyone present, and at least two generations of their ancestors, heard her, and responded with uncharacteristic mirth. Even Gabe couldn’t keep from smiling, for which he was later reprimanded by a loving female in his life.

  But Magdalena of Arc would not let Frieda get the last word. ‘Shame on you most of all, Frieda Bollinger! Don’t you remember in May when you were positive that there was a terrorist hiding out in your attic because you heard someone speaking “foreign”? But it turned out to be Eric Schumacher’s scarlet macaw that flew in through your broken window? It was Chief Graham who climbed up into your attic to fight the terrorist, and then later fixed the window for you. And you, Eric Schumacher got your “foreign” speaking bird back, for which you ought to be grateful, because I know that they don’t grow on trees – at least not in Pennsylvania.’

  The crowd twittered. OK, so maybe they were laughing at Eric and Frieda – and that wasn’t a good thing – but at least they were no longer laughing at Toy, the outsider, who had no support system. I know, two wrongs don’t make a right, but sometimes a wrong is all that’s left.

  By then the fake bones had been bagged and there was nothing left for us to do but go home. Gabe appeared especially anxious to leave.

  ‘I don’t mean to be rude, Toy,’ Gabe said, ‘but I’ve got to get back to the inn and pick up Ma and take her back home for the night. Mags, you coming?’

  I glanced at Toy, who seemed pretty spent. ‘Sure. But Toy, I just want to say for the record that I think what we had here this evening wasn’t just some high-school prank. I feel it in my bones – no pun intended – that whoever put those realistic-looking skeletons on the bridge was counting on us to cancel the festival day tomorrow.’