Mean and Shellfish

by Tamar Myers

  At any rate, I will admit in the privacy of my heart that I’ve always had a soft spot for Toy. He is, after all, quite easy on the eyes, and his slow Southern drawl has a way of pulling you into his conversations and having you hanging on to every word that falls from his young, full lips. Agnes, who isn’t married, and who is far too liberal for her own good, once confided to me that he was her romantic fantasy. Her ‘boy toy’ Toy, she called him. I giggled politely at the time, but felt more like slapping her (gently, mind you) for stealing something from me. I realize that just thinking along those lines is a sin, but we can’t help our thoughts, even though the Bible says otherwise – oh my gracious, I’d better change subjects right now.

  The best way to get my mind off the question of whether or not Toy had insulted me – or maybe even given me a left-handed compliment – was to get the particulars on the waste disposal truck as per his request. Funny, but what I hadn’t even noticed before was the peculiar name of the truck: Six Feet Under.

  The tiny blond hairs on my arms stood at attention. Some person, or persons, had gone to considerable effort to ruin our festivities. Well, at least a bag of angry snakes hadn’t been let loose – not that I was aware of. So far. Nonetheless, when my phone rang, I virtually jumped out of my best black brogans.

  ‘Rough puff pastry!’ I cursed into the phone. Sadly, I was becoming a real British potty mouth.

  ‘Magdalena, this is your sister-in-law, Cheryl. You need to come over. I have something very important to tell you.’

  ‘Not now, Cheryl. I’m in the middle of an investigation, and for another thing, I don’t think that I’m ever speaking to you again, given all the lies and deception that you—’

  ‘I know about the truck.’

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The waste disposal truck.’

  ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  It didn’t take me much longer than that. Cheryl lives two houses behind her shop. Like many others in the historical district of Hernia, her house is a large Victorian, with a wraparound veranda and white gingerbread trim. There are the requisite rocking chairs out front, and a white wicker table topped by a monstrously large Boston fern. The interior of her house is overly decorated with early Americana of all descriptions. In other words, Cheryl’s house is crammed with old stuff that people inherited from dead relatives, but didn’t want.

  Cheryl, like many antique dealers, buys items that appeal to her at estate sales, and then she enjoys these things in her own home, before she resells them. Not only is there no such thing as an ‘Amish luxury’, there is really no theme to what Cheryl actually sells, except that each piece has to be one hundred years old, or over, to be considered a genuine antique. Cheryl does employ a cleaning woman, but with so many ‘finds’ displayed higgledy-piggledy, her house is impossible to keep dust and pollen free. But the main reason that I didn’t want to go inside was that Hernia’s self-styled Queen of the Year lived there, and she was undoubtedly inside reigning over some dust bunnies. On that account alone I was relieved to find Cheryl waiting for me on her veranda.

  ‘Have a seat,’ she said, gesturing to a white wicker rocking chair. Wicker and I have never been friends. It always looks good in the store, or in someone else’s house, but it doesn’t look good on me. Sure, a pad placed on the seat, and even one against the back, will take the ‘bite’ out of wicker. But what about my poor forearms? At the end of the visit, my arms always look like long, thin waffles.

  ‘No, thanks, dear,’ I said. ‘I prefer to stand.’

  ‘Because of waffle arms?’

  ‘What? Can you read my mind?’

  ‘Of course I can’t read your mind, not with a skull as thick as yours. But when I sit out here in shorts, I get waffle thighs like any other middle-aged woman. I was extrapolating from my own experience, sitting on these chairs. I much prefer the sensual smoothness of my Italian leather sofa.’

  ‘Harrumph,’ I said. ‘Tell me about the truck.’

  ‘Yes, the truck. Well, I was working late in my shop last night, getting ready for this morning – Magdalena, you wouldn’t believe how inconsiderate some customers can be. They’ll pick up an item from one corner of my shop, and then drop if off in another aisle where the merchandise is totally unrelated to it. And you wouldn’t believe how messy they can be. I’ve finally hung a sign on the toilet door that says that it’s out of order. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I think that you still haven’t told me about the truck,’ I said. ‘Tempest fugits whilst the temperamental fidget.’

  Cheryl, a licenced psychiatrist, scrunched up her face in what I took to be annoyance. ‘I think that you could benefit from meditation, Magdalena. I’m speaking as a doctor, not as your sister-in-law.’

  I attempted a wan smile, which was meant to be insincere. ‘And speaking as your mayor, and not your sister-in-law, I’ve been thinking about widening this portion of Main Street so that we can have a special lane – no make that two lanes – just for horses and buggies. Of course, since your shop is built on land leased to you by the village—’

  ‘You can’t do that, Magdalena! I’ll sue!’

  ‘The truck, dear? Tell me about the Victoria wedding cake truck!’

  ‘Is that all? Well, there really isn’t much to tell, except that it pulled up behind my shop last night around nine. Just about twilight. Then a man and a woman jumped out and started to connect this long hose to the rear of the vehicle.’

  ‘Did you see what they were wearing?’ I asked excitedly. Finally, I seemed to be getting somewhere with the investigation.

  ‘Jumpsuits – I think. Dark jumpsuits. Like magenta. Or maybe black. I don’t know, because it was starting to get really dark.’

  ‘There is a big difference between magenta and black,’ I said. ‘Magenta is a proper colour.’

  ‘OK, so then they were magenta. But you’re not going to be using my name in any official report, are you? I want to be a responsible citizen, but as a single businesswoman I feel especially vulnerable to reprisals.’

  ‘You’re preaching to the choir, dear,’ I said.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Cheryl said.

  ‘It means that I know exactly how you feel. I was a single businesswoman for most of my career.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘Until you turned my brother’s head with your considerable feminine wiles.’

  ‘Ahem. What did you just say?’

  ‘Oh, Magdalena, don’t be so vain; you know exactly what I said. Gabe tells me about how you go on about how ugly you think that you are. About your body dysmorphia, when you’re really this stunning beauty. Give me a break. Now, do you want to hear about what was really so odd about this couple in the magenta bodysuits, or not?’

  ‘Spill it, toots!’

  ‘They were wearing masks.’

  ‘Masks?’ I said. ‘What sort of masks?’

  ‘Duck masks,’ Cheryl said with a laugh. ‘Donald and Daisy Duck masks. You do know who those two cartoon characters are, don’t you?’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, rather than admit that I did not. ‘If it was so dark, then how could you tell what the masks were?’

  ‘Now that’s the craziest thing,’ she said. ‘They both had flashlights and shone them on each other’s faces – well their masks – that is. Then they laughed and went about running the hose between my shop and Sam’s grocery store.’

  I sighed and plopped my bony bottom into her wicker chair after all. My modest gabardine skirt was guaranteed to protect my thighs, but it was going to be a losing struggle to keep my hands folded in my lap and my arms away from wicker.

  I sighed. ‘Waffle arms, here I come.’

  ‘There’s always that smooth Italian leather couch. It’s the next best thing to sex.’

  ‘But isn’t your mother inside?’

  She nodded.

  ‘So tell me,’ I said, ‘why didn’t you call the police when you saw two people in duck masks running a hose
past your shop last night? Or at least call me? Didn’t you think that was extremely out of the ordinary?’

  Cheryl shrugged. ‘Frankly, I thought that they had something to do with this whacky goat festival you Mennonites put on every year. Besides, like I said, my shop was in disarray, and today was supposed to be my busiest sales day of the year. I sold five times more last year during that one day of festival than I did in the four months after that leading up to Christmas.’

  I prayed for patience; it is my least answered prayer. ‘Look, this “whacky goat festival” has nothing to do with Mennonites, but everything to do with the fact that a goat saved the life of your only nephew. You’ve lived here long enough to know that masked strangers and sewage-pumping trucks are never part of the festivities. If you had spoken up, then today could have been a banner sales day for you.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Cheryl said, ‘you don’t have to bite my head off. I’m just a single woman, trying to get along the best that I can. I don’t have the emotional support system that you have. I don’t have any friends out here in the sticks. Sometimes I get caught up in my work – now, that’s my shop – as a way to cope.’ She sucked air between her teeth. ‘And there is Ma.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Your ma. We had quite the illuminating conversation earlier today. Heretofore I had no idea that she was a neurosurgeon.’

  ‘She’s not.’

  ‘Please, Cheryl. It’s time that the three of you – Ida, you, and especially, Gabe – stopped lying to me. I mean it when I say that I can’t take it anymore.’

  Then Cheryl lunged at me and grabbed my clasped hands. Had she been a blood relative, that move would have been taboo, and never would have happened. As it was, I squawked in alarm like a hen, one that had been pounced upon by the farmer’s wife fetching the evening’s dinner.

  ‘Magdalena, relax,’ she said as she tightened her grip. ‘I’m not going to hurt you; I just want your undivided attention for the next few minutes.’

  I tried not to grimace, but the woman was squeezing my bony hands like a vise. ‘Is this when you tell me about your third career shelling walnuts with your bare hands?’

  Cheryl shook her well-coifed head. ‘Always joking, aren’t you, Magdalena. That’s a symptom of deep-seated insecurity. At what age did your mother begin toilet-training?’

  ‘We began potty-training when I was two, but she died when I was nineteen. But bless her heart, she still hadn’t gotten the hang of it by then.’

  ‘Magdalena! That is the most disgusting, disrespectful, and—’

  ‘Well deserved,’ I said.

  Cheryl sighed. ‘Touché. But what you need to know is that Ma is not a neurosurgeon; our father was. And the accented English that you’ve heard her speak ever since you’ve known her – that’s our maternal grandmother, Hannah Abrams.’

  I ripped my hands from hers and jumped to my feet. ‘That’s ridiculous! Ida told me herself that she put on the accent as a way to keep me off guard. That’s a quote. Her plan all along has been to come between me and Gabe.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s been part of it, but that’s by no means the gist of the story. You see, we grew up on Long Island, where we lived the American dream. Both sets of grandparents had emigrated from Europe absolutely penniless. Anyway, Pop was extremely successful, and Ma was … well, she was a socialite. I know that’s hard to believe seeing her now.’

  ‘I can only imagine,’ I said as I resumed sitting.

  ‘Then the unthinkable happened. It was our grandparents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary. There was a big reception planned, but our parents took them out for a private dinner the night before. Gabe and I were both away at school. Anyway, Pop had drunk a little too much at dinner, so Ma volunteered to drive them all home. Actually, Pop wanted to take a cab, but Ma insisted on driving, because she hadn’t been drinking, and she didn’t see why they should spend any money when they didn’t need to. Can you imagine that?’

  ‘A penny saved is a penny earned,’ I said, and then felt like slapping my tongue.

  Thank goodness Cheryl didn’t appear to hear me. ‘My grandmother had a thick Yiddish accent, and she was in the back seat with my father, trying to feed him some gossip she’d overhead at the next table concerning someone they all knew. My grandfather was riding in front. At any rate, Ma was straining to hear the gossip more than she was paying attention to the road. She ran through a stop sign and they were hit head-on by a semi-trailer truck.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said when she paused.

  ‘Both passengers on the right died immediately, and my grandmother, who was seated behind Ma, and who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, was thrown out of the car when her door flew open. She was pronounced dead at the hospital. Ma, who’d been buckled securely in, survived with a plethora of bruises and multiple broken ribs from the steering wheel. Inside, however, she was totally destroyed.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. It was a shocking story, but was it true? Why hadn’t my husband shared this with me before we tied the knot and became one?

  ‘Magdalena,’ she said, ‘I can tell by your expression that you don’t believe me. But call your husband right now and ask him.’

  I threw up my hands, resigned to the fact that my life was stranger than fiction. ‘No, that’s OK. Whatever he’d say now, he’d say the same thing when I got home. Look, I can’t deal with this right now,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘So tell me, these masked people in the dark jumpsuits, did you see them leave on foot? Or did a car come along and pick them up?’

  My sister-in-law shrugged. ‘I haven’t a clue. Like I said, I was engrossed in my work. I noticed them, thought they were part of your team, and didn’t give them another thought – well, not until Main Street became a cesspool. What are you going to do about that?’

  ‘Oy vey,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you’re still the mayor, aren’t you? Or have the people revolted already and taken away your badge?’

  ‘No, dear,’ I said with a forced smile. ‘The badge is solid, twenty-four-karat gold, so I keep it at home in my dresser drawer, hidden beneath my sturdy Christian underwear. Say, you haven’t found any poisonous snakes in your house today, have you?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be worrying you – aw, tea and crumpets, why not? You are a psychiatrist after all; you can talk yourself out of panicking. It’s just we were worried that this one rather disapproving church in town was going to release a bag of rattlesnakes on Main Street during the height of the festival. So far there haven’t been any reports of sightings. Now, snakes generally avoid busy places and confrontation, so if they were released, they might have immediately slithered away to the side lines, and into the nearest yards. And you, my dear, live right behind your shop, as close to Main Street as one can get.’

  Although everything that I had just said was true, I had said it out of spite, because she’d asked me if I was still mayor. Yes, that was quite un-Christian of me, but I’m not perfect. What’s more, I took great pleasure in noticing that she had drawn her feet up off the floor.

  ‘Magdalena, you’re mean!’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear. I really am. The Devil made me do it.’

  Cheryl laughed. ‘I thought you didn’t watch stand-up comedy.’

  ‘What does that have to do with my apology?’

  She wagged a finger at me. ‘Oh, you’re priceless. Just how you manage to keep that placid, bovine look on that long horsey face of yours, while saying all those hysterically funny things is beyond me. You should have been a stand-up comic. Really, Magdalena, you missed your calling.’

  ‘What? You just said that I was a stunning beauty, for crying out loud. Which am I? A raving beauty, or a hideous beast?’

  ‘You’re definitely raving, I’ll grant you that.’

  ‘Grr. You Rosens have a knack for driving me up a wall. Tell me, Cheryl, was it you who outfitted your mother with that cheesy tiara and cheap glass necklace?’

  She wagged her finger again.
‘Yes, and those weren’t as cheesy as you think. Those weren’t glass pieces; those were vintage rhinestone pieces from the 1950s. I had them on display in my shop. I knew you weren’t going to come through with a crown, and I wasn’t going to let Ma be disappointed.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. It was all I could do to resist wagging a finger in return. ‘So you supplied your own Amish rhinestone jewellery.’

  ‘Magdalena, dear,’ Cheryl said, ‘sarcasm does not become you.’

  ‘I’ll own that,’ I said and popped to my feet again. ‘Toodles, as they say in the land of Big Ben. I’ll see you whenever. And seriously – do keep at least one eye open for slithering serpents.’

  ‘Ha, ha. I’ll see you tonight at dinner. Toodles.’

  I’d already turned and, given the size of my feet, I was halfway to the front steps. I pivoted, always a dangerous thing when I’m concerned.

  ‘I don’t remember inviting you, dear.’

  Cheryl smiled. ‘My sweet, long-lost cousin, Miriam did. Ma and I will be there at six o’clock sharp. As promised.’

  ‘That’s what you think,’ I said with a smirk. If only I’d been a better Christian and been nicer. Or at least believed in karma – well, then again, is anything that straightforward?

  SEVENTEEN

  Car theft is virtually unknown here in bucolic Hernia. Murder, you betcha. As mayor, and the one who hires the police force, I have given this matter some thought. So this is what I have come up with: no one in Hernia drives a car that anyone else could possibly want.

  For starters, most of us are modest people, of modest means. I am one of the few wealthy people in town, and I no longer care a hoot about cars, except as a means of getting from point A to point B. Secondly, our winters are snowy, and we salt the roads. The result is that our cars turn into rust-buckets before our very eyes. So there really is no point in getting a fancy, schmancy model with all the latest technology. No, siree, we Herniaites believe that as long as you can’t see the street, or the highway, through the car floor, it’s still a keeper. Even then, a sizable hole in the floorboard does come in handy on slippery roads, especially if one is wearing hobnail boots and has sturdy legs. And nothing beats a generous hole in the floor to address nausea or emergency bathroom issues.