Mean and Shellfish

by Tamar Myers

  I looked wildly about into the night. All I could see were Miriam’s car, the creepy little house, the two drug-crazed women, and trees and more trees. ‘Think, dear,’ I said aloud. ‘Think.’

  ‘She’s mumbling again, sweet’ums,’ Miriam said. ‘Clearly she’s delirious. I think we should put her out of her misery.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘But Snickerdoodle, she’s just stressed, that’s all. Let me have a few minutes alone with her, and I’m sure that we can come up with a whole new understanding of the way things are.’

  ‘Balaam’s ass,’ I cried triumphantly.

  ‘Who said ass?’ Susannah demanded.

  ‘Me!’ I said. ‘I figured it out. If the Lord could make Balaam’s ass bless the Children of Israel, instead of cursing them, then maybe the Devil can make Miriam sound like my nemesis, the evil, lily-livered, walleyed, pencil-necked, peanut-brained, totally incompetent Melvin Ichabod Stoltzfus.’

  ‘Oh, oh,’ Susannah said.

  Miriam didn’t say anything, but her gun sure did. It pushed me up three concrete steps, across a sagging wooden porch, and into the maw of the dark house. Susannah flipped a switch and a second low-wattage bulb illuminated what was the cabin’s primary room. A stained pink and lime green sofa, and two matching easy chairs filled half of that space. What were the odds that both chairs would be stained as well, I wondered, and that both would have rips in their seat cushions with stuffing bulging out in corresponding locations? The floor was bare scuffed pinewood, where it was visible – that is to say, where it wasn’t covered with dirty dishes, empty beer bottle, cartons of full beer bottles, crumpled newspapers, supermarket tabloids, discarded clothes, and a long, low cabinet upon which rested the largest TV screen I had ever seen in my life. Not that I have seen that many, mind you.

  ‘Is this mess the work of bears?’ I said.

  ‘Put a sock in it,’ Miriam said.

  ‘Hopefully just the one sock, because it would be hard to find the sock’s mate in this pigsty,’ I said.

  The barrel of Miriam’s gun shifted from my side to the middle of my back. ‘Sit,’ she grunted, giving me a push with her weapon.

  ‘Ow. That hurt, dear.’

  ‘Stop calling me “dear”,’ she snarled.

  Then, like a bolt out of the blue, it hit me. I knew the reason why Miriam was acting so strangely, why she was so mean and cranky. She was, after all, approximately my age. She and Gabe were first cousins who had been through college together, and Gabe is only a year older than I am. Miriam Blumfield, age fifty-five or thereabouts, was suffering from hot flashes. Trust me, I know from personal experience just how miserable they can make one feel.

  I turned and grabbed her shoulders, having forgotten all about the gun. ‘You are not alone, dear,’ I said. ‘We menopausal women share a common bond of silent suffering. And though we remain mute on the subject, our brows glisten with perspiration, and our underarms release torrents of sweat. Indeed, our entire bodies come alive with thousands of moisture-producing glands in places where they are not appreciated, and where they are wanted, our moisture-producing glands shrivel and die like seedlings planted in the sands of the Gobi Desert.

  ‘Boy, I tell you – as if you don’t know already – that when these things hit, they’re enough to make even a saint get crabby and lash out. But if I might offer one suggestion, dear, lose the lap robe that you wear as a skirt. Firstly, it’s quite unbecoming, and second, we already know that you have a prosthetic leg, so you’re not fooling anyone. Why not show off your prosthetic leg? You’re not Mennonite; you’re allowed to be proud.’

  Miriam responded to my wise words by pushing me into the nearest mutilated armchair. ‘Susannah,’ she said, ‘do you have any idea what your whack-a-doodle sister is saying?’

  Susannah giggled nervously. ‘Um – I think she’s saying that you’re crabby because you’re having hot flashes. Am I right, sis?’

  ‘Duh,’ I said, using a word that I had learned from Susannah herself when she was a teen.

  Miriam approached my chair and stared at me with her one good eye. The eye patch with the electric blue iris painted on it was slightly askew, and I had a sickening feeling that I saw the glint of another blue iris behind it. Or was my mind playing tricks on me?

  ‘And you think that’s what’s making me crabby, as you put it?’ she said.

  ‘Without a doubt, dear. Sometimes it makes even mild-mannered me feel out of sorts,’ I said. ‘Or worse.’

  ‘Well, that’s not the case here,’ Miriam said, waving her gun. ‘Do you want to know why?’

  ‘If you want me to know,’ I said.

  ‘OK then, here goes,’ Miriam said, and proceeded to hoot like the gibbons at the Pittsburgh Zoo.

  ‘Hang on to your seat, Mags,’ Susannah advised.

  A nanosecond later Miriam dropped the lap robe. Beneath it she’d been wearing a miniskirt. Below this sinfully short garment were the two ugliest legs that I have ever seen on a woman. That’s right: there were indeed two of them. Not only did she have two legs, but they were as skinny as the handles on croquet mallets, and her knees were as knobby as the heads on the ends of the mallets. What’s more, the knobby-kneed legs were covered with black hair so dense that, had she been standing at the rear end of my Angus calf, I might have jumped to the conclusion that he had sprouted two extra, very long, knobby tails overnight.

  ‘My word,’ I said. ‘Is that the fashion now in Australia, or do you have a French lover? In any case, it’s a very practical look, I’ll grant you that. Since your part of Australia is tropical and swarming with insects, no doubt those bristly underpinnings of yours function as a protective screen. Still, I should imagine that those woolly wonders have to be cleaned daily with a stiff brush and a strong disinfectant.

  ‘Believe it or not, this is your lucky day,’ I said helpfully. ‘See how my cute little organza prayer cap is made out of white netting. Well, I propose that I sew a prototype of organza net leg-coverings for hirsute – that means hairy, dear – Aussies, such as yourself. Then the two of us go into business, mass producing my inventions. We’ll make a killing, I promise you.’

  ‘Enough!’ bellowed Miriam. Then she unwrapped her ubiquitous scarf from around her neck. Bless the poor woman’s heart, as they are wont to say in the South! That gal’s head teetered on a neck that I was sure didn’t have the circumference to support it.

  ‘Get duct tape!’ I shouted to Susannah. ‘Quick! Duct tape fixes everything.’

  ‘Shh,’ she hissed.

  ‘Shut up, Yoder,’ Miriam said, as she whipped off her hideous black wig. Beneath it was a disarray of mousy brown hair, quite similar in colour to mine. It was truly awful, but more becoming than the synthetic mop of fibres she’d just whipped off. Being a kind Christian woman, of course, I felt obligated to give her constructive advice.

  ‘Not that you’ve asked, dear,’ I said, ‘but your own hair, which at the moment makes you look like you’re wearing a dead muskrat on your head, is an improvement over that hideous wig. My advice is to let that run-over rodent grow out, and then see if you have enough to pull back into a nice sedate bun. After all, you’re a middle-aged woman, and it’s time you act the part. And don’t worry too much about your shiny bald pate; your bun and prayer cap should cover it nicely.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Miriam stalked around my chair on her black furry legs, her giant head bobbling to and fro on her spindly neck. When Miriam came to a stop in front of me, her head took a second or two to stop moving. It was a wonder she didn’t suffer from motion sickness – or a broken neck. At any rate, something about Gabe’s cousin was beginning to look very familiar, but I couldn’t put one of my bony fingers on it.

  ‘Yes, that’s so,’ I said. ‘But as long as you’re open to advice, might I suggest that you put your scarf back on? Really, dear, you are a textbook case for whiplash while walking, and unfortunately for you, I’m pretty sure that you’d have to sue yourself for damages.’


  ‘Uh-oh,’ Susannah said.

  ‘You think you’re funny,’ Miriam said to me. ‘Don’t you?’ As she spoke, she put her delicate feminine hands on her hips. This gesture is a ‘no-no’ in the Conservative Mennonite world, as it is considered a sign of arrogance. Of pride.

  ‘I’ve never been funny in my life,’ I said.

  ‘She means it,’ Susannah said. ‘Mags doesn’t have a sense of humour. She really doesn’t know who you are.’

  ‘Then she’s the densest woman who ever lived,’ Miriam said.

  ‘Why I never,’ I said. ‘And here I thought you’d already reached the pinnacle of rudeness. Clearly you take after your Aunt Ida’s side of the family.’

  ‘Ha! For your information, I’m not even related to that old bag. I’m related to you!’

  ‘To me?’

  Susannah clapped her hands. ‘Show her! It’s time for the big reveal!’

  ‘Whatever you say, sugar cookie,’ Miriam said. She whipped off her blouse and then her bra, which was of the padded variety. Miriam’s chest was as flat as a pancake, and smooth save for three limp black hairs just above her sternum that had been tied together with a pale pink bow. But the baffling woman did not stop with her torso reveal.

  Next thing to go was the eye patch with the eerie neon blue iris painted on it. The second that ugly thing came off my heart stopped. There had indeed been a blue eye under that patch, but it was not aligned with her other eye. My very worst fears – aside from actually losing a loved one to death – is encountering Melvin Ichabod Stoltzfus in the flesh again.

  I closed my eyes and prayed. By the way, God likes it better when our eyes are closed during prayer, even though all sorts of sinful images can pop up on the blank screens of our minds. Gabe once said that Jews aren’t taught to close their eyes to pray, and that the only reason Christians are asked to close their eyes is so that they won’t see their clergy stealing from the offering plates. I was not amused.

  ‘Look at your sister,’ maniacal Melvin chortled. ‘She’s fallen asleep.’

  ‘No, she’s praying,’ Susannah said.

  ‘Fat lot of good that will do her.’

  I opened my eyes, but as I did so, I jumped out of my chair and shouted. ‘Boo!’ Right in Melvin’s face.

  The hairy-legged monster in the mini-skirt shrieked like a six-year-old boy and stumbled backwards. I was hoping that he would drop the gun, in which case I would pick it up and then make a run for it. Unfortunately, Melvin’s small hand was much stronger than it looked.

  ‘Now it’s time for the duct tape,’ he sneered. ‘Get the duct tape for me, Honey-Bunny, will you? It’s in the trunk of the car. Oh, and bring the noose, while you’re at it. No use making two trips with those bears out there.’

  ‘Aw Mely-kins,’ Susannah whined, ‘does your Pooky-Wooky have to go out alone? You know how afraid I am at night up here.’

  ‘Speaking of here,’ I said, ‘where on earth is here? I assume that we haven’t left the country.’

  ‘We’re on Cheat Mountain, West Virginia,’ Susannah said. ‘Mags, don’t you just love that name?’

  ‘How appropriate,’ I said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, sounding more than a trifle deflated.

  ‘Well, if you insist. Haven’t you cheated justice by aiding and abetting a convicted murderer to escape?’

  ‘Hey, I served my time in the lockup!’

  ‘What are you doing now?’ I asked pleasantly.

  ‘You weren’t supposed to tell her where we are,’ Melvin said accusingly. ‘We agreed on that.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t tell her about Thorny Flat,’ Susannah said.

  ‘Thorny Flat,’ I said. ‘My, what an intriguing name.’

  ‘It’s the highest point on Cheat Mountain,’ Melvin said, puffing out his pigeon chest proudly. ‘It’s the second highest point in West Virginia at 4,848 feet. By comparison, the highest point in all of the United Kingdom is Ben Nevis at 4,409 feet.’

  ‘My, you certainly are a font of knowledge this evening, Mely-kins – may I call you that?’ Normally Melvin is as thick as a post, but curiously at the moment, he was as sharp as a tack, and that was worrisome.

  Melvin’s eyes bulged, as his face contorted with rage. ‘No, you may not!’

  ‘My Sweety-Poteety looked those facts up on the internet just to impress you,’ Susannah said. ‘And you are impressed, aren’t you, Mags?’ As much as my sister loved the man in the miniskirt, deep down, she knew that he was at least two sandwiches shy of a picnic basket.

  I smiled at my kidnapper. ‘Well, I am impressed. I never knew you shared my interest in topography.’

  ‘Ha, wrong again for the billionth time, Yoder. I don’t give a rat’s behind about that so-called fancy handwriting. All those curly adornments on the letters make them too hard to read, if you ask me.’

  ‘Which no one did, dear,’ I said. Then I flashed him my pearly whites as an insurance policy. What was with me when it came to interacting with Melvin Ichabod Stoltzfus? No matter how hard I prayed, I just couldn’t stop my lips from parting and allowing the most incendiary words from slipping out. It wasn’t just a dance hall that was the Devil’s playground, so was Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen’s mouth.

  Alas, even a whackadoodle like Melvin can, if given enough time, recall a subject that had been derailed several topics ago. He stroked his baby soft, hairless chin, while first his left eye surveyed me, then his right. At last he bobbled his head in recognition of the retrieved memory.

  ‘Duct tape! Susannah, go get the duct tape! Now!’ She wobbled off on six-inch heels. How had I not noticed her crazy footwear before? I love my sister – sometimes quite dearly – but she can scarcely walk barefoot without wobbling. Well, maybe she could if she were sober.

  As soon as her fairly ungenerous posterior had cleared the doorframe, my brother-in-law ran over and locked her out. My poor sister immediately began to pound on the door and scream.

  ‘Don’t worry about the noise,’ Melvin said. ‘There isn’t another house for thirty miles.’

  ‘I’m not worried about the neighbours, you lout. I’m worried about bears.’

  ‘Nah, that racket is sure to keep them away. The only thing that it could possibly attract is one of the banjo-picking, moonshine-swilling mountain men that I’ve seen in movies. I mean, maybe there’s hidden moonshine still up here, and one of those hillbillies is looking for a bride. I wouldn’t blame him if he threw my little filly over his shoulder and carted her down to his cabin in the holler. I reckon she still has one or two more breeding years left in her, given that you spat Little Jacob out when you were older than dirt.’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  ‘Sorry. Long in the tooth, then,’ he said. It was the first time he’d ever apologized to me, and I was touched.

  I smiled gratefully. ‘Let’s just say that I played with God as a child.’

  ‘Hey,’ he snapped, ‘don’t be sacrilegious.’

  ‘But I thought you were an atheist.’

  ‘Yeah, I am. But it ain’t gonna be any fun torturing you, if you’re no longer that stuck-up, pompous, hard-nosed, judgmental, religious, old bigot you always were.’

  ‘I will do my best to judge you,’ I said.

  ‘Good, that’s all I want to hear,’ Melvin said. ‘But one more thing. You need to scream really loud and beg for mercy, to make up for all the torture that you’ve put me through. And I want you to ask for my forgiveness.’

  ‘Technically, that’s at least two things, dear,’ I said. ‘I can either scream really loud, or else I can beg for mercy. And asking you to forgive me is definitely a separate demand. So that’s really three requests. Which one should I go for?’

  Melvin pressed two petite, well-manicured fingers to his bulbous forehead as he considered his answer to my weighty question. Perhaps I should have asked it in a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ format to ease the pressure on his poor, overworked brain.

  ‘Uh,’
he finally said, ‘I want to hear you beg for mercy. Yeah. And call me “sir”.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and gave him a crisp salute.

  ‘Not now, you idiot. Wait until I let your sister back in. I want her to hear you beg for mercy.’

  ‘Well, now that’s just silly,’ I said. ‘You know that deep down in her heart, which is not quite as shrivelled as yours, she loves me. When she hears me beg, then she might take pity on me. After all, I’m the one who raised her, ever since our parents were squished to death between that tanker truck carrying pasteurized milk and the semi-trailer loaded with state-of-the-art athletic shoes.

  ‘No, I think that for your sake, you would be much better off choosing door four: forcing you to forgive me and letting bygones be bygones.’

  Melvin hooted with laughter. He carried on so loudly that I could barely hear Susannah as she continued to pound the front door and scream with fright and rage at being locked out. When Melvin finally ran out of steam I continued calmly.

  ‘It’s to your advantage, sweet’ums,’ I said. ‘Consider this: she might not be impressed by a self-righteous, Bible-beating hypocrite like me pleading with you to forgive her. One would expect that of someone of my ilk. Remember that Susannah received the same religious upbringing that I did. She memorized that scripture verse in which Jesus said that we are to forgive someone seventy times seven. That number, by the way, meant “boundless” back in His day.

  ‘But I tell you what. If Susannah hears a hardened criminal such as yourself, a malicious malcontent, a despicable lowlife, a bottom-feeder worthy of the utmost contempt, ask a Conservative Mennonite woman, an upstanding deacon in her church, as well as a Sunday school teacher, to forgive him, I guarantee you that my sister will virtually melt with desire. I would even venture to guess that she will have such an intense hormonal surge that she might even drop one of her viable eggs from her dwindling supply into her breeding basket, and nine months from now you might be the proud papa of a baby mantis.’