Just Plain Pickled to Death (16 page)

“Maybe you misplaced it somewhere else,” I suggested helpfully.

He glared at me. “I loaned the book to you.”

“Yes, you’re quite right. But then I gave it back, remember? Just before I ran into town to see Delores.”

“You gave it back, all right, but you stood there and watched while I returned it to my suitcase. You knew exactly where it was.”

“Your suitcase has a lock, doesn’t it? Why didn’t you lock it?”

“I did. Obviously you found out the combination somehow.”

I felt my Aaron lay a restraining hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. “I did no such thing. This is absolute nonsense. Why on earth would I want to steal your diary when I’d already read it?”

He had the nerve to give me that tidy smile again. “You were the only one who knew about it, Miss Yoder.”

I started to take a step forward, but the pressure of Aaron’s hand increased. “Yes, I was the only one who knew about it until supper. Then everyone knew.” Blinded by rage, I trampled right over my family-to-be’s feelings. “Why, with this bunch, I wouldn’t be surprised if the king of Siam knew by now.”

“That’s Thailand,” he said.

‘What?”

“Siam is Thailand now. Has been since 1939.”

“You know what I mean, buster. Besides, Melvin Stoltzfus, our chief of police, knows about it.”

He pointed a manicured finger at me. “You told him already?”

“I was laying groundwork, Uncle Jonas. Anyway, you can be sure that Melvin didn’t sneak in and swipe it. He’s not that bright. Poor man once tried to milk a bull.”

He blinked. “That man is your police chief? The one you wanted me to show my Sarah’s diary to? The one I spoke to this afternoon?”

“Hey, I was upfront with you. I told you his name when I called you in Florida.”

“I haven’t even been back to visit here for twenty years. How the hell was I supposed to remember a name? But the bull-milking, that I remember. That was back when we were still living here. Everyone was saying he should have been jailed for animal cruelty.”

“He was kicked in the head,” I said. “That was punishment enough.”

Even his grunts were raspy. “Look, all I know is you were the first one to leave the table tonight. You could have come straight on up here and stolen the diary. In fact, I’d bet my life you did.”

What with his swearing and betting, it was clear that life in Sarasota, despite its large Mennonite and Amish communities, had led Uncle Jonas a ways from the fold. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d secretly converted to Presbyterianism along the way.

“No, you look,” I said, trying to ignore Aaron’s fingers digging into my back. “I’m the one who went to the trouble of looking you up. For reasons that have become apparent, none of the others—even your so-called allies—could be bothered. I sent my fiance all the way over to Pittsburgh to get you, I put you up in my inn, I went to town and found you term lodgings, and now you have the nerve to treat me like this? Well, I won’t have it.”

I wiggled out of Aaron’s grasp, pushed Uncle Jonas aside, and proceeded to pack his suitcase for him. I did not pack his suitcase the way he would have liked. When I was done it looked like Susannah’s bag would look at the end of one of her escapades, if Susannah used luggage.

“You get out of my inn, Jonas Weaver.” I turned to the others. “And any of you others who want to try and stop Auntie Leah from attending her own niece’s funeral can do the same. This is supposed to be a family I’m marrying into, not a herd of stampeding cattle.”

The bovine imagery was unintentional, but it didn’t seem to offend anyone. There was a smattering of applause, and no one but Jonas Weaver left the premises.

I have never been entranced by watching fires, but stargazing is another thing. I can gaze at a summer sky for hours. At the PennDutch we are just far enough removed from the lights of Hernia to see some spectacular nighttime skies, and that night was a doozy. All the queen’s diamonds, spread across a bolt of dusty blue velvet, could not have been more impressive.

When I was twelve I saved up my allowance and bought a cheap telescope at a secondhand store over in Bedford. Along with it came a tattered book on astronomy. That summer was one of the happiest in my life, although—and I am ashamed to admit it—my new hobby turned me into a sinner faster that Eve could swallow that apple.

Every night when the sky was clear, I would sneak out after my bedtime and study the stars for hours. Disobeying one’s parents is a sin, and like the Bible says, sin has a way of getting found out. It wasn’t long before Mama noticed the dark circles under my eyes and accused me of you-know-what. Unfortunately I didn’t know what you-know-what was then, and in an effort to shorten the lecture, I made a full confession.

“You caught me,” I said. “I do it every night. I could do it for hours at a time. Mama, I wish you and Papa would try it. I just know you would love it.”

That was the day I ate a whole bar of Camay soap.

Once when Susannah was little I tried to explain the constellations to her.

“That’s Ursa Major, the Big Dipper,” I said.

“It looks leaky.”

“And that’s Virgo, the virgin.”

“Are you a virgin, Magdalena?”

“Over there is Taurus, the bull.”

“You can say that again.”

I gave up.

Even when they found out what I was really up to, my parents did not share my fascination with the heavens. It confused them too much. That mankind should inhabit a minuscule planet in such a vast universe did not make sense to them. Anyway, it was heaven with a capital H that interested them. In the end I decided that stargazing was best enjoyed as a solitary pursuit (much like you-know-what, or so I’ve been told).

I was sitting on a rocker looking up at Canes Venatici with my naked eye when I felt Aaron’s now-familiar touch on my shoulder.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

“Wait until everyone’s asleep and all the lights are off,” I said.

“Why, Magdalena, what a surprise!”

“I was talking about the stars, Aaron!”

“But I was talking about you.” He squatted down on one haunch and laid his head on my shoulder. I could feel his long, dark lashes flickering against my cheek.

I held my breath, willing time to stop. Of course it didn’t, and when I exhaled I sounded like a disgruntled horse.

“I love you, Magdalena Yoder, you know that?”

“Yes.” I was dying to say “I love you too,” but it is so hard for me to say the L word. I always require a mental rehearsal first.

“I was proud of you tonight, Magdalena.”

“Thank you.” I could have kicked myself for leaving off the “dear.” If I can say “dear” to strangers, why can’t I say it to the man I love?

“You make me the happiest man in the whole wide world,” my Pooky Bear said.

“I have a telescope somewhere up in the attic,” I heard myself say. “I’d really like to show you Uranus.”

It was the most romantic thing I could think of to say.

Chapter Eighteen

Sure enough, when I stumbled into the kitchen the next morning, there was Freni, bustling about as usual. She was even whistling a happy time, but she stopped abruptly when she heard me come in.

“Freni,” I said brightly. “You have a nice walk?” Freni lives directly behind me and actually prefers to walk through the woods rather than to come by any sort of conveyance. That is not a religious preference, mind you, but one based firmly on stubbornness.

She turned, spatula in hand, and stared at me. “I’m eighty years old, Magdalena. I’m lucky I can walk at all.”

“You’re seventy-four, Freni.”

“Close enough. Are those English going to sleep all day?”

“They’re Mennonites,” I reminded her for the umpteenth time, “and they’re not on any sort of schedule. Maybe we could make breakfast a help-yourself situation. You know, put out a couple of boxes of cereal, some juice, the toaster and a loaf of bread.”

“Ach! What kind of a breakfast is that?” Freni squawked. “I’ve got bacon and eggs here that need to be used before the end of the week.”

“Well, I hate to see you tied to the stove all morning. What if we invite those who want a hot breakfast to make their own?”

Will I ever learn? Despite her temper, Freni doesn’t have a violent bone in her body. Still, that spatula came perilously close to my ears. Both of them. A deaf person, watching her from behind, might have concluded that she was trying to conduct a one-person orchestra.

“They come in, I go out.” Freni was mad enough to lapse into Pennsylvania Dutch, her mother tongue. “Is that clear, Magdalena?”

“Yah.” I can’t speak Deutsche, but I can understand it. Chances are I could understand Freni if she was speaking Chinese.

“Now you go right on upstairs and wake them all up. Tell them that I’m making pancakes, sausage, and bacon, and I want to know how they want their eggs. Tell them they eat in thirty minutes.”

“Yah. Quite clear,” I said respectfully. “But before I go I want to ask a question.”

“What happened last night between my daughter- in-law and myself is none of your business,” she said. She was speaking English again.

That anything had happened between Barbara and Freni was news to me, but I resisted the temptation to pry. It took a tremendous amount of strength on my part, and the fingernail marks on my palms may well stay with me the rest of my life.

“It’s not about that, dear. Do you know a woman named Diane Lefcourt?”

The way Freni clucked, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had personally supplied our breakfast eggs.

“Ach, Magdalena, whatever made you think of her?”

“They talked about her at dinner last night. Someone said she was a bad influence on Aaron’s aunt Rebecca.”

Freni’s spatula waved the orchestra into a loud crescendo. “That Diane woman was a bad influence on the devil himself. All of Hernia breathed a sigh of relief when she ran off with that mattress salesman from Johnstown.”

“Johnstown, Pennsylvania?”

“Ach, what other Johnstown is there? Now go wake up the English, Magdalena. The sausages will get tough if they sit too long, and a cold pancake is fit only for pigs.”

I scurried off to do her bidding, visions of the over-done pork roast supplying unexpected energy. It was not, of course, a pleasant task. My rooms do not possess Do Not Disturb signs.

“Go away,” someone in Auntie Vonnie’s room grunted.

‘Two eggs basted easy, two eggs over medium,” Auntie Leah boomed.

“More lies, you’re queasy,” Auntie Magdalena moaned.

I briefly protested my innocence, and then to be on the safe side, jotted down “Four fried, over easy.”

From Auntie Lizzie’s room there was no answer. There were sounds to be heard, however, and I grimly resolved to oil those bedsprings before assigning that room again. In the daytime, and at their age!

“Breakfast is in thirty minutes,” I called to my sister.

Susannah didn’t answer either, and, as usual, her door was locked.

“Look, you sleepyhead,” I said, “you better get up this instant, or else.” Actually, one might possibly have interpreted it as yelling, but my doors are thick and Susannah is a sound sleeper. At any rate, I got no response.

I pounded briefly on the door. “If I have to put up with this bunch, so do you. In fact, if you’re the last one downstairs, then you can just kiss my hospitality goodbye. The day has finally come when you’re going to get a job, Susannah. Do you hear me? A real job. Then you can pay me rent!”

Feeling self-righteous, albeit justifiably so, I went downstairs and gave Freni the orders. I told her to scramble Susannah’s eggs. I told her Auntie Lizzie and Uncle Manasses wanted theirs poached—in Tabasco sauce.

“Ach!” Freni said, shaking her head, but then she did what she was told. To her, there is no explaining the English and their funny ways.

Everyone showed up at breakfast on time except Susannah. I swallowed my irritation and strove to be the best hostess I knew how to be.

“So,” I said brightly, “what have we planned for today? Another picnic, perhaps? Aaron and I discovered this really lovely spot by a stream over on Evitt’s Mountain. I’d be happy to give you directions.”

There were no takers.

“Well, then, I hear the library in Bedford is hosting a show on miniatures. You know, these teeny-weeny rooms all decorated with the tiniest—”

“We’re not interested,” Auntie Vonnie snapped.

“Well, maybe I am,” Auntie Magdalena said with surprising clarity.

“Me too,” Auntie Leah boomed.

“Provincial,” Auntie Lizzie sniffed. And to think I had looked up to her.

I realized suddenly that my guests had polarized themselves in their seating choices as well. Auntie Leah and her supporters were on my left, Uncle Jonas’s supporters to my right. It was like Judgment Day, only the two sides were reversed as far as I was concerned, and I was certainly in no position to play God.

However, I was not averse to playing Mama. After all, if my Pooky Bear was so bent on us having a family, I was going to need all the practice I could muster, and Susannah knew me too well to be a cooperative pupil.

“Well, that settles it,” I said, my voice still gay. “We’ll play Amish today.”