Between a Wok and a Hard Place Page 7

  “Well? Will you help me?” she wailed piteously.

  It was worse than having to choose between fried liver and boiled turnips. Despite what I may say about her, I love my sister deeply, and her welfare is always on my mind. But how could I possibly choose between allowing my dear, sweet sister to wallow in the depths of despair and sending her into the arms of a maniacal mantis? Mama, how could you do this to me? And you too, Papa! You had no business dying before your jobs were finished. A tanker full of milk and a truck full of shoes is a flimsy excuse if you ask me.

  “Magdalena!”

  Zelda’s tear-stained face was now just inches from mine. She may not have bought them at the golden arches, but she had definitely eaten onion rings for lunch.

  “Okay, I’ll do my best,” I said.

  Deep within my bruised bosom I knew I had made the right decision. Perhaps not for me, but for my baby sister.

  Chapter Nine

  I heard the faint moans and rhythmic thuds while I was still on the back porch. When I opened the back door I had my second chance to faint, but with nothing to break my fall, I just stood there and stared.

  Freni Hostetler was sitting in a ladder-back chair, which in itself is not unusual, given her age, but she was taped to it. With duct tape. Yards and yards of it had been wrapped around her ample frame. Fortunately her face had not been covered, except for a small strip across her mouth. She looked like a gray cocoon topped with a Hostetler head.

  Mercifully, after a few seconds my brain switched me over to auto-pilot.

  “Dial 911,” I said calmly. “Walk over to the phone and dial 911.”

  I didn’t. And not just because Hernia doesn’t have 911. I mean, I could have called Melvin, who would have sent Zelda zinging right back. But it was the tape over Freni’s mouth that diverted me. Once when I was sleeping Susannah had taped my mouth closed—just as a joke, mind you, because I was snoring—and it was the most uncomfortable sensation I ever experienced, my wedding night excluded.

  Driven by empathy, not caution, I ripped that tape off my cousin’s mouth.

  “Ach du heimer!” Freni shrieked, and with good reason. I had quite forgotten that she had a mustache any fifteen-year-old boy would be proud to call his own.

  “Sorry, dear. Can you breathe?”

  “Of course I can! I’m talking, aren’t I? Unwrap me this second, Magdalena. When I get my hands on them, they’ll wish they’d never seen this old Amish woman.”

  “Who is they, Freni?” I was unwrapping as fast as I could, but duct tape is hard to part from cotton clothing. “Robbers? Where is Susannah?” My heart was pounding and my fingers were shaking, which didn’t make the unwrapping any easier.

  “How should I know where Susannah is?” Freni barked. “Maybe they have her wrapped up, too.”

  “Oh, my baby sister,” I wailed. Then a horrible, but quite possible situation occurred to me. “They didn’t— uh—well—are you all right?”

  “Gut Himmel! Of course I’m not all right! I’m seventy-eight years old, for crying out loud. Just wait until you get to be my age, Magdalena, then you’ll see.”

  “You’re not seventy-eight, for pete’s sake, you’re only seventy-four. I wanted to know if you were raped.” I whispered the word.

  “Ach du leiber! They’re only children, Magdalena.”

  “The robbers were children?”

  Freni shook her head in despair. She was unbound, but still at the end of her tether. “Snitzkaupf,” she said, rapping her head with her knuckles.

  “So I have a head full of dried apple slices,” I said humbly. “Please explain.”

  Through a mixture of Dutch and English I learned that the villains were the three Dixon children. Apparently they had come into the kitchen looking for sweets, and Freni, who is usually such an obliging person, had refused their request because she didn’t have their parents’ explicit permission. Shortly after that Freni had sat down—just for a minute, mind you—and the next thing she knew they were wrapping her up like a mummy.

  “And they took the whole cookie jar,” she wailed.

  I comforted Freni as best I could, promising to find the missing cookie jar, pay for her damaged clothing, and read the Dixons the riot act. I would not, however, promise to summarily show the Dixons the door. There are at least two sides to everything, after all. Now I’m not saying Freni deserved the treatment she got, I am merely stating a fact. Freni Elizabeth Hostetler is capable of generating strong, and sometimes un-Christian emotions in people who rub her the wrong way. Of course she has no idea this is a two-way street. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised had she told me her own daughter-in-law, Barbara, had done the dirty deed.

  “Either they go, or I go,” Freni shouted at my retreating back.

  Until she paid me what the Dixons did, it wasn’t even a choice.

  I found Susannah still in the hallway, still sleeping on top of the dirty bedding. I shook her gently, but she didn’t stir. I shook her as if I were the paint mixer at Home Depot.

  She opened one sleep-swollen eye. “Go away.”

  “Not until you hear what I’ve got to say.”

  “Don’t waste your breath, Mags. I know I’m a slothful, slovenly slut. You’ve already said so a million times.” The eye closed.

  Of course I was taken aback, possibly even ashamed of myself. I had thought those things about my sister, certainly, but I don’t think I ever said them. In my defense I told her that.

  “Of course you did,” she said, both eyes closed. “Maybe not with your words, Mags, but you know what they say about actions.”

  That hurt me to the core of my already bruised bosom. “What kind of actions?” I wailed.

  “You don’t trust me, for one thing. Last summer when I asked to borrow your car, you told me I couldn’t.”

  “It was still in the body shop, Susannah! You backed it into a telephone pole, remember?”

  “Well, that wasn’t my fault, Magdalena. Jimmy’s foot accidentally hit the gear shift, and he would have stopped it, except that his zipper got caught on my belt.”

  I may as well be arguing with Freni. If I was going to save her, it would have to be at the expense of being right.

  “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I’d like to make it up to you now.”

  One eye opened. “You’ll let me drive your new BMW?”

  “When pigs fly, dear,” I said gently.

  “Then my life is over.”

  I prayed that it wasn’t. “I’ve come to give you my blessing, Susannah.”

  “Your what?”

  “My blessing. I’ve come to tell you that from now on you can do whatever you want with your life, make any horrible mistakes that you want, and I won’t interfere.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, I mean it. If I didn’t, would I be telling you that Melvin and Zelda have broken up?” Well, it was close to the truth. At any moment Zelda would break Melvin’s heart.

  The other eye opened and she lifted her head weakly. “No way,” she said, yet there was hope in her voice.

  “Way, dear,” I said mimicking her speech. “They are splitsville. Not only that, but a little birdie told me that Melvin is carrying a torch for you.”

  “That’s silly. This isn’t even an Olympic year.” Her eyes closed and her head drooped. Had she been a plant I would have rushed off to find some water.

  “He’s still in love with you, Susannah. It’s you he wants, not Zelda.”

  My sister popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “Melvin? Me?”

  I know, it is a sacrilegious thought, but it occurred to me that the Good Lord might have told Lazarus there was a woman waiting for him. Someone other than his sisters, I mean.

  “Take it easy, dear,” I said. “You might want to attend to some essentials before you charge off to collect your knight in shining armor.”

  “Like what?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “You’ve been sleeping on a pile of laundry, for one thing. And�
��—I looked around— “where’s Shnookums?”

  “Shnookums! My baby!” Susannah wailed. “Oh, Mags, I’ll die if something’s happened to him.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll help you find him.”

  I couldn’t believe those words had come from my mouth. That cowardly cur had been the bane of my existence ever since Susannah first brought him home in her purse. This just shows you how strong a force love can be. If that pitiful pooch made my sister happy, then I would forever hold my peace. About the dog, I mean. After all, Susannah is the most important person in the world to me, with the possible exception of my Pooky Bear. Okay, so maybe my Pooky Bear would win out if I was given one of those drowning scenarios in which I could save only one person. Maybe. But while I gave my solemn promise to cleave unto my Pooky Bear until death do us part, theoretically at least, Aaron and I could go our separate ways. Susannah and I, however, would remain sisters forever.

  Having said that, I did my sisterly duty and virtually tore up the Inn looking for two pounds of mouth and one pound of sphincter muscle. The cows were coming home, and so were the guests when I finally located that mangy mongrel. I found him just in time, too.

  “Have you seen a little dog anywhere?” I asked one of Dixon urchins, who was sitting on the back porch steps, her head in her hands. A half-dressed doll lay at her feet.

  The girl’s name was Caitlin, mispronounced to rhyme with Kate Lynn. I guessed her to be about four, certainly no more than six.

  “No gou,” she said.

  I froze my frown. It wasn’t her fault if her parents allowed her to speak baby talk. Mama goochy-gooed Susannah until she was a teenager. Not that Mama neglected her parental duties, mind you. Susannah went happily off to high school committed to drinking eight glasses of wa-wa a day.

  “He’s a very tiny dog,” I said patiently.

  “No gou. Just lao shuu.”

  “Can the baby talk,” I said sweetly, “and speak to me in English.”

  “I seen a rat,” she said, and giggled.

  “Not here you didn’t, toots.” I wondered if she was too young to sue for libel.

  “Yessum, I did so. His name is Mickey. I dressed him up in my dolly’s favorite dress, and we was playing tea party, only Bradley come along and took him away.”

  My heart began to pound. More than one guest has mistaken that snarling snippet for a rat.

  “Was he black? Was he ugly? Did he growl and bite?”

  She nodded solemnly. “He was my bestest friend in the whole world.”

  “Where’s Bradley?” I shouted.

  Her face clouded over, and her chin began to quiver. Since my shouts have been known to make grown men bawl like babies, it was time to back off a little. I squatted on my haunches so that we were eye-level.

  “Where did your brother take the rat, sweetie?”

  She shrugged. “Him and Marissa is going to give him a ride.”

  I breathed a prayer of thanksgiving that Susannah was still searching inside. “What kind of ride, sweetie?”

  “A popochute.”

  “Say that again, sweetie. I didn’t quite catch it.”

  “A popochute.”

  “What on earth is that?”

  She scrunched her little face into a look of total disdain. “Don’t you know nothing, lady?”

  I glared at her. “A lot more than you, toots. If you ever want to see Mickey again—”

  “There!”

  I looked in the direction her stubby finger indicated. At first all I could see was the barn. Then just below the hayloft window, a full thirty feet from the ground, I saw a white speck.

  “Popochute,” the tyke said.

  I gasped. Then, much to my credit, I sprang into action. At the risk of sounding vain, Carl Lewis has nothing over me. I covered the ground from the house to the barn in five seconds flat. By my reckoning I had the sixty-second mile down pat. Even then, I got there just in time to catch the little parachute before it crashed heavily into the earth.

  The Dixon kids might have been bright, but they were not versed in the laws of aerodynamics. A single man’s handkerchief is not going to offer enough air resistance to give a three-pound pooch a safe ride to the ground from the upper story of a barn. It was a close call.

  Poor, pitiful Shnookums. My heart, which was pounding like a drum along the Mohawk, almost went out to the beast. He looked almost cute, clad as he was in a lacy pink doll dress, with matching bonnet

  At least the Dixon urchins had been thoughtful enough to supply a green plastic strawberry basket for the pooch to sit in. It wasn’t like they tied the strings directly to his ears and tail like I might have done. Back when I was a child, I mean.

  “Is Susannah’s widdle Shnookums Pookums okay?” I cooed.

  Shnookums snarled and snapped at my shnoz, thereby ending any chance we had of bonding. I almost handed him back to the terrible two.

  “Give me back that rat!” Bradley demanded.

  “Yeah, give it back you big, ugly witch!” Marissa pointed to her nose and rolled her eyeballs back until only the whites showed.

  The terrible two had inadvertently saved the cur’s ungrateful carcass. Nobody speaks that way to me and gets away with it. I know, I am supposed to turn the other cheek, to be long-suffering, meek, and a host of other virtues. I try to behave like that, I really do, but I seem to have a threshold that is lower than that of my coreligionists. Perhaps, as a visiting psychiatrist once told me, I am the victim of my parents’ upbringing. Dr. Alice Well should know, since she is the author of the best-selling book Everything I Didn’t Need to Know, I Learned From My Mother.

  But I digress. “Go straight to your rooms,” I ordered. “March! And not one word of back talk, or you won’t get any supper. As it is, there’s no dessert for either of you. Now get!”

  Simply said, they got.

  “Brava!”

  I whirled.

  Dr. Brack was standing there, his hands arrogantly on his hips, an amused smile tugging at his mouth.

  As I caught my breath, I prayed for deliverance from Mama’s upbringing. Dr. Brack is a paying customer, after all. And his only crimes were lurking about and trying to peddle that preposterous posture contraption.

  “Guess I scared you, didn’t I?” He chuckled.

  The patience I had prayed for was slow in coming. “Scare me again and you won’t get your dessert, either.”

  “Hmm. What’s for dessert?”

  “Upside-down caramel apple pie.”

  “In that case I’ll be more careful to announce my presence. I’ve always had a sweet tooth.”

  “Supper’s at six o’clock sharp. That’s half an hour from now. Even if the others—say, why aren’t you in town with the others?”

  “I’m not a tourist,” he said, suddenly indignant. “I didn’t come here to gawk, I came to relax.”

  I glanced over at my newly paved parking lot. It is a recent addition, and cost a pretty penny, but it has cut down substantially on complaints from customers about their cars being dinged by gravel. At any rate, Dr. Brack’s Pontiac with the personalized plate bearing his name was now parked there in all its gleaming splendor, whereas it had not been there upon my return from town.

  “Well, in that case you may want to try out one of those rockers on the front porch. They are very comfortable, and you can see the pond across the road from the porch. I paid good money for those rocking chairs, but I might as well have poured it down the drain.”

  Frankly, it irked me that this was the squirmiest bunch of guests I could remember. Schusslich, Freni called them. Not one of them could stay still long enough for a fly to land.

  Dr. Brack shrugged, proving my point. “We each relax in our own way, don’t we? I, for one, prefer a nice drive through the country over rocking. How do you relax, Mrs. Miller?”

  I was both shocked and irritated. How I relaxed was none of his business. If I knew—which I didn’t—I certainly wasn’t going to tell him.

 
“Well, I’ve got work to do and time and tide wait for no man,” I said, using one of Mama’s favorite quotes. I started back to the house.

  “Mrs. Miller?” He was jogging to keep up—we Yoders are world-class walkers, especially when we’re provoked.

  “What is it?”

  “Have you given any more thought to wearing one of my braces?”

  I gave it a quick thought. “Yes, I’ve given it some thought.”

  “And?”

  “Well—”

  “Before you say another word, Mrs. Miller, I have some good news for you. I want to tell you that I’ve changed my mind and decided to go on your popular ALPO plan.”

  “You have?” That was indeed good news, now that Susannah was likely to quit so that she could fling herself full-time into Melvin’s arms.

  “Oh, yes. And I’m going to shovel out your barn just like you suggested. Provided that Pulitzer guy snaps my picture.”

  “I’m sure Angus will be happy to do so.”

  “So?”

  “Is that a needle pulling thread?” I asked with remarkable kindness, considering my mood.

  “So, are you going to reciprocate and wear one of my braces?”

  He had at last worn my resistance down to a mere nub. “Yes!” I nearly screamed. “I’ll wear one of your braces.”

  “You’ll be happy you did,” he said, falling a little behind. “It will improve your posture a great deal. You tend to slouch, you know. But one of my braces will straighten you right up. It’ll make your bosoms appear larger as well.”

  “Well, I never!”

  I slouched away so fast he ate my dust.

  Chapter Ten

  Great-Grandma Blough’s Upside-Down Caramel Apple Pie

  (“Messy on the plate, but clean on the tongue.”)

  Crust

  2 ready-made pie crusts to fit deep 9-inch pan Caramel

  ½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

  ½ cup finely chopped pecans

  ¼ cup melted butter (or full fat margarine)

  1 teaspoon warm honey

  Filling

  6-8 baking apples, peeled, cored, and sliced.