As the World Churns (17 page)

    They turned, moving as a single entity. This time, I got straight to the point.

    “Somebody tossed a cigarette butt into the Dorfman brothers’ paddock. Since it wasn’t them, and it wasn’t me, the odds are it was one of you.”

    As a former stockbroker, Dick Pearlmutter was used to thinking fast on his genuine Italian leather-clad feet. “I don’t know what makes me angrier, Miss Yoder, the fact that somebody has tried to compromise our livestock, or the fact that you have just accused me of this heinous act.”

    “I haven’t accused all of you, dear: just the guilty party.”

    “What about Miss Fuselburger? She looks like a chain-smoker to me.”

    
“How rude!
True perhaps, but nonetheless rude. And for your information, I’ve already put her through the wringer. I’m satisfied that she’s innocent.”

    Vance Brown stepped out of the pack, stroking his handsome brown beard. Although a lifelong dairyman, he had the demeanor of a trial lawyer.

    “What about that Amish fellow who oversees the barn?”

    
“
Mose?
He doesn’t smoke, and he certainly doesn’t wear dark red lipstick.” Oops. I’d let the cat out of the bag, and believe me it’s a whole lot harder to stuff a feisty feline back into the bag-or bra, for that matter. (I once had a pussy that lived in my Maidenform.)

    “Lipstick!” the ladies cried in one voice.

    “Did I say that?”

    “You certainly did,” Vance said. “And a card laid is a card played, Miss Yoder, so please don’t try to duck the question.”

    “But I didn’t ask a question.”

    “Show us the cigarette butt, please.”

    He was so calm, so soothing, even, that I immediately extracted the tissue from my dress pocket. If pressed, however, I will admit to taking my own sweet time to
unwrap
the disgusting thing.

    “There,” I said, and literally waved the butt under their noses.

    “It smells like cherries,” Jane said. “As you can see, I don’t even wear lipstick, and if I did, you can bet it wouldn’t be cherry flavored.”

    “My wife is allergic to cherries,” Dick said. “She ate cherry cobbler in the cafeteria of her grammar school, and it put her in the hospital for two weeks.”

    Candy nodded vigorously. “A peanut nearly killed my friend Ophelia.”

    “Ophelia,” I repeated, letting the word roll off my tongue. “What a beautiful name. Her parents must have been fond of Shakespeare.”

    “Huh?”

    
“As in Hamlet.
Why, is there another Ophelia that I am not aware of?”

    “I dunno, Miss Yoder. My friend spells her name O-H-F-E-E-L-ya.”

    “Why, that doesn’t make a lick of sense!”

    “But hey,” Vance said quickly, “isn’t arsenic supposed to smell like cherries?”

    “Perhaps there’s arsenic in that cigarette stub,” Jane said. “Shouldn’t you be taking it to a lab and having it analyzed, instead of harassing us?”

    “Really,” Dick said. “We never expected this kind of treatment from a four-star establishment.”

    Four stars? Where ever did he hear that nonsense? The PennDutch doesn’t have
any
stars-well, except for the movie stars that often stay here. Thank goodness the reviews of my little establishment were initially quite good, which eventually led to word-of-mouth business. Since then, I’ve had mostly bad publicity, thanks to the murders and a few bad sports
who
refuse to get into the spirit of ALPO. But, like they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. The more folks grumble about my business when they get back home, the more free advertising I get. And since Freni is getting ready to retire soon, I might consider serving only bread and water for meals. . . .

    “Miss Yoder!” Dick roared. “You look like you’ve totally zoned out.”

    “I was lost in thought; it was unfamiliar territory.”

    “That’s an old one,” Jane sniffed.

    I treated her to a look that should have frozen Miller’s Pond. Then, after carefully pocketing the cigarette butt, I
hightailed
my own tail across
Hertzler Road
, fairly flew across Gabe’s front meadow-but still taking care to skirt Miller’s Pond-and dashed up my true love’s front steps. After all, the only other two people I knew in Hernia who smoked were my sister and my mother-in-law.

    Unfortunately, I was still panting when my worst nightmare answered the front door. “Oy, it’s only you.”

    “I-I-I-”

    “It’s alvays about you, right?”

    
“Aye, aye, sir.”

    “So now you mock me. Vhat else is new?”

    
“The amount of rancor with which I do.
Heretofore, the bonds of holy matrimony not yet tightened snugly into place, my tongue shied not from being glib. At times it even gyred and gimbled in the wabe. But now that I have cloven to your son-if that is indeed the past tense of cleave-I feel much more inclined to treat you as if you were flesh of my own flesh. Although surely said phrase must make even the most accommodating vegetarian feel slightly queasy.”

    “You’re meshugah, Magdalena.”

    
“No doubt because my birth mother was an escaped mental patient who gyred and gimbled in the hayloft with Papa.
At least, that’s another theory-one which I have yet to explore.”

    
“Lies!
Vhatever you are saying is lies.”

    “I am merely saying that Gabe loves me ten times more than he loves you.”

    “More lies!”

    “While we’re on the subject, dear, could you explain this?” I fished out the stub.

    “Vhat’s the meaning of this? Vhere did you get my cigarette?”

    “So it
is
yours?”

    “You tink a person can buy this brand at Sam’s? Of course it’s mine; only in
New York
can one buy such a ting.” She made it sound as special as the Hebrew National salamis she schlepped back in her suitcase each time she went home for a visit.

    “Excuse me for not knowing the provenance of every brand of coffin nail on the market. Just tell me what it was doing in one of my cow stalls.”

    Her hands are even stubbier than Freni’s, but she put them to good use by snatching the butt away from me. She held it at arm’s length for a good look, which put it about a foot from her face.

    “Dis isn’t mine,” she said at last.

    “But you said it was.”

    “Den maybe I was wrong.”

    I studied her face. Gabe had her eyes, but not much else. But that was enough. Ida Rosen was lying through her dentures.

    “You’re lying.”

    
“Such chutzpah I never hoid!”

    
“Touché.
Fess up, Ma Rosen, before I call your son out to arbitrate.”

    
“Your daughter.”

    “You mean my husband.”

    “Now you’re hard of hearing as vell?”

    “But you said-wait, are you talking about Alison?”

    
“You heff another daughter, perhaps?”

    My blood began a slow simmer. “Do you have proof that Alison stole your cigarette?”

    “Believe me, eef I did, I vould have come to you. Deese tings are killers. I vouldn’t vant dat my shtep-granddaughter should end up like me. But dis”-a liver-colored nail traced the red edge of the filter-”dis is Kool-Aid.
Cherry, I tink.
Mit
sugar.
Alison likes to leek it from da package. I give her dis last night vhen she vas here.”

    Instantly, my blood temperature went from simmer to cold. “She was
here
? When, exactly?”

    Ida shrugged. Unlike Freni, she has a neck and can do a decent job of this gesture. Her bosoms, however, seem less secured, so that any movement of the shoulders sets the volleyball-size pair on a heaving frenzy. Should one or both break loose, there’s no telling what the fallout might be. I stepped back just to be on the safe side.

    
“I tink it vas around
ten o’clock
.
She came to say good night to my Gabeleh.
Maybe to me as vell, yah?
Den my son valked her back to your place.”

    I growled aloud. Didn’t either of the adults think to tell me about this? While it was sweet of Alison to come say her good-nights, she did so alone, with an escaped murderer gunning for our family-not to mention that brute who’d nearly killed an eighty-year-old man. Then no doubt, because she’d gotten away with it, Alison had sneaked out to the paddocks to enjoy a stolen cigarette. Someone, not just Alison, was going to pay for this oversight.

    “Dun’t
be
too hard on her, Magdalena. She is a teenager, and dis is vhat teenagers do.
My Gabeleh vas no picnic lunch either, yah?”

    “But she could have gotten herself killed coming over here- or worse. Melvin is a psychopath. There’s no telling what he’d do.”

    “True. But she didn’t get killed, so eet is important to keep perspective.
Een
Germany
-but never mind.”

    I was stunned. I knew Ida was a Holocaust survivor, but she has never, ever talked about it. Not even to Gabriel and his sisters. To my knowledge, this is the first time she has even said the G-word since coming to Hernia, where our Amish speak a dialect of German, and which has to be a constant reminder to her of a painful past. Finally, but only after a great deal of stammering, I was able to speak.

    “Ida, would you mind-”

    “I mind.”

    “But-”

    “Vee
are
done talking about me. So, you vill let me get back to my houseverk now?”

    “Can’t you at least tell me how Gabe misbehaved?”

    
“Vhat?”

    “You said that he wasn’t a picnic.”

    “Oy, the stories I could tell.
Perhaps another time, yah?”

    “Another time, then,” I said.

    Frankly, I was stunned into acquiescence by a trace of warmth in her voice. This was a side of Ida I had never seen before. Besides, she was so right: I should concentrate on being grateful that Alison was alive and well, and enjoying a sleepover with a friend. There would be plenty of time later to make heads roll.
Metaphorically, of course.

    After lunch at the inn-you can be sure the Dorfman brothers donned shirts-I drove the twelve miles in to
Bedford
County
Memorial
Hospital
. Doc was still unconscious and in the ICU, but, nonetheless, it was important to me that I see him.

    The hospital is famous for its good-looking interns of both genders, so my walk from the parking lot and my elevator ride up to his floor were shamefully pleasant. I might even have been joshing with a young doctor named Josh as I exited, but even if that is true, I certainly did not deserve what happened next.

    First of all, how was I to know that a nurse would be walking past the doors when they opened? And, pray tell, how on earth was I to know that said nurse, whom I just happened to run into-quite literally-would be the dreadful Nurse Dudley?

    “I’m so sorry,” I said as I stooped to pick her up.

    She turned at the sound of my voice, and then exploded like a waterlogged frankfurter. “It’s you!”

    I staggered backward in surprise, rebounded off the opposite wall, and then teetered back in her direction. Perhaps we might have gotten past this awkward reunion, had she not stuck a foot out to trip me,
and
had I not, whilst in the process of trying to keep my balance, reached out and grabbed one of her female appendages. Even then, all might not have been lost, had she not suffered a wardrobe malfunction of the first degree.

    Nurse Dudley-or Nurse Ratched, as I am wont to call her- is one of those women whom one tends to find more frequently amongst the very devout-whose underpinnings are not only extraordinarily large, but inexplicably stiff, as if made from steel.
A mighty fortress, as it were
. A citadel of womanhood-although one is
loathe
to imagine what lies beneath these formidable structures.