From Bad to Wurst (7 page)

“So you'll help me out?”

“I don't see where I got no other choice. Margaret might drive me crazy, but she's still my kid, and…dang it”—she heaved a woeful sigh—“I love her.” She peeked at me above her wire rims. “You never heard them words leave my mouth. Right?”

“Right.” I stood up. “Would you like to see for yourself how mom's doing? Her room's at the end of the hall.”

“I s'pose.” She boosted herself to her feet. “Now's as good a time as any. But if she's got amnesia, how's she gonna know who I am?”

“She'll know you. It's not that kind of amnesia.”

As we skirted around a freebie newspaper that was lying outside the door of a nearby suite, I was reminded of what the morning had held for everyone who hadn't been holed up in the emergency room. “Did the reporter from the newspaper stop by to conduct all the promised interviews?”

“Reporters,” corrected Tilly. “They sent a battalion of them.”

“And a photographer what took all kinds of pictures,” Nana enthused. “Individual shots. Group shots. We're gonna be front page news tomorrow. Above the crease.”

“And the interviews were quite in depth,” added Tilly. “I was quite favorably impressed.”

Arriving at Mom's room, I knocked on the door while Nana fidgeted nervously beside me.

“Your mother still looks the same, don't she?”

“Yup. Same Mom.”

“She don't got a paralyzed face or twisted limbs or nuthin'?”

“She's suffering from a rare form of amnesia, Nana, not a session in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory.” I peered down at her, frowning. “Why do you want to know?”

“'Cuz if she's all bent over and gnarly like that creature from
Beauty and the Beast
, I gotta prepare myself. I'm old. The fright could kill me.”

Etienne opened the door and held it wide, welcoming us into the room. “Come in, ladies. Margaret? You have guests.”

Mom bustled across the floor to greet us. “Emily! You're here, too?” She crushed me against her bosom. “Isn't that funny how we're all here together? How did that happen?”

“Lots of planning, Mom.”

She held me away from her and searched my face. “No, really, how
did
that happen? I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't even know where
here
is.”

“We're in Germany,” said Tilly, “touring the country with all our friends from Iowa, and you and Bob are traveling with us.”

“Bob,” Mom recited with confidence as she wheeled away from me to scan the room. “Where
is
Bob?”

“Band practice,” said Etienne. “With the Guten Tags. You're on the Sounds of Music tour, Margaret.”

“With all my friends.” She looked suddenly perplexed. “But where
are
we?”

Nana shuffled up beside me and whispered out the side of her mouth, “She don't know where she is?”

I forced a stiff smile. “Did I forget to mention that?”

“Ladies?” Etienne pulled on his sports coat and headed for the door. “With Margaret in your capable hands, I'll excuse myself to attend to other duties. I'll send out an email alert after I've spoken to Wally about this afternoon's itinerary. And if you miss that, just check the whiteboard in the lobby.”

“That man is so much more than a heartthrob,” cooed Mom as she watched him leave. “Impeccable manners. Nurturing. Organized. The only thing that could possibly make him any more attractive is an eye patch. So!” She clapped her hands together and nodded toward the chairs surrounding the coffee table. “Sit down. Make yourselves comfortable. I'm sorry Bob isn't here to welcome you, but he's”—she spun in a slow circle, her eyes scrutinizing the room—“he seems to be missing at the moment. Bob?”

“He's practicing with the oompah band,” I reminded her as I lowered myself into a barrel chair.

“Bob's in a band?” She seated herself opposite me, her eyes narrowing as she struggled to give the information some context. “Remind me what instrument he plays?”

“He don't play no instrument,” said Nana as she sank down beside Tilly on the sofa. “So you don't need to remember nuthin', which is a blessin' considerin' what I'm seein'.”

Just an observation, but I suspected that Nana's vow to lose the snark might require more practice than she realized.

Mom shifted her attention to Tilly, her little moon face a complete blank. “So Tilly, would you like to introduce me to your friend?”

seven

“It's Nana, Mom. Nana?
You know. Your mother?”

“My mother's still alive?”

Nana fisted her hands on her hips. “Do I look dead to you, Margaret?”

Mom cocked her head slowly left and right as she studied Nana's face. “How honest do you want me to be?”

Nana stiffened up like an arthritic joint, a clever comeback apparently trapped behind her clenched teeth. “Ohhh, I get it. You're havin' a little fun with your old mother. Pretendin' to remember everyone except me.”

Mom continued to scrutinize Nana's face. “Uh-uh!”

“What's
that
s'posed to mean?” demanded Nana.

“Just a friendly observation, but if you don't stop smoking, your skin is going to look like a slab of beef jerky.”

“I've never smoked no cigarettes.”

Mom pulled a face. “You can fool some of the people some of the time.”

“Don't make me come over there, Margaret,” warned Nana, spearing Mom with a look that would have silenced any normal person whose filter hadn't been temporarily knocked out of order by amnesia.

“I'm sorry.” Mom flashed a vacuous look. “What did you say your name was?”

The word exploded from Nana's mouth like a dart from a dart gun. “
marion
.”

“Oh! Like Marion the Librarian? Remember that old movie with Shirley Jones and Robert Preston?” Hands clasped over her bosom, Mom suddenly burst into song. “Marian…Madam Librarian, la-la-la, dum-de-dah, something something, Madam Librarian…”

Nana shot me a thorny look. “Not that kind of amnesia, huh?”

Okay. So the downside of the situation was that Mom couldn't recall Nana worth beans. But the upside was, she killed at almost remembering Academy Award-winning musicals from the sixties.

A symphony of text alerts echoed through the room. Nana, Tilly, and I went for our cell phones while Mom sprang out of her chair and rushed into the kitchen. “Is that the timer on the microwave?” She checked out the unit while we retrieved the message from Wally:
meet in lobby in one-half hour to board coach for oberammergau
.

“The dinging isn't from the microwave, Mom. It's from our cell phones.” I held up my unit. “Text alerts.”

“Do I have a cell phone?”

“You bet. It's probably in your pocketbook.”

“Where's my pocketbook?”

“Uh…wherever housekeeping stashed it when they moved your belongings to your new room. Nana can help you find it.” I stood up, my mind racing at warp speed. “Okay, can you two ladies get Mom ready to go and have her downstairs in half an hour?”

Nana looked at me as if I'd invited her to sip a refreshing glass of bleach. “I don't wanna cause you no disappointment, dear, and I sure don't wanna give the Good Lord no reason to turn his back on me, but I'm not up to this. If I was a little more hard a hearin', I might have the stomach for it, but I don't got no copin' skills for listenin' to your mother ask me what my name is every two minutes. It's humiliatin'.”

“You can count on us,” Tilly spoke up. “We'll have Margaret there with time to spare, won't we, Marion?”

“Wasn't you listenin' to what I just told Emily?”

“You don't mean that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I need to run down to my room and at least brush my teeth before I go anywhere,” I said as I hurried into the kitchen to corral Mom. I looked into her eyes and spoke slowly and emphatically. “I'll see you in thirty minutes, okay? Tilly and Nana will take good care of you while I'm gone. Thirty minutes. Do everything they ask you. All right? Then we'll join the rest of the tour group.”

“We're on a tour?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” muttered Nana.

As I headed out the door, I considered the irony of Nana's situation, from being smothered by the overreaching attentions of her daughter to becoming a nameless stranger.

If allowed a choice between the two now, I wondered which one she'd choose.

“In 1633, halfway through the Thirty Years' War, the Black Death swept through Germany, killing a quarter of a million people. But the village we're about to explore, Oberammergau, was spared total decimation. Legend holds that only a handful of villagers became infected before the disease miraculously disappeared.”

We were heading south on the A95, maintaining moderate speed while pricey, spit-polished cars in a festive range of colors from dark gray to black zoomed past us. Wally sat at the front of the bus, entertaining us with a little history about the town whose five- syllable name no one could pronounce. Etienne held down the front with him while I hung out in the back, sharing a seat with Mom.

“What stopped the plague dead in its tracks?” Wally asked rhetorically.

“D-Con,” shouted Lucille Rasmussen, whose deceased husband had once run a successful pesticide company with the catchy motto “
We get rid of what's bugging you
.”

“Penicillin,” called out Margi.

“Good guesses,” said Wally. “Wrong century. Once again, legend has it that the people of Oberammergau made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if he saved their village, they'd perform a pious play commemorating his suffering and death every ten years for time immemorial. And whether you choose to believe it or not, once the vow was offered up, the plague petered out and caused no more deaths. The first play was presented a year later in 1634, and the ten- year schedule has been maintained ever since 1680. Tickets are now on sale for the 2020 performance, so if you're in the market to attend a sixteen-act Passion play that takes five and a half hours to perform and features eight hundred actors on stage at the same time, buy your tickets now because they sell out fast.”

“We should do that,” Mom remarked as she gave my knee a friendly pat. “I'd be the envy of every parishioner at Holy Redeemer.”

I got so excited, my voice sounded as if it had been shanghaied by Munchkins. “You know the name of our church?”

“Of course I know the name of our church. I've only been attending the same one all my married life.”

“You've turned a corner, Mom. You're on the road to recovery!” I leaned toward the seatback in front of me and tapped the crown of Nana's head. “Mom remembers the name of our parish church.”

Nana peeked over the top of her seat, doubt in her eyes as she squinted at Mom. “What's the name of the fella what got elected president last time?”

“Last time?” Mom's eyes darted wildly in her sockets as she tapped her memory bank. “Uhhh…” She broke out in a sudden smile. “How badly do you need to know? Because if it's a real emergency, I bet Osmond could tell us.”

“Not that kind of amnesia,” grumbled Nana as she faced forward in her seat again. “
Pfffft
.”

“This little wrinkled woman in front of us,” Mom whispered in my ear. “She's very crabby. By any chance, is her name Bernice?”

Okay, so maybe I'd jumped the gun on the turning the corner thing.

“There's some great shopping in Oberammergau,” Wally in-formed us as we exited the highway onto a secondary road. “A good majority of the villagers are famed woodcrafters, so if your taste runs toward intricate wood carvings, you've come to the right place: nativity scenes, Madonnas, crucifixes, cutting boards, kitchen utensils. And the Ammer Valley is a great area for hiking and sports, so you'll find some terrific deals on outdoor gear. For those of you who can never have your fill of Christmas and all its trimmings, there are two K
ä
the Wohlfahrt shops on the main street, selling everything from traditional German nutcrackers to incense smokers to music boxes. We'll be there in a few minutes, so I'd advise you to start drawing up those shopping lists.”

“Astrid loved Christmas,” Hetty lamented from the aisle seat across from me. “If she was here with us, she'd head straight for those Christmas shops and buy so many ornaments, she wouldn't have space in her suitcase to carry them all back.”

“Would you have tagged along with her?” asked Zola, who occupied the window seat beside her. Wally had declared open seating on the bus today, so the guest pairings were all over the place.

“I didn't enjoy shopping as much as Astrid did. It was a recreational sport for her. But I would have tagged along anyway because Astrid was just a fun person to be around. She had Miss Congeniality written all over her.”

“She was an extrovert, huh?”

“I don't know about that, but she always wanted to include everyone in what she was doing and never shut anyone out.” Hetty's voice sounded accusatory as she directed this comment to the seatback in front of her, where Otis Erickson and Gilbert Graves were sitting.

“Oh, she was an extrovert all right,” said Zola. “I knew that the moment I laid eyes on her. I bet those stage performances of yours really energized her while they leave you feeling completely drained.”

Hetty grew quiet. “They do. The noise, the people, playing my clarinet all night—it's exhausting. It takes me forever to recharge my batteries. But how do you know that? You've never seen us play, have you?”

“I don't need to see you play. The proof is in a person's eyes—the energy, the animation. Introverts lack the firecracker spark that's always twinkling in an extrovert's eyes.”

Hetty jutted her chin into the air in a defensive gesture and coaxed a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You make introverts sound like duds. We're not duds. We're simply more cerebral and less vocal than other folks, which seems to be highly underrated in some circles.” She glared at the seatbacks in front of her again.

“I'm not knocking introverts,” chuckled Zola. “What I'm saying metaphorically is that if you're a leopard, I can identify you by your spots.”

Clairvoyants seemed to have a much better grasp of symbolic speech than either Catholics or Lutherans.

Hetty shot a look across the aisle at me. “So what's Emily?”

Zola leaned forward, winking at me as she cracked a smile. “Big-time extrovert. I'm surprised you even have to ask. Can you see the vitality in her eyes? That's what I'm talking about.”

Zola might call it vitality. I called it acute ocular bleariness due to lack of sleep.

Otis angled around in his seat, his cheeks flushed beneath his Santa Claus beard. “Is it true you read Astrid's fortune before she died?”

“I tried, but—” she paused. “There was too much noise and not enough time, so…I couldn't tell her anything. I suggested we try again later when we weren't standing in the middle of the city plaza.”

Gilbert craned his neck to peer over his seatback. “If you were a real psychic, wouldn't you have known there'd never be a later for her?”

“Real psychics aren't in the business of frightening people. You might find this surprising, but if I'd sensed she was going to die, I wouldn't have told her. I may be many things, but I'm not heartless.”

“How about you show us what you've got?” suggested Otis. “Do your fortunetelling routine with Gil right here.”

“I don't want my fortune told,” protested Gilbert, looking as if he's just been slapped.

“C'mon, Gil.” Otis egged him on. “Be a sport.”

“
You
be a sport. I don't want her messing with my personal karma.”

Otis's booming voice took on an edge. “Got something to hide?”

A vibe so toxic passed between the two men that I swore I heard the hiss of a light saber slashing through the air.

“If you're so gung-ho to see Zola in action,
you
be the guinea pig,” spat Gilbert. He scrunched up his nostrils and sniffed, a gesture that seemed to autocorrect the position of his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

Zola looked from one man to the other. “Any takers? I'm anxious to get back up on my horse after my epic fail yesterday, so I'll be more than happy to oblige. What do you say, Otis?”

“Me?” His Adam's apple bobbed uncomfortably. “Nah. Not my thing.”

“Why not?” taunted Gilbert. “Got something to hide?”

Zzzzzzzt
went the tension between the two musicians again.

Zola turned to Hetty. “How 'bout you? Are you game?”

“No!” Hetty looked more terrified than a shopaholic whose credit cards were about to be shredded. “Why should I let you dig into my life when the guys aren't man enough to let you dig into theirs? But why doesn't that surprise me? Par for the course for them.” The look she fired at Gilbert and Otis caused their expressions to stiffen with what could only be described as extreme discomfort.

“I'll volunteer,” offered Mom, breaking into the conversation with bubbly enthusiasm. “Maybe she can tell me where I am.”

Zola tossed me a look across the aisle. “Are you all right with that?”

“Go for it.” Mom had nothing to lose, actually. If the reading turned out to be apocalyptic, she'd probably be distraught for all of a minute. Two minutes, tops.

While Mom and Hetty exchanged seats, Wally resumed his announcements. “We'll be in Oberammergau for four hours. Please take note of the murals painted on the façades of the houses because it's one of the features that make the local architecture so unique. The majority of murals depict religious scenes, but if you take a stroll down Ettaler Strasse, off the central plaza, you'll be treated to whimsical scenes from Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. Visit the museum on the main street if you'd like to be wowed by 350 years of local art, and if you're in the mood for an afternoon snack, I'd recommend the Hafner Stub'n. The food is great, but the exterior is so spectacular, you might want to devote your time to picture-taking rather than eating. The bus will drop us off at the Passion Play House. From there it's a short two-minute walk to the main street.”