Just Plain Pickled to Death (15 page)

“So, Uncle Jonas, how was your flight?” I asked for everyone’s benefit.

My Pooky Bear beamed at my diplomacy skills.

“Bumpy,” Uncle Jonas said. He looked like he was about to bolt.

“Was it? I’ve never flown, you know. I’d love to, of course. I’ve just never had the opportunity. Mama never saw the sense in it, and then after she died—well, I’ve just been too busy.”

“Travel isn’t what it’s cracked up to be,” Auntie Vonnie said, her mouth full of bun. “We went to Europe last summer, and it was boring. If you’ve seen one museum, you’ve seen them all, if you ask me. Did you know they actually put broken statues in them?”

“Really?”

“With no arms and legs! Some of them don’t even have heads. It must be their economy, Rudy says. All this talk about how weak our dollar is and how strong their currencies are—well, it’s all stuff and nonsense. Just look at their museums.”

“You don’t say!”

“Oh, yes. But I will admit that the little foot baths they put in all the hotel rooms are mighty soothing after walking on those cobblestones all day.”

“Well, I’ve always enjoyed traveling,” Auntie Lizzie said sweetly. “Manasses and I keep talking about a trip to the Holy Land. Where would you go, dear, if you had the chance?”

I graced her with a warm smile. “Well, I’m not sure. I’d have—” I was reaching to pass the platter of barbecue buns when I noticed the word “Japan” stenciled on the bottom. “Japan,” I said quickly.

Auntie Lizzie nodded approvingly. “Good choice. That’s where I’d go. After the Holy Land, of course. These days Asia is a much more chic destination than Europe. And Japan, I hear, is the place to be.”

“Definitely,” Uncle Jonas said.

“Moo goo gai pan,” Auntie Magdalena whimpered.

“No, that’s Chinese, dear,” I informed her kindly.

“She said, ‘You knew Diane.’ She said it to him.” Uncle Elias, having translated his wife’s garbled verbiage, nodded in the direction of Uncle Jonas.

“Who is Diane?” I asked politely.

“Diane Lefcourt, a friend of Becca’s,” Leah boomed. “As far as anyone knows, she was the last person to speak to our sister—besides you-know-who.”

“Really?” I presumed that the you-know-who in question was the murderer, not Uncle Jonas.

Uncle Jonas squirmed. “Of course I knew Diane. She was my wife’s best friend, damn it!”

“You know what she means,” Uncle Elias said. “You knew that Diane was a bad influence on Becca.”

“Amen,” Aaron Senior said.

“Amen,” everyone chorused, except for Susannah, younger Aaron, and me.

“My Becca was a grown woman, and I didn’t pick her friends,” Uncle Jonas growled.

“Birds of a feather flock together,” Auntie Lizzie said primly. “And there was always trouble following that Diane woman.”

“Ah, yes, that Diane woman,” Uncle Rudy said, sounding wistful. We all looked at him and he shrugged.

“Did you tell her?” Uncle Jonas said suddenly to me.

“I didn’t even know this Diane person, dear.”

He gave me a knowing look. “Not that. I’m talking about Leah and my condition.”

“What condition?” Auntie Leah sat bolt upright in her seat. “And what’s it have to do with me?”

“Mucus, membrane, melanin,” Susannah mumbled. I kicked her sharply again. She was acting strange even for herself.

“Well?” Auntie Leah demanded.

“Nothing dear,” I said quickly. “She’s just talking gibberish.”

“Not her—him!”

“A deal’s a deal,” Uncle Jonas said calmly. “If you don’t tell her, then I will.”

“Tell me what?” Lacking a proper neck, Auntie Leah had to turn her torso to look at Uncle Jonas. All of us, Susannah included, stared in the direction indicated.

“Oh, it’s just something about a diary,” I said casually. “I’ll tell you after supper.”

“Diary?” my sister asked.

I patted her arm. “You know, Susannah, Sarah’s diary.”

All faces turned my way.

I took a deep breath. When the cat is out of the bag already, you have only two choices as far as I can see: pretend you let the cat out on purpose or put the bag over your head and hope you suffocate. I wasn’t about to do the latter, not with Pooky Bear about to be mine. I mean truly mine.

“Uncle Jonas has Sarah’s diary. In it Sarah mentions that she knows who killed her mother. Jonas and I thought it would be a great idea if we showed it to the police. Don’t you all agree?”

There was a chorus of “yes’s.” In retrospect there weren’t as many “yes’s” as I might have expected, but I was too distracted by that damn cat to notice who abstained.

“It isn’t yours to show,” Uncle Jonas said quietly.

Nine heads and one torso swiveled to face the opposite end of the table.

“Well, she was my niece,” Leah boomed.

“Here, here,” someone said.

“Ah, you,” Uncle Jonas said accusingly to Leah.

“Me what? Out with it, Jonas! What is it you’re accusing me of this time?”

He sat there like a tidy little Buddha, smiling placidly, his hands folded in his lap. “Magdalena?” he said at last, his voice as scratchy as Mama’s old phonograph records of gospel music. “You care to do the honors, or shall I?”

I took a deep breath. My hands were balled into fists, something that genetics all but prevents me from doing. Clearly I was not a willing partner in this crime.

“Uncle Jonas would prefer that it be a private burial,” I said quickly, “with none of us present.”

“Impossible!”

“Unheard of!”

“Absolutely not!”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“No way!”

The last was from Susannah. I patted her reassuringly.

“Well, how about limited attendance at the funeral?” I felt like Abraham arguing with God over the fate of doomed Sodom and Gomorrah.

“What do you mean, limited attendance?” My very own Pooky Bear was the first to challenge me.

“Well, it has been twenty years, hasn’t it? I mean, we don’t all need to attend, do we? Suppose just some of us went and the others stayed home?”

“Why?” Auntie Lizzie was now betraying me.

“Why? Well, uh—well, suppose Uncle Jonas didn’t want all of us there?” It was a mere whisper.

All eyes shifted to Uncle Jonas again, but he only smiled and nodded at me, so they whipped their heads around yet again. They were like observers of a miniature tennis match—all except poor Auntie Leah, of course, who had to swivel her torso. Undoubtedly the woman has a flat, tight tummy that belies her girth.

I looked past her and fixed my gaze on a spot on Uncle Sol’s collar. “Okay, Uncle Jonas doesn’t want one of you in particular to be there. If you will all see me privately after supper, I’ll let you know if it’s you, in which case you will have time to come up with a decent excuse of your own to stay away and nobody will need to get hurt.” There, do I sound like a mean-spirited woman?

“Why is this mystery person being banned from the funeral in the first place?” Auntie Leah bellowed.

“Let’s just say—”

Uncle Jonas put a hand straight out in front of him, palm out, as if to stop me physically. “Because my Sarah asked this mystery person for help, and they turned her away.”

Auntie Leah gasped. “That’s awful!”

“Then why did you do it?” Uncle Jonas asked softly.

Chapter Seventeen

“What?” The townsfolk were going to accuse the YY air force of sonic booms again.

“I am accusing you of turning your back on my daughter when she needed you. She went to you, Leah, after her mother’s death, to tell you what she saw, but you turned her away.”

“I did no such thing!”

“Apparently you were too busy. And she was just a kid. A kid who ended up dying because of you.”

“That’s unfair,” Auntie Lizzie cried, and we all voiced our agreement.

“It’s in the diary. You read it, Magdalena.”

“I dig pot,” Auntie Magdalena whimpered.

“She did not,” Uncle Elias translated quickly.

Everyone looked at me.

“Sarah didn’t word it nearly that strong,” I said gently. “Anyway, how were you to know what she wanted to tell you?”

“Never turn a child away,” Auntie Vonnie humphed. “Jesus himself gave us that example in the Bible.”

“He certainly did.” Uncle Rudy patted his wife’s wrist, the perfect example of a supportive husband.

Auntie Vonnie ran with the encouragement. “I’d have to say I see poor Jonas’s point of view quite clearly. If he wants a private burial, then so be it.”

Uncle Rudy nodded.

“It’s all right with me,” Uncle Manasses said, much to my surprise. “Jonas is her father, after all. He should have his say.” He turned to Aunt Lizzie. “What do you think, dear?”

“Well, well, well” was all Auntie Lizzie said, but somewhere in the distance I heard a cock crow three times.

I was shocked at the way the room had polarized into two camps. Or at least I assumed it had. But perhaps I was wrong and everyone had turned against poor Auntie Leah. And if that was indeed the case, would I be brave enough to stand up for her?

“Auntie Magdalena, what about you? What do you have to say?”

“Leroy has a cart of mould,” she moaned.

“She said Leah has a heart of gold,” Uncle Elias said crisply. “And I agree.”

Auntie Magdalena mumbled a few more things and Elias nodded vigorously. When she was done he looked around the room slowly, his gaze settling briefly on each married couple.

“It is damn easy to get distracted when you’re a parent. There were any number of times when my own kids have tried to talk to me, but I was too busy just then. It’s happened to everyone. So, even though we haven’t seen the diary, my wife and I feel that it should have no bearing on whether or not Leah gets to attend the funeral. The funeral is, after all, a family event, and Leah is family.”

“But you’re not,” Vonnie said.

Mine wasn’t the only gasp.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Elias’s dark eyes flashed.

“I simply meant that this is a decision that should be made by blood.”

“Blood, bile, boogers,” Susannah intoned.

Auntie Vonnie gave Susannah a withering look and linked her arm through Uncle Rudy’s. “And anyway, what Elias just said doesn’t apply to us. We always had time to listen to our kids. And our neighbors’ kids as well. Had young Sarah come to me with her problem, she’d be sitting here today.”

“Aaron?” I looked beseechingly at my beloved.

My Pooky Bear cleared his throat. “I’d kind of like to take a peek into the diary first. Leah, at the very least, should get a chance to see what it says. In this country we’re innocent until proven guilty.”

I patted Aaron’s arm discreetly. “Pops?”

Aaron Senior swallowed an enormous bite of hot potato salad. Our discussion had not slowed down his ingestion process in the least. “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” he said carefully. “At least I think that’s how it goes. Damn, but I wish I still had my King James version.”

“Susannah?”

“Gall, gook, gangrene.”

“Susannah!”

“What?” The look she gave me was devoid of deceit, and I felt my stomach do a flip. Tomorrow I was going to have to trot out the yellow pages and look up a therapist over in Bedford. I had been sadly mistaken about her recovery.

“Hey, you didn’t ask me,” Uncle Sol said.

As we turned to look at him, Auntie Leah looked away. Possibly she had reason to believe her own husband would betray her.

“What about it, Uncle Sol?” I asked calmly. “Do you think Uncle Jonas has the right to bar an aunt from attending her niece’s funeral?”

Uncle Sol stood up. Given the uncles’ height it is sometimes hard to tell if they’re standing or sitting, but I saw the napkin fall from his lap.

“Leah and I have been partners now for fifty-two years. I stand by my wife. Leah should definitely get to read that diary, but regardless of what it says, she’s going to that funeral. She and Sarah were very close.” He sat down again, disappearing briefly while he recovered his napkin.

“Well, there you go,” I said to Uncle Jonas. “That’s eight against five. It seems pretty clear what the majority has ruled.”

Uncle Jonas gave us one of his neat smiles. Then he began to speak in that voice that can put new grooves in your records.

“This is absolutely absurd. First of all, she”—he pointed to Susannah—”isn’t even part of the family. Besides which, she didn’t express a valid opinion. She should be locked up, if you ask me.”

“Nobody asked you,” I snapped.

“And the Miller men both equivocated. As for you, Miss Magdalena Yoder—you aren’t part of the family either.”

I linked arms with my Pooky Bear. “I will be, come Saturday.”

Had I not been a pacifist and seated at the opposite end of the table, I would have knocked that tidy smile off his face. “Well, now,” he said, “while you were all out gallivanting today, I made a few calls. I even spoke to this Melvin person. My little Sarah’s funeral is going to be Wednesday afternoon at three o’clock, Beechy Grove Mennonite Church. You are all invited except for Leah.”

Twelve pairs of eyes stared, twelve mouths hung open. I was the first to recover.

“Get out of my house, Jonas Weaver! You are no longer welcome here. Delores Brown has a room waiting for you on Maple Street. She takes all kinds.”

I, however, was the first one to get up from the table. I can’t stand for folks to see me cry.

A scratchy roar may not be as bloodcurdling as a high-pitched scream, but it will get your attention. When it persisted too long to be merely a stubbed toe or a whacked crazy bone, we gathered, one by one, in the hall outside Uncle Jonas’s room.

“It was right here in my suitcase!”

I pushed through the throng. “What was? The diary?”

“No shit, Sherlock. What else?”

I said a silent prayer that the ghost of Grandma Yoder would continue to sleep peacefully. This had been her room, after all, and the only four-letter word my Pennsylvania Dutch-speaking grandmother knew was “soap,” something she fed me liberal amounts of when I tried to teach her more.

“Are you sure it’s missing?” someone asked.

Uncle Jonas pointed to the contents of his suitcase, spread across the bed in the neatest little piles you could imagine. Every item of clothing was folded just so. Even his socks—which had clearly been ironed—were folded, edge to edge, not balled, like Mama used to do with Daddy’s. His toiletries were lined up in precise rows, like soldiers on parade. There was obviously no diary.