“Do you remember that beautiful long coat that the Russian woman had?” Agnes said. “You know, the one who was spying on us from the hill opposite my house?”
This was, incidentally, four years after the Melfia paid a visit to the PennDutch Inn. They say that time flies by when you’re having fun. I’d like to add that it can also seem to pass by quickly- especially in retrospect-even when you’re alone and miserable. Not that I ever am; I can usually manage to drag at least one person down in the dumps with me.
“She wasn’t Russian,” I said calmly, as I refilled the cookie plate for the third time. “She was an FBI agent and as American as you or I, or these butter cookies. I thank the Good Lord she was spying on me the day I climbed into the SUV containing Mr. and Mrs. Zambezi and the not so helpless Ida. She was doing a good job of following us that afternoon until she ran out of gas. Fortunately she kept a jerrican in her trunk. Better late than never, they say.”
“Yes, but do you remember her coat?”
“I remember that she dressed beautifully-and that she was beautiful. You know, the Bureau had been on the trail of this gang of six for almost a year with no results, and then they assigned her, and within a week she not only had proof of their culpability-she had everyone in custody except for Carl Zambezi.”
Agnes is a portly woman who doesn’t gain weight by osmosis. For every two cookies I’d been putting on the plate, she’d been putting one in her mouth. She is, however, my very best friend in the entire world, and I would never say a word against her.
“But, Magdalena, it wasn’t Suri-Sura-whoever-”
“Surimanda.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t her who apprehended all those gang members; it was you. You even stuffed one in the clothes dryer. You know, Magdalena, you’re my hero.”
“Hero, shmero,” I mumbled, feeling my face turn red. “Agnes, dear, I am going to miss you.”
“Nah, you won’t. Not on the trip you’re going on. A three-month cruise through the South Pacific; I can’t imagine how wonderful that would be.”
“Let’s not forget the extended land portions in New Zealand and Australia. Little Jacob will be staying with his father and grandmother in Manhattan, so I know he’ll be well taken care of.”
I paused to blink back some tears. It had been two years since the divorce was final, but there was still a part of me that wished Gabe could share this great experience. At least we were still friends.
Our marriage, which had always been rocky, never recovered from the Melfia’s invasion into our lives and my husband’s inability to protect us. Once again it was Magdalena to the rescue, and that was once too many for him. Soon after Little Jacob’s safe return to the PennDutch, Gabe moved across the road to the kooky convent, and six months later he was back in his native Manhattan. But enough of those thoughts.
“Anyway,” I said, “I decided to hike the Southern Alps and see Milford Sound. And I’ve always had a thing for Ayers Rock. Isn’t that odd?”
“Forgive me, Magdalena, but nothing’s odd when it comes to you.”
“Hmm, I think I’ll choose to take that as a compliment.”
“As well you should.” Agnes found room for three butter cookies simultaneously in her mouth.
“And you, dear,” I said, “you utterly gobsmacked us with your performance on America’s Most Talented. Who knew you had the pipes? Is that the word?”
“Yeth.”
“I mean, I knew you sang in your church choir, but not like
“You did not,” Agnes protested, spraying me with cookie crumbs.
“I most certainly did; I wept that it wasn’t me winning the million-dollar prize.”
“Now that I believe. But what I still can’t believe is that humongous flat-screen TV in your bedroom.”
I sighed. “As you know, I never used to watch TV until Gabe made me watch your first performance on YouTube on his computer. That’s when the Devil got into me.”
“It’s not a sin to watch TV, Magdalena. There are even special channels devoted exclusively to religion.”
I glanced around the kitchen. We were alone, except for our consciences.
“Monday night,” I whispered, “I watched a rerun of Two and a Half Men. What a potty mouth Charlie Sheen’s character has!”
“Why didn’t you turn it off, then?” she said. “Or, better yet, change the channel to something more uplifting?”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “I enjoyed every moment of it.”
Without warning my very best friend in the whole wide world threw her arms around me and gave me a buttery kiss on the forehead. When she released me, it took a couple of seconds for me to regain my equilibrium.
“ Magdalena,” she gushed, “I’m going to miss you more than I’d miss white bread if it were taken away. Will you write?”
“You know I get writer’s cramp easily; how about I call instead?”
“Okay,” she said, and fled outside. It was the last I would see of her for a very long time.
I took the plate that held the butter cookies into the adjacent dining room. The cookies themselves didn’t even make it as far as the table. No doubt about it they wouldn’t have made it out of the kitchen, had there not been a sign on the door that read: KEEP OUT.
The cookie culprits were a pack of teenage boys, but the crowd that filled the public rooms of my inn was composed of a wide mix of the friends, neighbors, and relations of Doc Shafor. It was officially the old geezer ’s ninetieth birthday, and the party was my present to him.
To say that Doc was a lech is a bit like calling Mozart musically inclined. The old coot lived to seduce the fairer sex,
Not seeing Doc in the dining room, I pushed through the throng until I got to the den. And voila! There he was, holding court whilst sitting in Great-great-great-granny Yoder’s hand-carved rocker. Frankly, a person has to be slightly off his, or her, rocker to spend any time in this chair, because it is terribly uncomfortable, built as it was back in the days when to enjoy oneself was considered a sin. Mankind was meant to suffer (it’s all there in the Book of Genesis).
“Doc,” I said happily.
“Ah, Magdalena, the fairest maiden in all the land.”
There followed a chorus of protests from the assembled spinsters, but I held up a silencing hand. “Doc, I believe that I no longer qualify as a maiden, given that I am fifty-six years old and the mother of an eight-year-old child.”
“ Magdalena, you will always be an honorary maiden in my eyes. Come, sit with me.” At that, the flirt-
“Doc!”
“Relax, Magdalena. This will be the last time I’ll ever get to see you.”
“No, it won’t; I’m only going to be gone three months-unless I take a yen to living in Japan. We’ll be stopping in Osaka on the way back to San Diego. That was a little joke, by the way.”
“Got it. But even if you come straight back, you’re going to have to share your travel stories with me up at Settler ’s Cemetery.”
I stiffened. “Doc, are you sick?”
“I’m old. My time has come, and I know it. Some folks are just blessed that way.”
“That’s crazy talk, Doc. Only God knows when we’re going to die.”
“Animals know, Magdalena. Sometimes days ahead. I was a veterinarian for sixty-two years, remember?”
“But you’re not an animal!”
“My mama died when she was ninety. She predicted her own death a full nineteen days beforehand.”
I jumped to my feet and fluffed my skirt. “You’re not your mother,” I said angrily. “You’re the most randy man in of all of Pennsylvania. Why, you’re supposed to ask me to marry you! That’s the tradition, or don’t you remember?”
And that was the tradition. Doc had been begging me to marry him for decades-and yes, shame on him, he did it even when I was married.
“Sorry, Magdalena, but all traditions have to come to an end. If you like, you can sit back down on my lap, and we can try to end this party on a high note.”
“Doc!”
He winked. But despite his pretense at virility, the dear man died that night in his sleep. I joined the cruise two days late because of Doc’s funeral, but considering it was a three-month cruise, a couple of days was no big deal.
Incidentally, approximately two hundred people mobbed the open house in honor of Doc’s ninetieth birthday, but only ten people showed up at his funeral-and that included me.
I am not a sentimental person. Still, saying good-bye to Freni hurt about us much as giving birth. I thought I’d said my final good-byes after she and her husband, Mose, had helped me clean up after Doc’s party, but of course I saw her again at the funeral. Afterward I walked her to the family buggy.
“If something happens to me on this cruise, Freni, I have written instructions for them to plant me wherever I am. If I’m at sea, they’re to toss me overboard.”
“Ach!”
“Well, there’s no use spending any of Little Jacob’s inheritance on shipping me back in a box. I don’t want to have an open-casket funeral in any case. I think the Jews have it right.”
“Stop this talk of dying. You will return from this cruise and drive me to attraction.”
“That’s not quite the vernacular, but hey, if it works, I might have a second career.”
“Riddles. Always the riddles.”
“Hmm. In that case, since I’m famous for asking them, let me ask you another: which high school English teacher married a doctor in December, but despite her promise to call her poor lonely mother at least once a week, doesn’t live up to her obligation?”
Freni shook her head, and as she lacks a neck, her smocked black travel bonnet jerked eerily from side to side atop her stout torso. “It is indeed a shame that you cannot call all the way to California on your cell phone,” she said.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“Have you tried calling Alison from the kitchen phone?” Freni said. The nerve of her for being so practical!
“That’s not the point,” I wailed (and this is truly the last time). “A daughter should call her mother, not the other way around.”
“Yah, perhaps. But times are changing.” She attempted a shrug. “Maybe it is not so important-this who calls who.”
