No Use Dying Over Spilled Milk (2 page)

“Over my dead body,” I said with sisterly sweetness.

“What’s-his-name was my cousin too,” she sniffed.

“You didn’t go to Aunt Pearl’s funeral two years ago,” I reminded her.

“But the Ohio men are so cute!” she wailed.

“I’m sure you can vouch for most of them, dear.”

“Of course, I could stay and throw a big party. Two of our guests are super-hunky, and one of them has already—”

“Only one small suitcase, dear. We’re not going to be gone that long.” To be truthful, I was hoping the luggage limitation would make her think things over a bit more carefully. Susannah dresses in a style that calls for voluminous amounts of flowing fabric. Since just one of her outfits can clothe a small Third World country, I knew that one small suitcase would be totally out of the question for her.

But much to my surprise, baby sister began jumping up and down for joy, and I feared for her dog, Shnookums. The mutt is one of those rat-sized dogs, and since Susannah has been cursed with a concave bosom, she often carries her pet around in her bra to act as ballast. Of course, I’m not exactly blessed in that department either, but at least I have the decency to use tissues. At any rate, Shnookums had begun to howl mournfully, and although I am no great fan of his, I will not tolerate cruelty to animals.

“Stop jumping, and start packing. I want to get to Ohio before dark.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Susannah mockingly saluted me and then swirled out of the room before I could issue further instructions.

“And the dog stays!” I shouted. I’m sure she didn’t hear me, but it didn’t matter. I’d frisk my sister before I let her put so much as one toe inside my car. If need be, I would even bring myself to look into her purse. Believe me, there are things in there that would make the whore of Babylon blush, but it is another of Shnookum’s haunts. There was no way I was going to drive the two hundred miles to Farmersburg with Freni Hostetler, Susannah Yoder Entwhistle, and that mangy mongoose for company. A gal has to put her foot down sometimes, and with size eleven shoes, that’s easy to do.

I had done my own packing and was about to check on the others when the doorbell rang. Since the front door of the inn is always unlocked during daylight hours, I knew at once that I had another salesman on my hands. When will those people ever learn? Well, perhaps they have. It used to be that they called, instead of coming over in person.

“PennDutch,” I would say cheerfully into the phone.

“Good morning, ma’am. I’m LeRoy Tibbs, from Tibbs Heating and Cooling. What kind of furnace are you using in your establishment?”

I’d quickly pick from my repertoire of fake accents. “Yah mon, dis here is de Jamaican PennDutch Inn. We have no furnace, mon.” Click.

That wasn’t a lie, mind you. Lies are told for nefarious purposes. I simply mean to decline in an entertaining way. If I were to really lie, Mama would turn over in her grave, and even the folks out in L.A. could tell I had fibbed by the tremors.

Now that the sellers come right to my door, dealing with them is even more of a challenge. I felt my pulse race as my brain strained to lock in on a persona. I decided to be a missionary just returned from Fiji. “Greetings,” I said in my meekest voice.

“Greetings right back at you, Magdalena.”

I looked up to see Aaron Miller’s sinfully handsome blue eyes fixed on me. I wished then that I was a missionary—still in Fiji. Certainly it couldn’t have felt any warmer over there.

“Are you going to let me in, Magdalena, or are you coming outside?”

I stared stupidly at him. I’ve known Aaron for a few months, or a lifetime, depending on how you choose to look at it. We spent our childhoods on neighboring farms, and then Aaron left to escape the draft. It was the height of the Vietnam War. We did not see each other again until last summer, when, on a beautiful cloudless day, he pushed me into his father’s pond (that is how I remember it). The important detail is that I fell head over heels in love for the first time in my life. And although he won’t come right out and admit it, Aaron fell in love too. With me, if you can imagine that!

“Magdalena,” he said gently, and then touched me with a finger the temperature of molten steel.

I jumped wordlessly aside. No male has ever made me feel like Aaron makes me feel. Surely it is a sin to feel this way outside the bonds of marriage. I will tell you, as proudly as my faith permits, that I have never known a man—not in the Biblical sense. I am forty-four years old and still a virgin. I have no experience in the ways of the flesh. And no—that time I sat on the washing machine during the spin cycle does not count! My point is that Aaron Miller makes my entire body bum, in a delicious sort of way, but I am not comfortable with the feeling.

“You look flushed, Magdalena.”

“I’ve been packing.”

“Going somewhere?”

“No, I’m just practicing in case I do.”

Just then Susannah came into the room dragging a suitcase large enough to have its own zip code. When she saw Aaron she all but squealed with delight. “Aaron!”

He glanced at her just long enough to see the suitcase. “Your sister must need to practice more than you do.”

I think Susannah might have said something then, but I don’t recall what it was. When Aaron’s in the room it’s hard to concentrate on anyone but him.

“So, where are you off to, Magdalena? Is Susannah going with you?”

I told him about cousin Yost’s death, and the need to take Freni to the funeral. I told him that Susannah had insisted on accompanying us, and about the arrangements I had made for the inn.

“Not to worry,” Aaron said. He put a muscular arm around my shoulder. “I’ll help Mose and Doc as much as I can. You just concentrate on getting to Ohio and back safely.”

Silly man. If my shoulder didn’t stop smoldering I wasn’t going to make it out of the driveway, much less to Ohio. I forced myself to think of practical things.

“All right, Susannah, it’s time to dump that dinky dog of yours.”

Susannah smiled sweetly. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Hand over your coat, dear,” I said. “You can take my old one.” Susannah’s coat is really a cape with a catacomb of pockets sewn into it. It would take a week to search it thoroughly, by which time her crafty canine could croak. Leaving it behind was the humane thing to do.

My sister parted with her wrap far too easily. When she threw it on the floor and did a quick tap dance, I knew it was time to start searching elsewhere.

“Okay. Hands above your head.” It was time to frisk her again.

Susannah smoothed her silken swirls and smirked. “No Shnookums, see? Or in my suitcase, either. Check it, for all I care.”

I did. Besides clothes, there were enough electrical gadgets in there to stock two hardware stores, but no dog. I would have pursued the matter further, but just then Freni came bustling in. It was time to go. Quite sensibly, she had only one small black fabric bag. The sight of it should have shamed Susannah, but of course it didn’t.

“Slumming it, are we?” she quipped.

Freni frowned. “This is a funeral we’re going to, Susannah, not an English party.”

“Well excuuuuse me!” Susannah flounced off to the car, without a coat, leaving her luggage behind.

Aaron gallantly carried all our bags to the car. As I was about to climb in, he grabbed me gently by the arm. He might as well have been using heated tongs.

“There’s something I just have to say before I let you go, Magdalena.”

I closed my eyes, straining to hear the sound of wedding bells. “Say it,” I murmured.

“Check your water and oil before you start back. That heap of yours has seen a lot of wear.”

I opened one eye. “Anything else?”

He released my arm. “As a matter of fact, yes. Stay out of trouble when you get there.”

I opened the other eye. “I don’t know what you mean, Aaron Miller.”

He smiled, revealing those perfect white teeth. Who would have thought that molars could be mesmerizing? “You’re attracted to trouble like ants to a picnic. And I have a hunch that your cousin was in a whole lot of trouble before he took that milk bath.”

“I’ll be careful,” I promised. I pursed my lips slightly on the off chance that Aaron would kiss me.

He did not. Mennonites are not big on public displays of affection. Instead he pulled a huge white handkerchief out of his pocket and proceeded to blow his nose. You would have thought a flock of geese had swooped down on the PennDutch.

That was my last view of Aaron that morning, but I cherished it nonetheless. Even with a handkerchief in front of his face, Aaron Miller was the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes on.

We had just passed through the Allegheny Tunnel (where Mama and Papa were killed) when I heard a strange, high-pitched noise. My first thought was that Susannah was crying. She may not be a sensible gal, but my sister is at times sensitive. What else would explain the similar noises I heard the last time I caught Susannah entertaining a boyfriend in her room? His mother had just died, and she was crying on his behalf, she said. Somehow it sounded plausible at the time.

“Enough,” Freni said, after I had ignored the sobs for almost a mile. “If Susannah wants to sit up front that bad I’ll change seats.”

“I don’t want to sit up front,” Susannah almost shouted. “What I want to do is sing. How about we all take turns singing our favorite hymns?”

Immediately I slowed down and pulled over. Something was rotten in Denmark, and my sister was speaking Danish. I turned in my seat and inspected her. She hadn’t been crying at all.

“Okay, what gives?” I asked calmly.

Susannah’s an expert at giving blank looks, and gave me a doozy.

“Susannah, I don’t have time for—” Suddenly a heart-rending sob filled the air, although Susannah’s lips remained as tightly closed as a clam at low tide.

Sometimes I’m slow on the uptake, but just one more sob was all it took for me to deduce that my sister had somehow managed to convey her canine to the car and had stashed the stowaway in the trunk. And sure enough, I found the pitiful pooch, along with a pile of poop, in Freni’s black bag.

“Ach du Heimer!" my elderly cousin exclaimed.

Literally that means you are a hammer, and that’s as bad as Freni can curse.

I will admit that I had a few choice words myself, but of course nothing quite that strong. Mama had washed out my mouth with soap enough times to ensure that I stuck to clean speech for life.

I suppose we presented quite a sight there by the road—one Amish woman, one Mennonite woman, and fifteen feet of flowing fabric, all gesticulating as if we were engaged in an animated game of charades—but I didn’t especially care what others thought. The people in the cars whizzing by were not without their own dramas, and I was sure that our little scene was tame compared to some of them.

In the end, Susannah promised to do Freni’s laundry, and Shnookums was liberated from Freni’s bag, but only to be detained in Susannah’s bra. Since I didn’t relish driving through the tunnel two more times, there was nothing to do but press on. But can you blame me for arriving in Farmersburg with a splitting headache? Perhaps if I’d only felt better I wouldn’t have gotten into all that trouble Aaron had warned me about.

We drove straight to the widow’s house. I had no idea how to get there, but I had Freni with me, remember? That woman has a sixth sense for ferreting out relatives. As far-fetched as it may sound, I suspect that she might actually be able to smell shared genes.

“That’s definitely a Hostetler house,” she said, as we neared Farmersburg. “Bloughs live on that farm. Oh, now there’s a Mast place if ever I saw one. Ach, look at that Bontrager barn—you would think the Troyers have always been a bit vain about their flower beds. You’d think the Stutzmans could plow straighter rows than that. The Shrocks should be ashamed to hang out laundry in need of mending, if you ask me.”

So, I was relieved, but not really surprised, when Freni had me turn right on Hershberger Lane and left on Leesburg Lane. Immediately after the second turn we saw the dairy farm owned by the late Yost Yoder and his wife, Sarah. That one even I could identify, although I must confess that the sea of black buggies in the front yard might have been a tip-off. Amish generally don’t congregate to party on Tuesday afternoons.

There were a few other cars there, so our arrival did not raise much of a stir. Except for some children who scampered up to stare, no one seemed to notice us— Amish often rely on their more liberal neighbors for long-distance rides.

We got out of the car.

“Is this the Yoder farm?” I asked a towheaded youngster just to be on the safe side.

The girl giggled, and I saw myself when I was three or four. With limited gene pools, one doesn’t need photo albums.

Another towhead, about six years old, pushed the girl aside. “Yah, this is the Yoder place,” he said. “Who is she?” He pointed at Susannah.

“My name’s Susannah. I’m a distant cousin,” my sister explained.

“Well, you look like a clown!”

The children all laughed and scampered away, proving that English children don’t have a monopoly on bad manners.

“Why I never!” Susannah said.

I patted her arm comfortingly. “It could have been worse, dear. At least they didn’t scream.”

We made Freni lead the way to the house. Even though her dress differed slightly from that of the Ohio Amish, she was still obviously one of them. Amish houses don’t have doorbells, but Freni is a world-class knocker. People with termites should pray Freni doesn’t knock on their doors. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that structurally unsound houses have collapsed under that woman’s knuckles.

“Yah?” said a woman who was perhaps in her late thirties. For some reason she looked right over Freni’s head and straight at me.

“Sarah Yoder?”

“Yah?”

“I’m Magdalena Yoder from Hernia, Pennsylvania, and this is—”

“Freni!”

Freni and Sarah, Yost’s widow, were in each other’s arms and talking a mile a minute. Unfortunately for Susannah and me they were speaking in “Pennsylvania Dutch,” a form of High German. Outside of a few prayers and harmless expressions, neither Susannah nor I can speak it. At least I can understand it, which is more than can be said for Susannah. Even the King James version of the Bible taxes her linguistic abilities—which might have something to do with why she married a Presbyterian.