The Hand that Rocks the Ladle (16 page)

Instead I would swing by Dr. Pierce’s house in Bedford, and just casually drop in. Yes, he was supposed to be away on vacation, but that didn’t mean anything. There have been times when I’ve officially been away from the PennDutch, but still been in residence, if you know what I mean. That month of my pseudo-marriage to the bigamist Aaron—well, that really isn’t your business, is it?

At any rate, I hadn’t driven more than a mile down the pike toward Bedford when Susannah let out a shriek worthy of any Yoder, living or dead. No doubt it woke the dead, even several counties over. Come Judgment Day my baby sister would make an excellent addition to my rousting team. It was a wonder we didn’t wreck.

“What is it?” I gasped with my first available breath. I had managed to get us to the side of the road by then, and I was shaking like the paint-mixer at Home Depot.

“My baby,” Susannah screamed. “I forgot my baby!”

I could feel the blood draining from my equine face. “Shnookums?” I asked weakly.

“He’s still in the biscuit basket! Oh, Mags, we have to save him!”

I made an illegal U-turn, cutting across a woods- filled median, and pressed the pedal to the metal. Fortunately it was a slow traffic day, and besides, there were no troopers about. If I had been caught, however, I would have deserved a taxpayer’s vacation in the hoosegow.

“Faster!” Susannah cried.

“I’m going as fast I can, dear.” There was no need to urge me on. If Wanda caught the hound from Hades in her restaurant, much less wallowing about in a biscuit basket, I would no doubt be banned forever from the Sausage Barn. Not leaving a tip could be interpreted as an oversight, but a pile of poop from a pathetic pooch is at best problematic.

“Save the life of my child,” cried the desperate mother.

I did my best. My new red BMW has a lot of horses under the hood, and I got the entire herd galloping at full speed. I wouldn’t say that we broke any land records, but it is a fact that once we stopped it took a moment for my breath to catch up with us. I’m pretty sure our shadows took a while as well, although I didn’t stick around long enough to see.

Susannah sailed into the Sausage Barn, a swirl of hot pink fabric, and swept right past Wanda, who was again playing hostess. I raced after her.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Wanda yelled. “We forget something,” I puffed.

“You’re damn right. You forgot my tip.”

I was so worried about the bitty beast it barely registered that Wanda had used a naughty word.

“Shnookums!” Susannah cried, suddenly spotting the biscuit basket still on the table. She ran toward the booth, her arms outstretched, her wardrobe streaming behind her.

Wanda caught up with me, grabbing my arm. “What is your crazy sister up to now?”

I glared at Wanda Hemphopple. “She isn’t crazy, she’s emotionally challenged.”

“Nonsense. Your sister is as nutty as my world-famous peanut brittle.”

“Your peanut brittle? You stole that recipe from Florence Root!” I have forgotten to mention that although the Sausage Barn serves only breakfast, they have a mouth-watering selection of homemade candies up by the register.

“I didn’t steal that recipe,” Wanda hissed. “I merely guessed at the ingredients.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Susannah reaching for the basket on the still-cluttered table. We were almost out of the woods. If I could stall Wanda for just a few seconds longer, we could beat a hasty retreat and Wanda would be none the wiser.

“What kind of a woman checks for tips, but doesn’t clear the table?”

“A busy woman.”

“Ah, but you swore,” I said, grabbing at straws.

Wanda recoiled, her beehive vibrating fast enough to create a breeze. “I did not!”

“You most certainly did. You said the D word. And you a Mennonite!”

“For your information, Magdalena, I am not a Mennonite. I’m a Baptist, and we’re allowed to swear. We’re even allowed to dance. We just can’t go to Disney World.”

“Well, you shouldn’t swear in front of customers—”

I stopped, my heart had left its perch in my bony chest, and was flailing about in my stomach among the remains of four poached eggs, six strips of bacon, and six pancakes.

My baby sister was headed straight for us, her arms extended like a child wanting to be picked up. Her face was ashen, and she was moaning something. I folded her protectively into my arms.

“What did you say?” I rasped.

"He's gone," Susannah moaned. “My baby’s
gone.”

“But the basket’s still there!”

“What’s this all about?” Wanda Hemphopple demanded, hands on hips.

“It’s a family matter,” I said.

Wanda scratched her head. The towering do wobbled precariously.

“Your sister doesn’t even have a baby, so she couldn’t have lost it. I’m not about to be held responsible for a child who doesn’t exist.”

“But he—”

I clamped a hand over Susannah’s mouth. “She calls her purse ‘baby.’”

”Okay, okay. But it wasn’t a total lie, since she does call Shnookums “baby,” and he’s often in her purse.

Wanda shook her head. I flinched.

“I didn’t see a purse, Magdalena. And no one’s turned one in.”

“Well, maybe one of Susannah’s friends saw it and is keeping it safe for her. Mind if we circulate a bit?”

“I most certainly do!”

Fortunately a family of five walked in the door. They just weren’t any family, either, but the Augsbergers, a clan known hereabouts for eating prodigious amounts of food. Along with the cowbells on the door, Wanda could no doubt hear the cash register ring. She waltzed over to the group, and immediately began fawning. You would have thought the Queen of England herself had arrived.

Susannah and I wasted no time. We split up. The Sausage Barn is laid out along two main aisles. Susannah took the aisle where we’d been sitting; I took the far aisle.

Granted, it looks suspicious to peer under tables around which folks are dining, but a gal’s got to do what a gal’s got to do. Since no one in the restaurant was screaming, it was safe to assume that the minimonster was holed up under a table, chowing down on crumbs. And yes, I got dirty looks, and a few unpleasant comments, but I’m forty-five years old, for Pete’s sake, and an orphan. I can do what I want.

“Hellooo,” a young man cooed, “if I would have known this was going to happen, I would have worn shorts. Baggy shorts.”

I picked up a fork that had fallen, gave him a poke, and moved on.

“Mama, there’s a witch under the table,” a little girl whined.

Her shoelaces were untied, so I tied them, together, before beating a hasty retreat.

“My, my, how the mighty have fallen.” I recognized the nasal voice of Lodema Schrock, my pastor’s wife. “Guess who’s scavenging with the dogs, just like Lazarus.”

I bumped my head on the underside of the table. “Dogs? Did you see a dog?”

“That’s from the Bible, Magdalena. If you didn’t skip church so often, you’d know that.”

I’d only missed church once in the last six months, and that’s because I had the flu. A pastor’s wife should be more careful about making accusations. One of Lodema’s shoes had slipped off, and to teach her a lesson, I tucked a wad of scrambled egg in the toe.

The diner at the next table was even more hostile than Lodema. “Come out from there, right now,” he growled, “or I’ll have you arrested for indecent exposure.”

Me? A pair of Lilliputian legs dangled in front of me. The trousers above the legs were clearly open, no doubt to accommodate an expanding belly.

I crawled out. “Look, buster, you—you’re Dr. Bauer!”

“Indeed I am. Do you often go about on all fours, Mrs. Hostetler?”

I glared at the gnome, but small as he was, I found him intimidating. I stared at his pancakes instead. Unlike Dr. Barnes and myself, Dr. Bauer preferred those perfume-sweet artificial syrups. His half-eaten pancakes were practically floating.

“I am not Mrs. Hostetler, I’m Miss Yoder. And that stuff will rot your teeth, you know.”

“Is this your expert opinion?”

“Frankly, yes. I did in a perfectly good set of baby teeth that way. And from what I recall, you have the smallest teeth—”

“Mags!” Susannah grabbed my arm, and with surprising strength pulled me away from the dinky doc and his soggy stack.

“What is it, dear? Did you find him?”

Susannah nodded, but I saw terror in her eyes, not joy. “Look over there.”

“Where?”

“There, by the register. Look at Wanda.”

I looked. Wanda Hemphopple was taking advantage of a lull to sort some receipts that had been speared on a miniature pitchfork. There, immediately above the crest of Wanda’s beehive, was the wicked little face of Shnookums Stoltzfus. His beady black eyes glistened like caramelized raisins, his pointed ears stuck straight up. Frankly, he looked smug and content.

“Oh, my gosh!” I staggered and had to steady myself on the nearest table.

“And now you dare take the Lord’s name in vain!” Lodema said. She sounded positively jubilant.

“I most certainly did not!” For some reason Lode- ma’s attitude gave me fortitude. It was now I who pulled Susannah along with surprising strength.

“Oh, Mags, what are we going to do?” she wailed. “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll think of something. I know—we’ll get as close as we can to the old battle- ax. Then I’ll do something to get her to look down, and then you snatch Shnookums. When you’ve got him, stick him in your bra and run like the dickens.” Two tables cleared just then and we had to wait while the Gingriches and Roches paid for their meals. Esther Gingrich has eyes like a hawk, but mercifully, even she didn’t spot the mutt in the mane.

When the coast was clear Susannah and I sidled up to the register. I held out a five-dollar bill.

“Wanda, dear, here’s the tip I forgot.”

Wanda looked startled. I have noticed that kindness has that effect on folks, at least coming from me.

“Well, thanks.”

But before she could grab the tip from my hand, I dropped it. The bill drifted toward the floor like an autumn leaf. For a second Wanda stared at the money, and then she scrabbled after it, like a kid after candy when a piñata has been broken. The beehive sank beneath the level of the counter.

“Quick!” I yelled.

Susannah needed no urging. She is only an inch shorter than me, and it was a fairly easy thing for her to lean over the counter and snatch the incorrigible cur from its den of dander. She shoved the ungrateful thing into the recesses of her swaddled bosom and slipped outside. I was hard on her heels.

Susannah and I laughed all the way into Bedford. We were still laughing when we pulled up to Dr. Ignacious Pierce’s house. We stopped laughing and stared. Not only was the place immense, it was a bizarre combination of Tudor and medieval castle. Turrets competed with massive beams for attention, while half the roof was covered in slate, the other in wooden shingles. It was the most grotesque residence I had ever seen.

“Ooh, Mags, I love it!”

“Gag me with a spoon,” I said. I may not be of this world, but I have picked up some of its hipper phrases.

At any rate, it hadn’t been hard to find the OB- GYN’s residence, as it was listed in the white pages. Since there are no sidewalks in this ritzy part of town, we parked boldly in the driveway. Our plan was to pretend that we “belonged.” Given Susannah’s unconventional attire, however, and my rather conservative frock, we looked more like representatives of two competing religions out to save the doctor’s soul.

There were no other cars in the driveway, and the four-car garage lacked windows, so we merrily marched up to the door and rang the bell. No one answered right away, but we waited patiently.

“Man, I could live in a place like this,” Susannah said with a sigh.

“Indeed, you could. All it takes is determination.”

“I don’t even think so.”

“But it’s true. //you really wanted a place like this, you could have one.”

“How? Just by wishing?”

“No, of course not. You could”—I chose my words carefully—“get a job. Then you and Melvin could put yourselves on a strict budget, and invest part of your earnings. It might take a while, and it might not be very much fun, but eventually you’d have a nice nest egg—”

Susannah rolled her eyes. “Man, you can be a downer sometimes, Mags, you know that? I was just daydreaming, and then you go and get all serious on me.”

“Well, excuse me!” I pumped the bell, irritated now that our camaraderie had been so fleeting. When after another minute or two no one had answered, I tried the knob. I tried it out of exasperation, not because I actually expected the door to open. But it did.

“Holy Moly!” Susannah cried.

We stared into a foyer that was every bit as big as mine back at the inn. This one had a parquet floor that was partially covered by a thick, fancy-shmancy rug that might well have been genuine wool. A spiral crystal chandelier hung from an unnaturally high ceiling. In a corner, under the marble stairway, stood a suit of armor.

I composed myself, remembering that the neighbors might well be watching. “Ignacious? Are you in there?”

There was no answer.

“Ignacious, I hope you don’t mind if we come on in. You don’t, do you?”

Nobody forbade us to enter, so how could we not? Wouldn’t you, if you were in our size eleven shoes? Mennonites eschew ostentation, and although I have had very well-to-do guests stay at the inn, I seldom get to see how the other half lives.

“Man, this is neat!” Susannah said. She was literally drooling.

“Careful of the parquet, dear,” I said gently.

“Do you think he minds?”

“The door was unlocked, wasn’t it? In Hernia that might be the norm, but this is Bedford, remember? They have crime here. I should think an unlocked door here is an invitation to enter.”

“I like the way you think, Mags.”

Actually, I was equally torn between curiosity and an almost paralyzing fear that I was going to end up in the slammer for trespassing. I have been to jail, and while I might look good in stripes, I would die if I had to use an open toilet again. Susannah, however, would feel right at home in the hoosegow. Her name was carved on the walls of the Hernia jail. I’ve heard rumors that the Bedford joint has a special bunk reserved just for her.