Tamar Myers - Batter off Dead

“Your wailing is really getting to be annoying-if I may say so.”

“You may, but now I’m annoyed. It’s not like I go through a verb-selection process when I emote and then come up empty-handed. Wailing happens to be my signature vocalization.”

“The Zugs,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, all right. Those Zugs! Rather, I should say that Zug! He weaseled out of my grilling by appealing to my vanity.”

“There’s nothing wrong with taking the easy way out, so long as it’s effective.”

“Whose side are you on anyway?”

“Uh-yours, of course. Although I guess strictly speaking I’m on the side of Lady Justice. Hmm, interesting that she’s a lady, isn’t it?” He rubbed his face with hands that were better tended to than mine will ever be. “Hey, speaking of ladies, we may not be able to tell the twins apart, but their wives look nothing alike. Why don’t you try talking to them? Maybe invite them over to tea?”

“Tea? I’m not Agatha Christie, for Pete’s sake; this isn’t an English cozy. Besides, I hardly know them.”

“Don’t they go to your church?”

“That’s the thing. The Zug twins are Mennonite by birth and joined Beechy Grove as soon as they moved here from Canada, but, like me, they are unequally yoked.”

“I don’t get it. Is that some kind of egg thing?”

I reined in my smile. The chief is a lapsed atheist, a man raised without faith, but he is now at least open to exploring the options. Still, when one is talking to him it is easy to forget that biblical references, which pepper everyday speech in Hernia, are as foreign to him as tofu is to Amish cooking.

“It’s what happens when you hitch an ox and a donkey to the same plow. Take the Babester and me: he’s the bull and I’m the ass, and spiritually speaking it’s not a good match. The Zug twins also married outside the Mennonite fold. One is a Pentecostal-I think-and attends the church with thirty-two words in its name, and the other is a nothing. At any rate, neither of them ever shows up at Beechy Grove for services, although they do come for potlucks and anything that basically involves food.”

“So you have met them.”

I sighed. “Okay, I’ll invite them to lunch at the Sausage Barn and put the screws to them there.”

“When?”

“I’ll call this evening, but I can’t guarantee I’ll even be able to get through. The man who invented caller ID-and it had to be a man-will have his own special place in you-know-where.”

“Why don’t you slip a note under their door on your way home this afternoon, suggesting lunch tomorrow? Say, noon at the Barn?”

“Noon,” I snapped. Let’s face it, it’s hard to be pleasant when someone half your age is micromanaging your avocation.

Yes, a retired husband can be a big help, and so can a mother-in-law. Ditto for a daughter and a housekeeping cousin. But only yours truly was equipped to feed a growing boy in the middle of the night, after which said boy refused to go back to sleep. As a result, I got as much sleep as a polygamist on a ten-minute honeymoon.

The next morning I was dead on my feet, and right after a six a.m. feeding (Little Jacob promptly fell asleep), I went straight back to bed, an act that is just as much a sin in my culture as the aforementioned polygamy.

Just once before I die I would like to spend an entire day lolly-gagging about on the sofa eating chocolate bonbons. I might even watch a television show. I’ve heard that Oprah and The View are both worth seeing, but since I’ll have only this one day in which to commit the second-worst sin, that of sloth, I should probably do some consulting first. Maybe even look at a few clips from the shows before I decide. You can be sure, however, that I will not be watching Ellen, as I’m already in enough trouble with the Good Lord without adding dancing, the worst of all sins, to my litany.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, after a couple of hours I woke up, groggy and grainy eyed, because the little one was crying to be changed.

“Gabe,” I called sweetly.

After I’d added several decibels and tone changes, my dearly beloved finally appeared in the bedroom door. “Hon, can you make this quick? The Yankees are playing the Red Sox.”

I glanced at the bedside clock. “It’s only ten in the morning.”

“Yeah, I know, but since you don’t allow TVs in the house, I’m watching it on my cell phone from a disk I downloaded. The game was actually yesterday.”

“That’s nice, dear. Your son-that’s the infant in the crib next to me-needs changing today. Would you be a darling and do it this time?”

“Poopy or pee?”

Poopy? Gabriel Rosen is a medical doctor, for crying out loud. A cardiologist and well-known surgeon.

“Number two, I think. Does it matter?”

“Ah, hon, you know I can’t handle the stink of really messy diapers; it’s just not in me.”

“This is your son,” I growled, “the fruit of your loins, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, and poop of your poop. So put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.” I smiled sweetly to soften my words.

Without another word, Gabe picked up his son, but he held him at arm’s length during the entire changing process. “There, you happy now?” he said when he was done.

I didn’t know if he was speaking to me or Little Jacob, so I murmured soft obscenities. “Ding, dang, dong, ding.”

“What was that, Magdalena?”

To be truthful, my response would have been a lie. Fortunately, I was stopped by the presence of a nun standing in my bedroom door.

“Susannah?” I asked through my veil of grogginess.

“I’m Mother Dispirited, remember?”

I pulled myself to a sitting position. “Oh, right. And I’m Sister Disturbed; I’m disturbed that you’re still going through with this apathy thing.”

Susannah shrugged. “Really, Mags, you’re not supposed to care. Anyway, I’m here to say good-bye to my favorite nephew.”

“You have only one, dear.”

“He’s still my favorite. And Sister Disaster has come to say good-bye to her son.”

“What? But there aren’t any men here.”

“Thanks,” Gabe said drily as he handed Little Jacob to his sister-in-law.

Susannah, who adores her nephew almost as much as she does the loathsome cur that nestles in her Maidenform, took my baby with the utmost delight. It would embarrass me to no end to repeat the gaga-doo-doo baby talk she inflicted on the boy when she wasn’t attempting to smother him to death with kisses. Meanwhile, my question went unanswered.

“Can I take him out to show him to the sisters?” she finally asked.

“Yes, but you have to promise first that you won’t kidnap him and turn him into a monk-or a monkette-or whatever the word is for a tiny male person of your unorthodox persuasion.”

“How about monkey?” Susannah said, and then skipped off giggling with my life’s one achievement in her arms.

It was only when Susannah was gone that Gabe and I noticed the very stout nun standing just inside our bedroom door, to the left and in front of the closet. This sister was so short, and had such an enormous chest, that her habit made her body look square. As for her face-let me say with all Christian charity that with her hair pulled back and tucked under her wimple, she might well have passed for a geriatric gorilla. A lemon-sucking geriatric gorilla.

So alarmed was I that I leaped from the bed and into Gabe’s arms. “These are private quarters,” I eventually managed to gasp. Gabe, of course, had said nothing.

“Nu? So I come to say good-bye to my son. Do you mind?”

I did a double take. Then a triple.

“Ida? Is that you?”

“Don’t be silly, hon,” my darling said. “This woman’s a nun.”