The Death of Pie (24 page)

‘What on earth is going on here, Toy? Are you turning Hernia's police station into Sodom and Gomorrah? Is this the influence of that big city of Charlotte from whence you hail, or is it the influence of this wanton woman, Wanda?'

‘Wanton woman?' Wanda waved wildly, like the crazed creature that she was.

Toy is fortunate in that he oozes charm. ‘No, ma'am, it's neither. It's just that Wanda here has taken pity on this poor homesick boy, and has been bringing me meals from time to time. The woman is an angel. No, really, Wanda, you've been an angel.'

It was then that I realized that Wanda's manic gesticulations had been directed at Toy. From the expression on Wanda's face as Toy spoke, it became clear that he, like most of his gender, was from Mars, whereas, sadly, Wanda and I were both from Venus. In the interest of science, I jiggled pinkies in both ears to make sure that I'd heard correctly – in case the pathogens had already begun to work – and when I was satisfied that I could indeed hear, I attempted to make sense of the incomprehensible words that had spilled from the young man's lips.

‘Toy,' I said. ‘Is this the
same
Wanda who has been bringing you food?'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘And you think that she's an angel?'

‘Well, she's not a
real
angel; she's not the kind that goes flapping around on her wings.'

‘Hmm. So angels in the South “flap” when they fly?'

‘Ma'am?'

‘Never mind, I was being facetious.'

‘Which is normal for you,' Wanda said. For the record, she is my second-best friend, albeit on a part-time basis. At other times, because we enjoy butting heads so much (in a gentle, Christiansort of way) she slips down a number of rungs on my ladder of love hierarchy.

‘Yes, and I can be fractious as well. Someone better explain exactly what has been going on – from the
very beginning
. Are the two of you having an affair? Is this what this is all about? Is that why you are watching lesbians on the television which I purchased with my own, hard-earned money? My husband – a physician, mind you – told me that it is commonly known that many men are, uh, titillated by the thought of two women performing the mattress minuet, although frankly, Toy, I shouldn't think that watching the wedding waltz with Wanda would do the trick for you.'

‘
Lesbians?
'

I hadn't heard the door open, but of course it had, for there stood my pubescent daughter, mouth agape, eyes as wide as dinner plates. There are folks who say that the reason that I remain as thin as a clothesline is because I starve myself, or that it's because I got lucky when it came to genetics. Ha! I happen to eat more than a busload of basketball players and, as for my genetics, when my great-grandmother Mary Hostetler died at home she had to be carried out of the house through a window and was buried in a piano case. It is
stress
that keeps me razor thin.

I am not one to exaggerate, so believe me when I say that my gaze zipped right past her dinner-plate eyes and went straight to the candy bars that Alison clenched in her sweaty right hand as she reappeared in the doorway. I'd sent her in for two treats: something for each of us. However, Sam knows that she and I each have a sweet tooth, and that
she
knows that he is sweet on me. Ergo, Alison had a fist-full of assorted chocolate bars.

‘
King-size Snickers
, please,' I said. For those unfamiliar with this confection, it has a gooey caramel center and is densely packed with peanuts. The whole shebang is covered with a thick coat of chocolate, making it a substantial bar. Just fitting an entire bar that size into one's mouth should be considered an Olympic sport, on a par with, say, dressage. Once you have this nourishing candy (protein from peanuts, antioxidants from chocolate) stuffed in your mouth, it is impossible to speak coherently. This was certainly the case for me.

‘Thespians?' I said, affecting an innocent tone.

‘Mom, that's gross,' Alison said and turned away. ‘You're not supposed ta talk with your mouth full. Ain't that what you're always saying?'

‘Yeth.'

‘Eeew! I thought I heard ya say “lesbian,” not “thespian.” Ain't a thespian some kinda bird? Ya know, with a white ring around its neck, and a long tail?'

‘That's a “thesant,” I said.

‘Yuck,' Alison said. ‘I'm getting outta here and going back ta Cousin Sam's. Ya know where ta find me when ya grow up and get some kind of manners.'

‘Thootles,' I said. I had meant to be ever so cultured and speak like a real English person (an English English) but caramel, the Devil, or both had got hold my tongue.

‘
Whew
, that was a close call,' Toy said when the door closed behind my dear daughter.

‘I'll thay,' I said. Then, using my left hand as a screen, I discreetly began to work my right index finger around and over my spacious gums.

A split second later, Wanda clapped hands in front of my face. She clapped them so close to my person that one of her fingers clipped my upper lip. Truly, I tell you, I was assaulted by the woman whose beehive I'd unwittingly unbound.

‘Have you no shame?' she said. ‘No decency? What is America coming to? It's all because of Obama and his Democrats, I'm telling you.'

I'd swallowed enough calories to finish out my day. ‘I'm not a Democrat, dear.'

‘Aha, a Republican! I knew it! You can always tell by the beady little eyes.'

‘Nope, not that either.'

‘So you don't vote at all? That's even worse! That's a lazy American; you're an uninvolved citizen who doesn't deserve to be here. Go back to England from whence you came.'

‘I'm an Independent voter, not that it's any of your business, and my people all came from Switzerland three hundred years ago, except for the Delaware Indian branch that formally adopted my ten-year-old ancestor into their tribe – after massacring his mother and infant sister. The Delaware arrived on this continent as early as fifteen thousand years ago, although given that the earth is less than six thousand years old, I am, admittedly, having a bit of trouble with the math.'

Wanda used to stand five feet seven when she had her beehive. With her hair down, she's an even five feet – if that. I had no trouble towering over her like a telephone pole. Wanda knew that beneath my gruff exterior there beat a heart of tarnished silver, so she didn't exactly shake in her crepe-soled waitressing shoes.

‘If you must know, Miss Nosey Yoder-Rosen, we were watching a scandalous but ever-so-delightful TV series set in a women's prison, and of course there are some scenes of women doing the “mattress minuet,” as you so quaintly put it, given that you are
the
most sexually-repressed of all my friends. My Hubert won't watch it with me, and since Toy enjoys it and isn't dating anyone – well, I don't know why I even need to be explaining this. It is, after all, a free country.'

Cheese and crackers, how do you like them apples? Wanda had actually thrown me a bone of flattery; I was
the
most sexually repressed of all her friends! By the sound of it, it wasn't even a contest. In fact, Wanda, sweetheart that she was, had thrown me a ‘two-for-one.'

‘So I'm still your friend?' I cried.

‘Was there ever any doubt?' Wanda said as she began twisting and winding her hair back atop her head like a garden hose that had served its purpose for the day.

‘And I really do hold the distinction of being
the
most sexually repressed of all the friends that you have? Not even any of your Roman Catholic or Amish friends are more repressed than I am?'

‘Not even my friend Mary Elizabeth, and she was a cloistered nun for sixty-five years.'

‘Cool.'

Wanda jabbed several large hairpins into the temporary nest atop her noggin. She then shook her head. ‘You are a sad case, Magdalena. It's a wonder that you have any friends at all.'

‘I'm not a sad case,' I said. ‘I'm just very self-aware. It's because I can see myself for who I truly am, warts and all – although I haven't any, I assure you – that I am able to see people around me so clearly. For instance, I can see that you are a tightly wound individual – ergo, the pseudo-French twist with a hotdog-eating hole in it.'

Wanda grabbed her faux crocodile-skin handbag, made from purple vinyl, no less, and leapt for the door. ‘I don't have to take these insults like you do,' she said. ‘I'm not a “turn the other cheek” Mennonite. You may be my friend, Magdalena Portulacca, but that doesn't mean that I always have to “lacca!”' She roared at her silly pun, and scurried out the door before I had a decent comeback.

‘Did you think that was funny?' I asked Toy, who'd been foolish enough to grin.

‘Yes, ma'am – I mean, no ma'am.'

‘Well, which was it?' I said.

‘It was only funny because Mrs Hemphopple said it,' Toy said.

‘What do you mean?' I said.

‘Miss Yoder, what I mean is that Mrs Hemphopple adores you.'

‘
Adores?
' I said. ‘Isn't that a pretty strong word?'

‘Maybe so, but ever since she's gotten it into her head that I'm a lonely bachelor who needs fattening up, she brings me meals, and all she ever talks about, when I see her, is you.'

‘Why, shoot a monkey!' I cried. ‘But not literally, of course. Tell me, what exactly does she say?'

Toy shrugged, in the manner of all men when asked to repeat a conversation. I heard somewhere that Valdemar Poulsen, who invented the magnetic tape recorder in 1898, did it so that he didn't have to repeat office conversations to his wife.

‘Well—' Toy stopped right away to scratch his head. He scratched and scratched and—

‘How about we make a deal, Toy?' I said generously. ‘I'd be quite happy to scratch that mosquito bite for you while you talk.'

‘Huh? I don't have any mosquito bites,' Toy said.

‘Well, then, whatever that lump is between your shoulders that you've been clawing at for the last five minutes,' I said.

‘Hey, now that's a good one, Miss Yoder! Sure enough, a guy's got to laugh at that.'

‘
Really?
' I said. ‘That didn't make you angry? Not even a little bit?'

‘No ma'am. Was that your intent? That wasn't it, was it?'

‘No,' I said, feeling a good deal of relief. ‘You seem to be a very decent young man.'

I fear that I may spoken too soon, for Toy immediately flashed me a brilliant smile, a testament to American dental care. He also fluttered his long, dark eyelashes, which for the first time lent his baby-blue peepers a ‘come hither' look. For the first time I saw the possibility of Toy the boy becoming Toy the ‘boy toy,' and the idea was both repulsive and fascinating. In other words, it was sinfully attractive – for what is sin, if not at some point attractive in nature?

‘Miss Yoder,' he said, ‘when do you expect your daughter to return?'

My heart raced with repulsion and desire. The two emotions, so diametrically opposed, meant that my heart nearly stopped, never to beat again, like my old grandfather's clock.

‘She's likely to return at any second when she needs money for chocolate; we'll never get away with it!'

‘
We?
Do you expect me to share in the blame?' Toy said.

‘You bet your bippy!' I said. ‘And here I thought you were a Southern gentleman.'

‘I am a gentleman,' Toy said. ‘Tell me, what's in it for me?'

‘This is all theoretical, mind you,' I said. ‘But I've been told that when properly aroused, I exhibit more energy than a sack of cats in a dog-fighting ring.'

‘TMI,' he said. ‘That means too much information.'

‘I know what that means, dear. I practically invented the phrase, seeing as how I
did
invent the habit of sharing too much in the first place.'

‘I rather doubt that.'

‘Harrumph. By contradicting me, you have put the kibosh on my wanton, and wandering libido. A heterosexual man would have put up with any amount of idiotic blathering on my part, just to have his way with me.'

Toy clapped his hands to the sides of his handsome, well-coifed head, as if to keep it securely in place. ‘Miss Yoder,' he ejaculated. ‘Are you trying to seduce me?'

‘Well, I wouldn't have followed through with it,' I wailed. ‘Besides, you are the one who was coming on to me, what with all your eye-fluttering and asking when Alison was coming back. What was that all about? Huh? Answer that!'

There are few things as humiliating as being given a look of pity by someone barely more than half one's age. It ranks right up there with having to wear a homemade frock to my eighth-grade graduation party, when every other girl in Hernia was wearing a brand-new frock picked from the pages of the
Sears and Roebuck
catalogue. To add insult to injury, my homemade frock was simply a shortened edition of one of Mama's. Whereas Mama had enormous bosoms, I was still as flat as a pancake. Thus the frock, which was white and had a fitted bodice, could have easily concealed watermelons. Instead the dress conveyed a week's worth of crumpled newspapers to the school gymnasium the night of the big event.

Given that I have a modicum of imagination, I might have been able to explain away the simple fact that I had grown bustier overnight. However, the Good Lord frowns on fibbers, and on the short walk from the car to the school, the heavens opened and a downpour of epic proportions drenched Yours Truly, soaking through to the newsprint, and for the rest of the evening every twelve- and thirteen-year-old boy amused himself reading the sports pages off my chest.

Suffice it to say, Toy took no prisoners. ‘I was
not
trying to seduce you – ma'am. With all due respect, even if your sort were my type, you wouldn't be my type – ma'am.'