Between a Wok and a Hard Place (21 page)

He grimaced. "I spent it baking pies with Mrs. Hostetler. What do you think?"

"That bad, huh?" I plopped some parsley potatoes on my plate before passing them on.

"When are we going to meet the Amish you talked about?"

"Mrs. Hostetler is Amish, dear."

"Not her. Younger Amish" - he gestured at his children who were busy flipping peas with their knives - "ones with

children."

"Oh, soon," I promised. "Maybe tomorrow."

"Of course they'll be farmers," Shirley said. It was a question, not a statement.

"That's the only kind we grow around here." I laughed politely at my little joke.

"Ones with big farms. I mean, I'm interested in large-scale farming."

I gave her a charming smile. "I'm so glad you brought that up, dear. I've been meaning to talk to you about my father-

in-Iaw's farm. It's for sale, you know. Some of the best farmland in Bedford County. I'm sure the Chinese you work for will

approve."

Angus speared a potato piece. "Chinese? I thought you worked for Silver Spoon Foods?"

Shirley nodded. She looked super in her getup, but wearing a prayer bonnet was carrying the thing too far. Amish

and more conservative Mennonites wear out of obedience to the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter eleven, verse six. As a

young girl I covered my head, but when Mama died I stopped. Verses seven through ten of the same chapter were just

too hard to swallow. Shirley, I'm sure, would never swallow them, either.

"I do," Shirley said. "Silver Spoon Foods is the international division of Kakogawa Foods. My employers are

Japanese."

"Oh."

"Would you like to see the property?" I asked hopefully. "I could give you a quick tour after dinner
- if it isn't too dark

by then. Or we could do it first thing in the morning."

"How many acres?" she asked practically.

"Eighty-seven," I said. "All of it prime stuff."

"It's not listed, is it? I didn't see a sign of any kind, and l’ve been on the lookout for that kind of thing."

"Oh, that's Pops for you. He's selling it himself you see, and he keeps meaning - "

I was rudely interrupted by a hard tap on my left shoulder. It was, of course, Freni Hostetler. No one else I know

would dare interrupt me when I am presiding over my guests at the table.

"Yes?" I hissed.

"Phone, Magdalena. Didn't you hear it?"

Of course I heard it. I don't have a phone in the dining room - no one should. But I do have a phone in the kitchen,

and I'm afraid it is audible, even though the kitchen is properly separated from the dining room by a heavy, swinging door.

"What's the matter with you, Freni? You know I don't take calls during dinner."

"Ach, but this is different."

"Tell Melvin I'll call him back in an hour. Tell him if he gets bored, he should try arranging a bag of M&M's in

alphabetical order." I know, it wasn't the Christian thing to say, but it had been a long day.

"It isn't Melvin. It's Aaron."

"My Aaron? But he knows it's dinnertime." And indeed he did. Dinner at six sharp every evening, whether we were

hungry or not. Tight schedules rank next to cleanliness on the godliness scale.

Freni glanced at the group, who were, of course, all staring at us just as intently as the congregation had that Sunday

my sister Susannah, having given Presbyterianism a mad fling, set a tentative toe back inside the sanctuary of Beechy

Grove Mennonite Church.

"I think he's been crying," Freni whispered. Alas, Freni whispers louder than I mutter.

My dinner guests' ears perked up just as pertly as the parishioners' ears had when the organist played her first chord,

and Shnookums, who'd been smuggled into church, thanks to Susannah's otherwise empty bra, began to howl.

I sprinted to the phone, nearly knocking the swinging door off its hinges. "Aaron?"

"Magdalena! Thank God you're there."

Freni was right. He did sound sort of husky.

"It's dinnertime, Pooky Bear," I said brightly. "Where else would I be?"

" Are you sitting down?"

"Yes." It wasn't a lie since I'm sure he didn't mean it literally.

"Magdalena, this is going to be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life."

I racked my brain for clues. Ah, but of course! My Pooky. Bear had been gone for three days, and had only packed

for two.

"Be sure to separate the whites and the colors. That navy plaid shirt of yours with white stripes belongs in the color

pile. Those tan slacks are kind of iffy. The navy might make them blotchy. But since they're polyester and not likely to

bleed, I'd wash them with whites."

There was a moment of awed silence. My Pooky Bear knew I was a woman of many talents, he just didn't know I

could read minds. Well, he'd learn. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the female brain, if allowed to develop naturally,

is capable of astounding feats of intuition. Any open-minded person will agree that a hunch from a woman is worth two

facts from a man.

"I'm not talking about my damned laundry."

" Aaron!"

"Sorry, Mags, but this is really important. I don't want to waste time with your guessing games."

I pulled up a kitchen chair. "What is it, dear?"

He sucked in his breath sharply. "I'm married."

"Of course you are, dear. I was there, remember?"

"No, I mean married."

I blushed. "I know, dear. I was there for that, too. Frankly, it wasn't quite what I expected but - "

"Mags! Listen to me. What I'm tried to say is that I was married before I married you."

19

Why don't kitchen chairs come equipped with seat belts? If I hadn't chosen to sit right up against the corner, with a wall

penning me in on either side, I would have slumped to the floor.

"You were married before? You mean, I'm your second wife?”

"Not exactly, Mags.”

I gasped. “You were married twice before?”

"Huh? No, that's not what I mean.”

Two times, three times, how much worse could it get? Pretty dam much worse, from what I understood. Susannah

has a friend who's been married nine times, and she's not even in show business.

A visiting African head of state once told me that he found our monogamy laws rather silly. “You Americans find

polygamy abhorrent,” he said. "Yet you practice a form of it - serial monogamy." He was right. Apparently more so than I

knew at the time.

"How many wives have you had?"

"Just one.”

"What?”

Just Deirdre. That's what I'm trying to tell you. And she's still my wife."

“Deirdre? What kind of a name is that for a Mennonite?" The mind can take interesting turns when its main conduits

have been clogged by shock.

"She isn't Mennonite."

"Amish?"

"She isn't anything."

"She has to be something!"

"Deirdre was raised Catholic, I think."

"You think?"

"All right, so she was. But it's not important. We don't talk about religion that much."

"This is all a joke, Aaron, isn't it? You've gotten together with some old army buddies of yours, and they've convinced

you to playa practical joke. Well, this one isn't funny, Aaron. Tell them it isn't working."

"Damn it, Mags, I told you this was going to be hard, didn't I?"

" Aaron - "

"This isn't a joke, Magdalena. I met Deirdre up here in Minnesota after I got out of the army. She gave me my first

haircut after I got back from Vietnam. Of course that was 1970, and long hair was in. Deirdre told me to go away and not

come back until I had something I could afford to cut.

"So, I did. I mean, I stayed away for a whole year. When I went back to the shop, she was still there. "We got married

in August of '71."

"August? We were married in August, Aaron."

"Different dates," he said dryly. "Do you want to hear the rest of it, or not?"

"By all means."

"We were married for eleven years and then some- thing went wrong. I don't know what it was - just say, we fell out

of love. We went our separate ways, but we never divorced. She actually filed for one, but when the papers came, neither

of us wanted to go through with it."

"Divorce is a sin," I said stupidly. Whose side was I on anyway?

" At any rate, we all but lost touch - even though we were living in the same city. Minneapolis is a big city, you know."

"So I've heard."

"Then when Pops fell and broke his hip last year, and I moved back to Hernia, I didn't even think about Deirdre."

"Of course not, you met me."

"That's right, I met you. Then you and I got married-but, as it happened, I was already married."

I intentionally slammed my head into the wall. It didn't clear my cerebral circuits, but it did affirm that I was indeed

awake, and not just dreaming the whole thing. The nightmare was real.

"Let me get this straight," I said calmly. "You married me when you already had a wife?"

"Yeah, that's what I've been trying to tell you. You've made this damn hard for me, Mags."

"Me? Hard?" I'll admit, I was no longer quite so calm. To her credit, Freni closed the kitchen door again as soon as

she saw that I was still in one piece.

"This never would have happened, Magdalena, if you hadn't pushed me into marriage."

"I did no such thing! You proposed, Aaron Daniel Miller. You proposed on our way home from Ohio last February."

"Maybe I did, but you were expecting it. In fact, your behavior demanded it."

"I didn't twist your arm, buster. But I wish I had, you sap-sucking, lily-livered swamp snake! I wish I had twisted it off

into a bloody stump." The rational side of me fought to keep control of my remaining faculties. "But that isn't the important

thing - "

"The important thing is that I am still legally married to Deirdre, and that our Hernia marriage is null and void."

I banged my head again. "You married her in Hernia, too?"

"Deirdre and I were married in Minneapolis. I was talking about you and I. Since Deirdre and I never divorced, our

marriage is still legal. It's our marriage - yours and mine - that is null and void."

"Null and void? Don't be silly, dear. I may have been innocent, but I wasn't that innocent."

Aaron sighed. "It was the best sex I'd ever had, I'll grant you that."

It all clicked then. It all came together at once, like the offering plates at the end of the Doxology.

"It may have been great sex for you," I screamed, "but it was adultery! I am an adulteress!"

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Mags."

"You're an adulterer, too, Aaron!"

"Well, that's taking the negative view."

"What other view could there possibly be? Read your Bible, Aaron!"

He sighed again. "I was hoping you'd be more enlightened, Mags."

I tried strangling the receiver but it didn't satisfy my English desire to kill. "What do we do now, Aaron?" I asked

through clenched teeth.

"That's why I'm calling, Mags. I want to do the honorable thing."

"Dumping Deirdre is not going to be easy, dear."

There was a long, pregnant pause, in which Deirdre might possibly have gotten pregnant. "Uh - Mags, what I've

been trying to say the whole time is that I still love Deirdre. I want the marriage to work now."

My pause was decidedly barren. "What did you say?"

"Don't you see! I owe it all to you. After we got married - our ceremony, I mean - I got to thinking about my life with

Deirdre. I came back up here to see if there was any hope for her and I."

"And?"

"I'm in love with her, Mags. I think I always have been. And you reminded me of her, Mags. You made me remember

the good times she and I shared together. I'll always owe you that."

I screamed so loud that David Bowie heard me on his compound on Bali. He told me that the next time I saw him.

Claimed lowed him for two lightbulbs and a champagne glass.