I gasped. “But you’ve been in here five years; you can’t be pregnant!” I gasped again, as reality sunk its baby teeth into my overnourished skull. “Oh no, don’t tell me it was one of the guards. Clyde? Houston? What’s his name with one eyebrow and no chin?”
“Eric? Give me a break! For your information, Miss High and Mighty, I’m not nearly the slut you think I am. I have never once cheated on my Melykins. Not once. Not ever.”
I must have been staring at her incredulously because she waved a long, but otherwise shapely, hand in front of my eyes. “Earth to Magdalena, are you in there?”
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m just having a hard time processing the fact that marrying the Mantis might actually have been good for you.”
“He was my salvation, Mags-and I don’t mean that in a sacrilegious way. Mama was always so strict, and let’s face it: you weren’t any better. It was all or nothing with you. If I didn’t toe the line a hundred percent, you got furious. Remember the time you threw me out because I wore a low- cut blouse and fire-engine red lipstick?”
“I didn’t throw you out; I made you choose between dressing like a hussy and living on the street, or showing some respect while enjoying the comforts of home.”
My baby sister opened and clenched her jaw several times, and frankly, I was surprised by just how much the issue seemed to affect her. Then, much to my astonishment, she threw her arms around me and began to sob. Furthermore, since folks in our family are genetically incapable of touching one another for more than two seconds without resorting to some vigorous backslapping, I was stunned when she let herself go as limp as a dishrag and simply hung from my neck like an Art Deco gewgaw.
“Hey, break it up, you two!” ‘V’h’Neek’qQ”WA’a rapped sharply on the glass with her billy club.
Susannah slumped into the nearest chair and began to sob. Neither of us is a pretty crier-Well, is anyone? But what I really meant to say is that my sister is uncommonly unsightly when she boo-hoos. Her nose turns bright red whilst emitting viscous fluids, her cheeks mottle in a multitude of unappetizing shades, and her eyelids immediately swell into something resembling half-baked puff pastries stuffed with spinach. It is barely an exaggeration to say that a lesser woman than I would have run from the room screaming.
Much to my credit I simply handed her a wad of tissues from my oversize pocketbook. “What is it, dear? I’m your big sis, remember? You can tell me anything.”
She had to swallow before speaking. “Anything?”
“Anything. And just so you know, now that I’m married, and well acquainted with the sweet mystery of life-so to speak-I am no longer the prude I used to be.”
She snorted, drenching me in the process. “Yeah, you were pretty awful. That time when we saw the horses-”
“That was then; this is now,” I said, using a favorite expression from her younger years.
She began to blubber again. “It’s-M-M-Melvin.”
“He’s dead?” Oh woe is me. There was far too much hope in my voice. There was too much hope in my soul as well. What kind of a Christian was I? How could I be happy to hear about someone’s death? Didn’t that, in a way, make me just as guilty as a murderer?
“No, stupid,” my sister croaked, “he’s not dead. My Melykins is about to do it again, and this time I have a feeling he’s going be caught.”
Melvin “the Mantis” Stoltzfus was not only Susannah’s husband, and my biological brother, but he was an escaped convict, a real murderer, who’d been on the lam for five years. Given that he had a pea-size brain, it was a miracle that he’d been able to elude the authorities for so long. I’d almost assumed that he was dead, or that perhaps he was lying somewhere in a coma, unable to convict himself with those thin bloodless lips of his-and oh how I judge!
“Caught doing what?” I practically shouted. “And where?”
“Pulling another heist,” she whispered, her voice now hoarse. “Somewhere in Somerset County.”
“Heist?”
“Don’t be such a dummkopf, Mags; you know what I mean.” Except that I didn’t. I was, however, happy that Susannah had reverted to our ancestral tongue to dress me down.
“A heist is a robbery,” I said, reasonably, stubbornly, and, of course, quietly. “Has Melvin ever robbed anyone before?”
She was quiet for a moment, her ragged breathing aside. “Yes,” she finally mumbled. “That bank job in Bedford -the one you had to go and interrupt.”
It was then that every hair on my head stood up, forcing my prayer cap to reach new heights. “Those faux-Amish men, like the one who shot Amy and could have killed my Little Jacob, one of them was Melvin Stoltzfus?”
“Shhh, Mags!”
“Don’t you shush me, Susannah. Unless you want me to rat you out like the Orkin man, you better tell me everything-and I mean every last detail.”
“I can’t.”
18
“What do you mean by ‘I can’t’?”
“Mags, you know if I tell you anything, then you’ll try to do something to stop it, and you’ll get hurt this time. I just know it. I feel it-kind of like a premonition. That’s why I had to see you.”
I took my time processing this new batch of information. “You’re in contact with that cold-blooded killer, and you know when he’s going to strike again?”
“He’s not a cold-blooded killer, Mags! He only kills when he’s very stressed-when he has to. Otherwise, you know that my Sweetykins wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“I think the expression is ‘fly,’ dear, but in this dirt bag’s case, flea is just as appropriate.”
Shame on me. I’d never used such harsh language; I’d never called anyone such a vulgar name. But Melvin had actually tried to throw me over a cliff once, and if it hadn’t been for the grace of God and my sturdy Christian underwear-which got caught up on a tree branch-my head would have broken open on the rocks at the bottom of said cliff like a jack-o’-lantern hurled in front of a speeding automobile. And for the record, I only did that once, and I was only ten years old, and after the licking Papa gave me behind the barn, it is a wonder I still have a bottom with which to fill out my Hanes Her Way cotton briefs, which are, of course, plain Protestant white.
My words seemed to have struck a nerve in Susannah. In the blink of a bloodshot eye, her demeanor went from being limp and weepy to resembling that of an alley cat caught in a net. Out came the fangs and claws, which, frankly, I much preferred.
“How dare you call my Woosty-Bootsy names? He’s a lot more of a man than that mama’s boy you’re married to. At least my husband can cut his own meat!”
I must admit that it is rather pitiful that a heart surgeon has to pass his steak to his mother first so that she can saw it into manageable bites, but doesn’t each family have its own idiosyncrasies? I’m sure that the Obamas do things behind the White House doors that they would rather not be made public. In fact-and I say this as a woman who voted for Barack-what was his wife thinking when she selected her inaugural gown? From the picture I saw in the paper, it looked like it had wadded balls of toilet paper glued hither, thither, and yon. Frankly, a little less hither and a lot more yon might have been in order for that schmatta.
“Susannah! Do you hear yourself? You’re defending a murderer. You are, in fact, a convicted accessory to murder. Oh where, oh where, did I go wrong?” Not knowing quite how to wring my hands, I rubbed them together vigorously.
“Stop being so dramatic, Mags. If you loved someone as much as I love my dingleberry pie, you wouldn’t be asking yourself that question.”