Read Online The Death of Pie by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online Page B

Agnes, speaking directly into the built-in microphone above my windshield visor.
    â€˜Agnes,’ I hissed, ‘stay out of this.’ Incidentally, one must always hiss using an ‘S’ sound. Some fancy-schmancy novelists actually try to get away without following this rule.
    I’ve always maintained that a healthy Amish woman, or a Mennonite woman of Amish descent, can induce just as much guilt in her charges as any Jewish or Catholic mother. Well, I was wrong on that score. The former are way, way better at it.
    â€˜Magdalena,’ Freni said, suddenly sounding completely resigned to her miserable lot as the downtrodden housekeeper, ‘I work my fingers to the bone all morning making the stew, and what do I have to show for it?’
    â€˜Bony fingers,’ I said helpfully.
    â€˜Yah, and they are crooked too with the authoritis.’
    I have spent decades gently trying to correct Freni’s pronunciation of certain words, but to no avail. An inflammation of published writers and painful swollen finger joints – perhaps in the grand scheme of things, there is no difference.
    â€˜Now I feel really guilty about not going with you back to the PennDutch,’ Agnes whispered. Alas, Agnes whispers as softly as a flock of scrapping seagulls.
    â€˜ Gut! ’ Freni said decisively. ‘That one can come and eat for how many people that she likes.’
    â€˜But I need carbs, Mags,’ Agnes begged. ‘I’m a grieving woman; I need pancakes, not stew.’
    â€˜What?’ Freni roared. ‘Pancakes in the middle of the day? Whoever heard of such a thing?’
    â€˜Freni,’ I said in my most motherly, intentionally soothing voice, ‘lots of people eat pancakes and waffles in the middle of the day. This is a free country, after all.’
    When Freni makes her ‘disgusted’ face, her thin, gray lips take on the shape of a well-weathered volcano as seen from above. A dozen or so fissures suddenly appear around the perimeter of the volcano’s cone and a smattering of white hairs give the illusion of a dusting of snow. Of course, I couldn’t see Mt. Frensuvius over my car phone, but I could picture it in my mind’s eye, which routinely performs with HD clarity.
    â€˜It is a sin, if you ask me,’ Freni said.
    â€˜ What did you say?’
    â€˜You heard me; it is a sin that so many things must change all the time.’
    â€˜Well—’
    â€˜First Agnes wants her pancakes for lunch, then maybe one day for supper. Who knows, is it not possible that one day she wants only pancakes? Pancakes, pancakes, pancakes! Magdalena, I ask you, is this healthy? Is this what Gott wants us to put into our bodies? This kind of thinking is the way of the world, Magdalena. They even have a name for it: they call it Edenism. These Edenists think that pleasure is a good thing! Imagine that! You must not be reduced by such thoughts, Magdalena.’
    â€˜Freni, dear,’ I purred, ‘I hardly think that eating pancakes three times a day will have much impact on reducing me.’
    There followed a moment of silence in which I knew that I had gone too far in teasing my mentor and my friend. ‘So now you mock me?’ she finally said. ‘Shame on you, Magdalena Portulacca Yoder Rosen. You are better than this.’ Then she hung up the phone.
    To be honest, the vehemence of Freni’s response embarrassed me. Yes, I’d known Agnes my entire life. We’d been bathwater babies – literally shared the same washtub as infants – and gone to school together, laughed together, cried together, fought each other, lied to each other and once we even snuck off to a dance together, but I still hated being treated like a child in front of my best friend. I especially chafed at her last line. Those were words that I’d heard a million times growing up, and I had not been a troublesome child; merely ungainly and awkward, with