“No, this I mean. Magdalena, you are too smart for this war with the sexes, yah?”

“That’s ‘battle of the sexes,’ and this is barely a skirmish.”

“Hmm-for you English, maybe so. But didn’t your mama tell you that there are more flies to be caught with honey than with vinegar?”

“Let’s pretend that she did, Freni; what do I want with a bunch of sticky flies?”

Freni shook her head, which meant that her entire stout body shook, from her shoulders down. “It is not to be taken liberally,” she said. “It means that-”

“I know what it means, Freni.”

She turned then and waved a dripping wooden spoon in my direction. “You will listen to me, Magdalena Portulacca, or you too will take a nap.”

Suddenly I was a ten-year-old girl again, and Freni was a much younger woman cooking at the very same stove. Upstairs Mama lay in bed, having recently given birth to Susannah. Yes, I’d been totally ignored by both overjoyed parents for the last week or so, but that was no excuse for what I’d done. How dared I have cut up one of the parlor curtains to sew clothes for my favorite doll, Melissa?

But it was just one panel, I tried to argue, and besides, no one ever used the parlor. Of course they wouldn’t see things my way. Wasn’t I too old to play with dolls? It was time I put away such foolish things and helped out with the housework. Cousin Freni was there only to wait on Mama (she had a bad case of the “nerves”), so of course there were a lot of other important things I could be doing-like washing out Susannah’s poopy diapers or scrubbing pots and pans.

“Okay, already, I’ll listen.”

The dripping spoon froze just inches from my nose. “I have been thinking, Magdalena, not just about you and Dr. Rosen, but about me and Barbara as well.” She actually winced when speaking her only daughter- in-law’s name. “We are not seeing the forest before the trees.”

“Come again?”

“Take this daughter-in-law, for example; she has many faults, yah?”

“Oh, yes, indeed! She’s too tall and she’s from Iowa.”

“Is this sarcasm, Magdalena?”

“Absolutely not, dear. Any woman over five feet eleven should be shipped off to New Zealand, and the government should do a better job of stopping illegal immigration from the State of Iowa.”

Freni’s normally beady eyes shone brightly. “Ach, do you mean this, or do you just pull on my legs?”

“Sorry, dear, but I just pull on your legs-well, one of them, at any rate. But your point is what, dear? Are my Gabe and your Barbara the trees, or the forest, in your mangled metaphor?”

Freni threw her stubby arms up, hands open, in a gesture of extreme frustration. The wooden spoon sailed completely across the kitchen, where it smacked against the calendar that hung on the opposing wall beside the refrigerator. Believe me, I am not a superstitious woman, but there was now a meat broth stain on the Ides of March.

“Gut im Himmel! You want that I should call you a dummkopf? I am saying that we have much to be thankful for. Especially you. Your Dr. Rosen is tall-but not too tall-and he is not from Iowa. He is also handsome, as well as rich, and he loves you very, very much; this thing I know. Yah, he is not of the faith, and is a mama’s boy, but no one is perfect and the final chapter for him is not yet written.”

I felt strangely let down. “That’s it? That’s your big advice? Count my blessings?”

She nodded. “Yah, and I will count mine: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fimf.”

I knew without a doubt that her five enumerated blessings alluded to her beloved husband, Mose; her precious son, Jonathan; and her three adorable grandchildren. Alas, I am not one to let a bone go ungnawed.

“Sex,” I said.

“Ach!”

“Well, doesn’t that mean six in Pennsylvania Dutch? You better count Barbara too, because it is thanks to her that numbers drei, vier, and fimf came along. But, come to think of it, a little sex was probably involved as well.”

“Ach!” Freni clapped her hands tightly over her ears and fled to the pantry.

Feeling strangely better about the puppy situation, I headed out through the dining room and back to the office/foyer. I had a lot of work to do, if indeed the horde from Hoboken was going to experience an authentic Amish supper. The first thing on my agenda was getting these folks to work up an honest country-style appetite.

“Come on, people,” I barked (gently, of course) to the stragglers who were still struggling to get their bulging valises up my impossibly steep stairs. “Tote that bag, and lift that tote, but if you gets a little drunk, then no fruit compote.”

“That woman is certifiably nuts,” I heard somebody grumble from the dark privacy of the stairwell.

“Indeed, I am,” I said with satisfaction. Yes, sir, it had all the makings of a blessed week.

I didn’t even have a clue that something had gone terribly wrong with my game plan until the sheriff’s car pulled up my long gravel driveway. It happened just as I had begun to say grace. I feel compelled to explain here that the enormity of such an interruption cannot be overemphasized. My guests, as it turns out, were all papists, given to a brief prayer accompanied by a hand gesture known as the sign of the cross.

But since they had all signed up for the full Mennonite experience, I was determined to give them just that. A proper grace-that is, a Protestant grace-should be long enough to wilt a crisp tossed salad and turn mashed potatoes into concrete. If at least one person in attendance does not come close to fainting, it fails the test. For one must not only ask the Lord to bless the food, but to calm Aunt Wendy’s eczema, cure Uncle Walter ’s halitosis, and find some way to talk some sense into Cousin Leona, to stop her from marrying that gold digger from Chile with the red toupee and the extra pinkie on his left hand.

Finally, when the time comes to wrap it up and say amen, the attendees are so famished that they will eat anything-perhaps even one another, like the survivors of an Andean plane crash-and they are grateful putty in your hand. Oh, what delicious power! Like a skilled conductor with an orchestra, one can prolong that moment of intense anticipation until it bursts into a collective gasp, quite like that moment of marital bliss that one experiences when-

“ Magdalena!”

“Shhh, I’m praying.”

“Sorry, hon,” my Beloved whispered, “but the sheriff said he’s not falling for that ruse this time.”

I opened one eye and looked down the long table that my ancestor Jacob the Strong had built in the nineteenth century. The papists along its length, like their distant cousins, the Episcopalians, were not keeping their eyes closed. Believe me, a Baptist, or a Methodist, would have to have his or her eyes pried open during a prayer, lest the Devil somehow distract him or her. If, however, they prayed that the English would adopt some gender-neutral pronouns-

“Mags, hon, this is serious.”

I closed my wandering eye; I never should have opened it. I was still returning thanks for the Good Lord’s bountiful goodness, by whose hand we all were fed, and had yet to even touch on familial maladies.

“-and bless the plump little hands that kneaded this bread,” I intoned. “It is, by the way, excellent bread, even if Freni did get the loaves a wee too brown on the bottom this time around, so I fully expect that we, your grateful servants gathered here, will partake thereof. And with gusto. But as for the beef stew-Mmm, mmm, mmm, does that smell good! No need for divinely inspired gusto there, Lord.”

“Miss Yoder?”

“Yes, Lord?”

At least five out of six of my guests were rude enough to laugh at that point. One can be quite sure that both my eyes flew open in righteous annoyance.

“Over here, Miss Yoder,” said the sheriff. He was standing in the doorway of my dining room, and in so doing re- created a scene from my worst nightmare. That nightmare, of course, had to do with the day Mama and Papa died, squished to death as they were between a milk tanker and a semi- trailer truck loaded to the gills with state-of-the-art running shoes. That evening as well a sheriff had stood in the dining room of the PennDutch Inn, twisting his cap in his hands.