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cut his Jell-O pudding for him, as well as his meat. Instinctively, if not from valuable experience, I knew that a man bested at a lunging sport – especially one played in the presence of another woman – was bound to be cranky and uncooperative for the rest of the day. The fact that the other woman was his mother’s age, height, and build (inverted isosceles triangle) made no difference in a positive way.
    â€˜Oh, is my Jakey-wakey-snoogey-boogey looking for his Daddy-waddy?’ I cooed as I scooped him up.
    â€˜Mags, stop it! We agreed on no baby talk.’
    I breathed deeply of heaven’s perfume – that is to say, a baby’s head – and instantly defused the old grouch by depositing chubby Little Jacob into his father’s strong, tanned arms. Suddenly, I felt totally at peace as well. In my book, there is nothing sexier than a father tenderly holding his child.
    â€˜Ach, you English mitt der funny names,’ Freni said. She sounded almost disappointed that we’d stopped arguing. Admittedly, for someone like Freni who doesn’t watch TV, from time to time the Babester and I do make for good entertainment.
    â€˜Not to worry, Freni,’ I said. ‘When he sees me decked out in my uniform, climbing into my black and white police car, he’ll have kittens.’
    I would like to think that Freni winked then. After all, it is hard to tell, given that the lenses in her glasses are a quarter of an inch thick. But if I were to be brutally honest with myself, I might admit that she looked just as shocked as my Dr Gabriel Rosen, the handsome cardiologist to whom I had promised to be faithful until death us did part. Fortunately, it was Gabe, the outsider from New York, who had insisted that we leave the word ‘obey’ out of our vows.
    The Convent of the Sisters of Perpetual Apathy lay across Hertzler Road from the PennDutch Inn, about a quarter of a mile away. In the old days both properties were farms, operated by second cousins, third cousins, fourth cousins and fifth cousins, who also happened to be first cousins. The two men I’m referring to were my papa and Aaron Miller Sr, but trust me: their close blood ties were not unusual in our community, where family trees give way to thickets which can prove daunting to the casual genealogist. The reason for this is that the Amish marry exclusively within their community. As a result, even I, who am merely a Mennonite of Amish descent, am in fact my own cousin. Just hand me a sandwich and I constitute a family picnic.
    Now where was I? Oh, yes, I was going across Hertzler Road (the Hertzlers are cousins as well) to what had once been a productive dairy farm. Then Aaron Sr died, Aaron Jr lied, and I cried. That said, after the marriage that wasn’t, and I was branded forever as an inadvertent adulteress, the hunk without a heart sold the family inheritance to the mother of my current lover. There, I said it, if only in my mind! Yes, we are married, but the Babester and I are lovers just the same. Lover – what a sinfully sensuous word, something only an English would dare speak aloud. If Mama could hear me she’d spin so fast in her grave she’d generate enough electricity to supply all Hernia’s needs into the middle of the twenty-second century.
    I shouted it instead. ‘Lover! Gabriel Rosen is my lover!’
    This was my anthem, which I continued to shout as I drove from my front porch to the convent gates. This was my right for having survived adolescence as the tall, awkward girl with the horsey face who never stood a chance of having a boyfriend, if only because Mama thought that deodorant was too English. As a consequence my nickname throughout high school was Yoder with an Odour. I had to console myself with the fact that I was not hirsute, because Mama believed that females who shaved and used depilatories were in cahoots with the Devil. She was not alone in her beliefs. Poor Agganetha