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

moved here from Brooklyn two years ago, but sometimes your Yiddish accent is worse than when you arrived. Then, on other days, you have hardly any accent. How can this be?’
    My nemesis shrugged and smiled just enough to display her gold tooth. Why had I even bothered to ask? Ida Rosen might be old, but she was far from helpless. Like every female, everywhere, she had been born knowing how to manipulate her father. (Surely this is the reason why the word ‘manipulate’ begins with the word man.) However, Ida had progressed to become a master manipulator, bar none, and her fluctuating accent was just one of her many tools. Unfortunately the Babester was her most frequent victim.
    â€˜Nu, Magdalena, do you vant to discuss accents wiz me, or do you vant dat vee should put our kophs togedder and find zee man who killed zat vonderful voman, my dear friend, Ramat Sreym?’
    â€˜Your friend?’ I gasped in disbelief. ‘You didn’t like her one little bit.’ Gabe’s mother was an all-too-frequent visitor at my establishment, and the two women often ran into each other—sometimes quite literally.
    â€˜I din’t?’
    â€˜You din’t! She constantly made fun of you. She described you as being shaped like a triangle standing on a point. She said that you had enormous bosoms and a humongous head. She had you speaking in an atrocious accent and mollycoddling your son. She even had you cutting his meat, for crying out loud!’
    Ida beamed. ‘Yah, eez all true.’
    â€˜Yes, but don’t you see how emasculating that description of Gabriel is to him? Do you really want your son, a prominent, retired cardiologist, to be seen as a Mama’s boy?’
    â€˜Eez nozzing wrong wiz dat. You vill see, Magdalena. Und anyvay, zees voman, she had zee hots for my Gabeleh, und she said zat eef you vood haf set him free, zen she vood haf converted und moved back to Brooklyn wif us.’
    â€˜Converted?’
    â€˜She vood haf become Jewish.’ So saying, Ida crossed her paddle-like hands, on account of her bosom being so bountiful that her stubby arms couldn’t reach any further.
    â€˜Why, that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. People aren’t supposed to convert away from Christianity; if anything, Gabe should become a Christian!’
    â€˜What? And turn his back on four thousand years of Judaism?’
    It was a good thing we were sitting, because my jaw dropped into my lap. Ida Rosen had suddenly lost all trace of her Eastern European accent. In fact, she sounded more Milwaukee than New York.
    I slapped my jaw back into place. ‘Golda Meir!’ I cried. ‘Have you reincarnated?’
    â€˜Vhat?’
    â€˜Don’t “vhat” me, Ida. A second ago you sounded like a native-born Midwesterner. I’ve always suspected that there was something fishy about your accent. Now it’s time to fess up; just who is the real Ida Rosen and where are you from?’
    Ida jumped to her feet. This was not an easy maneuver, due to her monstrous bosoms and oversized head. Yes, I know, I could have let her land face down, but then I would have missed yet another opportunity to feel self-righteous. That said, I jumped spritely to my boat-sized feet and pulled her upright before her noggin could hit the pavement of the garden path, taking great care to stay out of the trajectory of that enormous bobbing head.
    â€˜S-s-spy?’ she finally sputtered. ‘Eez dat vaht you tink I am?’
    â€˜I didn’t say that – well, not exactly.’
    â€˜Yah, but dat is vaht you deferred, no?’
    â€˜Hmm. Out of deference to you, I’ll leave that one alone.’
    â€˜Riddles! Always mit zee riddles wiz you, Magdalena. You come here casting precisions on my friends und me, und den you start talking in deez riddles like some crazy voman. Nu, how can I be happy wiz my leetle Jacob, my bubbeleh, growing up wiz a meshuggeneh voman