Pie

by Sarah Weeks

  Things changed after Polly Portman won the Blueberry Award. All kinds of people started showing up at the shop with ideas about how she could expand PIE or turn it into a national chain. One eager businessman came all the way from Hong Kong to unveil his plans to build a giant factory where Polly’s pies would be mass-produced, frozen, and shipped all over the world. He told Polly she would be so rich, she’d never have to bake again.

  “Why on earth would I want that?” she laughed. Then she handed him the green tomato pie she’d noticed him eyeing earlier and showed him to the door.

  Just as the hoopla surrounding Polly’s Blueberry Award began to die down, she won another one — this time for her buttermilk pie. Once again, she hadn’t entered the contest herself, but the word was out about Polly’s pie-making skills, and after that there was no stopping her. Each September like clockwork the call would come and Polly would put on her leopard-print hat and go off to wherever the APA conference was being held that year to deliver the same heartfelt four-word speech — “Thank you very much.”

  Polly Portman won thirteen Blueberry medals in a row — something no pie maker before or since has ever done. Although she may not have wanted to cash in on her fame, Polly was more than happy to share her good fortune with her neighbors. With so many out-of-towners coming to Ipswitch to visit the pie shop, other local establishments began to experience a boon in their own businesses as well. The Ipsy Inn, which had been boarded up for years, was suddenly overflowing with guests. The coffee shop, the diner, and the drugstore raked in profits on everything from BLTs to aspirin tablets, and the city council voted to replace the old ENTERING IPSWITCH sign at the city limit with a fancy new one that said WELCOME TO IPSWITCH — THE PROUD HOME OF PIE. In the upper right-hand corner of the sign was a red circle with a number painted in the middle, which changed every time Polly Portman won another Blueberry Award. In 1955 the sign proudly proclaimed 13 Blueberries and Counting!

  Busloads of people arrived in Ipswitch every day to visit the pie shop, and time and again, Polly was asked to reveal the secret of her perfect piecrust.

  “At least give us a hint,” they would beg.

  Even though Polly Portman was the kind of person who would have given you the shirt off her own back, she wouldn’t tell anyone the recipe for her piecrust. Modesty would have prevented her from saying it, but she knew that the success of the town rested on her shoulders. Keeping the recipe a secret was part of what drew the tourists to Ipswitch, and without their patronage, many of the small businesses would have trouble staying afloat. Although Polly had no intention of sharing her secret any time soon, after the conversation with Alice about keeping the recipe safe, she had made arrangements for what would happen to the piecrust recipe when her time on earth came to an end.

  Unfortunately, that time came much sooner than anyone expected, and as a result, things were about to change in Ipswitch … especially for Alice Anderson.

  • • •

  Mr. Ogden’s office was only three blocks away from the Andersons’ house, so Alice decided to ride her bike.

  As she pedaled off down the street, she felt a song coming on.

  I’d rather you were here of course,

  I miss you through and through.

  But thank you for the recipe,

  Aunt Polly, I love you.

  Singing about the recipe made Alice’s stomach grumble. She had been so busy missing Aunt Polly, she hadn’t realized she’d been missing something else, too — her pies. July was berry season. How good a slice of triple berry pie would taste right now, she thought. Aunt Polly used only the ripest berries, sweetening them with clover honey and a splash of vanilla. The thought of that pie, with its crispy golden crust and a scoop of homemade ice cream to go with it, made Alice feel so giddy, she missed the turn onto Maple Street and had to circle around and go back.

  Mr. Ogden was sitting at his desk when Alice arrived. He was wearing a blue and white seersucker suit, a crisp white shirt, and a red tie. His pants were held up with a pair of suspenders the same shade of red as his tie, and, Alice noticed, he wore a pair of black wing tip shoes very much like the ones both Mayor Needleman and Reverend Flowers had worn to her aunt Polly’s funeral. Alice knew they were called wing tips because her father also owned a pair, though he hadn’t worn his to the funeral because he said they pinched his bunions. On the desk in front of Mr. Ogden lay a large white envelope, and on the other side of the desk sat two chairs, one of which was occupied by a brown leather case about the size of a bread box, decorated with leopard-print trim. Alice knew right away what was inside.

  “Hello, Lardo,” she whispered through the little mesh window sewn into one end of the case.

  Lardo was Polly Portman’s grumpy old cat, and Alice was scared to death of him. Talk about nasty—Lardo would scratch and bite and hiss at anybody who came near him, except for Polly. He’d showed up filthy and half starved at the pie shop one day, and when no one came to claim him, Polly took pity on him and decided to let him stay. Thanks to a steady diet of fried sardines and sweet cream, he quickly tripled in size. His big fat belly hung so low it brushed the floor as he walked, but that wasn’t the reason Polly decided to call him Lardo. She had assumed at first that he was a tabby cat, but after risking life and limb to bathe him and brush out his matted gray coat, she discovered that underneath all that dirt and soot, he was actually white. So Polly decided to name him after the whitest thing she could think of—vegetable shortening.

  There was a big pantry in the back of the pie shop where Polly kept a supply of essential ingredients for her baking. Anyone who’s ever made a pie knows that you can’t make a crust without using some form of fat. Some people like butter, others prefer oil, but Polly Portman was a firm believer in vegetable shortening. She went through gobs of the glistening snow-white goop every week at the shop, and the brand she always used was called LARDO!

  Most people wouldn’t have tolerated, let alone loved, a cat with a rotten disposition like Lardo’s, but Polly adored and doted on him. Each morning before she went downstairs to the shop, she would fry up three sardines and put them on a little blue china plate for Lardo. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him eat the fish of course, but one of Polly’s favorite things in the world was to come upstairs at the end of a long day of baking to find the little blue plate licked clean.

  “You must be hungry,” Alice said, peering into the carrying case at Lardo.

  He narrowed his yellow eyes at her and hissed.

  “Charming cat,” sniffed Mr. Ogden.

  Alice felt a guilty pang. Everyone had been so wrapped up in Polly’s passing and in planning the funeral, they’d all completely forgotten about Lardo. He’d been cooped up in the empty pie shop for three days with nothing to eat. No wonder he was grumpy.

  “Poor kitty,” said Alice.

  Another hiss, even louder than the last, emanated from the case.

  “Getting him here was no easy feat,” Mr. Ogden said. “It took me over an hour to pull him out from under the bed. As you can see, I did not escape unscathed.”

  He held up his hands, displaying an impressive array of Band-Aids.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Alice told him. “Lardo doesn’t like anybody.”

  Mr. Ogden looked at his watch and frowned.

  “Have a seat, young lady,” he told Alice, indicating the unoccupied chair across from him.

  Alice did as he instructed, sitting on the very edge of the chair, in case Lardo tried to take a swipe at her through his carrying case.

  “As I mentioned on the phone,” Mr. Ogden began, “this matter concerns a certain bequest, a gift, which your aunt has made on your behalf.”

  “I know,” Alice said, feeling a tiny flutter of excitement under her ribs as she imagined the celebration the Anderson family would be having at their house that evening.

  Mr. Ogden paused, pressing his fingertips together.

  “Before we proceed, I’d like to exp
lain a few things about your aunt’s will,” he said. “I knew Polly for over fifty years. She was both a client and a friend. I will miss her, not to mention that remarkable Concord grape pie she used to make.”

  Mr. Ogden licked his lips, savoring the memory of the pie for a moment before continuing.

  “When Polly asked me to supervise the execution of her will, which is to say, sign it in my office with the necessary witnesses, I was more than happy to do so. However, I feel that it’s important that you know that the actual will itself was not prepared by me; it was written at home by your aunt in her own hand. After signing it before two witnesses — my secretary, Miss Lebson, and a gentleman by the name of Hammerschlacht — she sealed it in an envelope, which she instructed me to open only in the event of her death. I read it myself for the first time this morning.”

  “What did it say?” Alice asked, hoping that Mr. Ogden’s answer would be a lot shorter than the long-winded speech he’d just delivered.

  “We’ll get to that in a minute,” he said. “First I’d like to remind you that as your aunt’s attorney, my role in this matter is merely to inform you of her intentions, not to explain the reasons for them, and to see that they are carried out in the manner in which she has requested. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” Alice said, afraid that if she admitted she hadn’t understood something, he’d feel the need to repeat the whole thing all over again.

  “Very well,” Mr. Ogden said. Then he cleared his throat and began to read the will out loud.

  The document consisted of a single page, handwritten in blue ink. It took Mr. Ogden less than a minute to read it, and when he had finished, two things were perfectly clear:

  Polly Portman had left her secret piecrust recipe to her beloved cat, Lardo.

  And she had left her beloved cat, Lardo, to Alice.

  GREEN TOMATO PIE

  8 medium-size green tomatoes (watch out for worms!)

  1 tsp grated lemon peel

  Juice of 1 lemon

  ½ tsp salt

  ½ tsp ground cinnamon

  ¼ tsp nutmeg

  ¾ cup granulated sugar

  2 TBS cornstarch

  1 TBS unsalted butter

  Peel and slice tomatoes. In a saucepan, combine tomatoes with lemon peel, lemon juice, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Cook tomato mixture over low heat, stirring constantly. Combine sugar and cornstarch and add to tomato mixture. Cook until clear, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add butter and let stand until almost cooled. Pour into unbaked pie shell, cover with top crust. Bake at 400 for 45 minutes, or until nicely browned.

  Note: Not everybody likes the idea of a tomato pie — call it a “mock apple,” and they’ll gobble it down!

  Chapter Four

  “Her cat?” Alice’s mother shrieked after Alice returned home from Mr. Ogden’s office with Lardo’s carrying case balanced precariously on her handlebars. “Is this some kind of a joke? What about the recipe?”

  How Alice dreaded being the one to have to deliver the news.

  “She left it to Lardo, Mom.”

  “What do you mean, she left it to Lardo? How do you leave a recipe to a cat?”

  “I don’t know,” Alice answered honestly. “Aunt Polly told me she kept the recipe in her head.”

  “Surely, Mr. Ogden explained it to you.”

  Alice told her mother what Mr. Ogden had said about how his job was only to inform her of what Polly had decided to do with the recipe, not to explain why.

  “That’s ridiculous,” huffed Alice’s mother. “I’m going to call Mr. Ogden right now and get to the bottom of this nonsense.”

  Meanwhile, Alice’s father was dealing with a completely different issue.

  “A-choo!” he sneezed, the minute he laid eyes on Lardo. Highly allergic, even the word “cat” could set him off. “A-choo! A-choo! A-CHOO!”

  Mrs. Anderson reappeared a few minutes later looking ashen. The phone call with Mr. Ogden had not gone well. Although he had confirmed that the piecrust recipe had indeed been passed on to Lardo, Polly Portman had provided absolutely no instructions in her will as to how this was to be accomplished.

  “I should have known it was too good to be true,” Alice’s mother said, putting her head in her hands. “That recipe is worth millions, but Polly decided she’d rather throw it away than give it to us. Not only that, but without the pie shop, what good will the souvenir stand be now?”

  “There, there, Ruthie, don’t cry,” said Mr. Anderson, comforting his wife. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Perhaps Mr. Ogden misplaced a page of the will.”

  Alice shook her head.

  “There was only one page,” she told her father.

  “Still, there must be some reason she’s done what she’s done,” he insisted, then he pinched his nose to stifle an oncoming sneeze.

  “She hated me, George,” Alice’s mother wailed. “That’s the reason.”

  “Aunt Polly didn’t hate you, Mom,” Alice said. “She didn’t hate anyone.”

  “How can you defend her after what she’s done?” her mother shouted through her tears. “Clearly your precious aunt didn’t care about any of us. Not even you, Alice.”

  Her mother’s words stung, even though, in her heart, Alice knew they couldn’t be true. Aunt Polly had loved her. She was certain of that. Still, she couldn’t help wondering what her aunt could have been thinking, leaving something so valuable to a cat.

  “What are we going to do, George?” Alice’s mother cried. “What are we going to do?”

  “Take the cat up to your room, Alice,” her father said quietly. “And find him something to do his business in. Your mother and I need to talk.”

  Aunt Polly had kept a covered cat box for Lardo in her bathroom on the floor under the sink. It was filled with sand and had a little hinged door in it so he could have privacy while he was inside. The best Alice could come up with was a cardboard shoe box, which she filled with ripped-up newspaper and placed in the corner of the room. She went downstairs to the kitchen and came back up with two little bowls, one for water, the other for tuna fish, which was the closest thing to sardines that she could find. Lardo was still in the carrying case, watching her every move with his scary yellow eyes. Alice was afraid to get too close, so when she finally got up the nerve to let him out, she used a bent coat hanger to pull the zipper. The second the flap fell open, Lardo streaked out of the case and scooted under the bed, hissing all the way.

  He stayed there for the rest of the day.

  When six o’clock rolled around, Alice’s stomach was rumbling like an empty garbage can rolling down a hill, but downstairs there was no sign of dinner. Her father was parked at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. News travels fast in a small town like Ipswitch, and the headline read PIE QUEEN LEAVES SECRET RECIPE TO CAT.

  “Where’s Mom?” she asked.

  “Gone to bed with a sick headache,” he answered, reaching for a napkin to wipe his mouth. In front of him on the table was a half-eaten piece of pie.

  “Where did that come from?” Alice asked.

  “I found it in the back of the fridge,” he said. “There’s one piece left if you want it.”

  Alice crossed the room to the refrigerator and pulled open the door. On the bottom shelf between a jar of dill pickles and a head of iceberg lettuce sat a tin pie plate containing a single slice of lemon chiffon pie. It seemed like only yesterday that Alice had pricked the bottom of that pie shell five times with a fork, and sat on the tall red stool while Aunt Polly crushed gingersnaps and peeled thin yellow curls of lemon skin to decorate the top with.

  “It’s a little past its prime,” commented Alice’s father from behind his newspaper, “but still delicious.”

  Alice got a fork from the drawer and carried the pie tin upstairs, where Lardo was still hiding under the bed, the bowl of tuna fish untouched. Aunt Polly and Alice had been alike in many ways, but when it came to eating pie, they were opposites. Like most
people, Aunt Polly would start at the front of the slice and work her way to the back, but Alice always began by breaking off the crisp edges of crust, then moving forward, saving the tip — her favorite part — for last.

  Sitting cross-legged on the bed, Alice began to eat the pie. Having spent nearly a week in the fridge, the crust was not as crisp as it had once been, but when the first bite of lemony mousse hit her tongue, Alice closed her eyes and smiled.

  “Why is it called chiffon?” she remembered having asked her aunt.

  “Chiffon is a kind of fabric,” Polly had explained. “Cool and silky and lighter than air.”

  “Like those little white puffs your breath makes when it’s cold outside.”

  “Yes, sweet girl,” said Aunt Polly, leaning over to kiss the top of Alice’s head. “Exactly like that.”

  Each bite brought back more happy memories, until all too soon Alice had reached the end of the pie. The tip had always been her favorite part, but this time when she pierced the pale yellow triangle and brought it to her lips, a single tear rolled down her cheek. It would be the last time she would ever taste one of Aunt Polly’s pies.

  Later she put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth, then crawled under the covers and read for a while until her eyelids began to droop. It was eight thirty when she turned out the light, and after a minute she heard Lardo come out from under the bed and walk across the room. There was a full moon that night, so enough light was coming in through the window that Alice could see him gulping down the tuna in great, greedy bites. He must have been starving after three days alone in the apartment — probably scared, too. For the first time, it occurred to Alice that she and Lardo might have something in common.