Making Piece

by Beth M. Howard

  Just as I was gearing up to finally leave Phoenix, my cell phone rang again. This time the call was from Nan, who was en route from New York to L.A., where she would be spending the next five months directing and starring in a new play she wrote. Phoenix was not a planned stop on her trip, but she and her husband, Steve, had a last-minute change in plans.

  “Come stay with us at my sister’s house,” Nan insisted. That took no convincing as Nan, the designated leader of Team Marcus (my support group that included Alison and Melissa), was my biggest salve. I had stayed at her sister’s house once. It was a stunning palatial estate in the shadow of Phoenix’s Camelback Mountain. How could I not look forward to a night soaking in the infinity pool and sleeping in the guest room on the five-thousand-count sheets?

  I drove the RV all of five miles from Christina’s house to Nan’s sister’s—I may have been back in motion but I wasn’t getting too far—and parked in the circular driveway, just in time for a multimillion-dollar view of the sunset against the Camel’s red rocks. The next thing we knew, one overnight turned into “Let’s stay another night.”

  Phoenix seemed to have an odd grip on me. Two weeks after I arrived, I was still there. Two weeks is how long it took me to recognize that the Phoenix is the bird who rose from the ashes. A Phoenix symbolizes rebirth. Duh.

  This realization hit only on my last night when Nan, Steve and I raided the wine cellar and opened an expensive bottle of pinot noir. We wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat on the grass, propped up on cushions around an outdoor fire pit. In a New Year’s ritual, Nan made us all write down on paper what things, what qualities, behaviors, whatever, we wanted to get rid of from the past. We were to then throw the paper in the fire and start the New Year by leaving these (presumably negative) things behind. I looked at my blank piece of paper for a while and turned to Nan.

  “I don’t know what to write,” I said.

  Nan—who is the only person who knew me as well as Marcus (minus the sex and birthmark on the inside of my thigh)—replied, “I do.” She took my paper and wrote “Sorrow.”

  I threw the slip of white paper into the fire and watched, with tears streaming down my face, as it burned in the flames. Did letting go of my sorrow also mean letting go of Marcus? I didn’t want to let him go. But I understood Nan’s message: letting go of the sorrow was the only way to keep living. And if I had learned anything at all in the four and a half months since Marcus’s death, it was simply that our job as humans is to keep living as long as we’re graced with the opportunity to be here.

  The paper continued to burn into white ashes, floating up to the heavens, carrying a little bit of my sorrow with it, making room for rebirth, for new life.

  I wasn’t reborn, but it was a symbolic start and the perfect culmination to the holidays. With the help of some very special old friends and some new ones—Alison, Thomas, Alison’s sister and mom, Uncle Mike, Aunt Sue, Maggie, Christina, Nan and Steve—I made it through my first holidays without Marcus. I had only begun my journey through grief, but in Arizona I had discovered some additional elements I would need to bring along for the healing ride: sun, movement, openness—the ingredients for resurrection.

  And now, I had to return to L.A. I had a TV show to make.

  CHAPTER

  10

  The best, most priceless television footage cannot be planned; it just happens in the same way real life unfolds. Like when three little boys crash their sister’s pie party. Eight-year-old boys with unruly hair and shirts that hang out from their knee-stained jeans. Boys who make exaggerated faces, wrinkle their noses and say, “We’re not going to make any pie. Pie is stupid. Pie is for girls.”

  I nodded at the little boys and their reluctance to participate. I had expected it. But I just smiled to myself inwardly, because I knew what would happen next.

  I had just picked up Janice from the Los Angeles Airport in the RV and we were at the home of my former landlord in Venice, where I had lived in the guesthouse above the garage (similar to my place in Portland but with an ocean outside the door instead of a five-thousand-acre forest). I had promised my landlord’s daughter, Margaret, months earlier—before my life fell apart—that I would give her a pie party as her birthday present. She had turned nine and I told her she could invite up to five friends. Determined to make good on my promise, though she was already closer to turning ten, I asked her mom if I could still have a party for her and, “Um, would it be okay if we film it?”

  My former landlord had called the day before in a panic. “I don’t have a babysitter for the boys. And if they’re around I’m afraid they are going to be very disruptive. Maybe we should cancel the whole thing.”

  “Nonsense,” I told her. “The boys can make pies, too. Trust me. Once they get going, they’ll be very into it.”

  So when the macho little rug rats scoffed at making girlie pie, I simply suggested, “Well, maybe you can just make some little ones.”

  And they said, “Well, okay.”

  And then, once they started forming balls of dough in their baby-size man hands, they said—they insisted—“We want to make big pies.”

  Of course they did. They always did. Once people got past the initial reluctance to get their hands dirty, finding the sticky, doughy mess to be less distasteful than they had imagined, once they initiated the creative process, they wanted to keep going. No matter what their age. I had been teaching groups to make pie for a few years; I had seen it many times.

  With the camera rolling, I began my pie class. I covered the family’s kitchen table in my picnic-table-print vinyl cloth. I handed each of the seven kids one of my colored plastic mixing bowls, along with an apron and an adult-size rolling pin. “Everyone measure out two and a half cups of flour,” I announced, holding the huge sack of flour open for them. They were an obedient and excited bunch, and just nervous enough to line up behind one another without fighting. “Okay, now unwrap the stick of butter that’s in front of you and put it in your bowls. I’m going to come around and add a half cup of shortening to it.”

  Janice, with her big video camera balanced on her shoulder, moved around the table, capturing the serious looks on the kids’ faces.

  “We’re going to work all these ingredients together until you have lots of lumps in your bowl,” I continued. “Let me show you what I mean.” I demonstrated with my own bowl of flour, butter and shortening, then walked around, helping each one with their technique. My landlord watched in amazement as her young kids and their friends kept their focus.

  The inevitable “Ooh, yuck” was heard from several of the boys when it came time to add water to the dough, but the disgust was short-lived once they were ready for the rolling pins. This was always a tricky stage, trying to keep everyone at the same pace, keeping dough from sticking or cracking, and getting the desired thinness for the crust. “It doesn’t matter if your crust breaks or doesn’t look perfect,” I assured them. “No one will see the bottom of your pie once you put the fruit in it.”

  Having planned ahead for the age group by eliminating the knives we would have needed for apple or peach pie, we added mixed berries into the pie plates. The kids grabbed handfuls of the not-quite-thawed berries from the huge bowl I had dumped them in, their fingers—and aprons—quickly staining with shades of red and purple. And at last we were ready to put our top crust on the pies-in-progress.

  Cookie cutters are a wonderful thing for first-time pie makers. Adults and kids alike expect their pies to look perfect. And when they don’t, they get discouraged and give up on pie altogether. But with cookie cutters, or scissors or a paring knife, you can turn an unruly top crust into a one-of-a-kind art piece with cut-out pieces of crust decoratively laid over the filling. The only downside to this technique is that it’s so much more fun than slapping on a plain old top crust. Therefore, everyone gets caught up in the creativity and it takes a lot longer to get the pies in the oven. The kids forgot they were making pie; they were making artistic masterpiece
s.

  “I’m going to do butterflies,” announced one of the girls.

  “I’m going to do hearts,” replied Margaret.

  “I’m going to do snakes,” said her youngest brother.

  I didn’t care what they did as long as they weren’t running all over the house getting dough on the furniture. There was a giant dusting of flour all around the kitchen table as it was.

  Once all the pies went into the oven, Janice lined the kids up at the table and interviewed them while I cleaned up our mess. “Why do you love pie? What’s your favorite kind of pie? How do you think pie can make the world a better place?” she asked.

  The kids smiled, fiddled with their hair, looked down at their feet, pulled on their aprons. Some mumbled and some shouted their answers. “Pie tastes good. I like apple pie. I like chocolate pie. I like it when my mom makes pie.”

  While Janice had the kids’ attention, mine wandered out the back windows to my old guesthouse above the carport. Marcus had stayed here with me many times, providing a welcome respite for him from his stressful work in Mexico. The place in Venice Beach was immaculate and modern, similar to my tree house in Portland. Though it was smaller, it was much nicer. Sliding-glass doors looked out into the palm trees and blue sky. A Jacuzzi bathtub worthy of a five-star hotel occupied the bathroom. And the kitchen was so efficiently designed there was more than enough storage in the glass-front cabinets and full-size stainless steel appliances, and—always a criterion—plenty of counter space for rolling pie dough. When Marcus visited, we went on early morning hikes in the Santa Monica Mountains, rode bikes to our favorite cafés and took walks on the beach. He went to yoga classes and walked the dogs while I worked at my speakers’ bureau job. He shopped at Whole Foods and came back to fix meals for us. And at night we would spoon in my Murphy bed, watching DVDs on my laptop, falling asleep wrapped around each other. Marcus, a guy who didn’t readily give compliments, couldn’t stop saying, “Good job on finding this place. Well done, my love. This is a beautiful apartment.” These were some of our calmest, most intimate times together. We always had a hard time saying goodbye after those days spent together. Fortunately, I was too busy with the kids and our shoot to reminisce for too long.

  When the pies finished baking and browning, when the berries were bubbling and threatening to cover the bottom of the oven with their sticky overflow (and ensure I would never be invited back), we lined up the kids’ showpieces on the table and took a victory shot. The pride in the room was palpable, visible in their beaming faces and bouncing bodies (much in the same way Janice had expressed her excitement at the idea of making the show). They wanted to touch their pies.

  “That one is mine!” the older of the boys said, pointing to his freeform top crust adorned with extra dough that might have been a turtle or an army tank, I couldn’t quite tell which.

  “Be careful, guys. The pies are really hot,” I cautioned. “You all did an excellent job. Your pies are gorgeous.” The pies were beautiful, each one an art project made by kids under ten. Their edges were rounded and uneven as their little fingers couldn’t quite form the sharp-edged fluted crust. Berry stains had leaked through the tops, leaving ink-blotter patterns. Asymmetrical could best describe at least two of them. They all looked perfectly delicious and their summerlike juicy scent that filled the room was making everyone impatient for a slice. Janice, who had made it known that berry was her favorite pie, was practically salivating on her camera lens.

  “I’m really impressed at what good pie bakers you are,” I told them. “Thank you for letting us come here today. And now, there’s one last thing we need to do: sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Margaret.”

  Janice got the singing on tape and at the end asked the kids to say, “The world needs more pie” to the camera. Janice, my Fairy Godmother of Grief, in action. Was she doing this just for me? Did she know how it would make me feel? To hear seven childlike voices chant my pie slogan at the top of their lungs, seven kids who had just made seven delectable-looking pies, was so moving I almost started crying. (To not break down and sob in public at this point was an accomplishment in and of itself.) Children represented the future, the circle of life. These adorable, curious, well-behaved kids with the messy hair and scuffed-knee jeans had no idea what their presence and enthusiasm meant to me. But I knew. This pie party was not a gift to Margaret; it was a gift to me.

  We couldn’t make a pie documentary without including the place that had shaped me, mentored me, nurtured me. We were headed next to Mary’s Kitchen in Malibu. Except that it wasn’t called that anymore, since Mary had returned to her former New York home in the Hamptons. She and her business partner, Bill, parted ways after too many clashes over their different business styles. Mary always said, “Yes.” For Mary, customers came first. “It’s four o’clock and you need the pie by five? No problem.” Whereas ask Bill, “May I have that turkey sandwich with mayo and mustard?” and you would get a harsh and resounding, “No!” Bill was Malibu’s equivalent of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi. Poor overworked Bill, the former music producer who had no idea how hard it would be to run a gourmet take-out café in demanding little Malibu. He didn’t just take his frustrations out on the customers, he dished out the bulk of them on Mary. So she finally packed up her cookbooks and headed back East.

  I had an unrelenting loyalty to Mary, but still, I couldn’t dismiss my entire pie education because the teacher had left. So Janice and I drove the RV up Pacific Coast Highway in the middle of a torrential downpour, braving the potential mudslides the fragile cliffs were notorious for. It was like playing vehicular Russian roulette. But we were granted safe passage and finally entered through the familiar screen door into what had been renamed Malibu Kitchen.

  Bill greeted us, smiling behind his beard that had become much grayer since I had last seen him. Even after Mary left, I made a point to pop in once in a while, to say hi when I was in town, order a meatloaf sandwich and check on the pies. Sadly, the pies had given way to precious, too-perfect-to-look-home-made berry and lemon tarts in the display case. The tarts were dwarfed by the supersize cupcakes, red velvet and white-frosted chocolate monstrosities the size of whole cakes but wrapped in the prerequisite accordion paper to make them appear like cupcakes. Sheesh. Even the bakeries could not escape Hollywood special effects.

  “Good to see you, Pie Girl,” Bill said. He seemed genuinely happy to see me, and there’s no reason he shouldn’t have been as I had bolstered his income and his reputation during my year of pie sales. “Are you going to bake today? The kitchen is yours. I’ve got everything you need to make a few coconut cream pies.”

  We hadn’t confirmed our shooting strategy. I thought we would just film the place for atmosphere, then interview Bill about the business. To bake again in my tiny kitchen by the sea? “Really? I’d love to.”

  Apart from the white aprons, nothing was the same. For starters, Mary wasn’t there. I didn’t know anyone working there anymore. The stacks of ratty cookbooks and the overstuffed crocks of rolling pins and knives were gone. The spice rack above my work table was empty. And there was no food-stained sheet of notebook paper taped to the wall listing the day’s pie orders. When Mary and Jane and the rest of the girl gang left, the soul of the place had gone with them.

  “I’ll leave you to do your thing. Just come and find me when you’re done,” Bill said. He scurried away and I stood there, dazed, under the glare of the florescent light which was much harsher than I remembered.

  “Right,” I said to Janice as I tried to get my bearings and ignore the fact that her camera was pointed at me, its red light beaming like Rudolph’s nose to indicate it was on. “I feel like I’m on a reality show. It’s like Survivor and I was dropped on an uncharted island. I don’t even know where to start, let alone find anything. I hate to waste your tape.” She was silent and kept her camera rolling. “Yeah, great,” I mumbled.

  I scrambled around, trying to find mixing bowls, utensils and ingredients, while making ad l
ib commentary about my former baking days there. I also tried not to appear panicked as I searched the bare kitchen for a recipe. I could make apple pie blindfolded, but I hadn’t made coconut cream pie often enough to know it by rote. Cream pies can be one of those persnickety types where if you don’t get the amounts just right, or add them in the right order, at the right speed—like whisking the beaten eggs into the hot pudding fast enough—you could end up with a disaster. Vanilla pudding with chunks of scrambled eggs does not make for a saleable cream pie.

  I finally located all the supplies—and a recipe—and settled into what was familiar and fun: making pie. From the moment I began mixing the dough with my hands, I entered my comfort zone, which made it much easier to ignore the camera and forget just how much Mary’s Kitchen had changed.

  Once the dough had the degree of tackiness I liked (just slightly gummy), I rolled it out on my old table, prodding and cutting it into shape, and lined six pie plates with it. I pricked the bottoms and sides of the dough with a fork, placed a sheet of foil over each pie, and filled them until they were heaping with dried beans, which served as weights. I didn’t skimp on the beans as I too often had experienced that common blind baker’s error of using too little weight, resulting in the crust shrinking and thus rattling around in the pie plate.

  While the crusts baked in the convection oven, I moved over to the stove in the main part of the kitchen. The place was deserted except for one lone guy washing dishes in the far corner of another side room. Where was everybody? Why wasn’t there the usual bustle of soups cooking and salads being prepped for the next day? As I stirred—and stirred and stirred and stirred—waiting for the liquid mixture of milk, sugar, vanilla and cornstarch to thicken, I wondered if I could ever be happy working here again. It was so lonely. And colorless. When I was employed here, the worktable opposite the stove always had a huge cutting board covered in vibrant red tomatoes being sliced for sauce, or bright orange carrots being grated or chopped for one of the many deli salads, or glowing yellow ears of corn whose kernels would be shaved off for one of my favorite dishes: Mary’s corn salad. And there were always at least two or three people there, whose productivity could be gauged by the steady hammering of their knives.