Making Piece

by Beth M. Howard

  It was hard to wax nostalgic with a Sony high-definition digital video recorder in my face, so I just pretended to look cheerful, as if it were nine years earlier and I was surrounded by the Ghosts of Baking Past. I could almost hear Jane’s British accent, slinging one of her wicked jokes while pulling a tray of scones out of the oven. I could see Mary hovering around, her signature baseball cap tilting back as if to say “Get back to work, girls,” but secretly approving of our constant chatter.

  My reverie was interrupted when Bill popped his head into the small side kitchen, where I had returned with my steel pot of cooked pudding. “How’s it going?” he asked, checking on our progress. By this time I had poured the vanilla custard into the pie plates and was putting the egg whites I had separated earlier into a mixing bowl. (The yolks had been used for the pie filling.)

  “Just getting ready to make the meringue,” I answered as I fiddled with the beaters, trying to attach them.

  “You know, Robert Downey, Jr. is still a good customer. We should make sure he gets one of these pies.”

  Bill’s reference to the actor was due to the crush I had on him back in 2001, and everyone at Mary’s Kitchen was aware of it then, including Bill. Robert came into the café every day for lunch—and pie. Someone from the deli would send word back to the kitchen to let me know when he had arrived, so I could bring out fresh pies, making the timing appear coincidental. I did talk to him a few times, and tried to flirt with him by asking him how he liked the peach pie I had made. Once, when I was standing next to him at the cash register, our forearms touched. I felt the electricity surge through my body.

  “It was so strong, he had to have felt it, too,” I told Jane afterward.

  “He’s in rehab,” she chirped back. “He can’t feel anything right now.” It was true. The reason he came into Mary’s Kitchen every day is because the rehab center he had checked into was nearby. The better-adjusted clients were allowed to go out for lunch—supervised—and transported in the clinic’s unmarked van, proof that Robert was on the mend.

  “You don’t understand, Jane. There’s definitely chemistry. And anyway, he’s a good person. I can see past his problems and into his soul. I’m in love.”

  Janice stopped video taping to chime in. “I know! We should take a pie with us and deliver it to his house,” she said, almost shouting to make herself heard over the noise of the electric mixer and the convection ovens. “We could get one of those Star Maps to find out where he lives.”

  I laughed and mustered the enthusiasm to reply, “That’s a great idea,” before returning my attention to my task. I let the mixer run until the egg whites were whipped into a bubbly froth, then added a few tablespoons of white sugar.

  As the beaters raced at full speed, so did my mind. In the bowl, the eggs expanded and grew into a mountain of fluff. In my head, my thoughts wandered back to handsome brown-haired men. A little like how Robert Downey, Jr. had conquered his demons, moved back to Beverly Hills and gotten married, I had restored my spirit baking pies and then gotten married, too. To Marcus, who was every bit as gorgeous as Robert—and actually looked a little like him, but had a much sexier accent. Yet here I was again, standing in the place where I had started nine years earlier, with my heart cracked and broken like the two dozen egg shells I had just tossed in the garbage.

  I was glad Janice had put her camera down so she didn’t capture on tape how my smile had turned into a grimace. Still, amazingly, I had shed no tears. This TV show stuff was working miracles in that department. I hadn’t cried for two days in a row. This was a record for me. I had gone from measuring my personal bests based on how long I could hold a job; now I was calculating how long I could go without crying.

  When peaks finally formed in the meringue, I shut off the mixer and with a rubber spatula scooped the airy white sweetness onto the tops of the pies, dividing it evenly into heaping mounds.

  Janice quickly picked up her camera again to record the rest of the process.

  Taking a large serving spoon, I went through the quick-handed motions that Mary had taught me, dipping the back of the spoon into the meringue, gouging into it and then lifting the spoon high as I pulled it out. I immediately dipped down again into a new place on top of the pie, until I had created a haphazard pattern of curlicue spikes. When I was done with my spoon attack, I sprinkled a few handfuls of shredded coconut on top and put all six pies in the oven for seven to eight minutes for the final touch—toasting the meringue to a golden brown.

  “Those pies are stunning,” Bill commented as I placed them one by one on the worktable. “You certainly haven’t lost your touch.”

  Bill had no idea how loaded his statement was. No, I hadn’t lost my touch for pie, but I had lost what seemed like everything else.

  Janice and I didn’t drop off a pie at Robert Downey, Jr.’s house, even though the idea did make me slightly giddy.

  We did, however, deliver a pie to my parents in Playa del Rey. It was my mother’s seventy-third birthday—January 19 (also the five-month anniversary of The Phone Call)—and I had missed a family lunch in order to make pie in Malibu. Considering coconut cream was her number one pie choice, at least I could make up for not joining in the family gathering by bringing her the ideal birthday present. With the camera ready, pointed on the door, I rang the bell. This was turning into a reality show after all—Candid Camera. My mom answered, I handed her the pink bakery box, sang “Happy Birthday” (for the second time in two days), and left.

  The short duration of our drive-by visit was nothing personal. While it’s true, I was still punishing her for not understanding my grief and had seen her only once—for breakfast—in the month since I had come down from Portland, the birthday pie delivery was the only time I could manage. We couldn’t stay because we had another pie party scheduled and we were running late.

  The TV shoot included two pie parties, the second of which was decidedly different than the first. Instead of kids, I was teaching a group of thirtysomething single women. The premise was that baking a pie for a man is a guaranteed way to land a husband. “I am living proof of this,” I assured the women as we assembled at my friend Susanne’s house in Venice.

  By “proof” I was referring to the first apple pie I had made for Marcus, the one I made at my friend Uschi’s apartment in Bern, Switzerland, borrowing her ten-inch shallow metal tart pan with the pleated sides because that was the closest thing to an American-style pie plate she had in her cupboards. I had woven a lattice-top crust—an extra effort I reserved for special occasions—and the pie had finished baking just in time to catch my train to Stuttgart, where Marcus lived.

  Our romance had begun only ten days earlier when he accepted my invitation to meet in Italy for my American friends’ wedding, John and Laura, whom I knew from my dot com job in San Francisco. I had met Marcus six months earlier, at Crater Lake National Park, where we had talked for twenty minutes in the Crater Lake Lodge. Because our meeting in Italy was going to be our first date, we planned to keep it short; he was going to stay two days. But things went so well—as in, our greeting at the Milan airport was so charged we almost had sex in baggage claim—he stayed with me in Tuscany for the whole week.

  I knew “romance” had turned “relationship” when, at the end of the wedding week, I left Florence to visit friends in Bern and he invited me to come visit him afterward in Germany. Leaving Uschi’s in Bern with my hot, steaming apple pie in hand, I boarded the InterCityExpress for Stuttgart. Seven hours later, four on the train and the three I waited for Marcus to pick me up (establishing his lack of punctuality early on), I delivered the goods. He may have been more excited about that pie than he was about me, because he set it on his glass dining-room table, arranged the pie and the lights until they were just right and shot photos as if he was a paparazzo and the pie was a celebrity on the red carpet. The apple pie impressed him so much he broke his dating rule and introduced me to his parents. We took the pie with us the next day to their magnific
ent home in the country and, seated in their Queen Anne chairs under the twinkling crystals of the chandelier, ate more of the pie, served by their housekeeper on china plates with silver forks.

  That pie led to a marriage proposal, all right, but for the purpose of this party, for these single husband-seeking women, I didn’t tell that story. But it wouldn’t have mattered if I had, since the group already knew I was a new widow. One of the women, Elissa, who was ten years younger than me, had already been widowed twice, having lost both of her husbands to cancer.

  Gathered around Susanne’s butcher-block kitchen island, glasses of sauvignon blanc were poured for everyone while I explained the fundamentals of pie. “Pie is about comfort and sharing. Pie is not about perfection. And contrary to what you might think, pie is actually very easy to make. You don’t even need a recipe, if you just follow these basic guidelines.” I paused my lecture to take a sip of wine and continued. “There’s a simple formula, I call it ‘the three to one rule.’ For the dough, it’s three cups of flour to one cup fat. For the filling, it’s three pounds of fruit to one cup sugar. Easy. Three to one. That’s all you have to remember.” I didn’t bog them down with the minor details—that you start with two and a half cups of flour for the dough with the rest getting worked in during the rolling stage, and how I almost never use more than three-fourths of a cup sugar as most fruit is already sweet enough. I would explain it later, as the ladies didn’t want to wait. “Now, let’s get started.”

  I took another swig from my glass. I was tired. Tired from the phone calls and shopping I had done to prep for the shoot. Tired from the two days of taping we had already done. Tired from having to fake-smile for the camera. Tired from grieving. Marcus had been gone only five months and adjusting to life without him was exhausting. The feeling that I was grasping at air was constant, as was the sensation that my heart was a pail shot full of holes; its contents could not be contained and simply leaked right out. To perk myself up—and because it seemed fitting for the party theme—I had worn my new T-shirt from Target, gray with a huge pink sequin heart and black letters spelling Love on it. It was my feeble attempt at bling, my subconscious suggesting that life still held some sparkle.

  Janice moved around the island, getting close-up shots of the women’s flour-covered hands and the smiles on their faces. Every so often I heard Janice say, “That’s great” or “Can you do that again so I can shoot it from another angle?” Mostly I heard Janice laugh, an easy giggle that told me she was having fun. Janice was no stranger to grief herself, as her mother died when she was seventeen. All I had to do was look around the room to see that you can lose your loved ones and still have fun, and not live like your heart is caged behind iron bars.

  I kept the class moving, keeping an eye out for the type-A personalities. The corporate women were always the biggest baking offenders. They approached their pie dough the same way they did their jobs—aggressively, competitively, with perfectionism, putting in long hours. They couldn’t help but overwork their dough. It was in their nature. The group included an investment banker, the president of a mattress company and a public-relations vice president, so I hovered over them accordingly—and left the yoga teacher alone.

  When I wasn’t instructing, I was observing Elissa. How on earth was this woman still functioning, still sane, still alive after losing not one but two husbands? How could she ever trust life again? And yet there was not a trace of bitterness about her. She had not turned into a gooseberry pie with no sugar; she was all sweetness and tenderness, like peaches and cream in an all-butter crust. Not only that, she was using her experience to help others and worked as a life and health coach, aptly calling herself “The Healthy Life Guru.” And here she was, calmly peeling apples, joking and smiling, as if her heart had never been broken. Twice.

  The apples were skinned, the pies brushed with beaten eggs and placed in the oven, and after an hour—which we spent doing yoga in the living room—we arranged the bubbling pies on the island for the victory shot. There always has to be a victory shot. This final pose is what sustains me, restores my energy, reminds me that in my own small way, like Elissa, I too am trying to help others in spite of my own hardship—or because of my hardship. (It was too soon to know.) Seeing the joyous pride in everyone’s faces as they stood by their finished pies would have been enough in itself. But to hear the excitement in their voices—their confident claims like, “I’m taking mine to work tomorrow to share with my coworkers,” “I’m taking mine home to share with my boyfriend,” “I can’t believe how well mine turned out,” “I can’t wait to make another one”—added to my own sense of accomplishment. Maybe someday I would be as well-adjusted as Elissa and call myself “The Pie Guru.” One could dream.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Malibu Kitchen may have had its pie-loving celebrity customers, but so did Mommie Helen’s in Colton, California, an hour and a half away. Driving The Beast the following day to the easternmost reaches of Los Angeles, Janice and I set off to interview Dorothy Rose Pryor. Dorothy was owner of Mommie Helen’s and supplier of sweet potato pie and pecan pie to NBA stars Shaquille O’Neal and Magic Johnson and America’s biggest idol herself: Oprah.

  Pulling into a typical L.A. strip-mall parking lot, nothing seemed special about this place at first glance. You wouldn’t even notice the generic shop if you weren’t actively looking for it. Mommie Helen’s was deceiving, like a pie that looks machine-made and manicured, but after one bite you’re surprised to find it was homemade. That’s what it was like walking in the door, straight into the bear hug of Dorothy.

  “Welcome, welcome,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for coming out to see me.” She exuded such warmth I thought I might melt like Baker’s Chocolate in her arms. I missed being touched, being held. Besides snuggling with Team Terrier, I wasn’t getting much physical contact. I wanted to stay there in her embrace all day.

  “Thank you. It’s nice to be here. But don’t squeeze too hard,” I warned her, “or you’ll squeeze my tears out.” I had let her know when I spoke with her by phone that a premise of our show was to explore how pie can help heal grief. My grief.

  “I know what you’re going through, honey,” she said. “I lost my sister and my mom and I miss them every day. But the Lord knows what he’s doing. We have to trust in God’s will and have faith.” She let go of me and patted me on the shoulder while I wiped the wetness around my eyes.

  I appreciated her sentiments, but I wasn’t able to buy into the Lord’s work thing. I had tried. I was raised Catholic but had rejected the notion of organized religion early on. I was too much of a feminist, too rebellious, too skeptical. But when Marcus died and I was desperate for ways to connect with him, I was open to anything that might help, anything that might bring me peace, calm, keep me from wanting to end my own life. So I went to church.

  After I settled in Portland, I attended a Lutheran service at St. James’ Church, where Marcus had gone at least once. At least I assumed he had gone there, because I found the church’s newsletter in his files. The inner sanctum of the church was cold and stark, there were only two candles on the altar and about as many people in the congregation—on a Sunday. I attended a service at the Unitarian Church where our marriage workshop had been held, and while it was a more colorful and more musical affair, I couldn’t connect with its religious pep-rally atmosphere and crying babies, so I left early. I even set foot inside a Catholic church again, to see if that might inspire the conversation with God—and with Marcus—I was longing to have. But all that ritualistic, ceremonial, male-dominated pomp and circumstance sent me running for the door and back to the woods, literally. I had access to five-thousand acres of spirituality right outside my house. The forest was my church, it’s where I felt the greatest connection to a higher power. I didn’t need bible verses; I only needed an open heart, receptive ears—and rubber boots.

  Starting from the front of the store, where the bakery displa
y had only a few sweet potato pies in it, we worked our way to the back, to the enormous kitchen where all the action was taking place. A large vat of orange liquid was being stirred by a Hobart mixer as big as the young man in the white apron attending it. Right next to him was an oven of even greater proportions. It was the size of an entire wall and, inside, each of its rotating racks was filled with sweet potato pies, riding a Ferris wheel as they baked. The shelves of a nearby bakery rack were already packed with at least thirty pies left there to cool. The room was bathed in bright white light, lined with shiny silver appliances and accented by a sea of orange pies. It was a vision of heaven—if heaven were a sweet potato pie factory.

  “We ship pies all over the country,” she answered, as if she had heard the question in my mind: How could you sell that many pies here in this odd location? “But you should see this place at Thanksgiving. We get six hundred people lined up out the door. People get so desperate for our pie they fight over it. One year, a woman tried to buy a pie off someone else. I had to go out there and tell everyone that no one was going to get their pie unless they behaved.”

  “Here is our crust room,” said Dorothy, pointing to the steel door with the padlock on the outside. “It is off limits to everyone except the two people who make the dough. People look through our Dumpsters to find out what is in our crust, but they won’t find anything.”

  I turned and made a face at Janice—at her camera lens—but I don’t know if she could see me rolling my eyes. What could possibly be in Mommie Helen’s dough that was so top secret it required a padlock on the door? I had seen recipes that called for vinegar, almond extract, heavy cream, eggs or even vodka. (Vodka supposedly keeps your crust from getting too glutinous. I would argue just don’t overwork your dough and save the vodka for martinis.) I was of the puritanical pie mind that kept my crust recipe to the basics: flour, butter, shortening, water and salt—but just a pinch.