Making Piece

by Beth M. Howard

  “I was worried about you,” she said. “I was up all night wondering where you were.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” I sat down on the bed and told her everything.

  After I finished my sordid, shameful tale, all she said was, “The front desk called an hour ago. Your luggage arrived. I’m off to get a pedicure. Come find me in the spa when you’re ready and we’ll grab some breakfast.”

  I was so relieved by her lack of judgment. But inwardly I was judging myself. I was a grieving widow from a good family, who had flown all the way across the U.S. in the name of pie. I was giving a speech on how pie was helping heal my grief. I was going to judge pies. Pie was wholesome and I was invited to the event because I represented that wholesomeness. How could I claim to be pure and good when I was behaving like a slut? Looking at it from another perspective, however, it was even worse than that. It was a wasted opportunity. I hadn’t had sex in eleven months and I was too drunk to remember it. Damn. I should have stuck with the wine.

  After taking a long shower, I blow-dried my hair—which is of note because I normally never bother to do anything but pull my wet hair into a ponytail. I put on makeup to disguise my tired eyes, puffier than ever from all the crying, the lack of sleep and the horrendous hangover, and headed down to the lobby.

  The elevator doors opened on the first floor and there he was—John. My mouth fell open in surprise, but I quickly recovered, pursed my lips and pretended not to recognize him. He was with another businessman, probably a customer. I had only left John’s room an hour and a half earlier, but I looked completely different in the daylight. The night before, when we met in the bar, the only thing my expression portrayed was weariness. But by morning, I had put on my game face—namely my power-red lipstick. I was dressed in my fitted “The World Needs More Pie” T-shirt, a slim jean skirt and platform sandals. In spite of my condition, I looked so All-American perky I might as well have been carrying pompoms. Rah! Yay! Pie! The elevator came to a stop. As we stepped out we made eye contact and nodded politely at one another.

  Thirty seconds after exiting the elevator, I got a text from him. You look gorgeous! he wrote. See you at the bar tonight?

  Bar? I was on my way to judge pie. And I hadn’t even had a cup of coffee yet. No, I wouldn’t be going to the bar later. I had to give a speech the next day. I would be going to bed early. And sleeping. Alone.

  I found Gina in the spa. Her nails were still drying. “Key Lime Pie,” I said, noting how her toes matched the color of her sweater, “a fitting choice for spring in Florida. I like it.”

  “You ready to check out the pie scene?” she asked. She looked me over, seeing through my extra layer of under-eye concealer, and added, “Don’t worry. I scoped it out already. They have plenty of coffee.”

  We walked the long, wide hallway of the hotel’s convention area. I held my gaze up to keep the dizzying bold patterned carpet from making my headache worse. The doors for each break out room were labeled—Pie Judging, Pie Preparation Area, Pie Display and Truck Suppliers’ Lunch. My stomach twisted slightly upon reading that last one.

  Outside the Pie Preparation Room, Gina and I got our name tags and judging assignments. With a few minutes to spare before eating pie, we strolled through the ballroom filled with red, white and blue balloons, its perimeter lined with work stations and home-kitchen-size ovens where bakers were in action.

  A smiling grandmother in new white tennis shoes at one station opened her oven to check the progress of her lemon-custard pie, which looked as well-groomed as she did. She possessed the confidence of someone who knew she had a chance at a blue ribbon.

  A young woman from San Francisco, making the triple-berry recipe she said she got from her dad, was struggling with her lattice crust. “It’s my first time entering the contest,” she told us. Yes, that was self-evident. I wanted to give her some advice—she could have avoided the crumbling dough by adding less shortening. Forget that aiding her would have been in violation of the rules; I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or dash her hopes of winning.

  Volunteers in black T-shirts and baseball hats that read in bold, white letters “Pie Police” guarded the center space, where long tables were loaded with so many pies they looked as if they might collapse from the weight of all that fruit filling. Under the bright chandelier light, the combination of whipped cream, red cherry and strawberry, orange pumpkin and peach, fluorescent yellow lemon, chocolate shavings, confetti sprinkles, caramel drizzle, mixed nuts and the American flag toothpicks identifying each pie made for a dazzling Technicolor display. Janice would have loved to tape this for the pie show. There must have been over three-hundred pies, and the sight of all that sugar made my stomach twist again.

  For the next five hours, Gina and I ate pie. The judging room was filled with round tables, draped in white tablecloths, with pitchers of water and baskets full of forks, piles of napkins and bowls of soda crackers. Attendants walked around the room handing out judging sheets and pencils. After that, they came around with pie. Pie after pie after pie.

  Day One out of the three-day contest was dedicated to the commercial division, frozen brands, grocery-store pie. The pies made by the grandmother, the girl from San Francisco and the others toiling away in the Pie Preparation Room would be judged the following day, in the Amateur Division. I didn’t sign up for the commercial judging, and wasn’t thrilled with the idea of pumping my body full of preservatives and stabilizers, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t necessarily care, either. I wanted to experience every aspect of the National Pie Championships. I was here to do research. So I took my seat at the apple-pie-designated table and accepted the responsibility, along with each slice.

  The judging sheet was a full-page, printed with instructions and blanks to fill in for scoring. We were to consider each of the following: pre-slice and after-slice appearance, overall taste, flavor of filling, mouth feel (thick, thin, smooth, chunky, creamy, chalky, mushy, runny, dry, sticky, etc.), crust (texture, flaky, firm, mealy, soggy, undercooked, overcooked, tasty flavor, does it complement filling), aftertaste, overall impression (After scrutinizing this pie, how memorable is it? Would you buy this pie? Do you want more of this pie?). Rate each question on a scale of one to nine—one being poor; nine, excellent. They didn’t say anything about needing to be good at math to be a pie judge, but with this many criteria and corresponding numbers, I regretted that I didn’t bring a calculator.

  There were at least six judges at each table, including mine. To my left was Miss Michigan Apple, a twenty-year-old beauty queen wearing a rhinestone crown. People kept coming to our table to have their picture taken with her. To my right was a feisty Asian woman who owned a local chain of doughnut shops. We were not allowed to compare notes verbally, but since the officials didn’t say anything about eye contact, I exchanged periodic glances with the doughnut lady. Sometimes we raised an eyebrow, indicating a pie was questionable, other times we made gagging gestures, and only a few times did we waggle our heads discreetly to say, “Thumbs up on this one.” Mostly, the pies were overly sweet, drizzled with icing or caramel to disguise their artificial flavoring or lack of character.

  Four hundred bites of apple pie later, I needed a tongue scraper to get the cinnamon taste out of my mouth. A stomach pump and blood transfusion would have been nice, too. But I was keeping it in perspective, thanking my lucky stars for not being seated at the cream pie table. (Note to self: next time you’re going to judge pie, do not drink four martinis the night before.)

  To relieve all that ailed me, I went to the swimming pool. I felt so ill, I gave up after two laps of easy breaststroke and plopped in the hot tub. I closed my eyes and tried to recreate the events of the night before—the flight, the lost luggage, the bar. The last thing I remember was being half-dressed, with John holding me tenderly in his arms as my tears sputtered on his white hockey jersey. Come to think of it, he was actually a really nice guy. “Fuck it,” I said. I got out of the water and grabbed my BlackBerry off my t
owel.

  “C u after dinner? What time r u free?” I texted with my wet thumbs.

  If there’s any faster way to kill the buzz of having alcohol-induced sex with a one-night stand, it’s spending a second night with that person sober. I felt nothing. No guilt. No elation. Nothing. Except the headache lingering from my hangover. I lay there like a zombie. He might as well have been humping a rubber doll.

  “You’re making me do all the work,” he commented.

  I remained silent. As if I wasn’t there. And in my mind I wasn’t. I was meditating, the way I used to when riding on the back of Marcus’s motorcycle through Europe. Once, when returning from a weekend in France and trying to outrun a thunderstorm, Marcus opened up the throttle to 120 miles per hour. I could gauge the speed by how trucks blurred in my vision as we passed them. We were moving so fast I couldn’t read the writing on their sides. To keep myself calm, I adopted an out-of-body technique, imagining I was somewhere else, somewhere where I was still and safe, like wading in knee-deep tropical ocean waters. I used the same relaxation mind control when getting my teeth drilled in the dentist’s chair. And I implemented it again while laying beneath this stranger, this man who was not my husband. I didn’t have time to dwell on the aftermath of this decidedly unromantic interlude. I had a schedule to keep. By first light I was back in my own room, where I took another long shower, trying to scrub myself clean. What I needed was an appointment at the Korean spa to remove a few layers of regrettably contaminated skin. No, what I needed was for Marcus to be alive. And since he wasn’t, I needed to forgive myself. I also needed apples. For my pie speech.

  I walked to the nearby grocery store with my empty suitcase-on-wheels and bought nine pounds of Granny Smiths. With my suitcase loaded with fruit, I returned to my hotel room to read my notes for my talk and to peel the apples I was going to use in my on-stage pie-making demo.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Beth Howard,” I recited out loud to no one while I slid the knife between the waxy green skin and the fleshy fruit. “I had long considered pie to be one of the greatest comfort foods. I even believed pie had the power to heal. So when my husband, Marcus, died…” I could tell the story without notes. It was my story. I knew how it went. But I wasn’t sure I could tell it on a stage in front of an audience without falling apart. And anyway, the story wasn’t finished. Yes, with the help of my pie quest, I was healing, but I wasn’t done baking. My grief pie was still in the oven. You could poke a knife in it and tell it was coming along nicely, but it—I—needed more time. Well, too bad. I had committed to giving this speech over a month ago. It was too late to back out.

  I hauled my apple-filled suitcase onto the shuttle bus for the fifteen-minute ride to the Disney-designed town of Celebration. That’s where The Great American Pie Festival, the sister event to the National Pie Championships, was being held. Open to the public, the Pie Festival was a free, family affair with pie-related activities for kids—pie-eating contests, “Piecasso” pie painting and pie tin art. And, for a small fee, there was an all-you-can-eat pie buffet, a whole block lined with tented booths where the commercial-division kind of pies I had eaten the day before were being given away. I had already had all I could eat of those.

  In addition to all that, there was free, live entertainment on the main open-air stage—a comedian telling pie jokes, a singer singing pie songs, a team of baton twirlers, a harmonica player and…me.

  I made my way through the throngs of people in shorts and visors, and found the main stage. “Are you Beth?” a woman wearing angel wings and a walkie-talkie asked.

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “Mary asked me to keep an eye out for you. She said to look for a girl in pigtails.”

  Huh? Mary worked for Bakers Square, the sponsor of the main stage, and she was in charge of the entertainment. I had met her only in passing the night before, and had never mentioned anything about what I would be wearing, let alone my hairstyle. But yes, I did have my hair in stubby little pigtails.

  “Where’d you get those cool wings?” I asked.

  “I can get you a pair. Follow me.”

  I followed her to the Green Room behind the stage where the Pillsbury Doughboy was sitting in front of a fan, guzzling water, while his deflated costume sat in a pile next to his chair, the harmonica player was warming up, and the crew from CBS’s The Early Show was loading camera tape. The stagehand rummaged through a box and handed me my own pair of wire-formed, chiffon wings—with Bakers Square logos all over them. I was so excited about flying, I didn’t mind the advertising. I glanced over at the Doughboy as I slid the elastic straps around my back. He was so hot his hair was plastered against his head. It could be worse, I thought. At least I didn’t have to walk around roasting in an oversized space suit posing for pie-festival photos.

  You get what you pay for, as the old adage goes. The audience paid nothing. What they got was, well, not much more. I stood squinting against the broiling Florida sun, in the center of the stage, facing a crowd of about eighty people. A year earlier, my husband was still alive and I was working for a speakers’ bureau. Now my husband was dead, and I was on the other side of the podium, wearing angel wings and a checkered apron, telling the world what it was like to live without him.

  “And now, I’m going to demonstrate some of the pie-making tips I learned when I worked in Malibu.”

  I moved back from the front edge of the stage to the table behind me that was set up with my ingredients and tools. The apples I had peeled ahead of time, heaped high in a bowl, had surprisingly not turned brown in the Florida sun. Gina had offered to assist me, acting as a pie student. If Janice was the Fairy Godmother of Grief, Gina was the Fairy Godmother of Pie Demos. She kept me on track as my nervous energy threatened to turn my performance into an unintentional comedy routine. “And what’s the wine bottle for?” she asked, pointing out the out-of-place prop on the table.

  “Oh, I’m glad you asked. That is an example of improvisation. If you don’t have a rolling pin, you can always find something to use. A wine bottle works just as well.”

  With my forehead shining and my armpits soaking wet, the stagehand gave me the three-minute warning to wrap it up. I wrapped. I took my bow. And finally, thankfully, mercifully, it was over.

  I gave myself an A for effort, a D for preparedness, a C-minus for execution and a hundred bonus points toward earning the Spurs Award.

  Gina and I stayed in Celebration for the rest of the afternoon, watching people eat pie, and then watching the announcement of winners from the day’s pie competition. Back at the main stage, we sat in the audience, listening as the executive director of the American Pie Council, Linda Hoskins, called up pie bakers from all parts of the country and handed them prize money and gift baskets.

  Michele Albano of Michele’s Pies in Norwalk, Connecticut, ran to the stage to collect more than one ribbon. Her excitement was genuine when she bounced up and down over her wins for Twisted Citrus Blackberry and Classic Italian Tiramisu. Another winner was Linda Hundt of Sweetie-licious Pies in Michigan, who teetered up to the stage in four-inch stilettos, poodle skirt and pearls, adding another of many ribbons for her Tom’s Cheery Cherry Cherry Berry pie. And no, that pie name is not a typo.

  Riding the shuttle bus back to the hotel, I got a text message from John. My last night here. Would love to see you.

  My answer was quick and clear. I wrote him back, Sorry. Can’t. Have a safe trip home.

  I let go of my regrets about sleeping with him. I understood the meaning of our encounter in the bigger scheme of life. I needed physical invigoration to be reminded I was still alive, still had a life to live and that I needed to give myself permission to live it. John also gave me some important validation that I had not turned into a hideous, repulsive creature. He had been brave enough to kiss a grieving frog to see if she would turn into a ravishing princess. It didn’t happen. I had only just begun rewriting my fairy tale and hadn’t figured out a new ending yet.

&
nbsp; CHAPTER

  17

  A few days after returning from the pie championships, I packed up The Beast again for another road trip to Los Angeles, my second journey there in three months. I had received a call from one of Hollywood’s biggest and most respected reality-television production companies and they were interested in making the pie show. And since the RV featured in the show’s concept, I was going to bring it along for the meeting.

  The friend who set up the meeting for me—and had shown the TV executives the sizzle reel Janice made from the footage we shot in January—informed me ahead of time, “They don’t know if you look pretty enough to be on camera. So make sure you get your hair and makeup done professionally before the meeting.”

  Putting myself in highly stressful situations was becoming a habit. A speech at the pie festival? Sure, what’s a little added pressure on top of a huge heap of debilitating grief. A pitch meeting at an A-list production company? Hey, why not drive a thousand miles, only to put yourself in a position to be scrutinized for your appearance. Even with these bulging, puffy eyes? Sure, go for it. My friend’s comment sent me into a new form of meltdown mode. “I’m a writer; I’m not used to being judged by my looks,” I cried to Nan, Melissa, Alison and anyone else who would listen. “And if beauty comes from the inside, then believe me, I know just how bad I look these days. No amount of time in a goddamned beauty salon is going to help.”

  But I wanted to sell the pie show, so I did it. As soon as I arrived in L.A., I went to a hair salon for a cut and highlights. “I want to get my hair lightened,” I told the stylist with the skintight jeans and exposed bra straps. She insisted dark roots—lowlights, they were called—were in. Were they? I wouldn’t have known. “Well, that’s nice. But I didn’t come in here to copy Jennifer Aniston or whoever is going dark. I came here to get my hair lightened.” I got the feeling this gum-chewing stylist was not only young but inexperienced. How else would I have gotten a walk-in appointment in vanity-driven L.A.? Three hours and three hundred dollars later, I exited with dark brown, asymmetrically cut hair.