CHAPTER
25
Like some kind of divine joke, the opening day of my pie stand coincided with a funeral held in front of my house.
I could run, but I couldn’t hide. From grief, I mean. At eight o’clock on a mid-October Saturday morning, I saw Brenda Kremer, owner of Kremer Funeral Home in Eldon, walk up the path to my house with two men in tow. All of them were carrying folding chairs. I knew why. I was informed a few days earlier there would be a funeral service for Helen Glasson in front of the American Gothic House. Helen was the granddaughter of Gideon and Mary Jones, the owners of the house at the time Grant Wood created the famous painting that, subsequently, made the house famous. Helen was passionate about preserving Eldon’s history—not just her grandparents’ house but also the McHaffey Opera House—and had also spearheaded the creation of the American Gothic House Center. But by the time the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Center was held three years ago, her Alzheimer’s had advanced to the point where she was able to attend the celebration but, sadly, was not aware of why she was there. She eventually succumbed to the disease. And now her life was going to be commemorated.
Given my new residency of the house, it had seemed fitting that I pay my respects. But I need not have bothered debating whether or not I should attend the funeral. As always, the answer came on its own.
Sometime between the time Brenda and her crew finished setting up the chairs, the flower arrangements and the CD player, and the time the funeral attendees arrived, I took a stroll out front. This was not a good idea. The sight of the flower arrangements reminded me of Marcus’s funerals. That, combined with an instrumental version of “Morning Has Broken” by Cat Stevens on the CD player, undid me. I ran back inside the house, locked the door behind me and collapsed on the sofa in a fit of tears.
I had been so busy since leaving Portland the first of August—driving cross-country, judging pies at the Iowa State Fair, touring my childhood stomping grounds, moving into my new house and starting a pie business—that I’d almost forgotten what grief felt like. But there it was. Flooding back. Oh yes, I remembered it well. Grieving was like riding a bike. You never forget how to do it. Because it never goes away.
No, I would not be going to the funeral. They wouldn’t want the distraction of a sobbing mess like me in their midst.
In the height of my bawling session, I thought of Brenda Kremer. Brenda had lost her husband less than two years ago to pancreatic cancer. (Cancer sucks.) But here she was, organizing not just this funeral, but having taken over her late husband’s business, Brenda organized every funeral in Eldon. “How could she do it?” I wondered. How could she heal when she was constantly reminded of loss? That soul-wrenching, heart-shattering loss that leaves one permanently wounded and lost, going through life feeling like a leaking vessel, or missing a vital limb. I vowed to ask her. When the time was right. That time would surely not be the day of Helen Glasson’s funeral.
I eventually uncurled from the fetal position and extracted myself from the couch to call Melissa, telling her how the proximity of this funeral had triggered a grief burst.
“You always talk about how pie heals,” she said. “Why don’t you get busy and do something that makes you feel better? Go make some pie.”
She had a valid point. Especially as it was the opening day of my Pitchfork Pie Stand and I was scheduled to set up my table outside after the funeral. That I actually needed to be reminded to get busy baking showed just how deep I could still sink when it came to grief. Of course making pie always made me feel better, but it could also be a little like jogging. If I wasn’t already in the mood, I had to muster an extra dose of motivation to get started. Once I got going, I was fine. After the initial resistance, be it with pie baking or running, I would inevitably settle into my spiritual trance—I would get in the zone.
I hung up the phone, dried my eyes, rolled up my sleeves (and not just figuratively), to make ten more apple pies for my launch, to add to the ten I had made the previous day. The sight of the ten pies alone should have been enough to cheer me up. I had stabbed vent holes in each of them. Without giving it much thought, I simply carved the shape of a pitchfork. It was an obvious symbol of the American Gothic House, easy to create, and allowed for just the right ventilation for the steaming fruit. I looked down at my little emblem, a symbol that, like a horse’s brand, could be my trademark, and the name popped into my head: Pitchfork Pie Stand.
But before I began baking—and carving more pitchforks—I lit a candle in the living room. For Helen. It was my way of participating. In the only way I was capable at the time.
I pulled the kitchen curtain shut so the funeral attendees wouldn’t be distracted by my movements in the kitchen—and I wouldn’t have the constant reminder of all that sadness—and eventually lost myself in the creative, meditative process of pie. The steady and familiar rhythms of kneading, rolling, peeling, slicing, crimping worked their soothing magic on me, and pretty soon I found my balance again.
When the funeral was over, I carried my fresh-baked pies out to my folding table, set up to the side of the house on the lawn. The sight of the bountiful homemade goods lifted my spirits further. I had watched many of my students beam with a sense of accomplishment from their finished pies. And even after making thousands of pies in my lifetime, I was not immune to the joy of the accomplishment. I was so proud of my twenty baked beauties on display, I had forgotten all about the funeral and my earlier eruption. But I was also slightly nervous. What if no one came to buy them?
I needn’t have worried. I sold out of my pie inventory in less than two hours. What I hadn’t expected is that my customers didn’t want just a slice; they wanted whole pies to take with them. In that short span of time, people from all over the U.S.—tourists who came just to have their picture taken in front of the American Gothic House—came up to my makeshift pie shop. When they learned I lived inside the icon the barrage of questions began. “People can live in the house? Really? How long have you lived there? What brought you here?”
I learned very quickly that I was going to have to dodge the questions or come up with a pat answer or both. I whittled my long, complicated explanation down to one quick and easy sentence: “I’m from here.” It was true. And as I said it, I could feel the little sprouts under my feet grow a little more, seeking to plant themselves deeper into the ground.
Some of my first customers included the grandchildren of Helen Glasson, a sophisticated, articulate bunch who had moved away to major Midwest cities and reassembled in Eldon for the funeral. I offered to let them go inside of the house, their great-grandparents’ house that they hadn’t seen since they were little kids.
“Please excuse the disaster in the kitchen,” I called after them as they stepped through the front door. “I didn’t have a chance to clean up my pie-baking mess. But feel free to look around. Take your time.” It seemed fitting. With the exception of my furniture and clothes inside—and the fact I paid the rent—the house felt like it belonged more to them than to me. The Glasson Family was grateful for the tour.
“Thank you so much,” they gushed. “We love how you have it decorated. So modern.” And I was grateful for them buying pie afterward. It was mutually beneficial, a salve on a day with a somber beginning.
But the day wasn’t over yet. A little later I spotted Brenda Kremer walking up the path toward the house again. This time she wasn’t in her Sunday best. She had changed into jeans and was surveying the grounds to make sure everything had been cleaned up after the service. I stepped out of the house to meet her. I put my arm around her shoulder and walked with her up the sidewalk and said, “I am amazed by your courage. I don’t know how you do it. Just seeing the flowers tore me apart.”
We had been introduced only once and never really had a conversation before. And yet I felt her body relax under my arm with the relief of finally broaching the subject.
“I heard about your husband, too,” she said. “We should talk sometim
e.”
“I would really like that,” I replied.
For the next two months, from October to December, my focus was solely on building my pie stand business. Having stocked up on my equipment and supplies, I turned my attention to making some home improvements. I painted the oak cabinets red to cheer up the otherwise bland kitchen, adding iron drawer pulls to make the space look more 1880s instead of 1980s. I nailed a Peg-Board (purchased for fifty cents from the McHaffey Opera House Thrift Store) to the wall to hang aprons. I assembled a rolling rack to store my five rolling pins, stack of large plastic mixing bowls and all of my other pie supplies (like pastry brushes, bench scraper, lattice cutter and cookbooks) liberated at last from their travel bin. Over the window of the back door, I hung a red-and-white-checkered curtain, sewn by my neighbor, Rosie, out of a remnant I bought for two bucks at Wal-Mart. Rosie added a white eyelet ruffle, which was a fitting touch. I asked my landlord for a new oven and he said yes. I tried to keep the old one, too, so I could double my pie output. But the house was not wired for that much voltage, so the old oven was carted away. My wooden butcher-block table became the centerpiece of the kitchen. Its space served triple use for rolling dough, then pie assembly and, finally, pie cooling.
Local Eldonites were excited about the new activity in the neighborhood and wanted to get involved. Various neighbors and new friends all came by at various times to help peel apples by the bushel. Priscilla (who had loaned me the lawn chairs a month earlier) introduced me to the miracle tool, the apple peeler/corer/slicer. An ancient-looking cast iron contraption that adheres to the countertop with a suction cup, you place an apple on the prongs, turn the hand crank, and the apple spins around and around until it comes through a metal bar on the other end completely—as the name suggests—peeled, cored and sliced. This was not only a time saver, it was a way to avoid blisters and tired hands from too much time with a paring knife.
In between all the visitors—both the helpers and customers—I spent many hours alone in my kitchen. I listened to my iPod, swapping the cello music from my wedding for slightly more upbeat Jackson Browne and John Mayer—which represented an incremental step forward in my grief recovery, so I liked to think. I built up my forearm muscles while kneading bowl after bowl of dough. I was selling up to thirty pies every weekend, which means I was rolling sixty separate pie crusts at a time.
Surely the American Gothic House had never experienced such a prolific production of baked goods within its walls. Surely the American Gothic House had never had such a healing effect on one of its residents, either. In those late-autumn days, as winter approached, all I did was bake. With each push of the rolling pin and each pie that came browned and bubbling out of the oven, my soul was soothed and my heart mended a little more.
CHAPTER
26
March 19, 2011, Eldon, Iowa—19 months since Marcus’s death
My morning starts the same way every day. I open my eyes to the soft light penetrating through the three layers of opaque curtains on the famous Gothic window. I roll over to my right, rouse Daisy from her snoring sleep and pull her closer to me. Jack sleeps on the other end of the second floor, on Marcus’s red leather Stressless chair, next to the back Gothic window. My writing desk ended up downstairs, and while placing the leather chair upstairs was intended to be a reading nook for me, Jack claimed it for his squirrel patrol instead. He perks up at the sound of Daisy’s grunting. She makes purring-type noises when I stroke her behind the ears and Jack wants his share of snuggling, too, so he joins us in the bed as we greet the day in a group hug of dog hair and down pillows.
The bed is the “amazing memory foam mattress.” To get it upstairs, the movers hauled it up over the roof of the back porch and in through the rear Gothic window. (The front Gothic window is sealed shut, but the back one swings open on a hinge.) The king-size mattress takes up the entire bedroom and rests directly on the floor. It couldn’t be on a bed frame anyway because the slanted ceiling reaches down so low, to have the mattress raised any higher would mean you couldn’t sit up in bed. Some visitors have called my bedroom set up “glorified camping.” I call it “just right.”
Before I get out of bed, I check my iPhone for messages. I no longer have the BlackBerry in the red rubber case, but I do still get an occasional call from an “Unknown” number. While there might be a perceptible twinge when I see that reminder of the medical examiner’s call on the screen, I can predict it will be one of two people who I actually want to hear from—Susan, my grief counselor from Portland with whom I still check in every few months, or Jonathan, my entertainment lawyer in L.A. who is still hoping the pie TV show sells. While I look forward to calls from both of them, I try to keep the ones from Jonathan short because he bills for his time and even with the deep Team Pie discount he gives me, it’s still expensive. After several yes-no cycles thinking the show had been sold, only to have my hopes dashed yet again, I have let go of the outcome for getting the TV series on the air. It was the making of the pie show that was the gift. It gave me purpose when I needed it and set me on a positive, new path. It was about the journey, not the destination. It led me to some wonderful new people in my life, some very delicious pie and, without realizing it at the time, it led me back to Iowa, and ultimately to this house I now call my home.
I go downstairs, ducking my head as I round the bend on the tight, narrow staircase, and fire up my espresso machine. I use the time before the coffee drips to open the front door. The dogs know it’s their cue and they’re ready, certain that this time they really will catch the squirrel that’s been taunting them all week. While they race off in the yard, I go back to the kitchen to steam the milk for my latte. When it’s ready, I put on my long, puffy coat over the top of my pajamas, slide on my tall rubber boots purchased from Tractor Supply Company and go outside to join Team Terrier.
I didn’t spend the winter in California as I had expected to. My coat, which I bought for $8.99 at Goodwill, kept me so warm I never felt cold. And the house? It was also warm and surprisingly well insulated. It was so cozy, especially with the colorful Christmas lights I hung on the back porch, I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
The tourists aren’t here yet. It’s early spring and the threat of snow keeps them away. If the roads aren’t icy, a few might stop by for a photo later in the afternoon. It’s a rare day, even in sub-zero temperatures, that the American Gothic House doesn’t get at least one visitor. The house, looking dreary and dull against Iowa’s winter-thaw backdrop of gloomy, gray skies and leafless trees, still surprisingly sees a trickle of traffic at this time of year, people showing up like drips from a faucet leaking so slowly it’s not worth calling the plumber. The visitor center next door is open year-round, but during the cold months there are days when I am the only human being its administrator Molly sees. During the week, if I’ve woken up late, anytime after 8:30 a.m., Molly will already be at work and I’ll stop by to say hi—in my pajamas, hair uncombed, carrying my mug of coffee.
Molly sees me more often in my bathrobe than in proper clothes, and the times I do bother to get dressed I just slip my bib overalls on over the top of my pajamas. My life is uncomplicated that way. It’s not like I am letting myself go. I live in a rural place with no reason to wear the many cute wool skirts, silk blouses and the Armani suit that fill my upstairs closet. And in the cold weather my concerns have more to do with staying warm than looking stylish. I do bathe, almost every night, in my half-length iron bathtub. The tub is so short I have to lay in it at an angle with my legs up the wall in a yoga pose in order to submerge my torso.
I no longer wear my wedding ring or Marcus’s. I can’t say exactly when and why I stopped wearing them. Maybe it was just that my skin was pruning underneath all that thick gold and steel. One day I took them off to let my finger dry out and that one rest day led to another and another. Instead of the wedding bands, I wear Marcus’s chunky silver ring that looks like a cross between primitive African art and a motorcycle part, m
ade by the same German jewelry designer who created our wedding rings. I often rub my fingers on it as if it’s a worry stone or, when I’m feeling vulnerable, as a way to channel some of Marcus’s warrior-like strength.
It took nineteen months, but I finally washed Marcus’s red plaid bathrobe, the one I used like a security blanket when it still held his scent. I could no longer tell whose scent was on it—it merely smelled stale, like it needed washing. Badly. And as long as I was putting the robe into the washing machine, I added his orange-and-yellow plaid duvet cover along with it. I poured in the soap and shut the lid and felt a pang of regret and shame that I had snapped at Melissa’s innocent kids for playing on it. I took my spring-cleaning actions one step further and packed away most of Marcus’s pictures—the most visible ones on my refrigerator door and the ones in the living room. These steps were like prying my fingers loose from my grip on the past. If I wanted to make room for new life, I needed to stop clinging to my old one. It was simply time to let go. I had discovered my inner trapeze artist. I was no longer afraid of the empty space in between the swings. I was preparing to grab the new swing, whenever it might come to me.
Making Piece Page 26
