Sweet Home Alaska

by Carole Estby Dagg

  The sun, at a low angle above the mountains, put a golden glow on Mother’s face, but some of that glow also radiated from inside. She looked so happy! Terpsichore hadn’t thought about how much her mother must have missed her own mother, thousands of miles away.

  Mother led her mother back to the rest of the Johnsons and took back Matthew so she could reintroduce him to his grandmother. “Matthew is two now, and already knows all his letters.”

  Grandmother cooed approvingly and reached out to touch Matthew’s hair. “He’s perfect!” she said. Matthew shyly buried his head in Mother’s shoulder.

  “Oh dear,” Grandmother said. “I see I should have come up sooner. A little boy should always know his own grandmother. And the twins, Calliope and Polyhymnia! What little beauties you’ve become!” Grandmother stooped to take one twin in each arm for a hug. Last, she turned to Terpsichore.

  “Well,” she said, “here is Terpsichore, our junior librarian.”

  “Your books helped us off to a good start, Grandmother,” Terpsichore said. “Thanks!”

  “Not only a junior librarian but a blue-ribbon pumpkingrower,” Pop added, and pointed to Terpsichore’s pumpkin, still on the loading scale and sporting a blue ribbon rosette on its stem.

  “It’s very . . . big,” Grandmother said as she took a closer look at the blue ribbon. “Congratulations!”

  When Grandmother hugged her, Terpsichore felt the silkiness of her fur coat against her cheek. The fragrance of Grandmother’s Joy perfume brought the memory of the other scents of Grandmother’s house: beeswax polish, bouquets of flowers from her garden, and the bread her cook baked every day.

  • • •

  Pop took Grandmother’s coat as they walked to the wagon. Beneath her coat she wore a bias-cut frock of silk crepe. Her only concession to being in Palmer instead of her mansion in Madison was her low-heeled oxfords instead of high-heeled shoes. “I thought you’d have three feet of snow by now,” she said.

  “Snow will come around late September or early October,” Pop said. “And we had a couple of days last month that were nearly ninety degrees.”

  “Well,” Grandmother said, still looking around as if she suspected snow was lurking somewhere. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  • • •

  As they approached the wagon, Cally and Polly ran ahead to greet Smoky. He whinnied a greeting and lowered his head so Cally could rub his forehead between the eyes and around the ears. Polly combed her fingers through his mane.

  “Did you miss us?” they crooned.

  Grandmother looked warily up at Smoky. “Do horses grow bigger in Alaska too?” she asked.

  “He’s a Percheron,” Polly said.

  “They’re always big,” Cally said. “And wonderful!”

  Grandmother took a skittish step back. “My father had horses, but none like this.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s gentle,” Polly said. To prove it, she pulled a carrot out of her pocket and held it on the flat of her hand so Smoky could take it gently with his lips.

  Pop helped Grandmother up to the middle of the wagon seat. She checked the wood for splinters (there were none; Terpsichore knew her father had burnished it smooth as a mirror) before settling down and reclaiming her coat.

  Grandmother relaxed as they approached the house. “At least you have a house now instead of a tent,” she said.

  Mother led her mother into the house and took her upstairs. Terpsichore had moved into the twins’ bedroom with a pallet so Grandmother could have Terpsichore’s room during her visit.

  After Grandmother unpacked and came back downstairs, Terpsichore asked, “Would you like to see the farm?”

  “Your grandmother is probably tired from her trip,” Mother said.

  “Nonsense,” Grandmother said. “I’d love a tour from the girls.”

  Terpsichore and the twins took Grandmother back outside to show her the farm.

  “This was the first building Pop built,” Terpsichore said as they passed the chicken coop.

  “Pop said we would have had to sleep in it ourselves if the house didn’t get built before winter,” Cally said.

  Grandmother shook her head in dismay at the thought of living in a chicken coop.

  “And here’s the barn,” Polly said.

  “We got to sleep in the loft of the barn while the house was being built,” Cally said.

  Terpsichore remembered cuddling together with the twins, with the smell of hay and newly sawn wood. In Wisconsin, the twins had always seemed in their own world, with no need for anyone else. Alaska brought them all together.

  Grandmother was less skittish around Clarabelle, the milk cow, than she had been around Smoky, who was now settled into his stall. “I remember getting up early to milk our Maisy,” Grandmother said.

  “You milked a cow?” Terpsichore couldn’t imagine her grandmother in her silk dresses milking a cow. But of course she wasn’t born a grown-up. She had been a girl once too. What had that girl been like?

  “I grew up on a farm,” she told them. “I wasn’t always a matron of the Assistance League and Friends of the Opera.” She looked appraisingly at the barn, closed her eyes, and inhaled. “I remember the smell of a clean barn, the warmth of Maisy’s flank against my cheek as I milked her, half asleep. My mother always said milking gave me strong piano hands.” She held out her hands, with their buffed fingernails and rings that glittered even in the dim evening light of the barn.

  “That was a lifetime ago,” Grandmother said. “But seeing what you’ve done here makes me remember my years growing up on the farm. I was happy then. Are you happy too, on this farm in Alaska?” She looked at each of the girls.

  “We are! We are!” Terpsichore joined the twins in reply.

  They all paused on the way back to the house so Grandmother could admire the plowed fields and the remains of the kitchen garden.

  Once inside the house again, Grandmother said, “I didn’t expect to be impressed, but I am. In a little over a year you’ve established a tidy little farm. You must miss your piano, though, Clio. It’s a shame you and the girls don’t have one here in Alaska. Every year counts when a young person shows such promise.” She shook her head over the tragedy of wasted talent.

  Then Grandmother sighed. “But I suppose there are worse things. I miss you all. It gets lonely sometimes in that big old house by myself. A house with just one person doesn’t seem like a home.”

  CHAPTER 49

  A Knock at the Door

  WHEN THE KNOCK FINALLY CAME, TERPSICHORE RAN TO the door. She closed it behind her just as Gloria and Mendel gently set down the cardboard box they carried.

  “Here you go,” Gloria whispered.

  “We ran out of paper, so it’s only thirty more,” Mendel said.

  “Only thirty?” Terpsichore’s temples pounded.

  “I know that’s not going to be enough,” Mendel said. “But we tried, we really did.”

  “Miss Zelinsky even stayed at the school to help us with the mimeograph machine,” Gloria said.

  “If you don’t make enough money with the recipe books, we’ll help make up the difference,” Mendel said. “Today in the craft hall, a tourist saw my Erebia rossii and Pieris angelika butterflies you can only find in the far north. He’s offered to buy them.”

  “And I could sell my autographed movie star photos,” Gloria said.

  “But I can’t ask you to give up your best butterflies and movie star collection,” Terpsichore said. “You’ve already done so much. Thank you for trying.” Tears pricked her eyes.

  “I’d rather part with my collection than my best friend,” Gloria said.

  “And a couple of dead butterflies,” Mendel added.

  They draped their arms around each other and touched their heads in the middle. When they drew back, Terpsichore said, “I stil
l don’t . . .”

  “We don’t want you to go,” Gloria said.

  “You’re the best,” Terpsichore said. She opened the door and shoved the box into the room with one foot. She stood for a moment at the open door, watching Gloria and Mendel head home before she shut the door.

  “Who was that?” Pop asked.

  “Gloria and Mendel,” Terpsichore said. She leaned over to shove the box a little farther into the room. “Pop,” she said, “could you haul this box upstairs for me?” With only thirty copies, she could have carried the box herself, but she wanted to get Pop away from Mother so she could explain her project and how she might need his help at the fair.

  Pop picked up the box and started up the stairs with it. Cally and Polly clomped upstairs too.

  With Pop and the twins looking on, Terpsichore unfurled the crosshatched flaps of the box of thirty copies of her Alaska cookbook. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of mimeograph fluid. Her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she did the figures in her head. Five dollars from the pumpkin prize, fifty dollars from the one hundred recipe books she’d already printed, fifteen dollars from this batch . . . She was still five dollars short of enough to buy the piano, and she also had to pay the school back for the supplies she’d used. How could she make up the difference? And what if she didn’t even sell all the recipe books?

  Pop picked up the top copy of the recipe book and flipped through it. “Jellied moose nose? I’m not sure if I want to try that one,” he said. “Terpsichore, do these recipe books have anything to do with your secret plan to make your mother vote to stay in Alaska?”

  Cally and Polly bounced on their cots. “They do! Terpsichore’s going to buy Miss Zelinsky’s piano. With the bathroom you built and a piano she’ll be happy here, won’t she?”

  Pop shook his head and dropped the book back in the box. “Hmm. I just don’t know.”

  Cally and Polly stopped bouncing on the beds. Terpsichore drooped, then straightened. “But if I do earn enough money for the piano, can you pick it up from Miss Zelinsky? Once Mom sees the piano . . .”

  “When I see how much your mother has missed her mother, and how much your grandmother looks forward to having us with her, I don’t know if even a piano will make a difference,” Pop said. “You can count on me to get the piano moved, though.”

  He hugged each of his Muses in turn. “Give it your all, Terpsichore. At least we’ll know we tried.”

  CHAPTER 50

  The Fair, Day Two

  PALMER WAS AT ITS BEST THE NEXT MORNING. THE SKY was cerulean blue. The Chugach and Talkeetna Mountains, frosted with early snow, guarded the Matanuska Valley. As the gates opened for day two of the fair, many tourists clutched a copy of the Anchorage Daily Times with the picture of Terpsichore and her pumpkin, Laura, on the first page.

  Laura rested proudly on her nest of straw, the star of the Palmer Fair. Cally and Polly stood on each side of the pumpkin, and Gloria peeped over the back, fluffing her hair and displaying her perfect teeth in a Hollywood smile. Mendel was there too, ready to take the money and keep a running total of all the money they’d collected.

  Tourists surrounded the booth and everyone who had a camera wanted a picture of the biggest pumpkin they had ever seen. One of the tourists straddled his toddler’s legs around Laura’s stem and backed up far enough to get his little boy and all of the pumpkin in the picture. “How much for a picture?” he asked.

  Charging for a picture? That was the answer! Terpsichore couldn’t raise the price of the cookbook, since the Anchorage Daily Times article said she was selling them for fifty cents, but she could sell pictures. “Seventy-five cents for a picture and a copy of the cookbook,” Terpsichore said. Her voice rose like she was asking him if that was a reasonable price.

  The man eagerly dug in his pocket for change.

  He picked up a copy of the cookbook and turned the pages. “Low-bush cranberry cobbler, pickled salmon—hey, here’s that recipe for jellied moose nose. What a hoot! I’ll take a recipe book for myself and the picture of my son on the pumpkin. But I’d also like two more recipe books and two photos of all you kids and the pumpkin, for folks back home.”

  “That’s two dollars and twenty-five cents,” Mendel said, grinning at Terpsichore.

  Terpsichore grinned back. Twenty-five cents more just to let someone take a picture! Easiest money she’d ever made. Or maybe not really, as she thought of scraping off hundreds of squash bugs, lugging water, and everything else she’d done to grow the biggest pumpkin in the valley.

  In the lull between trainloads of tourists, Terpsichore ran her fingers through all the nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollar bills in the coffee can. “So what are we up to, Mendel?”

  He slid his glasses down his nose and rechecked his column of figures. “Forty-three dollars and twenty-five cents,” he said.

  Mendel and Terpsichore hunkered down over the box and counted the remaining recipe books. Out of the total one hundred and thirty copies, they still had nearly half of them.

  Cally said, “We’ll make sure you sell every last recipe book.”

  Polly said, “And sell lots of pictures.”

  Just before noon, the train made its second trip into the Palmer station, and the next batch of tourists streamed toward Terpsichore’s booth. The twins jumped up from the straw where they’d been giggling and whispering. As the first tourists approached, they hummed their starting pitch, traded smiles, and began. It was their own version of the folk song “The Pumpkin Pies That Grandma Used to Bake.”

  “My sister was a wizard

  At baking pumpkin pies;

  The things you would find in them

  Were surely a surprise!

  Mom canned a ton of salmon

  To save us from a famine

  But jars vanished just like snowflakes on a lake.

  When Halloween came around,

  Guess where those jars were found?

  In the pumpkin pies that sister Tipper makes.”

  As the crowd around the stand grew, the twins became more theatrical yet. They opened their eyes wide in surprise and spread their hands in mock amazement as they came to the lines announcing the location of the missing objects.

  “We thought we’d lost our dogsled.

  The winter we would dread.

  We’d have to get to town on rusty skates.

  When Thanksgiving came around,

  Guess where that sled was found?

  In the pumpkin pies that sister Tipper makes.”

  Gloria knew the tune and joined in with a hummed alto harmony and added some flourishes of her own. By the second repeat, the booth was surrounded by both tourists and locals watching the show. Gloria signaled the twins to stop singing for a minute and waved a copy of the recipe book. “Get your recipe book here, including the recipe for Tipper’s famous pumpkin pies!”

  “Come on, Trip—Tipper, it’s your pumpkin, get up here!” Mendel said.

  Terpsichore clambered up on a bale of hay and stood. “See the biggest pumpkin ever grown in the Matanuska Valley! Get your Alaska souvenir with genuine Palmer Pioneer recipes! Get your picture taken with the giant pumpkin!”

  Cookbooks and photos were selling so fast Mendel could hardly keep up with the hands thrusting quarters and dollars at him. He shouted out updates every few sales.

  A familiar voice cut through the hubbub of questions about growing pumpkins, the recipe book, and taking pictures. “My word!” It was Grandmother, holding Matthew. She was followed by Mother, who had left the school bake sale booth to follow the crowd to Terpsichore’s giant pumpkin. “What are you doing to attract such a crowd?”

  “Mattie down!” Matthew wriggled out of Grandmother’s arms. Mother lunged toward him, but he darted through a sea of legs to reach Terpsichore. “Tip,” he said. “Pick you up!”

  Mother caught up with Mat
thew and held onto the straps of his overalls with one hand as she held up her copy of the newspaper in the other hand for Terpsichore to see. “And what’s this in the newspaper about raising money for something for me, so I’ll want to stay in Alaska?”

  “Just a minute,” Terpsichore said. “How much money do we have now, Mendel?”

  Mendel added the last few pictures and recipe book sales: “Sixty-eight dollars and twenty-five cents.”

  “Gloria, how many books do we have left?” Terpsichore asked.

  Gloria shuffled through the remaining books in the box. “Just fourteen.”

  Gloria shouted out her spiel again. “Only fourteen copies left of the most authentic souvenir of your trip to Alaska! Be the one who buys the copy that puts this project over the top! Help the Johnsons stay in Alaska!”

  “Are you the sister Tipper those girls were singing about?” one tourist asked.

  “Cute nickname! Never heard it before,” another said.

  As she handed out another recipe book and posed for another picture, Terpsichore tried out her new nickname. “Tipper,” she said to herself as she smiled for another camera. Trip sounded like a clumsy slip on a banana peel. Tipper was light and cheerful, just like she felt.

  She stepped away from Laura to hug Cally and Polly. “Thanks for your help today, and thanks for the new nickname,” she said.

  “It fit the rhythm,” Polly said.

  “And it sort of fits you too,” Cally added.

  “I like it!” said Mom. “And it’s a bit like the ‘Tip’ that Matthew already calls you.”

  Finally, the last recipe book was sold, but people were still lining up with quarters to have pictures taken with the pumpkin nearly as tall as the girl who grew it.

  “We’re over the top, Tipper!” Mendel shouted.

  In the flurry of sales, Mother, Matthew, and Grandmother had been edged to the outskirts of the crowd. Cally ran back to hold her mother’s hand, pumping it up and down in excitement. Polly held her grandmother’s hand, although she resisted having her hand pumped.