She knows I’ve won, even if nobody in the audience does. We know our own pies.
Old Dorothy Kalim sits as Superintendent Erickson approaches her. He says, “What are your thoughts, Mrs. Kalim?”
She reaches down with her fragile little fingers and brings up a tiny crumb of the pie on her left. Ignoring the milk, she takes a similarly small piece from the pie on her right, grinding it slowly in her aged mouth.
The whole place goes silent as all eyes fall upon old Dorothy Kalim. She looks at the two pies, then shakes her head and winces.
Superintendent Erickson says, “Which pie don’t you like, Mrs. Kalim?”
She looks at them both, then shakes her head as he puts the mike up to her lips. “I don’t care for cake. I thought you were serving pie, like pumpkin pie.” The crowd chuckles, but she just looks around in confusion. “What? They said pie, Whoopie pie.”
“See?” Barney says to her, his hand outstretched to the crowd. “It ain’t jus’ me, right? I knew it wasn’t jus’ me!”
“Okay then,” Superintendent Erickson says as he crosses back to Barney. He says, “Barney, you liked entry B, and that was...” He turns the card over to reveal my name written in ballpoint blue. “Hannah Troyer, Lancaster County!”
The crowd applauds. I look down to see Simon, Gramm, my mamm and daed, even Rebecca, Beau and the Thompsons, all gathered around at my feet, looking up in loving support. My father looks so proud, nodding at me and holding my mamm so tight in his arms.
This really was a good idea, I have to admit to myself.
Superintendent Erickson says, “Christina Carapucci, you liked entry A, that was ... ” He flips the card over, my name appears again. “Another vote for Lancaster County’s Hannah Troyer! And since the third judge didn’t really cast a vote, it’s two for two and Hannah Troyer of Lancaster County is the winner! A big hand for the little lady, folks, a great big hand!”
The applause rises up like a tide, waves of admiration (begrudging or not) lapping at my feet. And I can’t lie, I like the feeling. It feels like being famous, being liked, being accepted.
A thrush of warmth courses through me, trembling relief, my heart suddenly feeling as if its beating for the first time in weeks.
I notice the reporter in the crowd, holding his phone up again but this time taking video with it, I’m sure. Rebecca stands so proudly next to Beau. She turns and gives her future mother-in-law a little glance, a wordless challenge. But Ruth is tough as nails, and she stares right back, not about to give Rebecca an inch that she doesn’t have to.
Superintendent Erickson interrupts my revery with the mike, easing me to join him at center stage. It’s not where I’m most comfortable. “Wow, congratulations, Hannah. Not only are you the first ever winner of what I know will become a popular annual event, but your pies were really a hit. Not just better than the other pies, but, it would seem, but in a class by themselves.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I say, genuine humility in my voice which I’m not sure is coming across. “I did my best, to benefit the community and to honor God. And I want to thank Grace for being such a good sport and for indulging me. She’s a wonderful person and she really does make amazing Whoopie pies.”
“Isn’t that nice, folks?” Superintendent Erickson says with a smile, “give her a big hand!” I step away from center stage, my moment of glory already passing. He adds, “There’s still lots to see and do here today folks, the best cooks and craftspeople in all of Pennsylvania. Stick around everybody, have a safe and pleasant afternoon.”
A bit more applause follows his exit when Olaf Thompson steps up to the mike. “Your own Superintendent Newton Erickson, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you so much for having us all here and for helping to arrange this wonderful event. Okay, the quilt auction will continue on the east platform, for those who are interested...”
I turn to start cleaning up the stage as Simon hops up and gives me a big congratulatory kiss. “I’m so proud of you, Hannah! I mean, I would be either way, but... you really hit it out of the ballpark.”
“You really did,” Olaf says, turning to us. “Thank you, Hannah. It means a lot to us to know that we can rely on you to put the community first. It truly is an excellent reflection on your character, and on your entire family.”
I give him a friendly smile, even if I don’t love his condescending tone. I know his heart’s in the right place. So I look back at my daed and mamm, standing in an embrace, my daed’s chest nearly bursting through his buttons.
That’s all I wanted to hear.
As I turn to start cleaning up, I see Grace only a few yards away. We cross toward each other and share a warm, friendly hug. I feel a bond growing with Grace, an almost sisterly connection as we give each other a big squeeze.
“Congratulations, Hannah.”
“Thanks again, Grace.”
I look around and have to admit to myself, This really didn’t turn out badly at all. I’ve earned big points for the family, and for myself, and even for Rebecca. Nobody got hurt. I made a new friend in Grace, somebody I really think I’m going to grow close to. And, along the way, I managed to create a whole new kind of pie, the Whoopie breakfast pie.
Unfortunately, things started to unravel pretty quickly.
CHAPTER FOUR
I try to get back to my normal routine as quickly as possible. The first thing I have to deal with from winning the festival bake-off is that there is suddenly a great deal more demand for my pies. And it isn’t that I’m not happy to have created something that people like. On the contrary, it gives me a feeling that only comes from having brought something unique to life, something extraordinary and personal and meaningful.
Meaningful? I hear my inner skeptic say. It’s just a pie, it was just a county fair. Get over yourself, Whoopie Goldfinger!
And although it is simply a Whoopie pie, it’s a Whoopie like no other in the world, and I’m the only person who makes it. The lines at my booth at the Central Market are waiting for me when I arrive in the morning, and in the days following the bake-off, I sell out of my entire day’s stock almost immediately.
And although I’m happy to be doing well with the pies, I don’t lord it over anyone. I’m careful to not even mention it in conversation, lest anybody start talking about that egotistical Hannah, princess of the pies!
And since this particular way of making the pies takes longer, uses the sweet butter (an additional expense) and takes more time to whip the filling, they cost more. It doesn’t take long before I start getting wisps of dissatisfaction about that also.
“So expensive all of a sudden!”
I know how these people are, how they can get. The same as everyone else, but that’s not necessarily a good thing.
And sure enough, I start hearing grumbles and mumbles as familiar faces walk past my booth, speaking loudly enough for me to hear without being mistaken for addressing me face-to-face.
Because they don’t have the guts.
“All these outsiders all the sudden...” one person says to another as they pass. “Long lines, crowded parking lots. If I wanted to live in Disneyland, I’d move to Disneyland!”
Another person says, “Meanwhile Mrs. Ingram’s jams and marmalade sit on the shelves.”
As if that were my fault, I want to scream out at them. You insisted I do that stupid contest, and now you’re just going to have to live with the extra attention. That means more money in the town coffers, more houses that can go up, that new schoolhouse! Go stand in front of a classroom full of kids and complain about the new wait at the red light or the lines at the marketplace.
But of course, I don’t. I do what I can, which is sit and watch my neighbors glaring at me even as I sell to them and to anybody else within a reasonable distance (and even some from beyond that) the best Whoopie pies they’ve ever had.
I’ve been through a lot worse.
But I’m not even close to being over the hump yet, I know it. My only concern
is, How much worse will things get before they get better?
And They will get better, won’t they?
That, of course, is a matter of perspective. For some people, what happens next would be blessing straight from heaven.
For me, not so much.
* * *
Rebecca isn’t as able to use my victory to her advantage with Ruth as she thought she’d be. And it isn’t her fault. People like Ruth are challenging to deal with under the best of circumstances. But being seen as invading her home, from the next county over, with a dubious past and recent history, to presume the new role of matriarch in Ruth’s own family, for Rebecca, these certainly aren’t the best of circumstances.
And Ruth is willing to let her know it, even if Simon and I do happen to also be guests at her dinner table.
Maybe all the more so because of it.
Ruth says, “Well, that certainly was a trouncing you gave us back at that festival.”
“Trouncing?” I repeat. “I certainly didn’t mean it to be. I’d had Grace’s pies, and they were so good, I was just worried about not being beaten too badly. Forget about winning, I just wanted to come in a close second.”
Okay, it’s not entirely true, but it’s not entirely false either.
Ruth leans forward, looking me straight in the eye. Only her twitch indicates that hers is a living human face and not some ugly death mask. She says. “Not that it means anything to me, you understand. But the folks in York County know when they’ve been hoodwinked.”
“Hoodwinked?” Simon repeats.
“Well it’s as clear as day to anybody with eyes to see,” Ruth says. She’s mixing her metaphors, but I don’t bother to interrupt her with a correction. Right now it’s what she’s saying that’s getting under my skin rather than how she is saying it. She goes on: “If you had some new recipe, why go through all the trouble of humiliating one of our best and brightest citizens?”
“I didn’t set out to humiliate anyone,” I say, “and I don’t think you can say that it came out that way in any case. We parted as perfectly good friends. Further, I did not have that recipe beforehand, I came up with it while getting ready for the festival. Why on Earth would I go through such shenanigans?”
“That’s just what we’re all wondering,” Ruth says, shrugging and returning her attention to her mozzarella-filled meatballs.
I notice Rebecca glaring at Ruth, saying nothing. And I still don’t blame her. She hasn’t married Beau yet, and things between Rebecca and Ruth are already tense.
But I have nothing to lose. I can unload a tirade on this crone that will blow her graying hair back like a hurricane just came through. Except that I know whatever I say or do will bounce back on Rebecca, and I’m not going to stumble into a trap like that. I’m not sure my relationship with Rebecca could take it, nor her relationship with Ruth.
So I keep my mouth shut.
For now.
* * *
As if Ruth and her York County cronies didn’t have enough to be angry or envious about, and as if my own Lancaster neighbors needed even more things to add to their list of grievances, there is still more fuel for their social forest fires ready to feed the flames of their discontent.
This time it comes in a limousine. It isn’t the first limo to ever drive into Lancaster County, but it’s the first I’ve ever seen. And by the buzz that starts to float around town in the mere hour or two since its appearance, it’s the first a lot of my neighbors have seen too.
But of course the limo doesn’t arrive empty. Nor does it arrive alone. Because not only are there two movie stars and their five children in the back of the limo, but at least five carloads of paparazzi are following in a low-speed chase that nearly cripples the traffic in downtown Lancaster.
All this is news to me until the wave of excitement that seems to surround these two huge stars and their clattering offspring comes rolling toward me from across the marketplace. What I see first is the energy itself, invisibly pushing bystanders aside. Next come the paparazzi, those celebrity photographers, walking backward toward me, video cameras and mikes pointed in front of them, at people I can’t yet see.
Then the crowd moves closer to me, and between the throngs of dedicated media and fascinated spectators, I catch a glimpse of the celebrity couple. I vaguely recognize them, but only vaguely. We don’t waste time at the movies or watching television, so it’s only from the magazine covers I see at some grocer's that remind me of who these fabulous and famous and (to me) completely faceless people are.
“What are you doing in Lancaster, Angie?” one paparazzo asks.
“Looking for a snack,” the actress says in an accent that sounds as fake as a lot of her looks. Her face, her body, her hair, she seems like a walking robot of somebody’s idea of sexy.
Her husband, blond and rugged and smiling vacantly, tries feebly to wave the photographers away. “Come on, you guys, now...really! Time with the family, y’know what I’m sayin’?” But he smiles into the cameras the whole time he says it, drinking up every bit of their attention and adoration.
While it lasts.
When I see them together, it clicks; this is Hollywood power couple Tad Granger and Angelica Dawes, who are known by their hybrid nickname Tangelica. They glide up to my booth with their kids, each from a different country, it would seem. The infant in her arms looks Asian, but the little boy clinging to her leg is of African descent, and I think the chubby little boy walking beside his handsome adopted dad is Inuit, a native of Alaska and the arctic regions.
I get the feeling my Whoopie pies are about to reach an international audience.
“Hi,” I say, trying to weave my words around the camera crews and fawning spectators. I don’t like being on video, but I know there’s not much I’ll be able to do about that. Right now I figure the best I can do is greet these people, sell them as many Whoopie pies as they want, and send them off with a good impression of Lancaster and its denizens.
If only it were that easy. If only anything were that easy around here.
The two big stars and their passel of ethnically diverse kids dominate the space in front of my booth. She smiles and stands, as if waiting for me to say what a big fan I am or to thank them from stepping into my lowly civilian presence.
I let her wait.
Finally, her handsome husband says, “Are you the person who bakes those wondrous pies we keep hearing so much about?”
“Well, I’m not sure what pies you’re hearing about, but I did win a recent local bake-off, and...”
“Yep, you’re the one. We saw a clip on Yahoo! News, the way the judges describe those cakes, we just had to try one.”
I take a moment to wrap my head around the implications of what he’s saying. “You don’t mean to say that you....you came all the way down here from New York just for my Whoopie pies...after seeing them on the internet?”
They chuckle. “Darling, no,” the actress Angelica says, “not at all. We flew in from Los Angeles!”
“From Hollywood...for a pie?”
Angelica shrugs, eyes gazing around the marketplace as if traveling three thousand miles for a two-dollar sandwich cake were the most natural, normal thing in the world. “Well, we wanted to try them fresh, so there wasn’t much point in having them shipped. And there’s plenty to do in the city while we’re here.” She turns to her kids. “You guys like the Central Park Zoo, right?”
They cheer and jump around, smiling and happy. Well, I say to myself, if they’re happy then who am I to object or take offense? Even if I do, who am I to say so?
I put a fresh, unwrapped pie on a plate hand it to her. “Have one on the house, I think you’ve earned it.”
The two actors exchange an amused grin as they each take a small piece of the Whoopie pie. They fall instantly in love with the dessert before finishing the first bite; eyes rolling, mouths dropping a bit, little moans of ecstasy leaking up out of their pie-filled throats.
They pass the plate around
to the kids, who reach in and grab a piece for themselves. Angelica gives a piece to the littlest one, the Asian boy in her arms. There isn’t a trace of the Whoopie pie left, and just as little conversation until one of the girls says, “Oh amazing, Mommy, these are so good, yum!”
They look at me, seven beaming faces. She says, “We need two each, in a bag. And all the rest of them in a separate bag.”
“All the rest of them? That’s almost two dozen pies.”
“Perfect,” the famous husband says, “there’ll be plenty of homeless people between here and New York who’ll love them.”
Well, why not? I ask myself. The homeless certainly need to eat. And if they’re feeding the homeless, itself a good and selfless deed, I should only be flattered that they’re doing it with my pies.
So as I bag up the pies, the woman Angelica says, “You’re quite striking, do you know that?” I smile, modestly. “Ever thought of a real career?”
I look at her and smile, allowing her to think I don’t know what she’s talking about. I shrug, quite innocently. “I just got married, and I have a thriving pie booth.”
“Yes you do,” she says, as if suddenly speaking to another one of her five-year-olds.
Her gorgeous actor husband Tad says to her, “Angelica, they’re Amish. They’re not allowed to appear on camera, they think it’s, like, stealing their souls or something.”
“Well,” I feel compelled to say but feel unsure how to say it, “that’s not really...”
She turns to me. “And you don’t pay taxes either, isn’t that right?”
“Actually, we pay everything but social security tax, because we never collect social security, and...”
“That is fascinating,” she says, seeming completely ignorant of having so rudely interrupted me, demonstrating just how fascinating we really are to them. She does look me up and down while imagining something more intriguing than the simple reality of my life. She says, “Pretty Amish girl, her pies propel her into the fast lane. Have you thought about selling the rights to your life story? I’ll bet Lifetime would buy it in a shot.”
Whoopie Pie Betrayal - Book 2 (The Whoopie Pie Juggler: An Amish of Lancaster County Saga series) Page 5
