Pinch of Love (9781101558638)

by Bessette, Alicia

  NEXT TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Garrett stands on my porch again. The knot of his tie is loose, and a small oil stain—from salad dressing, maybe—dots his white shirt. The skin under his eyes looks droopy and pinched.

  “I can’t believe I’m asking you to do this again,” he says.

  Ingrid pushes past me and drops her backpack just inside the door. “Ahab!” she calls.

  “I interviewed someone last night for a nanny position,” Garrett says. “But she was . . . I mean, she was a nice girl and all, but she seemed . . .” He trails off. He glances at his watch.

  I hand him Nick’s keys. “Keep them this time.”

  He pockets the keys, looking overwhelmed. “I’ll make it up to you. I swear.” He hands me a big wad of bills.

  “You don’t need to pay me,” I say. “Really.”

  He pauses for a second, like he’s considering just stuffing the bills into my apron pocket and taking off. But instead, he nods. “Thanks, Zell.”

  IN MY KITCHEN Ingrid flips through Meals in a Cinch with Polly Pinch. “Finished my homework,” she says before I even ask.

  We brainstorm. Ingrid wants to make upside-down cake. I want to make oatmeal brownies. We draft a recipe for Oatmeal Brownie Upside-Down Cake, and I quickly realize that Ingrid is not the baking prodigy she hinted that she was. She suggests one cup of baking soda, but I convince her that’s way too much. She suggests three cans of condensed evaporated milk and a dozen eggs, and I explain—gently—that we’re not trying to feed an entire army. Finally, we negotiate a general plan of attack—adding oatmeal to the brownie batter, then creating alternating layers of brownie mix and cake mix.

  “How do you know all this stuff about baking?” she asks. “What’s too much, what’s not enough? How do you know all that?”

  How, indeed. From Ye Olde Home Ec Witch? Perhaps. Perhaps I am the fallen soufflé in Room 8 of the basement of Wippamunk High School—Ye Olde Home Ec Witch’s classroom. Or the soggy omelet in the beat-up frying pan with rusted handle in Room 8 of the basement of the high school. Perhaps I am shavings of carrot stuck in the sudsy sink drain, to which glaring Ye Olde Home Ec Witch points with a warty finger. (Did she really have warts, or was that detail simply part of the legend?)

  It’s inconceivable that Polly Pinch has warts. She is the san-toku knife with forged-steel blade and slip-resistant polypropylene handle advertised on page eleven of Meals in a Cinch. She is the long-stemmed strawberry dipped in white chocolate fondue on page fifty-six. She is the porcelain cup of French-pressed Fair Trade organic shade-grown coffee on page ninety-nine.

  And I am neither a kitchen Nazi nor a television chef with tight skin and perfect tanned boobs. I am Rose-Ellen Roy, née Carmichael, the soggy omelet trying to win a twenty-thousand-dollar baking contest. If not with Flourless Peanut Butter Treats, if not with Oatmeal Brownie Upside-Down Cake, then with Something Else Outstanding.

  “You want to know how I know all this stuff?” I say. I hold the bowl. Ingrid stands on a chair and dumps the brownie mix. It mushroom clouds in our faces, and we both cough.

  “Years and years of practice.” I crack an egg with one hand.

  She takes the eggshells and tosses them into the sink. “Practice?” she says. “But you said you don’t cook. Like, not at all.”

  I grasp the wooden spoon and stir. “Let’s not split hairs, hm’kay?”

  FLOURY HANDPRINTS SMUDGE THE CABINETS. Sugar dots the counter. Brownish oatmeal sticks to the wall.

  Ahab licks something next to the leg of a chair. He sniffs his way to the oven door, lapping flecks of batter here and there.

  The Oatmeal Brownie Upside-Down Cake cools on the stovetop. It looks like black-brown volcanic mush.

  “Last year?” Ingrid says. “I went to a Halloween party at my dad’s work? And they had fake throw-up on the floor.”

  “Yeah?” I say.

  She points to the Oatmeal Brownie Upside-Down Cake. “That looks like the fake throw-up.”

  “Mmm. How appetizing.”

  “So much for years and years of practice.” Ingrid drums her fingers on the table. “Hey. I know someone who can help you.”

  “A fairy godmother?”

  “Sort of. Grab your car keys, and let’s go.”

  “I’m not going to drive us to someone’s house I don’t even know. Just tell me who it is.”

  “It’ll be more fun if it’s a surprise. Please?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll just sit here and lick the batter off my arm.” She drags her tongue from her elbow to her wrist. “Or maybe we should try to make a Right-Side-Up Cake.”

  Ahab sniffs Ingrid. She lets him lick her arm. “How much money do you win?” she asks.

  “Twenty thousand dollars.”

  “That’s a lot, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’d get all that money for the hurricane survivors. And I’d get to meet my mother. Finally.”

  Inside the pan, the oatmeal mass shifts. A wet spray plops onto the counter.

  “That dessert is just bizarro,” she says.

  I sigh. “You win. Where are we going?”

  Ahab licks Ingrid’s arm completely clean. She fixes her sleeve and grins—widening her freckles, widening her eyes. Her smile reminds me of Garrett, and of Polly Pinch. She does resemble Polly, in the eyes mostly, and the mouth. Maybe Polly really is her mother.

  “I want to surprise you.” She skips through the living room to the front door. She waves at me to hurry up. Ahab gallops after her.

  “Wait till you meet her,” she says, tossing me my coat. “She’s wicked awesome.”

  I LET INGRID SIT IN THE FRONT SEAT. She gives directions and seems so adultlike, I forget she’s just a kid. Halfway up potholed Route 331, I wonder if she’s big enough to sit legally in the front seat. Under the seat belt she looks so sunken, I almost pull over and make her get in the back. But she rolls down her window and howls into the icy wind. And so I roll down my window and crank up the heat as high as it will go.

  We pass the library, lit up like a carnival. We pass the dark, abandoned orphanage; crumbling stone walls; the dirt road on the south slopes of Mount Wippamunk.

  I pull into the driveway of the huge red house with stained-glass fairies in every window. A spotlight in the snow shines on the DON’T PISS OFF THE FAIRIES!! sign.

  “So you think your step-grandmother is going to help us?” I ask.

  “I know my step-grandmother is going to help us.” Ingrid races from the car to the front door.

  When I catch up to her, I lift the pewter fairy knocker and let it drop. A moment later the door swings open. A lanky woman stands before us. She wears protective goggles. Her jeans are duct taped to her construction boots, and the long sleeves of her T-shirt are duct taped to her bony wrists. A string attaching neon orange earplugs dangles around her neck.

  “Well, hello there, Pumpkin Pie!” cries the old woman. She pushes back her goggles and stoops to embrace Ingrid.

  I recognize, under the tight white curls, a square, craggy face.

  Ye Olde Home Ec Witch.

  If it’s humanly possible, she looks even older than I remember.

  Ye Olde Home Ec Witch is Ingrid’s step-grandmother? Impossible.

  Ingrid hops and hugs Ye Olde Home Ec Witch. “Hi, Trudy,” she says.

  Ye Olde Home Ec Witch pinches Ingrid’s cheek. “How did you get here, Pumpkin Pie?”

  “My best friend, Zell, drove us.”

  Ye Olde Home Ec Witch straightens to her full height, about five inches taller than me. She puts her hands on her hips and eyes me up and down. Years ago her beady eyes disdainfully sized up my half-raw pancakes. Her vinegary nose sniffed my not-gingery-enough gingersnaps. Her knobby hands swept naughty crumbs from my serving table.

  She throws back her shoulders and seems to grow yet another inch. “Rose-Ellen Carmichael,” she says. “As I live and breathe.”

  “It’s Rose-Ellen Roy now,” I say. �
��I can’t believe you remember me. I graduated sixteen years ago.”

  “I never forget a face,” she says. “Or a name.”

  “Mrs. Chaffin—”

  “That’s not what you’re used to calling me, is it?”

  “What?” I say, although I’m not really surprised she knows about her nickname. I feel a little uneasy, like I’m back in high school again, back in Room 8 in the basement. G.d. I stuff my hands in my pockets and pretend to study the bundled-up hedges under their protective lean-tos.

  “I know what you called me,” says Ye Olde Home Ec Witch. “And I know it wasn’t always witch, either.” She raises an eyebrow and glares.

  Ingrid looks from her to me, and I wonder if “bitch” is in the vocabulary of a nine-year-old girl. Perhaps. But she doesn’t seem to catch on, or maybe she’s just unfazed. She grins and clings tighter, squeezing her waist.

  Still glaring at me, Ye Olde Home Ec Witch pats the top of Ingrid’s head. “You probably still call me that when you get together with your high school friends to reminisce,” she says.

  I hear a sound I’ve never heard before—a dry, scratching sound—and realize Ye Olde Home Ec Witch is laughing. Her face is soft now. It might even glow with something. Kindness? Understanding?

  She reaches across the threshold and squeezes my hands in her cold claws. “I’m sorry for your loss, deary,” she says. “Nicholas was a nice boy. A class act. That was a beautiful article Dennis wrote about him in The Wippamunker. I know my stepson moved next door to you. I was wondering when we’d bump into each other.”

  She gazes at me—lovingly?—and caresses my hands. “Come on.” Ye Olde Home Ec Witch waves us inside.

  Impossible.

  Ingrid trots into the kitchen, climbs onto a swiveling stool at the breakfast bar, and spins away.

  “Anyhoo,” says Ye Olde Home Ec Witch. “Have a seat, and we’ll put the past behind us. You’re a different person now, living an adult life. And so am I. Call me Trudy.”

  Her boots make black marks on the linoleum. She strides to the stove, where a saucepan steams. “How about some hot chocolate?” She pours it into two fairy-decorated mugs and sets them in front of us.

  Ingrid slaps her palms on the counter. “Trudy, we need your help with a baking contest.”

  “I don’t cook anymore, Pumpkin. You know that.”

  Ingrid waves a hand as if to say, She’ll come around.

  I take a sip; the hot chocolate tastes just as I remember in Ye Olde Home Ec Witch’s class: grainy, buttery, not too bitter. Perfect.

  “You’re not at the high school anymore?” I ask.

  “Honey, that place can kiss my crotchety old can,” says Trudy.

  “So what do you do in your retirement?”

  “I run quite a lucrative business, actually. After Lew died—”

  “Lew was my grandfather,” says Ingrid, spinning on the stool so her hair flings out.

  “After Lew died I needed something else to do,” Trudy says. “Something different. Something more creative, for one. Cooking’s creative, but not after you’ve taught the same recipes over and over to punk kids—no offense—for thirty years. I wanted something more creative. And also, what I wanted was something more . . . aggressive.”

  “Aggressive?” I say.

  “Aggressive.” Trudy winks at Ingrid.

  “Show her, Trudy,” she says, slapping her own cheeks. “Show Zell the Barn.”

  Trudy leads the way to the Barn, an attached three-story side addition. Ingrid and I carry our fairy mugs through the kitchen and dining room, through a four-season sun porch. Fairies fill every available space. Ceramic fairies. Paper fairies. Glass fairies. Fairy plaques and fairy stationery. Fairy lamps and fairy wall hangings. Fairy salt-and-pepper shakers and fairy clocks.

  We pause in a hallway, where Trudy opens a door. “You kids have good timing,” she says. “I’m just about to fire up my babies and start a new project.”

  She flips a few industrial-looking switches. Before us, the Barn lights up like a ball field. The cement-slab floor could fit eight cars easily, maybe ten. Push brooms and ladders of various heights lean against the walls. Wood shavings fill metal trash cans. Hundreds of cans of spray paint line shelves.

  All around stand wide, tall tree stumps, stripped of bark. Some stumps are plain and smooth. Others resemble creatures. A dolphin juggling little red sticks. A coyote riding a skateboard. An eagle in green sneakers, reading a book.

  Ingrid clasps her hands behind her back and strolls the aisles. She admires each wooden creature as if it was a priceless museum heirloom.

  “The Family of Skiers?” I ask. I caress the beak of a giant cardinal fitting a baseball glove on the tip of its wing. “At the Mount Wippamunk base lodge? That’s you? You’re the wood sculptor? I heard a former teacher had done the Family of Skiers, but I didn’t realize it was you.”

  “The whole town’s gonna realize it soon because Dennis is doing a big feature on me,” Trudy says. “He’s been hounding me for an interview for a while now, but I put him off. I guess I wasn’t sure if my work is really worthy of The Wippamunker. But he talked me into it.”

  Trudy tightens her bootlaces. “That eagle is for the new grammar school they’re building in Princeton. I like to keep them around for a week or two after they’re complete, just so I can make finishing touches. I’m a perfectionist, as I’m sure you remember, Rose-Ellen. That’s Johnny Appleseed.” She points to the lanky likeness of a vag-abondesque young man wearing patched clothing and cupping seeds in his palms. “I did that for the Leominster Historical Club. Johnny Appleseed founded Leominster, you know. And that one’s for the Worcester Aquarium.” She points to an empire penguin waddling from an ocean wave carrying a beach ball.

  “You certainly have quite a range,” I say.

  “I like to branch out. After all, the more you like, the happier you are. I do the paint jobs myself.” She smoothes the duct tape against her wrists. “The outside sculptures are weather treated. The inside ones have just as much protective coating because of all the little loving hands that come caressing. And I use all found wood. I wouldn’t want the environmentalists after me.”

  In a far corner, a blue tarp covers something that stands at least ten feet tall. Trudy notices me eyeing it.

  “That’s a work in progress,” she says. “A very special and very important surprise commission that I’m working on. Top secret.”

  Ingrid slurps some hot chocolate and smacks her lips. “Tell us what it is, Trudy. The secret project.”

  “Can’t, Pumpkin. You’ll find out when the time comes. Tonight I happen to be working on something different. Something more time sensitive.” She cracks open a glossy-paged library book to a photograph of a bobcat. “This was what I was about to do before you rang the bell. Got half an hour?”

  “Yup,” Ingrid says. I set our mugs on a shelf while she fishes around in a storage bin and pulls out two pairs of goggles. She slaps a pair on her head, then on mine, and leads me toward the Barn door, where we entered. We sit side by side on the concrete floor.

  Trudy kneels next to another tarp, under which bulges a neat line of objects. Toreador style, she whips the tarp away.

  Chain saws, lined from smallest to biggest. Twelve of them.

  “The bigger saws are for the basic shapes: a head here, feet there,” she says. She repositions her goggles and screws in her earplugs. “The smaller ones are for the detail work. Feathers, teeth, and so forth.” She selects the biggest chain saw, stands, and cranks her elbow back. The saw whines and glugs. The smell of gasoline fills the Barn.

  I adjust my goggles. “Wait a second,” I yell. “You’re going to carve that huge log”—I point to a smooth log standing upright on the floor—“to look like that bobcat”—I point to the book, now propped open on a table—“with chain saws?”

  Trudy smiles, revealing yellowish dentures. She thrusts the growling chain saw overhead. “Honey,” she yells, “does a bear crap in
the woods?”

  She dives at the smooth stump, and the blade’s grinding notches sink into the wood. She circles the stump, plunging the blade in, pulling it out, and plunging it in again in a different spot. Chunks shoot up. Big chunks. Small chunks. More big chunks. More small chunks. They soar twenty, thirty feet in the air. One knocks against the ceiling rafters and lands near my feet. Ingrid scoops it up and waves it overhead. “Woo-hoo!”

  One by one Trudy fires up the other chain saws until they all whine at her feet. She alternates from one to another. Sawdust collects around the stump. The bobcat takes shape just as she described: A head here, feet there. Half a tail. Long, low torso. Downward-pointing cheek fur. Tufted ears. Intelligent eyes. Fierce teeth. Thick claws on big paws. Then she creates one little ski underneath each paw, a skullcap-style helmet between its ears, and a flapping scarf. The bobcat looks like it’s zooming fearlessly down a mountainside.

  Finally Trudy turns to us. She looks a little sweaty now. She flashes a thumbs-up sign and one by one shuts down the chain saws. She selects ten cans from the shelves, cradles them in her arms, and deposits them on the floor. As she sprays, the scent in the air switches from gasoline to paint and aerosol. She waves her arms. Reddish brown fur appears. Black spots and streaks. A pink nose. Black whiskers. Whitish teeth. Despite its accessories, the skiing bobcat appears so lifelike, I almost expect it to hiss, or purr, or lick its instep.

  Ingrid erupts in applause and two woo-hoos. “Trudy, that is wicked, wicked mint.”

  “I’ll say.” She laughs and brushes the sawdust off her clothes with a big dust brush.

  I drop the goggles back in the storage bin. “How did you—”

  “How did I go from being Ye Olde Home Ec You-Know-What to all this malarkey?” She laughs again—this one coarse and hacking. She scrubs the sawdust from her curly white hair. “It’s quite a story.”

  We follow her as she turns off the lights and shuts the Barn door. “I was cleaning out the shed the spring after Lew died,” she says, “and I saw this Husqvarna chain saw hanging from the wall.”