by Naomi Niles
Chapter Six
Lori
Sam and I spent the next couple weeks preparing pies for the Flowertown Festival. Each night after closing the shop, we would hang back in the kitchen for a few hours making the crusts and getting them ready for freezing. We were making several varieties of fruit pies—apple, pear, cherry, and raspberry—and they had to be frozen immediately after preparation so that they didn’t begin to exude moisture.
Whereas we had to freeze the fruit pies with the inner filling already fully assembled, the pumpkin pies were a bit easier. With those, we were able to keep the custard and shell separate until the day before we started baking. On a Thursday in early April—two days before the festival—I retrieved the custard from the back freezers and allowed it to thaw in the refrigerator. That way it was fully defrosted by the time Sam and I started baking all the hundreds of pies on Friday morning.
I looked forward to this day the way I looked forward to the first day of the Christmas holidays. We awoke just before dawn when the city was still sleepily stirring and drove through the cool of the morning to the bakery. There was no possibility of being disturbed today; before leaving work the day before, Sam had placed a sign in the front window warning that we would be closed. It was a relief just to bake for one day without having to worry about serving anybody or having to break up an argument that was getting too heated. As an introvert who preferred pies to people, I would have done this every day if I could.
“You know what this feels like?” I asked Sam as we began blind-baking the pumpkin pie shells. Later in the day, we would bake them again with the filling added.
“No, what?”
“It reminds me of Thanksgivings with Aunt Trish. After school let out for the week, we always had a few days to ourselves, and then on Wednesday, the rest of the family started arriving, bringing their pies and desserts. I wish you had been able to come more often.”
“So do I.” Mom had forbidden the family from visiting Trish, but one year, Sam had managed to sneak away and take the bus over to Pittsburgh, surprising us the night before Thanksgiving. It was still my favorite holiday memory. “I’d much rather have been eating cold cobbler and green bean casserole with you and Trish than putting up with Mom for five days.”
“She always had a special gift for ruining holidays, didn’t she?”
“She was the best at it,” said Sam gloomily, taking off her mitts and sitting down. “Growing up, I honestly thought Thanksgiving was that holiday where your mom fed you canned corn and cold, pre-cooked ham and went to bed early. I was so surprised the first time I went over to a friend’s house and their family cooked an actual meal, and nobody was yelling. I remember being so enthralled by the smells and the warm atmosphere, and just wanting to curl up on the couch with a full belly and never leave.”
“Trish always had something interesting playing on the TV while she made Thanksgiving dinner.” I felt warm and sleepy and happy just thinking about it. “One year it was the Harry Potter movies, which I had never seen. Another year it was Gilmore Girls, but I felt sort of lost because they were playing the third or fourth season, and I hadn’t seen any of the previous seasons.”
“At least you’re all caught up now,” said Sam. We had recently watched the entire series (save for the awful seventh season) on Netflix.
“Me, too. I know you didn’t care much for the newer season, but I thought it was a fitting end to the series.”
“Okay, it’s not that I didn’t like it—I just thought the writers made some bizarre creative choices. Like the fact that she’s still seeing Logan after ten years. We’re supposed to believe that Rory is this intelligent, globe-trotting woman, and she’s only managed to sleep with one guy in the last ten years.”
“She also slept with the Wookie guy,” I reminded her.
“Still. Sometimes it feels like there are only three boys in the Gilmore Girls universe, and they’re all in love with Rory. Which was, you know, fine back when they were in high school, but at this point, it’s getting a little sad.”
“Well, I thought it was true to her character and to the larger themes of the final season. Rory screws up everything. She thinks of herself as—or at least aspires to be—an important journalist, but all she has to show for it is an essay in The New Yorker. She falls asleep in the middle of interviews. She sleeps with one of her sources, and he’s wearing a Wookie costume. I think the point that the show is making is that Rory is just as feckless in her career as she is in her love life. When she graduated from Chilton, her parents and grandparents and friends and professors had high hopes for her future, and she’s done nothing but disappoint them. I thought it was quite brave of the show to deconstruct its most beloved character so devastatingly.”
“Yeah, when you put it that way, it doesn’t seem so bad,” said Sam. “I just wish they hadn’t devoted half an episode to that random musical number. And seeing the Life and Death Brigade with their hats and umbrellas just made me sad. It’s one thing to have a secret society in your teens, but when you’re pushing thirty, it’s just sad.”
We went on arguing over the merits and demerits of the final season—and the last four words in particular—while we waited for the pie shells to finish baking. I loved getting to talk with Sam like this, but we didn’t get to do it that often—usually we were either working or she was out with Jamal.
“You know what irritated me about the later seasons?” I asked her as we pulled the crusts out of the oven, golden-brown and slightly crisp, “was the amount of attention paid to Rory’s sex life. For the first two or three seasons, there was no sex at all, and then it felt like it became the main focus.”
“I remember reading in an interview,” said Sam, “where Amy Sherman-Palladino complained that viewers were more interested in Rory’s love life than they were in her career.”
“This might be asking too much, but I sort of wish they had kept sex out of the show. It would have been refreshing to have a teen drama where the focus wasn’t on sex.”
“Yeah. Hmmm.”
I could tell Sam disagreed; we often differed when it came to the subject of sex and dating. Mom hadn’t allowed her to date until she moved out of the house, and sex had been her form of rebellion. As soon as she got her own apartment, she dated three or four boys in succession and slept with all of them. I had never slept with anyone. Sam seemed to think I had inherited Mom’s fear and loathing of the body, but I didn’t think that was it. It was just hard to feel any sexual interest in a boy I wasn’t emotionally attached to, and there hadn’t been very many of those.
Sam was open-minded about most things, but I had the hardest time getting her to understand this.
“If it were up to you, though,” she said as we brought out the baking sheets, “there wouldn’t be sex on any shows.”
“Well, there would certainly be less of it,” I replied. “I doubt I’m the only person who doesn’t understand why the rest of the world seems obsessed with sex. And again, it’s not like I’m judging everyone else for being into that. It just isn’t my thing.”
“Maybe you have an abnormally low sex drive.”
“Maybe,” I said uncertainly. “There have been times I’ve gone three or four months without thinking about sex at all, to the point where I started to wonder if maybe I was asexual. But I don’t think that can be true. When I meet a boy I really like—well, let’s just say sex is thought about. But again, that doesn’t happen very often.”
“What we need to do is find you a decent boy.”
“Good luck!” I said with a laugh. “I can’t think of any boys around here who would be interested in—what was the phrase Mom once used to describe me?—‘insufferably boring?’”
“You deserve to be in a loving relationship more than Mom ever did,” said Sam. “I’m tempted to say people like Mom shouldn’t be allowed to date or have children, but then, where would we be?”
“Yeah, isn’t it funny how that works?”
Sam
went over to the fridge and pulled out a can of lemonade. Popping the lid open with a snap, she said, “It must be weird being able to go through the world not thinking about sex all the time. If I could turn that off, I would do it in a heartbeat. It’s a huge distraction.”
“For me, it’s just normal, so I don’t know how it is with anyone else. I remember in high school hearing the way other girls talked about boys and feeling left out without really knowing why. I knew I was different, but I didn’t really have the words to explain how.”
So, like, were you ever interested in porn?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I still don’t see the appeal, if we’re being honest. Who are these two people? I’ve never met them. Why would I want to watch them have sex?”
“What about romance novels?”
“Romances are different because if the author does their job right, I can develop an emotional connection to the characters. My objection to romance novels is mostly an aesthetic one. The genre is so formulaic. If you know who the main boy is and who the main girl is, then you know they’re going to end up together by the end of the story. There’s zero room for suspense.”
“Maybe,” said Sam. “But I think most readers know that going into the story. It’s the question of how they end up together that keeps them turning the pages.”
“I just think they would be better off reading Jane Austen,” I said with a shrug. “But then again, I am, as Mom used to say, ‘ridiculously old-fashioned.’”
“Mom was ridiculously old-fashioned,” Sam pointed out. “She tried to keep us from wearing pants because ‘good little girls only wear skirts.’”
“It’s amazing I’m still able to wear dresses after what she put us through.”
“I never do.” Sam motioned down to her flour-stained denim shorts. “I always felt like if I wore skirts or dresses, I would be letting her win. Sometimes I’ll go to the store and try one on in the dressing room. But I always put it back because I can’t stand how I look in a skirt. It reminds me too much of her.”
“I just learned to associate dress-wearing with happier things, I guess. Things that were all mine. That’s how I can still be religious even though she did her best to ruin that, also.”
Sam was quiet for a moment. She knew religion was a fraught subject, and it was best to steer clear of it when we were together. I went to church, and she didn’t, and we both knew we were never going to persuade the other, so there was no point in arguing about it.
“Anyway,” I said finally, “I hope the rest of the town likes eating these pies as much as I’ve enjoyed making them. You know they’re going to be swarming our booth the moment we show up.”
“Just like they did last year,” said Sam, who had suffered through multiple Flowertown Festivals before my arrival. She threw the lemonade can in the direction of the trash can; it bounced off the rim and rattled around on the floor.
I leaned over and threw it in. “Hey, do you want to take one of these home with us tonight?”
“You mean for eating?” she asked as if the thought had never occurred to her.
I nodded. “It’s just agony having to sit here all day baking pies and not being able to eat any of them. In hell, I bet they have to bake pies all day for the folks in heaven.”
“I don’t think I would want to eat one of those pies,” said Sam with a shudder. “I guess it is getting close to lunchtime, and neither one of us ate breakfast.”
“True, but all I really want to eat right now is pies.”
“Hazards of being a baker, I guess.” She motioned to the oven. “Pick whichever one you want, and we’ll wrap it up and take it home tonight. Maybe I’ll even run by the store and pick up a bottle of bubbly to celebrate getting this done. God, won’t it feel great when the festival is finally over?”
***
The festival began the next morning. Unable to find a parking space on Main Street, Sam parked the car in front of a boutique store five blocks away, and we walked the rest of the way carrying stacks of pies on a dolly I had lugged out of the store the night before.
Main Street that morning was a riot of color. As we navigated our way carefully through the dense crowd, my eyes were drawn to the pink azaleas and purple wisteria on all sides. Over two hundred booths had been set up, and our fellow vendors were hawking everything from art prints to candles to glass mosaics. A few paces ahead of us, a truck filled with hay was slowly wending its way down the street, several young faces peeking gaily out of the back.
“I’m glad they picked a cool morning,” said Sam as we approached our booth at the edge of the square. “Last year was miserable, and I wasn’t looking forward to doing that again.”
She was right: a more pleasant day would have been hard to imagine. Just overhead, a large, low-hanging cloud blocked out the worst of the sunlight, and a slight breeze made it feel like autumn. “This is the coolest weekend we’ve had in months,” I pointed out. “There must be a cold front blowing in.”
“Which means we’ll probably get some rain tonight,” said Sam eagerly. “As long as it’s not storming, I might go for a walk.”
We spent the next several hours selling pies, and the morning passed largely without incident, except that a boy of about nine or ten tried to distract us while another boy—presumably his brother—made off with one of our only remaining raspberry pies. Sam was livid and demanded to know who their parents were, but as neither boy was willing to tell her, there wasn’t much we could do about it.
“It’s not a big deal, Sam,” I said as she stood fuming. “I seem to recall this happening last year, too.” Our friend Charice, who made glass-beaded bracelets by hand, complained that an older gentleman in a pastel sweater had swiped some of her wares when her back was turned, but he dashed off before she could stop him.
“It is a big deal,” said Sam, “and it’s not okay. What those boys were doing is theft, and they need to know they can’t get away with it. We’re not living in Dickensian London; I’m sure their parents feed them, and from the looks of things, I bet they feed them a lot.”
At around lunchtime, Cheryl came over to visit. She had spent the morning selling batches of her homemade sweet tea, but wanted to nip over here and grab one of our pies before they were all gone.
“Pear or apple? I’m not sure which one Myrtle would rather have.” Myrtle was her partner of twenty years, whom she had left in charge of the booth. “I had better text her.”
She pulled her phone from a straw tote advertising the forty-fifth annual Flowertown Festival. Just ahead of us, a man in colorful face paint was performing illusions for the delight of a crowd of small children. Further back, somebody was blasting “Space Oddity” over a pair of speakers.
“She wants apple, apparently,” said Cheryl, returning her phone to her bag.
“Have you had any problems with thieves?” asked Sam as she wrapped up her pie. She told Cheryl about the two boys who had tried to make off with one of our pies.
Cheryl’s eyes widened. “No, I haven’t, but if you want, I can find them for you. Evil always leaves a trace.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by this enigmatic remark, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “We don’t need to find the boys; we need to find their parents,” Sam explained.
“Besides, it was just a petty theft,” I added. “I doubt it left much of a…trace.”
“My good lady,” said Cheryl, “even the smallest act of evil leaves a trace. Myrtle and I will keep a sharp eye out.” Smiling to herself, she took the pie and left.
Sam shook her head. “Good luck finding the taint of evil hovering over two boys in this crowd. I can guarantee you they are not the most wicked people here.”
Somehow, the thought seemed to put her troubles in perspective, and she became more cheerful.
“So far, this morning has been strangely bereft of cute guys,” she said. “Where do you think they all went?”
“They’re probably all doing the River Bridge Run. Th
is place is crawling with dads, but I don’t think I’ve seen a single guy who wasn’t holding the hand of a toddler.”
“There’s that guy,” said Sam, squinting and pointing at the creepy illusionist.
“Um, no thanks,” I replied. “I like guys who don’t wear nightmare-inducing face paint. He looks like he probably hangs out in the sewers.”
“Yeah, if there’s a sudden epidemic of children going missing, we’ll know who’s behind it.”
By now the speakers were playing “Heroes,” Bowie’s voice growing louder and louder. A dad walked past us carrying a bundle of hot dogs in both arms. “You know the worst thing about dating boys?” said Sam. “If you stay together long enough, they all become dads.”
“Not necessarily. You could choose not to have kids.”
“Yeah, but he’ll probably want kids. You should see Jamal around babies; his dad instincts kick in, and he becomes a different person. Doing funny voices, scratching himself and making monkey noises…”
“You should marry him.”
“Oh, I intend to.” She held up her left hand, waving her ring finger. “Sometimes the wedding feels like it can’t come soon enough. When are you going to settle down and get married?”
“Never,” I said resolutely. “I’m already married to my books.”
Chapter Seven
Marshall
“I can think of several things you could do with that money,” said Sean as we ambled down Main Street under a cloudy sky. “You could buy the entire Friday Night Lights boxed set on DVD.”
“Sean, why would I do that?” I asked. “That show is already on Netflix.”
“Yes, it is,” Sean replied ominously. “For now.”
The Flowertown poker tournament had just ended. I made it without much difficulty into the final round, where I squared off against an older man in a flat cap and gray cashmere sweater. The money didn’t particularly interest me, but I knew if I could win the tournament, it would boost my confidence going into the invitational in Vegas.