by Sarah Weeks
Sitting there on her rock, holding the little blue plate in her lap, the edges of Alice Anderson’s world began to blur and grow soft as memories of her aunt Polly and the pie shop came flooding back. Alice could see her aunt standing in the doorway of PIE, waving, a crinkled fan of wrinkles unfolding at the corners of her eyes as she smiled and touched the brass key that hung around her neck. Alice had led a wonderful life, and she often wondered what her aunt would have thought about the way things had turned out.
Polly would have been happy that Alice and her mother had become so close, and she would have been glad that Lardo had lived to the ripe old age of twenty-two. He was buried near the big gray rock where Alice was sitting. Although the Andersons had considered getting another cat after he passed, it didn’t seem fair to put Alice’s father through that again. He never got over his allergies, but even though Lardo made him sneeze, he’d cried right along with Alice and her mother when they’d finally had to put the old cat down. Alice was immersed in memories, lost in thought, when a sweet high voice pulled her back to reality.
“Yoo-hoo!”
“Over here, Polly!” Alice called.
Alice knew she wasn’t supposed to have favorites, but secretly she did. Part of it was the name, of course, but the truth is little Polly was the kind of person people couldn’t help but love, just like the remarkable woman she’d been named after.
“Dad says I finally got it right,” Polly said. “But you’re the expert. Taste.”
Her bright red hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and she bounded across the yard to Alice, all legs and bony elbows, holding a pie plate in her hands. Polly was born on October 30, 1985, the same day Kirby Grant, the actor who had played Sky King, was killed in a car accident. At ten years old, she was the spitting image of her father, and Alice’s heart swelled with love.
“Here.” The girl pulled a fork out of her back pocket and handed it to Alice, then held out the pie. There were six tear-shaped vents on the top of the crust oozing golden juice, and the edges were crimped in even little waves. Alice knew what it was, and smiled.
“Start in the middle,” the girl instructed.
Alice stuck the fork into the middle of the pie, scooped out a big bite, and put it in her mouth.
“What do you think?” asked the girl.
Alice’s throat grew tight with emotion, and tears sprang to her eyes.
“Good gravy,” said Polly. “Too much cinnamon, right?”
Alice shook her head as a single tear slid down her nose and fell into the pie.
“It’s perfect,” she said.
“Really?” asked Polly, flashing her father’s wonderful grin. “No kidding? Whoo hoo!”
Polly was number three of five children, all of them redheads and mirror images of their father. Charlie Erdling and Alice had been best friends for forty years, but in the end, it was Nora Needleman who’d captured Charlie’s big heart. Alice certainly hadn’t seen it coming, but then life is like that sometimes. At first she was upset; she didn’t think Nora deserved Charlie, but Charlie convinced her that she ought to give Nora a second chance, and eventually Alice and Nora became as close as sisters.
Like her aunt Polly, Alice never married. She had no children of her own, but the Erdling kids all called her Auntie Alice, and that was good enough for her. As it turned out, Nora surprised everyone by revealing a hidden talent for making pies. After they were married, Charlie and Nora bought the old pie shop and fixed it up again. They kept the name PIE, and on September 6, 1993, the welcome sign on the city limits of Ipswitch was repainted to read 14 Blueberries and counting! Nora won the medal for her peanut butter raspberry cream pie. When she made her acceptance speech at the APA conference, she gave all the credit to her husband, Charlie, because he had been helping her in the kitchen when she’d made it, and had accidentally mixed up two recipes. With Polly Erdling coming up the pike, it looked like the pie business would be booming in Ipswitch for many years to come.
After Charlie’s little Polly left that afternoon, Alice went upstairs to her bedroom, opened the closet, and took down the round red hatbox she kept on the top shelf. Wrapped in white tissue paper and smelling of mothballs was Aunt Polly’s leopard-print hat. She carefully lifted it out of the box and put it on. Polly had loved that hat, and she had loved Alice, too, which was one of the luckiest things that had ever happened to either of them. Alice grabbed her purse and, still wearing the hat, strolled down to the A&P, where she bought a can of their finest sardines. When she got home, she fried up three of the salty fish, lay them side by side on the little blue china plate, and carried it out to the spot where Lardo was buried. Placing the plate in the grass, Alice sang a little song she’d been working on in her head.
How lucky am I to be right here,
How lucky am I indeed.
A lifetime of love and song and pie,
What more could a person need?
In the morning when Alice went out to check, the little blue plate was licked clean. When she told Charlie about it later, he laughed and said most likely it was a raccoon that had eaten the fish, but he had a hard time explaining away the ornery fat white cat that showed up on Alice’s doorstep two days later, yowling indignantly to be fed.
PIE CREDITS
APPLE PIE (“Jim’s favorite”)
Recipe contributed by
Sarah Weeks of Nyack, New York
COCONUT CREAM PIE (“Eat off the floor”)
Recipe contributed by
Page Laughlin of Winston-Salem, North Carolina
BUTTERMILK PIE
Recipe contributed by
Ann Sawtelle of San Antonio, Texas
GREEN TOMATO PIE
Recipe contributed by
Thomas B. Wilinsky of Callicoon Center, New York
SOUR CHERRY PIE
Recipe contributed by
Vikki Gremel of Seward, Nebraska
HUCKLEBERRY PIE
Recipe contributed by
Frances Weeks of Ann Arbor, Michigan
CHOCOLATE CREAM PIE (“Grandma Bell’s”)
Recipe contributed by
Grace Bell of Checotah, Oklahoma
LEMON CHESS PIE (“Aunt Jane’s”)
Recipe contributed by
Jane Q. Wirtz of Washington, DC
KEY LIME PIE
Recipe contributed by
Magaly Perez of Fremont Center, New York
CONCORD GRAPE PIE
Recipe contributed by
Kristie Miner of Maine, New York
PECAN PIE (“Tio’s”)
Recipe contributed by
Amy Roberts of Austin, Texas
PEACH PIE (“Damien’s favorite”)
Recipe contributed by
Jil Picariello of New York, New York
RHUBARB PIE
Recipe contributed by
June Fontaine of Eagle Bend, Minnesota
PEANUT BUTTER RASPBERRY CREAM PIE
Recipe contributed by
Ann Miller Yoder of Goshen, Indiana
THANK YOU VERY MUCH …
I’d like to express my deepest gratitude to David Levithan, Emily Van Beek, Holly McGhee, and my mother, Fran Weeks, for enthusiastically embracing PIE from the get-go. Jim Fyfe, thank you for your loving support and endless patience — I couldn’t have written this book without you. Lastly, thank you to Parish Finn and Charlotte Steiner, who are wise beyond their years; to my son, Gabriel, who lent a crucial last-minute ear; and to the many generous friends and family members who were willing to share their favorite pie recipes with me.
About the Author
Sarah Weeks made all fourteen pies that she included in this book, but the recipes came from all over the country. Ultimately, she decided her favorite pie was cherry, with buttermilk coming in a close second.
When not wielding her rolling pin, Sarah is at her desk, writing widely acclaimed novels, including So B. It; Oggie Cooder; Oggie Cooder, Party Animal; and As Simple As It Seems. She liv
es in New York and can be found on the Web at www.sarahweeks.com.
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Weeks
Cover illustration by Mark Elliott
Cover design by Elizabeth B. Parisi and Whitney Lyle
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First edition, October 2011
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-38822-1