Making Piece

by Beth M. Howard

  And last but not least, I raised my left hand every so often, shaking it until I heard the familiar rattle of our wedding rings. I wore both of them now, my smaller one on top of Marcus’s larger one to keep his from sliding off. Considering these were heavy, bulky rings individually, wearing them together was the equivalent of strapping a barbell to my finger. That Marcus had gone to Portland knowing we were filing for divorce and still had his wedding ring with him was a painful reminder that he wanted the divorce as much as I did. As in, not that much. Finding the ring right next to his passport had produced another one of those searing stabs of heartache, but that feeling gradually turned to relief knowing I could keep the ring safe. Even if we couldn’t be together, at least our rings were. I took solace in the small things.

  I made it from Portland to Lake Shasta in Northern California the first night and pulled off the highway into an RV park an hour after dusk had turned to complete darkness. It was only my first day and, in my determination to just get this stressful and scary trip over with, I had already broken my first rule: no driving at night.

  I rolled down my window as the campground manager stepped out to greet me at the gate. “We have electrical outlets. You can plug in,” he said, zipping his down jacket all the way up to his neck.

  “That’s nice, but I don’t have a power cord,” I replied.

  He raised his eyebrow as if to say, I can see you are ignorant about RVs, and then said with a touch of compassion, “Let me show you where to find it.”

  Sure enough, there was a built-in cord. I plugged in to the power box and enjoyed the luxury of having both lights and heat. I don’t know why I ever insisted on tent camping. Nor did I know why I was so afraid to drive the RV. Driving The Beast was a cinch, really, once you got used to it. And after my first 400 miles, I was not only used to it, I… Oh, I’m so very, very sorry, Marcus—I actually liked it.

  Santa Monica Canyon is an exclusive pocket on Los Angeles’ far west side. Tucked between the Pacific Ocean, Malibu, the wild coyote-and sagebrush-filled coastal mountain range, and the mansions of Brentwood and Beverly Hills, this little canyon is an idyllic secret haven. Its prime location and elegant beach cottages could make even the most L.A.-despising person run to the nearest real-estate office.

  As I maneuvered the RV from Seventh Street above down into the canyon onto Entrada Street below, it was not the elegant houses that were so striking but the colors and smells. Magenta, red and orange bougainvillea bloomed on bushes even bigger than houses. The cloudless sky was colored iridescent blue, its beckoning infinity interrupted only by the ridgeline of the Santa Monica Mountains, a pristine preserve free of development. I rolled down the window to sniff the air that carried a scent of the sea, slightly fishy, mixed with the distinct and pungent spices of sage and bay leaf. There was no smog here. (Nor was there the depressing solid gray cloud cover and steady rain I had left in Portland.) There was only sea breeze and sun. And one of my best friends, Melissa.

  Melissa was my West Coast equivalent of my childhood friend Nan. One of Melissa’s magical qualities is how she turns up at precisely the moment you need her. She came to Marcus’s and my American wedding, on the farm outside Seattle, and found me alone inside the farmhouse, just as I was about to have a pre-ceremony freak-out. She calmly zipped me into my wedding dress, clasped my pearl necklace around my neck and recited the words from a fortune cookie that we had adopted as our self-help code. “I am not worried about your future,” she whispered, giving me her blessing before I walked down the pine-tree-lined aisle. When Marcus died, she was on a family vacation, but immediately upon her return she took the first flight to Oregon. She and Nan overlapped in Portland by one night, so Nan, needing to get back to New York, passed the baton of caretaker (and Suicide Prevention Watch) over to Melissa. Who needs tranquilizers when you have best friends?

  I parked at Melissa’s because I knew I could run my extension cord from the RV to her garage to get power. That was my excuse anyway. The truth is, I was avoiding staying with my parents. I didn’t want my grief to be scrutinized. I wasn’t ready for their Midwest “just get on with it” practicality. I knew what to expect. My dad, when he accompanied me to Marcus’s funeral in Germany, had said “Everyone has to die sometime” in response to my “I can’t believe Marcus is gone” statement, and that was still grating on me. I was doing my best to move forward, but I didn’t want to be pushed. I didn’t want my grief to be ignored either. I wanted to talk about Marcus. But they didn’t want to talk. At least not about death. “Let me show you my new outfit,” my mom would say. “Let’s have a martini,” my dad would say. But they didn’t say, “We know this must be so hard for you. We’re here to listen. Take as much time as you need.”

  Susan had given me her blessing before I left Portland to ditch my parents. The words she used were different than my driving mantra but equally useful: self-compassion, self-kindness, self-tenderness. I practiced saying them like the good grief student I had become. If anyone heard me talking to myself, as I was prone to do, they would have thought I belonged in a mental institution. And I probably did. Instead, I was in Melissa’s newly renovated bungalow with the heated swimming pool and grassy, palm-tree-filled backyard, perfect for Team Terrier.

  I was not the only one staying at Melissa’s. She had another houseguest, Janice, her fellow television-producer friend from the East Coast. Janice and I had met several times over the years. She and Melissa started their careers at MTV together, where Melissa started MTV Sports and Janice worked on a show similar to Road Rules, the reality show that followed a group of kids traveling cross-country in an RV.

  Janice, cheerful and tomboyish, lit up when she saw my RV. “That’s awesome you’re driving that,” she said in her thick New Jersey accent.

  “Yeah, it is,” I replied flatly, not bothering to describe the gamut of emotions I had wrangled to get The Beast there, and knowing I still had a return trip to make.

  The second evening I was there, Janice came back to Melissa’s after work. She was beaming and bouncy, so much so I thought she was going to start doing cartwheels in the living room with Melissa’s little girls. “I had an idea,” she panted. “You write a pie blog, and you have the RV. I miss my days working on the travel show. I need a road trip. Let’s take the RV, drive around the country and make a pie documentary. Better yet, a whole television series and we’ll start by shooting the pilot.” I must have looked slightly skeptical as she added, “I’m serious.” She didn’t have to emphasize the point because her eyes, glistening from under the brim of her “Life is Good” baseball cap, relayed just how interested she was. “I can take two weeks off in January. I’ll fly back out here and bring my cameras.”

  Whether pie documentary or TV series or a handful of videos posted on YouTube, it was a no-brainer. It combined my favorite subjects and skills—travel, journalism, curiosity about other people’s lives, and of course, pie. It would mean I wouldn’t return to Portland for another month. But what the hell, I didn’t have anything to go back for. I had my dogs with me. I had also brought Marcus’s shrine (albeit a scaled-down version). And I had the RV with my down pillows and espresso maker. But best of all, I had something I hadn’t found since Marcus died: a purpose.

  Janice, like the Fairy Godmother of Grief, had waved her wand and presented me with a new direction, a project I could channel my energy into, a goal to strive for. Or, if nothing else, a constructive diversion from my constant sadness. And so it was, through a chance convergence with an old acquaintance, my Pie Quest was launched.

  Or was it chance?

  “Marcus? What are you up to?” I asked when I was alone in the RV, holding his mug shot and staring him in the eye. “You’re trying to help me, aren’t you?” I had been watching too many episodes of Ghost Whisperer, making myself believe he was actually hanging around all the time. Unlike in the TV show, he didn’t materialize, and he didn’t answer. Well, it didn’t matter how—or who—or why it happened. The imp
ortant thing was that I was about to hit the road in the RV again—the road to recovery, a long, slow, winding road that would take many more months and many miles to travel. A wide open road paved with tears, but also bursting like ripe berries with goodness, kindness, generosity. A path filled with pie. A whole lot of pie. Delicious, fruity, creamy, flaky, homemade, hearty pie. If, like the Chinese proverb states, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” then the journey of a grieving widow begins with the first slice. I couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel again, to drive The Beast, the beloved Beast.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Our game plan for the pie TV shoot was pretty loose. Because I knew the world of pie, I would come up with all the content ideas and conduct the interviews. And I would drive the RV. Janice, who knew the technical world of cameras, would do the directing and filming. And provide an extra set of eyes when I had to parallel park. We wouldn’t follow a script, we would just make a list of the places, people and events we wanted to cover and then be like the renegades of Road Rules and wing it. The thread that would weave the stories together, Janice suggested, would be how pie had helped heal my grief.

  The problem was, it hadn’t. My grief was still raw, my eyes still extremely red from constantly crying, my vulnerability still visible. But I kept the faith in the healing powers of pie; I had had experience with its comforting capabilities, like when I had worked in Malibu and baked my way back to a balanced life. And as far as the TV show was concerned, I knew there were a lot of other bakers around the country using pie as a way to give back to society. Ways that helped others, that might also help me. Therefore, I went along with her suggestion.

  I was in Los Angeles and still had nearly a month before Janice returned from New Jersey, so I began my pie show research. I started with The Apple Pan, a legendary diner known for its pie, in West Los Angeles, conveniently near Melissa’s.

  The Apple Pan is the twin sister, or perhaps more accurately, the glamorous cousin, of the Canteen, the diner of my childhood. On the surface, the similarities are many: the horseshoe-shaped Formica counter surrounded by red vinyl-covered barstools, the checkered curtains, the wood-paneled walls lined with a smattering of coat hooks and faded photos and a menu that unabashedly offers only three things—burgers, tuna sandwiches and pie—a limited selection with an air of time-earned confidence that stops short of saying directly, “Take it or leave it.”

  Like the Canteen, The Apple Pan—established in 1947, making it eleven years younger than the Iowa version—remains unchanged since it opened. The only differences are that The Apple Pan’s burgers are formed patties (not loose meat), its counter is three times as big, and given its close proximity to Twentieth Century Fox’s film studios, the lunch crowd is often star-studded.

  Not that the Canteen hasn’t had its brush with fame. Tom Arnold, a native of Ottumwa, Iowa, is a regular Canteen customer whenever he comes home to visit. And in his ex-wife Rosanne Barr’s show, Roseanne, the Lanford Lunch Box restaurant was modeled after the Canteen. However, The Apple Pan, always one to upstage its rural cousin, laid its own claim to a television series: it was the model for the Peach Pit in the original Beverly Hills, 90210 series. I know this because I worked on the hit show as a publicist.

  I may never have owned a TV, but I had some background working in the television industry. My first public-relations job was at a hotel resort on the Big Island of Hawaii and Bob Hope’s Christmas Special was taped during my tenure there (I lasted eight months at the job, a personal best at the time). Because I was willing to help with whatever the production’s public-relations firm needed—from getting coffee to rounding up soldiers from the local army base to fill the studio audience—they thought I’d make a good employee at their Los Angeles headquarters. (They weren’t aware of my “entrepreneurial tendencies”…yet.) Several months later, claustrophobia from island living had set in—an affliction known as “Rock Fever”—and even though I had no desire to live in Southern California, let alone work in television, it was my ticket out of Hawaii, so I accepted the job.

  My first day of work at the PR agency, I found myself in Aaron Spelling’s private office, sitting on the couch next to a young hotshot producer wearing black velvet jewel-encrusted slippers. Cute guy, but those shoes? I may have been the first person in Hollywood to suspect he was gay. The guy was Darren Star, who later produced Melrose Place and the entire Sex and the City franchise; Beverly Hills, 90210 was his first show. It was clear why he was here, but me? Didn’t my bosses know I was a fraud? Not only did I not own a television, I never watched it. Who was Aaron Spelling anyway? Actually, I did know who he was. I would have had to be living under a bigger volcanic rock than the Big Island to not be familiar with his shows, Charlie’s Angels and Dynasty. But what I also knew was that I had no business sitting across from him. I was a junior publicist, a guppy thrown into the pond with Hollywood’s top whale sharks. It was like my first day baking pies at Mary’s Kitchen; I had no idea what I was doing.

  But I got the job done. I got on the phone, used my most polite Midwest manners and lined up interviews for Jason Priestly, Shannon Doherty, Tori Spelling and company. Tori was so young then she didn’t have a driver’s license and I had to pick her up—at her family’s mega-mansion—for appointments.

  I left that job (surprise!), and public relations altogether—it was a thankless career, literally, as no one ever said thank you—to fulfill my childhood dream of becoming an outdoor-adventure journalist. I wrote for sports and fitness magazines, jumping out of airplanes, scuba diving with sharks and dogsledding in Alaska for assignments—basically, the assignments no one else would take. And then, ironically, the magazine work led me back to television—even though I still didn’t own one. This time I was in front of the camera, appearing in two seasons of an inline skating show on the Outdoor Life Network. I was a perky and athletic host on Rollerblades, who said things like, “Why walk, when you can skate?” and “We’ll be right back, so stick around.” I wasn’t bad at it. I had enough talent to smile, talk and skate all at the same time. Mainly, I surprised myself with my ability to memorize my lines, surprising because my memory is terrible. Marcus, whose photographic memory was off-the-charts impressive, used to get annoyed with me for not remembering things, like the date we met (I was off by a day) or the name of a movie we had seen the week before.

  I already liked my new identity as TV producer, at least I liked the idea of it. It sounded much nicer than Grieving Widow. Still, I was both things. I was one of those multifaceted people known as slashers: Writer slash Pie Baker slash TV Producer slash Grieving Widow. I could have had many more slashes with all the other kinds of jobs I had had and quit. But that last one in the slasher lineup was a title I didn’t want, a job I couldn’t quit, couldn’t even get fired from.

  Marcus and I had talked about how awful it was going to be in the future to have to check the “divorced” box on tax and other official forms. Neither of us dreamed a different box would be checked. And that it would mean only one of us was alive to check it. “Widow.” I hated the term, hated being put into this category, hated being part of this club. And yet, this had become my main identity. Before I could remember that I was anything else, I now thought of myself first and foremost as Grieving Widow.

  I was also Husband Killer. I was still holding on tightly to that one.

  “You know that 99.9 percent of divorces don’t end in death,” Melissa tried to assure me. “You asking for a divorce did not kill him.”

  I considered this. “Yes, but…”

  “Think how many people would be dead if every divorce ended in death. You didn’t kill him,” she repeated.

  “I suppose you’re right.” Her hammer of wisdom had finally chiseled a little crack in my fortress of guilt over Marcus. But any progress was countered by a terrible, shameful thought: Melissa was filing for divorce, too. Why couldn’t her husband have died instead of mine? Oh my God, I was bad, bad, bad for
thinking that. Especially because they have two young kids. It’s just that Melissa didn’t love her husband the way I loved Marcus, and their divorce was most definitely not amicable. How would she have reacted had her soon-to-be-ex spouse died? Would she have been devastated, debilitated like I was?

  Friends wrote me emails, complimenting me on my courage, strength and resilience. “I would never have the strength to handle it,” they would say. I dismissed the notion that I was doing anything differently than any other widow, or anyone suffering any loss, would do. I was still living in spite of not wanting to, still getting up every morning, running through the basic daily functions. And crying.

  I would never wish what I was going through on anyone, best friend or worst enemy. I take back what I said about Melissa’s husband, even though the guy is kind of an asshole. But I couldn’t stop asking the question: Why Marcus? Why a good and honest man who respected life so much he couldn’t even throw out an avocado pit? WHY HIM?

  What I never asked was “Why me?” I wasn’t a victim. Marcus was the one who I felt bad for. My grief wasn’t self-pity. It was loneliness, a void, an emptiness that couldn’t be filled. Some devil had gouged my heart out of my chest and left me caving in, like a pie that’s lost its filling.

  Married or divorced, Marcus was still the person I was closest to, the one who knew the most intimate details about me, from my hot-and-cold sex drive to my infertility (due to the hyperthyroid) to the location of every birthmark and blackhead on my body. Likewise, I knew everything about him. Except for the fact that he was going to die at forty-three.

  “Regardless of whether the relationship was good or bad, don’t assume there is no attachment,” Susan had told me in my first grief counseling session. “The dream that it could be different, that you could get it right, is gone.”