Making Piece

by Beth M. Howard

  In the midst of all this decline, I located the Canteen Lunch in the Alley. I had met someone at the state fair who gave me the heads-up so I knew what to look for. The Canteen was still in its original location—at 112 East Second Street—but the city had built a parking garage over the top of it. A parking garage for what? There was no one here, no businesses, no apparent need for a three-story parking structure. But the city had insisted on the location and, in turn, the town insisted back that the Canteen could not be messed with. A petition was signed and the loyal patrons of the old diner won the fight. The compromise was that the Canteen would live under the concrete structure, like a homeless person camping under a bridge.

  If the rest of the town seemed deserted, it was because everyone was in the Canteen, eating lunch. I broke into a smile at the sight of the squatty little building, recognizable the way a friend is who you haven’t seen for thirty years. Or, in this case, more like thirty-six years. I entered through the screen door and stepped back in time, way back to 1936 it would seem, as the decor had not changed since the place opened. Nor had the smell. The odor was a greasy combo of beef and onions, in spite of the fact the meat was not fried, rather steamed in large metal vats right in front of the customers. Still, the fatty smell clung to your clothes and your hair, reminding you of the delicious Canteen burger you had just enjoyed.

  I found an empty bar stool and sat down. Just as I had imagined from my memories, the waitresses all had grey hair.

  “What would you like?” one of the old women asked.

  “A Canteen,” I said excitedly. “With ketchup and mustard.”

  I looked around and soaked in every detail. The brown wood paneling. The faded framed photos of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The map of the U.S. filled with pushpins to mark where the Canteen’s patrons had visited from. Clearly, I wasn’t the only tourist—or the only former resident who had returned to fulfill some nostalgia. The red-and-white-checkered curtains were still in place. And so was the pie safe, a glassed-in cabinet filled with a variety of pies.

  My Canteen was delivered almost immediately. The waitress set the burger down on the counter in front of me, the loose meat and white bun swaddled in a blanket of waxed paper. I took my first bite and felt like I was eight years old again, with my dad sitting next to me. I wished he was sitting next to me now. But I was at least grateful I could say my dad was still around, and that we had enjoyed our own taste of nostalgia at The Apple Pan in L.A. eight and a half months earlier. Had it been that long? Time was passing, and it wasn’t all based on how many months Marcus had been gone. It had been filled with something more than just tears and grief—there had been relationships with people who still meant a lot to me.

  As I ate I listened to the conversations around me. A couple across the horseshoe-shaped counter was telling another patron about their class reunion. They were visiting from California, they said. California got my attention, but so did their appearance. They looked to be around my parents’ age. Because the diner was so tiny and no conversation could be considered private, I boldly asked the woman of the couple when she walked past me on her way to the restroom, “Excuse me. Can I ask how old you are?”

  She stopped and straightened her back in surprise. But then she did answer. “Seventy-five,” she said. She was still blonde and had sparkling ice-blue eyes, a clear complexion and the spirit of someone much younger.

  Seventy-five was my dad’s age, so I continued. “Did you know Tom Howard?”

  She recoiled, her blue eyes shot open even wider. Looking directly at me, she said, “Tom was my boyfriend. He was my first love.” I could see why. She was beautiful, even in her midseventies. “I’m Ruthie,” she added, sitting down on the stool next to me.

  I was in as much shock as she was. It must have been shock, because I blurted out, “You’re Ruthie? I’ve heard about you. You could have been my mother!”

  She laughed, though probably out of embarrassment, and then asked, “How’s your dad?”

  “He’s great. He’s retired from dentistry and living in L.A. He spends a lot of time sailing. Let’s call him.”

  I grabbed my cell phone and my dad answered. “Dad? I’m at the Canteen in Ottumwa and I just ran into someone who wants to say hi.” I pushed my phone into Ruthie’s hand—and prayed that my dad’s poor hearing would be good enough to register who was on the line. He heard. It registered. And she stepped outside into the alley to catch up with her lost love.

  The grey-haired waitresses had watched the entire episode unfold. “Small world,” I said to one of them, still shaking my head. I couldn’t concentrate on my burger after that.

  When the blonde woman who could have been but was not my mother returned, she said thank you. I showed her a few pictures of my dad I had on my phone—and a few of my mother, too. I gave her my card and a hug when she left. I presumed she returned to California with her husband and that our encounter hadn’t given her—or my dad—any ideas about rekindling their romance.

  When she left, it was time for that slice of banana cream pie. The diner was so small I didn’t see how they could make their pies on the premises, so I asked the waitress, who was clearing away my wax paper and crumbs of loose meat off the counter. “Where do you make your pie?”

  “Oh, honey, we don’t have anyone to make them anymore,” she said. “We buy them from Hy-Vee.” Hy-Vee was the local grocery store chain. “Would you like a piece?”

  “Uh, no thank you. I’ll just take my check.” I had gone from the exciting high of meeting Ruthie, only to plunge to the depths of disappointment. No homemade pie? That was what made this place so special. The locals were so determined to save the Canteen from the parking-garage debacle, so why didn’t they protest and sign a petition about the pie?

  It was Mary’s Kitchen all over again, when I went in search of the outstanding pie they were supposedly known for and they didn’t have any. Mary’s words echoed: “We’re too busy to make it.” So when the Canteen waitress said they didn’t have anyone to make pie, history might have repeated itself. I could have said, like I did in Malibu, “I’ll make it for you.” I didn’t really have any other place to go. What if this was another one of those genie-in-the-bottle moments, an opportunity magically presenting itself? But Ottumwa, Iowa? Meat-packing town where more than half the city center’s buildings were labeled with “condemned” tags? No. I don’t think so.

  I spent the next hour driving around town to find my two old family houses, the first one on Asbury Avenue, on the south side of town. North and south sides were designated by which side of the Des Moines River they occupied. Our one-story, three-bedroom, one-bathroom house was not only still standing, it was freshly painted with a well-groomed garden. I had lived there until I was five and thus I wouldn’t have found it—or recognized it—without the help of my GPS. The house was red when we lived in it—and full of water bugs that scurried for cover when you turned on the light in the middle of the night. My mom hated that house. But to see it now, bright white with flowers planted in the front yard, it looked immaculate and bug-free. Though I guess it still only had one bathroom, which had been a hardship for my parents with four kids under the age of six.

  The fifth child in our family, Patrick, was born after we moved into a 5,000-square-foot house on the north side of town. I drove the few miles to East Golf Avenue and noted how small everything looked—the houses that had appeared so large to a child looked quaint, almost miniature. Or maybe I had lived in L.A. too long where mansions abounded and had skewed my perspective. This place, this street that bordered a golf course, was quiet, still safe and offered a lot of room to play; I could see why I had had a happy, carefree childhood.

  I parked in front of the split-level brick and wood three-story house designed by my Grandpa Lyle, who was an architect. My mom gave him input in the plans—she made sure there were ample bathrooms—four—and an entire lower level designated as a soundproof playroom. I sat there in my MINI for a while, en
visioning days gone by of playing football with our Old English sheepdog and holding talent shows in the backyard, until a well-dressed man came out to see what I was doing. He was Indian—from India—and when he approached my car window, I explained. “I grew up here. My grandpa built this house.”

  “I had a feeling that was why you were parked here for so long.”

  I wanted to tell him everything, about how we baked cookies on the long Formica table in the family room, how we held Christmas pageants in front of the fireplace and my sister and I dressed up as angels, how we didn’t have furniture in the living room for the first few years, how my mom took karate classes and when showing us what she learned she flipped my dad onto his back. How we walked across the street to the golf course after dinner and hit balls on the front nine. But he didn’t appear curious about me having lived in what was now his house. And he didn’t offer me a tour. So out of courtesy, I left.

  My grandparents had lived a mile away in an old Victorian house that always smelled of mothballs and green beans and bacon boiled in the pressure cooker. It was still there, on North Court Avenue, still burgundy and yellow with sunflowers blooming in the side yard. My grandpa had made homemade wine in the cellar and my grandma grew rhubarb in the back garden. If only I had appreciated rhubarb back then and the fabulous pies you could make from the celerylike red-and-green stalks. It was now one of my favorite pies.

  Before leaving town, I drove past my elementary school (Horace Mann), the cemetery to see if the dog stone monument was still there (it was), and drove past my dad’s dental office (also designed by my grandpa). I took pictures of each place with my phone and emailed them to my family, who promptly emailed back, “I remember that place! Thanks for sending. I can’t believe you’re there.” I couldn’t believe it, either.

  I had seen enough. My curiosity was satisfied, my belly still full with that Canteen burger, and I still needed to travel twenty five miles to the next town over. I was headed to Fairfield (pop. 13,000), home of the Maharishi University for Transcendental Meditation, for an interview with a local radio station. No, I wasn’t going to talk about mantras or levitation. I was going to discuss what it was like being a pie judge at the state fair.

  Driving back out the way I came in, I wasn’t sad to leave. In fact, my sentiments were clear. The last thing that went through my mind as I pulled back onto the highway was I don’t think I’ll ever be coming back here.

  CHAPTER

  23

  Sometimes you come to a fork in the road where you are forced to make a decision about which way to go, and the direction you choose can forever change your life.

  When I met Marcus in 2001, I was on a road trip from California to Oregon. I was taking a break from my pie-baking job in Malibu, exploring the possibility of moving to Bend. Sixty miles south of Bend, I saw a big brown national monument sign that read “Crater Lake National Park, 10 Miles.” Should I take the detour and have a look at the volcanic lake or keep going to Bend?

  I spent the next 9.99 miles deliberating whether or not to stop. I had never been to the park, but I also wanted to keep moving forward. When the fork appeared, it was as if some spiritual force grabbed my steering wheel and spun me into the park.

  After paying the twenty-dollar entrance fee, I pulled into the first parking lot marked Scenic Overlook and there it was—a vision of pristine blue water nestled in an amphitheater of snow-capped mountains. All was silent except for the pine-scented breeze and my own voice that whispered, “Thank you, God, for preserving this peaceful place.”

  When I returned to my car, an SUV whipped into the parking lot, screeched to a halt and a woman jumped out screaming, “Beth! Beth!” I held my body in a defensive stance, until I realized it was my friend Kim from L.A.

  “What are you doing here?” I squealed as we hopped up and down, hugging each other.

  “I’m here to see my client in Sun River. We’re sneaking in a side trip so Laz and Gabe can see the lake,” she explained, pointing to her husband and one-year-old son in the car. “We’re going to watch the sunset, then have dinner in the Lodge. Come with us. Get in.”

  After the sun dipped below the jagged ridgeline, leaving a chill in its wake at 7,100-feet-elevation, we drove to the Lodge. We hurried inside to warm up by the fire blazing in the lobby’s six-foot-tall stone fireplace, where other weekend travelers dressed in plaid flannel and fleece already occupied the oversize, Mission-style leather chairs and sofas. We found empty chairs—outside. A long row of wicker rockers, each supplied with its own wool blanket, lined the veranda overlooking the moon rising over the now-black basin.

  “Merlot?” Kim asked when she saw a cocktail waitress in a down jacket taking orders.

  “Definitely,” I answered, pulling the scratchy blanket tighter around my neck. As we reminisced about the days we used to work together in Hawaii, I was aware of a dark-haired man hovering near our chairs; he could have been eavesdropping or just searching the inky sky for shooting stars.

  By the time we finished our wine, Laz had found us seats in the lobby inside. We ordered French Onion soup from the bar menu and talked way past the baby’s bedtime.

  Meanwhile, in some other corner of the lobby lounge, a gay waiter was asking the dark-haired man if he needed a place to stay. “No, just the check, please,” he replied, avoiding eye contact, his credit card already in his hand.

  “Here, hold Gabe while we go to the restroom,” Kim instructed, and thrust her bundle of joy into my arms.

  For the next five minutes I stood in the middle of the reception area, twirling, bouncing and—unaware anyone was watching—enjoying my motherhood fantasy. In reality, I was a road-weary car camper, who at thirty-nine had recently been dumped by the latest in a recent string of unsuccessful boyfriends. My blond hair was in a messy ponytail and I was dressed in an Ecuadorian wool sweater—orange with a giant daisy on the front and back—jeans and trail running shoes.

  “Who’s a good baby?” I cooed to Gabe, holding him up to the ceiling as he smiled down at me.

  “This is a beautiful place, isn’t it?” the dark-haired man ventured, his voice confident with a hint of a British accent mixed with something else, something European.

  I turned to look at him. “Yes, it is,” I replied. He had a shadow of a goatee and warm, inquisitive green eyes. “Are you staying here?” I asked, shifting Gabe to the other hip.

  “No, I tried to get a room but they’re sold out.” He was wearing a funky combination of a traditional Austrian boiled-wool sweater with big silver coin buttons, surfer-style cropped jeans and brown leather hiking boots that laced on the sides, and he had a book by Thomas Mann tucked under his arm.

  “I know,” I said. “I tried, too. It’s getting a little cold for camping.”

  “You’re camping? I wish I had my camping gear,” he replied. “I would love to sleep by the lake.”

  “I’d love to sleep with you by the lake,” I wanted to say, but instead I asked, “Where are you from?” to keep the conversation with this sexy stranger going.

  “Germany,” he replied.

  “Where in Germany?”

  “I was born in Bremen, but raised in the South.”

  “Bremen. That’s where they import coffee for Europe,” I remarked.

  His eyes widened. “I caahn’t believe you know where that is,” he said, his British accent making his words so soft and seductive. I loved how he talked. “I’ve been heah for three munths,” he continued, “and find that most Americans don’t know their geography very well.”

  I was surprised myself for remembering this tiny fact; I hadn’t thought of it since I worked on that Kenya coffee farm fourteen years earlier. “And what brought you here?”

  He ran his hand through his brown hair. “An assignment in Portland with my company,” he answered just as Kim appeared.

  “We need to get going,” she announced.

  “Hi, Kim,” I said, quickly passing her the baby. I looked back to my new acquaint
ance. “This is…”

  “Marcus,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Marcus,” Kim said, adding playfully, “I leave her alone for a few minutes and, what do you know, she meets a hunk.”

  He turned back to me. “And you are…?”

  “Beth.”

  “By the way, Kim,” he said, “you have a very nice baby.” He looked back at me with a knowing smile.

  Laz joined us and we all walked out to the parking lot together. The night had turned colder, our breath visible underneath the dim street lights. “Kim is giving me a ride back to my car,” I told Marcus. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  We just stood there, eyeing each other, immobilized by a pull of energy. With Kim and Laz observing, there was nothing more we could say—or do. But, damn it, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if there could have been something more between us, if he was “the one” instead of the one who got away. In my unbarred, soul-searching state, I figured, “What the hell,” and handed him my card.

  “If you want to stay in touch, here’s how to find me.”

  And that was it—the fifteen minutes and the fork in the road that changed my life.

  So there I was, leaving the surprise encounter with my dad’s first girlfriend and the disappointment of the Canteen’s store-bought pie, and on my way to Fairfield. The date was August 25, 2010—approximately nine years since meeting Marcus at Crater Lake, seven years since marrying him and one year since burying him. I was speeding east on the spiffy new four-lane Highway 34, singing along to my Marshall Tucker Band CD (a throwback to my high school days), enjoying the open landscape, the puffy white clouds, the lack of billboards, and admiring how tall all that corn was growing.

  It was in this free-floating, mindless state, when I came upon another fork in the road.

  One of those familiar brown national monument signs came into view. It read “American Gothic House, 6 Miles.” What? The house from the classic painting of the old couple holding the pitchfork? I had grown up less than fifteen miles from this famous place and never knew it was here? So much for learning my Iowa history.