• • •
The day of the County Fair Bake-Off, it always made sense to carpool, so Pat agreed to meet Barb and Celeste at Celeste’s house over on the lake. The five-bedroom, four-bath stone house was the nicest, most expensive place in town; it used to belong to a personal injury attorney and his family. Pat had never been in the house before and was a little curious about it. Sure seemed like a lot of space for a couple with two teenage kids. What were those extra bedrooms for? Maybe they were hoarders.
Pat rang the doorbell and heard it echo through the vast space inside, like a lonely voice in an empty tomb. She thought of 1 Timothy 6:9—“Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.”
• • •
A man who looked like a younger Peter O’Toole answered the door. For a moment, the excruciatingly handsome man stared at Pat, with a look that said, What are you doing here? but in a sexy way.
“Yez?” he finally said, in a heartbreakingly warm accent.
For a moment, Pat couldn’t move or speak. She looked at his head of wavy light brown hair, the clean-shaven jaw, the shocking blue eyes, and the buttons on his white dress shirt that showed no strain near the navel; though she had never seen “washboard abs” up close in person, she was sure this guy had them. Pat found it necessary to quickly remind herself that she loved Eli with his scarred face and scratchy beard. In fact, that’s what attracted her to him—the promise of a big, full heart that needed healing, beneath that rough, tough-guy shell. She composed herself, met the handsome man’s eyes, and spoke. “Hi, I’m here to see Celeste? She’s driving us to the fair.”
The man looked past her. “Ez that your car?”
She turned and looked back at her rusty Accord with the fresh black Hefty bag hanging in the rear window.
“Yep, sure is.”
“Do you mind,” he said, thoughtfully touching his strong chin, “moving it down a house or two? We just moved here and I don’t want to give our neighbors the wrong impression.”
“OK,” Pat said.
“I’ll take this in for you,” he said, relieving her of the tray and setting it on the floor, near the shoes.
“Thank you. Be right back,” Pat said, walking down their driveway, thinking about what he had said about giving the neighbors the wrong impression, succumbing to unkind thoughts about these people and their evident, vulnerable pridefulness.
After moving her car two houses down and coming back to the front door, she found Celeste waiting.
“Did Oscar make you move your car down the street? I’m so embarrassed,” Celeste said.
After Pat picked up her bars from the floor by the doorway, Celeste led her through what Celeste called the “lawyer foyer” into the main living room, which was clean and spartan and arranged with that horrid midcentury modern furniture like the kind that Pat’s parents had in the 1960s. That style was supposedly making a comeback, but it only reminded her of uncomfortable groping from disrespectful boys and awful family game nights, when her dad got drunk and swore at everyone.
“I’d love to give you the tour,” Celeste said, “but I’m afraid Barb says we have to get going. Registration got moved up to 9:30 a.m. So we better make tracks.”
The doorbell chimed and there was Barb, standing at the door with her bars. “Let’s go, ladies!” she said.
On her way out, Pat saw something pink and slender descend the staircase behind her, and turned to see a teenage girl in a low-cut spaghetti-strap top, with straight bangs like that Zooey Deschanel, mope her way down the stairs, her angelic face downcast in teenage-girl frustration.
“Mom!” the pretty little nymph said. “What the fuck did you do with my fucking iPad charger?”
“I left it in your room, honey,” Celeste said, setting down her tray of bars as she put on a pair of red-bottomed heels in the doorway.
“Which one? My bedroom or my study room?”
“Your study room.”
“God, Mom. How many times do I have to tell you, don’t touch my shit.”
The girl turned and saw Pat watching her. Pat was disturbed by the language—it reminded her so much of Julie before she finally left—and the teenage girl grinned at Pat’s disapproving expression.
“Hey,” the girl said, absolutely unembarrassed. “You Sam Jorgenson’s mom?”
“Yes, yes I am,” said Pat, unable to look the girl in the face.
“Tell him to text me back, OK?”
Barb tugged on Pat’s arm and whispered for them to go. Celeste kissed her daughter on the cheek, shouted a goodbye to her husband, adjusted her Ray-Ban sunglasses, and followed Pat and Barb out onto her driveway.
“Wow, nice shoes,” Barb said. Barb was the most brand-conscious of the Deer Lake ladies, at least until you-know-who breezed into town. “Are you sure you want to wear Louboutins to a county fair, though? There’s, like, cow and horse poop everywhere.”
“Oh, these are knockoffs,” Celeste said.
• • •
There was some discussion over whether to take Barb’s Jeep Cherokee or Celeste’s Mercedes GLK, but after a short discussion it was decided that they would take Celeste’s car because Pat had never been in a Mercedes before. Barb sat up in front to help Celeste navigate the long, lonely rural roads to the County Fairgrounds, and Pat sat in back, to keep an eye on everyone’s bars.
As they drove past the lake, Celeste caught Pat’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“I think my daughter Madison has a huge crush on your son Sam,” Celeste said.
“Oh my,” Pat said.
“She met him at that coffee shop, Professor Java’s. He works there, right?”
“Yeah, not nearly enough.”
Celeste laughed. “Apparently he’s playing hard to get.”
“Well, he’s got a busy life.”
“What else does he do?”
Pat wanted, just then, to tell Celeste that Sam was the biggest drug dealer in the entire high school, knowing that it would permanently put the kibosh on any future relationship between her child and Celeste’s little demon-spawn.
“Well. He’s holding down a 3.4 GPA. He’s vice president of the skateboarding club. He’s into music. A typical teenage boy, I guess. What about your daughter?”
“Well, she’s a National Merit Finalist. But she had a private tutor to teach her all the tricks on the test. She got in the IB classes, barely. Varsity volleyball, dance. She’s done with Cotillion, thank God for that. For college, she wants to go to NYU, but that girl is going to college in New York City over my dead body. Oscar and I are going to make her go to Michigan—it’s closer. And Oscar likes their football team.”
“Neat,” Pat said.
“Our son, meanwhile, never leaves his room,” Celeste said. “He’s probably just, y’know, doing his thing, but I hope he’s not looking at anything weird when he does it.”
Pat decided that she had nothing to say on the subject.
“Any other kids?” Celeste asked.
“Well, Eli has two kids from his first marriage. Will and Julie. They’re grown up, both of them live outside of Chicago.”
“Cool. That must be fun to go down to visit them.”
“They don’t really talk to us.”
“They side with the mom in the divorce?”
“No, their mom died, that’s what happened. They still side with her, though. They can’t stand me. Never could.”
“That really sucks. You helped raise these kids, you put them through college, right? How old were they when you met Eli?”
“Sixteen and thirteen.”
“Wow, you never had a shot. And not even a thank-you, for what you’ve done.”
“It was hard at first, but now . . . I try not to take it personally.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort to you, I’m sure my own kids are gonna be just as bad. I know for a fact Madison’s only going to call us when she needs money.”
A snore burst from Barb’s face. Pat and Celeste both withheld laughs as they looked at their friend, zonked out in the passenger seat.
“I wondered why she wasn’t chiming in,” Pat said.
“Know what I like about you, Pat?” Celeste said. “You’re real. I think you’re the most real person I’ve met here. There’s not one fake or pretentious thing about you. I can’t tell you how much I love that.”
“Thanks,” Pat said.
Celeste glanced at her dashboard GPS and turned left down a country road. “I’m glad we’re friends,” she said.
• • •
Because they were participants, they got to park in the free lot close to the main food tent, where all of the judging contests were held. By 9:15 a.m. it was already eighty degrees; it was going to be a scorcher.
They stepped onto the grass and followed an old man in a bright yellow vest to the tent for registration and to hand in their bars. It was important to do this fairly quickly, so the bars suffered no adverse effects in the heat.
Upon entering, Pat’s senses were overcome by a fog of cinnamon, ginger, chocolate, vanilla, and buttery pie crusts. The long tent was filled with more than a hundred people, mostly women, many holding fresh baked goods, with a few pies still softly steaming from their vents and folds.
Celeste, of course, couldn’t believe it. “What a place,” she said at last. “What an honor to live in a part of the world that loves good old-fashioned baking.”
“My mom used to say, have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you die,” Barb said, and they walked forward, through the boys setting up folding chairs, toward the registration table at the far end.
• • •
“Well, I don’t know about you ladies, but I could go for some food after this,” Barb said, once they found out what line they were supposed to be in.
“Can you save my spot? I want to go see who the judges are this year,” Pat said.
Barb looked at her as if Pat had just suggested they run across the fairgrounds, take off their shirts, and streak the demolition derby. “Knock yourself out,” she said.
Pat never cared much for that phrase, but decided that now was not the time for her opinions, so she just stepped out of the line and said she’d be right back.
“Hey there, Pat,” she heard a young woman’s voice say as she entered the tent.
Pat turned around and saw it was Susan Smalls, a real nice young woman from church. They had just talked recently because Susan was married to an Afghan War vet who was medically retired and still looking for a job. Eli was trying to help them out by getting her husband an interview at UPS, where Eli had worked since his machine shop went out of business in River Falls and they moved to Minnesota—maybe the company that had saved their family could save another. So far, sadly, their prayers hadn’t been answered, and Pat had been trying to avoid Susan until she had something good to report.
“Sure is a warm one out,” Susan said, smiling. A three-year-old boy twirled between and around her legs, and Pat admired the young woman’s short, practical haircut and modest makeup on her pretty round face.
“You can say that again.”
“How’s the family? Are they here?” Susan asked.
“No, this year it’s just me and a couple of friends. What about yourself?”
“Oh, my husband’s here. He got a job at the mini-donut stand.”
“Oh, which mini-donut stand?”
“The Lutheran one.”
“Well, of course,” Pat said, and the two women laughed.
“Say, I hate to pester you about this, but you heard from Eli’s boss at UPS yet?”
“No, not yet. But I’m sure we will any day now.”
“You think it’s rude to send the résumé again? In case it got lost the first time?”
“I don’t suppose it could hurt.” Pat touched the corner of the pan under Susan’s arm, eager to change the topic. “So what are you entering this year?”
“Something new. They’re called Resurrection rolls.”
“Resurrection rolls?”
“Yeah. What you do is, you put marshmallows in melted butter and then roll them in cinnamon sugar. Then ya wrap ’em in crescent roll dough and put them in the oven for twelve minutes. Then—this is important—while they’re baking, read John 20, verses 1 through 18.”
Pat tried to think of what it was. She didn’t know John 20 off the top of her head.
“‘Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb,’” Susan said. “And the same thing happens to the marshmallow. You take ’em out of the oven, break it in half, and the marshmallow is totally gone. He is risen.”
Pat smiled. “Resurrection rolls. Now that’s a shoo-in.”
“Well, I’m not gonna lie. I sure could use the first prize in Miscellaneous Baked Goods. This year it’s a Target gift card worth fifty dollars. The way this one is growing, and with my husband between jobs, well, it would be a help.”
Pat nodded. That fifty-dollar gift card was no small potatoes, but the first prizes in each of the Bars, Pies, Cookies, and Cakes divisions were Target gift cards worth seventy-five bucks. The big leagues.
“Well, good luck, Susan, I’m pullin’ for ya.”
“I’m glad I’m not competin’ against you, Pat,” Susan said. “God bless.”
Now at the far end of the tent from registration, Pat angled to sneak a look behind a partition at the judges’ table. The judges were never announced ahead of time, and were different every year, to prevent corruption, but they were always present for registration. She took in the six faces, all of whom she knew, and then she took a deep, sad breath, swallowing the hard fact that God had saved His most difficult test for last.
• • •
The judges were:
Victor “Sexy Venison” Strycek: An unmarried, twenty-eight-year-old firefighter born and raised in the town of Deer Lake. Three years ago, to raise money, the firefighters had published a “hunks” calendar; Victor’s page (November) featured him shirtless, at a grill, frying up venison steaks. It was not an unattractive photo, but since then, all of the young people called him “Sexy Venison,” and now he even answered to it. There was absolutely no chance he’d vote for anyone but Celeste Mantilla.
Sister Lois Freehold: A Catholic nun from Deer Lake, Sister Lois was on the judging panel every six or seven years, and the only year she’d been on the panel since Pat had been entering her bars was the one year Pat got a red ribbon instead of a blue one. A strong Catholic entry from St. Boniface in Deer Lake, or St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Deer River, would get this woman’s first-place vote, no question.
“Aunt” Jenny Sjoholm: Aunt Jenny was the bulwark of central Minnesota’s baking community. She’d been the chairwoman of the Baked Goods Judging Committee since 1976. An enthusiastic supporter of Pat Prager’s bars.
Clarence Peterson: Eighty-year-old Clarence Peterson was a legendary local mechanic who could “fix any damn thing without a heart or a computer,” or so he said. There were two big strikes here against Pat: She and Eli never brought anything to Clarence for repair, and he’d never been a judge on a baked goods panel before. Those types, especially the men, always went for pretty faces and rich treats.
Ross Peterson: Make that three strikes against Pat. Ross was Clarence’s mentally handicapped grandson, who was a savant at small engine repair—a Rain Man of riding mowers. Another thing: They were both Methodists, so even though First Lutheran Church in Deer Lake had dominated Bars for the last seven years, a strong entry from Calvary Methodist Church would now have two automatic first-place votes.
Miss Minnesota Runner-Up Rachael Bauer: Now things may have been looking up. Everyone knew that skinny girls didn’t like buttery sugar bombs that made them fat and ruined their complexion. But then Pat recognized the immodest dress on the person talking to Rachael. Celeste and Rachael were talking and laughing! They knew each other! Celeste just moved here, for Pete’s sake. How could this have happened?
Also, what kind of baked goods judging panel had three men on it? One was fine, but three? This was obviously a P.C. overcorrection to last year’s six female judges. And of the three remaining women, one was Catholic, and one was somehow friends with that horrid Celeste. This was bad, this was real bad.
• • •
Pat got in line behind Barb and Celeste at the registration table, where two old women in floppy sun hats took their names, their recipes, and their bars.
“Celeste Man-teeya?” one of the old women asked, pronouncing Celeste’s last name in what Pat would later learn was the proper Spanish style.
“No, Mantilla, like vanilla,” Celeste said.
“Where you from originally? It’s such a pretty last name.”
“My husband’s from Florida.”
“No, originally, originally.”
Celeste sighed. “He’s half French, half Cuban.”
“I knew it,” the old woman said. “Being from Florida.”
“Are you going to ask for their family trees as well?” Celeste said, glancing at Barb and Pat. “Go ahead, we have all day.”
“Just asking,” the old woman said. “My husband and I had our honeymoon in Cuba in 1955. Beautiful place.”
“Well, we wouldn’t know.”
“Guess we better get this line moving.” The old woman looked up at Pat. “Next.”
• • •
Despite Barb’s earlier request for some food, she first wanted to show Celeste the 4-H Livestock Judging Area. Celeste was still whining about the racism of the old lady at registration; Pat would never admit it outright, but she got some pleasure from seeing Celeste get a little miffed. Some small thing had to go wrong for Celeste Mantilla today in order for Pat to feel that the Lord would restore a sense of harmony and balance in the world.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest Page 23