The Recipe Box

by Viola Shipman

  “Remember how you played in these orchards as young girls?” Willo asked Deana and Sam.

  Deana turned to look at Sam, and the two smiled. “We do,” they said at the same time.

  These orchards had been their playground as girls.

  Sam slowed even more and studied the orchards carefully.

  I ran, played hide-and-seek, caught fireflies, scaled trees, picked apples and peaches straight off the tree, launched pits from slingshots, and danced in the sprinklers here, Sam thought. Moreover, I learned about plants and science: I understood the seasons, when to plant trees and seeds, how to nurture them and protect them from insects, what to feed the deer in winter and the hummingbirds in summer.

  Sam again thought of her grandpa.

  If we’re good to Mother Nature, she will be good to us, he always used to tell her. Same goes for people.

  Sam’s mind went back to Chef Dimples, and her stomach lurched.

  He made goodness seem like a scam, she thought. He made men seem … well, not like my father or grandfather.

  Without thinking, Sam said, “I didn’t know if you’d continue walking after Grandpa was gone. I was sort of surprised to see you out here this morning.”

  Willo slowed as they came out of the orchards and rounded a corner near the hillside that overlooked the bay. A small patch of raised, bermed land sat at the end of the hillside, surrounded by a deer fence and marked with a sign: WILLO’S PILLOW.

  The ground did, indeed, resemble a fluffy pillow, rising from the earth like a peaceful place for a giant to rest his head. For as long as Sam could remember, her grandma and grandpa had overseen this chunk of land at the end of the orchard as their own garden, to grow the other bounties of summer the orchard didn’t produce.

  The long rows were marked with labels that read Rhubarb, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Strawberries, Asparagus, Green Beans, Peppers. A teak bench sat in the corner next to a small potting shed. And a plaque was attached to the door of a pretty painted garden gate, thick with old coats of green paint, pink roses climbing the trellis that flanked it.

  Willo walked up to the plaque and began to read, smiling as she recited the lines of a simple poem about the beauty and importance of what lies beyond a garden gate. Her voice grew husky as she read the final lines:

  But if you’d have a mind at peace and a heart that cannot harden, Go find a gate that opens wide upon a little garden.

  Willo finally turned to Sam, a melancholy smile on her face. “Your grandfather made that plaque for me,” she said. “He saw the poem in an old newspaper, attributed to E. M. Boult. My mom started this garden after her mother died. Alice had a little garden up by their old log cabin that my mom let go to seed after she passed. One winter my mom was going through her recipe box, and there were so many old-fashioned recipes in it that called for fresh produce. She wanted to honor her legacy—and feed her family in hard times—so she started it again, right here, in one of the prettiest spots on the whole orchard. This is where my mom loved to sit and watch the sunset, or read a book, a big glass of sun tea right beside her.”

  Willo took Sam’s free hand in hers and gripped it tightly. “To answer your question: I won’t—and never will—stop walking these orchards every morning, unless I’m unable to do so. This is how I talk to your grandfather,” she said, a mist forming in her eyes matching the mist in the air. Willo hesitated and turned to scan the orchard. “I can’t stop because he’s still here … in every leaf and branch and apple and blade of grass. I can see him, smell him, talk to him, hear him.”

  Willo took Sam’s hand. “Listen,” she whispered. “Shut your eyes. Be still. Sssshhh.”

  Sam closed her eyes, feeling silly for a moment, as she had when she first started doing yoga. But slowly her mind stilled, and her own thoughts stopped talking back to her and cluttering her head. Birds sang happily, the wind sighed, the bay lapped in the distance, and in every single sound, Sam indeed could hear her grandfather’s voice.

  Hi, Grandpa, she said to herself. You’re right beside me, aren’t you? She stopped and exhaled. You always have been, haven’t you?

  Sam opened her eyes when Willo tightened her grip on her hand. “Your great-great-grandmother and grandfather did the same thing, as did your great-grandma and grandpa,” Willo continued. “They walked these orchards every single day. My mom used to tell me they had all made a pact to get to know each other as well as they knew the land, to never start a day on the wrong foot, to make sure they were moving ahead on the very same path.”

  Willo stopped and looked at Sam, giving her hand a little shake, and then looked at Deana. “They had nothing but this orchard and each other. And they cared for them with great love and respect.”

  Willo glanced at her garden, vines covered in tomatoes and strawberries, asparagus that resembled spiderwebs as the morning sun shone through their misty tops.

  “When we walk these orchards, we follow in the steps of our ancestors,” Willo said. “And that is an honor and a privilege.”

  Eleven

  Winter 1942

  Madge and Wilbur Beck stopped in the middle of the orchard, snow falling hard all around them. They lifted their noses, their yellow Lab, Babe, following suit.

  The whole world smelled like popcorn.

  The couple looked at one another, and Madge’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Please don’t, sweetheart,” Wilbur said softly. He pulled his wife into his arms, before Babe nestled between their legs and then crawled up their bodies to join the hug. Madge emitted a tiny laugh through her tears.

  My mother, my father, the Depression, and now this, Madge thought, trying hard not to collapse into tears yet again. How much can I endure?

  Madge and Wilbur had returned to the orchard to care for her mother after she was stricken with ovarian cancer.

  The silent killer, Madge thought. Undetected. She didn’t know until it was too late.

  Her father had died of heartbreak two years later.

  They never even knew about you, Madge thought, rubbing her expanding stomach and suddenly bursting into tears.

  “Oh, honey,” Wilbur whispered.

  The Depression and the war had been hard enough on their little orchard, but the economy was now about to put them under. Her parents had worked hard to produce big crops during the war, but now prices had fallen and the harder they worked, the further they fell behind. The price of a bushel of corn was just eight cents, and many families were burning their own corn because it was cheaper than coal in their stoves.

  “They’re burning their own livelihood,” Madge said in a shaky voice, again sniffing the air. “They’re burning their own history. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not,” Wilbur said. “But people have to survive somehow.”

  “What about us?” she asked. “If we lose this?”

  Wilbur remained silent. Madge looked down and rubbed her stomach once more, tears again filling her eyes. “What will happen to our baby if we lose this? What will our child have?”

  Wilbur pulled his wife close and hugged her, stroking her head with his gloved hands. “Us,” he said softly. “Us.”

  Madge looked up and into her husband’s eyes. “I can’t imagine life somewhere else anymore, now that we’re back.”

  “Then don’t,” Wilbur said. “And remember, we’re still better off than a lot of city folk.”

  Babe barked and took off in a flash after a rabbit, his body flying through the snow, powder flying into the air, making it look as if a truck had just driven down a dry gravel road.

  Madge took her husband’s hand, and the two continued to walk.

  He’s right, Madge thought, looking around the orchard, barren and dark in the winter, wet, black limbs covered in snow, the whole world resembling a paint-by-numbers picture. The couple rounded a corner, and there—on a hillside overlooking the bay—sat the garden they had started after Alice had died. At least we can produce some of our own food.

  Nearly every
farm and orchard in the area did double duty or traded with one another, raising large gardens with vegetables and canning fruit from the orchards. Most kept dairy cattle and chickens. Madge bought sugar and flour in fifty-pound sacks, baked her own bread, and then made clothing from the flour and feed sacks. She made one-dish suppers, and the women in her church organized potlucks to share food and have a little fun.

  We’ve learned how to get by with very little, Madge thought. But how far can a little go?

  Madge stretched her food and budget with what she liked to call “goop,” casseroles that filled the belly but did little for the taste buds.

  That’s why I love to bake, she thought. I can’t wait for apples … and apple crisp.

  Her soul suddenly felt as warm as a hot oven, and she again rubbed her stomach.

  “When I think about apple crisp, the baby kicks,” Madge said, her breath coming out in little puffs.

  “So does mine,” Wilbur laughed as Babe came sprinting back up to them, tongue hanging, his face a happy smile. Wilbur reached down and petted the dog. “Attaboy,” he said, brushing a layer of snow off the dog. “Gotta learn to be like Babe. Happy and grateful for the smallest things in this world.”

  As the couple continued walking through the orchard, hushed and quiet in the insulation of snow, Madge looked at her husband surveying their land. He had taken every penny he had and purchased even more land after her father had died in order to expand what her family had passed on to them. He had worked tirelessly. In the spring, lugs of apples would be loaded onto horse-drawn wagons and pulled into the barn on the far side of the orchard. The apples were washed and wrapped in tissue paper before being placed in handmade wooden boxes for distribution. Even at the lowest of times, Wilbur had never considered quitting or cutting back. He added peach and cherry trees to the orchard, blueberry bushes, pumpkins.

  “We can’t be one season,” he had said. “We must be three. It’s a long winter.”

  Wilbur now wanted to can and sell his produce. He had considered having people come and pick their own fruit. He had even asked Madge to sell her pies and cakes at church socials and to local restaurants.

  The couple navigated the edge of the orchard overlooking the bay, which was frozen as far as the eye could see, and then cut right into the middle of the trees. Snow was piled in deep pillows, the glow from the icy bay faded, and their world grew even darker.

  It’s becoming harder to see our future, Madge thought.

  Wilbur slowed and then stopped. “Look,” he said, his voice echoing in the grove of bare trees. “What do you see?”

  Madge looked around. “Nothing,” she said.

  “Look harder.”

  She scanned the orchards. They were bare. She searched the hillside, the limbs, the barn in the distance. Nothing. Even the birds had hunkered down in the snow. Madge was about to answer, but then her eyes did a final scan of the land, and she saw it.

  “Our footsteps,” she said.

  Wilbur smiled. “Our history,” he said in a raw voice. “Us.” He hesitated and grabbed her hand. “I want this orchard to be our place … not just where we work, but where we come to be together. Let’s try to walk this orchard every day, to get to know not only the land better but each other better. Let’s talk as we walk, figure things out, make plans … and, more often than not, just be at one with each other and our land. Be thankful for what God has blessed us with … land, nature, a child, each other.”

  He turned and looked his wife in the eyes. “I want our children to run through these orchards. I want to hear them laugh. I want to see them pick apples and spit peach pits. I want them to grow old here, like us. I want them to leave footsteps, a history.”

  Wilbur pulled her into him. “This is all we have to connect us, the only thing any of us have: the earth and family. It’s all that will remain after we’re gone, but it will tell our history, repeat our stories, vibrate with the impressions left by our footsteps. Your recipes do the same. Your imprint will be left on the world. All of this is our legacy.”

  Madge got onto her tiptoes and kissed her husband deeply. “So is our baby,” she added, putting her husband’s hand on her stomach.

  “I just felt a kick,” he said. “Time for some dessert.”

  “It’s barely dawn, Wilbur,” she said, hitting him playfully on the chest. But then she thought of what he’d just said, about her recipes being a legacy, and she added, “But I have an idea.”

  When they got home, Madge turned on her oven and began to pull sugar and flour from her cupboard. She stopped.

  I have no fresh fruit, she thought. Only what I’ve canned or preserved.

  Madge thought of what she could make for Wilbur and her baby—a mix of breakfast and dessert, a sort of early-morning crisp—and thoughts of her mom baking filled her mind.

  What was that recipe called? Madge wondered, racking her brain. What was it?

  Madge shut her eyes tightly and was transported back in time. She could see herself sitting, legs crossed, on the floor of her parents’ old log cabin kitchen, wearing a little dress and drawing.

  “I’m going to make something very special for breakfast this morning,” she could recall her mother saying. “It’s your father’s birthday, and although we don’t have a lot of money, I want you to learn that you can make a meal fit for royalty with what we have right here, all around us.”

  “How?” Madge asked, standing up, eyes now wide.

  “Follow me,” her mother said, grabbing a colander and her daughter’s hand and heading outside.

  She took her into the backyard and to the edge of the woods that bordered it.

  “What do you see?” Alice asked.

  “Weeds,” Madge said. “Chiggers.”

  Alice smiled. “Look harder,” she said, edging into the bramble and holding up a thorny branch. “Now what do you see?”

  “Raspberries.”

  “You love raspberries, like your dad,” she said, picking the red fruit. “Life is a lot like this bush right now: thorny and difficult to navigate, but there’s always beauty to be found. Sometimes you just have to look really hard.” She turned and looked at her daughter. “I hope you never forget that.”

  She waded a little deeper into the woods and began picking some blackberries, before freeing herself from a few thorns and heading toward the orchard, where they picked fresh blueberries.

  When the two returned to the kitchen, Alice pulled over a small, upholstered footstool she kept nearby for her daughter to stand on. “You can help me measure all the ingredients, OK?”

  “OK!”

  “We’re going to make a triple berry tart,” her mom said.

  “What’s that?” Madge asked.

  “It’s sort of like an open-faced sandwich,” her mom explained. “We make a crust for the bottom, but it’s open on the top, so you can see all the fruit, everything that’s inside.”

  She continued. “And remember how I said this was fit for royalty? I have a poem for you, so you’ll always remember what we’re making. It goes like this:

  “The Queen of Hearts

  She made some tarts…”

  “What’s that mean?” Madge asked when she was done. “And why did that mean person steal them?”

  Her mother laughed. “It means that tarts are for royalty,” she said. “They’re rich and beautiful, just like a queen. And…” Her mother stopped and leaned in to her daughter to whisper, “It means that you should never let anyone steal your tarts.” She laughed again, tickling her daughter. “And don’t let anyone steal our recipes. Remember our little poem when you need to remember how to make the recipe.”

  Babe barked, knocking Madge from her memory. She walked over to her cabinet, pulled down her recipe box, and inserted the key that she kept on a chain near her heart. She unlocked the recipe box and began to thumb through the cards, smiling as soon as she found the recipe.

  I forgot I had drawn on it, she thought, her face breaking into a big smi
le. A crown for a queen.

  Madge went to her freezer and found some frozen blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries.

  “The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, all on a winter’s day,” she sang to herself, altering the verse to match the season.

  She looked over at her husband and dog. They’re right, she thought. I need to be grateful for the simplest of things. Worry takes you out of the moment.

  As she ran hot water in the kitchen sink to begin thawing the berries, she looked out the window, smiled, and leaned even closer.

  Their family footsteps remained, firm in the snow and crisscrossed like birds’ tracks, leading from home to orchard and back again. As her eyes tracked to the apple trees, which would soon be filled again with fruit, Madge felt her baby kick.

  Twelve

  “I still love apples,” Willo said with a laugh. “And apple crisp most of all.”

  She scanned the orchard and continued. “This was my playground, too, just like yours. I used to pick blueberries and blackberries, hide in the trees, catch lightning bugs in mason jars at dusk, and play in the sprinklers, just like both of you.” Willo stopped and looked at Sam. “You used to run these orchards—back and forth, row by row—when you were training for cross-country in high school. You left a lot of footprints here.”

  Sam scanned the path between a row of trees, thick with apples, that they had just walked. All of their footprints were visible in the dew, soft outlines as if they had just stepped in wet concrete.

  My footprints are everywhere, Sam thought. These may dry, but they will never go away. She stopped and looked at her mom and grandma. Unless I do.

  “Sam?” she heard her mother ask. “Are you OK?”

  “Who’s hungry?” Sam asked out of the blue.

  “Starving,” Willo said. “We can have some donuts when we get to the bakery.”

  “Mind if I whip something up this morning?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, honey,” Deana said. “You made dinner last night. And you got up so early. You must be tired still.”