The Recipe Box

by Viola Shipman

“You’re definitely hot,” he said in a lusty voice, with a wink. “Or something.”

  “Stop it,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. Sam took off her sunglasses and put them on top of her head. She looked again and laughed. “Is this it?” she asked, pointing at a sign a New Yorker had obviously placed that read NO MORE LOCKS! beside which another New Yorker had written WHAT ABOUT LOCKS & BAGELS?

  “You’re cold,” Angelo said with a big laugh. “Just like the salmon.”

  Sam walked quickly toward Angelo. “Cold,” he said. “Freezing. Icy.”

  She skipped the other way, Angelo following. “Still cold,” he said, as she continued to move across the bridge toward Brooklyn. “Tepid. Lukewarm. Warm. Hot. Hotter. OK, you’re red hot. Literally on fire.”

  Sam stopped and began to scan the railing in front of her. She looked left, right, high, low, and then there it was, staring directly at her: a lock featuring a sticker of Michigan was holding a recipe box to the railing. Sam turned, her eyes wide.

  “What is this?”

  “What do you think this is?”

  “Are you a Sphinx?” Sam asked. “What’s this mean?”

  Angelo walked up to Sam, set her coffee down on the pavement, and put his hands on her shoulders.

  “I didn’t know what to do with the key that Willo gave me,” he said in a quiet voice. “It just meant so much to me. I felt as if I had been entrusted not only with your family’s history but also its heart.” He stopped. “When I got back to New York, the weight and importance of the key weighed on me. I was walking the bridge a few days back, saw the railings filled with locks, and it finally hit me.”

  “What hit you?” Sam asked.

  “I don’t hold the key to your heart or your life,” he said, his voice serious and strong but filled with emotion. “And your family doesn’t hold the key, either.”

  Sam shook her head. “I’m confused,” she said. “Then who does?”

  “You do,” Angelo said with a knowing smile. “You do, Sam.”

  He reached into his pocket, grabbed Sam’s hand, placed something into her palm, and closed her hand. When Sam opened her hand, the key her grandmother had given him to the original recipe box was there.

  “It’s your decision what to do with the key,” he said. “No one else’s.”

  Sam stood there, tears in her eyes, shaking her head, her knees feeling as if they were going to buckle.

  “I had a lock made that fits this key,” he said. “And I filled the recipe box with some … let’s just say, surprises. If you want to be with me, you have the key … you can use it to unlock the recipe box and discover what’s inside. If not, just leave it here.”

  A lone tear trailed down Sam’s cheek. “Angelo,” she started.

  “You hold the key to your own happiness, Sam,” he said. “And once you unlock that, you’ll know what to do.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said, her voice wavering.

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Angelo said, his dimples flashing. “I’m going to go.” He leaned in and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Good luck on the interview, Michigan. You’re going to knock ’em dead.” Angelo walked toward the edge of the railing and acted as if he were going to climb over and jump. “Just don’t leave me hangin’, Michigan, OK?”

  Sam smiled and shook her head. “OK,” she said.

  Angelo waved good-bye, but he turned one last time and yelled, “Just a week before this bridge opened in 1884, P. T. Barnum led twenty-one elephants over it to prove that it was stable.”

  Sam shrugged and made a face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sometimes you just have to trust everything’s going to work out,” he called, “whether you’ve actually crossed that bridge or not.”

  Sam laughed. “You’re crazy,” she called.

  “I know,” Angelo said with a backward wave.

  Sam watched him walk across the bridge, his body becoming smaller and smaller until he was just a dot among the masses.

  Sam turned and looked at the lock and the recipe box. Just over the railing, in the distance, the Statue of Liberty stood tall, holding up her torch for the world to see.

  So strong, beautiful, proud, independent, Sam thought.

  And yet, Sam couldn’t help but also think, she’s all alone out there.

  Sam stood on the bridge, turning the key over and over and over again in her hands.

  Thirty-two

  Willo awoke with a start. She leaned up in bed and looked at the clock on her nightstand. The red numbers flashed in the still-black night: 4:35. Willo smiled to herself in the dark, the clock’s numbers conveying a not-so-hidden message: 4 + 3 = 7, followed by 5.

  “Happy birthday, old gal,” Willo said to herself. “You made it to seventy-five.” She stopped and added with a chuckle, “Somehow.” Her laugh echoed in the still of her bedroom.

  For the past few months, Willo had experienced difficulty sleeping. At first, she believed it was merely her excitement at what lay ahead: her and the orchard’s dueling birthdays and celebrations, and the planning and execution that entailed. Despite getting a handle on those details, Willo still found herself waking up in the middle of the night, her heart racing, near panic.

  Willo went to the doctor worried, but she was told that this condition was normal as people aged.

  “The older we get, the more prominent sleep problems can become,” her doctor said. “Waking before sunrise, unable to fall back asleep. Getting up several times during the night. For many adults over fifty, sleep issues can disrupt everyday life and leave you more exhausted.”

  Her doctor urged her not to nap or disrupt her normal sleep pattern. She had suggested some sleeping aids, but Willo had demurred. She was proud that her daily regimen of medication consisted solely of vitamins and a pill for her arthritis. Many of her friends took fistfuls of pills, carried around boxes crammed with pills for every hour of the day.

  Hour, Willo thought, checking the time again and shaking her head. Big day. Might as well get it started now.

  She clicked on the little lamp on her nightstand—a pink ceramic base topped by a vintage shade dotted, of course, with little apples—and reached for her reading glasses, knocking over a small plaque as she did. Willo put on her glasses and reached over to set it upright, smiling at its message: GRAY HAIR IS A CROWN OF SPLENDOR. PROVERBS 16:31.

  “What about gray hair that’s been colored a bit?” she asked the plaque with a chuckle. “I even think the color is called Splendiferously Salt and Pepper.”

  Willo picked up a book on her nightstand—essays by Anne Lamott, whose wisdom and insights about surviving the daily hardships of life provided her with comfort and strength—and stopped cold when she read the bookmark: Fear doesn’t prevent death. It prevents life. Naguib Mahfouz.

  Sam had given the bookmark to Willo years back, and it had marked every single book Willo read over the years, still standing proud and firm like a literary friend and sentinel.

  How true, Willo thought, rereading the bookmark.

  Suddenly, Willo sat up straight in bed.

  That’s it, she thought. It’s not because I’m older, or worried about all the planning. I haven’t been sleeping because I’ve been afraid.

  Willo placed the book in her lap and looked around her bedroom. It was adorned with the history of her life and the history of her family’s life: photos of her husband and daughter, grandparents and parents, the orchard and pie pantry. Scanning the framed pictures on her walls was like watching an old film reel: babies being born, growing up, going off into the world, having kids of their own, aging and …

  Willo stopped and shut her eyes. I’m next, she thought. There is no one standing before me in line any longer, is there, God?

  She opened her eyes again, and black-and-white photos of the orchard turned to color pictures, saplings turned into trees, buildings expanded.

  I’m not afraid of my own death, Willo thought. I’m afraid o
f the death of what my family started. Is that selfish?

  Willo looked at photos of Sam and her brother, Aaron. What if my grandchildren don’t want the orchard? What if they sell out to a company or larger farm? What if …

  A voice inside Willo’s head called to her. It was that of her mother, standing with her in the kitchen, teaching her how to bake.

  “What if the cookies don’t turn out?” Willo had asked her mom over and over in the kitchen. “What if we didn’t add enough sugar?”

  “You can’t control any of that, Willo,” her mother had explained. “You’ve followed the recipe. You’ve even added your own spin on it: cherries in the chocolate chunk cookies. You’ve done everything you can; now you just have to trust that it will all turn out.”

  “Sometimes,” her mom had added, picking Willo up into her arms, “you can be too careful, you can worry too much. Sometimes, your grandma once told me, you have to approach love and life differently than baking: with more abandon.”

  Willo pulled on a pink chenille robe and fuzzy bunny slippers.

  “What would life be like without bunny slippers?” Willo asked the happy little faces. She whispered into their soft ears, “Ready for some coffee?”

  She padded down the stairs and into the kitchen, turning on lights along the way. Willo started the coffee and impatiently tapped her fingers on the counter, waiting until the pot was full enough that she could pour her first cup. She nabbed her favorite mug, which read Baking Is Love Made Visible, and filled it to the brim.

  “I love you, coffee,” she whispered to the mug.

  Willo moved toward the kitchen table to take a seat, but stopped on her way, plucking the recipe box from the old cabinet along the way.

  Should I bake something this morning? she thought. A special treat for everyone who’s working so hard to set everything up? Start on those turnovers?

  She glanced at the kitchen clock, which was shaped like a pie, the hands moving across a lattice crust, one piece of apple pie missing. I certainly have enough time, she thought.

  She sat and opened the box, perusing and plucking cards as if she were turning the pages of a newspaper. As she did, memories came flooding back, just as they had moments ago when she’d looked at the photos in her bedroom.

  All the birthday cakes and holiday pies, ice cream on warm summer nights, and warm, gooey treats on cold snowy days, Willo thought. Cookies, cupcakes, chocolate, and coffee cakes.

  Willo stopped and ran her hand over the box’s burnished wood.

  This is a history of my family, Willo thought. This tells the story of who we are.

  Willo lost track of time scanning the recipes, until a peek of light appeared outside. She stood and walked to the kitchen window. Beyond the orchard, in the distance over the bay, Willo could see the first light of her seventy-fifth birthday squeezing over the northeastern edge of the bay.

  An unexpected thrill enveloped Willo’s body, and she crossed her arms around herself, burying her hands in the plush of the chenille. The dawn’s light was orange, and the horizon looked as if a giant Creamsicle had melted over it.

  How many beautiful sunrises have I witnessed in my life? Willo wondered. How many stunning sunsets? And though she tried to stop it, another question entered her mind: And how many more will I see?

  Willo began to turn, but as she did, a lone leaf caught her attention in the blush of morning light. It was a sugar maple leaf dangling from a high branch, twirling in the breeze, round and round, as if it were a Cirque du Soleil performer. The leaf was bright orange, a hue even more beautiful than dawn over the horizon, and it stuck out like an oriole in a chorus line of bluebirds.

  A harbinger of fall, Willo thought. A harbinger of change.

  Every year, one branch of Willo’s beloved towering sugar maple thumbed its nose at summer weeks before any signs of fall in northern Michigan had declared themselves. The leaves on the branch would turn a rainbow of colors while the rest of the leaves remained verdant. Willo would often sit on the patio and stare at the tree while she sipped her coffee or her wine, admiring the branch’s bravado and coming to terms with the fact that another summer was ending, that fall was coming, that the seasons of life could never be slowed or stopped. Sometimes, the sun would blind Willo as she stared at the tree, and she would be forced to shut her eyes, and hundreds of mirror images of the tree would float in her viewfinder. She would pop open her eyes again, and the trees would still be there, this time moving, running, scampering around her yard, the hillside, and the orchard, like ghosts from her past and hopes for her future.

  The leaf continued to twirl, performing only for Willo. Suddenly, an idea hit her. She scurried back to the kitchen table and began to rifle through the recipe box, looking for the flash of orange, just like the leaf.

  Where is it? she wondered. Where did it go?

  She sat, confused, and took a big sip of coffee to jolt her still sleepy mind awake.

  Did I lose it?

  Willo returned to the coffeepot and filled her mug, leaning out the kitchen window to look at the horizon and then at the leaf, still waving, still standing out proudly in the midst of a world that looked too much the same.

  Willo’s eyes widened, and she smiled to herself, finally understanding where the recipe had gone. She gave a little wave to the leaf.

  Oh, Sam, Willo thought, shutting her eyes to say a little prayer. Follow your true colors.

  Thirty-three

  Sam tossed and turned, and finally sat up in bed and checked the time on her cell: 4:35.

  Happy birthday, Grandma, Sam thought. She considered texting her grandma an early birthday greeting but decided against it.

  Too early, she thought. And too early to wake up now, or my roommates will kill me.

  A trash truck clanged and clattered on a nearby block, the deafening noise echoing up the buildings as if they were a canyon.

  Sam lay back down and covered her head with a pillow, trying to block out the city noise.

  The city that never sleeps, Sam thought. That’s an understatement.

  Sam hadn’t realized how accustomed she had grown to the city noise until she returned home. She’d been unable to sleep in Michigan at first because it was eerily quiet, but it had taken only a few days for Sam to readjust to the solitude. She quickly grew accustomed to an orchestra of owls and cicadas rather than the hard rock of trash trucks, police sirens, ambulances, music, and screaming New Yorkers. The noise was unrelenting; no matter the time of day, New York was awake.

  With a vengeance, Sam thought, laying an arm over her pillow to muffle the noise of music blaring from a passing car. She tried to still her mind, but it was having none of it; her job interview was front and center.

  I can’t be exhausted for my interview, she thought. Go back to sleep.

  But the more Sam repeated this mantra, the more amped up she got.

  Will Colette be nice? Will she be a repeat of Chef Dimples? Sam wondered. Will I like her? The job? What if she offers it to me? What if she doesn’t?

  An image of her grandmother popped into Sam’s head, and she forced the pillow more tightly across her face. Sam could hear her grandma saying the phrase she always repeated to her when she had worried about things she couldn’t control growing up: “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, oh, what a Merry Christmas it would be!”

  Nothing like Grandma’s words of wisdom, Sam thought. If, if, if …

  A siren wailed by, and Sam’s brief clarity was again shattered.

  What if Colette asks me to make something for her on the spot? Sam wondered. If so, what?

  Sam ran through options in her mind. The galette would be ideal, Sam thought. But if Colette is the queen of French pastry, mine might not be up to her standards.

  I could make the slab pie, Sam continued. But what if Trish already told her that was my mic drop moment at Chef Dimples?

  Sam’s tired mind whirred, and then she remembered Colette saying she needed someone for fall. Autumn,
Sam thought. Scarves, sweaters, cute coats, and boots.

  Another image of Willo ran through Sam’s mind. That’s why you stole that recipe, isn’t it? Sam asked herself.

  She yanked the pillow off her face, the cool air sobering her, and she inhaled deeply. She reached over and grabbed her cell, flicking on the phone’s flashlight. She shined the light around her bed and saw her purse sitting on a tiny folding chair. Sam stretched out her arms, not wanting to get out of bed, until her fingertips brushed her purse, and she was able to snag it and pull it to her. She opened it and inside was the index card that she had squirreled into her shorts when her grandma wasn’t looking and then transferred to her purse before she headed back to New York. Sam illuminated the recipe with the tiny flashlight.

  Willo’s Fabulous Fall Pumpkin Bars with Cream Cheese Icing

  Sam smiled in the dark. The recipe was written in orange marker in her grandma’s slanted handwriting, the same cursive—tilted heavily toward the right as if the letters had been caught in a windstorm—that Sam and her mom used. The Fs were fancy and flourished, just like schoolteachers used to teach, and Willo’s i’s were dotted with hearts. Alongside the edges, Willo had drawn cute little pumpkins and fall leaves.

  Sam laid the card flat on the bed and tried to smooth it out after her cat burglary. The card was wrinkled and bent, and Sam’s heart sank. But the card had also seen better days; it was flecked with orange stains—from the pumpkin and the batter—and there were spots from the cream cheese icing, likely spun out of the mixer, covering some of the recipe’s letters. Sam picked up the card and held it to her nose; it smelled like the wood of the recipe box.

  It smells like home, Sam thought.

  Sam scanned the ingredients and directions, trying to forge them into her mind in case she was asked to bake on the spot, but winced when she came upon an ingredient that stuck out like a sore thumb to her culinary training: Bisquick.

  Grandma, Sam thought. I forgot how much you love Bisquick.

  OK, Sam thought, staring at the recipe. I can just rework it the old-fashioned way: flour, baking powder, salt, shortening or butter.