Cam drops his hands at his sides. “Look, um, I don’t mind suing you...like crazy... but we’ve only got one more season of Tastes of America, and if we don’t get this episode out in six weeks, our window is slammed shut.”
Paulie says, “‘Ey, we feel your pane! Get it, like window pane?” He breaks out laughing, but one flash of the evil eye from his grandfather Vincenzo quiets him up in a hurry.
Cam glares at me. “You planned this the whole time!”
“No, Cam, I didn’t.” But despite myself I have to add, “It just occurred to me last night.”
I really do feel badly, like I’ve tricked the Hollywood sharpie and turned his manipulative tricks against him.
Okay, maybe I don’t feel too badly.
But I still say, “Look, maybe there’s a way we can make this work out for everyone.” I turn to Vincenzo and say, “Señor Carapucci, I...”
Cam interrupts me, thinking out loud. “Carapucci, like that judge from the YouTube video of that bake-off?”
Paulie lurches toward him, hands out, head bobbing. “‘Ey yo, ‘ats my sistah...”
Cam gives it a little thought. “Yeah, I remember her, she’d be great on VH1. Are you guys really, um...connected?”
“Yeah, likes I said, she’s my sis-tuh!”
Vincenzo shakes his head, his well-dressed frame the perfect picture of an Old World mafioso. “I’m a businessman...”
“That’s good enough for me,” Cam says. “Tell you what, give us this pie thing, we’ll promise you thirteen episodes on SpikeTV.”
Paulie and Vincenzo share a wordless glance, a complete business conference consisting of nothing but a nod, a glance, the tilt of a head. Paulie says to Cam, “I got a screenplay too.”
Cam says, “Three-week option and an agent at CAA.”
“Deal!” Paulie says, shaking Cam’s hand. He turns to me and Simon. “Okay, I guess you guys can go on ahead, do what ‘cher doin’. Thanks!”
Vincenzo gives me an honorable little nod, shakes Jacques’s confused hand, then lets Paulie lead him across the stage. I turn to Cam and Jacques, the one comforting the other. Then Cam leans over to me and whispers, “Nice try. But that little dustup probably just earned me five million dollars and maybe we’ll get another season out of this crappy show. You are gold, Hannah...gold!”
I think about it as he smiles and turns back to the Jacques, then steps out of frame. Jaques says to me, “So, we continue, oui?”
Um, right, I think, I guess so.
“Um, right,” I say, “I guess so.”
So I turn back to my pies.
Well, smartie-face, I have to chide myself, nice work. Now you’re stuck. This show’s gonna be aired now after all that mess even if it wasn’t before. Rebecca will be crushed, life in Lancaster may never be the same. Now every car that drives down Main Street will be my fault. The pollution, the crime, the congestion; these are the things that happen to little towns that make a big stink, the grease that covers the squeaky wheel.
I may have just have ruined our peaceful, pleasant little town even in the act of trying to improve it. Maybe I should have just kept my mouth shut and gone along with the program, I have to admit, done what I was told. Bake, don’t bake, whatever.
Still, I have to be frank with myself, there’s nothing I can do now. Clever as my backup plan was, it has blown up right in my stupid face, and it’s left for me to simply stand here and do my best, carry on and wreak whatever havoc my best intentions are destined to bring to poor old peaceful Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
I’m about to succeed magnificently and bring new fame and glory to a town I’ve only lived in for a few months. And these people will hate me for it forever.
So be it then, I finally resolve myself. I’ll do my best and put it in God’s hands. Lord knows my own have done enough damage for a good long while. And, looking at the frozen metal mixing bowl in my hands, I realize they’re not done with their wicked works quite yet.
I walk Jacques through the process, explaining the soda cake and the sweet butter glaze and the oven at such a high temperature. He nods with interest, watching as I measure out a smaller amount of marshmallow into the filling, dusting it with the finest ground mocha I can manage.
Finally, we all stand and the cameras roll as the great French master raises a small plate up past his massive stomach, a tiny fork looking even tinier in his other greasy paw. He cuts into the Whoopie pie with the little fork, the crisp-and-airy cakes breaking up a bit but still hovering over that soft and creamy inner layer. The crowd goes silent and, I have to admit, I nearly stop breathing as he raises the forkful to his mouth and then opens wide, wrapping his jowly head around my original creation.
As much as I know the kind of torment I’ll earn by winning his approval, I do still want it, more desperately than I would have or could have imagined. Suddenly, I feel like everything I am is on the line, and everything I’ll ever be is wrapped up in that dark, wet hole of this Frenchman’s mouth.
I don’t like the feeling.
He chews slowly, giving little indication of his reaction. After that single bite, he smiles at me pleasantly, then turns to nod at Cam standing behind the cameras.
Cam says, “Aaaaaaaand...cut!”
Chef Jacques Cherierre turns and spits out his mouthful of my breakfast Whoopie, his fat face wincing in disgust. He tosses the plate away, not caring that it shatters at his feet and spills cream and cake all over the stage, even speckling the faces of the people in the front row.
“Quelle est cette merde ennuyeuse ? Mon Dieu, tout ce brouhaha et l'attention à ce morceau de rien?”
Cam shakes his head at Jacques. “I don’t speak French, you know that.”
So Jacques says, “This cake is a joke.” He turns to me with a curt bow. “I am sorry, madame, but I cannot feature this...this thing on my show.”
Cam says, “Jacques, we’ve got some great footage, where have you been for the last half-hour? Who cares what the damn cake tastes like?”
“I do,” Jacques says, pointing into his own chest, and then into Cam’s. “I care. I have a reputation, you idiot!” With that, Jacques turns and storms off, leaving Cam to stand around with a growing realization.
Every minute on that stage is wasting money which he’ll have to account for.
“Okay, everyone,” he says to his slew of camera and boom operators, as well as the beefy, bored looking men I take to be construction and deconstruction workers. “Pack it up, we’re done here.”
Cam walks past me, disappointment ripe in his expression. But I derive no pleasure from it. I feel badly for him, in fact. He was always pretty straightforward with me, was just trying to do his job as best he could. Really, I played him as much as he played me. Between the two of us, I realize I was really the true manipulator here.
Mamm was right.
And as the crew disassembles the oven and takes down the speakers, the crowd looks up at me in sneering, glaring judgment.
Guilty once more.
Fine, I say to them silently, in the chamber of my imagination. Think what you want, do what you want. I wash my hands of this.
“Thanks for blowing it, loser!” one person hollers out.
“There goes the new silo,” another of the eternally dissatisfied Lancaster residents tosses up at me as Simon gives me a big, loving hug. I know he’d take them on, one at a time if necessary, but I’m glad he’s not doing so.
I want his attention now, his embrace, his support, his love. They’ve taken all they’re going to take from me today.
And Simon has taken all he’s about to take from them. He grabs the mike, his voice loud and strong, flexing in the shadow of the feedback from the speakers. “All right, now you people listen to me! I’m fed up with this, and I’ve heard all I’m going to hear about my wife from the likes of you...or anyone!”
They all look up at Simon, every mouth stilled. I stand next to him, my heart racing, my own tongue as paralyzed as anyone else’s.
For the time being.
Abram has stopped juggling and looks on, admiration keen in his young gaze. I know he is coming to respect Simon as much as he ever did me, that he and even Daed will now be able to give my kid brother the kind of male role models he needs.
Daed and Mamm look up from near the stage, his arm around her, her head nuzzling against his chest. I think I see a single tear trailing down his cheek.
Simon says to them, ” Now, I’ve grown up with a lot of you, you know me and you know my Gramm, you knew my parents. And I stake everything you knew about us on what I know about this young woman, my wife, Hannah Troyer. Of all of you, she’s the one I married, she’s the one I will spend my life standing beside. And what did she do to deserve your scorn? She went against her own better instincts and did precisely what you asked her to do. And what happened was just what she was afraid would happen, and then you blamed her for that.” Letting the silence of their shame linger for a moment, he adds, “You should be ashamed of yourselves, as much as I’m ashamed of you all.”
Even Ruth’s nasty tongue is silent as Simon lets his stare comb the expansive audience. “You thought you could push her around, you thought you could make her do things that you weren’t willing to do for yourselves. You wanted what she had to offer, but didn’t want to pay the price, couldn’t face the repercussions of her actions on your behalf.”
They look up at us, at me, their eyes sorrowful. And those are the ones who have the strength, the courage to raise their eyes to us at all. Most of them just look down at the ground, hats in their hands.
Ruth and Samuel stand in the crowd too, Rebecca and Beau nowhere near them. Ruth’s twitch is running full-steam.
Simon goes on: “And when things got bad, did any of you accept responsibility, or did you just do the easy thing and blame poor Hannah for every little thing that didn’t go right.” Not waiting for an answer, he adds, “And for every little thing that did go right! Well, I hope you all learned your lesson. You can’t manipulate people for your own benefit and then just let the chips fall where they may. Because like they almost did today, they may fall right down on top of your stupid heads!”
The crowd, already dead silent, goes even quieter somehow, a shocked hush rippling over their heads.
Simon adds, “Even down to the last minute, Hannah was doing everything she could to make things work out so that they’d suit Lancaster best. Never once did she think about herself. What about you?” he asks one person in the crowd, who shrinks back amid the others. “You?” Simon posits, another person shaking their heads. Simon says, “That’s right, you did nothing. Nothing but cast aspersions and blame and doubt and accusations on an innocent woman who risked everything in her life just to make a town full of virtual strangers happy.”
In the delicate silence, I whisper to him, “It’s okay, Simon...”
“No,” he says to me in an equally soft tone, then turns back to the crowd. “Even now she’s standing up for you, while you crowd around and mock her! Aren’t you ashamed? Aren’t you all just terribly, terribly ashamed?”
They are, their quiet confessions filling the air with an echoing, deafening silence. But their eyes reach up to me, to us, and offer their sorrow, their regret, their apologies.
Simon and I stand, arms finding one another.
The first sound in the crowd comes from a most unexpected source. Ruth Thompson stands clapping. Tears are rolling down her face, her husband Samuel standing next to her but still looking as if he doesn’t distinguish her from Eve. Ruth’s clapping is loud and strong and slow enough to catch another person’s participation; Samuel himself. They both clap, and soon the people around them join in.
Even Lilly and Jessup are clapping, even if she looks like she’s doing it begrudgingly.
It doesn’t take long before the whole crowd is clapping for me, for Simon, for us and for our love. Abram claps and even tosses up a loud hoot or two, whistling through his fingers.
My mamm and daed join in too, Rebecca and Beau only a few feet away from them, all four clapping enthusiastically. Then I see Ruth rush into Rebecca’s arms, sobbing, wrapping her arms around my older sister, panting her unheard apologies. Rebecca smiles, tears running down her own face as she strokes Ruth’s hair with one hand, the other pressing lovingly against her back. They both squeeze tighter as Samuel straggles up from behind, smiling at the loving display. He and his son Beau share a hug, and I am flushed with warmth to know that this moment has truly been transcendent for us all. Our coffers are indeed filled, as never before.
The wave of applause rises higher, greater than my accomplishment or my task, greater than me or Simon. They’re applauding us all now, I realize, themselves as well. They’re welcoming me in and welcoming themselves back, a wholeness returning to Lancaster that hasn’t been here since I arrived months before.
Now, thinking with a single mind, clapping with a single pair of hands, breathing with a single beating heart, we all join in a mass show of mutual love and support. It’s like nothing I’d ever experienced, even my own wedding.
But it pales in comparison to what is yet to come.
# # #
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