Throw Like A Girl (29 page)

I gave them both a light shove in her direction. They started toward her, moving like sleepwalkers. Oh resilient hearts! Oh mad recurring drama! Did no one ever learn?

I slipped away when no one was watching me. I didn't know what came next. I knew I wasn't an artist or anything like that. But maybe I was finally starting to get the picture.

S
o
much of the world had changed and kept on changing. But you could count on the pie list to remain the same. January was always custard, February chocolate, March lemon meringue. There were no substitutions. The absoluteness of this was comforting, since there were, in general, many rules now, which were often superseded without warning by new, contradictory rules. In the matter of coconut cream (April) it was true that Mrs. Colley had persuaded Mrs. Pulliam to allow, if not a substitution, at least a little flexibility. There were people who had really violent feelings about coconut. Mrs. Pulliam was not inclined to humor them. She was an artist. There were aesthetics involved in the choice of pies, the harmonies of taste and weather. The cycle of seasons gave rise to the cycle of cravings, for tart or smooth or juicy. Mrs. Colley had to frame it as a question of allergies, and only then did Mrs. Pulliam relent and offer (on occasion, and by special request) a banana cream alternative. But it always set her to brooding, and Mrs. Colley had learned to walk wide of her at such times.

The Pie of the Month Club's motto was Easy as Pie! With an exclamation point in the shape of a rolling pin. Pies were delivered to subscribers on the first or third Friday of the month. Although Hi Ho was not a large community, the reputation of the pies was such that the ladies had no lack of business. The crusts were perfect marriages of shortening and flour, so that each bite simultaneously resisted and gave way. The fillings were piled high and handsome. Of course only the best-quality ingredients were used. Nowadays, when there was so much concern about contamination (air, water, crops), a pie harkened back to simpler, more wholesome times. No one had yet cast any aspersions on pie. People in Hi Ho were sensible folks with their feet firmly on the ground, not inclined to sway with each new panic. Still, Mrs. Colley was afraid a day might come when even pie would turn up in one of those ominous newspaper articles, accused of causing some disease you never knew existed until then.

Mrs. Colley tried to avoid the news as much as possible. It was all so worrisome, and all so completely beyond your control. She much preferred the kind of magazines that had recipes instead of news, and television programs where people lived in nice houses and had glamorous problems. But sometimes the news seeped in anyway. She'd be settled in her chair, her front still faintly damp from the evening's dishes, her iced tea and Kleenex within reach, and instead of her program there would be a news bulletin you couldn't avoid. Usually it was about something blowing up. And since whatever blew up was in a place you'd never been, or sometimes never even heard of, you first thought what a terrible thing it was, followed by relief that it had nothing to do with you, really, followed by a vague guilt at feeling relieved.

It was all the fault of the War, or Wars. One ran into the other nowadays. Mrs. Colley couldn't keep them straight. Wars were different than they used to be. They were all fought in hot places, for one thing. The current War had begun back in October (pecan), and they were trying to get it wrapped up before summer, when the great parade of fruit pies (cherry, blueberry, peach) began. Fruit pie season was not a good time to be fighting a War in a hot place. The War news was always about how we were winning, but the enemy was refusing to admit it and was fighting back in dirty, underhanded ways, such as blowing things up or poisoning (or threatening to poison) some vital resource. How were you supposed to deal reasonably with people like that?

When the phone rang at a certain time of evening, it was always Mrs. Pulliam. Mrs. Colley pressed the mute button on the television remote so she could still follow her program as she conversed. Mrs. Pulliam said, “Tell me this rhubarb was meant as a joke.”

“What's wrong with it?”

“Aside from being so woody you can whittle it, nothing.”

When Mrs. Pulliam was in this particular mood, you had to let her run on for a time. Mrs. Colley murmured that people these days did not understand rhubarb as they used to. She thought this was true. Certain vegetables, peas for example, no longer got the respect they once had. Mrs. Pulliam sniffed in disdain. “The only thing to understand about rhubarb is you pick it before it gets old and tough. It's not rocket science.”

Mrs. Colley's program required her attention just then. Something was being explained, some important part of the story that you wouldn't get if you couldn't hear. She clicked the volume up to the first level and said, trying to sound more concerned than she was, “It's what, just six pies tomorrow? Couldn't you mix them three-quarters strawberry, one-quarter rhubarb instead of half and half?”

“It's the rhubarb that gives it body,” said Mrs. Pulliam, not ready to stop being irritable. “Without enough rhubarb, it's like jam.”

“Well Joyce, why not let me make them? Then if they don't turn out, everybody can blame me.”

“Absolutely not,” said Mrs. Pulliam, just as Mrs. Colley had meant her to. “You know very well I always do May. It's my responsibility and I'll see to it, thank you very much.”

After she put the phone down and got caught up with her program, Mrs. Colley thought, not for the first time, that Mrs. Pulliam made things more difficult than was necessary. She attributed this to Mrs. Pulliam's divorce and the fact that her only child, a boy, had a bad character and had gone off to live in Chicago. Mrs. Colley was a widow. Her daughter, Margery, lived right here in Hi Ho. Margery and her husband had two precious babies, well they were hardly babies anymore, four and six, but that was how she thought of them. Mrs. Colley's son John and his wife lived in Des Moines, which was too far away for Mrs. Colley's liking but at least in the same state. John and his wife did not have any children yet, even though Mrs. Colley dropped hints from time to time about how much she would love to have more grandbabies.

The news said that before they went to the War, some soldiers had stored their sperm in freezers, in case something chemical happened to them in battle. You were really better off not knowing a thing like that.

Mrs. Colley had grown accustomed to widowhood. It had been a terrible thing, of course, her husband's heart attack, and the anxious tug of hope while he lingered, and then the press of large and small events necessary to accomplish a man's death. Everything after that was slower. Slow march of hours and days, months and years. Nothing much changed, except she grew older and more settled into her leftover life.

She got by all right. Sometimes she turned on a football game so she would have a man's voice in the house. And sometimes, if she was shopping at the SuperStuff and found herself in the automotive or hardware or electrical aisle, surrounded by all the mysterious items men used to keep the world running, she missed her husband terribly. Then she would feel so down and blue, she would start thinking bad, crazy things, like what if her grandson, Ronnie, grew up and went to a War and they did something to his sperm? That multitude of little unformed pearls inside him, all doomed. Or what if something in Hi Ho were to blow up? The grain elevator, for instance, or the American Legion. Hi Ho would be the last place you'd expect something like that to happen, and that was exactly why it would be targeted.

At such times Mrs. Colley turned to the Rainbow pills her doctor had prescribed. Of course the pills had a longer, medical name, but they were advertised on television with rainbows. The commercial began with a gray, drippy cartoon sky, which gradually gave way to arcs of violet, red, yellow, green. Cartoon flowers sprouted and cartoon birds sang. While you understood that this was a commercial and was not meant as a literal representation—when it came to advertising one both resisted and succumbed, like pie crust—it was true that the pills made Mrs. Colley
feel
more rainbowlike. Peaceful and sort of glowing. And what was the harm in that, as long as your side effects (headache, nausea, gas, bloating, diarrhea or menstrual pain) were the exact same ones the commercial reassured you were normal?

Mrs. Colley went to Mrs. Pulliam's house in midafternoon, when the strawberry-rhubarb pies were scheduled to be done. Mrs. Pulliam had not disappointed. The six pies sat cooling on the kitchen table. The crusts were delicate brown with scroll-shaped cutouts that showed the deep jewel color of the filling. The pies smelled of May, of blossom and warm wind and sweetness. Mrs. Colley leaned over to drink in the smell. “Oh, heaven,” she murmured.

Mrs. Pulliam stood at the sink, washing up. “That rhubarb gave me fits.”

“Joyce, they turned out perfect.”

“Perfect,”
said Mrs. Pulliam, angling the spray hose to scald a glass, “is a word cheapened by overuse. In the course of a normal lifetime, I very much doubt if anyone encounters perfection.”

Yet Mrs. Colley knew that her friend relied on her appreciation, even as she grudged and pushed it from her. Mrs. Pulliam's tall figure bent over to scour a cookie sheet. She wore a hairnet while baking and with her hair skinned back her profile was severe. If you were uncharitable, you might even say it was witch-like. Fretting had kept her thin over the years. Mrs. Colley didn't think that Mrs. Pulliam was unhappy, not in any active sense. More like she'd grown into the habit of mistrusting happiness and had to call it by other names.

A breeze ruffled Mrs. Pulliam's blue curtains. Outside the window a bumblebee lumbered in the white flowers of the spirea. The new grass bent and tossed like a herd of green ponies at play. One of the Mexican families who lived in the trailers across the field had put out a line of wash, children's small bright shirts and pants.

The Mexicans were something new. Hi Ho had been founded by industrious German and Swiss farmers, just the sort of people you would have chosen yourself to found a town, if you'd had any say in it. There were streets in Hi Ho named Hoffman and Schroeder. In the fall there was a Heritage Day when children were dressed up in dirndls and lederhosen and performed Tyrolean folk songs.

But in the last few years, a portion of town had come more to resemble Guadalajara. The Mexicans mostly worked in the meatpacking plants two towns over. Although they were from a hot country, we were not at War with them. There was a new Catholic church to accommodate them, an addition to the many flavors of Protestant. The Hi Ho Market now sold chilies and cans of hominy and packets of Mexican spices. Mrs. Colley did not know any Mexicans personally. She thought they were all right as long as they kept to themselves and didn't go jabbering Spanish at you when they knew you couldn't understand it. She was not the sort to be prejudiced about people just because they came from a hot country.

Mrs. Pulliam looked out the window, where two of the Mexican children had come outside and were kicking a ball around, soccer-style. “Those people won't ever be subscribers. They don't have a tradition of pie.”

“We could take some pies by the Catholic church sometime. A free, introductory offer.”

“I don't see them going for it, in a business way.”

“It would be neighborly,” said Mrs. Colley, but they let the idea pass. Being neighborly was a good thing, of course, except there was a sense in which the Mexicans were not real neighbors.

Mrs. Pulliam took her apron off and poured two cups of coffee. She set the cream jug in front of Mrs. Colley's chair, although she herself continued to stand. “Maybe it's just as well we don't add subscribers. Who knows how much longer I'll want to keep on with the baking.”

Mrs. Colley tried not to show her alarm. In all of Mrs. Pulliam's history of complaint, she had never mentioned quitting the pies outright. “A long time, I hope. Otherwise, people would be so disappointed.”

“Would they,” said Mrs. Pulliam. She reached up to pull the hairnet off, though her hair stayed in the same crimped, hairnet shape. “Oh, I suppose. Yes, they would at first, sure. Then they'd adjust. It's only pie. I keep thinking that. All the fuss and bother for something people gobble down in a day or two.”

Mrs. Colley knew better than to approach any issue with Mrs. Pulliam head-on. She said, “I saw the most interesting recipe in one of my magazines. Rustic plum tart.”

“Gaaagh.”

“I'm just saying. Maybe something different once in a while. Perk you right up. They had another one, peanut butter pie with an Oreo crust.”

“If I'm going to start down that road, I might as well bake
cupcakes
. I make pies the way they're meant to be. I have to believe there's still an audience for that. Now you'd better get this batch around to people.”

Mrs. Colley always handled the deliveries. She had certain people skills that Mrs. Pulliam, being an artist, lacked, and besides, she enjoyed getting out and about. She loaded the pies in their special baskets and set off in her old car, motoring carefully down the quiet streets. Tree shadow from the new leaves cast lace patterns on the pavement. There was a cloud at the edge of the beautiful day. For reasons of her own, or for no reason except temperament, Mrs. Pulliam might decide to end Pie of the Month. It no longer seemed to give her satisfaction to make pie for pie's sake. Mrs. Colley wished she could get Mrs. Pulliam to see how sociable a pie really was, how it brought people together, gave them something to look forward to, talk about, share.

The first delivery stop was Jeffy Johnson. He was out watering his grass seed when Mrs. Colley pulled up. “Hi Jeffy, how are you today?”