Pumpkin Pie Read online

  “You love us and you know it,” another voice says from the door. Nixie Waters walks in, her dark red hair dripping wet from the swim practice she probably just left. The gang is officially here.

  “Did you all come for pie?” Goldie asks as she brings the plates from her last table back behind the counter. Goldie Rust is quite possibly the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. She has about a seven inch waist, straight blonde hair down to her knees and a few other lovely “assets,” if you know what I mean. It’s like being friends with Barbie. If, of course, Barbie had been the only child of a teen mom and a bit of a trollop instead of living with Ken in the dream house.

  “Yeah, did you all come for pie?” Rosie scratches through her crunchy hair with an edge of panic to her voice. I guess there might not be enough to go around. Elbows will be thrown and switchblades drawn if everyone doesn’t get their due amount of pie.

  “As long as it’s not chicken pot pie,” Nixie says with a menacing giggle.

  Rosie starts to come from behind the counter and we all do well to get out of her way. She does, after all, have a very sharp carving knife in her hand and with the flour on her face and clothes she looks a bit like a reject from a slasher movie.

  “Okay, no pie for any of you! I didn’t come here to be insulted-”

  “Where do you usually go?” Bella chimes in with a smile in her eyes over the rim of her glasses as she continues her fight with the cash register. She has a fork under the lip of the drawer, trying to force it open.

  Blanche reaches forward, across the counter to tousle Rosie’s hair. With the amount of hairspray in it, it will not be budged. It’s like a blonde football helmet.

  “Beattie said that if we wanted to come to the tasting we’d have to come and help you guys close.”

  “Coach was not pleased.” Nixie adds. “But no way was I missing pie night.”

  Pie night, is a monthly tradition for the staff of Hap-PIE-ly Ever After. We try all of Rosie’s newest concoctions and experiments. Every month we turn out a new pie or two, or seven, so our customers never get stuck with the mundane and boring.

  “Seriously though, did you make anything with chicken?”

  Rosie sticks her tongue out, “No, I did not make anything with chicken. And just for that you get to do dishes with me.”

  Nixie smiles, dropping her gym by the register next to Bella, and follows Rosie behind the counter.

  “Lead the way master,” she continues with a smile.

  When all the work is finally done and my salt shakers finally filled, it’s pie time! We line up along the neon stools in front of the checkered counter and Rosie resembles Julia Child as she dishes out the first pie onto the mismatched plates.

  “What do we got?” Goldie asks as she twists her miles of her hair onto the top of her head in a messy bun that makes her look like a supermodel, but would have made me look homeless.

  Rosie sighs proudly and as she admires the dish in her hands. Girl loves her pies.

  “First up, we have a new creation of mine that I really like. It’s an apple and sour cream pie.”

  She fiddles with the hem of her simple black tee shirt that’s such the Rosie staple, and shows off her perfect boobs. It’s so unfair that all my friends are super models and I’m a shapeless string bean.

  Blanche whines, throwing her head down on the table in an extremely dramatic fashion that we barely notice. Blanche can be the queen of drama. She narrows her eyes Rosie and demands, “Aw, come on now, apple’s my favorite pie! Why would you bastardize that?”

  Rosie rolls her eyes and purses her perfectly painted red lips.

  “Will you just try it?”

  I won’t lie, I’m a little wary of doing so. I take a deep breath and bite into it. Rosie never fails to impress. It’s brilliant. The taste is rich and creamy, like heaven in your mouth.

  “Well,” Rosie poses to Blanche with a smug smile, balancing her hip against the counter and waiting. Her purple rose tattoo peeks out ever so slightly at her collarbone on her left shoulder.

  My friend avoids eye contact, focusing her dark eyes on her plate, and tries to be nonchalant, “It’s not bad, I guess.” Everyone sitting around the counter shoots her a look.

  “Okay, fine it’s pretty good, but I still like the traditional better.”

  As the words leave her lips her purse begins buzzing feverishly. She pulls out her phone and sighs at the screen before answering it.

  “Hello,” she begins and then listens intently for a minute as she rubs the space between her eyes with the thumb and forefinger of her free hand.

  “Is it a rash or is it chicken pox? Well where’s dad? Fine, fine, fine. I’m leaving now. Keep him in the tub and no one touch him.”

  With an aggravated sigh she clicks off the call and throws the cell back into her purse with more force than necessary.

  “Well my pie night just got cut short. Shiloh may have the chicken pox and my father is out on a date.”

  “Which one is Shiloh? Is he the scrawny one with the chicken arms?” Goldie asks.

  Bella shakes her head and mumbles through a mouthful of pie, well into her second piece, “No, you’re thinking of Wilson, Shiloh has glasses.”

  “Nope,” Nixie corrects, tying her long red hair that has dried into its frizzy, bright normalness. “Thomas has glasses, Shiloh has freckles.”

  “No-” I begin, but Blanche cuts me off.

  “Shiloh is the baby everybody, can’t you get them straight?” she snarls as she pulls on her coat. She’s already wearing a hoodie over her tee shirt, but only shorts on the bottom. The girl only gets cold up top.

  Rosie extends a paper bag with a few pieces of pie inside to Blanche.

  “For later,” she explains. “And besides, you have about a thousand brothers. It’s a little hard to keep them straight.”

  Blanche snatches the bag, but there’s still gratitude to it.

  “I have seven, thank you very much. And thank you for the pie.” She runs a hand over her short black hair and crinkles her freckled pale nose, a classic sign that she’s upset.

  I touch her arm as she turns away.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” I ask, really hoping she’ll say no. Not just because it was pie night, but also because I didn’t want to go. There’s far too much testosterone in that house. My role as best friend can only stretch so far.

  She smiles and kisses the top of my head.

  “No my darling, I’m fine. It’s not my first rodeo. See you all tomorrow.”

  “Bye,” we respond in unison.

  Rosie has truly outdone herself on this run. We try fifteen different pies and I’d be lying if I said my stomach isn’t killing me by the end, but we’ve successfully picked three new pies for the menu. The apple and sour cream, a quiche with the flakiest crust ever, and a black-bottom cheesecake that Nixie instantly chooses as her favorite.

  We all do the dishes, a little less to be put on Rosie’s plate, and turn over the stools. The girls say their good byes and I wait around a minute for Rosie.

  Rosie pulls down a heavy sack of flour from the highest shelf in the kitchen. She’s already busy making another pie. Never slows down for even a moment.

  “You should go home. Your mother already thinks I corrupt you too much as it is. That will only be worse if I have you out past curfew.” Everyone in town knows my mother pretty well, which means they also know her attitude.

  “Oh my mother thinks I’m corrupt all on my own. It has nothing to do with you. Besides, my dad’s coming home tomorrow so I think I’m the last thing on her mind.” My father travels all over the world for business. What he does? I have no idea. For all I know he’s a hitman for the mob. It would be a perfect profession for my bald, short, fat, middle-aged father of three. No one would ever suspect him.

  “Where is he this time?” Rosie asks as she adds flour to concoction in the mixture, causing a cloud to puff up and out of the bowl. It’s no wonder Rosie’s always covered
in the stuff.

  I shrug.

  “Paris? Singapore? Cleveland? I don’t know, which I think is kind of the point. That way we can’t find him. My mother’s freaking out about her solitude being broken, so the further out of the way I am the better. Megan and Tyler are the only ones she really cares about anyway.” Rosie nods. It’s pretty bad when your friends don’t try to say, “Oh that’s not true, your mother loves you just as much as your sisters.” They know the reality and we all accept it.

  I glance down at my watch and sigh, “But perhaps you’re right. Even Eleanor might notice I’ve been gone this long.” Soft dark circles cloud the undersides of Rosie’s eyes. I’m always so worried about her.

  “Are you getting any sleep? It’s starting to show.”

  Rosie turns on the mixer, the sound of the motor breaking our silence.

  “Oh my dear Elle, there’s plenty of time for beauty sleep when I’m dead.”

  It’s completely dark by the time I walk home. Not a huge feat in the state of Maryland in October, but still it makes me tired. All the lights in my house are on and burning brightly. My mother’s in full freak out mode about my father coming home.

  I walk through the front door and Megan’s leaning over the sink in the kitchen turning the water on and off, her version of doing the dishes. I don’t know what surprises me more, that my mother gave Megan a task, or Megan actually doing it.

  “Somebody’s in trouble,” she singsongs in a very musical way. The girl can easily play a Broadway villian. Creepy.

  “What’re you talking about?” I ask, nearly getting it all out before my mother booms down the stairs.

  “Young lady, where have you been?” she shrieks as she clears the bottom step. I know that she’s been working all day and yet there’s not a hair out of place or a wrinkle in her perfect pantsuit. I’m a hot mess with a cheese-doodle powder stain across my black tee shirt and hair frizzing at the sides of my face.

  “Working,” I say sheepishly, a little afraid of my mother at that moment.

  “Michelle Antoinette Conner, I told you I needed you home early tonight to help with the house. The dishes need to be done, the floors need to be mopped, the chimney needs to be cleaned, and the trash taken out. Who exactly did you think was going to do all that?” she demands.

  I almost don’t speak, but finally I open my mouth and say, “Megan and Tyler?”

  The sink shuts off and you could hear a pin drop in the silence.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I hear Megan say from behind. “These are your jobs.”

  “And what exactly are your jobs then? Or Tyler’s for that matter?” I ask, ignoring my mother for a minute. Megan bites her bottom lip and thinks for a long pause. It probably takes that long for the hamster running the wheel in her brain to get moving.

  “Well, there’s, and, well, we keep our room clean.”

  “You do not,” I argue back quickly and she knows it’s true.

  “Well, there’s also, we do the laundry.” I just smile. “I do your laundry.” She just crosses her arms. “You suck.”

  “Good comeback Meg,” I mumble with a grin. This is worth what I’m bound to get from my mother later. But Eleanor’s too preoccupied with her own crap to even notice that I’m making fun of one of the golden children.

  “Will you just get started please? There’s a load of laundry to do and the floors all have to be done.”

  It’s not worth the fight. I could stamp my feet and whine and cry like the twins would. I could tell her that it’s unfair and I shouldn’t have to do so much when my sisters don’t have to do anything. I know that won’t get me anywhere and I’ll just be later getting started.

  “Fine, I’ll get it done. Is there any dinner left?”

  My mother’s already onto the next thing as she absentmindedly answers, “Oh I took the girls out to eat.”

  “Thanks for letting me know,” I mutter, grabbing the new bottles of Rain Water detergent and fabric softener that I recently bought, off the breakfast bar and stuff them into my overloaded purse.

  “Excuse me, young lady. Did you say something?” she hisses, narrowing her long lashed eyes at me.

  I sigh heavily and make my way to the pantry to grab a Pop-Tart, the dinner of champions. “Nothing mother, I’ll go start on the laundry.” How I ever get anything done, like homework or a life, I’ll never know.

  Our basement’s a rather cold and unwelcoming place. The only lighting is a swinging bulb from the ceiling and there’s a general smell of mildew that never quite goes away. The laundry sits in whopping piles all over the floor. No rhyme or reason, nothing’s even separated, but why would they do that when they have me to do it for them? I start wading through the sea of pajama pants, tee shirts and dresses on my way to the far side of the laundry room in search of dryer sheets and laundry baskets. I find what I’m looking for, but am momentarily distracted by a box sitting beside the bottles on the shelf.

  Everyone, I feel, is entitled to a hobby that’s special and strange. Something uniquely theirs. For me that’s salt and pepper shakers. I know it sounds stupid, but you’d be amazed what pairs they put together to make these things. Nothing better to me than spending a Saturday morning at a yard sale digging up what I can for my collection. This particular box is full of the ones I love too much to get rid of, but don’t love enough to display in the glass case I keep in my room. I remove a Garfield Salt and Odie Pepper and smile at the chipped paint around their faded eyes and smiles. They clip together in the middle like they’re hugging and it makes me incredibly sad.

  I started going to the flea markets with my dad when I was little. He would wake me up at the crack of dawn most Saturdays between April and October and we’d go off on an adventure together to find the cleverest things we could. Dad looked for old records and I looked for salt and pepper shakers. After a long morning of hunting we would always stop at the town’s diner for waffles before heading home. I got to know my dad on those Saturdays. I wish I still knew him as well. He had started to grow apart from us when I was twelve. I didn’t know what happened exactly. I mean I can’t pinpoint it down to any specific moment, but something changed. I can’t say if it was my mother, my sisters, or even me, but one day he was always there, spending as much time with us as he could and the next he was going on trips that took him away for weeks and weeks. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss him sometimes and seeing the remnants of our old adventures only makes that harder. I wrap Garfield and Odie back into their protective newspaper with its familiar newspaper smell and tuck them back to safety before closing the box. I grab the detergent and softener from my purse and turn my back on the memories. There’s no time for them now.

  As I load the laundry machine for the fourth time, my sisters wear more clothes in a week than the population of a small country in a month, my cell starts buzzing in my pocket. It’s Blanche.

  “Hey,” I start as I measure out the blue goo detergent.

  “Blah! This has been the longest night of my life! I’m covered in freakin’ cornstarch!” she shouts into the receiver. This is a big reason why our friendship works. Blanche is good at talking and I’m good at listening.

  “Cornstarch? I thought Shiloh had chicken pox?” I question as turn the washer on and move to sit on the steps. I have a feeling this one might take a while.

  “Oh yes, that’s what I thought too, but you only have to see the kid to know that it’s not chicken pox. He looks like he has some kind of flesh eating virus or something. I called the doctor and he said it probably wasn’t anything bad, but to try and keep him away from the other boys until tomorrow when he can see us. Elle, have you ever tried to keep seven boys away from one another in a small house? I had to make three of them sleep in the living room,” she huffs into the phone and I keep up with my job of listening, “hmm”ing and agreeing when necessary.

  “And, of course, if it does turn out to be chicken pox, Wilson and Martin have never had them so I have to be doubly sur
e to keep them away.”

  I have this feeling that what I’m about to say is a bad idea, but for some reason I say it anyway.

  “Is your dad home yet?”

  She’s silent only a moment before continuing on with her rant.

  “Oh, that’s a whole other can of worms! Where is he is the better question. He’s not answering his phone. He didn’t leave a note as to where he’d be. I mean these are his kids, he should be here with them. But is he? That’s a big no red rider! He’s out dating... Dating!”

  Blanche’s mother had died five years before, giving birth to the youngest boy, Shiloh. Blanche hasn’t coped or grieved at all and Mr. Summers’ recent decision to start dating again isn’t helping matters any.

  “Blanche, Blanche,” I chant, trying to get back into the conversation, but she’s mumbling on about Martin’s math homework that he refuses to do and Leo getting a note sent home from his teacher. “Blanche!” I finally have to scream to get her silent for a second.

  “What?” she yelps, shocked that I’d interrupt her.

  “Blanche,” I start again calmly with a sigh. “Just listen. I know you’re not going to like what I have to say, but listen with an open mind.” I take her silence as confirmation. “I know you feel like your father is somehow abandoning your mom by dating again, but it’s been five years. Your dad is still relatively young, he might just be lonely.”

  “Lonely? Lonely!” she shrieks, obviously the open mind approach didn’t work. “Elle, he has eight children! Who could be lonely with eight kids?”

  She’s getting hysterical, and I try my best to sooth her.

  “Just talk to him if you don’t like this. He might not even know that it upsets you, and he’ll never know if you don’t tell him.” I coo softly in the most comforting voice I can muster. This is not usually my job. Normally Blanche calms herself down.

  “It’s like I know that you’re right, but I’m tired and I’m frustrated and there’s a little man in my head telling me that you’re wrong.” Her voice catches on the end and I know that she’s fighting tears. Blanche doesn’t cry.

  “Sweetie, I think they call that schizophrenia,” I say and she laughs. The buzzer on the dryer goes off, it’s time to switch clothes around. Balancing the phone between my shoulder and ear, I open the dryer door and shovel a mountain of socks and underwear into a blue laundry basket. The smell of the fabric softener is heavenly and I want to bury myself in the warmth.