The Recipe Card at the Bake Sale

The Line

After that, people came.

Not to say anything. To buy rolls. A line formed in front of my table, and it was the strangest, kindest line I have ever stood behind a table for.

Women I had known my whole life came up and bought a dozen, or a half dozen, or one, and looked at the card, and some of them touched my hand. Doris Wendt said, “You did these for my daughter’s wedding shower,” and I said, “I did,” and she said, “Thank you,” and that was all.

Nobody said Janet’s name. Not one person. That is the other thing about a small town. They know exactly what they are doing, and they are kind about it, and they let you see that they know.

And then Janet was at the front of the line.

I had not seen her come over. She had set down her lemon bars somewhere. Her face was red, not angry red, but the deep red that starts at the collar and comes up.

She opened her purse and took out a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the table.

“A dozen, please, Missy,” she said. Her voice was very steady and very low.

I put a dozen in a box for her. I did not say anything except, “Here you go, Janet.” I handed it to her with both hands.

She took the box. Then she said, “Could I talk to you in the kitchen? Just for a minute. When there’s a break.”

“Linda,” I said, “can you watch my table?”

The Kitchen

Janet set the box of rolls on the counter and stood with her back to the pass-through window, so nobody in the hall could see her face.

“I owe you an apology,” she said. “And I owe your grandmother one, and I can’t give her that, so you’ll have to take both.”

I waited.

“I didn’t steal it,” Janet said. “I want you to know that first, even though it doesn’t matter much now. When the committee was collecting recipes, I went through the old kitchen binder in that cupboard there. The funeral dinner binder.”

“There’s a typed sheet in there for cinnamon rolls,” she said. “No name on it. Just the recipe. I thought, these are the funeral rolls, everybody loves these. I copied it onto a form and turned it in.”

I had typed it myself, on my mother’s typewriter, in about 1998, so the kitchen ladies would have it if I was ever out of town. I had never thought to put a name on it. It was just the rolls.

“The forms had a line for Submitted By,” Janet said. “I wrote my name, because I submitted it. The printer put the contributor’s name on every recipe. That’s how those cookbook companies do it. Then the committee picked it for the cover, and the printer put my name on the cover too.”