Grandma Elsie’s Rhubarb Custard Pie
“She’s not feeling well,” Barb said, and I could hear in her voice that she knew it was more than that and was embarrassed to be the one stuck in the middle.
Two weeks later Pam canceled the next one too. Thirty years of every other Thursday, and she canceled it twice through her neighbor. I put her name on the book anyway and left the hour empty.
By then the paper had come out. The county weekly runs fair results on the second page in a big spread, with all the ribbon winners from the 4-H steers down to the pickled beets.
And there was Pam. Front of that page, top left, three columns wide. Holding the blue ribbon and Grandma’s pie beside her face.
The caption said: “Pam Schultz with her own rhubarb custard recipe, which took best pie and the bank’s $500 prize.”
I cut it out. I do not know why. I put it in Grandma’s recipe box with the rooster on the lid, right in front of the card where her rhubarb custard was written in her own hand.
I want to be fair about something. I know a recipe is not property. You cannot own sugar and eggs. Mrs.
Arndt has said for years that half the pies on her table are somebody’s grandma’s, and that’s how it should be.
It was never about the ribbon, either. I have never entered a thing at the fair in my life except a 4-H rabbit in 1985, and the rabbit bit the judge.
It was the words “her own.” It was the card I wrote with a heart on it for her dying mother. It was my grandmother’s name, gone, and Pam’s name standing in the place where it used to be.
And it was the door. If Pam had picked up the phone just once and said, “Kathy, I did something stupid,” I would have forgiven her before she finished the sentence.
She knew that. That was the part I could not get past.
Dean and I talked about it one night in late August on the back step, after supper, watching the lightning bugs over the rhubarb patch. The rhubarb was long done by then. Just the big leaves left, going ragged.
“You could just tell people,” Dean said. “Tell Mrs. Arndt. Tell the paper. They’d print a correction.”
“And make Pam into a thief in the paper while her mother’s in the hospital,” I said. “Rick already made her the laughingstock of the county. I am not going to pile on.”
“So what do you want?” he asked. He asked it gently. Dean asks questions like he is checking a calf, slow and careful, so it does not spook.
“I want Grandma’s name back,” I said finally. “That’s all. I don’t need Pam’s name off of it. I just want Grandma’s name on it. Where it belongs. Where people can see it.”
Dean nodded. He scratched the back of his neck. “Well,” he said. “Fall supper’s in October.”
Our church, St. John’s Lutheran, has put on a fall supper the second Sunday of October for as long as anybody can remember.
Turkey and dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry, and a dessert table that runs the whole length of the basement wall.
It is a free will offering. The money goes to the furnace fund, which is a fund that never ends.