Grandma Elsie’s Rhubarb Custard Pie

We feed about three hundred people, more if it’s a nice day and the Catholics come over after their own lunch.

The ladies of the church kitchen run it like the Army. Sign-up sheets go up on the bulletin board in September.

Every woman in the congregation knows her job, and most of us have had the same job for twenty years.

My job, for twenty years, has been two pies and running the coffee urns. That year, when the dessert sheet went up, I took the pen and wrote my name on every line.

Marilyn Schroeder, who has run the dessert table since 1994, called me that same night. “Kathy, honey, you signed up for all the pie,” she said. “All thirty slots. Is that a mistake?”

“No,” I said. “I’d like to make them all this year, if you’ll let me. I’ll make sure there’s enough. Rhubarb custard. My grandma’s.”

There was a little pause on the line. Marilyn has known me since I was born. She was at Grandma’s funeral. She ate that pie at her own husband’s funeral lunch, from Grandma’s own hands.

“Elsie’s,” Marilyn said quietly. “Well, all right, then.” And she didn’t ask anything more, and I loved her for it.

Thirty pies is a lot of rhubarb. Each one takes about four cups, cut small. Grandma’s patch puts out more than we can ever use, so every spring I cut it and wash it and freeze it in quart bags.

Dean went down to the deep freeze in the basement and counted. Thirty-one quarts left from spring. Thirty pies’ worth and one bag over, if I measured careful. Dean said Grandma must have planned it that way.

Thirty pies, cut eight ways, is two hundred and forty slices. So I cut two hundred and forty slips of paper out of plain white cardstock with Grandma’s old pinking shears, the kind that make a zigzag edge.

On the front of every one I wrote the same thing, in my best handwriting: “Elsie Jorgensen’s rhubarb custard pie, 1951.” And on the back, small, I wrote the whole recipe. Every step. The orange peel too.

I want to be honest about this part, since I’ve been honest so far. I would be lying if I said I never thought about Pam reading one. I thought about it every single night I sat there writing.

But I never once wrote Pam’s name. Not on a slip, not anywhere. I never told anybody what I was doing or why. I did not want to shame her. I just wanted my grandmother back on that table.

Two hundred and forty slips took me almost three weeks. My hand cramped. I went through four pens. Dean would come in from the field and sit across from me and cut cardstock with the pinking shears without being asked.

One night, about two weeks in, he picked up a slip and read it. Front and back. Then he held it up and looked at me over it, and asked me the one question that mattered.

“Would you say this to her face?” he said. “If she was standing in this kitchen. Would you say every word on this paper to Pam’s face?”

I took the slip from him and read it again myself. Grandma’s name. The year. The recipe. Nothing else. No accusation. Nothing that wasn’t true.