Grandma Elsie’s Rhubarb Custard Pie

She held up the slip. Her hand was shaking so hard the paper rattled.

“This is that pie,” she said. “This one. This is the pie I won with. And it isn’t mine. It never was. It’s Elsie Jorgensen’s. Kathy gave it to me in June so I could make it for my mother.”

Nobody moved. Somebody’s baby fussed and its mother shushed it. Over by the stairs, I saw Mrs. Arndt, who I had not even known was there, put her fork down slowly.

“I wrote ‘original recipe’ on the tag,” Pam said. “I don’t even know why. I wasn’t thinking. I was just so tired. And then I won, and they said my name, and it was the first thing all year that was mine.”

Her voice broke there. She stopped. She looked at the floor for a while. Janet put a hand on her back, very lightly.

“Rick left in March,” Pam said, and her voice got smaller. “Most of you know that too. And my mom is dying. And when they said my name at the fair, I just wanted to be somebody who won something. For one afternoon.”

“And then the paper came out and it said ‘her own,'” Pam said.

“And I meant to tell Kathy. I meant to call her every single day. She called me four times and I never picked up. I was too ashamed.”

“She came to my door,” Pam said, “and I stood in my kitchen and didn’t answer it. My best friend. Thirty years. I stood behind my own curtain.”

She looked up then, right at me, across that whole basement. “I’m sorry, Kathy. I am so sorry. And I’m sorry to Elsie, too. She was good to my mother, and I took her name off her own pie.”

I don’t remember walking up there. I’ve been told I didn’t run, but I didn’t walk slow, either. I remember the floor tiles, the green and white ones, and then I was beside her.

I stood next to her. That’s all I did. I put my arm around her waist, the way we used to stand for pictures in high school, and I stood there beside her in front of three hundred people with flour on my apron.

Pam leaned into me. She was shaking all over. I could feel her ribs through the blouse. She’d gotten so thin.

Somebody in the back started clapping. I found out later it was Walt, the old man with the slip in his shirt pocket.

Then a few more joined. Then the whole basement was clapping, and the Kessler brothers were standing up.

I took the microphone from Pam for just a second. My hands were steady. I don’t know how.

“Grandma Elsie would have given this recipe to anybody who asked,” I said.

“She gave it to half this county. All she ever wanted was for people to make it for somebody who needed it. And that’s what Pam did. She made it for her mom.”

I handed the microphone back to Janet. Then I took Pam by the hand and walked her back to the dessert table, and cut her a slice of pie myself, and put a slip beside it.

She sat down at the end of the first table and ate it with her eyes closed. I sat across from her and drank cold coffee.