Like That

Tonight, my dad makes more pies. Apple. I receive the gifts of his recent baking stint in cardboard boxes sent to me at school. Blueberry. Cherry. Pecan. Lemon. Apple’s the ringleader. Some pies are palm-sized, others big as a head. They sit on my counter like a caravan of zoo animals, striped and spotted. Lattice. Criss cross. Crust. Berry, nut, cinnamon, sweet. It’s hard for me to eat them all at the impressive rate they come, but I try, slice by slice, to take them in.           

“Eight cups of apples,” Dad tells me in the kitchen. I’m home for the weekend and agreed to help. “I’ll make the dough.”

So I peel and cut, count and shake; apple hearts bob on a dark granite lake. The flour from Dad’s bowl floats shadow-like in the air as he cuts butter, measures water, mixes sugar, separates egg. His ritual of parts to whole, a prayer he’s committed to memory.

From my apple post, I watch his hands work the dough, round knuckles, oven-burnt, ghost of a wedding band I didn’t know he’d stopped wearing. It’s been three years since she died, and there aren’t any rules now, so I don’t think she’d mind. She used to take off her rings too, just for an hour, and place them in the small ceramic bowl near the sink. She was in charge of the apple pies then, and shaped the dough with her nimble hands, forming crusts that turned perfectly brown, exquisitely crisp. Next to her, Dad whipped meringue for his lemon pies, and the two stood side by side for twenty-eight Thanksgivings, mixing and measuring, pouring and filling, the ritual of them. Light bulb yellow and autumn-brown spoons crossed each other in the sink when they were done.

Now, I stand in her spot at the apples—part mother, part daughter, part wife—and follow Dad’s lead as we make too many pies in April, as we fill the time without her, step by step. 

I’ve become my dad’s emergency contact. I help him decide whether or not he should elect for hip replacement surgery. I try not to be jealous when my friends get in arguments with their mothers. I try not to feel like less of a woman because the woman I came from is gone. 

When I’m done cutting, Dad says, “Now pour the cinnamon-sugar over the apples. It makes them weep and forms a glaze.”

I pour the sugar so the apples weep, and then we fill the tins.

“Just below the top,” Dad says. “Don’t overdo it.”

My dad has moved from Illinois to Virginia. He bought a home with lots of land that my mom would have found too quiet and far from town.  He turned his garage into a woodworking shop. He fills his hours by using his hands. By creating something new over and again.

When the miniature tins are filled—eight in all—it’s time to add the tops. Dad slices the rolled dough with the scalloped lattice cutter he bought online.

“Start with the middle strip,” he says as he lays it across the apples. “Like that.” 

We create the checkered top together, sliver by sliver of dough. His chapped hands do the delicate work of piecing together. His naked left hand does the most work of all. 

When the pies are topped, Dad places the first one in the oven. Then the next. And the next. On and on, eight perfect pies, nothing into something, new life, like that.