Miracle Beach (37 page)

The days that followed seemed to zoom by. She and Jack spent most waking moments with Glory, taking her to see a matinee, or Putt-Putt golfing, or for ice cream. Some afternoons they would head to the beach, sometimes Miracle Beach and sometimes Stories Beach, where they’d snack on the picnic lunch Magda packed and look for impossibly vibrant starfish in purples and blues, or for seashells. And in the midst of these activities, Magda found herself marveling at how all of it was real. That her life had taken such a turn.

Those moments ran together until Magda found herself counting the hours, not days, until she had to leave. She had woken too early, though. So here she was, driving aimlessly along the shoreline of a place where she didn’t belong, where her husband did, and where their son no longer was.
Was
—such a strange word.
Was
and
when
. Every single moment of her life to that point could be attributed to one or the other. Now she was caught in the middle, waiting.

Magda had had Tim Hortons in hand by seven a.m., and as she approached Stories Beach, she slowed and pulled to the shoulder. She located a spot on the beach, now obscured by the tide that had come in, and thought of the previous night—her on one side of the fire that Jack had built and Glory and Jack on the other, singing “The Banana Boat Song,” Glory punctuating many of the lines with giggles. And Magda knew then that as much as she might want to take them back to Wisconsin with her—and with all her heart she did—it was a selfish want. Jack and Glory needed to be here for their own separate reasons, but they still needed to be here, together. Eventually, she would find her own place with them. Of that Magda was confident.

Without thinking, Magda put the car into drive and turned up a road to the right, just past the stretch of rocky beach. She kept on driving, out into the country, which was where she came upon an unattended produce stand with a hand-painted sign advertising bell peppers, corn, and rhubarb.

She had plenty of time. And so she stopped, dropped four loonies in the wooden piggybank fixed to the signpost, and scooped up a handful of sorry-looking rhubarb stalks, even though she knew that they were likely the dregs of this year’s crop.

 

As expected, the house sat empty. Even though there was a note taped to the door from Macy saying that she should let herself in, Magda knocked anyway.

She didn’t have time to waste, so Magda immediately turned the oven to 425 degrees, even before she had set down the few groceries she had brought in with her—the rhubarb, butter, and a jar of cloves. She figured Macy wouldn’t mind her borrowing a little flour, sugar, and salt.

Magda worked on the crust first, careful to cut the shortening into the flour as fast as she could. This was the key to a good crust: not taking so long to meld the flour and lard that the latter started to soften. When the mixture beaded into pea-size chunks, she dripped water into it a tablespoon at a time, adding just enough to bring it together. Usually, it was less than any recipe prescribed. Then she separated the batch into two pieces, wrapped each in waxed paper, and set both balls of dough in the freezer. She hadn’t ever tried cooling her dough on the quick before, but she said a small prayer asking God to help her out, just this once, and that she’d follow the recipe as it was supposed to be followed from here on out whenever she made it again. If she made it again.

Next she set to chopping the rhubarb. She had always found chopping to be satisfying work, and as the family’s main baker, she had never gotten to do enough of it. Jack, with his marinades and meats and grilling—he got the satisfying jobs: dicing onions, crushing garlic, slicing mushrooms. She wondered if he knew how lucky he was to have that much knifework to do. Like all things, though, Magda figured, you tended to appreciate those that came around less often.

Magda slid the squares of rhubarb from the cutting board into a waiting bowl. A door slammed. Magda jumped.

“I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you.” Sophie appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

Magda smiled at her: thin, not toothy. “No bother,” she said. Then she added, “No one’s here.”

“I figured. But Glory needed to run off some energy, and I’m so close to that dang water that I end up having to watch her every second. So we decided she could come play in the woods up here.”

Magda nodded. She had met Sophie just once since their first encounter that night on the back porch, now glazed with sun.

“Want some help?”

“That’s okay,” Magda said. “It’s pretty much a one-person job.” This wasn’t true—she had enlisted Nash for help with this very same process many, many times—but it could have been. And truth be told, today this needed to be her project—hers alone.

“Pie?” Sophie asked.

Again Magda nodded. She checked the dough in the freezer, called it good enough. She sprinkled a dusting of flour on the countertop, a little more on the dough, and ran a floury hand over the rolling pin. Then she set to work, rolling the pin first vertically, and then horizontally, until the crust flattened, evening out into a rough circle.

Sophie had wandered to the opposite side of the island from where Magda stood. She tipped the steel bowl toward her, took a whiff. “Rhubarb?” she asked, furrowing her brow. “Bit late in the season for that, no?”

“I suppose so,” Magda said. She continued her rhythm without a hitch: Up one, down one. Across one, back one. Repeat. “The farm up the road had some dregs for sale. Figured I’d try, and see if it would work.”

“I was always afraid of cooking with it, because of the poisonous leaves and all. Guess I should’ve given it a chance,” Sophie said. “But maybe this is a good time to leave you to your cooking.” She dismounted the stool that she had just hoisted herself up on not a minute before, pushing it back under the counter. “It’s been nice meeting you, Magda. Really nice. I hope you have a safe trip back.”

Magda remembered the night she had arrived, to Sophie’s hand on Jack’s knee. She had seen other gestures pass between them in the days that followed. She had seen the way Jack looked at Sophie. None of it had been obvious, and she could sense that nothing had happened between them, but she suspected things wouldn’t continue that way. The thought of Jack falling for someone else pinched at Magda when it should have felt like being stabbed. She suspected it had something to do with the fact that Jack and Sophie themselves seemed oblivious to what was happening.

Sophie had nearly cleared the doorway leading from the kitchen to the living room and, beyond that, the back entryway, before Magda called out, “I guess I could use a little help.”

Sophie poked her head back through the kitchen doorway like a question.

“I don’t know if I’m going to finish in time,” Magda said.

“No problem. Let me wash my hands, and then you can tell me what to do.”

When Sophie returned from the sink, Magda instructed her on the proper combination of the sugar, spices, and cornstarch. She told her how to stir the mixture to best distribute the spices and cornstarch—in a folding motion, not a beating one. She explained to Sophie that if she were at home, she’d take one of those turkey-cooking bags and place the whole kit and caboodle right in there, and toss it as if it were Shake ’n Bake chicken, so as to get the best, most even coating on the pieces of rhubarb. Magda told her that she might want to add a little vanilla and brown sugar, too, if that was something Sophie thought she’d like. And she warned her about doing all that—the mixing of the pie innards—too early. She told Sophie her best-kept, most closely guarded secret: about how the sugar leached too much water out of the rhubarb if you didn’t wait to combine the pie innards until right before the crust was ready.

Sophie did as Magda instructed. Meanwhile, Magda worked at making the lattice topping for the pie. When she had all of the lattice strips cut, she cued Sophie to pour the filling into the waiting pie tin.

“This isn’t just for show,” Magda said, nodding at the strips of dough. “Rhubarb retains a lot of water, and when it cooks, all that liquid needs someplace to go. A full crust top won’t allow that to happen, but a lattice crust will. Plus, if you do it right, it sure looks pretty. Not surprisingly, Macy doesn’t have a pastry wheel, so it won’t be as pretty as it could be.”

Magda thought back. When they were first married, and Jack had suggested they plant rhubarb in their measly garden patch, Magda had been first surprised, and then unnerved, by its bounty. And so she had started experimenting, trying to find the very, very best rhubarb pie recipe she could. Because really, what choice did she have? But it became her thing. She even won a “County’s Best” contest at the Brown County Fair, and she brought in top dollar with this very same recipe in the baked-goods auction at Nash’s school. Magda’s rhubarb pie recipe reputation preceded her.

And now, as she showed Sophie how to make the lattice topping, placing five strips of dough horizontally at even intervals across the pie, she wondered if this might be her last one.

“You fold the first, third, and fifth strips back to the edge and lay one strip of dough vertically across the horizontal strips. Then fold the first, third, and fifth horizontal strips back, then fold the second and fourth strips back to the first vertical strip. Really, you’re just weaving these pieces,” she said. “Then lay a second vertical strip an equal distance from the first one. Fold the second and fourth strips back. Do the same thing with the final strips.” She talked to keep her thoughts corralled, to not let them go where they seemed so desperately to want to go. And despite her best efforts, a couple wayward tears escaped Magda’s eye. They fell onto one of the lattice pieces yet to be assembled, and she brushed her thumb over the wet, hoping Sophie hadn’t noticed.

With the pie in the oven and dishes washed and drying in the sink, Sophie excused herself for a second time that morning.

“Take care now,” she said, having said most everything else once before.

“You too,” Magda said.

They nodded at each other. Magda surveyed the distance between them. Usually, she tended toward hugging, but this didn’t seem like the proper situation for that gesture.

“Well, then,” Sophie said. She started around the kitchen table toward the back door, giving a little wave as she went.

“Sophie?” Magda called. Sophie hesitated and looked back. “Rhubarb is Jack’s favorite. Only pie he likes. One small dollop of Cool Whip on top.”

Sophie nodded, a faint smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “I’ll remember that,” she said.

 

Outside the security checkpoint at Campbell River’s airport, Magda looked at Glory and bent to kiss her cheek. She straightened and looked at Jack, unsure what to do with him, what to say.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he replied.

It was like a bad movie script. But those seemed to be the only words they had left.

She thought of the pie cooling on Macy’s kitchen counter, the simple note she had laid on top of it, and her breath knotted in her throat. “I should go,” she said.

Magda placed her carry-on and purse in two separate bins and removed her sandals, placing those in another bin. She stole a glance at Jack, standing with Glory in front of him, a hand on each of her bony shoulders. He looked somber, and for that, Magda was grateful. No smile on his lips to suggest he was happy that she would be gone in a few minutes. No tears in his eyes that would surely set Magda off on the same path. Even, as always. Just-right Jack, she thought, conjuring up what she had privately, fondly called him for as long as she could remember.

But Glory was not so composed. Try as she might to prevent it, her whole body hiccuped and her face was slicked wet. Magda saw Jack bend down and whisper something in Glory’s ear, saw Glory turn her face up to Jack in a question. And just as Magda handed her boarding documents to the security officer, she felt a pair of arms wrap tight around her hips.

Glory buried her head into Magda’s waist. “Don’t go,” she said, and Magda felt her insides go straight to mush.

She extricated herself from Glory and knelt down in front of the girl. “What’s wrong, honey?”

“I don’t know,” Glory croaked.

Magda brushed the back of her hand over her granddaughter’s wet cheeks. Her granddaughter. She was still trying to get used to what that meant, to really believe it. “What’s going on here?” she asked, fingering a single, rolling tear.

“My eyes are leaking,” Glory said. The girl fixed her eyes on Magda. She chewed on her lower lip.

“I’m going to miss you,” Magda said. She tapped a finger on Glory’s nose for emphasis.

She thought of all the moments with Glory she wouldn’t be there for, and that thought made her ache all over. It was, she realized, more painful than when she thought there would never be a Glory in her life at all. She hugged the girl’s waif of a body tight against her chest.

“Then don’t go.”

“I have to go. I have a trip to take, you know. I’ll send you a postcard from every place I stop. And then, when I get back, you can come see me in Green Bay. I’ll take you to the zoo, and we’ll go to a Packers game. How about that?”

“You can, though,” Glory said. “You don’t have to take your trip. I want you to stay here with us.”

“My sweet Glory,” Magda said, shaking her head. “I love you to pieces. You know that, don’t you?”

“Ma’am, it’s time.” The security agent stood over Magda and tapped her on the shoulder. “Everyone’s boarding.”

“Can I please get a smile before I go?” Magda said. She hooked a finger under the girl’s chin. “I want to remember this little face as a happy one.”

Despite her cheeks still running slick, Glory fixed Magda with a brave, giant grin, her upper lip trembling. “It’s time,” Glory said.