Page 16 of The Golden Spoon
“I see. Anything else you want to tell us about it?” She looks at me expectantly.
“Yes… um. Sorry.” I laugh nervously and try to regain my confidencefor the cameras, even though inside I’m feeling insanely fragile and calculating how I can fix the shitty crust—or hide it. “The peaches are being reduced, they are seasoned with sugar and thyme. I’ll dot the top with a sweet ricotta after baking.”
Betsy nods approvingly, and my body goes weak with relief. She turns to move along and then stops short. She pivots back toward me and sniffs the air. “It smells a bit burnt if I’m being honest,” she says, lowering her eyes to my pan of peaches, bubbling frantically on the stovetop.
“Oh no! I thought I’d turned it off!” With a sinking feeling, I look down at my burner, which is now cranked up to the highest setting. I distinctly remember switching that burner off, but I must not have turned the knob all the way and instead locked it on high. I quickly turn it off and inspect the damage, pulling the top layer of peaches away with a wooden spoon. They’ve scalded, and charred peach slices are stuck to the bottom of the pan in blackened lumps. There’s no saving this. That burnt flavor will have tainted the whole pot. What a stupid, stupid mistake. I can feel my eyes prick with tears.
“Good luck,” Betsy says, patting my shoulder for just a moment as she moves away from my baking table. I am rooted to the spot. Betsy Martin touched me. The thrill of it makes me nearly dizzy.Snap out of it, Stella!The camera operator follows me as I rush to my refrigerator, capturing my every move as I prepare to make my filling all over again, but all I can think about is how I can still feel Betsy Martin’s hand on my arm. It must be a sign that she thinks I can do this. I can’t let her down.
LOTTIE
I suppose I should just admit that this isn’t my first time in Grafton Manor. It’s been hard for me not to tell the others every time I notice something familiar. I want to share with someone what I remember about the place, how the chairs in the library were once faced toward the fireplace, or how the dining room used to have drapes in blue crushed velvet that were perfect to wrap yourself up in during a game of hide-and-seek. Other than a few details, I was surprised to see how little had changed. Grafton is preserved like a museum from my past.
“The help” is what they called my mother. There was no mincing words back then. Not that she ever seemed to mind. Cooking and cleaning for a family as rich as the Graftons was not an easy job to come by. Most housekeeping work didn’t come with full boarding by the time I was born, so my mother was even more grateful that I was allowed to stay with her in the upstairs room. Not many families would have taken in a single mother and her child in those days. Whenever I was fidgety or misbehaving, she would remind me that we were so lucky to have the Graftons. They were a bit like gods, hidden away in the East Wing.
All I’m left with are fragments of memories from that time. Some are merely images of my mother in the kitchen or Betsy holding oneof her porcelain dolls. They are disjointed, though I try my hardest to find a thread connecting the memories, turning them this way and that in my mind as though they are puzzle pieces that might suddenly click into place with enough effort. It’s hard to make sense of them, though I’ve tried for nearly sixty years, lying awake at night, my eyes flicking across the grainy darkness of the ceiling, replaying what little bits I can remember, over and over again, looking for clues.
I put one of my pie crusts into the oven to parbake and begin chopping rhubarb into chunks. I suppress a yawn. That is why I am here, to put myself back into that time, to search for remnants of my mother. For the past two nights, I’ve thrown back the covers and crept out into the hall, trying to retrace her last steps. But it’s hard when I have no idea what those were. So I have been spending my nights wandering Grafton, looking for something intangible that will bring me back to the night she disappeared.
I make my custard, whipping together sugar, flour, eggs, vanilla, cream, and butter.
Betsy comes by my station as I mix the rhubarb with cinnamon and sugar. “I love a rhubarb pie,” Betsy says. I can see she means it. “Nothing better on a summer evening.” Of course, I already know that Betsy loves rhubarb. I would spend countless summer afternoons at my mother’s side smelling the rhubarb bubble in order to please the young mistress of the house. I smile politely, even though every time she speaks to me my legs turn to jelly. Just as they did when I was a child.
I was always a bit afraid of Betsy. She was only a year older than me, but she was a million times more mature. She was already quite a bit taller than I was and walked around the house like a miniature adult in stiff, buttoned-up dresses and shiny leather shoes. Most of the time I saw her only in passing, often marching purposefully from the front door up the stairs toward her room in the East Wing. Whenever she did see me, if we happened to collide in a hallway or pass each other in the kitchen, she’d frown and tilt her head back, lookingdown the bridge of her nose at me, a not-so-subtle reminder of who was in charge. Despite our differences, I would occasionally be sent to play with her. Apparently, the Graftons had thought it would be good for Betsy to interact with more children her own age, and I was dispatched to entertain her like an organ-grinder’s monkey. Not that I minded one bit. To me these playdates spelled opportunity. Betsy with her mountains of toys and fancy dresses was like a princess hidden away in the forbidden East Wing. I wished desperately to befriend her. I would convince my mother to dress me in my nicest clothes for those rare occasions. She would go along, putting me into my church dress and braiding my hair with ribbons. Looking back, I wonder what she thought of my attempts to fit in with the lady of the house, knowing as she did that there was no way I would ever be accepted into their fold. The Graftons knew who I was, a poor, plain little girl who they took pity on.
Occasionally I would run into an elder Grafton in the halls of the manor. The mother, Josephina, was stern and imposing. She preferred me to stay out of her sight, and if I somehow didn’t, if she caught sight of me in the hall or by the kitchen, she would look at me with her mouth pursed, as though she’d just swallowed buttermilk. Richard Grafton was more of an enigma. If I saw him with Josephina, he would gaze past me, as though he had somewhere he’d rather be. But occasionally, when I would see him on his own, often when I was playing outside and he was coming back from a walk with the dogs or parking one of his cars, he was quite nice to me. He would ask me how I was doing and pay me compliments. These conversations always filled me with anxiety as a child. The truth was, Richard Grafton made me quite uncomfortable. I didn’t like the way his eye would focus on me, and I always felt I was disappointing him with my monosyllabic answers, like he expected more.
Now Betsy moves on from my baking table, cameras in tow. There was a moment, the first time Stella and I went into the dining room, that I worried about Betsy placing who I was. But I knew as soon asshe saw me that she didn’t recognize me at all. She practically looked right through me. I always knew it was a possibility, but I figured that after all these years the chance of her remembering me was slim. Is it odd that after all this time I was almost disappointed? After all, I have never forgotten her. It’s been over fifty years since I last laid eyes on Betsy Grafton. I bet she’s hardly given me a moment’s thought. She’s a celebrity, and who am I? The daughter of a housekeeper. A little girl she played with from time to time. Nobody.
I pull the crust out of the oven, lifting the parchment paper with a load of tiny, spherical pie weights. It is a light butter color, firm and already a bit flaky. This will help it keep from getting too soggy with such a wet filling. Now I pile the rhubarb and sugar mixture onto the crust and pour the custard over the top. It froths pleasantly as it fills in the cracks. It will thicken into a true custard studded with craggy bits of tart rhubarb. My mouth waters.
Coming back to Grafton after all this time has felt strangely like coming home. After all, it is where my mother raised me. The only real childhood home I ever knew.
The last time I spoke to my mother wasthatnight. It was already dark when she came into our room and kissed me on the forehead. I was bleary-eyed, already asleep. She smelled of the outdoors, of crisp leaves and woodsmoke. Pale moonlight slanted in through the window, hitting her side where she sat on my bed. Her eyes sparkled.
“Things are going to get better for us,” she’d said, leaning over me. Her hair was loose and tickled my face as she gave me a kiss. I fell asleep against her, and will never forgive myself for sleeping so deeply, because when I woke up the next morning, she was gone.
PRADYUMNA
I’ve had my spark of inspiration at the beginning of the bake as I normally do—a savory mushroom pie with dough that’s infused with thyme and rosemary and a sweet one inspired by my favorite summer cocktail, the Dark and Stormy. The idea is, as always, the fun part, and now, an hour into the competition, I find myself looking around the room, watching the others. I have the intense desire to engage someone in conversation, to shake things up, but they all look so serious. Stella is mixing something on the stove with an expression of pure dread on her face. Gerald is measuring his crust with a ruler. I glance behind me. Lottie is fussing with her pie, her eyebrows pinched with focus. As she attempts to weave a top crust into latticework, a slender ribbon of dough pulls free and flops onto the table. She starts again, exasperated. I wonder what she was doing walking down the hallway last night like some sort of weird Victorian ghost. I will ask her later, if only just to see if she even remembers it. Of the five of us, only Hannah looks like she’s enjoying herself, a small smile playing on her lips as she fills one of her crusts with a bright pink custard. She catches me looking at her and scowls slightly, shaking her head.
I jerk my head back to my table, irritated.Does she think I’m going to copy her?With a sigh, I turn to the rum-and-lime curd I’ve been making for the filling. The rum bottle sits open in front of me, letting off tantalizing wafts of sharp alcohol. It is taking all my strength not to reach for the bottle and take a quick slug. Is it terrible to admit that I’m getting a bit tired of baking? I’ve never had to do it for so long or with such discipline. It’s nothing to do with baking itself. Pies and breads are fine enough. It’s spending so much time in forced concentration without music or a podcast to distract me that is becoming tedious.
I’m just a bit off today, I tell myself, spreading the curd into the base of a parbaked crust. But if I’m really being honest, it had already started the first day I arrived. The feeling is coming back. I’ve had it for years, an endless, aching boredom. Generally, when I start to feel the emptiness, my first line of defense is to catch it off guard with a distraction. I’ve done this more times than I can count with a variety of different activities—tennis, yachting, sky diving, elaborate trips to climb far-flung mountains. I have to say that all of them have worked to varying degrees. There is an art to finding a good distraction, one that will keep you from sinking into the abyss. There needs to be some action incorporated into it, and it needs to involve other people, so nothing too sedentary or isolating. No knitting or chess. But it can’t be just empty action. There needs to be some sort of goal, some way of bettering yourself or learning a new skill. Otherwise, you will start to question what the point of it even is, and you will become restless. And if you are at loose ends, you will leave yourself open, vulnerable, and the feeling will find you.
There’s a commotion in front of me, breaking me free from my thoughts. Gerald has started yelling. He is waving his arms around above his head as though defending himself from the cameras, which are scattering around him, retreating. “This is not right,” he shouts as he runs down the corridor between the baking tables. “Someone is not playing by the rules.”
He is such a good baker, so meticulous and controlled, that I’m shocked he could have such an outburst. I watch Archie retreat to the far side of the tent, taking refuge between Melanie and Betsy, the look on his face a hilarious mix of fear and embarrassment.
Honestly, I’m just grateful for the excitement.
GERALD
ThoughBake Weekhas a pantry of staples for contestants to use, I’ve brought my hand-ground pastry flour and orange syrup. I prefer to do the job myself and to make sure it is done correctly. I look at each ingredient, accounting for their whereabouts before I begin. After that disaster with the train, I want to be absolutely certain everything is done right and according to plan. No more mistakes.
I melt butter on low heat, pouring it into a bowl with my sugar and mixing it thoroughly with a teaspoon of vanilla. I crack an egg into the mixture and open my orange essence just as Archie comes up to my baking station surrounded by a small cadre of cameramen. Something is wrong. The orange smell is off; in fact it doesn’t smell of orange at all anymore.
“Geraaalllld,” Archie croons in his overly friendly way. “Everything going perfectly, I’d assume. Not a grain of sugar out of place?”
