Free Labor Day by Joyce Maynard

fun was what it looked like. I got this odd feeling, when I looked at her—and then at him. It was like some kind of electric current ran between the two of them. He was talking to me, and paying attention closely, too. But there was this other thing going on, underneath all that, not recognizable to most people, or any people for that matter. Like some kind of high-pitched frequency only certain very rare individuals could pick up. Only them.
    He was talking to me. But he was sending his real message to her. And she got it.
     
    Not that he was finished with the pie lesson: now he was telling me how you made a well in the center of the bowl and splashed in only enough ice water for the top crust first, gathering up the dough to make a ball—not a perfect round ball; that would require more water than you wanted. Let it hold together just enough so you can roll it out.
    We didn’t have a rolling pin, but Frank said no problem, we could use a wine bottle, with the label taken off. He showed me the motion first—swift, brisk strokes, from the center out. Then he had me try. The only way to learn anything, to do it.
    Our dough, when we rolled it out on the counter, seemed hardly to hold together at all. His rolled-out dough only vaguely took the form of a circle. There were places where the pieces didn’t even hold together at all, though these he pressed together with the heel of his hand.
    Heel of the hand, he said. It’s got the perfect texture and temperature. People buy all these fancy tools. When sometimes the best tool for the job is right there attached to your own body. Always there when you need it.
    For a bottom crust, there was no big problem getting it in the pie dish. Frank and I had rolled out the dough on wax paper, and now that it was thin enough for his liking, and holding together, if just barely, he flipped the plate over, so it lay upside down over the rolled-out dough. Then he picked up the wax paper and turned the whole thing over. Peeled off the paper. Presto.
    He put me in charge of the filling. He let me sprinkle the sugar on the peaches first, and a little cinnamon.
    It would be great if we had Minute tapioca to soak up the juices here, he said. What do you know? We did.
    My gram’s secret ingredient, he said. Scatter a little of this stuff over the crust before you put your filling in—just so it looks like salt on a road in winter, when there’s ice—and you’ve seen your last of soggy crust. This stuff soaks up the juices for you, without that cornstarch flavor. You know those pies I’m talking about here, right, Henry? The ones with that gluey consistency, like the inside of a Pop-Tart.
    I did. We had about a hundred boxes of them in our freezer at that very moment.
    Frank cut bits of butter over the mounded peaches in the pie dish. Then we were ready for the top crust.
    This one has to stay together a little better than the bottom because we have to lift it, he told me. Still, it was always easier to add more water than take some away.
    I looked over at my mother again. She was looking at Frank. He must have felt it because he looked up then himself, back at her.
    Funny the way advice works, he said. A person might have been gone from your life twenty-five years. Certain things they said just stay in your head.
    Never overhandle the dough . Another of his gram’s sayings.
    He got that one wrong, however, he told us. Thought she meant money. That was a joke, he explained. We might not have known because one thing about Frank, the muscles on his face, that pulled so tightly under the skin of his jaw, seemed never to have formed what you could call a smile.
    We rolled out the top crust, also on wax paper. Only this time there was no way a person could turn the pie dish over on the dough, because there were peaches in it now. We’d have to lift that circle of dough off the sheet and flip it on top of the pie. For a split second there, our flaky crust, with only the minimum amount of ice