"Susan, I can more or less make a circular crust now. I"ve looked over several recipes for shoo-fly pie, but there"s not much I can do about that without the actual recipe I"m going to use and an oven. Besides, I wanted to spend some time out here with the girls."
"Sometimes you just have to make sacrifices." Susan knew her voice came out sharp, but she didn"t care. This was important.
Julie"s smile faded, and she looked as though she might cry. She stood there and looked toward Susan, then back toward the girls, then back toward Susan. "And sometimes there are other things more important. Now, loosen up those strings of perfection for a minute and come on over here and help us do the next load of curtains in our fancy washing machine."
It took every bit of Susan"s willpower not to unload everything right now. To tell them all about her conversation with Kendra, to let them know how close they still were to losing it all. No, that was her burden to bear and she wouldn"t dump it on them, but she did say, "We don"t have time for-"
"Yes"-Julie"s voice was as firm as Susan had ever heard it-"we do. This is what this whole experiment is all about. It"s not about pies, or even clean curtains. It"s about slowing down enough to really spend time with the family."
Whitney gasped aloud. "Wow, Mom! Who knew you had all that in you?"
Julie"s eyes grew wide, as if she was as surprised as everyone else that she"d actually spoken with such force. Her cheeks turned a bit pink; then she grinned and reached up to give a mock salute. "Troops dismissed."
"Aunt Julie, I"d forgotten how funny you are." Angie put her arm around Julie"s waist and Julie returned the hug.
Great. No one was doing what they needed to be doing, and now even her own daughter had jumped ship.
Chapter 11.
"Wow, Mom! Who knew you had all that in you?"
"Aunt Julie, I"d forgotten how funny you are."
Julie woke slowly and couldn"t help but smile when she looked around her spa.r.s.ely furnished room. This place was the dream she"d never even known could exist. No ringing phones. No emails asking for more volunteers. No committees. No pressure to keep up with the other moms. The reality here wasn"t easy: she"d spent the last two days hand-washing and ironing a farmhouse full of curtains. But the time had been entirely invested in her family. She"d actually had fun with the girls.
She sat up in the bed, listening to the springs screech beneath her, and wrapped her arms around her knees. There were birds singing just outside the window, and the sun was already painting a rectangle across the floor in spite of the fact it was still early. She slid off the bed, then tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen.
On the counter sat an old-fashioned percolator, and the only thing that could make this morning better would be a fresh cup of coffee. She prepped it with coffee and water, and set it on the little hot plate Kendra had provided for necessities. Within minutes it burbled to life and the smell of coffee filled the air. When it finished she poured herself a cup and took a first sip. Not bad. It definitely wasn"t as good as the freshly ground brew she made at home, but it would more than do.
Susan walked into the room, already dressed in her a.s.signed wardrobe-a long khaki skirt and a short-sleeved chambray shirt. It might have been a bit dated, but Susan managed to make it look crisp and cla.s.sic. "I thought I heard you in here."
"I think I"ve finally got this coffeepot figured out. You want a cup?"
Susan went to the cupboard and pulled out a white stone mug. "Maybe just half a cup for me. I"m so keyed up over the challenge today I don"t think it"s a good idea to put much caffeine on top of that."
"What are you nervous about? I"m the one who has to do the cooking." Julie laughed as she asked the question.
Susan kept her back squarely turned, making Julie think she was avoiding the question. And she was. Her continued silence said as much.
"That"s it, isn"t it? You"re worried I"ll mess it up?" Just like that, Julie"s dream morning fizzled, right back into the stress and failure she"d left behind.
Susan shrugged and kept her back turned. "This is so important to me."
"I am going to do my best, Susan; you know I am."
"Are you?" Susan turned, her face perfectly serious. "I would think that if you truly wanted to do your best, you would have actually made a pie yesterday."
"I didn"t have an oven, remember? I could have a.s.sembled the ingredients and poured them into a crust, I suppose. And it wasn"t like I was loafing around. You"re the one who wanted all the curtains washed and pressed for the picture, remember?"
"Yes, I do remember. But I also remember that before I left to go shoot a segment downtown, I specifically asked you to practice your pie making, and you didn"t. You made a point of avoiding it, in fact."
Had she been wrong yesterday? Julie didn"t think so, at least she hadn"t at the time. Now she felt that all-too-familiar uncertainty. "Susan, I am sorry. I guess I didn"t realize how strongly you felt about it."
Susan poured herself coffee. "Well, you do now." She took a sip, made a face, and shook her head. "I"m sorry, I didn"t mean for that to come out so harsh. But we know everything that happens is going to reflect on me. And you know how much I need to succeed in this."
"I know, and I"m sorry I didn"t spend more time figuring out the pie stuff." Julie said the words, but she wasn"t sure she believed them.
Three hours later Julie sat in the makeup chair, getting powder dusted all across her face. It tickled her nose, and her eyes watered from the effort of not sneezing.
"The idea is to make it look like you"re not really wearing makeup, but to make you look better in the process." The makeup artist had spiky white-blond hair with jagged dark roots, dark eyeliner that accentuated huge blue eyes, and a small nose ring. "There, I think this ought to work just right. What do you think, Kendra?"
Kendra came around the chair for a closer look. She bent over to inspect Susan"s face first, gave a quick nod, and moved over to Julie. She stared for what seemed forever and frowned. "We could really use a bit more concealer on the uh . . . " She made a semicircular motion under her eyes. "We want her to look natural, but I don"t want her to look like an insomniac."
A glance in the mirror only confirmed what Kendra had said, what Julie already knew. She looked awful.
There were loud banging sounds coming from just outside the shack. Since the delivery truck had arrived an hour or so ago, Julie a.s.sumed they were making the final setup to the oven. Her stomach tightened, and she glanced toward Susan, who was looking nervously toward the door. Julie would do this well. She had to, for Susan"s sake. And for her own.
"Here we go." The makeup girl, whose name Julie had not been told, leaned forward and applied something beneath Julie"s eyes. "Yes, that is better, I think."
Kendra nodded. "Okay, ladies, it"s time for your big debut. Let"s get moving."
Julie"s stomach began to flop as she stood up. It wasn"t until this moment that she"d fully come to terms with the fact she was about to be on national television, on a show watched by millions of women, most of whom knew their way around a kitchen. More than Lisa Lee or Kendra, they"d be the harshest judge of her success or failure. Well, she"d just have to show them she could do this.
Kendra led them through the back screened porch. "Along with the new stove, you"ll see that we"ve added some additional lighting in the kitchen. It"s better for the cameras." Kendra held open the door. "What do you ladies think about your new cooktop?"
A huge, gleaming piece of . . . black metal . . . more than filled the s.p.a.ce where the old gas range had been. There were only two openings on the stove top, and beneath that, what looked like two separate oven doors. Kendra walked over to the door on the left and opened it. "This is where you put the wood." Then she opened the door on the right. "This is your oven. Any questions?"
"Uh . . . I have one." Julie looked at Kendra. "You are kidding, right?"
Chapter 12.
"Ladies, time for our first post-challenge interview. Susan, you will sit in that chair." Kendra pointed toward an old bent wood rocker. "Now, remember, I"ll be off-camera, so when I ask you a question, I want you to more or less repeat the question in your answer. I"ll be completely cut out of the final product."
Susan nodded her understanding and pasted on a confident smile. Truth was, she really needed to vomit. How could this first week have been any more of a disaster? And now, she was going to have to sit here in front of all of America and try to somehow convince them that she was thriving, embodying the life of an almost-Amish person. "I"m ready."
Kendra took her place behind the cameraman. "So tell us how your life has unfolded this week. What was your first impression when you arrived here at the farm?"
Susan couldn"t quite bring herself to look directly at the camera; it was too terrifying. Instead, she focused on the red light just above it, gleaming at her as if to say "it"s your turn." "My first impression when we arrived here was simply, I couldn"t believe how beautiful the countryside is. It"s so lush and green, and the rolling hills are just breathtaking."
"Good. Now, tell us what most surprised you in a bad way."
Susan took a deep breath and considered her words. She didn"t want to say anything that might make her come across as whiny, yet she didn"t want to go so far in the other direction that her truthfulness was called into question. "It can be quite hot here at times. And the humidity is something I"m not really used to. . . ." Her mind kept searching for a way to put a positive spin on even the negative. "I understand the humidity is good for one"s skin, which perhaps explains why southern women are known for being so beautiful-they have fewer wrinkles than those of us who come from the dryer climates." Maybe this wasn"t going to be so bad after all. Somehow, so far at least, she"d been able to keep her cool. Judging from the satisfied expression on Kendra"s face, she felt the same way.
"So tell us about the cooking challenge from earlier today."
Susan tried to smile, as if it were all in good humor, but in truth, she was furious. She would have to be very careful about what she did and didn"t say. "The cooking challenge was a bit of a . . . challenge, to say the least." Again, she fought to produce a smile, uncertain of how convincing the results were. "Today was the first time we"d ever seen a wood stove, and apparently the internal temperature is much more difficult to control than it is with an electric or gas oven."
"Do you remember learning that the local Amish don"t use gas appliances?"
"Uh . . ." Susan"s tongue felt thick. "Well, I . . ."
"Let"s move on. As you know, the pies did not turn out all that well. In retrospect, should you have done something differently? Do you wish you had been the one doing the cooking?"
Susan thought of the burned outer layer of the pie, the mushy inner layer. She could still smell the mola.s.ses as it burned onto the side of the oven after Julie tilted the crust a bit too much. "Obviously, I would have liked to have my own chance at making the pie. Cooking is something I"ve enjoyed for a long time." In her mind, she flashed back to Julie, dissolving the baking soda in boiling water, then forgetting to add the cold water before adding it to the mola.s.ses and egg mixture. The resulting texture was a catastrophe. "I know that Julie did her best, but in retrospect, we should have spent a bit more time practicing her baking the day before."
"And perhaps you should have explained to her the difference between blackstrap mola.s.ses and baking mola.s.ses."
"Ah, the mola.s.ses mix-up." Susan could feel her face heating with the as yet unresolved anger. "I a.s.sumed she would know from reading the labels that one was preferable to use over the other. I would think the words *baking" mola.s.ses should have been the clue that gave it away." Susan shook her head, trying to regain her composure, but every bit of the pressure that had been placed on her was pushing down against her right now, causing her to wonder if she just might explode.
"Change of topic: let"s talk about living simply. Tell us what kind of modifications your family has over a typical Amish one, and tell us the things that are similar."
"There are a few things different about our home and a typical Amish one. First of all, we do have electricity, which powers our refrigerator, water heater, and three window air-conditioning units, which don"t keep the house-at least not a drafty old farmhouse-as cool as central air would keep a well-insulated home, but it does make it tolerable for us twenty-first-century softies." Susan grinned now, trying really hard to get back into the hospitable mode she"d tried to portray earlier. "Oh, and we do have indoor plumbing, which I gather some Amish families have to some extent, but some don"t. The ones in this area apparently don"t."
"What are the similarities, and how have they affected your family?"
"There are no telephones in our home, and we don"t have cell phones-something that is taking the teenagers some time to get used to. I will say, it has been a nice change not to see them with their heads down and their thumbs texting all the time. We don"t have electric lights except when the crew is inside the house filming; otherwise it"s all oil lamps and candles, which is lovely, if a bit inconvenient. Also there is no television-something that is taking a little getting used to, I suppose. I miss the evening news while I"m cooking dinner, but otherwise we don"t really watch a lot of television in my home. Julie and her family do a bit more, I think, and they play a lot of video games, which we don"t even have at my house. So, in some ways, this is probably harder on her and her family than it is on mine."
"All in all, how would you rate your first week here?"
Susan thought back to the kids putting their dirty creek shoes on the just-cleaned porch, to the nights that she"d spent alone in her room worried about when the summer tutor was going to show up, her list of things that still needed to be cleaned, her niece"s growing rebellion, her own growing panic that it was out of control, and the complete lack of anything here to distract her. She could mention none of it, so she smiled at the camera and said, "I can"t imagine how it could be any more perfect."
Julie sat on the edge of her bed, looking out the tall, narrow windows at the sky full of stars. They twinkled their delight, and why wouldn"t they? Stars never had to wonder why they had been created. They lit up the sky, everyone knew and acknowledged that they did it beautifully, and they never embarra.s.sed themselves-certainly not on national television.
Everyone she knew had a special gift, or two, or even three. But she had none. Susan headed up the school PTA, a charity board, and a women"s Bible study group called Lydia"s Legacy, which specialized in teaching women how to show Christian hospitality. Julie had tried the group but found herself so embarra.s.sed by her lack of skills that she"d made an excuse not to continue. In fact, it"d become such a burden that she had more or less quit inviting company over at all. The kids still had their friends over, but they were kids; they didn"t care so much.
Susan, of course, was a terrific cook and housekeeper, along with her many gifts. Thomas was a terrific businessman, with an eye for investment that had kept his clients sound through some turbulent years. Whitney had a smile that could light up an entire building, not to mention a great talent for volleyball and a heart for helping others. Brian would be a great scientist someday, just like his uncle James, who, home-wrecker though he was, still was a vice-president of a company that made some kind of parts for NASA. All of them had something going for them. But Julie had nothing.
She looked at the brightest star in her field of vision. Brian would likely know its name, but Julie decided she"d simply call it Fred. "You know, Fred, it"s not that I have a bad life. I don"t. I mean, I have a great life. A nice husband, terrific kids, good health, all that. It"s just that I feel like I don"t contribute anything. I do everything kind of mediocre, no matter how hard I try. I want to be good at something, anything."
The star continued to twinkle but gave no other response. A plane flew past, way up in the distance, and Julie watched its lights until they disappeared. Then she looked back at the sky, but this time, she didn"t talk to Fred the star; this time she talked to G.o.d. "Father, please help me to find myself. I feel like all I do is flounder and I"m not really good at anything. And I"ve been thinking that I was doing so well here, but well . . . I guess today proved just how wrong I was. Show me where my strengths lie, and help me to use them for Your glory. Help me to somehow make a difference in this world. And please, please, keep me from making a complete fool of myself on television again next week. Or the rest of our time here. Amen."
Chapter 13.
The beginning of their second week arrived with a sticky heat that invaded the farmhouse in a little-too-warm haze. Julie washed the last of the breakfast dishes quickly, wanting to get out of the hot kitchen as soon as possible. Even though they had installed the "summer grate" into the firebox of the stove, it still put out a lot of heat into the room. She wiped her forehead, already thinking how much she was going to enjoy a nice cold shower.
"So tell me about this church we"re going to again." Whitney came into the room, picked up a dish towel, and went to work drying a white plate from the drying rack. The shoulders and back of her green shirt were splotched a darker color from where her still-damp hair had touched it. "I mean, is this going to be a small country church, or one of those places with a gymnasium, or what?"
Julie put another plate in the rack, then picked up a couple of forks to scrub. "I gathered from what Kendra said it"s going to be somewhere in the middle. It"s not one of those huge churches we saw as we drove through town, but they did some checking and found a place that has a fair amount of families like ours."
"So they"ll be teenagers, then?"
"I"m a.s.suming."
Whitney groaned and shook her head.
"I"d think that you would be ready to see some other kids your age that were of no family relation by this point."
"I am. It"s just"-she held up a strand of her hair-"with no electrical hair appliances, they"re all going to think I"m a fuzz-head from another planet, not to mention these clothes we have to wear."
Julie turned to her daughter, prepared to argue that it really wasn"t that bad. But, in truth, Whitney"s hair was as frizzy as Julie had ever seen it. "You brought some of that gel, didn"t you?"
"Yeah, but it doesn"t work all that great without a straightener."
"What if we put just a little into your hair, to tame the frizzies a bit, and then I"ll do a french braid. We haven"t braided your hair in a long time."
Whitney"s eyes brightened. "Will you do that one where you braid both sides, and then they meet up into one big braid in the back?"
"Sure."
Whitney nodded. "All right. Here, I"ll help you finish the dishes first."
The church turned out to be a brown brick building that looked newish. It was more oval than rectangular, and the entrance rose up into a steeple above. All in all, quite nice.
Gary pulled the Suburban into a parking place and turned to the group. "Enjoy yourselves."
"Aren"t you coming with us?" Brian leaned up from the backseat.
"Well, I"m planning on attending, but I supposed that your family might like a little time without all the show crew around for a change."
"Nah. We see each other plenty. Besides, I"d really appreciate it if you don"t leave me sitting in a row full of all females. I mean, what would that say about my macho-ism?"
"It might say you"re macho enough to gain the favor of four beautiful women. Ever thought of that?"
"Um, no. Come on, please?"
Gary shrugged. "Sure, if that"s okay with everyone else."
Whitney and Angie were quick with their agreement, and Julie followed with, "Even without my son"s need for male companionship, I think it would be nice if you sat with us."
Susan was the last to respond, and Julie began to wonder if she was going to protest. Finally she said, "If you"re okay with it."