“Pie”
When Willa was 9 years old her Mama wouldn't let her have pie. So she stole quarters from the jar above the refrigerator, standing on a kitchen chair with chunky legs quivering and sneakered feet on tiptoes. Pockets heavy with change, she stood up on her flamingo-pink Huffy pedals all the way to the store and bought a can of frosting. It was the fluffy butter cream kind – the type that made a perfect creamy-sugary-crunchy sandwich with graham crackers. She stowed it under her bed; the lacy white dust ruffle concealed any contraband beautifully.
Allison Reed lived across the street, and her mother kept M&Ms in a crystal dish on the coffee table. Willa would stare at the bowl, with all its facets distorting the hundreds of colored candy spheres, and dig her little fist inside to fill up her pockets with sticky handfuls. She didn't understand why her friend didn't take advantage of this delicious treasure, which was right in her very own house.
Allison shrugged, and watched Willa's rainbow-stained hands warily as they brushed the platinum hair of her new doll. “It's just always here.”
Allison and her doll had matching hair. She took piano lessons and tennis lessons and ballet lessons – she had everything and shared nothing, because there were no brothers or sisters in her house. She wore a little two-piece bathing suit at the city pool, and her slim brown legs flicked through the water like elegant scissor blades. Willa sat on the blue edge of the pool - where the butt of her swimsuit snagged on the concrete – extending one chubby pale leg out, then another, then another, until both were held out in disgusting tandem, chlorine-scented water beading over the baby-hair of childish limbs. All around her the other kids splashed, laughed and the teenage lifeguards lounged in their high red plastic seats, wrapping their bleached hair into endless ponytails and tilting their heavily-made up tan faces towards the sun.
In the mornings Mama pulled Willa's thick dark hair into a tight French braid – so tight that her brown eyes arched up at the corners – and sent her off to get on the school bus with Allison. Willa dreaded the bus, with its greasy-dirty smelling rubbery seats and ear-piercing child shrieks, so she walked in wide circles, crossing the street in a series of loops to waste plenty of time. Allison always brought two strawberry Pop-Tarts wrapped in a paper napkin. Sometimes she would give one to Willa, whose chilly Special K breakfast paled in comparison to a nice toasty pastry. When she bit into it, the sprinkles scraped the roof of her mouth and the sugary jam insides stung her tongue with sweet.
People called Willa's Mama beautiful. She had lovely large eyes and thick, dark curly hair – but what Willa noticed the most was that she was delicate, small and thin, like a doll. Her soft hands always had long fingernails, sometimes painted red or pink, and she watched herself in the bathroom mirror with a critical eye.
“You'll grow up, sweetheart,” she said with a pinched smile, squeezing Willa in a petite hug. “And you'll be so pretty.”
Mama always told Allison she was pretty. She would beam her bright-white smile and stroke Allison's hair whenever she said hello. Willa was old enough to notice that Mama never told Allison that she would be pretty when she grew up, but that she was pretty now. It made her stomach feel funny, like she was mad at Allison but sad with Mama at the same time. After that Willa started chewing her fingernails whenever Allison came over.
In the summers Allison and Willa would ride their bikes to the farm where Allison had a horse – it was a little doll house barn just outside of town, and a short 10-minute trip down sunny gravel roads. Willa would close her eyes and sail down the pebbled hills, legs and hair flying.
The horse was a dirty-white color with flaring nostrils and pink-tinged eyes – not the fairy-tale cream-colored animal of little girl fantasies. But when Allison rode it through the golden late-summer sunlight, Willa held her breath. Her light hair would stream behind her, and she bent her legs at the knee in two straight, clean bronze lines, squeezing the horse's belly with her heels, flying faster and faster around the bumpy field. Her pointed features remained dutifully serious, and when she let Willa sit behind her on the smooth English saddle, she kept straight and silent. Willa would clasp her hands around Allison's wisp of a waist, a clumsy passenger – she rose and fell haplessly on the horse's broad back, the grass swishing past, seemingly miles below her dangling feet. But the sky was so big and blue, streaked with clouds, and she leaned back into it, into the loud quiet of the country.
Afterwards they would sometimes get ice cream, and Willa would feel guilty about it, while she watched Allison casually eating some enormous bowl of chocolate-peanut butter-covered sundae. Allison's mother even gave her money for ice cream. Willa did not want to ask her Mama, because she knew what the answer wouldn't be. When she rode her bike into the garage, there was a single drip of melted vanilla on the pink handlebars. She wiped it clean with one finger, before the screen door slip-slapped and Mama, prettily flushed and wiping her hands on a dish towel, came out to ask how her day was. Willa would talk, but carefully leave out the ice cream part. This was not unusual – it just was.
When they were fourteen, Allison moved to a bigger house out in the country – rumor had it that she even had a bedroom in an honest-to-god tower. Willa didn't know, because Allison didn't talk to her anymore. She smiled beatifically, when she floated past in the hallways at school, but there were no more strawberry Pop-Tarts or shared squeaky bus seats. Most unfortunate was that Allison had gotten beautiful, just as predicted. Her white-blond hair reached the middle of her back, and her legs were still two clean bronze lines. She was on the honor roll and the track team. She seemed to be always happy; her laugh echoed across the school cafeteria like wind chimes. She made boys nervous. She made Willa nervous.
It was a fall afternoon that Allison came to the front door. Willa was home alone and making popcorn, the kind that came in little pressed red and white bags and slowly grew in the microwave, amid an angry flurry of bursting noises . Since Mama was gone, she melted a chunk of butter and dumped it over the bowl; the white pieces of fluff shrank under the warm greasy weight.
Willa saw Allison out of the corner of her eye – she was standing on the front steps, one hand bending a sleek leg back, stretching her quadriceps. She rang the doorbell again – pulled a tan arm around and above her head, first the right, then the left. From the corner of the bay window, Willa could see her blond ponytail and the heels of her pricey running shoes.
She swung the door open a little too quickly, and Allison looked up with the pearl-toothed smile that Willa remembered. As a child Allison had a mouthful of tiny, perfectly straight teeth, and it seemed that they had decided to stay that way. As she stared at them now, however, they seemed almost freakish – but Willa couldn't tell if that was the truth, or if she just really wanted it to be.
“Hi, Willa!” Allison's voice was breathless and too high. She gazed down from her considerable height, and smiled at Willa as if she were talking to a little child. “Is your mom home?”
Willa slouched in the door frame and wrapped her arms around her stomach, almost protectively. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of her slouchy cotton shorts, and the old t-shirt she wore around the house in the summertime.
“Um . . . no. Why?” It became a flat statement instead of a question.
“Oh. We're selling raffle tickets for track.” Allison peered around the door, into the living room and the kitchen beyond it. She was flushed but not sweaty, and she held her slender frame almost regally, as if standing on front porches and obtaining money for sports was just about the most important thing she could do in her life up to that point. “Is your dad here?”
“No, no one else is home.” Willa felt the rising irritation that was nagging at her throat. Furious prickles of heat dotted her cheeks, like they did when she had to give a speech in school. She surveyed Allison, who, she now noticed, had grown actual breasts.
“Well, I'll check another time, OK? Bye!” Allison smiled again, a quick one this time – then she turned and sprinted down the driveway and into the street, a teenage gazelle with willowy limbs.
Willa watched her move gracefully, gradually getting smaller and smaller as she disappeared into a running dot at the end of the street. She looked at her bowl of popcorn, now soggy with melted fat, and thought better of it. The box of SnackWells fat-free chocolate cupcakes would do very nicely. The small cellophane wrappers ripped open easily, and the leftover frosting print made on each little paper square pedestal was easily scraped off with a metal-studded overbite. Willa sank into the couch cushions, while the late afternoon light bathed the living room in yellow and gold, and wondered if Allison ever had anything to be sad about.
In the summertime, Willa watered plants for Mrs. Henley across the street – lugging large, green plastic watering cans and dumping the sun-warmed contents of the garden hose into potted petunias and bleeding hearts, ducking into the dark, dusty garage to wipe the mud from her shoes. Mrs. Henley paid in thin, crumpled dollar bills that looked about as old as she was. The day before high school started, she handed Willa her usual handful of crinkly singles, and a blue Wedgwood dinner plate covered with an apple pie slice the size of Texas.
“I know you like my pie,” she remarked, gazing proudly at her baking handiwork.
Willa thanked Mrs. Henley and went out into the garage, standing perfectly still in the dim light, under the wooden beams covered with errant spiderwebs. The plate felt heavy in her hand.
“Good grief,” Mama spat when Willa set the plate on the kitchen counter. “Just what you need, pie. Well, save a little for your dad, and toss the rest.” She Looked at the pie plate as if it were something vile, evil, disgusting. “Can't that woman just pay you in cash?”
Willa scraped the pastry into the trash, watching the cinnamon-flecked filling ooze in over coffee grounds, eggshells, soggy paper towels. “She did.”
“Well. She doesn't have to worry about you, you're not her daughter.” Mama watched Willa's eyes watching hers as they surveyed chubby adolescent curves of flesh, the small bust, thickish legs ending in two dirty white tennis shoes. She held her thin hand at her throat, where the flesh was tight against her collarbone and the tiny gold chain of her usual pearl-pendant necklace lay, reposing over olive skin. To Willa, she looked for all the world as if she was getting herself ready for disappointment.
Willa's Mama took the Wedgwood plate in her hand, holding it over the sink, up to the light. Crust flakes and apple slid down the china, over the little painted dancing figures; men in old- fashioned suits and women wearing balloon-sleeved dresses with tiny waists drawn up tight by invisible painted corsets. “This sure is a pretty plate, though.”
In Willa's dream, Allison was slender, sylph-like and shiny-faced. Her eyes were hard and cold, like two round blue stones, and she wore her track uniform – maroon and white shorts up-to-there and a matching jersey tank emblazoned with the number 5. Her socks barely covered her slim ankles, and her shoes were those space-age shaped Nikes with the cratered rubber soles. But for some reason, she looked as beautiful as if she were wearing a prom gown. She stood in the middle of the high school gym, and stared up at the bleachers, which were filled with people, alternately staring back at her. There were boys, girls, old ladies, children. They all looked awestruck and, somehow, small. Allison stood in the center, perfect, taut, well-muscled limbs rooted to the spot. Her platinum hair was in a neat ponytail, so one could see the nape of her neck, tanned and smooth with a tiny mole in the hollow at the base of her skull. Willa imagined there were countless boys who were enamored with that spot; the boys who sat behind Allison in class and stared at the back of her neck, down past the elastic clasp of her bra, the bumps of her spine, the small of her back against the hard orange particle-board desk chair. She was sure that when they went to sleep at night, all sloppy-sweaty in their mysterious boy rooms, their dirty adolescent dreams ran rife with secret girl encounters. She, Willa, would never find her way into sleepy teenage male brains, because it seemed that the Allison Reeds of the world would stand in her way, with their perfect slender legs affixed to the floor – their slow, sweet smiles betraying their knowledge of what it was like to be always happy, always beautiful, always adored.
Willa was thinking about her dream when she saw Allison in the school parking lot, where all the yellow buses were lined up in a row, waiting for passengers and spewing exhaust fumes. Allison was alone, for once, her pale blue backpack dangling from her straight back, her French book clutched to her chest. Willa caught her eye over the packs of kids threading their way through the crowd. She was hesitant to wave, but then Allison gave her a tiny smile. She smiled and then she wrapped her arms around herself, either for warmth or security, Willa couldn't tell which. In that after-school mob, all alone like that, Allison actually managed to seem small. Willa found a seat on her bus, and leaned her head against the window, her temple cooling from the damp, dirty glass. When the bus started to move, she traced her finger along the dust, making swirls and curlicues, and she imagined herself on Allison's horse again, thundering over the same bumpy field, legs held tight to the animal's flank and the ground speeding past underneath. But this time she was alone, and it was she who urged the horse faster, laughing, leaning her head back into the loud quiet of the country and melting in with the blue sky. It was summer, it was bright and clean and pretty, and pie didn't seem so important anymore.
