Pie Thief

"Thanks, Mrs. Webbe."

And so I got to lie there, fantasies running amok. Two doors and the width of a hallway away. What does she wear to sleep? T-shirt and underwear? Naked like me? Was she thinking about me two doors and the width of a hallway away? What would happen if I knocked? I had promised not to find out.

The morning came—an entendre I tried not to think about—and I lay there until I heard voices. I found Mom listening avidly to Nadie. "So, while the pears are poaching, you pulse the Gruyère with the flour, salt, and sugar in ..."

Other than a my-ears-only, big-sister, "Jed's in lerrrvvv" tease from Jess, it was astonishing how normal Nadie's presence felt. It was like when Jess's boyfriend came up, and they'd been dating for almost three years, and we all knew he was going to propose as soon as she graduated.

"Once you take them out of the oven, just put them in your mudroom to cool for— What?" She broke off as the four of us burst into laughter.

"Not if we want to eat them," Dad said. "You need to meet Pie Thief."

And so she did. And then she saw my workroom in the barn where I fixed and restored old furniture for spending money. I was taking a gap year so my parents didn't have two in university at the same time, but I was already accepted at McMaster. The thought of that was suddenly not as rosy as it had seemed months ago.

"I should get going," she said. "Mom'll want to grill me while pretending she's not." She went back inside to say goodbye to my parents and sister.

"Come again whenever," Mom said.

"Can I?" she asked me as we walked out to her car.

And so, she became a regular at the Saturday table. She'd show up about two or three, just as I was finishing out in the barn. Mom would insist on taking her backpack up to the guest room while Nadie laid out whatever she'd brought for that week's baking spree. I'd clean up in the shower, and then we'd walk or just hang out if the weather was bad. We'd have dinner and then my parents would tactfully go upstairs or hang in the kitchen, ceding us the living room.

Until the week when something different happened. I came out of the shower and found Nadie's backpack on my bed. I was halfway through dressing when I heard a tap on the door. She slid in. She followed my gaze from her face to the pack and back.

"I talked to your mother. She said they're okay with it."

That night wasn't my first time. I'd had sex with a girlfriend in high school. I knew what a blowjob felt like, and found I enjoyed returning the favour. What I hadn't done was take my time like this: half my experience had been in cars or the barn, worried about my dad needing something from his toolroom; the other half were moments grabbed when her folks weren't home.

What I hadn't done was do it with someone who electrified me the way Nadie did.

This time, after a can't-quite-meet-Mom's-eyes "we're going to the other room," I took Nadie's hand and headed upstairs. It was winter dark outside, only a little light filtering in from the barn spots. She was nervous; so was I.

She was also bashful. I could tell. After she kissed me her shoes came off quickly, but the socks followed less so, and the hands slowed dramatically as they pulled at the hem of her sweater. I remembered her self-description. I reached over and stilled her hands.

"Let me?" I asked. "I want to."

She froze and then nodded.

I took my time because I had already played this scenario out in my head during night after night of feverish imagination. I knew exactly how I wanted it to go, exactly how I wanted to extract every morsel for her so that she didn't have that dismissive tone when she said "slept with him" that she had when she told me about her last boyfriend.

I kissed her mouth as I held the sweater up over her head and she worked her arms free. I kissed her neck and that place behind her ear as I did the same with her shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra, so I kissed the dark buds that I could just make out in the shadow of her body, refusing to hurry. I wrapped my arms around her hips and lifted her, pivoting to lay her on the bed, then kissed her mouth again, and then her eyelids—"Close them. Just relax."—and then down her collarbone to bring her nipples back to full attention.

I traced a line of kisses down her belly, pausing to pop the button and work the zipper on her jeans. They weren't tight and I stepped back and grabbed the cuffs and drew them down her legs, revealing the triangle of white lace beneath.

I started from the other end this time and kissed my way up from her ankles, calves, turning her leg to catch the back of her knees, evoking a little giggle and squirm of ticklishness. Kisses, little nips too, as I worked my way up her thighs, entranced by the sound of her breath quickening. Then the juncture of leg and hip, where I hooked my fingers in her panties and drew them slowly down, letting one hand take them off her ankles while the other stroked her hip.

Then I kissed a circle around the tuft of blackness darker than the night sky ... and paused. Her hips rose. I repeated the circle of kisses. She made a sound somewhere between a moan and a whine. Another suggestive bump of her hips.

"That's not the agreement," I said.

"What!"

"The agreement is I can't do anything until you ask. You started the kissing, so that was okay, but this ..." I hoped she could hear the laughter in my voice.

"Jed!"

"I'm not picky about how you say it. I mean, since you're a baker, maybe, 'Jed, how 'bout eating my muffin?' But I can't—"

She pulled me by the hair so that our eyes met. "Jed, please."

"Close enough."

I listened to her breathing, tried to read the shifts of her hips and the gentle pressures of her hand. I tried to give her exactly what she wanted. I succeeded ... at least enough that her breathing went into overdrive and then her entire body clenched and clenched again.

I sat back on my heels and waited. She pushed down with her elbows and raised her upper body until she could look down its length at me. There was just enough light to see the satisfied smile. Then it twisted into something broader as she threw bashfulness to the wind.

"Will you please take your goddam clothes off, and come here and fuck the hell out of me?"

Christmas came. Mom declared it the best one ever, mostly because she'd gotten the one thing she'd always dreamed of: a professional oven. I'd heard Nadie and her talking as they worked on Saturday afternoons: "... always wanted ..." — "I think electric because ..." — "Convection or deck?" — "Well, Wiesheu or Unox, maybe Convotherm ..."

But there weren't any stores like that up by us, nor any bakeries going out of business, and Mom declared they were too expensive, and it wasn't worth going down to Toronto to find one, and she loved her presents just fine. And so it remained her little fantasy, one fueled by Nadie's "Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful!"

Until Kerstman heard them talking. He stopped by every once in a while to check on Pie Thief — "I've taken a liking to your little fella." — and was never averse to stopping in the kitchen for a slice of pie or a cookie or three.

He nodded me aside as he was leaving. "Tell your dad I know where we can get one."

And that Christmas morning we heard the "tzzing, tzzing, tzzing" followed by the crunching of hooves through the snow. When we all piled out, Mom shrieked when she saw the large stainless box on the back of the sledge with the giant red ribbon tied around it. And then, of course, nothing else would do but we menfolk carted an unused sideboard out of the way in the kitchen and, lo and behold, revealed a 220-volt outlet Dad and I had run in when Mom was out for a day.

"Get a room, you two," Jess said as Mom and Dad's clinch went on.

When Nadie showed up that afternoon, I tried not to be jealous that the first thing she exclaimed over was the new appliance and not seeing her boyfriend. She made up for it when we had a moment alone, making sure I knew that, while a man might not be quite as interesting as an oven, when it came to men, I was certainly her favourite, and besides, did I like the present she had for me?

I unwrapped a leather holder for my wood chisels. "You said you hated keeping them in a wooden box. I stitched it. My uncle did the tooling," she said shyly. "He's really good at it." He was. The outside of the wrap had traditional symbols beautifully cut into the leather and my name embossed.

She pointed to the corner. "He showed me, and I did that part." A heart, "N.S." and another heart.

"I love it," I said, meaning it. I gave her what I had made for her.

I'd taken samples of various woods that I'd cadged from a specialty lumber yard the last time I was down south. I'd shaved them thin and then inlaid them into two sheets of mahogany in the form of sunbursts: the lightest of bird's-eye maple leading to the darker beech and larch, moving to the rich tones of gum and mesquite. I'd built spacers and added brass hinges and then hour after hour with shellac to put a French polish on it. The results were the covers of a photo album.

Only the first page had anything on it: a picture of the two of us taken out in the midst of a grove of evergreens, untouched snow clinging to the dark green, she tucked into the circle of my arms, my chin on her hair. I'd written "Heaven" as the caption.

She stared at it a long time, then pulled me down for another long kiss.

"Geez, everybody needs to get a room around here," my sister observed from the hallway.

The thought of leaving Nadie for months at a time was almost unbearable. She worked Saturdays and alternate Sundays, so even though it was only about five hours down to Hamilton, our chances of much time together while I was at university were slim. My parents understood. Unlike when Jess went off, there was no shared excitement over "time to spread your wings." Instead, there was a quiet recognition that it would be hard for me, and "hopefully it will be midterms and then Christmas break before you know it."

But while I loved the Near North, I didn't want to work on a farm or in a store; I wanted to do software, and that meant a degree. So I packed for McMaster.

Nadie came over to say goodbye. She handed Mom a large rectangle wrapped in foil. "A blueberry buckle. I made two of them this morning." She turned to me. "And half of the other one for your drive. Watch your shirt; I used a lot of berries."

I smiled even though I could feel the upset welling inside.

"The other half's to keep me going. You lead, I'll follow," she said.

"Huh?"

Suddenly she started giggling. "Surprise! You didn't think I was going to leave you all alone, did you? I'm moving to Hamilton for the next few years."

While I did my fish-out-of-water impression, she and Mom shared a huge grin.

"What's going on?"

"That student housing assignment your mom 'accidentally' opened? Yeah, that's fake. I have a tiny, tiny apartment I rented, and your parents are paying the utilities instead of dorm fees."

"But your job ..."

"A bakery in the city has hired me. Ambe! That means 'Let's go!' Lotsa miles." She was looking at me with a curious expression on her face. I suddenly realized she was nervous, scared that she'd overstepped and that I wanted to go spread my wings unencumbered.

"This is the best surprise of my entire life!" There was no doubting the honesty in my voice.

She beamed.

At midterms, we went to her mother's for Thanksgiving. I'd been pushing for everyone together out at our place, including her mother, but Nadie had said no. "I've spent a lot of time out by your folks. She wants some time with us."

I'd met her mother a few times, but never for very long: hellos the few times when I picked Nadie up at her house; dinner there once, very polite and friendly on the surface. But I had felt myself being examined.

"Did I pass?" I'd asked Nadie later.

"The jury has not yet voted to convict." Seeing my expression, she had given me a quick kiss. "She knows what happened with wankstain"—I got a kick out of the names she gave the guy on the rare occasions she mentioned him—"and she's from a generation that had to deal with that shit even more. Trust me, she's cautious, but you're doing great."

I was somewhat quiet as we ate the turkey and all the trimmings. Nadie didn't press me to talk; she understood without a word being spoken. She filled the space, chattering away about the apartment, about the things we did, about friends we'd made. We ended with a three-berry and apple pie that had me surreptitiously loosening my belt. "Thank you. This was wonderful," I said.

Her mother smiled. "Miigwech, we say."

I repeated it.

Later, we were sitting in the living room finishing the bottle of wine I'd brought. I noticed the delicate, drop leaf gateleg table against the wall. One of the legs had clearly been broken, and someone had mended it with some bad gluing and by bodging on a steel brace.

Nadie's mother noticed me notice. "That was the first piece of furniture my husband—Nadie's father—and I bought that wasn't second hand. It ... It broke but I couldn't bear to throw it out."

There was dead silence. I didn't say a word, unsure of this ground. I glanced at Nadie, but she was looking at her mother.

"It's okay to say, Mom."

Her mother looked away from her daughter and met my eyes. "He got badly hurt at work when Nadie was young. The doctors couldn't completely fix him, and instead, they started him on opioids. He got addicted. He couldn't kick them because then the pain came back. He got weaker and weaker, couldn't hold a job. One night, he collapsed, falling against this table." She gestured toward the broken leg. "He went into rehab, and Nadie and I struggled to get by. But in the end, the drugs had ruined his immune system. He got sick and died."

There was something about the way she spoke of him, some little note in her voice that said, no matter how bad those times had been, the man she remembered was the one who had fathered her daughter, not the shell at the end.

"I kind of ruined it," she said ruefully, looking at the repair.

I debated. Finally, very tentatively, I said, "I can fix it, make it look almost like new."

She looked startled.

"You should let him, Mom. He's good at this kind of stuff. Not like fuckweasel who totally screwed up even the simplest—"

"Nadie!" her mother cut her off. "Language."

"Well, he was one," my girlfriend insisted. Mother and daughter locked eyes, and then suddenly both broke in laughter.

"Yes, he was," her mother said.

I worked hard that entire break, ignoring even homework. I broke the bad glue joint, cleaned it, sanded, re-glued, and clamped. I cut plugs from an old piece of cherry to fill screw holes. I tested solvents to find the finish and carefully touched up raw wood with stain before applying varnish. I waxed and buffed.

When I carried it in the door of Nadie's house, it glowed with a deep rich shine, better than new because age had given the wood some patina. Her mother stared at it and dabbed at one eye. "Miigwech," she said with a smile.

Later, I was carrying suitcases out and could hear them in the kitchen. "I wish you could stay longer," Nadie's mother said to her daughter. "The bakery here would take you back. Everyone says things aren't as good now."

"I know, Mom. But Jed's got to get back to school, and I can't bear to be away from him."

"Gi-zaagi`in," Nadie murmured quietly into my neck.

Those words upset me. Those words elated me.

I was upset because I had wanted to say exactly that first. I had looked it up and thought myself so incredibly clever. I'd planned when I would say it ... and that time was maybe three minutes from now. But she'd stolen a march on me. Now saying those words would be a stupid "yeah, me too" kind of thing.

I was elated because there was nothing more in the world I wanted to hear.

Elation won and I turned toward her. The expression in her dark eyes wasn't what I expected. It wasn't entirely warm and tender.

"I saw your browser history," she said.

"Oh."

"I'm not some exotic pet. I'm not gonna wear a jingle dress or take you to a powwow. I don't even go to them myself. If you have something to say to me, then I'd like it to be in your words."

Point taken.

"I love you, Nadie."

"I love you too, Jed."

The years passed. We married in a quiet ceremony up north. Mom cried. Nadie's mom cried. Jess cried. Nadie didn't. She just looked beautiful and radiant and determined and proud ... and did I mention beautiful? We honeymooned in the Bahamas, where she left me a wreck every night.

And the years passed.

We moved back up north. I could work anywhere since it was all remote, and Nadie had finally convinced the owner of the bakery in Ville-Claire to sell. We lived in town for a while, keeping Nadie's mother company. But then Mom broke her hip, and Dad asked us to come stay and help for a while. One thing led to another and soon we had built a large addition on the back of the house that was ours, with extra room for the family we wanted.

Nadie would get up early to head to Ville-Claire, and I'd get up at the same time so we could have coffee and a cinnamon bun together. Those couple of hours before I had to log on allowed me to work on my latest project: replacing that butt-ugly, orange monstrosity of a pulk with something more beautiful. It was a lapstrake design I'd found on the web, made of ash and birch, and trimmed with cedar and marquetry from shed caribou horn that Kerstman gave me.

"That's a work of art, Jed," he said.

Then we decided it was time and Nadie went off the pill.

Environment Canada, like any weather service, has trouble getting the forecast one hundred percent right.

Wombs aren't baking ovens, despite the common metaphor, and don't turn out a baby in precisely forty weeks at 37°C.

Put those facts together and maybe we should have moved back with Nadie's mother in town a few weeks before her due date, but no one expected the storm to stall over central Ontario.

There was no need for panic. Mrs. Curry lived about a mile from us, and she was a midwife.

"When it's time, come get me," she'd said.

When the snowfall turned heavy and didn't stop, she called us, "Maybe we don't wait for her water to break. If you want, I can bunk in your guest room."

It was a lively thirty-two hours. Nadie baked non-stop until the entire house was redolent of cinnamon and clove and nutmeg.

"My goodness," Mrs. Curry said, biting into a schnecken. She grinned slyly. "Maybe you'll need someone to stay around and just make sure everything's okay postpartum for ... I don't know ... maybe six months?"

We laughed. And Nadie's water broke.

"She's failing to progress," Mrs. Curry said hours later.

"What does that mean?"

"The baby's not moving down the birth canal."

"What causes that?"

"Doctors don't know."

"So, what do we do?"

"I can give her some oxytocin, but it's a drug that can cause harm."

"Define harm."

"Impairment of foetal heart rate, hypoxemia, acidemia, excessive uterine—"

I cut her off. "No. Next suggestion?"

"I can try a forceps delivery but that can injure the baby—"

"No, dammit! And her name is Ann, not baby!"

"Jed," Mom said, laying a quieting hand on my arm. "We're all upset. It's to be expected. But try not to snap at people who are only trying to help."

She was right. I took a deep breath. "What is the ideal thing?"