Read Online Labor Day by Joyce Maynard - Free Book Online Page B

before. Doing this—though I was shy to ask—gave me a nice feeling, as if I was a character on some TV show from the olden days, where the characters were always dropping in on each other and doing fun things together. Like we were all normal people here.
    When I came back with the butter, Frank cut up most of a stick of it into small pieces and scattered those over the flour too. No measuring with either of these ingredients, naturally, but when I asked him how much he used, he shook his head.
    It’s all about instinct, Henry, he said. Pay too much attention to recipes, you lose the ability to simply feel, on your nerve endings, what’s needed at the time. This was also true of people who analyzed Nolan Ryan’s fastball motion, or gardeners who spent all their time reading books about the best method for growing tomatoes, instead of just going out and getting dirt under their fingernails.
    Your mother could probably say something about this, as it relates to the world of dancing, he said. And some other areas too, that we won’t go into now.
    He shot her a look then. Their eyes met. She did not look away.
     
    One thing he would tell me, though, he said, had to do with babies. Not that he was any kind of expert, but for a brief while, long ago, he had cared for his son, and that experience more than any other had taught him the importance of following your instincts. Tuning in to the situation with all your five senses, and your body, not your brain. A baby cries in the night, and you go to pick him up. Maybe he’s screaming so hard his face is the color of a radish, or he’s gasping for breath, he’s got himself so worked up. What are you going to do, take a book off the shelf, and read what some expert has to say?
    You lay your hand against his skin and just rub his back. Blow into his ear. Press that baby up against your own skin and walk outside with him, where the night air will surround him, and moonlight fall on his face. Whistle, maybe. Dance. Hum. Pray.
    Sometimes a cool breeze might be just what the doctor ordered. Sometimes a warm hand on the belly. Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is the best. You have to pay attention. Slow things way down. Tune out the rest of the world that really doesn’t matter. Feel what the moment calls for.
    Which—back to pie—might mean more lard than butter on some occasions. More butter than lard on others. The water, too, was a variable, depending on weather, of course. And we were speaking about ice water, naturally.
    You need to use as little water as you can get away with, Frank said. Most people, when they make their crust, put in way too much. They get themselves a perfect-looking ball of dough naturally, but nobody’s giving prizes for that. They’re going to end up with a pasty crust. You know the kind I’m talking about. A person might as well be eating cardboard.
    Here was one thing I must never forget: You could always add more water to your dough, but you could never take it out. The less water, the flakier the crust.
    Mostly I was paying attention to Frank when he told me these things, and definitely, he was paying attention to me, and to the peach pie we were making. He had this way of focusing that made it seem as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.
    There was something in the way he talked about the process of making a pie that commanded a person’s attention, to the point where it was hard to look away even for a moment. But every now and then, as we worked, I’d look over at my mother, standing at the counter, watching us.
    I might almost have thought there was this whole other person standing there, she looked so different.
    She looked younger, for one thing. She was leaning against the counter, holding a peach. Now and then she’d take a bite, and when she did, because of how ripe the fruit was, the juice ran down her face, onto the flowered blouse, but when it did she didn’t seem to notice. She was nodding, and smiling. She was having