Today’s word is zucchini. I had an imediate reaction to this word, though probably not the one people would expect. It made me hungry. So off to the kitchen I went… and twenty minutes later I sat down to my computer, sauteed zukes in hand, to write this week’s story. Hope you enjoy!
If she had just handed over the recipe, everything would have been alright. If she hadn’t been such a selfish bitch, everything would have been fine. But she didn’t and she was, so everything is decidedly not alright. I suppose I should back up a bit, let you in on what got us to this point. What point? I am the owner of Beth Trinkle’s prize-winning Zucchini Bread recipe… and Beth? She’s dead.
Everything about Beth Trinkle was perfect. She had the most beautiful, bouncy blonde hair I had ever seen and even with braces in her 15-year old mouth, she was gorgeous. And to a gangly, mousy-brunette, ordinary looking new girl like myself, she looked like the epitome of what a girl should be. Beth and I met in the 9th grade at Benjamin Franklin Preparatory Academy. Her family, being of the genteel southern variety, had been going there for generations and mine had finally scraped together enough money to get me out of the horrible school I had been attending. I had been telling them for years that my school was hell. They only began to believe me when a 12-year old black boy was hung outside the school gym in 1954. Integration wasn’t going to come easy in Georgia. Or in other places in the deep south from what little news came to my teenaged ears.
After that incident, my parents pinched pennies until they were able to afford a year at Ben Franklin and a year away from the racial hatred. Oh I’m not black, but my parent had a lot of black friends as did I. We weren’t the type people wanted around in those days. My parents were what we called “free thinkers” and in the 60’s they would march on Washington, DC, smoke a lot of pot and have sex in public. I would be mortified by them, but would secretly be doing the same things, just on the other coast. I was in my early 20s and I would have the time of my life, even if my parents were doing the same. I would be ok to be my mother just this once. And now back to Beth.
We never spoke. Not once. I tried my best to blend in with the deep mahogany panelled walls of BFPS and Beth never bothered to look beyond the end of her pretty little button nose. She had her lackeys, her boys in letterman’s jackets and her home economics club. And beyond my penchant for disappearing, I also had a penchant for poetry and older men. We did not travel in the same circles. But I knew her nonetheless. Who wouldn’t notice if a unicorn strolled into their math class? Even a unicorn who couldn’t multiply to save her rear end.
Alright, this is moving way too slowly. We met, she was beautiful, I was a little jealous (though I would never admit it then), blah blah blah, jump forward hmm… about 45 years. That should be good.
In 1999, we were both 60 and wound up in the same place for the first time since leaving Ben Franklin Preparatory School. I had just gotten my second divorce and moved back to Savannah, GA to get a new start. Neither of my marriages had produced offspring and I was secretly glad for that. Both my husbands had wanted children, but I had not. I do not have a maternal bone in my now-post-menopausal body. I was doing some shopping at the Piggly-Wiggly down the street from my newly leased duplex when BAM. There she was. Even though I hadn’t seen her since the 50’s, I knew her instantly. The same bouncy blonde hair now had a slight hint of silver and her damn button nose was just as cute. I admit I stalked her around the store for about 10 minutes just staring at her. I couldn’t believe how well she had aged. I wanted to think she had married a plastic surgeon who was secretly holding everything together, hell holding everything up with all his surgical prowess. I wanted to think it took a lot of prowess, but she was just one of those lucky people who aged gracefully. Somehow she was even more beautiful than she was in her teens. And she had two equally beautiful sunny blonde toddlers in the basket of her cart. And I figured that unless she was the world’s most beautiful bionic woman, those toe-headed tots were her grandchildren. Twins, wouldn’t you know it?
And now that the dripping green tones of envy are beginning to taint the edges of this little tale, we’re going to skip forward again. I still will not admit that I could have possibly been jealous of the grandchildren I didn’t want the children to get.
In 2007, at age 68, I found Beth Trinkle again. This time at Peter Pepper’s Pie & Pasta Cook-off. We had both entered the pecan pie contest & our tables had been assigned across from one another. I was unloading all of the ingredients for my blue-ribbon winning cinnamon-laced pecan pie, when the thin patch of sun between the overhead tarps bounced off of those stunning blonde waves. Needless to say, she won. Though I probably handed her that particular blue ribbon by failing to actually get my pie in the oven before time ran out. I was too busy watching her easy movements and steady hands.
A few months later, we both entered another contest. Cookies this time. I made a mental note not to watch her from across the venue and this time I actually had something to present to the judges. And it came down to Beth’s Pomegranate-Passion fruit shortbread cookies and my Oatmeal-Cardamom Chocolate Chip cookies. The judges really seemed to like my cookies, but she won. This was becoming a pattern. Not a good one. Over the course of the next year, she trumped me 7 times and I only managed to take home 2 ribbons. And to top it off, she still didn’t bother to talk to me. She beamed when she won and she lost graciously, without ever shaking my hand. I really started disliking her. I could see under her calm, ladylike southern veneer to the shallow, sullen and ugly underbelly of her temperament.
Two weeks ago, I was sent the email entry list for the mother-of-all baking contests. I had been accepted to bake in the Betty Crocker Bread Bake-off. So had Beth Trinkle. This one was special. I had never been the one to stand up front and demand attention. I was always the one who stood to the back and was content to just participate. But now I wanted the glory. I wanted my recipe in the Betty Crocker Cookbook. My name. My fame. It was the only time I had ever wanted recognition and I was damned if she was going to take my title away from me. I found her in the Piggly-Wiggly gathering ingredients for her famous Zucchini Bread. I decided she was probably practicing it so she could enter it into the contest. Damn, I thought to myself. This was going to be hard. Really hard. I was making a pumpkin bread with a swirl of cinnamon-sugar. It was good, but was it that good? I had had Beth’s bread at a bake-off in Atlanta (where, incidentally, she won $4,000 for taking 1st place) and it was absolutely the best zucchini bread I had ever eaten. Something inside me snapped. My fame was slipping through my fingers as quickly as she was loading flour and vegetables onto the checkout counter.
As she left the store, I abandoned my cart where it was and earned myself an angry look from the cart-boy. I was starved for attention that was 50-odd years overdue and I didn’t care what I had to do to get it: Beth Trinkle would know my name before the day was out. I got in my car and tailed her to her home. It was easy to keep track of her; she was the only shimmery pink SUV in Savannah with the tag “GRITGAL.” Gag.
Her home was beautiful. The kind of home you see on the cover of Southern Living magazine. Magnolia trees in the yard, azalea bushes hugging the wrap-around veranda, two-storeys of post-colonial masonry and wood painted a demure shade of farmhouse cream and three cars in the driveway. I don’t know why but I was incensed. How did this woman manage to get everything? The attention, the men, the house, the kids… no, not the kids. I didn’t care about the progeny. I still don’t.
I parked my car on the street and followed her into the driveway. I just wanted to see what she was doing. I just wanted to see her make the bread. Now let’s be honest with ourselves here, I could tell you she went right in & started making the bread, but she didn’t. She futzed around putting away groceries, did the dishes, washed the counter and laid out some fish (presumably for dinner the next night). I waited through all of this. Just to figure out how she did it would be worth the hours I spent watching her mundane home-maker’s existence.
I almost gave up hope when she started to grab the pruning shears. I thought she was going to go get some magnolia blossoms from the trees to have as a centerpiece on her table when she swapped the shears for a pair of gardening gloves. There was a large sun hat laying next to the gloves, but it was nearing dusk and there was little sun to mar her pretty porcelain face. She exited through a side door off the kitchen and very close to the window I was crouching below. I forced my way into an azalea bush and out of her line of sight and continued to watch her from my hiding spot.
She strolled silently down the path to the garden & knelt down in front of the carrots? No, those couldn’t be carrots. She was baking zucchini bread. I knew my enemy, had tasted my enemy, and as long as I could see her make it I could figure it out. If she was making something with carrots I was out of luck, out of cookbook… I was out of options. I pulled myself out of the bush by sheer will and strolled up behind her.
“What are you making for the contest?” I demanded.
“Excuse me? Who are you, why are you on my property?” I shared a winner’s podium with this woman and she didn’t even recognize me.
“I have known you since 1954. We went to school together. You’ve beaten me to a blue ribbon 8 times and I’ll be damned if you’re going to do it again. Betty Crocker is mine. Give me your damned Zucchini Bread recipe. Now.” I was getting madder by the second and her outraged expression wasn’t helping matters.
“I most certainly will not. I don’t know you and even if I did, that is my favorite recipe. I created it. It’s mine. And it will not be yours. Now kindly leave.” And just as she would dismiss an angry two year old, or a dog she had scolded, she turned her back on me in a huff.
“I haven’t come this far to leave empty handed, you old bitty. And you do know me; you just never bothered to ask my name. Or even give me the time of day. You’re going to give me your recipe because you never bothered to be human with me. You never let me into your world,” so now I’m going to force my way in, I added as an afterthought. “Give me the recipe.”
She remained facing away from me, calmly pulling carrots and brushing off the excess dirt. I could feel my hands clenching into fists at my sides but couldn’t make them stop. I felt my feet moving me forward but couldn’t make them stop. My teeth were grinding with rage and I didn’t want them to stop. The sound of my tortured molars was drowning out my rational thoughts and I liked it. I didn’t want rationality, I wanted my due. I wanted that recipe. And if I couldn’t have it, neither would Beth Trinkle…
The last thing I remember I had taken about 6 unrelenting steps toward her still kneeling body. When I came to myself again, she was lying on her side, eyes staring at me vacantly. This was a woman who no longer had that spark of life. Her hair no longer shone in the dying sun, her button nose was blotchy and imperfect and she was less… she was just less.
As I walked away from the home of Beth Trinkle, all I could think about was the competition. My pumpkin bread was going to win. I was going to win & there was nothing that she could do about it now.
Like I said before, if she had just given me the Zucchini Bread recipe, we would have been fine.
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