Apple Pie

Marthe closed the apartment door, nodding in an acquiescent way while diminishing the crack through which her neighbour continued to speak to her. Once that crack had turned into a solid line and the pushy chatter of Elisa had turned into a muffled sound, Marthe leaned against the closed door and breathed a big sigh of relief. This was the kind of person she had turned into, these days: a quivering, shaking sequence of small reliefs.

What, she wondered, was the age you had to reach before being able to breath that final, decisive sigh of relief: knowing it was too late for everything? She had been both dreading and looking forward to that moment for her entire life, but it didn’t seem to come, not even at eighty-seven. It was quite unfair.

In the afternoon, Marthe kept herself occupied with crocheting a pastel coloured bear for the daughter of her cleaning lady. The thing was growing into an enormous size, but Marthe liked the repetitive movement of the hook and the steady growth of the bear. Also, the yarn she had been gifted by Pierre, the local crafts shop owner, would finally all be put to good use. She was already wearing a pastel green sweater she had crocheted, and pastel blue and yellow napkins were adorning her dark brown couches.

              Today, however, she found herself unable to relax. She kept on muttering angry monologues to herself, and with feeling as well: her heart rate was all the way up, and she was certain that her blood pressure would be too high, as well. During her last doctor’s visit, the man had stated that she had the heart of a lioness. She had not liked that one bit. She was too old to be called something like that.

              ‘Does he even know how old I am?’ she muttered, slipping that particular annoyance seamlessly into her already ongoing monologue about Elisa’s absurd question. She huffed. ‘A lioness. The outrage.’ The hook flashed up and through, up and through, catching the sunlight with every turn, pulling the softly coloured yarn gently against the skin of her finger with every stitch. She eyed the dead grey television screen on the commode. She even didn’t feel like watching the next episode of Fruits of Friendship anymore, let alone the French dubbed version of the new season in the evening. Bother! Her entire day would turn out wasted.

              She put down the bear on her lap, clenched her teeth and watched the green and black curly patterns of her carpet, heart beating that angry drum, again and again. With a deliberate sigh, she then picked it up again. It wasn’t so much the question. Everybody was permitted to ask her to participate in their stupid activities. Apparently, they had the right, just as she had the right to politely decline.

              What jarred her beyond measure, however, was the remark Elisa had made. ‘What on earth does that woman think?’ she muttered. ‘The rudeness.’ Marthe was a very kind person, so the next thing she said, was completely out of character, and sounded absurd even to herself. ‘The old cow.’ She bit her lip, looked up, and apologised to the good Lord.

              The remark kept turning around in Marthe’s mind: ‘You know, Marthe, it isn’t because Arthur has passed away that life shouldn’t continue.’ She had then added: ‘It has been so many years now.’ Marthe still hadn’t figured out whether that had been meant in a dramatic or accusatory way, but she already knew for certain that she didn’t like either possibility.

Marthe muttered on: ‘And how she looked at me while she said it! The impertinence! As if.’ A flash of the hook. ‘She.’ A flash of the hook. ‘Knows.’ Another flash of the hook. ‘How. I. Feel. As if anybody knows how I feel. If I wish to spend all of my years in this room crocheting it is nobody’s darn business.’ 

The thing is that Marthe had always had an uncanny perception of the passing of time. For as long as she could remember, she had felt it slipping through her fingers. It seemed to travel too fast, and after a few first ever missed opportunities (not being selected winner of the Miss Potato Beauty Contest and not becoming Thomas Griffin’s girlfriend in the weeks to follow being the two major ones at the time), she had decided that she was too slow for life, and that she would just let it pass her by. Ever since she had made that decision, she had felt slightly suffocated. The feeling was not so big, however, that it couldn’t be ignored. It could.

              Her sweet Arthur, however, hadn’t taken no for an answer. On a late September afternoon, in the tavern he always dragged her to on dates, after finishing her syrup pancake, she put the damping mug of rooibos tea aside, and moved her old, gnarly hand over the table to put it on top of his. Then, she had smiled. It had brought that mischievous twinkle into his eyes, and from then on, he had been her man.

They had had two fairy tale years, in their seventies, and now he was gone. She had been shocked by the grief. Up till then, Marthe had secretly believed that she had remained completely true to her life’s moto: she would not participate in any of the chaotic mess that made up life. Not really. As grief struck her, however, in the way of a gong echoing without pause, creating an unbearable hole in the centre of her body, she had to admit that she had been sucked in anyway.

As all of this went through her mind, a tear escaped and fell onto a pastel coloured bearpaw. ‘Damn you, Arthur.’ It didn’t matter that she had been old. It had felt exactly the same as her teenage disillusions. Exactly like that, and much worse, as well.

Who on earth did her neighbour think she was, throwing such a remark at her, just because she wouldn’t join her stupid apple pie contest. It was true: nobody baked an apple pie quite like she did, but that did not compel her in the least to participate, nor did it give Elisa the right to utter such a remark.

The mind, however, is a horrible pragmatist, because even while Marthe was thinking all of this, on an entirely different highway inside of her brain, she was comparing her different apple pie recipes.

This thinking along two different highways went on for quite a while until finally, she put down her crocheting. ‘Good Gods,’ she exclaimed angrily. She got up and strode towards the door. She opened it, and made her way across the small hall towards the only other apartment in the block. She knocked.

Elisa’s face had a horrible pale sheen. ‘Yes?’ she said. For a frightening instant, Marthe thought that the woman was actually going to cry.

‘I will take part in your competition,’ she said. ‘But no artificial flavours or sweeteners should be allowed. I simply will not stand for it.’

Elisa was already nodding feverishly.

‘And I will not suffer any more talk about my private business.’

‘Of course.’

As Marthe made her way back to her own apartment, a small ball of happiness seemed to have awakened somewhere inside of stomach. She heaved a frustrated sigh. ‘Drat,’ she muttered.

Apparently, it was never too late for anything.