Forever Hilltop

Filled with curiosity and a little dread, Alex dialed the Olsons’ phone number. Lydia picked up on the second ring. “Pastor Alex, is that you?”

“Have you fixed yourself dinner yet?” she interrupted, which was uncharacteristically impolite.

“Don’t do a thing. I’ll be right over. How do you feel about chicken potpie?”

“I do. Preheat your oven to four hundred degrees. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Lydia hung up.

Alex walked into the kitchen to do as he was told. After turning on the stove, he took two plates from the cupboard and set the table. If Lydia was determined to teach him to cook, he hoped she’d also take the risk of eating his creation. It would be good to have someone with whom to share supper.

Alex stared, unseeing, out the window that overlooked the yard. Another touch of melancholy hit him. He’d thought by now he’d have the company of a family, his family, at mealtimes. Alex fought back the loneliness that had been plaguing him. Why now? It had been months since he and Natalie had separated. Perhaps this was the first time since their breakup that he’d allowed himself to feel all that was inside him.

He’d just put water glasses filled with ice on the table when Lydia rapped on the door. Before he could reach it, she opened it and came inside carrying two big canvas bags. She handed one to Alex and bustled to the kitchen counter with the other.

“Groceries,” she said briskly. “Take them out and put them on the counter. I assumed you wouldn’t have everything we needed so I brought it all.”

“You were certainly sure I would be home and ready to cook tonight,” Alex said mildly as he took a package of frozen peas and carrots and ready-made piecrusts out of the tote.

“I knew you’d be home and ready to cook sometime, I’m just glad you were available tonight.” Lydia busied herself putting things in order on the counter. “I wanted to teach you my real recipe but this will have to do.”

“My everything-from-scratch version.” She put her fists on her ample hips and looked at the counter appraisingly. “Tonight we’re taking shortcuts.” Lydia pointed to the ready-made piecrust and frozen vegetables. “The piecrust should be homemade with lard to be really tender. The peas, carrots and onions should be garden fresh, but we’ll make do. I’ve already cooked the chicken. Next time you can do it. Here’s your recipe.”

LYDIA’S CHICKEN POTPIE

• 1 two- or three-pound whole rotisserie chicken (meat picked off the bones)

• 2 frozen piecrusts, thawed

• 1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup

• 1 package green peas and carrots (10 ounces, although I often use more)

• 1 teaspoon chicken bouillon

• ½ to 1 cup water to dissolve bouillon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pour soup into saucepan and add peas and carrots, bouillon and water as needed. Simmer till smooth. Mix in chicken. Roll out piecrust. Pour mixture into one piecrust and cover with the other. Seal edges. Cut small steam hole in top crust. Bake 30–35 minutes or until crust is brown.

Under Lydia’s watchful eye, Alex simmered vegetables in cream soup seasoned with bouillon and diced the precooked chicken she’d brought. She was nervous as a sparrow, he observed, flitting from one place to another, wiping an invisible spot from one counter and rearranging dishes on another.

Did he imagine it or were her hands trembling? “Lydia, was there something you wanted to discuss…”

“Roll out this piecrust for the bottom of the potpie,” she ordered, ignoring the question. She handed him the rolling pin she’d found in a drawer. “Put a little flour down first so it doesn’t stick. And don’t handle the rolling pin like a baseball bat. You’re holding it like you want to hit a ball over the fence.”

“Use a light touch. We don’t want the crust ground into the counter. There now, just flatten the dough ball slightly and turn it a quarter turn. Now do it again. If you keep turning the pastry and making sure there’s a little, but not too much, flour beneath it, you’ll be able to roll a nice, even crust. Now there you go, pressing too hard. Light touch, remember?”

Under Lydia’s tutelage he learned how to pick up a piecrust with a long, thin spatula and transfer it to a pan, fill it with the cooked mixture and top it with the second crust. “There, how’s that?” It looked promising but a little sloppy to his untrained eye.

“Crimp the edges, put a small hole in the top to release steam and it’s ready to bake.” Lydia looked at the potpie with a satisfied expression. “I believe I have a very bright student.”

Lydia tucked the edges of the top crust beneath those of the bottom and, using the forefinger of her right hand and the thumb and forefinger of her left, made a ruffled pattern in the crust around the pan. “Like that.”

Carefully Alex transferred his prize to the oven. With a feeling of satisfaction, he set the oven timer. He was going to have an entire repertoire by the time he cooked for his sister Carol. The idea pleased him immensely.

“You’ll eat supper with me, won’t you?” he asked. “You can’t leave now, before you’ve tasted the finished product.”

“Thank you. I will. My brothers can fend for themselves for once. Surely between the two of them they can figure out how to make a sandwich.”

Alex turned so that Lydia couldn’t see him smile. Feisty was Lydia’s middle name today. As they sat across the table from each other waiting for the stove’s timer to ring, Alex tried to ferret out the real reason for Lydia’s visit.

“I appreciate the cooking lesson, Lydia, and I look forward to many more of them, but I have a hunch there’s something else behind our session today. Want to talk about it?”

“I tell you, Pastor, I just don’t know what to do anymore!” The timer rang and Lydia erupted out of her chair like a rocket from a launch pad at NASA. “Mercy, that startled me! Could have given me a heart attack!” She hurried to the stove and withdrew a perfectly golden brown chicken potpie with steam coming out of the center hole like a little geyser. “Look at what you did!”

Alex wasn’t given to unnecessary pride, but the sight of the bit of culinary perfection did fill him with an unparalleled sense of satisfaction, much like when he had first learned to ride his bicycle without training wheels. “It’s lovely. Shall we see if it’s edible?”

Lydia marched the dish to the table and gave it the place of honor on a wooden trivet. Then she dipped a serving spoon in the crust. Alex heard the delicate crunching of crust and smelled a fragrant aroma of chicken and vegetables. His salivary glands sprang to life.

“I’ll dish up, you pray,” Lydia said as she filled his plate. After she’d made a plate for herself, she sat down and looked at Alex expectantly.

After the prayer, Lydia took a bite from her plate and sampled it with the intensity of a food critic about to write an article for the New York Times. She laid down her fork and announced, “Delicious!”

“Your brothers are lucky men to have someone like you to feed them,” Alex said when he could speak. He knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing by the grim expression on Lydia’s face. “Aren’t they?”

“Those two! Spoiled as the day is long! I’m so fed up with the both of them right now I could just…just”—it seemed to be taking her quite a while to think of something bad enough to say—“just barf!”

“Oh well, I…” How did one respond to that, coming from this prim and proper pillar of the congregation? It was probably as close to uncouth language as Lydia Olson had ever gotten.

“I’ve become those two boys’ slave,” Lydia fumed. “Lydia, do this, Lydia, get that, Lydia, I thought I told you to make apple pie, not cherry….’ Never a ‘thank you’ or a ‘please’ anymore. I’m no different in the kitchen than the toaster or the stove, just something that prepares food for those two big bellies!”

Alex had never gotten a good look at Jacob Olson, who was a serious recluse, but he had to agree with Lydia’s assessment of her brother Clarence’s anatomy. Clarence looked as if his stomach had been inflated with a bicycle pump. Too many pies, no doubt.

“Are you feeling taken for granted?” Alex ventured. “Overworked? Underappreciated?”

“All of the above,” Lydia said grimly. “Not only that, I feel like my life is slipping away from me! I’m sixty-two years old and I haven’t had any fun yet!”

“Fun. F-U-N, fun. I haven’t traveled anywhere outside the state except for an occasional trip to Minnesota. I’ve never been to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York…Rome! I haven’t even been to Disney World. My brothers’ idea of a vacation is to go to the threshing show and watch the old-time threshers harvest grain. Then they stop at a little town that holds turtle races and bet which turtle will win. The crowning glory is to stop in Fargo on the way home and order a prime rib steak with extra horseradish. And, believe it or not, they expect me to make sandwiches to eat in the car so they don’t have to spend any extra money for lunch.” Lydia’s face reddened. “That’s not exactly my kind of travel.”

“What is your kind, Lydia?” Alex asked gently. The poor woman was so upset that he didn’t want her to have a coronary in his kitchen.

She stared at him as if he’d asked a question she’d never even considered. She took a long time to answer.

“Shopping, maybe. And the theater. Yes, the theater. And music! I’d like to go to a concert, to museums and art galleries and to take a cruise on a big ship. And I’d love to have someone to cook for me for a change.” She was practically transported to a realm of bliss by the notion. “I want to eat caviar, escargot and lobster. And I want to soak in a hot tub.” She said this as if she were asking for the moon and the stars.

“They are all reasonable requests, Lydia. I think you should be able to enjoy those things. What’s stopping you?”

“Come to think of it, it shouldn’t be.” Her jaw hardened. “I own a third of the land and I work as hard on that farm as anyone else. Why am I worrying about spending money? My brothers buy machinery all the time and I’ve used the same stove for twenty years. It’s time I spent some money!”

Alex wondered if he’d be in trouble for this little counseling session when the Olson boys heard that the pastor supported their sister in running off to New York to go to the theater. Still, the look of excitement—no, transformation—on Lydia’s face made it worth the risk.

Unfortunately, as quickly as Lydia’s exhilaration and anticipation came, they were gone again. The brief insurgency melted away.

“I can’t do any of those things! I don’t have anyone to do them with and I certainly can’t go alone.”

“That’s the real problem, you know. I’m alone. Those brothers of mine don’t understand. Clarence is satisfied with everything in his life—especially my cooking. Jacob prefers not to be with people so he’s happy like it is. Me? I’m the only one who wants things to be different.”

She gazed at Alex with a look he recognized from personal experience, and it hit him like an arrow directly to the heart. He knew what she was going to say, even before she opened her mouth.

“I’d like to be married, Pastor Alex. Is it too late for me? Has life already passed me by?”

Was it too late for him as well? It might have been easier to find a mate in the city where there were a lot of single women. But out here the only single woman his age was Lolly Roscoe, who terrified him with all her blond hair and blue-eyed intensity and desperation to marry. He understood her problem far better than Lydia probably imagined.

“Is it too late?” he finally said, after taking seconds on the potpie. “No, I don’t believe so. It’s probably more difficult now, after you’ve lived here so many years and there are so few newcomers to the area to meet, but it’s never too late. My grandfather’s best friend was widowed at seventy and remarried at eighty-two. He lived happily another ten years with a wonderful woman so I know it’s possible to find love at any age.”

“What about you, Pastor? You’re a handsome man. Why haven’t you married?” Lydia blushed the color of the pink peonies in his garden. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been so bold.”

“This conversation is just between us, right?” He smiled at her, trying to put her at ease. “I did plan to marry, but the lady found someone else.”

“I’m so sorry.” Lydia put her hand to her lips, dismayed. “That’s much worse than never having found anyone at all.”

“I’ve forgiven her. I wish her only the best. We can’t close ourselves off to love, Lydia. Neither should we be foolish and start looking for it in the wrong places. All we can do is pray about it and then leave ourselves open to what God brings into our lives.”

“How, exactly, does one go about doing that?” Lydia bristled with curiosity.

Alex had to stifle a laugh. “I’m not quite sure, but I think that hiding out in a kitchen on a farm won’t help.”

“So I should get out more?” She looked both hopeful and confused, as if she had no idea how to go about such a thing.

“Yes, I think so. Don’t close yourself off to new things. Keep your heart open, Lydia. See what shows up.”

She sighed. “It feels better already, knowing I’ve told someone how I feel.” She tucked into her second helping of food with renewed gusto.

“Lydia, perhaps you should begin to wean those brothers of yours from all the good food you cook. If you decide to leave home for the weekend or go on a trip, they might starve without you.”

“Good idea. I can’t imagine they’d be good students like you, but I suppose I could teach them how to defrost and use the microwave. It would be a start.”

“And if they come to me for counseling, I’ll encourage them in every way I can.”

Pact made, they settled down to eat the banana cream pie Lydia had brought for dessert.

The phone rang as Alex was drifting off to sleep. “Hullo?” he answered sleepily.

“I wanted to know how all those people I met are doing—Lauren and Mike, that guy with the pig….”

Alex told his nephew all he could think of, and Jared seemed genuinely interested in the goings-on at Hilltop. Then Alex said, “How about you? How are you doing?”

“I remember thinking the same thing when I was your age. I could hardly wait to ‘grow up.’ I didn’t find out till later that it wasn’t much easier than being a teenager.”

“It was different with you, Uncle Alex. You’re a smart guy. Things came easier for you. I’m just a dummy.”

“Hey, Mom’s yelling up the stairs telling me to go to bed. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” The line went dead.