Walter

It was his favorite part, twisting the knob, the small rush of air bordering on a whistle as the gas began to escape. Then the anticipation of the flame. The scrape of the matchstick against the box, and the fire crackling to life, a whoosh when the stovetop burner caught. It reminded him of the beginning of Mission: Impossible. Except this was better because it was real. And he knew what was coming. 

“When do I get to light it?” Walter asked, settling into the kitchen stool. 

“When you’re a little bit bigger,” his grandmother Midge answered.

“I’m almost as big as you are,” Walter protested. It was true. At 4’11” Walter’s Grandma Midge wasn’t even three inches taller than her 10-year-old grandson. She compensated by having step stools strategically positioned around her kitchen. One in front of the stove, one at the sink, and a three-step model in her pantry. 

“When you’re older then”, Grandma Midge said with a nod and the confidence of a long retired elementary school teacher, firm but gentle. And that was the end of any further discussion. Walter understood it. He didn’t like it. But he understood.

“Now what you can do,” Grandma Midge said, scooping a dollop of Crisco into the cast iron pan she slid atop the burner, “Go into the pantry and bring me the flour.”

Walter hopped down off the stool. In three steps, the kitchen small like everything in his grandparents’ house, he was in the pantry, which compared to the general size of things, was really quite large.

The flour container was on the third shelf. He needed the stool to reach it. Just like his grandmother.

The flour container sat next to its matching sugar counterpart. A foot tall and half-a-foot deep, Walter’s distorted reflection shimmered in the chrome of the art deco containers. His grandmother had received them as a gift when she and his grandfather had “set up housekeeping” as it was referred to long ago, shortly after they were married in 1932. No one remembered exactly who had given them the containers. Grandma Midge thought it was one of her husband’s, sisters. Heddy probably. Grandpa Wil thought it was Midge’s sister Mae.

No one ever took credit. Or blame depending on the point of view.

The mystery remained unsolved.

What was agreed upon was that they were useful for as much as Midge baked. For as much as Midge baked, they could have even been larger, but they didn’t make larger sizes and Midge thought they were ideal, regardless.

Walter wrapped his arms around the flour container, and with a grunt and careful footing, worked down the step. He lost his balance on the last one, but only slightly, and managed to catch himself on the pantry door frame without spilling.

He sighed deeply. Relieved. 

Early on, a year and four inches before, he’d tried the same maneuver and lost half the flour across the linoleum floor. He felt a certain sense of pride that offset the definite sense of the previous year’s shame, when he delivered the flour container unmolested to his grandmother.

“Thank you,” Grandma Midge said, carefully measuring out the the flour and whisking it into the pan.

Walter loved the sound of the spoon on the cast iron, the sizzle of the Crisco, the scraping of the pan across the stovetop. The sounds, he’d come to learn at an early age, portended even more rewarding senses. The next was the scent. The aroma. Delicate, at first. The crumble being formed. A tease before the spices. Nutmeg, allspice and cinnamon. Intertwined in the dough. Still roughly subtle.

Until the apples.

Like the matches, Walter was still forbidden from slicing the apples, peeling them. He sat on the kitchen stool, watching his grandmother patiently coax the skin off each of the six with the skill of a surgeon, coring the seeds away and slicing the rest in almost identical pieces. 

Another sprinkle of cinnamon on the apples, and they went into the mix. Along with four slices of cold unsalted butter. 

The butter was one of the most important ingredients, by Grandma Midge’s reckoning. She would use only one brand. Ashcombe Farms. Twenty minutes outside Harrisburg by most reckoning. Thirty-five by Grandma Midge’s driving.

Walter didn’t mind. He enjoyed riding with her.

The Pennsylvania countryside just outside Harrisburg seemed timeless. From an early age, Walter could sense the history. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see Union cavalry ride out of the hickories along the single lane highway

.

“Nothing around here ever changes,” he said to no one in particular. Just a thought he felt strongly enough to share.

“Now what’s the one thing we need still?” Grandma Midge asked, her teaching instincts still guiding her even in her relationship with her grandson long after her retirement. Ask rather than tell. Teach to fish rather than give a fish. 

Walter knew the answer straight away. “Sugar,” he said, bordering on shouting. Confidence but not arrogance. That wouldn’t be proper.

“What was that?” someone shouted in from the other room. Walter ignored it.

“Good,” Grandma Midge said. “Go get that for me, please.”

Walter was in the pantry before he recognized he was in the pantry.

“Sugar,” he said to himself. “Third shelf.”

And then he noticed something wasn’t quite right.

Where was the step stool? He looked left and right and then into the doorway behind him. It was a big pantry but not that big. Not big enough to hide a step stool. The stool was definitely gone.

And equally perplexing, the stool was unnecessary. The sugar container was on the shelf directly in front of him.

It had just been there on the shelf next to the flour. He had just seen it. It didn’t make sense.

Grandma Midge was a creature of habit. Pennsylvania Dutch. She ran things neatly. Methodically. Everything in her house arranged just so. Everything had its place. Nothing ever changed. Walter found it comforting. As things changed around the rest of his life, his Grandmother’s house remained the same.

Until now.

“Why did you move the sugar here?” Walter shouted. “It’s supposed to be up on the third shelf.”

“Walter,” someone called from the living room just outside the kitchen. “Please come back and join us.”

The voice was familiar. But it wasn’t Grandma Midge’s.

“Do you need the sugar still?” Walter called back.

Somebody might have said something but he didn’t quite hear it and didn’t quite care that he didn’t.

He leaned close to the sugar container. He’d retrieved it for his grandmother as many times as he could remember. It was as familiar to him as she was. As his own reflection. A reflection he saw distorted now in the chrome of the sugar container. Distorted like in the mirrors of the funhouses from the boardwalk in Ocean City.

He raised his head up and down, watching his forehead stretch, his eyes widen, his nose grow as he leaned in. His brow crease and wrinkle. His hair recede and gray. His eyes cloud.

If he didn’t know the reflection was him, he never would have guessed it was.

“Walter, please come out,” the voice called again. 

Then the pantry door widened, and a graying-haired woman who was familiar but wasn’t his Grandma Midge smiled and extended her hand.

“Come on now, darling,” she said.

“I was getting the sugar for Grandma,” he said

.

The woman nodded and smiled, but the smile didn’t extend to her eyes.

“She’s making apple crisp,” he said. “I’m helping.”

“I know, Walter,” the woman said, taking Walter by the hand and leading him back into the living room. Back to his chair. Lowering him into it. She pulled an afghan up over him.

“Grandma needs the sugar,” Walter said. “Someone moved it.”

“I know,” the woman said, patting his hand gently, handing him the remote control for the television set. “Why don’t you rest here a bit first. I’ll get it for her.”

“Okay,” he said, his eyelids growing heavy.

“You stay here and enjoy your program,” she said, turning up the volume. “We’ll be done soon and all have some apple crisp together.”

“Okay,”Walter said again.

The familiar theme music began again and the lit match and the twentieth time Walter had seen this episode of the original Mission: Impossible series began again.

But it was all new to Walter.