The Button Jar

The divorce was three years ago this October. I keep track because people keep asking how long it's been, and I got tired of doing the math out loud.

My name is Nelson. I'm thirty-four. I design bookbindings for a small press, which means I spend my days thinking about spines and endpapers and what a book should feel like in the hand. It's good work. It's quiet work. And for three years now, it has not been enough to fill up a whole life.

Here's what I did with the empty parts. I got good at pies.

Not good. Obsessed. My grandmother's pastry recipe, which I found in a box of her papers after she died, and which I practiced every weekend for two years until my crusts won ribbons at the county show. And every autumn, the Harvest Pie Auction at the community hall in our little coastal town. That was the big one. The whole town turned out. The money went to the roof fund, or the lifeboat, or whatever needed money that year.

And every year, Darrell beat me.

Darrell the stonemason. Darrell with the big hands and the easy laugh and the lardy crust that half the town swore by. Three years running his pie went for more money than mine at auction. Three years running somebody's gran stood up and said his pastry was the best she'd tasted since her mother's.

I hated him. I need to be honest about that, because it wasn't a small thing. It wasn't sport. He'd say something friendly to me at the hall and I'd give him a flat answer and walk off, and he'd look puzzled, and I'd go home angry anyway. At him. At myself. At the whole stupid arrangement of a world where a man who cuts stone all day also bakes better than me.

My ex-wife used to say I fed my grudges better than I fed myself. She had a point. She usually did, which was half the problem.

So. Last Saturday. I was due to fly to a design conference in Manchester. Bindings and dust jackets, three days of panels, a hotel by myself, the whole thing. I'd packed on the Wednesday night. I'd printed my tickets. I was up at six and at the airport by eight, and then the board said CANCELLED in letters I will not forget quickly.

Storm coming in off the Irish Sea. Winds above what they'd fly in. Everything grounded until the next day at the earliest, maybe longer.

I stood there with my little wheeled bag and my coffee going cold, and I thought, well. There's a whole day now. There's a whole empty day before the auction.

I could have gone home. Sat in the flat. Listened to the rain on the windows and the kettle clicking off and on because I kept forgetting I'd already boiled it. That's what I did last time a flight died on me. Sat there. Ate toast. Felt the walls get closer. But this time I had a pie to bake.

I'd already decided back in September that I couldn't go this year. Too busy. That's what I'd told people. Too busy, when the truth is I couldn't stomach watching Darrell win again.

Standing in that airport, I changed my mind about everything at once. I went home, unpacked the conference bag, and got out the flour and the butter and the jar.

The jar of buttons.

That's not a figure of speech. My grandmother kept a Kilner jar of buttons on the windowsill of her kitchen, and my mother swears it was just buttons, but the crust recipe in her handwriting says at the bottom, in Welsh, a line my mother translated for me once and then wouldn't again. Something about keeping it by the buttons and the pastry will know it's loved. Nonsense, probably. But I keep my jar on the sill by my own window, and I take it down every time I bake, and I set it next to the bowl, and I don't tell anyone why.

I baked all afternoon. The rain from the storm had softened to a steady drizzle, hammering the glass. Kettle going because I drink too much tea when I'm nervous. The crust came out the way it does when I stop trying to control it and just listen to the dough. Golden. Flaky. It smelled like my grandmother's kitchen, which it only does maybe one time in five.

I filled it with damson and apple from the market. Crimped the edge the way she taught me, thumb and two fingers, all the way round.

Then I put on a clean shirt and carried it through the wet streets to the hall, feeling like a fool the whole way, and feeling lighter than I had in months.

The hall was full. Bunting, tea urns, folding tables, a man with a gavel who has been auctioning things in this town since before I was born. Dozens of pies on long trestle tables, each with a little card. The bidding would be loud and silly and generous, because it always is.

And there, across the room, was Darrell.

Thirty-six years old, built like the quarries he works, sleeves rolled, laughing at something with the vicar's wife. His pie sat in front of him looking smug. His pie always looks smug. It has a lattice top, which people apparently find charming, and I find it a crutch.

The burn started in my chest the way it always does. Three years of it. I actually said a bad word under my breath, quietly, and a woman near me turned around.

Then the man with the clipboard came up to me.

"Nelson? They've put you at table four. Shared, I'm afraid, we're packed to the rafters tonight. Roof fund's desperate this year."

"Shared with who?"

He checked his list. "Table four's you, the Hendersons, and... looks like Darrell. Sorry, mate. No room anywhere else."

I could have walked out. I need to acknowledge somewhere in my own head that walking out was an option and I saw it clearly and I didn't take it.

I sat down at table four. I put my pie in front of me and straightened my little card. The Hendersons said hello and I said hello back.

And then Darrell came over with two cups of tea, looked at the seating, looked at me, and smiled like it was Christmas.

"Well, look at that," he said, setting a cup down in front of me. "Forced to share a table with my favorite rival. Drink your tea, Nelson. It's going to be a good night."

I picked up the tea because my hands needed something to do.

"We'll see about that," I said.

"Oh, I reckon we will," he said, sitting down beside me, close enough that his elbow nearly touched mine.

The judging took forever. Or it felt like forever. The vicar's wife and two other judges walked the tables with little pencils, and the whole hall went quiet in that fake way, everyone pretending not to watch. I watched. I'm not proud of it but I watched every step they took.

They lingered at our table. That was the worst part. The vicar's wife cut a sliver of my damson and apple, chewed it, wrote something down, and moved on. Then she did the same at Darrell's lattice-topped thing and made a face I couldn't read. A pleased face, probably. Everything about that pie pleased people.

The gavel man climbed up on the little stage and tapped the microphone.

"Right then, ladies and gentlemen. Third place, the Hendersons, for that rhubarb effort. Lovely work."

The Hendersons cheered. They were genuinely delighted. I liked them for it.

"Second place, and I'll say the judging was close this year, very close indeed. Nelson, for the damson and apple."

Applause. Scattered but warm. Somebody whistled. I sat there with my tea going cold and felt nothing you could call happy.

"And first place, for the third year running, and I know nobody will be surprised, Darrell, for the lattice plum."

Darrell stood up and raised his arms like a boxer. The hall loved it. They always love him. He shook hands with people down the row and made his way to the stage and said something modest that got a laugh, and I stared at the tablecloth and did breathing.

Close. He said close. Second by a whisker after two years of weekend practice and a dead woman's recipe and a jar of buttons on my windowsill.

"You were robbed," the Henderson wife said, and she meant it kindly, which made it worse.

"It's fine," I said. "It's fine. It's a pie."

But then Darrell came back to the table holding his