“You can do it!” Alice says. “I bet you’ll all love it so much that you’ll end up making another batch in a few weeks.”
“We love Aunt DeeDee’s fudge, Mom,” Joan says, reaching for a pot. “It could be an entirely different story when I make Aunt DeeDee’s fudge.”
“Call me later and tell me how it turned out.”
Joan hangs up the phone and puts the sugar into the pot with the milk. She then measures out a cup of Marshmallow Fluff and puts that into a separate small bowl, along with a cup of peanut butter. After she stirs the milk and sugar together, she turns on the burner and places the thermometer on the side of the pot so the bottom of it is immersed into the mixture. She is paranoid as she watches the temperature, stirring consistently as the red moves upward through the slender thermometer.
“Is it done yet?” Gigi asks, playing with Christopher on the kitchen floor. Joan has learned the best spot for the children to play while she is cooking is right in the heart of the kitchen with her.
“Not yet,” Joan says, stooping over to make sure she is seeing the correct temperature. The temperature rises quickly during the first several minutes of cooking but seems to crawl for the last several, making Joan wonder if something is wrong with the thermometer. She stays stooped over, watching the red dye as it creeps toward 234 degrees. Before it reaches soft ball, she turns off the burner and removes the pan from the stove. Taking the thermometer out of the pot, she uses a spatula and adds the Marshmallow Fluff and peanut butter to the mixture, along with a teaspoon of vanilla. She stirs everything together and then pours the mixture into a buttered pan. “Who wants to lick the pan and the spoon?”
Gigi and Christopher are in front of her before she finishes the question, raising their little hands for the goodies. Joan leaves enough in the bowl for all three of them, and as the warm peanut butter fudge hits her tongue, she smiles in satisfaction. “Wow! So good.”
“Yummy!” Gigi says, running her spoon around the bottom of the pan.
When the kids aren’t looking, Joan uses her spoon and scoops some fudge from the pan. She remembers loving it this way as a child when her mom made it, warm and gooey right out of the pan. She looks at the soft brown fudge and hopes it will “set up,” as her mom always said.
John lifts a long, thick slab of black walnut inside his workshop and sets it on the wood plane to begin the process of planing each side. He’ll rotate the wood until it’s approximately a one-and-a-quarter-inch square piece of lumber and thirty-one inches long and will repeat this for each leg before working on tapering them. He stops his work when Joan opens the door, letting the children run in ahead of her. She’s holding a small plate in her hand. “Is that lunch?” he says, shutting off the planer.
“It’s peanut butter fudge!” Gigi squeals. “It’s yummy!” The little girl jumps up and down, waving her arms as if she’s about to take flight.
“Is this Aunt DeeDee’s peanut butter fudge?” John asks, taking the plate and lifting a piece. Joan nods. “There’s nothing like it.” He watches Gigi move busily around the workshop and smiles. “It looks like Mommy filled your tank with fudge because you have lots of energy!”
“Just eat some and you can do this, too,” Gigi says, jumping.
He bites into a piece, closing his eyes. “Mmm. The best.” He opens his eyes, looking at her as he pops the rest of the piece in his mouth. “Please tell me this means you’ll be making it every year from now on.”
“Yes, we will!” Gigi says, jumping higher yet into the air.
“I can’t afford to make it every year,” Joan says. “I think I’ve eaten half the pan by myself. I’ll be enormous tomorrow.”
John puts another piece of the fudge into his mouth. “It’s worth being enormous one time a year for this.” He hands the plate back to her. “What else are you making in there today?”
Joan bends down and picks up Christopher. “We like to surprise you when you come in for dinner. Don’t we?” she says, looking at Gigi.
The little girl nods. “Yes! We like to surprise you with meat loaf!”
“That’s not surprising Daddy,” Joan says, laughing.
“It is surprising!” John says. “Mommy has never made meat loaf and I love it. Especially a meat loaf sandwich.”
“What are you working on today?” Joan says, looking at the various pieces of wood in front of her.
“Legs!” John says, holding up a piece of the thick lumber. “If these can be half as good-looking as yours, I’ll be happy.”
Joan rolls her eyes. “Just what every woman wants … to have her legs compared to wood!”
“Wooden legs are beautiful!” John says. “They are stunning.”
Joan reaches for Gigi’s hand and walks to the door. “You’re obsessed, John Creighton,” she says, closing the door behind them.
“I’m not obsessed! I just know beauty when I see it, that’s all.” John looks at the piece of lumber in his hands. “Gorgeous!”
Miriam drives up to the door of Larry Maccabee’s workshop and turns off the engine. “Andrea said that Larry had a couple of tables that might work for your house,” she says, looking at Lauren.
“But what about the price? Larry’s things are so expensive,” Lauren says, getting out of the car and closing the door.
“The furniture he makes is expensive,” Miriam says, opening the shop door. “If he refinishes something, it’s usually less expensive. That’s what we need to find!” She glances throughout the shop for Larry. “Larry! You’ve got customers!” Larry pops his head around the corner, wiping his hands on a rag. “You need a bell on your door.”
“Who needs a bell when I’ve got a foghorn like you?” Lauren laughs out loud
