Now

We’re having coffee, me and my sister-in-law Sharon, when Sharon says, “It would be nice if we had some apple pie to go along with this.”

Being a good host, I happen to have a supermarket pie in the refrigerator. I take it out, cut two slices and toss them in the toaster oven to heat up a little.

When I serve though, after taking a forkful, Sharon wrinkles her nose. “Supermarket pie? How can you eat this with all the sugar and chemicals and who knows what else? It’s so bad for you. Let me just pop over to my kitchen: I made an apple pie the other day I know you’ll just adore.”

It only takes a few minutes: our twin husbands Dirk and Dan have always lived next door to each other. Soon Sharon’s back with two warmed up slices. I know I should be polite and praise her for the quality of her baking, no matter how good or terrible her homemade pie happens to be, or her detailed feedback on my coffee making skills, but inside I’m seething. I take a forkful and deliberately wrinkle my nose.

“What sort of apples did you use for this?”

“Granny Smiths,” Sharon says. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“No wonder this tastes so pedestrian. Granny Smiths make such ordinary pie filling.”

It takes her a moment to process what I’ve just said and come up with a response.

“At least I made this pie with my own two hands, instead of hoping a supermarket has any idea what an apple pie is supposed to taste like besides sugar and chunks.”

I stand up. Fine, most people don’t have the time to make bespoke artisanal apple pies to keep around in case their sister-in-law drops by for coffee unannounced and comment on their housekeeping. But neither do most people have time machines.

“Wait right here,” I say. I go down to the basement: I set my time machine to Goddamn Biblical Times, just right before you know what, where I grab a basketful of a particularly long lost variety of apples. That’s right, that kind. The kind you eat and you get the knowledge of what the apples in an apple pie are supposed to taste like, along with everything else, like why you shouldn’t have married one of two twin brothers whose names begin with D, Sharon.

I set the time machine to return a few weeks early so I can remodel the cellar, make my own cultured butter and pick up some exclusive pastry flour sourced from France, and I bake the best bloody pie that lady will ever taste in her life.

Still warm from the professional oven now installed in my basement, I plate two slices and climb upstairs with them, passing myself on the way up. I give my earlier self the grim, “Oh yeah we’re doing this,” look, and she nods like someone who knows the meaning of pie.

I hand the plate to Sharon and smile as sweetly as possible. “I’m so sorry about the supermarket pie. Try this instead.”

Sharon takes a forkful of what has to be the most delicious slice of apple pie anyone on earth has eaten in the last five thousand years. She sets down the fork and gives me a measured, hardened stare, the look of someone who will never admit defeat, or that she married the wrong twin.

“You used a time machine just now,” she mutters. “Didn’t you? Is that what Dan got you for Christmas?”

I just smile even more sweetly. I can only surmise how stingy Dirk is with his presents.

Sharon gets up. “You just get whatever you want, Kathy, don’t you?” she says; then she fiddles with her watch and blinks out of existence.

Next thing I know, there’s an enormous apple tree in the middle of Sharon’s yard. The leaves are unbearably green, and each branch bends with the most luscious of apples, but the rest of the yard is now all barren and blasted with scorch marks.

I hear the moan of lamentations outside, and church bells ringing out, too late, too late, too late.

Sharon returns trailing a cloud of sulfur, looking like she’s been crying blood, and in her hands is someone’s idea of a perfect apple pie.

She sets it on the table. “Go ahead, Kathy. Cut yourself a slice.”

I look at the pie, right there next to all our previous pies, and while my pie is fantastic, hers is perfect. Hers is too perfect, it’s writhing with perfection, it’s practically moaning perfection from all its perfect lattices, little wisps of inexhaustible perfect apple pie scented steam, and I’m kind of afraid to do that. You do not touch a pie like that without consequences.

“What’s the matter, Kathy?” Sharon asks. “It’s just pie. It’s not like I sold my soul for this pie. It’s not like I watered that apple tree now standing in my yard with the blood of our butchered husbands for this pie, Kathy. It’s not like I brought the end of the world a whole lot closer just to bring you this pie, Kathy.”

She storms into the kitchen while I stare at the pie, like it’s temptation itself, a damned thing, but a delicious damned thing, no doubt. Next to which my own pie will never be quite delicious or perfect enough.

Sharon storms back with a knife and stabs into the pie, carving out an oozing, softly moaning slice.

“The least you can do is try some.”

________

Hugh Behm-Steinberg’s prose can be found in X-Ray, The Pinch, Invisible City, Heavy Feather Review and The Offing, among others. His short story “Taylor Swift” won the Barthelme Prize from Gulf Coast. A collection of prose poems and microfiction, Animal Children, was published by Nomadic/Black Lawrence Press. He lives in Barcelona.