I Thought It Was Just an Ugly Thrift-Store Mold Until a Woman Downstairs Recognized It

The night I made a ridiculous brain-shaped butterscotch pudding for a staff Halloween potluck, I was standing in my cramped Spokane kitchen with a cheap white-handled knife in one hand and a little floral bowl in the other when my seventy-six-year-old downstairs neighbor walked in, looked at my counter, and suddenly forgot what she had come upstairs to tell me.

Her name was Marlene Fiske.

She had lived downstairs from me for a little over two years, and in all that time I had never seen her enter anybody’s apartment without knocking first.

That night she had knocked.

I had yelled, “Come in!” because both my hands were covered in pudding.

Marlene stepped inside carrying a package that had apparently been delivered to her apartment by mistake.

“Another one of yours,” she said.

Then she noticed the thing on my counter.

She stopped.

I laughed because, honestly, most people had the same reaction when they saw it.

“Yes, I know. It looks awful.”

She didn’t laugh.

The pudding had come out a muddy caramel color instead of the pinkish color shown on the recipe card, which somehow made the whole brain effect worse. Little ridges curved across the surface. A little vanilla sauce had collected around the bottom of the plate.

I had been trying to decide whether adding whipped cream would improve it or make it even more disturbing.

Marlene put my package on the counter.

“Where did you get that?”

“The recipe?”

“No.”

She pointed.

“That mold.”

I looked down at the brain.

“At St. Bridget’s rummage sale last weekend.”

Marlene stared at it.

“Are you sure?”

I smiled.

“Well, unless there’s a black market for plastic brain molds that I’m accidentally part of, yes.”

Nothing.

Not even one of her usual little snorts.

That was when I finally realized something was wrong.

I wiped my hand on a dish towel.

“Marlene?”

She came closer.

The closer she got, the stranger her expression became.

She wasn’t looking at my dessert anymore.

She was studying the tiny details around the edges.

“There should be a dent right there,” she murmured.

She touched the left side of the mold where the pudding had formed a shallow flat spot.

“And one of the folds should be crooked near the back.”

I turned the plate.

It was.

Marlene sat down at my little kitchen table without asking.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

Then she looked up at me and said quietly, “That belonged to my sister.”

I assumed she meant she had owned one like it.

“There were probably thousands of these made.”

“No.”

“Marlene—”

“She melted that dent into it herself.”

I put the knife down.

“How?”

“She left it beside the stove one Thanksgiving.”

Marlene gave a tiny laugh, but there was no happiness in it.

“She was trying to make gravy, answer the phone, and yell at my nephew all at the same time. Part of the mold touched the burner.”

She looked at the dessert again.

“That crooked part was there too.”

I didn’t know what to say.

Finally, I asked the obvious question.

“Does your sister still live around here?”

Marlene looked at me for several seconds.

Then she said something I wasn’t expecting.

“I haven’t spoken to Lenora in twenty-eight years.”

For a second, the humming refrigerator was the loudest thing in my kitchen.

I pulled out the chair across from her.

“Twenty-eight years?”

Marlene nodded.

“And you’re sure this was hers?”

“Turn the mold over.”

I hadn’t washed it yet because I was planning to make another pudding if the first one fell apart.

I lifted it from beside the sink and turned it upside down.

Marlene pointed toward the rim.

“Look near the number six.”

There were little manufacturing numbers stamped into the plastic.

Beside one of them was something scratched by hand.

L + M.

I had noticed it earlier and assumed somebody’s kids had done it.

Marlene touched the letters with one finger.

“Lenora and Marlene.”

Suddenly my silly rummage-sale purchase didn’t feel silly anymore.

I sat down.

“Why did you two stop speaking?”

She shook her head immediately.

“That’s a long story.”

“I have nowhere to be.”

“You have your party.”

“Tomorrow.”

She looked toward the brain again.

“I can’t believe she got rid of it.”

There was real hurt in the way she said that.

Not anger.

Hurt.

I poured her coffee.

Mine had been sitting in the pot since dinner and was probably terrible, but Marlene drank it anyway.

Eventually, she started talking.

She and Lenora were only fifteen months apart.

They grew up outside Spokane in a little yellow house their father built after coming home from Korea. According to Marlene, they fought constantly as kids.

Over clothes.

Over records.

Over who got the bathroom first.

Over which one of them had stolen the other’s hairbrush.

But they were also inseparable.

“They used to call us the twins who weren’t twins,” she said.

The brain mold came much later.

When Lenora was thirty-six, she developed headaches that wouldn’t go away.

Doctors eventually found a benign tumor.

The surgery went well, but Lenora was terrified before it.

“She had two little boys,” Marlene told me. “She wasn’t scared of dying for herself. She was scared they’d grow up without her.”

After the surgery, Lenora couldn’t stand everybody treating her like she might break.

People whispered around her.

They carried groceries she was perfectly capable of carrying.

They stopped inviting her anywhere because they thought she needed to rest.

So on the first Halloween after her recovery, she bought the ridiculous brain mold.

She made some kind of vanilla gelatin dessert, covered it in strawberry syrup, and served it to the whole family.

“My mother nearly threw her plate at her,” Marlene said.

I laughed.

“So the tradition started.”

“Every October.”

For almost a decade, Lenora made the brain dessert.

Sometimes chocolate.

Sometimes gelatin.

One year ice cream, which apparently collapsed into something horrifying before dinner.

Marlene smiled for the first time.

Then her expression changed.

Their mother died in 1998.

That was when everything went wrong.

Their father had already been gone for several years, and the sisters were responsible for cleaning out the house.

Most of it went smoothly.

Furniture was divided.

Photo albums were copied.

Christmas decorations were separated into boxes.

There was only one thing Marlene cared deeply about.

Their mother’s sapphire brooch.

It wasn’t especially valuable.

But their mother had worn it to every important family event Marlene could remember.

Weddings.

Graduations.

Church on Easter morning.

Marlene had asked for it years earlier, and according to her, everybody in the family knew that.

When they cleaned the bedroom, the brooch was gone.

Marlene immediately suspected Lenora.

Apparently Lenora had been alone in the house several days earlier.

“I asked her if she’d taken it.”

“What did she say?”

“She said no.”

“And you didn’t believe her.”

Marlene looked into her coffee.

“No.”

The argument became ugly.

Marlene accused Lenora of always taking whatever she wanted.

Lenora accused Marlene of caring more about objects than people.

Old childhood arguments suddenly became evidence.

Every disappointment got pulled into the conversation.

Every grudge.

Every insult they’d supposedly forgotten.

Then Lenora left.

She moved to Eugene, Oregon, not long afterward when her husband was transferred for work.

Neither sister called.

Months became years.

Birthdays passed.

Christmas cards stopped.

Their children grew up.

Their husbands occasionally exchanged short updates, but even that eventually disappeared.

“And the brooch?” I asked.

Marlene leaned back.

“That’s the worst part.”

She had found it.

Seven years later.

Not in Lenora’s things.

Not hidden anywhere.

It was inside the lining of their mother’s old sewing basket.

The fabric had torn underneath one of the pockets, and the brooch had slipped between the fabric and the wooden base.

Marlene found it when the basket broke.

I stared at her.

“You knew for twenty-one years that she hadn’t taken it?”

“Yes.”

“And you never called her?”

The question came out harsher than I meant it to.

Marlene didn’t get angry.

She simply nodded.

“I picked up the phone more times than I could count.”

“What stopped you?”

“At first? Pride.”

She rubbed the rim of her coffee mug.

“Later, embarrassment.”

“And after that?”

“Time.”

I understood what she meant, even though I didn’t want to.

The longer you leave certain things untouched, the harder they become to touch.

You start thinking you need a perfect explanation.

A perfect apology.

A perfect moment.

Then another year passes.

Marlene stood.

“Where exactly at St. Bridget’s did you buy this?”

“In the gym.”

“Who was working?”

“I have no idea.”

She looked disappointed.

Then I remembered the recipe card.

“Wait.”

I opened the junk drawer.

The mold had come inside an old cardboard box along with three folded recipes.

I had only tried one.

I handed them to her.

Marlene sat back down.

The first recipe was typed.

The second was from a magazine.

The third was handwritten on an index card stained yellow around the edges.

Marlene’s thumb moved over the handwriting.

“That’s hers.”

On the front, Lenora had written:

October Brain — don’t let the kids choose the color. Learned that lesson in ’94.

Marlene laughed.

This time it was real.

“What happened in ’94?”

“Purple food coloring.”

“That bad?”

“Looked like something from a crime scene.”

She turned the card over.

There was another note.

Not a recipe.

Just one sentence.

If this ends up at St. Bridget’s, tell whoever buys it that it worked. We laughed more than we worried.

Marlene read that line three times.

Then she handed the card back to me.

The next morning I called the church.

I explained enough of the story that the woman answering the phone stopped treating me like someone asking about a missing casserole dish.

She couldn’t give me information about whoever had donated the mold.

I understood.

“But,” she said, “I can call the person if we still have a record and give them your number.”

“Please.”

I gave her Marlene’s number, with permission.

Then we waited.

Saturday passed.

Nothing.

Sunday morning, I came home from the grocery store and saw Marlene sitting on the front steps of our building.

She was wearing a blue sweater even though it was colder than sweater weather.

“You’re going to freeze.”

“She called.”

I stopped halfway up the walkway.

“Lenora?”

Marlene nodded.

I sat beside her.

Neither of us spoke for a few seconds.

Finally I asked, “How did it go?”

“Terrible.”

My stomach dropped.

Then Marlene smiled.

“And wonderful.”

Apparently the church volunteer had called Lenora’s daughter, Dana, whose number had been attached to a donation receipt.

Lenora had recently moved back to eastern Washington after her husband died.

She was living less than forty miles away.

Forty miles.

For nearly three decades, Marlene had imagined her sister somewhere far away.

During their phone call, Marlene apologized.

No excuses.

No explanations.

She simply told Lenora she had been wrong.

Then she told her about finding the brooch.

There had been silence.

A long one.

Finally Lenora said, “I figured you found it eventually.”

Marlene asked why she had never called.

Lenora answered, “For the same stupid reason you didn’t.”

Pride.

Then Lenora asked something unexpected.

“Do you still hate butterscotch?”

Marlene laughed.

“I knew exactly what she meant.”

They agreed to meet the following Thursday.

Marlene asked if I would come.

I tried to refuse.

“That should be between you two.”

“No,” she said. “You’re bringing the brain.”

So on Thursday afternoon, I made another one.

This time Marlene supervised.

Apparently I’d used too much milk the first time.

She also insisted that brain desserts were not supposed to look elegant.

“If it looks appetizing, you’ve missed the point.”

Lenora arrived just before six.

I recognized her before Marlene said her name.

Not because they looked exactly alike.

They didn’t.

But they had the same way of narrowing their eyes when they were trying not to show emotion.

For a moment the sisters stood in the doorway.

No dramatic music.

No running into each other’s arms.

Marlene said, “You got shorter.”

Lenora said, “You got rude.”

Then both of them laughed.

That was it.

Twenty-eight years.

Broken by one stupid sentence.

Dinner was awkward at first.

Of course it was.

There was no way to fit almost three decades into one evening.

They talked about safe things.

Children.

Jobs.

Houses.

People who had died.

People who had remarried.

Marlene showed Lenora the sapphire brooch.

Lenora barely looked at it.

“I never wanted that thing.”

“I know.”

“You called me a thief over it.”

“I know.”

“That hurt.”

“I know.”

Marlene’s voice cracked on the last one.

Lenora stared at the table.

Then she said, “I should’ve called too.”

They did not solve everything that night.

I think that’s the part people sometimes leave out when they tell stories about reconciliation.

An apology doesn’t erase twenty-eight years.

There were missed funerals.

Graduations.

Grandchildren.

Illnesses.

Birthdays.

Whole versions of each other they had never known.

At one point Lenora became angry.

At another point Marlene cried.

Twice, one of them stood as if she might leave.

But neither did.

Around nine, I brought out the brain dessert.

Lenora stared at it.

“You made this?”

“With supervision.”

She tried a bite.

Then she looked at Marlene.

“She used too much milk.”

“I told her.”

“Still does.”

They were laughing again.

Before Lenora left, she asked if Marlene wanted to come to her daughter’s house for Thanksgiving.

Marlene didn’t answer immediately.

She looked surprised by the invitation.

Then she said, “Only if you don’t make me sit at the kids’ table.”

“No promises.”

That was four years ago.

The brain mold still belongs to me.

I offered it back to Lenora almost immediately.

She refused.

“You found it,” she said. “Maybe it was supposed to go through you.”

I told her that sounded suspiciously philosophical for a piece of warped plastic.

She agreed.

Every October now, the three of us make something disgusting in it.

One year chocolate mousse.

One year lime gelatin.

Last year Lenora decided peanut butter pudding was a good idea.

It wasn’t.

Marlene complains every time.

Then she eats two servings.

The sisters still argue.

They are extremely good at it.

They argue about driving.

Politics.

Salt.

Who forgot whose birthday in 2004.

Whether Lenora’s son was actually a difficult teenager or whether Marlene is rewriting history.

But now they argue while sitting in the same room.

I think that matters.

A few months after their first dinner together, I asked Marlene something I probably shouldn’t have.

“If I hadn’t bought that mold, do you think you would’ve ever called her?”

She thought about it.

“No.”

Then she looked embarrassed by her own answer.

“But I wish I could tell you yes.”

I appreciated that.

Because life isn’t always full of people who suddenly become brave at exactly the right moment.

Sometimes we’re stubborn.

Sometimes we’re ashamed.

Sometimes we wait so long that waiting becomes easier than doing anything else.

And sometimes the thing that finally interrupts all of that isn’t profound at all.

Sometimes it’s a phone call.

Sometimes it’s a wrong delivery.

Sometimes it’s three dollars spent at a church rummage sale.

And sometimes, apparently, it’s a badly made butterscotch brain sitting on a plate in a tiny kitchen.