This Failure Isn’t Half Bad
By Karen
Stiller
The Dining Room Table as a Metaphor for Work
n a recent winter day in Quebec, my friend, who was hosting us that night, purchased a raspberry pie, and forgot to bake it. The remains of our delicately herbed, perfectly cooked chicken dinner had just been swept away into our host’s gorgeous kitchen when she brought out four wedges of pie. The slices were as pale as the moon and the white dessert plates she had set them on. “Is this a special French pastry?” my husband asked. “Yes,” she answered, “I suppose. I bought it at a French bakery.” We ate a bite or two of the exotic dessert (soft, thicker than one would expect, not flaky) with tart, room-temperature raspberry filling. “Does it taste a little doughy?” our hostess asked. Whether it made me a good friend or bad would be for her to say, but I decided to give this excellent and experienced cook the truth. “I’m pretty sure it is dough,” I admitted. Astonished, she said, “I didn’t bake the pie! Why didn’t they tell me to bake the pie?” That was a question for the pâtisserie, and certainly not for anyone at the dinner table, especially not her now-chuckling husband. I can report that while unbaked pie is
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unusual, it is not horrible. In solidarity with my friend, I ate every last bite. I sensed she was not as accustomed as I to these particular kinds of failures. She’s a skilled hostess, with art on the walls she painted herself. She dresses in linen tunics and lovely, dangly earrings. She follows recipes printed on glossy pages free of large, mustardy splotches and oily stains, from hardcover cookbooks that look perfect on a coffee table. This is not a kitchen where mishaps abound. I grew even closer to my friend that night, thanks to that pie. Our kinship grew not because of all that went right, but because of that one thing that went wrong. Anybody, after all, can stick a pie in an oven for 40 minutes. To serve it raw is a singular event. We will never talk about the fully cooked chicken. But we will laugh about the pie.
..... Fifteen months after my book was
published, and 28 years after my husband Brent graduated from Regent College, we visited the college bookstore for only the second time since we had moved away from Vancouver. While Brent had studied there, I had worked in the admissions department. On my breaks, I would wander the bookstore as booklovers do, noses twitching, tails wagging.
THE MOCKINGBIRD
