Chapter 2: Fritz’s Orange Chiffon Pie

Now, in the Detroit winter of 1950, Fritz and Bernice shared a second-floor flat above a barber shop near Hastings Street. It wasn’t much by most standards, but it belonged to them. The rent got paid every month. The lights stayed on. There was food in the cupboard more often than not. For two young women whose mothers had spent years stretching every dollar until it practically cried for mercy, that counted for something.

The apartment smelled faintly of oranges and coffee. Outside, the February wind blew against the windows and rattled the glass. The old building responded with its usual chorus of groans and creaks. Somewhere below, the barber shop owner was closing up for the evening, and the familiar sound of chairs being moved across the floor drifted upward through the floorboards.

Inside, however, the apartment felt warm. A radiator hissed beneath the window. The lamp in the corner cast a yellow glow across the sitting room. The radio played quietly enough to be ignored but loudly enough to make the rooms feel less empty.

Fritz loved evenings like this. She stood at the kitchen counter with a recipe sheet spread open in front of her. The paper had already begun to soften at the folds from being handled so often. She had carried it home from Hudson’s several days earlier and had probably read it twenty times since then.

Orange Chiffon Pie. Even the name sounded elegant. The words seemed to belong to another world entirely. A world of polished dining rooms, lace tablecloths, and women who hosted afternoon luncheons simply because they could. Fritz had never attended a luncheon in her life, but she could picture one perfectly.

The recipe fascinated her. Not because it was complicated. Because it wasn’t. The ingredients themselves were simple enough. Eggs. Sugar. Orange juice. A handful of pantry staples.

That was what fascinated Fritz most about cooking. The idea that a handful of simple ingredients could become something memorable.  Even better, the idea that an ordinary meal could make people gather around a table and linger a little longer than they planned.

Across the room, Bernice sat at a small table near the window with a textbook open in front of her. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, and every few moments she would tap her pencil against the page as though threatening the words into making sense.

Fritz glanced over and gave Bernice an encouraging nod.  Three months ago there had been no textbook, no college class. There had only been excuses.  The tuition cost too much, the books cost too much.  She wasn’t smart enough.  Bernice had spent years collecting reasons not to try.  Fritz had spent months arguing with every single one of them.

Eventually, Bernice had enrolled.  One class, just one.  But it was a beginning. Now most evenings looked exactly like this. Bernice studying.  Fritz cooking.  Both of them working toward futures they could barely imagine.

“You’ve been staring at that recipe for ten minutes.” Bernice didn’t look up from her textbook when she said it.

Fritz shook her head.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You absolutely have.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“That’s what I said.”

Bernice finally lifted her eyes from the page. There was a tiredness there that hadn’t existed a year ago. Working all day in a school cafeteria and attending classes at night would do that to a person.

“You know,” Bernice continued, “most people just make the recipe and take it to church.”

“Most people don’t walk into Hudson’s demonstrations and take notes.”

“You snuck into that demonstration.”

“You know what I mean.”

Bernice laughed softly and shook her head. For a few moments, the apartment fell quiet again. Outside, a streetcar rattled past on Hastings Street. The sounds of the city blended together into the familiar rhythm of the neighborhood.

Bernice broke the silence again.

“Do you really think we’ll ever do it?”

Fritz looked up.  The question hung in the air. Bernice lowered her pencil, her joking tone fading away.  She wasn’t talking about the pie.  She wasn’t talking about recipes.  She was talking about the future.

The classroom. The restaurant. The dreams they rarely spoke aloud. Fritz turned back toward the counter and looked down at the recipe sheet. For a long moment she didn’t answer.  The truth was that she didn’t know.

Most days she spent her time in a hotel kitchen washing vegetables, peeling potatoes, and preparing food that someone else took credit for serving. Owning a restaurant felt about as likely as waking up tomorrow and discovering she had inherited a mansion.

Yet, the dream refused to leave.  Every recipe she studied seemed to feed it.  Every demonstration she attended made it grow.  Every church potluck gave it another reason to stay alive.

Finally she looked back toward her friend.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I know I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what would have happened if I never tried.”

Bernice looked back at her desk.  The room grew quiet again as the radiator hissed and the radio hummed.  They sat there surrounded by textbooks and recipe sheets, by dreams that felt far too large for a small apartment above a barber shop, and by the uncertainty that seemed to accompany every worthwhile thing in life.

At last Bernice smiled at the though entering her mind.

“You know Mrs. Nyman is going to tell you that pie needs something.”

Fritz rolled her eyes.

“There isn’t even a pie yet.”

“That won’t stop her.”

Both of them laughed. Mrs. Nyman was a cooking legend at the Baptist church on the corner, a pillar of the community. And she would be a painfully honest critic. Not that Fritz minded. Well, mostly, she welcomed the feedback.

Bernice gathered her books from the kitchen table and stacked them neatly against the wall. Fritz covered the pie and slid it carefully into the refrigerator, already wondering if the filling would set the way the recipe promised.

“We’ll know tomorrow,” Bernice said.

Fritz closed the refrigerator door. “About the pie?”

“Mmmm hmmm,” Bernice nodded.

The apartment grew quiet as the sounds of Hastings Street drifted through the frosted windows below. Somewhere in the distance a streetcar rumbled along, carrying workers home from another winter day in Detroit.

“Goodnight,” Bernice said as she went to her room.

Neither Fritz nor Bernice realized it that evening, but dreams like theirs were measured in years, not days. There would be disappointments they could not yet imagine, doors that would refuse to open, and seasons when hope would have to be chosen again and again. But every journey begins with an ordinary day, and that winter evening was quietly the beginning of theirs.

The recipes on Potluck Revival are real recipes inspired from vintage recipe cards, cookbooks, and family collections. The recipes in this series belonged to Fritz. However, the story of Fritz and Bernice is historical fiction based on just a few clues I have of Fritz’s life.