Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “Yes. Absolutely. Look, let’s try this: Starting tomorrow night, your job also includes doing one bread a week on your own. I mean one loaf. I’ll give you time to do it during the night. I want you to do it first by the direct method, with commercial yeast, then try making it with a sponge. Then a starter. I’ll answer questions if you need me, but basically you’re on your own. Tomorrow night I’ll give you a recipe to use for a basic white country bread.”

  “Okay.”

  Her enthusiasm is underwhelming. I start to turn away, but she says, “Are you going to tell Ellen?”

  I shake my head. “She doesn’t care how we set it up.”

  Her face flushes. “I mean, about the dope.”

  “Oh.” I’d almost forgotten. “Well…that depends.” I dredge up my classroom-discipline voice. “If you promise me it won’t happen again, we’ll call it a temporary aberration and forget the whole thing.”

  “I promise.”

  I love Thanksgiving. It’s the only American holiday dedicated solely to the preparation and consumption of food.

  When I was a kid we always went to my oma’s town house in San Francisco, along with the few old aunts who were still alive and creaking around, a distant cousin or two, and Mr. Lewis, the crotchety bachelor who used to work with my opa. Dinner was very formal, with starched white linens, crystal goblets, and all kinds of silverware that I never knew what to do with, and salt cellars and finger bowls and six courses. But I never minded.

  The weather was unfailingly wet and cold, so it wasn’t as if you could go out and play, and I loved spending all day Wednesday with my mother and my oma in the big, warm kitchen. Ironing and folding the napkins was my first chore, then setting the table with the gold-rimmed plates. I loved the juggling of things from oven to stove to oven to refrigerator, the stirring and the tasting, listening to the family gossip.

  This Thanksgiving Day comes at the tail end of a solid month of rain. CM and I have invited a few people for dinner—Mac, Kenny, and Roz. In a sudden burst of expansive goodwill, I’d invited Tyler to come, but she said she was going to San Francisco.

  It surprised me. “What are you going down there for?”

  Her expression fell somewhere between boredom and annoyance. “My dad,” she said. “He’s getting married.”

  “That’s kind of exciting. Is this somebody he’s known for a while?”

  She shrugs. “I just met her in September.”

  “So, are they going to live down there?”

  A sigh. “She’s moving in with us.”

  “What’s she like?”

  Tyler scooped toasted hazelnuts into the bowl of the small Hobart. “Betty Crocker.” When she saw my puzzled look, she added, “A house bunny. You know—tuna casserole on the table every night at six o’clock.”

  My first thought was that Tyler’s dad was probably primed and ready for a house bunny. My second thought was that Tyler obviously was not.

  I’m doing most of the cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. CM’s good at chopping things and cleaning up, but other than that, she’s pretty much a culinary washout. Mostly she keeps the fire going and hangs out in the kitchen as self-appointed cheerleader and supervisory staff. Mac shows up at noon with six bottles of wine and a couple of tapes. CM scans the bottles.

  “Ooh, Côtes du Rhone. Mmm, Alsatian Riesling. Good job, Barman!”

  I should be used to this by now, but I can’t quite squelch a prickle of annoyance at the way he smiles and stands up a bit straighter, basking in the glow of her approval. They load the Riesling into the refrigerator.

  “Hey, don’t take up all the room,” I grouse. “I need someplace for the salad and the mousse.”

  A few minutes later the buzzer squawks again, and our tiny foyer is suddenly full of noise and wet coats and dripping umbrellas.

  Under the banner “Invite an Orphan Home for Thanksgiving,” Roz and Kenny have asked if they can bring a friend of theirs. Or at least that’s the official story. Steve Grimaldi is a tall, buffed-out bus driver with gorgeous dark eyes. I remember that he went with us to Hong Chow’s Noodle Parlor one night after Bailey’s closed, and I’m pretty sure he wangled this invitation so he could see CM again.

  I nudge her with my elbow as we stand at the sink together. “Pretty cute, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Well, at least we have an even number of boys and girls,” she says with a neutral smile.

  From the living room I hear the muted roar of a football crowd and the hyper tones of the pumped-up announcer. Roz appears with a casserole of scalloped potatoes. “It smells wonderful in here. Just the way Thanksgiving should smell.” She looks radiant in her gray jumper and wine-colored turtleneck, her dark hair brushed and shining, little strands of it haloed around her face by static electricity. I don’t recall ever seeing her with makeup on before. “Where do you want this casserole and what can I do?”

  “You can just set it on the stove.” CM smiles. “My personal chef has everything under control, so there’s not much to do. What are the guys up to?”

  Roz makes a face. “Football. In a few minutes they’ll be sniffing each other and marking their territory.”

  “Guess we’ll have to party without them.” CM reaches in the fridge for a bottle of champagne while I grab three glasses.

  “Just a teensy bit for me,” Roz says, holding her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.

  We both look at her in surprise, and she blushes. “I guess I’m not supposed to say anything till we make the official announcement, but I’m pregnant.”

  “Like omigod!” CM and I sandwich her between us in a hug.

  “That is so awesome! Congratulations. Oops.” CM licks champagne off her fingers as it foams over the rim of the glass.

  “We’ll have to imbibe more, then. In your honor, of course.”

  “Please act surprised when Kenny makes the announcement. He’s so excited.”

  We touch our glasses together, and whisper impatient questions. “How far along are you? Do you know the sex? Have you thought of any names?”

  “I’m due in May,” she says, “and I don’t know…well, clinically, I don’t know. They can’t tell the sex until twenty weeks, but I just have a feeling it’s a girl.”

  CM grins. “A toast—to the baby woman!”

  Although cooking isn’t her forte, CM sets a beautiful table, hauling out her grandmother’s rose-patterned china, the crystal she bought in Vienna, and her mismatched silver, collected on her travels from antiques shops across the country. In place of flowers there’s a basket filled with bright leaves, nuts, pinecones, mahogany-colored buckeyes, and dried sweet-gum balls.

  While the rolls warm in the oven, Roz tosses the salad, I whip cream for the pumpkin mousse, and CM ransacks drawers for serving pieces and trivets for the hot dishes. We arrange the food buffet style on the desk, and pour the wine while the men sit glued to the television, popping up every few minutes to cast doubt on the lineage of the referees or high-five each other.

  We pause in our labors to study them.

  “And I thought all they did for fun was fart,” CM deadpans.

  Roz purses her lips thoughtfully. “No, my dear. As every married woman knows, that falls under the heading of foreplay.”

  When we’re all at the table, plates heaped with turkey and dressing and my oma’s giblet gravy, scalloped potatoes, romano beans with toasted almonds, spinach salad, and homemade yeast rolls, Kenny says, “I guess it’s corny, but I’d like to say what I’m thankful for.” He picks up his glass. “Great friends, great food.” He turns to Roz, and I could swear his contacts are fogging up. “And my beautiful wife, Rosalind, who is about to make me a daddy.”

  While everyone is exclaiming and clapping and shaking Kenny’s hand and jumping up to hug Roz in a pantomime of surprise, I watch that familiar neutral expression replace the surprise on Mac’s face. Then he recovers.

  “So you really can teach an old dog new tricks.” Grinning, he slaps Kenny on the
back, kisses Roz.

  After seconds—in some cases, thirds—after pumpkin mousse and coffee, when we’re sitting around in a sated stupor nursing our brandy and finger-painting in the melted whipping cream, Mac puts on one of his tapes, and we watch the afternoon sink into early evening darkness, lights winking on down the hill.

  Steve and Mac compare rock-climbing escapades. CM describes her latest dance project, based on the caryatids. Kenny, who grew up on a farm, grosses us out by describing how his father killed their Thanksgiving turkey every year, and when Roz gives him the Oh, honey, not that story, he asserts that if everyone had to kill their own food, there’d be more vegetarians.

  Steve stirs everything up with his “I’m a recovering Catholic” comment—Roz is devout, Kenny is simply Irish. Steve touts the mellow vibes of Zen and Kenny scoffs at “religion lite.” Mac shocks all of us with the revelation that he was an altar boy.

  I mostly sit listening. Watching Mac. Noticing how different he is in a group. More…I don’t know. Convivial? Exuberant? He does the just-one-of-the-guys thing very well. But it seems hollow to me.

  The first Saturday in December Mac is up on Orcas Island helping Rick Bensinger install a shower in his cottage. CM is out to dinner with Steve Grimaldi. I have a glass of wine at Bailey’s around seven-thirty, but without Mac, the place could be any other bar on a Saturday night—crowded, overheated, too noisy to concentrate on my book. So I trudge back up the hill in the dark, pelted by rain, long scarf wrapped around my neck and drawn up over my nose.

  All the shops and some of the houses are decorated for Christmas. Most of the windows in our building are outlined in lights, red and green for Christmas, blue and white for Hanukkuh. By eight-thirty I’m taking comfort in a blazing fire, hot chocolate, and hazelnut-cornmeal biscotti. I curl up on the couch, surrounded by pillows, ecstatic to find an Audrey Hepburn film festival on one of the movie channels.

  Just at the point in Two for the Road where she comes back to Albert Finney after a night of illicit adventure, and all he says is, “Thank God,” the front door opens and CM walks in.

  I look at my watch. “What are you doing home?”

  She hangs up her coat, kicks off her shoes, and inserts herself into my nest of pillows, tucking her legs under the blanket next to mine. She picks up my mug, and sniffs.

  “Mmm. Hot chocolate. Is there any more?”

  “On the stove. What happened? Was it ghastly?”

  “No.” She takes the last biscotti on the plate and gnaws on it. “Not ghastly. Just…I felt like I was sleep walking.”

  She gets up and goes into the kitchen, returning with her own mug of cocoa. She repositions herself on the couch and takes a sip. “He thought the caryatids were insects.”

  I laugh, but she doesn’t.

  “Don’t you find that depressing?”

  “Actually…” I hit the power button on the remote and the TV goes black. “I think it’s hilarious.”

  “That’s because you weren’t trying to have a conversation with him.” She stares thoughtfully into her hot chocolate. “I guess I’ve never really been very smart about men.”

  “Show me a female who has and I’ll show you a black-widow spider.”

  She doesn’t even smile. “I’m serious. What if my mother was right?”

  “About what?”

  “About everything. Love. Marriage and babies. My aunt Connie who fell down the basement stairs and laid there, for three days, till the yardman found her.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She was the family old maid.”

  “Stop it! You’re not old and you’re sure as hell not a maid.”

  Finally, a grudging little chuckle. She nestles into the pillows and pulls the blanket up to her chest. “The problem is, I want it all. I want to dance and travel and then I want to come home to somebody wonderful. But they won’t let you.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Men. It’s always an either/or thing with them. They want you to give up everything else to get that little bit of warmth. It’s not worth it.”

  I turn myself around and sit cross-legged facing her. “But this was a first date. He wasn’t getting into the dancing/traveling/coming home thing yet, was he?”

  “No.” She sighs. “But then, he wasn’t wonderful, either.” She picks up the remote and clicks the tube back on just in time for the end of the movie.

  Albert Finney looks at Audrey Hepburn and says, “Bitch.” She smiles her glorious smile and says, “Bastard.”

  five

  Unless you know someone who’s short-listed for the Nobel Peace Prize or about to go into labor, a phone call at four A.M. can only be bad news. But I’m not thinking about that when I first hear Dorian the duck phone quacking obnoxiously. I’m cursing myself for forgetting to unplug him. I’m thinking that whoever is waking me up at this ungodly hour on my day off better have a damn good reason.

  She does. “Wyn?”

  “Mom?” I push myself into a sitting position, shivering in the cold darkness. The living room smells of the ashes from last night’s fire. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Richard.” Her voice is small and sounds very far away. “He’s had a heart attack. But he’s all right,” she adds quickly. “He’s at Encino Medical Center. That’s where I am. I’m sorry to wake you up.”

  Now I’m fully, wide-eyed, hair-raisingly awake. “Mom, for God’s sake, don’t worry about that. Tell me what happened. Are you okay? You want me to come?”

  Even as I’m saying it, I know it’s the wrong thing. I should have just said I’d be there on the first flight this morning.

  “No, it’s okay. I’m fine. And he’s stable. I guess I should have waited till later to call you…I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  That about does it for me. All that’s keeping me from bawling like a baby is the knowledge that the last thing she needs with her husband in the ICU is a hysterical daughter. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, after dinner Thursday night he wasn’t feeling good. He said it was heartburn, so he took some Pepto and we went to bed. Then about midnight I woke up and his breathing sounded funny, you know—stressed or something. He was lying there with pains in his chest, trying to decide whether to wake me. I swear, men can be so—”

  “Wait a minute. Are you telling me this happened two nights ago? Why the hell didn’t you call me?”

  “Oh, Wyn, I don’t know. I can’t even tell night from day right now. It’s been a very strange forty-eight hours. I’m sorry I’m not making any sense. Anyway, as soon as he told me what was wrong, I called nine-one-one, and he kept insisting he could drive himself to the clinic. Can you imagine? It was a good thing I didn’t listen to him because by the time the paramedics got here he was about to go into cardiac arrest.”

  I know she has to be wondering right now if maybe my father, who dropped dead of the same damned thing at the age of forty-five, had had symptoms, some kind of warning that he ignored or was too stubbornly macho or maybe too scared to tell her about.

  “I’m sure I can get a flight this morning, and as soon as I—”

  “No, honey, I’d really rather you didn’t come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because everything’s under control, and I think it would upset Richard if everybody started hovering—”

  “‘Hovering’?”

  “He didn’t even want me to call Gary. What I’d like you to do, if you can, is to come home for Christmas. Spend a few days with us. I think it would make Richard very happy. And me, too, of course.”

  Naturally she interprets the silent pause incorrectly.

  “I know it’s short notice, and I know you’re probably busy at work—”

  “No, it’s not that. I’m just not totally awake yet, and I was—”

  “Oh, the doctor’s coming, honey. I’ve got to run. You see if you can work it out. Maybe you’d like to bring your…boyfriend? I’ll call you tomorrow. Love y
ou.”

  I close the door to CM’s bedroom, and since there’s no going back to sleep now, I tiptoe into the kitchen and put the teakettle on. I turn up the thermostat and pull on my sweats and sit at the table.

  Memories are like those nested Shaker boxes, each one holding another half-forgotten surprise, some pleasant, some not so pleasant. Thinking of Richard reminds me of their wedding last year, how hurt and resentful I felt that she would marry this stranger—actually hold the ceremony in the house she and my father built—and then move him into it. I remember getting knee-walking drunk at the reception, but I don’t remember much of what I did or said. This is probably a good thing.

  What I mainly recall is meeting Richard’s son, Gary, a perfectly nice guy with whom I ended up having a brief and mindless fling. CM charitably refers to him as my transition man. The worst part of the weekend—aside from the wedding itself—was David showing up on the doorstep the next day to announce that he’d decided we should get divorced so he could marry Advertising Barbie. Not that it came as a huge surprise; it was just the addition of insult to injury.

  Each successive Kodachrome image in my mind makes me cringe a little more until the teakettle screeches, mercifully ending the reruns.

  While I’m rummaging through the tin of tea bags, looking for an Earl Grey, CM emerges from the bedroom in a green silk kimono with little Japanese dolls embroidered all over it.

  “What’s going on? Did I hear Dorian quacking?”

  When I tell her the news, she groans. “Oh, God, how awful. Poor Johanna. They haven’t even been married a year. Are you going home?”

  “She didn’t want me to come.”

  She pulls another mug out of the cupboard and pours boiling water in it. “Did she say why?”

  “She said Richard would get upset if people started ‘hovering.’ She wants me to come home for Christmas. She says I should bring my ‘boyfriend.’”