Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “What’s the rationale behind freezing the butter?”

  “It makes the scones flakier.” Heat blasts out of the oven as I open the door to put the nuts in. In less than a minute, the warm smell of toasting hazelnuts fills the kitchen.

  Richard takes little sips of his coffee. “Wynter, I know how hard it is to come back to a place you love and see it altered almost beyond recognition.”

  I set the timer for the nuts and turn to him. “Howard, I appreciate your concern, but everything’s fine. I don’t live here anymore; you do. The bedroom is beautiful, and a lot more functional than it was with my junk all over the place.”

  He’s giving me an odd look, and I suddenly understand that it’s because I just called him Howard. My face flares.

  “Howard?” he says.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “That’s okay. I was just wondering why Howard?”

  I turn on the hot water in the sink, wash and dry the knife. “If you really want to know…I…” I press my lips together. “Did you ever read The Fountainhead?”

  He starts to laugh. “Howard Roark. That’s great.” He laughs again, and then I laugh, too.

  When the timer dings, I pull the nuts out and turn the oven up to 400. Richard puts the kettle on for more coffee.

  “My first wife died when Gary was ten.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sure it was hard…”

  “It was very sudden. A brain aneurysm. She was fine and then she was dead. She was…” He looks at me for a few seconds. “Just about the age you are now.” He stops talking while I grind more beans. “I was thirty-five, and I was totally devastated. Also totally incompetent at raising my son. Well, pretty incompetent at doing much of anything for a very long time.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Gabrielle. Of course, we called her Gabby.” It still makes him smile.

  He pours boiling water over the ground coffee and we stand side by side watching it slowly settle into the pot below.

  “Much as I would have liked to remarry, for Gary to have a mother, I just never could bring myself to do it.” He turns his head slowly toward me. “Until I met Johanna. She…” He pauses. “Is a very special woman.”

  “Then why did you have to change everything about her?” It comes out spontaneously, and I almost regret it when I see the look of hurt surprise on his face.

  “What do you mean?”

  I’m treading on shaky ground here, but this has been on my mind for a long time. “Her hair, her clothes. The whole house.”

  “I had nothing to do with her change of hairstyle and clothes, Wynter.” He leans one elbow on the kitchen counter. “I think maybe that was something she’d wanted to do for a while. Being with me might have been the catalyst, but the decisions were all hers.” He smiles. “I think you underestimate your mother if you imagine that anyone could bulldoze her into doing anything she didn’t want to do. In fact, that’s one of the things I noticed about her immediately, the way she took charge of that office…”

  All at once I feel silly. No, worse than that. I feel like a petulant six-year-old.

  “Sorry. It was none of my business anyway.”

  “As for the house…maybe I did push for some changes there, but I think Johanna was happy with the new direction.”

  “Probably. It doesn’t matter.” I grab the sponge and start wiping up the miniscule spill of hot water on the counter.

  The coffee grounds go in the compost bucket, and Richard refills both our cups. “When you get the scones in, why don’t you come in the den,” he says. “There are some things I wanted to show you.”

  Inside the large box are two smaller boxes, one of which I recognize immediately. Christmas tree ornaments. The ones I made in school, like the paper-plate Santa face. The buckram angel, wings glittery with glued-on sequins. The cotton-ball snowman and woman. The felt Raggedy Ann. The cut-out photographs of my mother and father, pasted on cardboard.

  There, too, are the ornaments that belonged to my oma and opa—the delicate glass birds with tails made of real feathers; tiny silver bells, engraved with their initials; wax images of the holy family, brushed with gilt; dolls and animals woven from straw; and carved horses and soldiers. There are my mother’s painted eggs and origami birds, the Tour Eiffel that my father brought back from a trip to Paris, the tin whistle from his childhood.

  The other box, of course, holds Gary’s handiwork. Richard and I laugh because it includes the same cotton-ball snowman and paper plate Santa. His box includes a string of those old candle lights with the perpetual rising bubbles and a lot of doily snowflakes and painted tin cutouts from New Mexico. We unwrap them all and spread them out on the coffee table, telling each other the stories of each one, and when my mother wanders in sleepily an hour later, Richard and I are nibbling on our scones and hanging the relics on the flocked tree, on top of the pristine glass balls and shiny metal stars.

  seven

  Lit up in the dark, L.A. looks like the vast motherboard of a very unwieldy computer. The chimes ring—I’ve never figured out what they’re for—and I sip my wine, wondering what kind of germs I’m inhaling from all the recirculated air. I feel tired and inexplicably sad, suddenly vulnerable to unseen dangers, of which hostile microbes are only the least.

  I should be happy. It was a pretty decent Christmas, the first in recent memory. There was a sort of wobbly rapprochement between Richard and me. My mother and I actually talked about our lives. And stuffed in my carry-on bag is the Christmas present of my dreams—in fact, beyond my dreams. I was nearly speechless when I ripped open the envelope and found a round-trip ticket to Paris, with a connection to Toulouse, purchased using frequent-flyer freebies—Richard’s, I’m sure, because my mother hasn’t traveled enough lately to earn a free ticket to Burbank.

  “We thought you could use a real vacation this summer,” she explained after I stammered my undying gratitude. The thrill lasted just long enough for me to realize that I’ll be going alone, because there’s no way Mac can afford to go.

  A cold, dark current circulates around me, like the air-conditioning on this damn freezing plane. I pull my jacket closer, tuck my hands under my arms. I change the channel of “in-flight entertainment” from jazz to opera just in time to catch Victoria de Los Angeles singing “Habañera,” from Carmen. L’amour est un oiseau rebelle: “Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame. Love is a gypsy child.” My favorite line is “If you don’t love me, then I love you, but if I love you, then watch out!”

  When I close my eyes, I see—not Mac—Gary. Leaning against the kitchen counter, looking like the boy next door. The thing I recall about him now—in stark contrast to Mac—is his openness. He was always so forthcoming with his feelings, his own story. It probably would have been fairly painless to settle into a life with him. At the time, I was sneering at painless, but it might not be such a bad deal—a man who loves you, a nice man, let’s not forget. Attractive. No shortage of cash. You could learn to live with stepchildren and ex-wives. People do it all the time.

  God, what am I thinking? It would have been painless, all right. Like being under anesthesia.

  I finish the wine and lean my head back against the scratchy white pillow, and what seems like three minutes later we bump and skid onto the rain-slicked Sea-Tac runway.

  The air in the terminal doesn’t smell much better than that on the plane, but at least it’s not freezing. I told CM not to bother coming in, to just pick me up outside baggage claim. I push forward out of the crush, hurrying to break away from the press of bodies.

  “Hey, lady. Need a taxi?”

  I wheel around, already smiling stupidly, and there he is. Wearing the Black Watch plaid flannel shirt and jeans and his old down vest. Holding the most exquisite rose I’ve ever seen. Its petals are a pale salmon color on the outside, a warm shade of parchment on the inside. He holds it out to me.

  “It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen one like that.” It has a light, spi
cy fragrance.

  “It’s called a Caramella,” he says.

  I look around. “Where’s CM?”

  “I gave her the night off.” When he kisses me he smells like the rainy night. “How was everything down south?”

  “It was good. Better than I expected.” For once, I don’t feel like talking. I just want to soak him up. While we wait for the bags to come down, he puts his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side, and I look up into his gaze.

  “I should have gone with you,” he says.

  I shake my head. “You probably couldn’t have gotten off.”

  “Maybe. But I didn’t try. I’m sorry.”

  The look he gives me at that moment is more than just an apology. It’s a look that promises something. I’m not even sure what, but it’s enough.

  Mac has to work on New Year’s Eve, having traded with Kenny so he could pick me up at the airport. It’s just as well. CM and I have a long-standing tradition of spending New Year’s Eve listening to oldies, eating good food, and drinking champagne until we are able to recall and perform the lyrics and choreography to all of the Supremes’ greatest hits.

  By the time our soup is simmering, the rain’s turned to sleet. We hear it making little splats on the windows. We’re starting out slow, with a Dave Brubeck tape, and I’ve just put some phyllo pastries with mushrooms and feta cheese into the oven to fill the role of hors d’oeuvres. The buzzer rings.

  “Who the hell…” CM goes to the squawk box. “Yes?”

  “W-Wyn? It’s me. Tyler. Can I come up?”

  CM buzzes her in and I open the door. On the landing is a wet, shivering mass of sleet and tears, looking like a drowned blue rat. “Tyler?” I grab her and pull her in. “What the hell are you doing?” She’s shaking too hard to discuss it.

  We drag her to the bathroom, strip her down, and get her under a cool shower, gradually raising the water temperature till she warms up enough to stop shivering. CM goes to make a cup of tea while I rummage through my drawers looking for some clothing she won’t get lost in. Then simultaneously I smell smoke and the smoke detector starts emitting its piercing squawk.

  “Oh shit!” CM says.

  “What?”

  “Our hors d’oeuvres look like they’ve been napalmed. Phew.” She’s opening the windows, fanning frantically.

  When I take Tyler my smallest sweatshirt and some tights, she looks stricken. “Did I screw up your dinner?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. It was just snacks. Here. Put these on and then come out by the fire.”

  She wanders out, waiflike in my oversized clothes. She sits on the floor by the fireplace, takes a sip of the hot tea, and makes a face.

  “This tastes like baby piss.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” says CM. “For your information, it’s green tea and it just might keep you from catching pneumonia.”

  Tyler buries her nose in the mug, chastened, and keeps sneaking looks at CM, whom she’s never seen up close and personal.

  Finally I say, “Not to be nosy or anything, but what were you doing strolling around in the sleet on New Year’s Eve?”

  She mumbles into the tea, something that sounds like, “…ass hole threw me out.”

  “What? Your dad?”

  She shakes her head. “My date. We were going to this party and we had a fight and he threw me out of the car.”

  “Who is this paragon of chivalry?” CM asks.

  Tyler giggles. “She talks like you.”

  “She isn’t royalty; she just looks like it. Feel free to address her directly.”

  She looks at CM. “Jason Harris. He’s a friend of my friend DeeDee’s boyfriend. It was sort of a blind date.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  “I wanted to go to Barton’s party. He wanted to go get high and fuck.”

  CM rolls her eyes. “Ah, the answer to a maiden’s prayer.”

  “Where did you and he part company?” I ask.

  “Over by Olympia Pizza.”

  “You walked over here from there? Why didn’t you take the bus?”

  She looks sheepish. “I left my purse in his car.”

  The timer starts buzzing for the new batch of phyllo bites, and I go to retrieve them. “Tyler, you want some champagne?”

  “Don’t we have to wait till midnight?”

  “Not in this house.”

  “Cool.”

  On January 5 I call Elizabeth Gooden, my attorney in Los Angeles. I ask politely about her vacation.

  “It was lovely, thanks. You know, you’re the only one of my clients who’s even asked.”

  I consider telling her that the others probably don’t want to know how she’s spending their money, but I figure that would nullify all the points I just made with her.

  “How are you?” she says.

  “Well, if you disregard the fact that there’s another payment coming due on the bakery as of February first, and I still haven’t paid my mother back the fifteen grand she loaned me as the first payment, well, then you could say I’m fine. I guess what I’m wondering is what my ex-husband-pending and his scumbag lawyer are doing with the paperwork.”

  “I’ve had an indication that we can expect an agreement soon, so I’m trying my best to chase Ivan down, but he hasn’t returned my phone calls. I’m sorry my news isn’t any better, but I don’t see any reason why it should take longer than a few more weeks.”

  “Weeks? God, what am I supposed to do for money in the meantime?”

  “I don’t know, Wynter. If you recall, last year at this time, you were telling me to stall. To drag it out as long as possible, so for quite a while, that’s just what I did. Then you changed your mind, and I changed my approach, but I can’t do anything about their response, as long as it’s within acceptable parameters.”

  There’s not much I can say to that, since every word is the gospel truth. I even remember her saying to me, She who seeks revenge should dig two graves, Wynter—one for her victim and one for herself.

  “I know. I’m just in a tight situation here. Monetarily.”

  “Well, I’m going to continue to do everything I can to bring this case to a swift and satisfactory conclusion for you, Wynter. I’ll let you know just as soon as I hear something.” She pauses. “Oh, and happy New Year.”

  It’s the kind of day that’s rare in Seattle in January. Which is a good thing, because if they happened too often, the rest of the outside world might discover the city and come swarming up here.

  The sky is an inverted bowl of blue tracked by white contrails, and there’s a gentle westerly breeze. The sun is warm on my face and I know I’m going to have a whole new crop of freckles, but it feels so good I don’t care.

  The other reason I feel good is that my mother told me not to worry about the fifteen thousand dollars I owe her, and she didn’t even blink when I swallowed my pride and asked for another fifteen. In fact, she just made that little clicking noise she learned from my oma, and said, “David Franklin just better hope I never see him standing in a crosswalk.”

  Mac’s in a really good mood because he finally heard from Alan Lear, the agent who’s been reading his manuscript. He said that he liked the work, although he couldn’t take on any new clients right now, but he was passing the manuscript on to his new partner, a guy named Steve Devine. So we’re sort of celebrating today.

  We’ve occupied a tiny table in front of Two Dagos from Texas, a funky Italian café down on First Avenue, where we’re having lunch. Mac’s immersed in Bonfire of the Vanities and I’m watching the parade of assorted odd birds that nest here in Belltown.

  You’ve got your starving-artist loft dwellers, your merchant marine contingent, thrift-shop patrons, the usual homeless, a few punkers who frequent the music clubs and retro shops, and an occasional yuppie resident of the high-rise condo and apartment buildings that are just beginning to sprout around the district’s fringes.

  If you sit here long enough, you can see
almost anything, so at first I don’t pay any attention to the bedraggled-looking guy slouching down the sidewalk, hands jammed into his pockets.

  Until he gets right in front of our table and stares hard. “McLeod?” he says. Then louder, “Mac McLeod?”

  For a second they stare at each other. A slow grin breaks across Mac’s face.

  “Son of a bitch.” He closes the book and stands up and then he and this guy who looks like he spent the night on a park bench in Pioneer Square are shaking hands and pounding each other on the back. And then they actually hug each other. All I can think of is that this must be somebody pretty special, because I can smell him from four feet away, and hugging him would not be an option for me.

  He isn’t as tall as Mac, but he’s sturdy looking and deeply tanned. His hair is long, stringy, and dirty blond, his eyes a deep, strange gray. “Holy shit, pilgrim. I heard you might be in Seattle, but I can’t believe I just stumbled over you like this. How the hell are you?”

  “Good. What about you?” Then he remembers me. “Oh, sorry. Wyn, this is Nick Hatcher. Wyn Morrison.”

  A hand is thrust under my nose, and I have to shake it, but I make a mental note not to eat anything else till I can go to the john and scrub.

  Mac grabs a vacant chair and pulls it over to our table. When Nick Hatcher scoots up so close that his knee is almost touching mine, I try to identify the smell—week-old roadkill? Suddenly the rest of my blue-cheese turkey burger seems a lot less appealing, so the hand-washing thing becomes less urgent.

  I try to be subtle as I check out every detail of his appearance, from the run-over loafers on his dirty feet, to his grimy cords that are ripped in both knees, to the faded Grateful Dead world-tour T-shirt stretched over his well-developed biceps. His hands, besides being estranged from soap and water for some time, are scraped and bruised, and his ragged fingernails look as if he’s been digging in road tar.

  “What are you doing here?” Mac asks.