Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “I really appreciate this.”

  She waves a hand. “You’re most welcome, Mac.”

  “I…think I upset the—”

  “Was she horribly rude?” Pearl’s eyes narrow.

  “No, I just caught her at a bad time.”

  “She was rude, wasn’t she? It seems any time is a bad time for Bernie. Bernice. My granddaughter.” She opens one of the cabinets in the bottom of the hutch, talking softly to herself. “Frying pan, saucepan. Hmm, no teakettle. I’ll see to it.”

  “I can use the saucepan to boil water.”

  She looks horrified. “Absolutely not. Even the sourdoughs had proper teakettles.”

  After she leaves he stands in the middle of the room holding his underwear. Obviously, previous occupants didn’t have much in the way of wardrobe. He stacks all the clothes on the single shelf by the sink. The spiral-bound notebook and a fistful of pens go on the table, and now there’s just one thing left in the deepest recesses of the duffle. The twisted wreckage of his book, cleverly disguised in a mailing envelope and held by crisscrossed rubber bands. He grips the bag as if testing its weight, then zips it shut and stashes it under the bed.

  He sits at the table and takes out the stationery he liberated from the Gold Rush Motel. He pulls the cap off a pen with his teeth and chews on it as he writes.

  Dear Wyn

  eleven

  Wyn

  With Mac gone, days assume an orderly progression.

  Day One: Guilt. I’m a woman, therefore it must be my fault. He left because I was too a) pushy, b) controlling, c) emotional, d) all of the above.

  Day Two: Outrage. He’s self-absorbed. Shallow. A commitment-phobe. In short, a typical man.

  Day Three: Resignation. Whatever.

  Day Four: Invigoration. I’ve got things to do. Lists to make. I need to research some new breads, clean the apartment, get my finances under control, start jogging again.

  Day Five: See Day One above.

  As the sun climbs higher and the days engorge with light, the neighborhood comes out of hibernation. The last sweet peas are spent, brown and brittle; the Red Riding Hood tulips have finished blooming, and the Shasta daisies, poppies, geranium and lobelia start to take over the empty spaces, spilling their blooms over the edges of planters in excited profusion. Drifts of maroon and gold daylilies nod along the parking strips. Regular customers start showing up with new puppies or kittens. Painting and construction crews drop by in the mornings on their way to somebody’s renovation project. They replace some of our regular guys, gone to work on the fishing boats in Alaska.

  With the changing weather come thoughts of France. The airline ticket I stuffed in the bottom of my underwear drawer suddenly beckons. Actually, it does more than beckon. It hollers at me. It waves its arms wildly, like the show-off kid in the back row who always knows the answers. I deserve a break today. Or at least sometime this summer.

  “I was thinking about taking some time off.”

  Ellen’s down on her knees in the corner by the front door. She looks over her shoulder at me. “Good idea. When?”

  “August? September?” I shrug. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Putting out roach motels.”

  “Roach motels.”

  “Yeah. You know.” She gives an evil laugh. “They can check out anytime they like, but they can never leave.” She stands up, dusting her hands. “They’re traps with poison bait.”

  “You mean you’re not capturing them live and sending them to repatriation centers where they can be reunited with their next of kin?”

  “No. My love of living creatures does not extend to roaches.” She turns on the water in the sink and pumps liquid soap into her hands. “And they make such a mess when you squash them.”

  “Mmm.” I look at the Garibaldi in my hand, the raisin filling oozing out of one corner. “Thanks for sharing.”

  “How long do you want to take off?”

  “Well…”

  She shakes the excess water off her hands and grabs a towel. “You have four weeks coming, but—”

  “I just want three.”

  “That’s kind of a long time for you to be gone.” She opens a gallon of skim milk and pours some into the frothing jug. “Are you that comfortable with leaving Tyler alone?”

  “She’s making amazing progress. All she’d need is an extra pair of hands to help her shape the loaves and clean up. I was thinking we could get someone from the culinary academy to do a three-week apprenticeship.”

  “Yeah, can you actually see Tyler teaching someone?”

  “You have a point.” I pour myself a glass of orange juice to wash down the Garibaldi. “Maybe one of the Mazurka crew could help her?”

  “Good luck getting one of them to work nights.” She purses her lips. “Where are you planning to go?”

  “My mother and Richard gave me a ticket to France for Christmas.”

  Her eyebrows lift. “Ask them if they’d like to adopt another daughter. I’m really no trouble at all.”

  “It’s a frequent-flier freebie, so I have to use it by November. And it’s not worth it if I just go for a week.”

  “How about two weeks?”

  “I was thinking I’d take two weeks’ vacation and then maybe head down to Toulouse and kind of putter around with Jean-Marc for a week. If he’s up for it. I might learn something interesting.”

  “Well, let me sleep on it. Maybe a brilliant idea will present itself at three A.M.”

  When I get home CM is dawdling over her scrambled eggs. When I tell her my plans, she says, “The company’s going to England in August. If you go after we finish our classes, I could meet you in Paris for a week.”

  “Ooh. That would be more fun than humans are supposed to have. But…” I frown. “You think Paris is ready for us?”

  She puts her elbow on the table, resting her chin in her hand. “I’d go so far as to say it might usher in a whole new era in foreign relations. Where should we stay?”

  “Left Bank, bien sûr. Seventh arrondissement.”

  “Of course, there’s always the Île St-Louis.” She jumps up and goes over to the bookshelves, returning with my well-worn copy of Frommer’s guide to France. “I’ve always wanted to stay in one of those gorgeous old town-house hotels. Where did you and David stay?”

  “The Ritz.” The memory makes me sigh. “The best thirtieth birthday I ever had.”

  She laughs. “Was it worth being married to shithead?”

  I smile dreamily. “Yeah, I think it was. Five hundred dollars a night. I can’t imagine what it costs now. Dinner at Taillevent. I felt like a princess.”

  “We’ll have at least as much fun, even if we can’t stay at the Ritz.”

  “Yes, we will. And you won’t try to recover the cost of the trip from me in court.”

  We smile at each other, and our smiles expand as we consider the possibilities.

  One morning Mitsuko’s vegetable market across the street fails to open at the usual time, and sits, shuttered, all day. The next day, Mitsuko and her husband, Fred, are there early, hauling cash registers, tables, boxes, notebooks, baskets, and bins of produce out to a U-Haul trailer.

  He comes over with buckets of lemons, apples, onions, carrots, just as Tyler and I are cleaning up and the day shift is arriving. “Whatever you don’t want, just put out for your customers,” he says.

  “But where are you going?” Ellen asks.

  He takes off his baseball cap and scratches the pink scalp under his thinning hair. “We’re moving to Lopez. Gonna do a little truck garden there, sell at the farmers’ market. Take it easier.”

  “What’s going in your space?”

  “Dunno.” He looks over his shoulder. “I think some artists are renting it. I’m not sure what they’re going to do.”

  “Great,” Ellen mutters. “There goes the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, I hope it’s a wonderful gallery.” Maggie claps her hands together like something
out of a Doris Day movie. “Maybe all the local artists could contribute some work.”

  Tyler’s chin juts out. “They probably don’t want any Power Rangers birthday cakes.”

  I link my arm through hers. “Hey, girlfriend, it’s after seven, and we’re at liberty. Why don’t we go get some breakfast?”

  “I gotta meet Barton,” she says. “We’re trying to find an apartment to rent.”

  We take off our aprons and toss them in the hamper by the back door. “Are you guys…in a relationship or something?”

  She laughs loud and long. “In case you didn’t notice, he’s totally gay. He’s just my best friend. Since first grade. He was the only one of the kids I grew up with who still liked me after my mom left and I did my hair blue.”

  “So where are you looking for apartments?”

  “On Capitol Hill. It’s cheaper over there than Queen Anne.” She shoulders her backpack. “Anyway, I gotta do something. Betty’s driving me wackadoo.”

  “Betty?” I puzzle, stepping out the door behind her.

  “The wicked stepmother. Betty Crocker.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The woman’s got bad epazootics of the blowhole.”

  I burst out laughing. “And what might that be?”

  “She never shuts up. I don’t know how my dad can stand it.”

  “He’s probably been lonely for someone to talk to.”

  “Well, it’s not like he gets any talking done. Plus, she keeps ‘tidying up’ my room when I’m not there.”

  “I’m sure she means well—”

  “She’s looking for my cocaine spoon.”

  My head turns sharply and I realize that she’s joking.

  She rolls her eyes at me. “You and Betty. What a pair.”

  I leave her at the bus stop and walk down the Ave in the bright, cool morning, thinking about where I can have breakfast reasonably inexpensively. I really can’t afford to be eating out so much, but I dread going home in the mornings to that empty apartment. Wandering around trying to decide what to do—shower? Go to bed? Read?

  I haven’t slept well since Mac left. There’s a whole different dynamic in effect when the bed is all yours. Nobody to push up against. Cold sheets. Total silence. It takes some getting used to. Again.

  So instead, I treat myself to red-flannel hash at the Five Spot. I sit at a table near the window, reading the paper in the sun, listening to the energetic chatter of people whose day is just beginning, and the sounds of traffic as Queen Anne Hill comes awake.

  My eyes open at two o’clock in the afternoon and refuse to shut again. I get up and pace the apartment in my T-shirt and under-pants, study the books in the bookcase, stare listlessly into the refrigerator, turn resolutely away from the TV. Finally I pull on my sweatpants and go down to pick up the mail. Before I’ve even begun to sort through the bills and catalogs and circulars advertising carpet cleaning for $19.95 per room, my eyes lock on the envelope with the Canadian stamp. I walk up the stairs slowly, turning the letter over and over in my hands, almost reluctant to open it, half afraid of what he might say. It’s cheap hotel stationery from the Gold Rush Motel in a place called Beaverton, Yukon Territory. The postmark is smeared, so I can’t tell if that’s where it was mailed.

  Back in the apartment I throw all the other mail on the desk, get into bed, and tear the end off the envelope.

  Dear Wyn,

  They shoot horses, don’t they?

  The Elky’s pulled up lame. I hit a pretty big rock driving through what I thought was just a puddle, but was actually a washout on the road north of Carmacks.

  I’m in a little town called Beaverton, YT (Yukon Territory)—well, actually a big town by Yukon standards, big being anything over 350 pop. It sits in a bend of the Yukon River, and it consists of about four big streets intersecting with a few smaller ones—all of which are gravel/mud and the sidewalks are wooden planks. They don’t pave anything here because of frost heave. There’s a post office, a general store, a hardware store, two cafés, a barbershop, a church that doubles as a movie theater in summer (so I’m told), a school that goes from kindergarten to whatever the age of the oldest kid, a doctor who doubles as a dentist in emergencies, two motels, and, of course, a saloon.

  And a gas station/auto repair, where the Elky is staying. The owner, Ian Johnstone, is originally from Toronto, and he’s an auto mechanic in summer and a musher in the winter. He’s trying to put a team of dogs together to race in the Iditarod next March. I found all this out when I was riding with him in the cab of his tow truck from Carmacks. He said the transmission pan got shoved up and crushed the valve body. I know. It didn’t mean much to me either. Loosely translated it means that I need a whole new transmission. Finding one for a ’71 Elky and getting it up here is going to take some doing.

  Up to that point, the drive was easy, only a little rain. I was making good time considering all the roadwork they have to do here in the spring.

  Anyway, Ian says he’ll try to get a transmission from Whitehorse (doubtful). If they don’t have one there, he’ll try Vancouver. Then Seattle. And so on…

  Looks like Beaverton is going to be home for a while.

  Fortunately, I’ve found a place to stay where I can pay my way by doing maintenance work for an old lady named Pearl May Austen, who seems to own about half the town, including the Beaver Tail Saloon, which she inherited from her mother, who won it in a poker game. She also has a psychotic poodle named Egbert. He’s pretty old, too. I think he used to be white, but now he’s turned sort of yellow, like old book pages. He sits under her bar stool and attacks any feet that get too close to his mistress. The first time I went there, he sank his little fangs into my Raichles. Maybe he thought they were marauding armadillos.

  For a while just after I crossed the border I was picking up a Vancouver radio station and the woman who did the traffic reports sounded so much like you. I could sort of fool myself into thinking you were somehow talking to me—even if all you told me was to avoid the Burrard Bridge during rush hour because of lane marking. I miss you.

  Mac

  I fold the pages along the crease lines and stuff them back in the envelope. I lie back on my pillow and stare at the dappled sunlight on the ceiling. The letter is so Mac. All the intimacy of a story from the travel section of the newspaper.

  Lead off with an intriguing premise, not too specific, just enough to make the reader want to know more. They shoot horses, don’t they? Give the reader a bit of orientation. Beaverton sits in a bend of the Yukon River, population approximately 350. Then an interesting tidbit. They don’t pave the streets or sidewalks here because of frost heave. Next, a personal anecdote. Ian Johnstone told me he’s a mechanic in the summer and a musher in the winter as we rode up from Carmacks in his tow truck. Throw in some local color about Pearl May and Egbert the psycho poodle.

  His idea of getting personal is to tell me about the woman who did the traffic report on the Vancouver radio station. Oh, Mac.

  He’s working for some old lady doing odd jobs. Next thing, he’ll be tending bar. Just like he did here. It’s like those houses you see sometimes sitting up on blocks, jacked up off the foundation, the destination written in white chalk on the black insulation paper. He’s perfectly capable of picking up his entire life and taking it somewhere else, and setting it down again, intact.

  twelve

  Mac

  It’s early. The sun is low, the trees casting long shadows, and a pale ghost of a half-moon lurks in the southwest. Back in Seattle it’s probably still dark. He pulls on jeans and a sweatshirt in the cool air, and walks down the winding gravel drive toward the river. Breathing. That’s the thing about the air up here. You keep wanting to breathe more deeply, hold it longer. Like you could inhale the sky.

  He walks along the high-cut bank awash in grasses and dotted with yellow cinquefoil. A bald eagle scowls from a dead tree on the opposite shore, and a pure, singular birdsong he’s never heard before sends a c
hill down his back. The sound of an outboard motor draws his gaze to the water. A small, red square-stern canoe plows upstream through the chop, bringing cliff swallows pouring out of their nests in the bluff. At the tiller, wearing a bright yellow dress and an Aussie bush hat—Pearl May Austen.

  Ahead on his right is the abandoned school bus he saw yesterday, except it’s now obvious that it’s not abandoned. A black metal chimney pokes up through the roof, puffs of smoke escaping into the summer morning. He watches for any other signs of life, and when he’s almost directly opposite, a woman steps out the door and waves.

  She pantomimes drinking coffee from an imaginary cup, then motions him to come closer. Now he sees the sign that faces the road. MADAME BLUE’S MOOSEBURGERS AND TAROT READINGS.

  He turns up the well-worn path. When he gets within speaking range, a brown blur rounds the corner of the bus and stops between him and the woman.

  “Hah,” the woman says. He thinks it an odd thing to say until he realizes that she has a southern accent, and what she said was Hi. “Don’t mind him.” She nods at the animal guarding the path like some Manhattan nightclub bouncer.

  The dog stands stiff legged, making a low rumbling noise at the back of his throat, mouth pulled back to display a menacing set of teeth.

  “Jester, shame on you, dog. That’s real inhospitable. Now sit.” He sits, but his golden eyes follow Mac’s careful approach.

  “Interesting eyes.”

  “He’s part wolf.”

  “The front part, I bet. Nice doggie.”

  “He really is nice,” she says. “In fact, he’s nothing but a big, fuzzy cream puff. He just doesn’t know you.” She turns to the dog. “I want you to apologize to this man. Sorry, I didn’t get your name.”