Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “How was your session?”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you like Terry?”

  “She’s okay.”

  I attempt a laugh. “I guess you were wondering what Josh and I were doing.”

  “Not really.”

  I sit down next to her. “I’ll tell you anyway. We’re laying out a garden.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I thought maybe you and I could plant some herbs and flowers.”

  “What for? Josh owns the place. Let him plant stuff.”

  I want to slap her silly little face.

  “I thought it might help you feel better. I remember when I first got divorced, I was really depressed. Doing physical things like gardening and making bread seemed to help me—”

  Her legs slide down the wall and she scoots into an upright and locked position. Her eyes are throwing off sparks. “Well, I’m not like you, and this is totally different. All you did was lose some jerk you didn’t even like. I love Barton. And he’s dead. You know, stone-cold dead. So how could you think it’s the same?”

  I count backward from ten, just like my mother always said I should do when I’m about to lose my temper. “Tyler, I know it’s not the same. I just thought watching the plants grow and working in the garden would make you feel better. Maybe we could make it a kind of memorial to Barton. We could get Josh to make a marker—”

  “How too cute. And maybe we could get Turbo to come shit in it. Sort of add his two cents’ worth.”

  I get up abruptly. “I don’t know why you feel compelled to be such a bitch, but I’m getting sick of it. I’m trying to help you.”

  “Well, you can’t!” She jumps off the bed, stands glaring at me. “He wasn’t your friend! You just have to take over and run everything. I don’t need you to make me feel better. Why don’t you just go to fucking France and leave me alone.”

  “Tyler, it’s not your fault, you know.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” She swipes furiously at the tears that won’t stop.

  “I know you think he died because you didn’t ask him about the HIV test—”

  “Shut up! You don’t know jack shit!” Her voice reminds me of squealing brakes. “Get the hell out of my room!”

  She slams the door behind me.

  I stand looking at the blank face of the door till I realize I’m holding my breath.

  In the kitchen I take some leftover soup out of the refrigerator and pour it into a saucepan on the stove. When it’s hot I put the pan on a trivet and sit at my little table, eating the soup and listening to her sobs on the other side of the door. For this I gave up going to Toulouse?

  We hardly exchange two words the remainder of the week. At first I think I should probably just blow off the whole idea of having a garden. Seeing it in front of the house every day might piss her off even more. But it’s only mid-October and there’s no sign of a change in the beautiful weather, and I can’t stop thinking about how good it feels to dig in the dirt. The plants will have the long, wet winter to develop their roots, and by spring, there won’t be an herb garden this side of Fall City to compare with mine. Forget Tyler. I can do a garden without her help.

  Josh and I leave Sunday morning while she’s still asleep. We have omelets at Steve’s Broiler and I carefully avoid thinking about the mornings Mac and I sat here. The time we were in the booth next to the woman and her two little boys. The morning when he first came back from Orcas. And all those other Sunday mornings.

  After breakfast we hop back in the cab of his white Ford Ranger and take off down Boren to Interstate 90. Sunday-morning traffic is practically nonexistent and we fly across Lake Washington on the floating bridge to Mercer Island.

  “What does Tyler think about the garden?” Josh asks me.

  My eyes follow a sailboat with a red-and-blue spinnaker skimming across the whitecaps. “I have no idea. She’s barely speaking to me. I’m doing the garden for myself.”

  “That poor little critter,” he says, and I look at him sharply.

  “What about this poor little critter?”

  He laughs his funny laugh. “I’m not wasting any pity on you. You got the world by the tail, lady.”

  It’s my turn to laugh. “Yeah, right.” I fold my hands and unfold them a few times. “I really don’t understand it—whatever’s going on with her. I must have been insane to think I could help her. That she needed me.”

  He turns a serious look on me. “It’s pretty plain to me that you can and she does.”

  “She acts like she’s furious with me.”

  “I could be wrong, but here’s what I think. Besides being about as sad as a person can be, she’s scared. Know what I mean?” I look out the window and his voice gets even quieter than usual. “Sometimes when you love somebody—when you need that somebody—you get so scared of losing them that you just push them away. So you won’t be the one who gets left behind. Know what I mean?”

  I turn to look at him. He’s looking straight out the windshield. In profile he’s more Paul Bunyon than teddy bear. Except for the wire rimmed specs.

  “Yes,” I say. “I know what you mean.”

  I kneel in the freshly tilled black dirt, surrounded by plastic pots of herbs. A handful of the stuff under my nose, smelling clean and damp, leafy and almost chocolatey, makes me happy, sort of like walking into a bakery. The piney scent of rosemary, a whiff of licorice from the tarragon, the astringency of lemon thyme, the soothing floral breath of lavender—I don’t even notice when Josh disappears, but when I’m almost finished, I look up and he’s gone. I remember guiltily that I didn’t even thank him. As soon as I stick the last of the fuzzy gray lamb’s ears in the ground, I follow the sound of the power sander.

  “All through?” He pushes up his plastic goggles when I walk in and Turbo runs to meet me, covered with a fine layer of dust.

  “Yes. Listen, Josh, I feel terrible. I didn’t even say thanks for all your help.”

  “It’s okay. Turbo was in the mood for a walk. But, I’ve got something for you. For the garden.” He sets down the sander and retrieves a brown paper bag from under the piano. Inside is a small plaque attached to a stake. It’s hand painted with flowers and a butterfly and it says “Barton’s Garden.”

  “The woman who makes them has a table at the Market. I know it’s kind of cutesy-poo,” he says, grinning. “And it sounds like something from Monopoly, like Marvin Gardens. So if she doesn’t like it, just pitch it. Won’t hurt my feelings.” Au contraire, I can see quite plainly that it will, and I decide that if Tyler says one nasty thing about this plaque, I’ll use it to beat her senseless.

  “It’s really nice. Maybe I’ll just wait awhile to show it to her.”

  For the first few days, she pretends not to notice that there’s a garden in front of our house. I usually do the watering/weeding/routine maintenance every morning when we get home, so she can have breakfast by herself if she wants. Then by the time I’m ready to eat, she’s in the tub or asleep or just holed up in her room with her Walkman on.

  On Thursdays she goes to see Ellen’s friend Terry. A couple of times—once when I’m spreading my sand-and-gravel mulch, and once when I’m watering—I look up to see her watching me from out of the window. Both times she turns away quickly.

  She announces that she and Felice are going to a Halloween party. That suits me because I’m going over to CM’s to hide out inside her walled fortress. I’ve always hated Halloween—at least since I got too old to sneak around egging cars and toilet-papering yards. I hate having my evening interrupted a thousand times by a bunch of overdressed little beggars extorting candy. And then there are the teenagers who think they’re way too cool to wear costumes, but they expect you to fill up their king-size pillow cases with food anyway.

  It’s already dark when Tyler emerges from her room at six-thirty P.M. wearing black tights, a white turtleneck, and a black jacket with a white scarf. Her face is pale, made up with heavy eyeliner a
nd lipstick that’s so red it’s nearly blue.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” I ask.

  The look she gives me is startlingly like one of Linda’s—a combination of disdain and impatience. She reaches for her black bowler and sets it on her head. “Boy George, of course.”

  She disappears out the door.

  I hike over to Galer Street and press the buzzer on the door. CM’s best witch cackle comes over the intercom.

  “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, fire burn and—”

  “Whatever’s bubbling, I hope it’s cold and from France.”

  She buzzes me in. “It’s cold, but it’s from Sonoma,” she says, opening the door. I hand her the pumpkin bread I carted away from the bakery and some brownies cut out in the shape of pumpkins and glazed with chocolate.

  She’s made her famous meatball sandwiches, which are her one culinary claim to fame, but they are to die for. We eat them with our Iron Horse brut champagne and watch Nosferatu on video.

  “Forget Bela Lugosi and Frank Langella,” she says as the tape rewinds. “Max Schreck is truly the best vampire ever.”

  I shiver. “That scene where he comes out of his coffin in the hold of the ship…”

  She puts on a pot of decaf while I slice the pumpkin bread and put it on a plate with the brownies. “What’s the poppet doing tonight?”

  “I’m trying not to think about it. She went to a Halloween party with Felice. At least they don’t hang out with DeeDee anymore.”

  “Was she the one with the slimy boyfriend?”

  “Yes. I’ve been afraid to even mention it to Tyler—her mental state’s so precarious these days—but I can’t help wondering if Creepo’s the one who got Barton the heroin.”

  “So she really thinks he did it on purpose?”

  “That’s what she said. She said Barton never did the hard stuff. But who knows?”

  CM sighs. “Well, he did once. And that was enough.”

  The weather holds for one more week and then the monsoon cometh.

  “At least you don’t have to worry about watering,” Tyler says quietly. We’re standing at the front window, watching the rain pelt the herbs. It’s the first complete sentence in a civil tone of voice that’s come out of her mouth since Josh and I staked out the garden. I’m almost afraid to make a sound.

  “Now the real work begins,” I say cautiously.

  “What’s that?”

  “Slug patrol.”

  “Hmm.” Her nose wrinkles with distaste.

  At the bakery we’re running a little late on preparations for Thanksgiving. Ellen is trying different pumpkin pie recipes, experimenting with pumpkin-pecan bread, and she’s even come up with a pumpkin filling for the Mazurka bars, which is rapidly becoming a hot seller. We’ve got a huge pile of orders for Tyler’s Indian Maiden Bread, for pain de compagne, and for dinner rolls.

  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving a bitter-cold wind pours down from the north and low, fat clouds promise a deluge.

  At seven-fifteen A.M. Cathy, our new barista, is on the job. She’s a refugee from the Starbucks at Pike Market, and she’s amazing to watch. She works the espresso machine as if she’s performing a concerto that only she can hear—fast, inspired, precise—and she never confuses somebody’s nonfat, decaf, no-whip mocha with their friend’s double, skinny, extra-hot vanilla latte. Women in power suits and guys in jeans and work boots wait patiently beside grandmas in their warm-ups trying to get in their morning racewalk before the rain. Misha’s running the till, and the racks behind her are full of bread. Jen’s in back pulling muffins and scones out of the oven and wheeling the cooling racks out front. Ellen and I are sitting happily in the corner with coffee and pumpkin-millet muffins, putting together our orders for next week, and we can’t resist looking around every few minutes, smiling at customers and then at each other.

  It’s one of those mornings when the bakery pulls me to stay, and if we had a cot out back by the ovens, the way a lot of French village bakeries do, I probably wouldn’t go home at all.

  Big, round drops are just beginning to splat on the sidewalk when a black Mercedes sedan stops out front and sits there in the no parking zone with the engine running. The windows are all tinted, so you can’t see inside, and Ellen and I watch idly, sipping our coffee, waiting to see who gets out. The car sits there for so long that I’m beginning to lose interest.

  “Do you think I should go out and tell them they can’t park there?” Ellen says.

  Before I can answer, the passenger door opens and Maggie gets out, leans back in to say something, then shuts the door and dashes inside. Everybody in the place has been waiting to see who was in the mystery car, so when she walks in, they all turn to look.

  Her upper lip is cut, pasted over with a small bandage, and a blue shadow lines the left side of her nose. Customers look away from her reflexively, then some look back, but she doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She just smiles a small, unfocused smile and heads for the work area.

  Ellen and I exchange frowns.

  “You know, I think I could do it,” she says. “I could kill someone like that. I wouldn’t think of him as a person, it would just be kind of like exterminating vermin. Sort of a public service.”

  “I don’t understand why women put up with that shit.” I finish my coffee and set down my cup.

  She sighs. “Probably as many reasons as there are women.”

  We get up and carry our dishes back to the sink.

  Maggie’s in the storeroom. The apron hangs limp around her neck, strings untied. She’s standing under one of the lights, dabbing something on her face with a small makeup sponge. She looks up and smiles when we come in.

  “Aren’t I a mess?” she says cheerfully.

  “Are you all right?” Ellen asks. “Do you need to call somebody? Is there someplace you can go if you need to?”

  Maggie looks dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”

  While I stand there, debating how to best say this without actually saying it, Ellen looks her directly in the eye.

  “I’m talking about family or friends you can go to. Or the women’s shelter.”

  Maggie’s cheeks flame. “What on earth for?” She looks in the mirror as if noticing for the first time that she looks like she kissed a stone wall. “Oh, you mean this?” She laughs. “I had a bit too much wine last night at the restaurant, and I got up to use the ladies’—it’s in kind of a dark hallway, you’ve been there, haven’t you, Wyn? You know how it is. Anyway, this other woman was coming out just as I was going in and she pushed the door open too fast, and of course I wasn’t truly on my game, so I didn’t get out of the way in time.” Another laugh. “What a klutz. Tony was so upset, he insisted on taking me to the urgent-care clinic—”

  “Bullshit.” The word is flat and cold, bearing no resemblance to Ellen’s usual voice.

  For a split second something flickers through the tiniest chink in Maggie’s gaze, but then she’s back in control. “I’m fine,” she says. “As soon as I get through fixing my makeup, I’ll get started on those Thanksgiving cakes.”

  “Maggie…” Finally I find some words. “You don’t have to live like this. There are plenty of things—”

  “You know the term ‘anamorphosis’?” She looks up from the mirror, expressionless, except for two small vertical folds in the smooth skin between her brows.

  “What?”

  “Anamorphosis,” she goes on coolly. “It’s a trick of artistic perspective. It’s when an image appears distorted unless it’s viewed from a particular direction at the correct angle.”

  For a few seconds, I just look into that flat brick wall of her expression, and then I turn around and walk back out of the storeroom. Ellen stays.

  On the Wednesday morning before the holiday, just as I’m about to leave, Ellen hands me an envelope with our landlord’s return address. Tyler’s waiting for me out front, hopping around to stay warm, stripping needles off a branch of prostrate rosemary that grows in
a half wine barrel beside the door.

  “What’s this?”

  “A letter from Nate. He’s sold the building. It means our rent will probably be going up.”

  “It probably would anyway, right? I mean, Nate’s a nice guy and everything, but rents are going vertical all over the hill. I’m sure he’d want to be on a par with all the other building owners up here.”

  “True. I just wish he would’ve told us a little bit more about the new owner. Maybe brought him around and introduced him.”

  I look out the window. “Can I take the letter with me? I’m afraid she’s going to denude all the plants if I don’t get going.”

  Ellen nods. “Sure. Just don’t share it with her, okay? We’ll talk Monday. You two have a happy turkey day.”

  I stuff the letter down in my pocket and head out the door to interrupt Tyler’s deforestation project and steer her toward home.

  November 14, 1990

  Dear Ellen and Diane: Wynn:

  This letter is being sent to you as tenants of 6005 Queen Street to inform you that I have contracted to sell the building. The new owner, Dr. Harvey Mendina, assumes title on January 15, 1991.

  This was a very difficult decision for us, especially in light of all the exciting growth Queen Anne Hill is experiencing, but for several years now, Libby’s health has been deteriorating, and we have decided to leave the Northwest and move to Scottsdale, Arizona, where I believe the warmer weather will make her more comfortable. I’ve certainly enjoyed working with all of you and being able to call you my friends as well as my tenants.

  I understand that this change may cause you some anxiety, but Dr. Mendina has assured me that he is most interested in preserving and protecting the heritage of our building and he is looking forward to meeting and working with everyone there. I’m sure he will be in touch before the end of the year.