The host shows us to a booth toward the back, and we settle in.
“This okay?” he asks me.
“It’s perfect. I just don’t think I’m going to be much fun tonight.”
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll supply the entertainment.”
When the waiter brings menus, Mac orders a bottle of champagne without even looking at the list.
“Are we celebrating?”
He nods, his expression serious. “The end of chapter one. The beginning of chapter two.”
I find myself smiling. “McLeod the Mysterious.”
The champagne arrives and he assigns the tasting to me. It’s a beautiful, wheaten-dry Château St.-Jean. After the waiter takes our order, I hold up my glass.
“Chapter one.”
“Chapter two,” he says, touching his glass to mine. He sets down his champagne and takes my hand across the table. “I’m sorry. About the bakery. I know it doesn’t help much—”
“Actually, it does.” I twirl my glass in a little circle of moisture. “It’s funny. I tried to get Ellen to move to a different location, but she didn’t even want to discuss it, and now I think she was probably right. It’s time to move on.”
“To…?”
“I’m not sure. I still haven’t gotten used to the bakery going away and you coming back. Tyler and I talked about moving to L.A. But I don’t know. She’s pretty opaque these days.” I look in his eyes. “What are you thinking of doing?”
“Well…the options just got better.”
“What do you mean?”
He looks down at the table, then back up at me. Then he says quietly, “Steve sold my book.”
For a stunned minute I just sit there, and then, to my abject embarrassment, I burst into tears. He hands me his blue bandanna. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to take this personally.”
I try to smile, to talk, to laugh, and I just keep crying. The waiter brings our salads, and gives me an odd look. “Is everything…?”
Mac says, “Good champagne always moves her to tears.”
“I’m so happy for you,” I sob.
He laughs. Picks up my hand and kisses it.
The tears abate and I blot my swollen eyes. “That’s what I get for wearing mascara. Do I look like a raccoon?”
He nods. “But a very cute raccoon.”
I get up from the table.
“Sit down. I’m kidding.”
I sit back down. “You’re sure?”
“Your mascara is impeccable.”
“I mean, you’re sure he sold it?”
He laughs. “Can you believe it?”
“Almost. Tell me everything.” I pick up my fork and attack the salad.
“He’s been sending me the rejections. I’ve gotten five. Then yesterday he called and said that Ames Sullivan at Drummond had made an offer—”
“How much?”
“Fifty.”
I bite down on the tines of my fork. “Fifty dollars?”
“Fifty thousand.”
“Mac.” My eyes snap open, wide. “Oh God. I think I’m going to cry again. What did you say?”
“I told him I’d get back to him.”
I laugh so hard I almost spray him with champagne. “You liar.”
“Okay. I said, not just yes, but hell yes.”
“Ohhhhhh.” I lean my head back so far it clunks against the booth. “This is so incredible. But he called yesterday morning? Why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“It didn’t seem like the thing to do. Not with the bakery and everything.”
The waiter brings our entrées—salmon for me, New York strip steak for him—and clears the salads.
“Now the next part of the entertainment—”
I look up quickly. “There’s more?”
“There is indeed. They want me to come to New York. Meet my editor and…I don’t know…whatever famous authors do in New York.”
“That’s wonderful. You’ll have such a great time.”
“We. We’ll have such a great time.”
“We will?”
“I want you to come with me. We can’t stay at the Plaza or anything. This trip. But we’ll find someplace fun, and I can take you to all—what’s wrong?” He sets down his knife.
“I can’t afford to go to New York. I wish I could, but I’m stretched to my limit right now.”
“Wyn, I’m inviting you. I’m buying.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I can’t?”
“I don’t want you spending your advance on unnecessary—”
“How about you let me decide what I spend my advance on?”
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea to—”
“I think it’s a great idea. We’ll only be gone a couple of days. Come on, say yes.”
I look at him very directly. “On one condition.”
“What?”
“You take me to meet your mother.”
His expression freezes into that awful blankness I hate. The whole mood of the evening is altered beyond recognition.
“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he says.
“I’m asking to meet your mother, McLeod. Or was all that stuff a joke?”
He looks wary. “What stuff?”
“The stuff about trying to be open with me, letting me into your world. That’s all I want. Since we’re going to be there, it won’t kill you to have dinner with her.”
“She won’t want to see me.”
“Fine. If she doesn’t, we don’t go. But you have to call her and ask.”
“I don’t know why you think—”
“Because she’s your mother, that’s why. She’s where you come from.”
He stares at the bar as if one of the men in Italian jackets might come rescue him. Then he looks out the front windows. Finally his eyes shift back to mine. He sighs. Lifts his shoulders.
“Okay.” His voice is quiet. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
I put my hand in his and he shifts slightly in the booth, as if shaking something off. He gives me a very small smile. “I think you’re the most relentlessly honest woman I’ve ever met.”
“Is that so bad?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure how I’ll look under your microscope.”
When we get back to the house, he walks me up to the door. I fumble in my purse for the key. “So when do I get to read it?”
Under the yellow porch light he looks momentarily lost, as if he’s forgotten that books are for other people to read. “I don’t know. After the edits, I guess.” He moves, and his face is lost in the shadows. “I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon.”
“You’re not staying?”
“No, I’ve got to get up early and drive to Lake City to work on one of Josh’s apartment buildings.”
I hesitate. “Are you angry with me?”
“No.” He holds me for a minute. “I’m just—it’s not going to be easy.”
“What isn’t? Meeting your mother?”
“None of it,” he says. He tips my chin up to kiss me and then he turns and walks back to the Elky.
twenty-six
In the morning I lie in bed, wondering if Mac slept any better than I did. I rolled around like a top, getting entangled in the covers, then kicking them off. I got up at some point and fixed myself some hot cocoa and drank it at the kitchen table, trying to decide if I was pushing too hard too soon. Then I went back to bed to twirl some more.
At seven-thirty, I get up, pull on my sweats, and make a pot of espresso, since there won’t be anything to eat or drink at the bakery today. The thought is abrupt and staggering. It’s also totally unreal. Won’t I just walk over there, and everything will be humming along, just like always?
Panic rings in my head like a bell. What am I going to do?
At the sight of the bakery, shades drawn, silent, I feel cold and sick. From a block away, I see a woman walk up, try to open the door.
She steps back, obviously surprised, looks around, eventually focusing on something tacked up on the window.
She shakes her head, turns to walk away, then turns back, makes a half hearted gesture, as if she’s talking to someone. She seems disoriented, frustrated, disbelieving. Like a kid whose bike’s been ripped off. But it was right here last time I looked! Finally she hurries away. I let her get across the street before I approach the door.
Taped at eye level is a piece of paper—one edge ragged, like it was ripped out of a notebook—with what appears to be a poem neatly typed and centered on the page. I move closer and read…
The Queen Street Gentrification Blues
To the tune of The Midnight Special,
apologies to Huddie Ledbetter
Well, you wake up in the mornin’, boy
The clock radio sings
You look upon the table,
You see the same darn thing
Got no doughnut on your plate, boy,
Croissants or scones you gotta choose
You want a latte or a chai tea, boy?
You got the Queen Street Blues.
Another Starbucks on the corner, boy
Hardware store done gone away
Just a sushi bar and Art Space
Lookin’ like they’re here to stay
They’re redevelopin’ the Thriftway, boy
See, you gotta pay your dues
Then you can get yourself a loft, boy
You got the Queen Street Blues.
You got the mean ol’ Queen Street Gentrification Blues.
I unlock the door and go quickly inside, smiling in spite of myself. Ellen’s sitting at one of the tables, drinking coffee out of a thermos. The paper is open in front of her, but she’s not reading.
“Where’d the song come from?”
She returns a wistful smile. “I don’t know. It would be funnier if it wasn’t so true.” Her face is pale, and from her eyes I can tell she had the same kind of night I did.
“What time are they coming?”
“Sometime between nine and noon is all they said. Want some coffee?”
“No thanks. I had some at home.” I sit down across from her.
“Want part of the paper?”
“No thanks.”
“There’s a couple of scones in that bag.” She nods at the counter. “I…um…called him. Mendina. About the sign.” She’s been eyeing it for weeks. Our lovely little hand-painted wooden shingle that hangs out above the doorway like a proper French baker’s sign.
“You decided to take it?”
She makes a little “humphf” noise. “I asked him if he would mind if I took it. Just as a keepsake.”
“That was your first mistake.” I lean back, propping my foot up on a chair.
“You know what he had the nerve to say? He says he’s going to use it. Repaint it and use it for whoever—” She swallows. “Whoever comes in here.”
“Bastard. Did you tell him to use part of the twenty percent increase to buy a new one?”
Tears brim in her eyes. “The worst part is, you know he won’t. He’ll just trash it. He’s just being mean.”
I have to laugh a little. “Mean? I’d say he’s being a mother-effing, scum-sucking, dirtbag asshole dickhead. Did I leave anything out?”
Her chuckle opens up into full-throttle laughter. “No, I think that about covers it.”
Then I laugh, too, and we sit laughing and wiping tears away until there’s a sharp rap on the door.
“Davies Auction,” a man calls.
For the next thirty minutes, we stand mutely watching three guys load equipment onto rollers and dollies and wheel it past us and out to the truck. But when one of them comes in with a pry bar, jams it between the display case and the wall, and gives a push, the ripping, splintering sound makes my scalp prickle. From the corner of my eye, Ellen’s face looks as if they’ve just ripped off her arm.
She turns to me. “I don’t think I can stay.”
“It’s okay. I’ll lock up.”
She hugs me, hard. “It’s been good, Wyn. I’m so glad you were—” The rest of it gets lost in my shoulder. I let her go. “We’re going to Whidbey for a few days,” she says. “I’ll call you when I get home and we can have lunch and sign papers. Okay?”
I nod. “Take care.” It’s all I can manage.
She walks quickly out the door and down the street and doesn’t look back.
In an amazingly short time, the space is a cave, empty except for the big, black ovens. I go over to lay my hand against the side, like some old dog you have to put down. It’s still warm.
“Does this go?” One of the men points at the chair I was sitting on.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s it, then. If you’ll just sign this…”
When the truck is gone, I lock the front door, take a last look around.
Keeping a bakery clean is very nearly impossible. No matter how often you scrub and sweep, mop and wipe, there are spills and smudges and crumbs. Laid over everything is the fine dust of flour. It gets in your hair and your nose and under your fingernails. Every morning when I get ready for bed, there are traces of white on the floor where I stand to undress.
Even now—even with everything gone—this morning’s footprints make trails through the fine dust of flour that still patches the floor.
I let myself out into the alley, and as I’m locking the back door, I hear someone banging on the front. No way. I’m not going back in there. I walk down to the far end of the building, out to the street, and peer around the corner.
Linda LaGardia is standing there, one hand on either side of her face, trying to see around the brown paper taped over the glass.
I take off running, toward home.
When I walk into the house, I hear noises in the kitchen. Noises that sound like a bunch of little mice scurrying over paper. “Tyler?”
I stick my head in the kitchen and she turns quickly, both hands behind her, like a little kid caught in the act. The kitchen table is covered with sheets of paper, pages from an artist’s sketchbook. Watercolors, a few pastels, some charcoal sketches.
“What’s all this?”
“Just some stuff.”
I try to see around her. “So this is what you’ve been up to.” I smile. “I thought maybe you had a secret lover.”
She snorts, sounding remarkably like Linda. “As if.”
She doesn’t move away from the table. “Can I see?”
She shrugs. “They’re not very good.”
I pick up a watercolor of sailboats on a lake. There are two of the skyline viewed from West Seattle. Then I pick up a page from the bottom of the pile. It’s a pastel portrait. Linda. Wiry gray hair standing up like she’s been electrocuted, cigarette drooping out of the corner of her mouth. She’s wearing her shapeless black pants, a long white apron, and her usual pissed-off expression. She’s standing next to the ovens with the big wooden peel in her hand.
“This is perfect.”
Tyler looks pleased.
“How did you get her to pose?”
“It wasn’t easy. And then I had to let her smoke.”
She’s giving me a look I can’t decipher. I sit down at the table.
“Why all the secrecy?”
She shrugs again.
“Your shoulders are going to get stuck to your ears one of these days.”
She doesn’t smile.
“Do you want to go back to school?”
“I don’t know.” She sits down. “I gave a portfolio to the art institute. They said they’d let me back in.”
“That’s good. If it’s what you want.”
“I don’t know,” she says again. She fidgets, weaving a thin black paintbrush in and out between her fingers.
“You’re very lucky, you know. To be able to do both things. Lots of people have only one talent. You’ve got two.”
The corners of her mouth droop. “Don’t talk like a frigging guidance couns
elor.”
“Okay. How about this: There are art schools in L.A., too. Quite a few, actually.”
Again the wariness. “You want me to go? Even if I’m not making bread?”
“Tyler…? Of course I do. You’re my friend, not my indentured servant.”
She moves the pictures aimlessly around on the table. “What about Mac?”
“You mean, is he going, too? I don’t know. We haven’t gotten around to discussing it.”
“But you guys are sort of a thing, now.”
“That’s true, but I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
She smirks. “Well, whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t happen in the kitchen.”
A hot blush rises in my face. “That was an aberration.”
She laughs out loud. “No shit. It was a whopper.”
“And don’t change the subject. Whether he goes or not shouldn’t have any bearing on your decision.”
“But I still don’t know.”
“Okay, here’s the deal.” I put my hand on her arm, forgetting that she doesn’t like it. She inches away. “Mac’s agent sold his book.”
She blinks. “Cool.”
I laugh. “Try to contain your enthusiasm.”
“It’s good, it’s great,” she sputters. “That okay?”
“I think we’re going to New York for a couple of days. Why don’t you let me know when we get back?”
“Okay.” She gets up and starts stacking her artwork, slipping it into a large brown portfolio.
Mac shows up on our porch just as the sun’s going down and a hot-red glow backlights a few clouds. He takes off his baseball cap and kisses me and hands me a legal-size envelope. Inside are two tickets from Sea-Tac to JFK airport for next Tuesday afternoon, returning on Friday night.
“Can you hold on to those?” he says.
I put them in the mail dish on the coffee table and give him an inquiring look.
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