And then I, too, had a choice to make.
Less than a week before my flight from JFK to Charles de Gaulle, I was given the opportunity to open Wild Rise. The rent was reasonable, there was an apartment above the store I could live in, and the former pizzeria was already outfitted with a wood-fire oven—something I would never be able to afford on my own. The start-up cost? Enough of my travel fund to worry me. I’d need some sort of income within three months of opening.
Yes, choices.
I took it. I knew the chance would not come again. I trusted God in it, both the business opportunity and the reconciliation of my relationship with my father. Sometimes understanding is long coming.
But I still want Paris. I will, I decide, sell out for it.
Selecting Patrice Olsen’s e-mail, I click Reply and let her know I am honored to accept the invitation to be on Bake-Off.
Five
They take a trip without me, to the ocean again even though it’s November. My father brings me down into the basement, amidst his springs and scrap and wire, and asks me to understand. Because she’s sad about Oma, he says. Not because we don’t love you or want you along. He gives me five dollars and tells me I can use it for ice cream in school or for a Fanta at the corner grocery. Just remember to brush your teeth afterward.
The grief sticks to my mother, coating her, like dirt on the mouthful of Bubble Yum I cough to the ground while swinging in the play yard at recess. When I find it, only bits of pink gum show through the grit and grass, and no amount of rinsing in the water fountain can clean it. Only bits of my mother show through the sadness. I can’t imagine the ocean any more effective than the fountain at school.
So I stay home for two weeks with Great-Aunt Mary. She cooks brown meat for every supper—liver and dry London broil and crumbled hamburger pie—and tries to help me with my homework the one time I ask if she knows the secret to adding fractions. She doesn’t, but tries valiantly to understand the model problems in my textbook before writing a note to Mr. Sanchez explaining my home situation and asking him to please give me extra tutoring. Otherwise, she watches her game shows and eats pudding desserts and tells me to go to bed at eight thirty.
My mother seems plumper and happier when they come home. I expect gifts from the seashore, a jar filled with sand and shells and dehydrated starfish, or a box of saltwater taffy. My father hands me a bag of hotel toiletries, shampoo and soap and lotion and a plastic shower cap. Mother hugs me against her neck until I can’t breathe; her body trembles next to my own. You know I love you, she whispers.
Oh yes.
Promise me you won’t forget.
My eyes flick to my father. He smiles tightly, takes my mother’s arm. Why don’t you lie down, Claudia? It was a long drive. I’ll be up in a moment.
She lifts the small case at her feet and carries it up the stairs with her; something rattles inside with each step. My father smoothes my hair, one of his bony, long hands positioned on each side of my part, sliding them down to my ears once, twice, and then giving a little tug on the ends. Don’t worry. The doctor gave her some new medicine. To make her feel better. It will be all right now.
Doctor? I thought you were at the beach.
He opens his mouth in response, but my mother’s voice creeps down to us. Alistair?
Coming.
He twitches, as if he wants to come to me once more, but the floorboards creak above our heads and he’s upstairs in seconds. My parents’ bedroom door closes.
I stand on the edge of the living room rug, a braided wool island in the center of my mother’s most loved pine plank floors, and listen. Only the trees talk to me, thin fingers tapping the panes on the east side of the house. I dump the toiletries onto the couch, peel my jeans off, and sit, legs straight out. Thigh to toe, I squeeze one long line of lotion down each leg. Then another, though I get only over my second knee before the bottle empties, spitting a blob on the nappy fabric of the sofa. Mayonnaise. My hands are knives. I spread the cool cream over my skin. Slick. White. I’m a ghost; maybe no one will see me.
I smack my legs, the sting snappier because of the lotion. I hit myself again and again, harder each time, the moisturizer thinning and opening to show speckled red below.
And then I slap my face.
I’m stunned. My cheek radiates heat, buzzing like a neon sign. Bright, dim, bright. Dim. Fading. I try to hit myself again but cannot seem to make my hand apply the same amount of force as the first time, my body protecting itself.
A door opening upstairs. I pull on my pants and wipe my fingers on the top of the couch cushion, flipping it over to hide the stain.
Xavier knows about the television show when I find him the next morning, already pulling baguettes from the oven. I reach for a basket to help, banging my hip on the corner of the counter. “Ow.”
“Slow down, dear one,” he says, swinging the peel with grace through the air and sliding the hot loaves into the basket on his own. They stand perfectly at attention, thin pointed sentinels of wheat. “Save some of that enthusiasm for Mr. Scott.”
“Ha-ha.”
I rub my hip and, turning from Xavier, lift the corner of my shirt and peer down my jeans. A bruise greets me, puffed up and purplish-blue, a color I’ve only seen artificially induced in a grape snow cone. Lovely. I snatch the lame from Xavier’s apron and give each unblemished round of dough four cuts across the top. I’m in no mood for dainty.
Xavier notices. “Remind me to stay out of your way.”
“I’m going to do the show.”
He wrinkles his forehead. “Glad I’m not a betting man.”
“There’s prize money. Ten thousand dollars.”
“Paris,” he says.
He sees through me like glass.
Xavier has been to France a dozen times. He’s charmed me with stories of bread, but more so of people. Of Jérôme, the Gaelic-music-promoter-turned-boulanger because he wanted to save a beloved building from demolition. He has one of the first LeFort ovens in his basement and only uses pre-1800 bread recipes. Or Marthe, who owns a small inn close to the northern border of France, who accepted Xavier’s gift of bread as if it were from the Magi.
“Tell me I’m a sell-out.”
“I’ll do no such thing. But I do have a favor to ask.”
“What’s up?”
“I’d like to take on an apprentice.”
“Zave, I can’t pay anyone else.”
“I know. You don’t have to worry about that.” He hesitates. “My grandson is living with me.”
“Since when?”
“Since yesterday. He showed up on my front porch. It was either my place or the street, I imagine. Things haven’t been good with Jude for a while. He’s always struggled in school, failed his junior year. Says he’s not going back. No interest in anything. His parents told him to get a job or get out, so he hitchhiked over to good old Vermont. I spoke to his father last night. Bill, my middle boy. I guess there are . . . many things Jude’s dealing with now.”
I wait for Xavier to elaborate but he stays silent. I suck my lips together and a puckering sound escapes. “Can he bake?”
“Not a lick,” he says. “But, Liesl, he has the hands. I just know it.”
Bread plays favorites.
From the earliest times, it acts as a social marker, sifting the poor from the wealthy, the cereal from the chaff.
The exceptional from the mediocre.
Wheat becomes more acceptable than rye; farmers talk of losing their rye teeth as their economic status improves. Barley is for the most destitute, the coarse grain grinding down molars until the nerves are exposed. Breads with the added richness of eggs and milk and butter become the luxuries of princes. Only paupers eat dark bread adulterated with peas and left to sour, or purchase horse-bread instead of man-bread, often baked with the floor sweepings, because it costs a third less than the cheapest whole-meal loaves. When brown bread makes it to the tables of the prosperous, it is as trenchers—plates—
stacked high with fish and meat and vegetables and soaked with gravy. The trenchers are then thrown outside, where the dogs and beggars fight over them. Crusts are chipped off the rolls of the rich, both to make it easier to chew and to aid in digestion. Peasants must work all the more to eat, even in the act of eating itself, jaws exhausted from biting through thick crusts and heavy crumb. There is no lightness for them. No whiteness at all.
And it is the whiteness every man wants. Pure, white flour. Only white bread blooms when baked, opening to the heat like a rose. Only a king should be allowed such beauty, because he has been blessed by his God. So wouldn’t he be surprised—no, filled with horror—to find white bread the food of all men today, and even more so the food of the common people. It is the least expensive on the shelf at the supermarket, ninety-nine cents a loaf for the storebrand. It is smeared with sweetened fruit and devoured by schoolchildren, used for tea sandwiches by the affluent, donated to soup kitchens for the needy, and shunned by the artisan. Yes, the irony of all ironies; the hearty, dark bread once considered fit only for thieves and livestock is now some of the most prized of all.
He picks up Cecelia earlier today, not quite four yet, his one arm sunburned because he hangs it out the window as he drives. It’s summer now, so he wears work boots with his socks pulled up nearly to his knees, shorts, a gray t-shirt with a logo on the chest so faded I wonder if it’s actually there. I won’t stare to find out. It’s the first day I’ve seen Seamus’s limbs uncovered, his forearms surprisingly narrow, his calves bulgy, pumped full of Popeye’s spinach.
“Business good today?” He asks this almost every afternoon.
“A little slow.”
“Just wait ’til that show rolls out.” Something akin to disappointment discolors his words.
“We’ll see.”
We stand watching his daughter, the bottoms of her pigtails matted with saliva from chewing them, spray water onto a chair and wipe it. “Every little spot,” Gretchen tells her, and Cecelia scrubs quicker and harder to finish before her, and they race to the next table and start again.
Seamus rakes his top teeth through the hair on his chin. “Her last day of school is tomorrow.”
“She told me.” I take a deep breath. “I can’t have her here all day. I’m sorry.”
“Oh no. ’Course not,” he says. “I found her a place, at the Y. Gave us a scholarship, or whatever they call it so you don’t feel like a charity case. It’s just . . . look at her. You don’t know her outside of here, except when we were on the farm. The shy girl you saw there, that’s more what she’s like everywhere else, with everyone else. The Cecelia she is when she’s here . . . it’s the most like the one she was before Judy left. This is her magic place.”
I know what he means. I am more me here than anywhere. So much so that when I’m outside the bakehouse I sometimes need to remind myself I’m something other than ether, that I can bump into passersby and be heard when I make comments aloud. Maybe I am only me here.
I poured out my soul when decorating Wild Rise. The aqua-green wainscoting, treated to look worn and topped with peg molding head-high. Then the plaster walls, Van Gogh gold rising high to the metal pipes and ducts, original tin ceiling, all a deep eggplant color. Wooden floors, absolutely. Mismatched chairs, painted the same purple as the ceiling. My father came to the grand opening and couldn’t suppress his astonishment at my choice in colors. “It’s so bright,” he said. “Not you at all.” I muttered something about vibrancy being good for the stomach and tried not to be too hurt because, really, what else would he think. We had always been that quiet family. We didn’t shout—usually. No one gesticulated while talking or hung our emotions on the clothesline for all the neighbors to see. We never seemed overly excitable or sought out rugged adventures, or even had much fanfare at the holidays beyond a wreath on the door and a few paper hats. We wore dull clothes in dull colors, moths not butterflies. Those looking in on the McNamara family must have thought us as wan as over-watered chicken broth, without meat or noodle.
So where did these colors come from? So deep I didn’t know I had them inside me until I left my beiges and yellows and twenty-seven shades of white sample chips in a pile at the Home Depot paint counter, carrying out my cans of color instead. But on my surface I still wear only brown and gray and denim and fatigue green.
I don’t want to be noticed.
Seamus gathers Cecelia, and they stand together at the counter to pick their loaf, a liturgy for them when he’s here before we pack away the extra. Most days they choose sandwich bread or a loaf of Italian if they plan on spaghetti for dinner. But today Wild Rise offers Cecelia’s favorite—chocolate sourdough. She won’t leave without it. Seamus knows this very well, but rituals must be played out, despite knowing the endings. “I’m not sure, Ceese. It all looks good. Too many choices.” She giggles, and he points to the Sweet Chèvre. “How about something new?”
“What’s chev-ree?” she asks.
“Goat cheese.” He doesn’t correct her pronunciation.
“Yucky. No way.”
“Well, then maybe the one there, with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.”
“The chocolate, Daddy. It’s right there. And there’s only one left.”
There’s always one left. I keep it aside, just for her, each time I make it.
Seamus hmms loudly, pretends to deeply contemplate her words while stroking his beard. “I don’t know. I heard a little girl in Montpelier turned all sweet and melty because she ate too much chocolate bread.”
Cecelia giggles. “You did not.”
“True, true.”
“Please, please, please?”
“Aren’t you sick of it?”
She shakes her head, pigtails slapping her face.
“Alrighty then. I suppose we can all be a little sweeter. One chocolate bread. Thank you much, Miss Liesl.”
I bag the loaf and give it to Cecelia. “And you?”
“Oh no. We’re good,” Seamus says, taking a step back from the counter. “We can’t take any more from you.”
“I told you, it was a slow day. There’s too much left, and it will just be donated. So pick.”
He chooses a cinnamon raisin. I add a whole wheat sandwich loaf. He protests, hand fumbling to the back of his pants for his wallet, but I tell them to go. Seamus thanks me again, pinching both breads between his elbow and ribs. With his other hand, he cups the back of Cecelia’s neck, guiding her through the tables and out the door. They stand on the curb, and I hear his blurry words reminding her to look both ways. He turns her head left, right, left, right, fast enough she begins to laugh. Then they stampede across the street to his truck, and he boosts her into the driver’s side before climbing in after her.
I want to call my father.
In the kitchen, Tee and Gretchen argue. Tee brandishes a ladle, stabbing it toward Gretchen with each angry word. “What on earth?” I ask.
“I have no clue,” Gretchen says.
Tee bites her lip. “She insult my food.”
“I didn’t. No one ordered her silly ankle soup today—”
“Solyanka.”
“—whatever it is. No one wanted it because they have no clue what’s in it. Or they didn’t want to look like fools trying to pronounce it. I just told her to call it something different, like summer sausage stew or something.”
“It is Ukrainian solyanka.” Tee shouts this and flings her spoon into the pans on the counter. Her nose reddens, her glasses steaming with tears. “Only that. Only.”
And she goes, without cleaning the stove, without putting away the food. Gretchen looks at me and shrugs. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Liesl. I was trying to help.”
“It’s fine. She . . . she’s Tee.”
“I can call her tonight. Apologize.”
“Leave it alone. She’ll be back in the morning, her normal prickly self.”
We work for some time, falling into our rhythm, kneading and mixing and shaping and staying ou
t of one another’s way. Gretchen offers to wash Tee’s pots before she leaves, but I send her home and do it myself, spending extra time making the stainless steel shine and storing the leftover soup in the cooler for tomorrow.
Then, upstairs, before changing my clothes or eating, I dial my father.
I don’t expect him to answer. Most of the time he doesn’t, ignoring the ringing and letting the machine handle it, sometimes listening to his messages, occasionally returning them. More than once I’ve had to contact old Mrs. Grimm, the neighbor, asking her to knock on my father’s door and tell him to call me. She doesn’t mind; she finds him charming and likes an excuse to make conversation. And I have to not mind, because when it comes to telephones, I do the exact same thing.
But tonight he picks up.
“Dad, it’s me.”
“Liesl, darling heart, how are you?”
He still has a bit of brogue left in him, passed on from immigrant parents, though he was born in Brooklyn. There have been times he’s worked to snip it out of his speech, and mostly he thickens it to sound like a Lucky Charms commercial. “It’s good for business,” he would tell me during the few times I made deliveries with him, “the accent.” The middle-aged women thought it delightful, the men felt as though they were talking with their buddy from the corner pub. My father came home exhausted from playing the game.
“I’m good. Busy with the bakery. What are you up to?”
“Oh, this and that.” He retired a few years ago from the deli meat truck but works part-time at the local Ace Hardware, instructing the lost on how to fix their perpetually running toilets and faulty light sockets. “They made me head usher at church. Speaking of which, remember Selah Bates, the one you used to play with in high school?”
“It was elementary school.”
“That long ago? Any which way, she got married last weekend. Real nice boy. A podiatrist, I think. Which gets me to wondering when you’ll—”
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