Stones for Bread

by Parrish, Christa

  Soon a man came to him, a German officer who said he wanted to help; he had met Henri’s mother in Paris, ate bread from his family’s bakery, a baguette so delicious he asked the woman if there was anything he could do for her. She told him her only son was forced to labor at Daimler-Benz, and could the officer help at all? The German came with a note from Henri’s mother. Do as he says. He has shared our bread and is sent of God. Henri agreed to let the German help him, and he was transferred to a camp for French officers where no work was done. The German told him, “Make the bread of your father, and you will be safe here.” Henri spent the rest of the war baking bread once a day, reading, smoking, and playing cards with the other soldiers. He went home when the fighting ended to bake in his family’s oven, never again to leave.

  “He’s gone,” Jonathan says. “My translator friend let me know when he died, oh, probably eight years ago now. He said the old man left something for me, and I received a package several months later, a tattered French bread book with a note in the front cover: ‘À celui avec une tête en pain de sucre.’”

  “‘To the one with the egg-shaped head.’ Or literally, the head out of the sugar loaf,” I say. “Four years of high school French.”

  “You probably speak it better than I do, still,” he says with a laugh. “I never did get the hang of it. But that’s my boulangerie story. And that’s why I appreciate bread. I mean, quite honestly, before Paris I didn’t think much about it. It was something you tossed on the table with dinner or made a sandwich with, and there wasn’t much difference between a good loaf and a bad loaf. Even most of the bread people here consider good—I’m talking the so-called artisan stuff in the grocery store or that fancy chain-bakery bread—wouldn’t be considered fit for consumption in France. While traveling, I began seeing it differently, the skill that goes into it, the craftsmanship. The time. Oh, do you need patience for good bread. But after Henri, and his story, it became more than food. It was something that had the power to give a man back his life.”

  “Is that why you came up with the Bake-Off idea, then?”

  Jonathan’s eyes darken and he’s disappointed, it seems. I’ve tied his story together with the show, one cheap parlor trick leading the way to another. “I didn’t. The network did. But I was the hot, up-and-coming TV chef at the time, so it was given to me.” He laughs again, this time without a trace of amusement. “That’s the biz, as they say.”

  And the baker starved them. He is looked upon with no less suspicion than the miller. He charges for bread what they cannot afford, the peasants say. He has no bread to sell when they are hungry. What do they know of Assize of Bread, which fixes the price of a loaf based on the cost of grain and puts more money into the pocket of the lord and less into that of the baker? The peasants watch for his thumb on the scale, even though he gives them thirteen loaves instead of twelve so they will trust his honesty. Heaven help the baker who cheats; he is paraded naked and chained around town and pelted with his own bread.

  If the miller suffers loneliness, the baker suffers with his body. His chest oozes with pustules from flour-clogged pores. His knees swell, his spine compresses, his height decreases each year. Burns cover his hands. Only he is allowed to work in the night as well as in the day, and he tries to keep his eyes always open, knowing another baker who burned to death when he tumbled into the oven in his sleep. The baker must have a pact with the devil, the peasants think. He is always in the fire.

  It is bread that keeps them alive. Give us this day our daily bread, they pray, and they praise the Almighty for it. The miller and baker they despise, those who, on earth, are most responsible for their food.

  Armed with our loaves of bread—the baguettes, Jonathan’s maple cheese boule, and my ciabatta—we make our way to the park down the street where a crowd has gathered and judges await. We walk, Jonathan beside my father, chatting about nothing in particular, as far as I can tell, but it’s difficult to make out any of their conversation because Cecelia is chirping like a mockingbird at my side, clinging to my arm, nearly yanking it from my shoulder as she bounces along. Seamus is somewhere behind the two of us.

  Three hundred people cheer for us as we walk through the wrought iron gates. Jonathan zips on his television personality; hands are shaken, babies bounced, photos snapped, cheeks kissed. Patrice Olsen removes a travel-sized package of baby wipes from her floral bag and gives one to Jonathan, who manages to clean lipstick from his face in such a discreet way I wonder if the burgundy and pink and coral smudges have been there at all.

  Patrice uses her megaphone to quiet the crowd. Jonathan makes a few comments about the show, my abilities, the hospitality of Vermont folk, and then directs everyone to the far tent, where the bread has been sliced for sampling. I wander, watching the cameras film men and women gnawing their bread and then answering, “Which do you like better and why?” A few children throw pieces to the ducks waddling around the pond. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, a breeze ruffling my hair, wrapping around my bare ankles. I wish, only for a most insignificant of seconds, I am one of those people who believes spirits flit around us all the time, existing on some other plane in the trees and wind and drops of rain. Then I can lie in the grass and with each blade tickling my neck think, That is my mother. That’s not truth, though, and I am still here without her, so I find my father and loop my arm through his. He smiles at me and says, “Ah, Liesl. I’m sorry, my dear one. I tried both the long breads and I can’t tell the difference. Forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” I say, remembering the Italian place in Maine, the dead white bread, the margarine pots. I’ve been waiting all day for him to mention my mother, but he doesn’t, and I’m afraid to bring her up. I don’t know if he’s trying to avoid it for his sake, or my own.

  Cecelia has replaced me with Jude, and she’s tossing crab apples to the ducks with him. The birds ignore the fruit until Jude shows her to break them open. Then they gobble the sticky bits and follow Cecelia, wanting more. She collects handfuls from beneath the tree, stomps on them, and flings them into the flock. Across the park, Xavier talks on his phone, his back to me. I go to him, touch his shoulder. He says, “Call you back,” and folds the phone into his pocket.

  “Everything okay?” I ask.

  “Ducky,” he says. “Don’t say anything about your bread. They’re children. The temptation is too great.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You went with the tomatoes.”

  “I couldn’t come up with anything better. You and Jude sure got out of there fast enough.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. And Tee. Of all days to desert me. She better be bleeding or dying in an alley somewhere, I kid you not.”

  Xavier smoothes his hand across his bald head. “She is.”

  I stop. “She is what?”

  “Dying.”

  “What? Wait. Tee is dying? What are you talking about?”

  “Chemo. She’s home sick from her first treatment. She thought she’d be able to sleep it off and come by this afternoon, but it didn’t work out that way.”

  “Tee has cancer?”

  Xavier nods.

  “What kind?”

  “I don’t remember. Does it matter?”

  I’m still confused, one sentence after the next a tranquilizing dart, each making me dizzier, more numb. “Why didn’t she tell me? And how come you know?”

  “She wasn’t planning on letting anyone in on the news, as far as I can tell. The only reason I know is because she needed to get to a doctor’s appointment the other day and was too sick to drive herself. Tee is, well . . . she doesn’t want fanfare or sympathy, or God forbid, pity. She doesn’t want anyone treating her different. And she certainly didn’t want to lose her job.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “I know. But she made me promise not to tell you. You have to act as if that’s the case or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “She’ll know
anyway,” I say.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Xavier says.

  A blast of the megaphone and Patrice Olsen announces judging is about to begin. She crosses the grass in determined strides, the fistsized copper pendant around her neck bouncing with each step. “Ms. McNamara, you disappeared. I don’t appreciate that.”

  “I’ve been right here.”

  “You were supposed to stay with Mr. Scott. Come now.”

  I follow her, turning back to Xavier to see him mouthing, Woof, woof, and giving a little pant. That’s how I feel, like her dog on a leash, one who peed on the expensive Persian carpet and is now about to have my nose rubbed in it. We go to a second tent, where the judges sit. I’m introduced to Master Baker Ronald Gantz from King Arthur’s Flour Company, Peter Kris-Wentworth, owner and chef at one of the ritzy Vermont B&Bs not far from here, and Good Food Channel star Marianna Dutton. I shake hands. Jonathan jokes with them. The camera films it all. Then Jonathan and I are directed to stand aside while lettered plates are given to the judges. He’s plate A, I’m B. Patrice herds my father, Gretchen and Jude and Xavier, and then Seamus and Cecelia toward me. “Look concerned and hopeful and excited,” she tells them, then screeches orders through the megaphone for the crowd to quiet.

  The judges taste Jonathan’s bread first. “Pain a l’ancienne, I believe,” Gantz says. “A little spongier than we like to see at King Arthur’s.”

  Those around the judges murmur, and Jonathan stages an indignant expression for the camera focused on us. The other judges comment on the crispy crust, scribble notes on their ballots, and move on to the goat-cheese-maple-walnut-apple bread, which all agree is delicious and not too sweet.

  Plate B now. I don’t have to pretend to be hopeful or concerned or excited; I’m all those things already, and more. I cannot believe how thick my heart beats, how I can feel it bulging at every joint in my body. Cecelia stands in front of me; I drape my arms over her shoulders, clasping my hands across her collarbone simply to have something to hold. She, in turn, crosses her fingers and sticks them behind her back. And then a warm, firm sensation against the small of my back. It’s Seamus. I shift my eyes toward him and contort my lips into a tortured smile. He smiles back, shifting in a little closer, but when my father’s arm clamps down on my shoulder, Seamus removes his hand and leans away.

  “I’m proud of you,” my father says against my ear.

  I nod, an itchy lump swelling behind my tongue. That’s not what I want him to say.

  My father’s mouth quivers. He’s praying. I’ve never understood the rules of prayer. Some people, I know, petition God for every single thing, from parking spaces at the mall to raising the dead. Others save their prayers for the important things—a job loss, a sick child, a failing marriage—just in case there’s a limit to the number of yeses one is allowed in a lifetime. I tend to fall into the second category, but I’m not certain what’s truly prayer-worthy and what’s an impostor, and a reality cooking competition seems too far down the list to chance being wrong.

  Still, I can’t help it.

  Please, please.

  The judges nibble my baguette; they like the slight tanginess of the crumb, the shiny crust. The crunch. Then they taste the secret ingredient bread. “The flavors are balanced,” Gantz says, “but I wish the combination was more original.” They scribble on their ballots again.

  I scowl. Jonathan creeps closer and whispers, “That look is going to make it on the show.”

  Finally, Marianna Dutton stands. “This was a very difficult decision, but my fellow judges and I have made our choice. The winner of this episode of Bake-Off is . . .”

  I close my eyes. “Look, look, Liesl,” Cecelia says.

  In her hand, the judge holds card B.

  Eleven

  I’m thirteen, an old thirteen, coming home with a report card of Cs mostly, a B in art and a D in social studies, and plenty of Liesl is not performing to her potential comments to go along with the grades. I don’t care and neither will my father. Neither of us is living up to our potential now. Neither of us cares much about living at all.

  We manage. We exist in a home without the spoken word, except for television and the occasional request from him, or the occasional question from me. Mostly we pass one another as we wander around the cold, wood rooms we once believed were warm. My mother was the warmth, our sun, but she left us and we can no longer find the thermostat without her, even though we walk by it every day, in the hallway, on our way out the door.

  I make dinner, tonight a frozen skillet meal, just pour, heat, and serve. This one has the chicken included. My father used to buy the ones where the meat was purchased and prepared separately, but I sliced my finger open cutting up strips of steak for one of them. I waited for him to come home, staring at Jeopardy! while squeezing a dishrag around my pinky. He saw the blood and shouted at me for not calling him sooner. I had to get eleven stiches. I was relieved to be excused from gym class for two weeks.

  My father won’t be home to eat with me. He works as late as possible, and on the days he doesn’t work—the weekends, like tomorrow—he lives in the basement with his toasters and gears, and I bring him plates of food if I have the inclination to take a load of laundry down to the washing machine. I don’t sort the clothes, and our underwear is dingy gray-blue because I toss them in with our jeans.

  After my cheesy rotini primavera, I spoon the remaining pasta onto a plate, cover it with wax paper, and stick it in the microwave. Then I rinse the pan and jam it into the overly full dishwasher. It needs to be run but we’re out of detergent. I add it to the list on the freezer door and hang my report card next to it, with a clay magnet shaped like a loaf of braided bread.

  Everything is her in this house.

  I think that’s why he does it, because we’re suffocating in the fullness of her. He will never—can never—get rid of her tables or bowls or chairs. But the sofa is safe, he must believe. My mother never liked it, great mint green cushions with embroidered peach tulips, given to us by the people across the street when they moved and in better condition than the old couch my parents bought when they married. I emerge from my bedroom well past noon Saturday and see the new sofa, a plush brown leather sectional with built-in recliners on each end. I scream.

  My father is there. I don’t know where he came from. What’s wrong?

  The sofa.

  I bought another.

  How could you?

  He doesn’t know that all I used to be bled into that middle cushion the day she died, that I have a plan to recover myself, to soak me back in. I can’t do it yet, though, can’t bring myself to sit on a center cushion on any couch, let alone our own. Now it’s impossible because my essence has been hauled away to some secondhand store or garbage dumpster. My body clenches. You don’t love her, I say.

  He slaps me across the cheek.

  We both recoil. It’s the first time I’ve been struck by either parent. I stare at him, the poltergeist of his hand throbbing in my skin. His anger melts, jowls and lips sagging. I turn and run upstairs.

  Liesl, he calls.

  I slam the bathroom door behind me. None of the other rooms upstairs lock, old doors in an old house with brass keyholes and skeleton keys long gone missing. The bathroom has a hook and eye for privacy. I expect a knock, or another shout of my name, but neither comes. My cheek burns. It feels good, a tangible, physical pain understudying for my broken heart. I don’t want it to stop.

  I’m not able to hit myself in the face, but I remember the lotion, my legs, and I shimmy my jeans over my hips and down to the floor, sit on the closed toilet, and slam my fists into my thighs. It’s not enough; the heaviness in my chest remains. Next to me, on the vanity, is my hairbrush. I grab it and smack my legs until they flame, prickled with broken vessels, until they go numb and I turn the brush, pointed handle end down, and stab, stab, stab. The blue welts grow, and I stop because I’m crying. It hurts too much.

  I lie on the floor, on a moldy
-smelling towel I left sitting wet in the machine too long but didn’t rewash. Cover myself with another one, this one still damp from my father’s morning shower, and clamp an arm over my eyes. My legs throb and I focus on them, content. It’s the only thing I feel.

  I keep drifting up from sleep, so buoyant it cannot keep me captive. I don’t wake completely, but enough to be aware of a car alarm, a stray feather from my pillow, my sheets twisted around my feet. It’s disorienting, and finally I give up and open my eyes. Six thirty.

  Something stirs in my brain, wanting attention. For weeks after my mother died, I would swing my legs over the side of the bed each morning with dread in my belly, knowing I had a reason to be sad but not quite conscious enough to fully realize why. The cold wood against my feet, the sunlight in my face, and suddenly I’d remember. She was gone.

  It’s the same now, but instead of sadness there’s joy. I rub my face, feeling how puffed it is with the previous night. I yawn. And it’s there.

  I won.

  What is this—this happiness? I cannot remember feeling such delight, ever. Perhaps as a child, before the rust and moth chewed it away, leaving gaping holes where reality began seeping in. And maybe something very close to it when I opened the bakery, a few hours of excitement and anticipation of the journey, but quashed not long after by all the work needing to be done. That’s how my life has been, always walking, completing tasks, moving on to the next, a constant focus on the to do. Drive, some call it, praise it, even. And it will come again, this evening, when the dough must be prepared for tomorrow and the weekly invoices paid and the flour ordered. But for this morning, I choose to enjoy it.

  I may sleep, shower, and occasionally flop on the couch here in the apartment, but I dwell in the Wild Rise kitchen. The apostle John writes the Word became flesh and dwells among us. Tabernacles. He makes his home with us, lives in the tent with us. It’s where he breathes, with us. It’s Sunday. I shake my head. I promised Cecelia, but not today.