Stones for Bread

by Parrish, Christa

  “Why?”

  “Because Beard was down on sourdough. He didn’t think it was worth the effort and called it unpredictable. He includes one recipe for those who might want to haggle with it, but his starter has commercial yeast in it.”

  “The philistine.”

  “I certainly think so.”

  His fingers continue their travels, and he pulls out another book, German Bread. Seamus flips through the pages and reads, “‘Germany prides itself on having the largest variety of breads worldwide. More than three hundred basic kinds of bread are produced with more than one thousand types of small bread-rolls and pastries.’ Well, that’s impressive. No wonder you bake. How could you not?”

  I’m not German, remember? I want to tell him, but as he closes the book he notices a handwritten date and short note in the cover. Reads it to himself. “Paul?” he asks.

  I jerk my shoulders. “No one. Some guy.”

  He returns the book to its place. “I have one of those.”

  “It’s less than yours. Not really serious at all.” I stack the dishes on the coffee table into a pile, close cartons of rice and seal the plastic lids on foil trays of beef and broccoli.

  “Should I take this as a hint?” Seamus asks.

  I stop. Sigh. “No. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to kick you out of here.”

  “Good,” he says, coming up behind me and looping his arms across my breastbone, each of his hands cupping my shoulders. I sigh again and melt back into him, his collarbone rigid against my skull. I still hold a container of fried rice.

  “How’s Jude?” I ask, because I’m too comfortable here, with him. I don’t deserve to be soothed while the boy suffers.

  “He’s holding up.”

  “Is he still at the farmhouse?”

  “No. His uncle wanted him out, like, yesterday. They’re getting the place on the market as soon as the ink dries on whatever papers need to be signed.”

  “Then where is he? With you?”

  “I offered, but he said no. He’s staying with Tee.”

  “Tee? Really?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “How’s that going to work? She rents a room in someone else’s house.”

  “No. Jude said she’s in an apartment now.”

  “She must need her bathrooms scrubbed or something.”

  “I think she just has a heart for the wounded.”

  I shrug free of Seamus’s arms and carry the food to the kitchen, packing it into the Bacardi box from which it came. “Why is it Chinese places are always near liquor stores? One of the universe’s great mysteries, I suppose. Anyway, you take this with you. It will just go bad here, and I bet Cecelia would like it.”

  I’m embarrassed. Seamus is so much more generous with people than I am, more perceptive. I don’t know Tee in full, only scraps of her story culled from things she’s said over the years, but well enough to hear truth in Seamus’s assessment. Her father was an alcoholic, or is one—he may still be living, I’m not sure. Her mother I’ve never heard her mention, except to say she sometimes made brown bread, and perhaps I should consider making some for Wild Rise. She immigrated from the Ukraine with her older sister in the eighties, arriving here unable to speak English. She worked hard as a child. She works hard now. She wears a gold Russian Orthodox cross every day, the kind with three crossbars, a short and long one near the top, a crooked one toward the bottom. Tee is a rescuer of stray dogs and nestlings with broken wings, fallen from their nests. She nurses them with her cooking, Jude and Cecelia and Seamus. And, I suppose, me. She doesn’t prepare special desserts for me like the others, or hot cocoa or sandwiches of cream cheese and coleslaw, but the bakehouse wouldn’t be what it is without her food. Some of my customers come for her, for what she provides; to them my bread is something to dip in her delicious soup.

  She has cancer.

  Seamus picks up the box. “See you tomorrow at the funeral, then?”

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “I love you, you know.”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “One of the universe’s great mysteries, I guess.”

  I can’t help but chuckle and shake my head. “Go on. The babysitter is wondering where you are, I’m sure.”

  He closes the front door and I hear him lumbering down the stairs, and his truck’s ignition turning over with a pig-to-slaughter squeal. He’s so big, he leaves a pit in the room when he goes, a giant-sized vacuum. It takes time to refill with my previous, pre-Seamus existence, each time slower, each time less, and I realize sometime soon, the hole will be one only he can occupy. What will I do then?

  Twenty

  Five years in a cubicle, and my hands itch. The money is good and the work challenging, but there’s too much plastic beneath my fingers. I wake in the mornings, stare at my reflection while brushing my teeth, and want something else.

  I don’t allow myself to consider what that something else may be.

  Hello, earth to Liesl, Paul says. Is everything okay?

  I like him. He’s nice, steady, the kind of college-educated man who can buy Star Wars memorabilia without seeming socially inept, or creepy, for that matter. We have lunch together every day at work. He brings the same thing: ham and yellow American on white bread, Miracle Whip on the side so the sandwich doesn’t become soggy, rippled potato chips. A kosher dill. And a little something sweet, he says, opening his hand to offer me one of his two Hershey Kisses or similar foil-wrapped treat. Sometimes miniature eggs at Easter, or the bite-sized candy bars he snagged for 70 percent off after Halloween. He tells me his mother packed his lunch for school the same way, with some tiny treat. She counted out the M&M’s. I always got twelve. I don’t tell him my mother, father, and I would eat an entire bag of chocolate in one sitting.

  I’m good, I tell him.

  Sometimes we talk on the phone, but mostly we don’t. He kisses me on the cheek after work, outside the office building when we separate to go home, each in our opposite directions. Occasionally we pucker our lips to dry prunes and touch them together, a show of affection more for the great-aunt occasionally visited at the nursing home, the one with the beard who smells like urine. Now, after eighteen months of this, we add an I love you in there. I don’t mean it, and I doubt he does. We’re free variables for one another, notations in the code of our existence specifying a place where substitution may occur. I’m twenty-seven, he’s twenty-nine. It’s easier to have someone to tote around if needed for a wedding or party, to be able to say to that nosy mother or friend, Yes, of course I’m seeing someone. We’re the not-so-favorite-but-affordable shoes, knockoffs of the real deal. The pair of trendy designer jeans found at the thrift store, hot this season but a size too small, and we squeeze into them anyway, no matter how uncomfortable, for the sake of fashion. We’re biding time together for the right person to come along, instead of waiting alone.

  It’s Saturday. Paul asks me to brunch with him and a married couple he knows from college, visiting from south of here. They’re activists, he says, and we meet at Housing Works in Soho, a café and used-book store staffed by volunteers, and all profits fund the charity of the same name, battling homelessness and AIDS. After eating, the other couple disappears into the depths of the store while Paul and I poke through the discount bins. We’re not readers, neither of us.

  How long do we need to stay with them? I ask.

  I know. They’re not nearly as fun as they were when we were drunk together at frat parties.

  I see it then, a book nearly as large as my torso, foggy cellophane cover taped around it, library call number sticker on the spine. Breads of Germany. The photos are full color and glorious, the recipe pages stained with crusty dough or oily fingerprints. I turn through it, mouth open and juiceless as I breathe my saliva away.

  The bread found me.

  Do you bake? Paul asks.

  I shake my head. Swallow. My mother did. She was German.

  Of course she was, with you havin
g a name like Liesl. Either that, or she really liked The Sound of Music.

  It’s Austrian.

  What is? Liesl?

  No. The Sound of Music takes place in Austria. I have this exact conversation often, as most people have never heard my name outside the movie.

  But it’s under German rule at the time.

  That makes all the difference, then.

  Paul looks at me. I offended you.

  No.

  I did. I’m sorry. He reaches for the book. Let me buy this for you.

  I hug it beneath my arm. Really, that’s not necessary—

  Please. I want to.

  I check the inside cover, where the price is written in pencil. Five dollars. Okay.

  He pays for it as I wait by the bin, shaking his head when offered the receipt. Then he takes it from the flat paper bag and, borrowing a pen from the clerk, writes something in the front cover. Returning the book to the bag, he gives it to me as the other couple appears, each with armfuls of paperbacks. I plead fatigue and thank the couple for lunch, wishing them well and lying about looking forward to meeting again the next time they’re in the city. I squeeze Paul’s hand, a surge of genuine warmth in the gesture, land a peck on his baby-smooth cheek, and hail a taxi.

  My mother’s starter, in Oma’s crock, sleeps in the refrigerator at my apartment. I’ve been a neglectful caretaker, going weeks or months between feeds. But now I spoon the contents into a bowl. I wash the crock, refill it with half the starter, a cup of water, and two cups of flour, stirring to a batter-like consistency. I’ll leave this on the counter, lidded, and feed twice a day in hopes a few resilient microorganisms still exist. To the rest of the starter in the bowl, I add the same, cover it with a damp towel, and stick it in the oven; the extra warmth from the oven light will incubate the yeast colonies more quickly, if there’s anything left to grow.

  By midnight, the mixture bubbles with life.

  I quit my job, and Paul, on Monday.

  Xavier’s memorial is at Frederick & Sons, and I wonder about all the funeral homes I’ve seen with & Sons tagged on the end. What keeps these men glued to a business of bereavement and finality, following in the ways of their fathers? What child wakes and thinks, I want to be a mortician when I grow up? Perhaps for them it’s an inherited fascination, the grim reaper gene. Or maybe the father simply gives his kid a nice cut of the profits.

  The room is plush and gold, the rug squishing beneath my feet, all the mirrors and candelabras brass-toned, the long burgundy drapes tasseled in yellow. The chairs are brocade, the air sodden not only with the scent of dozens of floral arrangements around Xavier’s closed casket but with some kind of perfumed aerosol I saw one of the attendants spritzing in the corners.

  I wear my one black dress with black flats and a gray sweater, the cardigan kind with no buttons, and feel underdressed, even though the majority of people I know here—my employees and customers—are not attired much differently. The strangers, like Xavier’s extended family, all wear suits, ties, and shiny shoes. I mingle and accept condolences, and it seems so strange to have others apologize to me for my loss. It is a greater loss to me than they realize. Xavier, the man who peered through me like glass. I’m still mostly opaque to Seamus, though I’ve become translucent around the edges.

  In the tsunami of events recently—Jonathan Scott’s offer, Xavier’s death, everything defined and undefined with Seamus—I’ve been able to sidestep most of the emotional turmoil of the adoption revelation. Most. It’s been difficult not having the long hours at the bakehouse to keep focused elsewhere. Years of avoidance, however, have given me an arsenal of techniques to stuff feelings, so if one fails me, I try another.

  This week I tried reading the Bible.

  Sleeping kept the memories from snapping at my heels, so I didn’t get out of bed until close to noon. However, those hours after dinner, when tiredness won’t come because I’ve dozed the better part of the day, those are the difficult hours to fill. I moved to another of my most trusted approaches: organizing something. This time it was my closet. I stripped the hangers of my clothes and sorted them into items I would keep and items I’d donate. I swept storm clouds of dust from the floor, piles thick enough to be spun to yarn, like the roving on the fiber tour my first time out with Seamus and Cecelia. I restacked the items on my topmost shelves. And, in doing all this, I found the Bible I stuffed up there because I couldn’t stand it accusing me of unfaithfulness when it was somewhere I saw it every day.

  I remember my father, when he first began attending church with a coworker, spending so much time with the Word flopped open on his lap, scrutinizing and underlining, the message a salve for the gaping chasm left by my mother’s suicide. One flesh torn asunder, like a man who’s lost half of himself in battle. I was jealous of his spiritual attentions. I wanted him to continue hurting as I hurt, for us to be fused in our grief. I never expected him to begin healing, and despite knowing even today that my father isn’t whole again, he’s much closer to it than I am.

  So I opened the book, hardly larger than my hand with an olive faux-leather cover embossed with a swirly cross. The ribbon marker rested somewhere in Romans. I scanned the first passage my eyes fell on.

  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

  I’ve heard this passage before, used to spur those in the pews to adopt children. If God adopts us, the argument goes, should we not emulate him and do the same? Not to mention all the other times we’re told to care for orphans. It doesn’t help me think more positively of my own circumstances. I’m confused, disoriented, and in some ways, I question my entire existence.

  There is anger too, and it’s directed, unexpectedly, at my mother.

  It’s been there since the hours after I found her, simmering, a pot of linguini on the back burner, heat turned up too high. The water foams and threatens to overflow, but I always snatch the pot away in time, moving it to a cool place until the torrents subside. She was ill. She didn’t know what she was doing. I can’t allow myself to be mad at her, though. It means—

  No. I won’t consider this today.

  Jude sits hunched in the corner, Tee standing over him, a diminutive sentinel in black slacks and turtleneck and turban of silk around her bald head. He wears his everyday jeans but his newly dyed hair shimmers black like crow feathers. He stares at his scuffed boots. She presses an embroidered handkerchief to her nose, moving it left or right to absorb her tears before they travel all the way down her face.

  “You’re crying,” I say.

  She must hear disbelief in my voice. “It is my sadness. I am able to have it.”

  “I know, but—” I stop myself from the rest of it, the you never liked him anyway, because it’s a repulsive thing to say. Death is here, she weeps for it. It doesn’t matter if Xavier was her least favorite person in the world.

  Tee is no fool. She reaches for my hand, holds it open, palm up, and bunches her handkerchief into it. Then she curls my fingers around it. “You take. The compassion I have, maybe you wipe it on you. Maybe you see something not your bread,” she says, and she walks briskly toward the ladies’ restroom.

  “Tee is Tee,” I mumble, as if her behavior excuses my own, and cram the hankie in my sweater pocket. To Jude, I say, “You’re really staying with her?”

  “Pops would want me to. She acts all tough and whatever, but when she’s home you can see how sick and tired all those cancer drugs make her.” He sticks his finger through a shredded patch of denim, close to his knee. “Nan was like that.”

  Nan. His grandmother. Xavier’s Annie.

  I start to ask how he is managing,
but a man approaches, one of the dark suit brigade, his silver shirt and tie the same color. His stomach hangs over his belt and the skin of his face seeps downward, toward his neck, pooling in a fleshy wattle beneath his chin. He reaches us and holds out one fat hand. “Bill Potter.”

  “Liesl McNamara,” I say, shaking it. Now it’s my turn to guard Jude, and I push in closer to him, resting my arm across his shoulders. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Yes, of course. But my father led a full life. That’s the way to go, in your sleep, isn’t it?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “We should all be so fortunate.” He adjusts his pants, tugging them up at the waist. “Well, we’re starting soon. But I wanted to introduce myself.”

  “It’s good to meet you.”

  “That it is. And I do understand how you might be somewhat . . . shorthanded now. In the bakery. If that changes how you feel about possible business decisions, please feel free to get in touch with me. I’m still very interested in potentially working with you.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” I say. “But I’m sure Jude will be able to step in and handle things just fine.”

  The man nods. “Jude.”

  “Dad.”

  And he limps off to the front, where a similar-looking man, slightly thinner, slightly taller, his shirt and tie navy blue, talks with the rent-a-chaplain. Jude half-whispers something I think I hear, a string of words found in rated-R movies. I drag the closest unoccupied chair next to him and sit. “Are you okay?”

  “How can Pops and I be related to that?”

  “I hear chronic imbecility usually skips a generation.”

  Jude allows himself the tiniest grin. “What does that say for my kids?”

  “Two generations, then.”

  I hold Jude’s hand between both of mine as the memorial begins. I wish Seamus had been able to come; Cecelia took ill with a stomach virus this afternoon. He called after picking her up from the school nurse’s office to say he would be home serving ginger ale and saltines to his little girl, and most likely cleaning vomit from the bathroom floor. Had he been here, he could be a citadel for Jude and me. I need something between us and the rest of this place.