by Karis Walsh
The argument hadn’t made much sense to five-year-old Jenny, but she’d taken it to heart and lived by it for years. Sitting here next to Helen, wanting to wrap those loose tendrils of Helen’s dark gold hair around her fingers, somehow the argument seemed as foolish and hurtful as it had when she was a child.
She stood and held out her hand to Helen. “I always thought community meant a place where I’d visit for a while and then leave. It’s the way I grew up.” She tugged Helen to a standing position. “Right now, this community needs us, and we can’t let it down. First, though, I want to have some of this banana bread Danny’s been raving about.”
*
Helen kneaded a large mound of soft dough on the marble countertop in her bakery’s kitchen. Over the past five days, she hadn’t been open for business more than three hours each morning, and even then she’d had a limited supply of pastries for sale. She’d been baking more than she had when she was in culinary school, though, as she helped Mel feed practically an entire town of volunteers every day.
The slow beach cleanup and the continuing flow of birds into the rescue center were clear signs that this summer wouldn’t be the heavy tourist season she’d been hoping for. She’d had dreams of selling dozens of muffins and cupcakes every day—enough to support her through the long winter months when customers would be sparse. Instead, she was giving away more than she put in her display cases.
Helen punched the dough with a tight fist and felt a mist of flour puff into her face. She braced her hands against the edge of the counter and stood quietly, her head bowed while she struggled for control. No need to punish the dough for her foul mood. She had a pile of bills in her office and itemized lists of her projected expenses. She’d written dozens of budgets, trying to find a way to keep her business going without a significant summer income, but she felt trapped in a maze with no possible way out. So what did she do? She left her bakery door shut while she made another large tray of food for the center’s volunteers. Foolish.
Helen heard a rapid series of knocks on the front door and she pushed past the blue plaid curtain that separated the kitchen from the sales floor. Not that the word sales seemed appropriate since the large display cases held only a few dozen cookies and some chocolate cupcakes. She sighed when she saw Tia standing next to the closed sign and waving at her. Not a hungry horde wanting to buy her scraps for exorbitant prices, but someone who was probably looking for more donated snacks. Given the way Tia talked and Helen’s apparent inability to say no, Tia would most likely leave the store with full boxes. Leaving Helen with empty display cases and a similarly empty cash register.
She unlocked the door with a resigned click. The cookies and cupcakes had been made this morning, anyway, and Helen wouldn’t have kept them much longer—they might as well be put to good use.
Tia came through the door in midconversation. “And I said I’d bring something from my favorite bakery for our snack. You don’t think it’s wrong of us to meet, do you? I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I also believe it’s important to maintain a sense of normalcy. Not to let this tragedy destroy the life we’ve built here. Right?”
Helen was too busy wondering how she had become Tia’s favorite bakery, when the woman had never been here before, to grasp the full meaning of her words. “What meeting?”
“Our book club, at the Beachcomber,” Tia said. She wandered over to the sparse display cases and peered inside. “You should join. Most of the locals are members. We meet at seven on the first Thursday of every month.”
Helen, ashamed of the scanty offerings in her cases, was happy to keep off the subject of baked goods. She was flattered by Tia’s reference to her as a local, even though Tia hadn’t seemed to consider her one until after the oil spill. “I have to volunteer tonight, but maybe I’ll come next month,” she said. If she still owned the bakery and was in town, she added silently.
“Please do.” Tia frowned and tapped a long, red-painted nail on the glass. “We were thinking of canceling because of the spill, but Jocelyn and I decided to go ahead with the meeting. Were we wrong to plan something fun during a tragedy? Jocelyn said we should continue to function as a community, that the meeting would give all of us a chance to get together and talk. To share our pain. What do you think, dear?”
Helen had been in the bookstore twice since arriving in Cannon Beach, but she easily recalled the owner, Jocelyn. She and Helen had spoken for a few minutes, and then Jocelyn had moved around her store gathering an armload of exactly right books for Helen. New books by her favorite mystery authors, two titles Helen never would have chosen for herself but ended up adoring, and a book of poetry. She had devoured the books and had gone back for more, and this time Jocelyn had a stack waiting behind the counter with her name on it.
“I think you two are right,” she said. “Everyone is working hard, and the days have been long and sad. You’ll probably end up comforting each other and talking about the spill more than books, but that’s how it should be.” Comforting each other and gathering together in a familiar and beloved routine. Helen understood the appeal even though she wouldn’t accept Tia’s offer to join them. She’d be the outsider.
“Should I go with the muffins or the cookies?” Tia asked, interrupting Helen’s reverie. “They both look delicious.”
Helen was still thinking about the book club, and she took a moment to switch gears mentally. “I have some sand dollars in the back room,” she said. “I’ll go get a couple dozen for you.”
“Wonderful!” Tia smiled with a remarkable amount of energy and enthusiasm, given that she’d been working as volunteer coordinator nearly nonstop for the past two weeks. She seemed indefatigable, and Helen envied her ability to keep moving and talking without rest. Helen wasn’t as resilient these days, but Tia had the advantage of being a permanent fixture at Cannon Beach—not a newbie baker who wouldn’t last the season. Helen would never be as openly extroverted as Tia, no matter what her situation, but she certainly had reason to lack Tia’s verve.
Helen layered the soft pastries in a pale pink to-go box. She’d been making a similar dessert since culinary school, but after naming her bakery the Sand Dollar, she’d changed the shape of them. The disks of flaky, buttery Napoleon pastry were filled with different flavors of cream. Grooves and notches were piped on top in vanilla icing to give them the look of sand dollars. The ones she had made today were stuffed with an almond-flavored pastry cream mixed with fresh raspberry coulis. She’d been planning to stop by some local restaurants on the way to the center and try to sell her signature pastries at a discount, willing to take the loss if it meant she could earn some paying customers. A lucrative account supplying desserts to a five-star restaurant would have been great. Instead, she’d donate her pastries to the local book club.
“These are beautiful,” Tia said as she peered inside the box. “They’ll remind us of what we’ve lost on our beaches, and what we’ll find again under the layers of disgusting oil. How much do I owe you, dear?”
Helen quoted a price that would barely let her break even given the cost of ingredients. She wasn’t sure why she was undervaluing the high-end and time-consuming confections. Was she trying to buy her way into the community, or was she doing this as a way to support the people involved in the cleanup effort? Maybe a little of both. Unfortunately, every step she took to belong to this community was another step away from financial success and the chance to really make this her home.
“Nonsense,” Tia said, putting double the amount Helen had asked for on the counter. “I’ll see you at the rescue center later on this evening. And remember, if you need a break, come by Jocelyn’s.”
Tia had already pushed out of the door without pausing for breath or to say good-bye, as if she was carrying on a day-long conversation, and Helen happened to be part of it for a few minutes. Helen took the cash off the counter and gratefully put it in the starving cash register, then she closed and locked the door behind Tia. The streets were empty
and she wouldn’t have any more paying customers tonight. She might as well go to the center and start her shift early. She boxed up the remaining items from her case and set her dough in a cool spot to rise overnight for tomorrow’s loaves of bread. Although she specialized in sweet pastries, she had planned from the start to offer some sourdoughs and whole grain breads as well. The more she diversified, the more likely she was to make some cash. Besides, her pastries were indulgences, but fresh breads were staples. She needed to cater to the families living here year-round as much as to the occasional tourist who would come to their oil-covered beach.
Helen hung her blue striped apron on a wooden peg and went into the bathroom to wash her hands and scrub flour off her cheeks. She couldn’t do much about the smear of pink pastry cream on her T-shirt or the dribble of chocolate batter on the thigh of her faded jeans without going back to her apartment and changing her entire outfit. She’d rather be a little messy than late for evening feeding at the rescue center, but part of her wanted to look her best, or at least look reasonably clean, when she saw Jenny. She turned away from her reflection with a tired sigh.
She was foolish to think Jenny would care what she was wearing or how presentable she was—Jenny was interested in the birds under her care, not in Helen. Well, Jenny did seem to care about her volunteers but not how they looked. Helen shook her head. She was tired and rambling to herself. She needed to get to the center and get to work before she crawled on her bakery counter and fell asleep. She piled the remaining boxes of sand dollar pastries into her arms and carried them outside, balancing them against her hip while she locked the bakery door.
“Can I help you with those?”
Helen spun around and saw Jenny walking toward her with an armful of pizza boxes. She looked tired and sleep-deprived, as usual these days, but her natural loveliness shone through the veneer of weariness. The drawn expression on her face only emphasized her high cheekbones and curved lips. Her socks were mismatched and her sweatshirt was torn, but if a television crew swooped down right now to interview her for the news, her devotion to this cause and her unyielding goodness would enhance her looks more than makeup or a restful night’s sleep could ever do. Helen was sure of it because just last night she had watched Jenny on the evening news, lighting up the screen with inner and outer beauty.
Helen wished she’d kept a change of clothes here at the bakery.
“Looks like you’ve already got your share,” Helen said, pulling her focus off Jenny’s lips and nodding toward the boxes she carried. “Besides, the heat from the pizzas would melt the pastry cream.”
“Please tell me you made more of your sand dollars,” Jenny said as they started walking along the sidewalk together. “I don’t want to sound like I expect you to bake for me and the other rescue workers every day, but I’m seriously addicted to those things.”
Helen laughed. How was Jenny able to relieve all her tension with a few words? The money she was spending on ingredients and the time she spent baking, assets she could barely afford to squander, were worth every stressful moment just to hear Jenny’s compliments.
“Yes, these are sand dollars. The filling for this batch is—”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess.” Jenny shifted the boxes to her left hand and traced a path along Helen’s lower ribs with her right index finger. “Strawberry?”
Helen nearly dropped her boxes at Jenny’s touch. One finger, a second or two of contact, and a layer of cotton between them. No big deal. Then why did Helen feel as if her ribs had been seared? “What?” she asked, more startled by her response than by the touch. She stopped and faced Jenny.
“You have the remains of something pink on your shirt. I thought it might be a clue to the ingredients you used.” Jenny put both forearms under her pizza boxes again.
Helen couldn’t read the look in her eyes. She gave up and stared at the pastry boxes. “I would have changed shirts, but I wanted to…well, it was almost feeding time, and…”
Jenny shook her head. “Why bother? We’ll be covered with oil and mashed bird food before the night is done. Besides, right now you look good enough to eat.”
Jenny cleared her throat and started walking again. Helen swallowed the surge of arousal she felt at the simple statement and hurried to catch up.
“Raspberry,” she said.
“What?”
Helen grinned. Jenny seemed as distracted by her company as she was by Jenny’s. “The filling is raspberry, not strawberry.”
“Even better.”
They walked in silence while Helen struggled to find a topic of conversation that wouldn’t leave her breathless. “You have good taste,” she said. She realized too late that Jenny might think she was referring to her good enough to eat comment, and she hurried to explain herself better. “People make pilgrimages from all over the state to get Fontana’s pizza.”
“I make it a point to sample all the local favorites when I’m in a new place,” Jenny said. Helen thought she saw a flush of red under the crew neck of her sweatshirt. “From local restaurants, I mean,” she continued in a rush. “Fontana’s pizza, Mel’s scones, your sand dollars.”
Helen liked having her baked goods lumped in with the other Cannon Beach specialties. She’d hoped to make that exact name for herself and her bakery this summer. Too bad she was earning a reputation from donations instead of sales. Money again. Why worry about it when there was so little to be made right now?
“You called yourself a nomad before. Do you travel all the time?”
“Yeah,” Jenny said. “It’s the only life I’ve ever known, except for the years when I was in vet school. My parents worked with Doctors Without Borders, and I traveled with them from the time I was only a few months old. I even got my college degree online since I was still a minor.”
“Really? What an exciting life you must have led.” Helen paused at a street corner and looked both ways before crossing the road even though barely any cars were out. The first weeks of summer had been crazy, with city-sized traffic on small-town streets. Jenny must be bored with the meager offerings of Cannon Beach, especially when she compared them to the grander and more exotic specialties of far-off lands. Helen had moved around far too much as a child—but not with her parents and not for philanthropic reasons. She imagined Jenny running through villages like she belonged in them, playing games with the local children…
“It wasn’t as romantic and exciting as people think.” The bitter edge to Jenny’s voice broke through Helen’s daydreams and caught her full attention. “If my parents were called to a specific place, it was because a lot of people were sick there, and I wasn’t allowed to mingle with them. Most of my childhood friends were stray animals I’d find when I played outside of towns, and not other kids my age. By the time I’d pick up a little of the local language and get to know a few families or get attached to another pet, we’d be moving on to the next epidemic and leave them all behind.”
Helen wasn’t sure how to respond. The adult Jenny, who had chosen a lifestyle similar to the one her parents had followed, evaporated before her eyes. In her place was a lonely, isolated young girl who seemed similar to the child Helen had been. But Helen had made different choices, as soon as she was old enough to be on her own. She veered over and walked close enough to Jenny so their arms touched. “Didn’t you ever want to settle down in one place, once you could make your own decisions? A place where you could make friends and be part of the lives around you?”
Jenny gave her a rueful smile and leaned in to their contact for a brief moment. “I used to think I would someday, but when I got to vet school, it was months before I adjusted to the idea that I was going to be with these same people long enough to make friends. Forming lasting relationships isn’t exactly a skill of mine.”
Helen almost tasted the bitterness and hurt in Jenny’s voice. “From what I’ve seen, you are great with relationships. Everyone who works with you here trusts and likes you. Was there someone in particula
r who made you believe you aren’t capable of making lifelong friends?”
Jenny sighed and looked away, although she kept her body close by Helen’s side. “I guess. I really had only one serious girlfriend during vet school. I never really thought it would be a forever type of thing, and we had our rough spots, but when she left me I had a really hard time handling it. I was used to being the one who left, and even when our family moves were sudden, they were never unexpected. It was a crazy overreaction, but I almost dropped out of school because of it. But then I was offered a summer internship with a wildlife biologist who was traveling to South America. Travel was familiar to me, and I enjoyed the work, so I focused on finding jobs that kept me moving.”
Helen couldn’t imagine how she would have felt if she hadn’t had any significant interaction with people her own age until she was of age and on her own. In some ways, Jenny must have grown up faster than other kids, and in others she had been left behind. Her parents should have been preparing her for school and life, not keeping her separated from it. Helen heard the dichotomy coming through in Jenny’s tone of voice as she went from relating the story of her girlfriend—who must have been insane to let her go—to talking about her present life.
“I can help more animals and birds and communities if I move to where I’m needed,” Jenny said. “My mom tried to explain that to me when I would be sad about moving again. She’d say it was selfish of me. I didn’t understand her at the time, but I think I do now.”
Helen spoke without pausing to think. “Nonsense. They were the selfish ones, not you.” She felt a buildup of her old rage. All she could hear was her uncle’s voice. I gave you everything after your parents died. A house, food, clothing. And this is how you repay me? The cost of his generosity had been much too high for Helen to accept, but she’d been torn by guilt when she heard those words and was too young to know better. She was trapped in her own memories, but the sensation of Jenny moving out of reach and the chilly sound of her voice brought Helen back to the present with a thump.