by Paul Hond
“I’m sorry,” said his father’s voice. “I’m sorry for all the things I’ve done to hurt you. I just want you to know that you mean more to me than anything else in the world.”
The words dove bravely down into the darkness and Ben swam alongside them, reaching out in fear and fascination to touch the broad white belly of their meaning. It was then that he felt a brush of rough skin against his cheek, and the light pressure of a dry but tender flesh which sent him twisting bashfully downwards and with a shudder into a pocket of rare warmth. There was a faint click, and then slowly the presence receded. Ben tried to reach out to it, struggling up to the lambent, spangled surface, only to fall back deliciously from the light.
25
The muscles in Mickey’s arm tensed and bulged as he scraped the starter from one bowl into another. He’d prepared it last night before going to bed, and now, eight hours later, the mixture was desirably fragrant and fizzy, and gloppy as quicksand. In the second, larger bowl he mixed in careful measurements of water (bottled stuff, from some underground source in Maine), yeast and organic flour that he’d purchased from his vendor yesterday afternoon.
It was almost six in the morning; a light, tapering snow fell outside, coating the lawn with a hoary white moss. By noon, Mickey figured, it will have all but melted away.
The kitchen glowed with fluorescent light, the only light in the world: it was Saturday and the bakery was closed.
The mixture in the bowl thickened; Mickey had to give it his all to move the wooden spoon. The dough was ready to be slapped onto the table and kneaded, but Mickey was reluctant to surrender his grip on the wood. He stirred and stirred.
It wasn’t clear if the kid had been awake or not, but somehow Mickey knew that his words had reached him. To what effect remained to be seen. As with Donna Childs, he’d told the truth; finally, that was all you could do.
Still, he wondered why the kid hadn’t moved out of the way. It was as if he’d wanted to be hit; as if he’d wanted his father to feel what it was like to hurt him.
Mickey emptied the dough onto the kitchen table, and set out a bowl of flour.
When he looked up, he saw Ben standing in the doorway, wearing the blue bathrobe that Mickey had given him a few years ago. His eye was black, blue, green.
“Jesus,” Mickey said. “You might want to get some more ice on that thing.”
Ben shrugged. “I will.” His hands were in the pockets of the robe. It made Mickey wonder how long he’d been standing there.
Mickey dipped his hands in the flour, then dug the heel of his palm into the soft, sticky dough and pushed it forward.
“What are you doing?” said Ben.
Mickey stopped. It occurred to him that a kid might think it strange to come downstairs at dawn and see his father in a white apron, playing with a blob of dough. “Making bread,” he said. As the gluten strengthened he had to involve more of his body, bending his knees, rotating his shoulders.
Ben came closer. “What are you going to do with that bowl of flour?”
“I have to add it in. A little at a time.”
Ben picked up the bowl. “Now?” He tilted the bowl and let some flour fall over the mass of dough. Some of it landed on Mickey’s wrists. It felt cool as talc.
“Is that good?” said Ben.
“Yes. But you don’t want too much; that’ll dry the dough out.” He stopped himself, thinking that Ben might be mocking him. He kneaded more vigorously.
“How long do you have to do that?”
Mickey stopped, took a breath. “Until the dough is ready.”
“How long is that?”
“Usually about fifteen minutes.”
“You should get a mixer.”
Mickey ignored that. He sprinkled in more flour and continued.
Ben shifted his weight. Despite his qualms he stared at Mickey’s hands like a fascinated child, and Mickey began to study them that way too; they seemed so skilled.
A minute passed.
“Can I try it?” Ben said.
Mickey stopped and looked at him. The eye was a mess, but he tried to see past it. “You want to try?” he said.
“Sure.”
Mickey dipped into the bowl for more flour. “Are your hands clean?”
Ben went to the sink. Mickey listened to the rush of water. A cautious joy took root.
“Okay,” said Ben. “They’re clean.”
“Okay,” said Mickey. “First thing, you put your hands like this. Then you dig in with your feet and use some elbow grease.” He rolled the dough. “Got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Get some flour on your hands. That’s it.”
Ben positioned his hands. Mickey wanted to grasp the wrists and guide them, but feared his touch might cause Ben to recoil.
The dough rolled, slowly.
“Good. Now pull it back,” said Mickey. He took the dough blade from the table and put it in the sink.
“It’s hard,” said Ben.
“It takes muscle,” said Mickey. He returned to the table and sprinkled in some flour. “Elbow grease. Come on now.”
Ben took a breath.
“Work it out,” said Mickey. “That’s it. Good.”
Ben kept at it. Mickey could see that something was kindling inside him—the child’s wonder of creation. It was as if the dough had called him from his bed, down the steps and into its softness; he was becoming immersed in it, his one good eye marveling at the changes brought forth by his hands.
“It’s getting smoother,” he said.
“That’s the idea,” said Mickey.
“Less sticky.”
“That’s the idea.”
Mickey held the bowl of flour and sprinkled at intervals. He remembered how he’d taught Emi to eat steamed crabs at this very table—how they’d communicated so much and said so little. “You got another ten minutes,” he said. “Then you can do a little test. Poke the dough with your finger. If it pops right back, it’s done. And remember—careful with how much flour.”
Mickey went to the kitchen door and looked out. A pink opaline light had spread over the yard; the clouds were breaking up; the snow on the ground was in tatters.
Between the cherry tree and the flower bed lay a plot of earth, a neat little expanse which suddenly suggested itself as a potential site—Mickey dared to picture it—for a wood-fired oven. Hope came back to him like feeling to frozen fingertips: he imagined not only building the oven with Ben—the mortar, the bricks, the good clean work in the crisp air—but also the feasts they could make there in all seasons: corn, squash, shrimp, turkey, potatoes, clams, apples; they could even roast chestnuts, and the fragrant smoke would be the talk of the neighborhood.
“Dad?”
Mickey turned. “Yes?”
“I think it’s ready.”
“Good,” said Mickey. He walked over.
“Now what?”
“Now we let the dough rise.”
“It’s gonna be good,” Ben said.
Mickey smiled at the kid’s innocence. “It’ll only be as good as we are,” he said. He shaped the dough into a ball. “Take that oil there and rub the inside of that big bowl. Use a paper towel. That’s it.” When the bowl was greased Mickey filled it with the ball of dough. Then he turned the ball over to lightly grease the top. “Okay. Get me a dish towel from the drawer and wet it and wring it out so it’s damp.”
Ben did this. “Here,” he said, holding out the towel.
Mickey took it and felt the slightest resistance; he had to yank a little. A fear passed through him.
“Now we cover the dough,” he said. He was aware of Ben behind him. “And we let it sit.”
“How long?”
Mickey turned. Ben was inspecting the webbing of dough still caught on his fingers. “Three hours,” Mickey said.
Ben looked at him. “Three hours?”
“Until it doubles in size.”
“Like my face.” He smiled.
Mic
key looked away. “And we can’t disturb the bowl. The dough could collapse.”
“Three hours.”
“Good things come to those who wait,” said Mickey. He placed the bowl atop the refrigerator. “The temperature should be close to perfect up there. Don’t touch the thermostat.”
“I won’t.”
“Meet me back here in three hours,” said Mickey. “Okay?”
“Where are you going?”
“Just out back. Maybe I’ll take a jog.”
“I think I’ll go back to bed,” said Ben.
“Wait,” said Mickey. He opened the freezer and took out some ice cubes and placed them in a plastic bag. “Go and get that swelling down.” He handed Ben the bag.
Mickey waited and listened to Ben’s footfalls on the stairs. Then he took off his apron and went outside.
The cold felt good. He picked up some frosted stones from around the flower bed and laid them out on the ground, outlining the foundation of his prospective oven.
The house was quiet; Ben must have been asleep. Mickey took the bowl down from atop the refrigerator and uncovered it. The dough had progressed admirably. He wished Ben would come down, so that he could show him the bloated dough and explain to him the next step, which was to dump the dough back onto the table and deflate it by flattening the center by hand. Mickey did this himself, satisfied that it was still a team effort. He formed the dough into a ball again, then returned it to the bowl and covered it.
Thirty minutes later he put on his apron and dusted the table with flour. He turned out the dough, deflated it and divided it into two parts, both of which he kneaded for several minutes. Then he packed them into balls: these would be round loaves. Peasant stuff.
Ben appeared in the doorway, holding the melted ice pack. “Did I miss anything?” he said.
“No,” said Mickey. “You’re just in time to help. Can you grab two towels and two medium-sized bowls?”
Ben dropped the bag of water into the sink and did as he was told.
“Line the bowls with the towels,” said Mickey. “And rub a little flour into the cloth.”
“Like this?”
“Yes.” Mickey placed the raw loaves into the bowls and dusted the tops with flour.
“Now what?” said Ben.
“Now we cover them with towels and wait another two hours.”
“You’re joking.”
Mickey shrugged. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Yeah. It was built in five hundred years.”
“Well, we won’t have to wait that long, fortunately.”
“What happens after we wait another two hours?”
“Then we bake,” said Mickey.
“How long will that take?”
“Five hours.”
Ben’s chin dropped. “What?”
Mickey laughed. “Forty-five minutes, tops.”
Ben went to the refrigerator and poured himself some orange juice.
Mickey sniffed his hands. Fresh dough. Back at Dulac’s there were times when he’d thought he’d never get enough of that smell.
“I think I’ll go downstairs,” said Mickey. “Maybe listen to some music. See what your mother left down there.” He looked at Ben. “You’re welcome to join me.”
The kid turned his head. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll just meet you back here in two hours.”
It was like a promise between lovers: Mickey’s heart soared.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all about being home was to enter through the basement door without knocking and walk down the steps into silence.
Mickey looked around: the shelves, the desk, the music stand, the chair; everything was covered with a bluish film of dust, and Mickey could almost sense, in the walls, the floor, a soft, fading return to a previous incarnation—the wood-paneled clubroom of his adolescence, where the pennants of all the football teams were tacked in the shape of a pinwheel to the ceiling and the phonograph needle snapped and popped over the shoobie-lahs of some forgotten doo-wop sensation whose vocalist Mickey had sung along to in the mirror, using his old bicycle pump as a microphone.
Even his wife’s most intimate items—her clothes, her shoes, her jewelry, probably too her violin, which was locked away for safekeeping—no longer vouched for her ownership; they had become almost absurdly themselves—a shoe, an earring—and nothing more. It was as though she had never invested herself strongly enough in the object world to have inspired a proper afterglow. Even her blood, Mickey suspected, had it still been there on the sidewalk, would have had very little to say for itself.
There was a single disc in the player: the sixth symphony of Tchaikovsky, recorded some twenty years ago when Emi was still with the orchestra. It was one of the few symphonic recordings she ever made. Mickey figured out the knobs on the stereo, then took a seat in Emi’s chair and read the accompanying notes. It was Tchaikovsky’s last major work, a dark piece whose mood was similar to that of a requiem. “Without exaggeration,” Tchaikovsky said, “I have put my entire soul into this symphony.” He died nine days after conducting the first performance in St. Petersburg.
Mickey closed his eyes and listened. He might have put on one of her chamber recordings, a sonata perhaps, so that he could hear her voice distinctly, but it was more interesting somehow to pick her out in a crowd. The first movement began in a low whisper as a bassoon rose up through a fog of what sounded like double basses, and already Mickey could feel the tension, the anticipation of the violins, whose forceful entrance a few moments later caused him to clutch at his knees. The theme mounted to a nervous climax, then faded; and then a lone voice—was it hers?—prepared the way for a great romantic swell of strings. Mickey’s thoughts drifted in and out of the music, which had by now quieted down considerably; and then he was startled half out of his chair by a sudden knife of strings: his heart nearly stopped. Then the suspense grew, the chord was struck again and again, now spilling over into a fast, frantic, almost demonic restatement of the theme, a frenzy in which Mickey suffered visions of impending violence—only to relent (Mickey exhaled slowly), then build, relent, build, now with great bombast, and relent again, and then, on the wings of the string section, swell melodiously before dwindling with a plucked pulse of a countermelody down to silence.
Listening to the subsequent movements, Mickey was amazed at the range of moods and emotions that the composer had squeezed into one cohesive work. There was a whole lifetime of pain and terror in this music, but also of joy and sorrow and wit. Mickey was amazed at how much sense it all made to him now, compared to when he had first heard it twenty years ago. He listened with great sensitivity, taking in every note, every surprise, whisper, frolic, every worrisome brassy plunge. And all throughout he listened for Emi, riding with her in the dark through the snorted steam and hoof claps of some glacial Russian winter. He did not realize that his face was awash in tears.
When the final movement went out like a winking ember—when the theme from the first movement had been resurrected, only to be extinguished in strands of thin, gloomy smoke, fading, fading—when silence had seamlessly taken over and made its own great statement, Mickey felt as though he had arrived with his wife at the very edge of the world, and felt too that even now, at this very moment, her soul remained in the swirl of that music, still flying out over the rooftops and black forests of a snowy purple night.
He had found her; he knew where she was.
In the kitchen he lined the oven rack with the thick terra-cotta tiles that he’d bought at the housewares store. He preheated the oven to about as hot as it could get.
Ben arrived on schedule, fully dressed. The eye looked improved.
“Finally,” Ben said. “The moment of truth.”
“Yes,” said Mickey. He floured up a large cutting board and turned the raw loaves onto it. “Now,” he said. He took up the dough blade. “You do one, I’ll do the other.”
“Do what?”
“We have to cut lines in the dough,
” said Mickey. “It’s called scoring. Cut in about a half inch. Make any design you want.” He handed Ben the knife.
Ben looked at the ball of dough. Then he inserted the knife and carved a plain X.
“Is that it?” said Mickey.
“That’s it,” said Ben. He seemed pleased with the simplicity of it, the directness of statement. He placed the knife on the cutting board instead of handing it over.
Mickey picked up the knife. “Now let me see,” he said. He was drained from the music and had no ideas. He shrugged and drew a circle, as a kind of counterpart to the X.
“Hmm,” said Ben. He took the blade and filled in the circle with eyes, a nose, a line for a mouth.
“He doesn’t look too happy,” said Mickey.
“Look where’s he’s going,” Ben said.
Mickey laughed. “Okay. Now see that spritzer bottle on the counter there? Fill it up with cold water.”
Ben did.
“Okay,” said Mickey. He opened the oven: the heat rushed out and filled the kitchen. “Now as soon as I slide these loaves onto the tiles there, I’ll need you to spray the sides of the oven until we get a lot of steam. Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Mickey slid in the loaves; Ben sprayed. A dense, sizzling fog developed. Mickey shut the door to trap it.
“Now it’s up to the oven,” said Mickey. He thought to hold out his hand and shake on a job well done, but something—superstition, maybe—told him to wait until the loaves were baked. “I think I’ll do some digging outside. The ground’s softened up from the snow.” He paused, then said, “Care to join me?”
“Maybe in a few minutes,” Ben said. “I’ll clean up some of this stuff.”
“Okay,” said Mickey.
From the small shed next to the back door Mickey grabbed the garden shovel, then proceeded to the far end of the yard. On the way he stopped to check the feeder. It was empty, but not for long. The birds had some real good bread coming, at least a few crusts of it, and Mickey liked to think that even they would notice the difference in the quality.