Baker's Blues

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  Once those are proofing, he’ll start on desserts, assisted by one of our revolving door procession of young men and occasionally women who think they want to be a pastry chef. When they find out what the job entails and the level of craft necessary to be really good, most of them fall back to the comfort of a nine-to-five job. Rafe, as we call him, is really more sorcerer than pastry chef. He moves serenely through the morning, crafting tarts and Napoleons, friands and macarons, galettes and éclairs that could make the angels weep. But his specialty is something he calls a Guadeloupe Tart, which is sort of like a moist, dense macaroon in a flaky crust. Customers have been known to fight over the last piece in the case.

  Pete, our work/study baker from the community college, will be cutting butter into the scone mix, scooping the bran muffins. He’ll be singing—he has a great voice, not conventionally appealing, but kind of gravelly and poignant. A Tom Waits with flour. Danni has a bit of a crush on him I think.

  Sally will be cleaning the cases, setting up the cash drawer, filling the cream pitchers and spice shakers, tidying the service counter and the coffee station, refilling the napkin dispensers. Sometimes it all makes me a little wistful, like I’m on the fringe of things, not quite part of it. Not one of them.

  Because I’m The Boss.

  In my office, I turn on the computer and prepare for the third time to install this new bakery software that does everything from inventory control and costing to formula keeping. When an ingredient price changes, the program automatically adjusts the cost of the formula and spits out a new retail price. At least in theory. The problem is I can’t seem to get it loaded.

  After thirty minutes, when I’ve tried every command, rebooted, uninstalled and re-installed the program, and still can’t get it to perform, I call the software company’s helpdesk. A pleasant voice informs me that the current wait time is six minutes. The music on hold is an old, very annoying song by the Jackson Five.

  I hit the speaker phone button, and open my email program.

  Tyler pops her head in. “Are you busy? Or just brushing up on your seventies music trivia?”

  “What do you know about the seventies? You were still in diapers.”

  “You told me all about it once, how you did macramé by candlelight and walked to school in your bellbottoms through drifts of snow.”

  “You must be confusing me with some old person. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Cheryl. It’s getting to the point where we need a dedicated person to take over wholesale, and I thought she might be good at it.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. Let me just pull the invoices for last month and—”

  She deposits a bulging file folder on my desk. “Last two months.”

  Standing there with her sleeves pushed up, she looks serious and efficient—but somehow I still see the little blue-haired delinquent I met my first day at the Queen Street Bakery in Seattle.

  “I’ll take a look at these and then we can talk about it.”

  “Si, jefe.” She grins and starts out the door. “Oh, and there’s one…other thing I need to—”

  The speaker phone crackles. “Tech Support, this is Gail.”

  “Hey, this is Wyn at Bread Maven. I can’t seem to get this inventory software to load…”

  I give Tyler an apologetic shrug and she mouths, “Later.”

  At 4:30 in the afternoon Prince Charles is sitting on my front porch licking his boy parts while CM stands behind him, arms folded, admonishing him to behave. I should explain that Charles is a two-year-old tricolor Pembroke Welsh Corgi with a very unfortunate name.

  Charles isn’t actually CM’s dog, much as she would like it to be so. Her apartment building doesn’t allow pets, plus her life as a dancer and choreographer makes it impossible. Charles belongs to her friend Susan, who got sole custody of him in her divorce, but had to move into a small condo with no yard and go back to work full time, leaving Charles to fend for himself. He showed his displeasure by eating his bed and having to have stomach surgery to the tune of about two thousand dollars. Susan was on the verge of surrendering him to Pet Rescue when a bunch of her friends got together to take turns keeping him out of trouble and today is CM’s lucky day.

  We bundle him and Brownie into the back of my station wagon, and head for the Luna Blanca dog park. We’ve barely cleared the driveway before they’ve jumped into the back seat, jockeying for position and singing their funny songs.

  CM tosses each of them a cookie. “When I retire I’m going to have a little house on a big piece of land somewhere and be one of those crazy ladies who has fifteen dogs.”

  “Ha. I can’t wait to see you on a big piece of land covered with dog poop, twenty miles to the nearest coffee house and dry cleaners.”

  I park in the lot and the dogs scramble out barking deliriously. It’s amazing how Brownie can slough off the years when she has an accomplice. We follow them down the dirt path towards the lake, leashes in hand. The sky is overcast and the air is thick and still.

  “I hope we don’t get rained out,” I say.

  “I’ve got so much to do, I can’t stay too long anyway.”

  “Oh…I was hoping we could get some dinner after.”

  “Tonight’s really not good; I leave for London on Thursday and I’ve got a jillion loose ends to deal with.” She pulls an old tennis hat out of her pocket and jams it on her head. Anyone else would look ridiculous, but on her it’s adorably scruffy. “Where’s Mac tonight?”

  “San Francisco. I think.”

  “How’s the book doing?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Are you okay?” she says. “Has he said anything else about the girl?”

  “Not a word. It’s like it never happened. I’m starting to think I dreamed the whole thing.”

  She gives me a quick one-armed hug. “He’ll come around. He just has to process the information.” Then, “Oh, damn.”

  I follow her gaze to the water’s edge, where the dogs have found something dead and are rolling in it with great enthusiasm.

  I make a face. “Well, at least I know what I’ll be doing tonight.”

  By the time I get Brownie bathed, dried and fed, get the back of my car cleaned out and all the towels washed and put in the drier, it’s almost nine o’clock. I should go to bed, but I know I won’t sleep. I’m hungry, but I don’t know what I want, so I take a raspberry juice bar out of the freezer and wander out into the yard, only to discover it’s finally raining, a gentle, soaking rain that reminds me of Seattle. I retreat back inside, into the living room, through the dining room, the hall, back to the kitchen, vague uneasiness growing until suddenly it’s a huge knot in my gut.

  I like to think of myself as a sensible woman, not given to panic or flights of fancy…but I just have this creepy, unfocused sense of wrong-ness. Maybe it’s because Mac’s not here to tell me I’m imagining things or that he’s tired or any of his other standard issue excuses. I hate being cynical. I want to think that he really is simply exhausted and stressed. I want to trust him.

  But the fact is, I don’t.

  His desk top is fairly clean. Where there were lots of small piles of papers, there’s now one large pile. The bottle of Remy does double duty as a paperweight. The trash basket is empty; two crumpled rejects lie nearby where they landed after a bad bounce. The book shelves are crammed full of books in no discernable order. The ones that won’t fit are stacked on the file cabinet and in the wingback chair. Even a few of mine have migrated in here, including one that lies inexplicably on the floor…The Baker’s Book of Days, A Memoir. It was a present from Mac a long time ago when he was trying to convince me to give up the boring and pedestrian idea of happiness and throw my lot in with him.

  I pick it up and hover uneasily between desk and chair, pausing to consider that what I’m about to do goes against everything I believe. But right now my need to know trumps everything else—self-loathing, fear of what I m
ight find, and certainly any scruples about privacy. I sit down in his chair and slide open the center drawer.

  Pens, pencils, paper clips, ruler, scissors, rubber bands, toothpicks, peppermints from various restaurants…all reassuringly mundane. See? There’s nothing wrong here. I don’t even know what I’m looking for. If there is anything incriminating, it’s probably on his laptop or his cell phone, both of which he has with him.

  In the bottom right-hand drawer is a bottle of scotch, three quarters empty. God. I’ve tried to overlook the Remy…telling myself that cognac is expensive and elegant and not what people drink when they have a problem. And the level in that pretty bottle with the fancy label seems to go down slowly. But scotch is just booze. Although this Macallan stuff probably costs more than the Remy.

  Bills.

  I pull open the top left drawer. In the back, rubber-banded together, are his American Express, MasterCard and Verizon bills for the year to date. As I’m reaching for them something catches my attention. Something blue in a stack of pristine white envelopes. An edge of blue vellum.

  It could be a fan letter or something. Except he doesn’t save those. I’ve never understood how he could be so casual about them. If anyone ever wrote me a letter telling me how much they love my bread and what a genius baker I am, I could never throw it away.

  I pull out the envelope and lay it on the desk, my heart thudding against my ribs. The pretty seashell stamp says New Zealand and the letter is addressed to Mac in care of Drummond Publishing. I draw out the pages, but before I can open them, a small photograph falls out.

  It’s a standard school photo of a young girl, her flawless skin and vacant smile retouched to artificial perfection. Actually, Skye was prettier in person.

  In spite of the ugly little knot that the idea of her makes in my chest, I feel as if I know her. I lost my father, too, although under different circumstances, but I know all about the longing, about that empty place nobody else can fill.

  The letter is written in dark blue ink with careful penmanship:

  Dear Mr. McLeod,

  You don’t know me, so I will introduce myself. My name is Skye Welburne. I am your daughter. My mother is Gillian Welburne and she knows I am writing this letter even though she asked me not to. This is rather awkward, but apparently when you were in New Zealand seventeen years ago, you stayed at my family’s farm and you and my mother were in love for awhile. She said you left before she discovered that she was pregnant.

  I have always wondered and asked her about you, and one day last month she and I went in a bookstore in Napier and saw a book called December Light. When mum saw your photo on the dust jacket, she was acting a bit off, but then later she told me who you were, and I was thrilled to finally know.

  I am sixteen (of course) and I have one more year of sixth form, and have not decided whether to do seventh and go on to university. I love horses and have my own gelding named Raleigh. I was excited to find that you are a writer, because I like to write also and I am learning how to juggle.

  I want to know all about you. Can you come to see me? Or at least ring me? A letter would be fine, although it would be my last choice. Here is my phone number. 843-2564. I would like to hear from you soon, if you don’t mind.

  Yours truly,

  Skye (McLeod) Welburne

  P.S. I have enclosed a photograph of myself. Will you send me one of you?

  The return address, Napier, North Island, NZ is just below the P.S. and under it is the date, nearly at the bottom of the page. I stare at it for a minute.

  December 12, 1998.

  Nearly a year and half ago.

  six

  Friday night I’m kneading walnuts into hearth bread dough when the door to the garage opens.

  “Hi.” He gives me a tentative smile. Brownie is dancing around him.

  When he leans close to kiss me, I flip the dough over, sending up a cloud of flour on his black Armani jacket.

  “Oh, sorry.” I try to sound contrite. “How was your trip?”

  “About as good as a book tour can be, I guess.” He brushes distractedly at the flour, but only succeeds in rubbing it in. He sets down his computer bag and takes off the jacket, draping it over the back of a kitchen chair. “Have we got anything to eat?”

  “There’s some deli stuff in the fridge.”

  He goes back out to the garage for his suitcase. “Could you make me a sandwich while I unpack?”

  I look him straight in the eye. “I’m in the middle of something right now. Presumably you remember the basic sandwich process. Bread, ham, cheese, repeat bread.”

  He tries a laugh. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Can I fix you something?”

  “I’ve eaten, thanks.”

  He makes his sandwich, puts everything back in the refrigerator, opens a beer, sets a glass of red wine on the counter for me and sits down to eat. The kitchen is silent except for the thump of dough on the marble counter.

  I’ve had three days to think about this…how to act, what to say…now he’s here and I’m drawing a blank. I take a sip of wine, holding the stem of the glass between floury fingers.

  “So how were the signings?”

  “Okay. Probably 30 people at all of them.” He tips back his beer.

  “And the interviews?”

  “Had two good radio interviews, one asshole TV talk-show host.” He pauses for effect, then adds, “I don’t think he liked the shirt.”

  It’s a throw-away line, so like his old self that I almost laugh. If I could laugh, then he’d laugh and he’d come behind me and put his arms around me and it would be like hitting the reset button. Everything would revert to normal. Except not really. Not now. Because now there’s no way to un-know what I know.

  I’ve been kneading the dough so long it’s like rubber. I lay a damp towel over it and start cleaning the counter with my bench scraper.

  He slips the dog a piece of ham.

  “There’s a new spa hotel in Bellingham,” he says. “Right on the water.”

  “I thought you were going back to Seattle that night.” I wipe the counter, squeezing water out of the sponge over the dried smears of dough.

  “I did go back to Seattle. I ate at the hotel before the signing—”

  Brownie makes a strange little whimper.

  “You’d like the restaurant. We should go up there sometime.”

  “Like next month?”

  He ignores me.

  Brownie whines again, noses the door.

  I absolutely believe that dogs can sense an earthquake about to happen. It supposedly has to do with electromagnetic fields or faint tremors in the ground that humans can’t feel. Brownie doesn’t really need to go out; she just knows that things are going to get bumpy in here and she doesn’t want to be around for it. I don’t blame her. I lift the towel and press gently on the dough.

  He gets up slowly and takes his plate to the sink. “It’s been a long day. I’ll take her out and then I’m going to bed.”

  “Mac…I’ve been thinking. About Skye.”

  He turns on the water and rinses his plate, doesn’t look at me. “What about her?”

  “I was thinking…” I clasp my hands to stop them shaking. “I know that December is when they all take vacation down there, and I was thinking maybe we should invite her to come for Christmas. I mean, I’ll be really busy for a few weeks, but you two could…”

  He shuts off the faucet abruptly and turns to me. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  I’m stunned into silence.

  “I don’t want her to come for Christmas. I don’t want her to come for anything. Ever. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  He opens the back door and Brownie escapes into the dark yard. But before he can disappear after her, I blurt out,

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  “What?”

  “About Skye. She wrote you a year and a half ago.”

  He closes the door and leans against the wall and his fa
ce goes very still.

  “How would you know that?”

  “I found the letter in your desk.”

  “What were you doing in my desk?”

  “Trying to figure out who you are these days.”

  “I thought we had a certain level of trust—”

  I dust the residue of flour from my hands and face him. I’m still shaking, but now it’s from anger. “Trust is not the default mode. Trust is something you build with openness and honesty. Both in short supply around here.”

  “You actually went through my desk—”

  I was hoping for something a bit more like regret, remorse…or at least embarrassment.

  “I’m your wife, Mac, not your roommate. Apparently you don’t know the difference.”

  “Sure I do. A roommate would respect my privacy.” He heads for the stairs.

  I take the towel off the dough, divide it in half with the bench scraper. It’s cool against my damp palms, and slack now, easy to shape. I do it automatically, rounding the dough, stretching its skin, moving scattered bits of walnut from the counter to my mouth, chewing them without tasting.

  When the loaves are proofing on a baking sheet in the refrigerator and the counter is clean, I call Brownie inside and go upstairs.

  His suitcase sits open on the floor of our bedroom. It takes me a few seconds to understand that the clothes inside it are clean, not dirty. Folded and stacked, not wadded up for the wash. He’s packing, not unpacking. I hear his office door open across the hall and he walks in.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Alan’s. That little apartment over the garage where Sylvia’s mother used to live. He said I could stay there.” He avoids my eyes. “I think we need a time out.”