Baker's Blues

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  He looks blank for a minute, so I press on.

  “The first thing we have to decide is what the evening’s going to be. Then we figure out what we can get donated. Then we need a committee—”

  “Wait a second—”

  “We can’t do it all by ourselves. You’ve got a café to run, so your time is limited. I have more time, but I don’t know the people here. We need a few worker bees that we can count on to take the ball and run with it. Just stay with me here…”

  “Okay…So what’s the evening going to be? Besides dinner and drinking and maybe some music?”

  “It’s Halloween. Let’s have a costume contest with prizes. And how about a silent auction?”

  “Auction of what?”

  “This island is crawling with artists and craftspeople. Surely we can get some of them to donate some work.”

  “Yeah. Of course.” The light has begun to dawn on him. “And Sarah knows most of the business owners—”

  “And the restaurant owners. We can ask for gift certificates for meals, tickets to movies, events at the Orcas Center.”

  Then he sobers up. “There aren’t that many people on the island come Halloween. Who’s going to buy all this shit?”

  “People who live here. People who live on the other islands. And I assume you have a mailing list…?”

  “Sure. But a lot of them live out of the area, out of state. People aren’t going to come up here at the end of October for a party.”

  “No, but they can make donations. And they can participate in the auction on line. We just need to make sure all the right people know what’s happening and why.”

  “So I’ll donate all the food…”

  “Maybe we can find some nice rich person to buy the booze.”

  He looks at the ceiling. “Good luck with that.”

  “We’ll just have to ask. All they can say is no. Now, who do you know that we can get to work with us? Preferably people who know Sarah and love her.”

  “That’s pretty much everybody,” he says.

  “Well, out of everybody, if you were hiring people for a job, people with talking skills and organizational talent…”

  “Ivy Jacobsen. She’s been here so long she’s practically a native. She’s got money and connections and she had her own tour company in Seattle.”

  “Excellent. Who else?”

  “Rocky Whalen. Former mayor of Eastsound. He knows everybody. He’ll be a good arm twister.”

  “Perfect. Let’s start with those two and they can probably bring other people on board.”

  He refills our wine glasses and laughs. “I’m trying to imagine you in your executive wife days. I bet you were unstoppable.”

  “I suppose you could say that.” I smile and touch my glass to his. “To Sarah.”

  eighteen

  Mac

  This trip could hardly be more different from the first one.

  He’d sold everything except his clothes, books and music to buy a ticket on a charter flight to Fiji. After only a few days of snorkeling, learning to windsurf, and drinking Fiji Bitters he was feeling desperate and claustrophobic. Island Fever the locals called it, but he knew it was more than that. His somewhat vague plan to work on a boat or find a cheap flight to Australia wasn’t coming together and he needed to get off this island. A chance encounter with some New Zealand footballers at the Royal Suva Yacht Club Bar led to the offer of an empty seat on their charter flight back to Christchurch.

  That night was all about the butt-numbing bench seat of the flight from Nadi to Christchurch, drunken snores around the cabin, the cold air blowing in his face the whole trip. Tonight he settles into his sheepskin covered, fully reclinable seat in Air New Zealand’s first class cabin while a pretty flight attendant comes by to hang up his jacket, offer a drink, a menu, headphones and magazines.

  He moves over to the vacant window seat and opens the ARC Alan asked him to write a blurb for. He reads the first page three times, before closing the book and dropping it into the seat pocket in front of him. The same flight attendant appears to collect the drink, which he’s barely touched, and the plane begins to taxi out to the runway. He closes his eyes, dozing lightly until the engines rumble. The plane rolls, picking up speed, lifts with a grace that belies its mass, and banks in a wide arc out over the Pacific. The lights of Los Angeles recede into the autumn night.

  The 6:30 AM traffic is light on the motorway south from the Auckland Airport. This is a good thing. Between remembering to drive on the left, trying not to hit the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal, dealing with the treachery of roundabouts…he doesn’t have much attention to spare for other vehicles. Soon enough the road dwindles to two lanes.

  Why the hell didn’t he just book a connecting flight into Napier and save himself an eight hour drive? He’d had some vague notion that he would be glad of this time alone on the road. To get himself together. To get ready for what’s ahead.

  As if that were possible.

  The sun inches higher, his hands begin to ache, and he realizes he’s been clutching the steering wheel in a death grip. He pulls off the road and walks around the car a few times, shaking his hands, tilting his head from side to side, stretching out the ache in his back.

  He returns to the car, buckles the seat belt, takes a deep breath and nearly pulls out in front of an SUV because he’s looking the wrong way. The other driver swerves and honks as Mac slams on the brakes, heart pounding. God. He survives everything else, finally gets here to see Skye and ends up just another stupid Yank getting scraped off the highway.

  He looks both ways twice before pulling out again.

  Just north of Taupo is Huka Falls. That’s where Gillian’s father had picked him up hitchhiking, his first question not “Where you headed?” but “Have you worked construction?”

  In those days there was nothing but an amazing channel of roaring, churning turquoise water where the whole of Lake Taupo seemed determined to push through a narrow granite chute into the Waikato River. Today he sees signs for a retreat and conference center, jet boat rides on the river.

  In Taupo he stops to buy a sandwich and eats it on a bench overlooking the gray-blue, choppy lake. At a shop, he buys flowers—some kind of brightly colored daisies Wyn always liked and which he can never remember the name of—and lays them carefully on the passenger seat. A gentle rain begins.

  Back on the road, he falls in behind a silage truck and for a while he relaxes into the monotonous, slow pace, smiles at the sign on the truck’s back end…

  Please do not overtake when I indicate.

  He’s forgotten how polite Kiwis are—at least officially.

  His memory of the drive over the mountains into Hawke’s Bay that day is hazy. Graham wasn’t much of a talker and beyond explaining that he was looking for some help at rebuilding a shearing shed that had burned, there wasn’t a lot of conversation. He remembers the smell of wet dog from the grizzled huntaway snoozing in back, the dirt and hay on the floor of the old Land Rover. The sun darting in and out of the clouds, the limestone cliffs and green hills dotted with sheep.

  At the farm, Graham showed him around, and left him at the bunk house, where he’d discovered that he was not the only recruit. Besides himself there were a couple of Samoans, one South African and an Aussie, none of whom had any experience in construction. That made him the de facto foreman.

  Then, as now, it was spring and the weather was unpredictable, changing moods the way some women change clothes, several times a day. When it was raining too hard to work on the shed, the hands would drink and play cards. Everyone was friendly enough, but he couldn’t keep up with them in either drinking or cards and sometimes he couldn’t even understand what they were saying, although everyone presumably was speaking English. Then, too, his lungs rebelled at breathing the smoky air in the small, dark room off the bunkhouse, so he got in the habit of wandering around the farm, watching Graham and his son Rory and their dogs work the sheep. When t
he shearing crew came, he watched them, too, fascinated by the strength, skill and speed of the men, most of whom were Maoris—large, tattooed, chain smoking, unflappable except when drunk.

  Gillian had gone off on a trip with her cousins, and by the time she came home, the shed was finished. Pay had been distributed; the others had left. Mac had stayed a few days longer to go rock climbing with Rory and when they came back he made plans to head to Tongariro for some hiking and then over to Raglan to try the surfing.

  Graham had said if he wanted a lift out to State Highway 5 to be in the driveway at 10 AM when he would leave on an errand.

  How do you ever know when some seemingly unimportant event is going to change your life? A thing as trivial as showing up fifteen minutes early. At 9:45 he walked up the hill and set his pack on the ground. He was knocking the dried, caked mud off his boots when a dirty yellow car pulled in from the road. A girl stepped out holding a battered leather duffle, said something to the driver, then laughed and shut the door. She stood waving as the car retreated down the gravel drive, trailing dust.

  It was her hair that caught his attention first, a rich brown the color of walnuts, highlighted with gold in the sun, bound into a thick braid that hung halfway down her back. He had a sudden flash—something a woman or a different sort of man might have called intuition—an image of her with the braid undone, hair loose, tumbling over her shoulders. That image stopped his breath for the length of a heartbeat.

  When she turned to go up to the house, she seemed to notice him for the first time.

  “Oh,” she said. “Hello.”

  He’d seen her before, he realized. She’d helped her mother serve them all dinner for a couple of nights before she left for her holiday. The men had been exhausted and ravenous. He remembered her mainly as a pair of hands that set down plates of food and then cleared them off the table when they were empty.

  Now he looked at her for several seconds before responding to her greeting. She returned his gaze the whole time, no blinking or blushing or turning away. She wore jeans and jandals and a sleeveless white shirt that showed tan, well-muscled arms.

  She looked at his pack and her eyebrows lifted just slightly.

  “You’re leaving us, then?”

  Without consideration or hesitation, he said, “Not just yet.”

  Her face opened into a smile. “Good,” she said. And she turned and walked into the house.

  He’s getting close now. Skye had said to watch for a white sign for a boarding kennel. He sees it as he comes over the rise and his stomach feels suddenly hollow. Two kilometers later he turns into the gravel road with several black mailboxes and a row of poplars just leafing out. He doesn’t remember the trees.

  But he does recognize the white farmhouse with black shutters set back at the end of the drive, the huge Norfolk Island Pine at the corner of the garage. He stops the car, turns off the engine and sits very still, aware of the sound of his own breath. The carefully rehearsed speech is useless now. He gets out of the car and then leans back inside, grabbing the flowers off the front seat. Their heads nod lazily on limp stems. He should have waited to buy them. Stupid.

  Lifting his hand to the door knocker, he sees Gillian through the window. She’s looking out across the lawn, not at him, but she’s obviously seen him. Her profile is clean and sharp against the glass; hair pulled into a loose knot—to her, there’s no such thing as a hair style; it’s just hair—the memory of her smell, that mix of grass and sweat and soap suddenly returns with perfect clarity.

  Now she’s opening the door, motioning him inside, and he’s close enough to see the silver threads shot through her hair.

  “Hi, Gilly.”

  She says nothing till they reach the kitchen. Then, “So they let you in. Immigration must be slacking off.”

  “You haven’t changed.” He can’t prevent the slight smile, which she doesn’t return.

  “Mac, I want this one thing to be perfectly clear. You’re not an honored guest. The only reason you’re here is because Skye wants you to be, and I feel I owe her that. She can get to know you and decide if you’re worth the trouble. And by the way, in case you haven’t noticed, she never cashed your check. She said it was the only thing she had from you and she wasn’t parting with it. Pathetic, eh?”

  “So you haven’t told her what a shit I am.”

  “No need. She’ll find out soon enough.”

  He sighs and sets the flowers down on the table. “I had no way of knowing.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You made damned sure of it. How you could just walk away, never call or write to see if I was okay…or the child…or even just to say hello…”

  “When we talked about it, I thought you—”

  She turns on him angrily. “You thought. What did you think? That I could flush a child out of my body like brushing a burr off my sleeve? And never look back. And never think about who she might have been. You are a total ass. Do you have other children?”

  “No.”

  “Good then. For them.”

  “I can’t excuse what I did. I can’t make it right. I don’t blame you for hating me.”

  “And I don’t need your permission to hate you.”

  “Maybe this was a bad idea. I should go to a hotel.”

  Gillian laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. “Believe me, I thought of it. We don’t have any hotels around here that are up to your standards, I’m sure.”

  “I’ll find a farmstay. I can drive out in the mornings. I don’t want to make things uncomfortable.”

  She shakes her head, somewhat mollified. “Just the fact you’re in the country makes it uncomfortable, there’s no changing that. But no. She and I have worked this out, and I’m asking that you just not tip the boat.”

  “Whatever you want,” he says.

  Her stare is level. “When was it ever about that?” She wipes her hands on a towel and tosses it on the counter. “Perhaps you remember where the bunkhouse is.”

  He hesitates. “Where is she?”

  “At a friend’s house. She said she couldn’t bear hanging around here, waiting for you to not appear. I’ve already called her. She’ll be here soon.”

  It’s an ironic bit of symmetry, him walking down the steps with his bag when a dusty green Subaru pulls up and a girl gets out and walks towards him. Nineteen years ago it was Gillian. Today it’s Gillian’s daughter. Gillian’s and his.

  The car horn beeps and Skye waves carelessly at the driver without taking her eyes from Mac.

  She looks different now in jeans and a T-shirt, jogging shoes with no laces. Tall. Amazingly tall. And beautiful. Older somehow, although it’s been barely six months since she stood in the doorway of his house. He stops and sets down his bag. Is he supposed to shake her hand? Hug her? Is she angry? Happy? Wary? Nervous?

  She stops a few feet away. How is it possible that someone whose existence was unknown to him for sixteen years should have his eyes, Suzanne’s mouth?

  “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  “I said I would.”

  “I thought you’d change your mind. Shall I call you Matthew? Or Matt?”

  “Mac.”

  “Mac.” She holds the compact syllable in her mouth like a hard candy.

  He picks up his bag, unsure what to do or say next. “Maybe you should go tell your mother—”

  “She knows I’m here. She can see everything from the castle tower.”

  “Well…I guess I should…” He gestures vaguely and begins to walk slowly down a dirt path that leads around the house. She falls in beside him. In the bunkhouse she sits on one of the stripped metal beds while he unpacks the few clothes he brought and she tries to study him without seeming to.

  “Why did you decide to come?” she asks.

  It’s annoying, disorienting, all the things he planned to say falling away, useless, forgotten. What to say? Excuse me a minute while I find my notes.

  He takes a breath. “I felt bad…the way
I acted when you came.”

  She shrugs. “Rather a surprise, I imagine.”

  “And…I sort of wrecked my car.”

  “Sort of?”

  “I went off the road. It scared me.”

  She frowns slightly. “I expect so. Were you hurt?”

  “No. What scared me was I realized I might die without …before I got to talk to you.”

  “Derek went to Rotorua,” she says abruptly, twirling a strand of pale hair around her little finger.

  “I guess that’s understandable.”

  “He’s a great bloke,” she adds hastily. “He’s been a…he’s been great to me.” She looks away, flustered, then back quickly, seeking his eyes. “I didn’t mean to start off about Derek straightaway—”

  “That’s okay,” he says.

  “I’m just nervous. I’ve been waiting so long. Now you’re here, I don’t quite know what to do. How long can you stay?”

  He smiles. “Long enough, I guess. A week.”

  “Alright then. Come on.” She gets to her feet, links her arm through his, pulling him towards the door. “Shall I show you the farm?”

  Soon they’re winding up a rutted road that tops a series of green, sheep dotted hills.

  He says, “I wanted to tell you that I think you were very brave. To come to L.A. after I didn’t answer your letter.”

  She seems surprised. “Not really so brave. First off, I had no way of knowing if you actually got the letter, since I had to send it to your publishing company. I was hurt when I didn’t hear from you, but…” she shrugs. “I was going to be in Los Angeles anyway. What did I have to lose? Maybe you didn’t want to meet me, but at least then I would know and not waste any more time on it.”

  The road narrows, becoming a rock strewn path, and begins to switchback down a steep slope. She moves ahead of him, sure-footed as the sheep that appear to cling to the hills by magnetized hooves, while he slips on small rocks, wishing he’d worn something more substantial than Gucci loafers, tries not to appear totally inept and prays to reach the bottom in one piece.