Bread Alone: A Novel

by Judith R. Hendricks

  “Wynter, what are you doing?”

  I gave him my best smile. “I forgot my book.” I went up to the house and rifled through my suitcase, only then remembering that I hadn’t brought a book with me. Oh well. I tried to walk at a leisurely pace back down to the cottage.

  “Have you found it?”

  “No, I must have forgotten it.” I leaned against the wall of the house, in the shade, watching him. We chatted a little. He kept looking down, probably trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. Or maybe he knew.

  “You should go back to the river,” he said gently. “Where it is cooler.”

  “It’s so damp down there.” I piled my hair up on my head and leaned back, the better to give him a good view of my neck. I’d seen Raquel Welch do it in a movie.

  Finally, he finished the job and got down off the ladder. He came over and picked up a cleaning rag he’d left on a small table. He began to wipe the pruners slowly and deliberately. He must have cleaned them for ten minutes while I stared at the curly black hair on his arms. My heart was fluttering like an injured bird and my head was full of the scents of tobacco and coffee and bread—yes, and sweat—that clung to him.

  He set down the pruners and the rag, but he didn’t move. I thought if he didn’t either kiss me or get away from me, I’d faint. We made eye contact.

  “Jean-Marc …”

  “Oui?”

  I took a deep breath. “Would you like to kiss me?”

  I’ve always been grateful to him for not laughing. He sighed. He raised his heavy eyebrows. “Bien sûr, Wynter. What man would not like to kiss you? But then what will happen?”

  I had my fantasies, of course, but I wasn’t exactly clear on the progression of events.

  He tilted his head to look at me. “Suppose for a moment that I desire to kiss you and we find ourselves en amoureux. There is more to love than kissing, as you know. I cannot compromise a young woman who I have promised to protect. Ce n’est pas bon.”

  I was twisting my class ring around and around my finger. “I’m an adult, Jean-Marc. I don’t need protection.”

  “Oui, but then consider what happens. We have a brief love affair, which is not good for our work together. We part sadly.” He ran a hand through his short, wiry hair, causing it to stand up adorably. “Or, I suppose we can marry.” He paused. The look on my face must have made great stories for years to come. “You will, bien sûr, become Catholique. And we must live in the house with my mother.”

  “Well …” I stammered.

  “You will cook and keep the house and have children. At least four, possibly five or six. My mother will take care of them and you will run the shop while I bake the bread … Que pensez-vous?”

  Mon Dieu. I was thinking Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin; he was talking Ozzie and Harriet. He sighed again, attempted to look sad. “You see, Wynter, malheureusement, I do not think this will work.”

  Merde.

  Ten

  I love the Queen Anne Thriftway. It’s less pretentious than the gourmet markets in L.A. with their artistically arranged strawberries and Tuscan estate-bottled extra-virgin olive oil and designer goat cheese and candied rose petals. Thriftway has all that, but they’ve got regular food, too, and everything doesn’t cost more per pound than a vintage Stutz Bearcat. The clerks are called “clerks,” not “sales associates.” They carry some respectable European-style breads with good sturdy crusts, which they don’t ruin by sealing in plastic bags. Plus, they have an espresso cart and they play great oldies on their sound system. I’ve gotten to where I actually look forward to grocery shopping, a chore I always hated at home.

  The Wednesday after New Year’s Day I’m tooling up and down the aisles with my mostly empty cart, sipping a decaf latte and humming along with the Carly Simon/James Taylor cover of “Mockingbird.” Okay, I’m dancing in front of the dairy case—the mashed potato—the way CM’s big sister Katie taught us, and trying to decide which flavors of yogurt I want.

  “If yogurt makes you feel that good, they’re probably not charging enough for it.” I wheel around, feeling a scarlet flush ride up my neck. Mac the bartender smiles at me.

  “I was just—” Excuse me, why do I feel compelled to explain myself?

  He says, “I like that song, too. But the Inez Foxx version’s better.”

  I grab two cartons of yogurt, no longer caring what flavor they are. “I don’t think I’ve heard it.”

  “Come to Bailey’s Saturday night. I’ll play it for you.” He rips the top off a plastic bag of precut carrot sticks and pops one in his mouth like a cigar. Then he holds out the bag to me.

  “No. Thanks.” I grip the handle of my cart. “I’m not in the habit of going to bars by myself. Especially not on weekends.”

  He twirls the plastic bag around and ties the open end in a knot. “Bailey’s is a neighborhood joint. We even have a bunch of grandmothers that come in. You won’t get hassled. I promise.” He uses the carrot to cross his heart.

  “Well, maybe. I’ll have to see what’s going on.” In my extremely busy social life. My hands are actually sweating on the cart handle.

  “I’ll save you a place at the bar.”

  Before I can think of anything else dumb to say, this cute little blonde comes flying around the corner, all dewy smiles. “Mac, hey. I thought I recognized your voice. How long has it been?”

  While he’s trying to figure out the answer, I slink off to the produce aisle for my bananas. Old wallflowers never die; they just go to seed.

  Tassajara yeasted banana bread is good—dense with whole wheat, minimally sweet with honey, the banana really only an aftertaste. But I know it can be improved. On impulse, I cut a piece and take it to work with me. Linda handles it like it might be radioactive.

  “What’s in here?” she demands.

  “You tell me. Taste it.”

  She chews like a cow, her lower jaw making a complete rotation. “Cinnamon.” She swallows. She looks up at the ceiling, side to side.

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know. Somethin’ else. Come on, I haven’t got all night. What’s in it?”

  “Banana.”

  “In yeast bread?” She looks outraged, then disgusted, then she takes another bite. “Yeah, it’s banana all right. Can’t hardly tell it.”

  “Isn’t it good?”

  She shrugs. “Why bother putting banana in it if you don’t even know it’s there?”

  I laugh. “It’s called ‘subtlety.’ “

  “I call it silly. Puttin’ in something you can’t hardly taste.”

  “I think it could use something else …”

  “Yeah, like more banana.” She cracks herself up.

  “I was thinking nuts. Maybe hazelnuts. What do you—”

  She shakes her head vehemently. “No sir. I tell you what it needs. It needs more cinnamon. And sugar.”

  I stare at her. “Damn, Linda. I think you’re right. Make it like a cinnamon swirl bread.”

  “That’s what I said.” She looks half embarrassed, half pleased with herself.

  “Let’s try making some tomorrow night.”

  “No way,” she snaps.

  “Why not?”

  “We got plenty to do tomorrow night. The bread we’re s’posed to be doing. Don’t need to be messing with bread that has bananas in it but you can’t tell.”

  “Oh, come on. I’ll come in early—”

  Her teeth clamp together. “I don’t care if you come in at three in the afternoon, we’re not doing it here. You want to mess with it, do it at home.”

  So I do. I add two more bananas to tenderize as well as flavor the dough, pat it into a rectangle, brush it with melted butter, sprinkle it with brown sugar, cinnamon, and raisins, roll it into two fat spirals. It gives off an almost narcotic aroma while it’s baking so that it takes all my willpower to wait for it to cool before cutting into it. I let the loaves sit for fifteen minutes, turn them out of the pans, and drizzle a bit of confecti
oners’ sugar glaze over the tops.

  Sitting at my table with a warm slice of banana-cinnamon swirl bread and a glass of cold milk, I think it doesn’t get much better than this. Maybe sex. But only incredible sex with a French film star at the George V in Paris. This stuff would sell like gangbusters on weekends, but I know Linda’s not going to let me try it. I don’t understand her. She’s got the right instincts. She knew that a little more sweetness and spice would make it come together, but she won’t take the next step.

  She reminds me of this girl CM and I used to see at the pool every summer. About once a week, she’d climb the ladder of the high dive and walk out to the end of the board. She’d stand there for a few minutes, looking down at the water, sometimes even bouncing a little. Once she backed up and started her approach steps. But she stopped short of a dive every single time. She’d stand there hugging herself till the lifeguard blew the whistle and told her to either go or get off the board, then she’d give this little shrug and climb back down, making everybody move off the ladder to let her by. She always seemed embarrassed and I felt sorry for her until CM pointed out that no one was forcing her to publicly humiliate herself every week.

  The second week of January, a front blows down from Canada and makes everything so clear and cold that the city seems sculpted in ice. For days, the only clouds are little white puffs floating in an ocean of blue sky. There’s a heavy capping of snow on the Olympic Mountains, making the view from the park into a travel poster. Linda and I have to play with the bread’s rising times because the ambient temperature in the bakery is much lower than usual and there’s virtually no humidity.

  “Did you guys hear what happened up on Galer?” Ellen comes in breathless on Tuesday morning, locks the door behind her. “A woman was raped and murdered.”

  “On Galer?”

  Ellen’s dark eyes look huge. “In her home, for God’s sake. I just heard it on the news. I guess it actually happened yesterday. They haven’t released much information yet because there’s a suspect, but he’s still at large. They’re warning all women who live alone to be supercautious.”

  Linda gives her trademark snort. “Anybody ever grabbed aholt of me, they’d turn loose fast enough once they got a look.”

  I’m inclined to agree.

  When Tyler comes in at six-thirty, she says she heard the killer got in through an unlocked basement door. At seven, when the rush starts, you can feel the electric crackle of fear. It’s all anyone’s talking about. Linda and I are drying the last of the aluminum bowls when Ellen walks back.

  “Wyn, are you all right to go home by yourself?”

  “Sure. I just need to get a door chain or something, I guess.”

  “A door chain? Don’t you have a dead-bolt lock? What about window locks?”

  “It’s just a guest cottage. It wasn’t really designed for maximum security.”

  “You’re not staying there alone one more day without some decent locks.”

  “I’m okay, really. I’ll go by Ace Hardware when I wake up this afternoon and get a book and some tools …”

  “This is no time for do-it-yourself. I’ll send Lloyd over when he gets home.”

  “Ellen, I’m fine, really. I’m sure your husband has better things to do than—”

  “I’m not going to argue with you, Wyn. Don’t buy anything till Lloyd looks at the place. He’ll know exactly what you need.”

  In the movies, Lloyd Gannaway would play the stoic ex-con, trying against all odds to go straight. Tall and lean, white-blond hair, flinty eyes in a face ravaged by acne and sun and hard living, he doesn’t seem a likely match for Ellen. But the longer I’m with him, the more I can see how it works. For one thing, he doesn’t do a lot of talking—the perfect foil for Ellen’s running commentary on life.

  In fact, after he introduces himself, he just walks around my house, looking at the windows and doors, testing the locks, tapping things, shaking his head occasionally. Then he says, “Let’s go.” And we drive off down the hill in his faded-blue Toyota with the missing front bumper.

  The hardware store is doing a brisk business in panic. It’s like being in a hardware store in L.A. after an earthquake. The aisles are crowded with single women and their brothers, fathers, boyfriends, sons. By tonight, there probably won’t be a lock left in the place. Lloyd selects a dead bolt for the door and insists on getting a peephole and some screw-in locks for the double-hung windows.

  Doug, my little fir tree, is still sitting in his pot on the porch, still wearing his red bow.

  “You should plant the tree,” Lloyd says when we come back.

  “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.”

  He picks up the pot, squeezes it gently. “Well, you might have to leave it behind. But if you don’t stick it in the ground soon, it’ll get root bound and die. I’ve got a shovel in the trunk.”

  While he drills a tunnel in the door for the peephole, I dig a new home for Doug, just in front and to the left of the porch. When I knock the tree out of the pot, I see that the roots have already started to curl under and double back on themselves. I untangle them gently and spread them out over a mound of earth in the hole, scoop dirt around the root ball, tamp it down. I imagine him sighing and wiggling his toes in the dirt.

  I lean the shovel against the porch rail and come inside. “Will it bother you if I watch?”

  Lloyd shakes his head, absorbed in the mechanics of putting in the locks. The little piles of sawdust under the windows escape his notice. But then, I’m used to David, whose tranquility could be marred by fingerprints on a glass tabletop.

  “Would you like some tea or a beer?”

  “Tea’s good. Thanks.”

  I put the teakettle on and make a fire in the stove. As the room warms up, he pulls off his sweatshirt and uses the inside of it to wipe his forehead.

  “Good fire,” he says.

  “My father taught me.” I hand him a cup of tea and close the air vent on the door of the woodstove.

  He looks around. “I think that does it.”

  “I really appreciate your help.”

  “No problem.” He has the quietest voice for a guy. “You oughta get yourself some tools, though. Learn how to use ‘em. Since you’re gonna be livin’ alone.”

  Hello. I’m going to be living alone? Not really. At some point, David’s going to come to his senses. Or worst case, eventually there will be a replacement. Alone is temporary. A vacation. Hearing it pronounced in Lloyd’s flat, steady voice makes it sound alarmingly final. It’s like being hit in the back of the knees. “Yes,” I manage. “I guess I should do that.”

  He calmly sips his tea, oblivious to having just turned my life upside down. “What’s in the boxes?”

  “Mostly books. Clothes.”

  “You could build some shelves,” he says.

  I laugh weakly. “I’ve never built anything in my life.”

  “Be a good first project.”

  “I can’t afford to run out and buy a bunch of tools and wood and stuff right now. Maybe in the spring.”

  “I got some tools you can use.” It’s as if he hasn’t heard me. “I’ll give ‘em to Ellen to bring to you.” He gazes at me steadily, daring me to decline.

  “That’s very nice of you.” Okay, I’ll take the damn tools. That doesn’t mean I have to use them. I can go out and buy some shelves.

  “Be a lot better ‘n what you can buy in the way of shelving these days,” he says. Another sip of tea. “They’re all particleboard.”

  “Ellen said you’re a boatbuilder. Where do you work?”

  “Whidbey Island.”

  “You commute to Whidbey Island?”

  “Once or twice a week. The other nights I stay on my boat over there.”

  “Oh. That’s great. So how did you meet Ellen?”

  “She saved my life once.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Really.” When I don’t ask the next logical question, he answers it anyway.
“I was a junkie. One night I was so strung out, hurtin’ and full of self-pity, I decided to just kill myself quick instead of slow.” His eyes never move from mine and I find that I can’t look away. “But before I pulled the trigger, I picked up the phone and called the crisis hot line. Ellen answered the phone.

  “She talked to me for two hours. Got me to go to a detox clinic. Whole time I was in rehab I used to call the hot line and hang up till I got her.” He smiles minutely for the first time since I’ve met him. “Finally talked her into meeting me for coffee. Think I was already in love with her before I ever laid eyes on her. Goin’ on ten years now.”

  “That’s”—I clear my throat—”some story.”

  “Yep.” He drains his cup, takes it to the kitchen sink and rinses it out. “Thanks for the tea.” He pulls his sweatshirt back on, drops the drill in his tool kit. “You have any questions about usin’ the tools, I’m home most Saturdays.” He disappears out the door.

  Well, I really do need some shelves.

  Eleven

  I love to watch Diane assemble and decorate cakes, especially the wedding cakes, because they’re the most elaborate and some of them are pretty different from your average white wedding cake with flowers. Like the one she did for this couple who both work for Greenpeace. They wanted a cake that represented (their words) “the oneness of life and the harmony of sea, earth, and sky.” Other than giving her the theme, they said she was (their words) “free to unleash her creativity.”

  She spent weeks leafing through photo and nature magazines, art books, doing sketches. In the end, the cake was three layers—chocolate, lemon, and hazelnut—stacked asymmetrically. White-chocolate buttercream frosting was colored greenish blue on the bottom to represent the ocean, chocolate in the middle for earth, then sort of a marbleized pale blue on top for the sky, with wispy white clouds. It sounds weird, but it was beautiful. Diane fashioned exotic sea creatures and animals and flowers and birds to populate the three layers. The bride and groom were represented by a little mermaid and merman—I guess that’s what you’d call a guy mermaid—porcelain figures that the bride had found somewhere.