“Linda, I’m sorry about your husband.”
Silence. Is she embarrassed or does she just hate me? When I turn around to look at her, big tears are oozing from her eyes, lumbering down her face. Like she’s fighting them every step of the way. I start to slide off my stool, but she spits out, “Asshole.” Does she mean him or me? “Ya know how he died?” I shake my head. “Asshole,” she says again. “Drinking on the boat. He went over.”
“I’m sorry.”
We labor in silence except for the motors of the two big mixers.
“Ellen said I had to apologize.” Her abrupt pronouncement startles me. She stands next to the ovens, squinting resentfully at me, hands on hips. If she just had a corncob pipe sticking out of her face, she’d look like Popeye. “But I’m not going to. ‘Cause I’m not sorry.”
I sigh heavily. “It doesn’t make any difference to me. All I want is to do my job.”
“She can fire me if she wants to.”
“Ellen doesn’t want to fire you.”
“Wouldn’t be too sure of that, missy.”
“Linda, you’re making this much harder than it has to be. Bread making is a good job. We could be having fun here.”
Her hard laughter fills the room. “Fun? You little Pollyanna nitwit. Sure it’s fun if your daddy has money and you can quit whenever you want and run over to Hawaii for a few weeks. You try doin’ it for twenty-five years to bring up two kids when your old man drinks up everything he makes. We’ll see how much fun you think it is.”
The hair is standing up on the back of my neck and a wave of red heat rises in my face. “My father is dead!” I hear myself shout. I hate it that I’ve let her get to me again. “And I can’t take off to Hawaii for a couple of weeks because I’m separated from my husband and I need the goddamn job. Okay? Does that make you happy? So just get off my case and let me do the work.”
Fifteen
I’ve never had a man friend before. Not one who’ll sit with me in a stuffy, low-ceilinged dive in the U district through two and a half hours of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I reciprocate by accompanying him to his favorite used bookstores, where we spend hours sifting through dusty volumes in search of anything “interesting.”
I blink as we emerge from yet another bookshop on a narrow, grimy street off Pioneer Square, each of us carrying two recycled grocery bags full of books.
“I feel like a pack mule,” I complain. “Those places are all so dusty—”
He laughs. “Oh, quit complaining.”
“Maybe we could go to a real bookstore sometime. Like Elliott Bay Book Company. You know, someplace where they have new books. What is this fascination you have with books that have been pawed over by two or three other people?”
Even before I catch the sidelong glance he throws me, I already know I’ve inserted my silver foot in my mouth.
“I can’t afford new books all the time,” he says. He doesn’t belabor the point, and I say a silent thank-you. Most men would have seized the opportunity to remind me that I’m a spoiled brat who’s not accustomed to giving much thought to the price of anything.
Mac, however, isn’t most men. In fact, he isn’t much like anyone I can recall knowing. His brain reminds me of a meticulously organized file cabinet full of interesting but often arcane or useless information, such as the difference between a glade, a copse, and a grove. Why the second law of thermodynamics is actually more important than the first. Get him going, and he’ll ramble on about Cubism or horse racing or celestial navigation. But his favorite subject, hands down, no contest, is music, and he’s maddeningly opinionated.
I asked him one night at the bar why he never plays instrumentais. He said because they sound like something’s missing.
I said, “You think the lyrics are more important than the music?”
“Not exactly. It’s best when the words and the music work together. Like that Otis Redding song I was telling you about. The way the horns follow every phrase, kind of drawing you in.”
“I don’t remember.”
He gave me a disapproving look. “You need to learn how to listen.”
“You were probably one of those people who used to sit around playing Beatles songs backward, trying to hear them say, ‘Paul is dead.’”
“I never did that,” he said.
But I think I hit a nerve.
The one thing we never get around to discussing is his love life. He knows my history, of course, and every once in a while he’ll refer to David as the “Evil Prince.” Gary is “your brother” or “the parking mogul.” But he doesn’t expend a lot of breath on either one. I know only the basic plot outline with him and Gillian, even less about Laura. And if he’s seeing anyone now, he’s not talking. I’ve tried asking him about it, but he’s a master of evasion and diversion. It’s probably just as well.
Wind gusts up from the waterfront to meet us, blowing my unrestrained hair into a wild cloud. I grab it, wrestle it down, and plop my Dodgers hat over it.
It takes the rest of the afternoon to get back up to the Market because we keep detouring out on the piers or stopping to look in shop windows. The cold sting in the air promises yet another storm, but for the moment, people jam the sidewalks, jostling each other happily, enjoying the break in the rain. Smells of clam chowder and waffle cones remind me that I haven’t eaten since breakfast.
“I’m hungry.”
He looks at his watch. “I’ve got to be at work by six. If you’d let me bring the truck, we would’ve had time to stop somewhere.”
“No we wouldn’t have, because we would have spent all day looking for parking places.”
We compromise by running into Phoebe’s Café on Third while we wait for the bus. The eighteen-year-old with two-inch fingernails who waits on us keeps looking at Mac under her mascara-gooped eyelashes. She hands me the white Styrofoam box that contains his croissant and my scone while he empties change out of his pockets onto the counter. I pop the lid for a peek and my blood freezes.
“This is not a croissant.” They both look up and I hold open the box as Exhibit A.
“Sure it is,” she says between gum pops.
“It’s a roll and it’s crescent shaped. That does not make it a croissant.”
“That’s what we call them.” Her tone is defensive.
“You should call them crescent rolls.”
Mac looks at the ceiling. “Wyn, we’re going to miss the bus.”
“Crescent, croissant.” She shrugs. “What’s the difference?”
“Allow me to show you.” I set the box on the register and rip the croissant in half crosswise. “What do you see here?” I brandish half under her nose.
“Half a croissant.”
“Wrong. You see half of a crescent-shaped roll. This is bread, and not even very good bread. Look at the mushy crumb. A croissant is pastry. Flaky layers, each one separated by butter so that it puffs up crisp and golden. Instead of being dry and bready inside, you should be able to separate the layers into almost transparent sheets.”
The girl looks a little scared.
“There’s the thirteen.” Mac stares glumly at the bus grinding to a halt across the street.
“You want the croissant or not?”
“No,” I say.
“Yes, I do.” Mac jams the lid back down, grabs my arm, and pushes me out the door. “Goddamnit, we missed the bus.”
“There’ll be a two along in a minute. I can’t believe they try to pass this shit off as a croissant.”
We park ourselves on the bus bench. “Eat your scone and leave my crescent roll alone.”
The scone feels suspiciously warm and spongy. I stick my pinky into the interior. Just as I suspected.
“What’s the matter with it?”
“It’s hot.”
“You should be happy. It just came out of the oven.”
“It’s squishy. And hotter inside than outside. That means it just came out of the microwave.”
He s
ighs. “Fräulein Wynter, the bread Nazi.” But he’s laughing when the number 2 bus pulls up.
At Steve’s Broiler early one Sunday morning, we sit in a Naugahyde booth that would easily hold eight people, eating feta-cheese omelets and watching the old guys at the counter suck on unfiltered cigarettes and drink coffee.
A young woman wearing a baseball cap, flannel shirt, and jeans comes in with two little boys and they climb into the booth next to us. The rugrats are cute—about seven and five years old—and they could’ve been made by the same cookie cutter, except the older one has brown hair and his little brother has blond curls. The kids have coloring books and their mother gives them a box of crayons and tells them to share. She sips her coffee and gets engrossed in a magazine. Mac watches them with more than casual interest.
“So tell me about it. You never talk about your childhood. What you did or what it was like. Was it happy? Unhappy?”
He folds his napkin and lays it next to his plate. “There were actually a lot of factors involved.”
“A lot of ‘factors’? That sounds like an algebra problem, not a kid. You had a brother. Kevin, right? What about your mother? Your father? Friends?”
“I had buddies.” He smiles briefly. “That’s the jock equivalent of friends. Except you don’t actually have to talk to buddies. You just punch each other in the arm and laugh a lot. I went out for every sport there was. And plotted my escape from New York.”
“Lots of kids play sports and punch their buddies and think about escaping from their hometown.”
“True.” He lets out a long breath. “Okay, here’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version: My mother was an art student. She met my dad—the original happy wanderer—in a museum. In a few hours, they were madly in love. They went to his place and screwed their brains out—”
“Mac …”
“I’ve kind of distanced myself from the whole thing. Anyway, she got pregnant. I guess in those days there weren’t many options in that situation. They got married. Kevin was born. Things were fine for a while, then he got restless. He took off for South America, working for an oil company, I think. After a year or so, he came home. She took him back. Bingo. I’m in the oven.”
“Didn’t they ever hear of birth control?”
He shrugs. “If they had, I wouldn’t be here. So life went on. He’d be home for a while, then he’d get the blues in the night. When I was twelve, he went to Canada to hunt moose or something and he never came home. His plane went down in the Canadian Rockies and they never found it.”
“Did you ever wonder if he was really dead?”
“For years, I was convinced that he was alive. I used to make up stories about him being taken care of by some hermit or having amnesia and not knowing who he was. I even wondered if he’d wanted to disappear. Not that he would have planned it all, but maybe it seemed like a convenient out.”
“Is that what your book’s about?”
His eyes lock on mine. “What makes you think I’m writing a book?”
I start to laugh. “Oh, come on, Mac. I may not listen to all the words, but there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight.”
“Meaning what?”
“The way you’re always scribbling in those notebooks.”
“I told you, it’s a journal.”
“My bullshit indicator is blinking double reds. I suppose it could be a journal, but I’m picking up an intensity. A certain unity of purpose.”
He seems somewhat abashed. “Well …”
“I’m not asking you to show it to me. Just to admit to what you’re doing. Why are you so embarrassed?”
His eyes are suddenly dark. “I don’t want to be an asshole about it. I’m not a writer. I’m a bartender who writes stuff.”
“As long as you think of yourself that way, that’s what you’ll be.” I take my last bite of cinnamon-raisin toast.
Sounds of a scuffle draw our attention to the next booth, where the kids are locked in a tug of war over a blue crayon.
“Knock it off or nobody gets to color,” the woman says, not looking up from the magazine. The kids act as if they don’t hear her. The older boy manages to get the crayon away from the younger one and starts writing on his napkin. The little one chooses an orange crayon and imitates his older brother’s artwork on his own napkin. The calm lasts about fifteen seconds, and then the older kid decides he wants the orange crayon, too. He grabs it away from the little guy, who promptly begins to cry.
The mother looks up. “I told you guys to share.”
“Christopher took mine,” the little one wails.
“So get another one and stop being such a baby.” She resumes her reading.
The waitress sets down our check. Mac hands her a twenty and continues to watch the kids while I watch him. The younger boy pulls out a green crayon and resumes his napkin art. The waitress counts out our change and we scoot out of the booth. There’s a sharp slapping sound and a yelp. The older boy now holds the blue, orange, and green crayons and the little one’s crying again. The mother’s looking around like she’d rather be somewhere else.
“Brian, I told you to shut up. If you’re gonna sit there and cry like a baby, you can’t color anymore.”
Suddenly Mac leans over and pulls two crayons out of the older boy’s hand. The mother and both boys stare openmouthed as he looms over them. He smiles sweetly and says to the kid, “It’s always a good idea to share. Someday he’ll have something that you want.” He hands the two crayons to the little brother and we walk out.
Spring and winter are having a tug-of-war. Some afternoons when I walk up to Parsons Garden in the mild caress of a Chinook wind, I think spring is winning. Crocuses push up through the dank black earth, yellow and purple and white. Pale green flowers of hellebore, which my oma called Lenten rose, gleam like tiny lamps in the deep shade. I daydream about fiddleheads and fresh asparagus.
By the time I leave for work at night, the wind has changed again, driving cold, stinging needles of water against my face and sending the temperature south. Winter digs in its heels, refusing to budge.
Ellen comes in early one of those wintry mornings, her eyes hollow and red-rimmed, her mouth a soft downturn. She’s one of those people who’s normally so up in the morning you sometimes want to kick her in the knees, so I start worrying about her and Lloyd. When you’re obsessed with your own marital woes, you tend to assume that’s the only thing that can go wrong in anyone’s life.
But after Linda goes out, slamming the door behind her, Ellen says, “Diane’s mother had a stroke last night.”
“Oh shit.” My very first thought is how she’ll be drowning in guilt. I would be. “I mean, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry. Is she going home?”
“She’s on her way to the airport as we speak.”
“Let me help you set up.” I turn on the espresso machine, and wring out a cloth in the enamel pail of Clorox solution to wipe the counters.
After she finishes counting change into the register drawer, she rinses the espresso baskets with a jet of steam and fills them with two quick snaps of the grinder.
“I feel awful for her,” she says, handing me a double shot of decaf. “And I’m a terrible person for worrying about the bakery at a time like this … but we’re in a real bind here. We’ve got all these cake orders. I don’t know how long she’ll be gone. Two that are supposed to be ready this morning. They’re frosted, but not decorated. She was going to finish them when she came in.” She looks at me. “I don’t suppose you could—”
“Oh, Ellen, I wish I could. Believe me, they’d come out looking like ground zero of a nuclear chain reaction.”
A tapping on the glass draws our attention to the door. Tyler’s waving at somebody in a green Plymouth Valiant of indeterminate vintage. Ellen and I look back at each other and smile. She jumps up to open the door.
“Hey, I’m really sorry. Marie’s car wouldn’t start and I had to—”
“Hi,” she practically sings. “H
ow are you this morning?”
Tyler shoots her a guarded look. “Okay. Why?”
“I need a big favor. Can I make you a mocha?”
“Ellen, you’re creeping me out. What’s up?”
“Diane’s mom had a stroke last night.”
“Bummer.” Tyler takes off her jacket, looking from Ellen to me and back to Ellen.
“We have two cakes that are supposed to be ready this morning and—”
“Oh, no. Not me. I don’t do that hearts-and-flowers shit. No way.”
Ellen impales her with a pleading gaze. “Tyler, it’s too late to call them and say we don’t have cakes for them. We have to give them something. Please. Only one’s a wedding cake, and the flowers are all in the fridge. All you have to do is arrange them. Please?”
“What about the other one?”
“It’s a birthday cake. Generic adult. All she specified was the colors—pale peach, lavender, pale green. Like spring. You can do something with that, I’ve seen your pictures.”
Tyler sticks her finger down her throat.
“Come on, please? I’ll up your hourly for the time you spend on the cakes.”
“Oh, all right.” She closes her eyes and puts out her hands like a blind person. “Lead me to them.”
I don’t get to see the cakes, but everyone laughs about them for the next few days. Everyone except Ellen. She’s busy calling people who have orders for the following week, advising them that Diane is away on a family emergency.
“So what happened?” I ask Tyler one morning when Ellen’s out in the alley helping the people from Meals on Wheels load up the day-olds. “How did they turn out?”
She glares at me, scuffing her Doc Martens on the rubber matting. “The wedding-cake woman looked at the thing like it came out from under a rock, but she didn’t say much.”
“What about the birthday cake?”
“She freaked. Totally wigged on me. Started screaming, ‘I said peach and lavender. This is orange and purple and neon lime.’ “ She pushes up the sleeves of her T-shirt. “I told her it was cutting edge. She said it looked like the shirt Sammy Davis Jr. wore when he sang ‘The Candy Man.’ Whatever that is.”
Bread Alone: A Novel Page 27