On July first, I call my mother. Just to say hi. I’ve been doing that every couple of weeks since I came home, and it makes her so absurdly happy, I have to wonder why I never did it before.
After the usual pleasantries, I ask, “What are you guys doing for the Fourth?”
“We’re going down to Long Beach.”
“Long Beach?”
“We’re spending the night on the Queen Mary. They shoot fireworks off from the bridge and they have parties in all the different restaurants.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“I think it will be. Gary and Erica and the kids are coming down.”
I nearly choke. “I’m sorry. Did you say Gary and Erica?”
“Yes, we were rather surprised when he told us they wanted to come.” She pauses.
As you should be, Mother. Since two scant months ago he was crawling around naked on my futon and begging me to come to San Francisco.
“I’m not sure what’s going on. For a while I thought he was rather enamored of you.” She waits again. “What ever happened with that?”
“I’ll tell you all about it sometime.”
“He seems like a very sweet boy.”
“He is. Please tell him hi for me. And try to say it in front of Erica.” She gives it her merry laugh. “Will do.”
Seattle is having a heat wave, something I didn’t know was possible. It has to do with a huge high-pressure area stalled between two low-pressure areas, and it’s hanging smack over the city. It’s been miserable for almost a week, high nineties during the day, eighties at night. Not a breath from the Sound to bring relief. Even the water itself looks oddly flat and still. It’s eerie. Everyone says it’s not that unusual, it happens every year or two, but it feels unnatural to me, and I realize that I’ve gotten used to the cool weather. I’m even maybe starting to like it.
Friday is the Fourth of July and the bakery’s closed. I was thinking about going down to the waterfront to watch the fireworks, but Tyler convinces me that I should go with her and Barton the hairdresser—except she calls him a stylist—to Gasworks Park to watch the display over Lake Union. When they come by for me at six-thirty, it’s so hot that my own sweat hangs in a cloud around me like a personal steam bath.
Barton the stylist is a tall, thin guy with an infectious grin and bleached-blond hair with black roots. He bats his big, dark eyes at me. “I’m Barton. How do you like my shirt?” The shirt in question is a blue Hawaiian number with ugly red flowers all over it.
I laugh. “It’s a great example of the genre.”
“Very tactfully put.” His eyes lock on my hair. “Ooh, what a lot of hair. How I’d love to play with it sometime. Strictly on a professional basis, you understand. Can I touch?” He rubs a piece between his fingers and holds it against his cheek. “ ‘Like a virgin,’ “ he sings. “No perms, no colors. But we can fix that. Let Barton pop your cherry, honey. Strictly on a professional basis, of course.”
“Should we take snacks with us?” I ask on the way to Barton’s green Plymouth Valiant.
“Barton packed us a gourmet picnic,” Tyler says. “With a thermos of his secret-recipe strip-and-go-nakeds.”
“Fat, sugar, alcohol, chocolate, hallucinogenics,” he intones. “All the major food groups.”
Parking is scarce around Lake Union, even under the best of circumstances, so we end up having to schlepp our blankets, basket, and cooler for blocks before we find a patch of grass not occupied by other humans. I’m dripping and miserable and wishing I hadn’t come. Barton’s first official act as host is to pour drinks out of the giant thermos. He’s even brought sprigs of mint for our cups. The concoction is refreshing and lemony; I gulp it down.
“Careful, Wyn, baby,” he warns. “It tastes good, but it’s got the alcohol content of jet fuel.”
I lie down on the blanket, balance the sweating glass on my stomach. “What’s in it? Or is that a trade secret?”
“Basically lemonade, vodka, and beer. ‘It’ll cure whatever ails you,’ as my granny used to say.”
“That one has to be in the granny training manual,” I smile. “Mine used to say it, too.”
“I think mine did, too,” Tyler says, “but she always talked Polack, so I’m not totally sure.”
Barton spreads out the gourmet picnic—two pressurized cans of “cheese product,” a box of Triscuits, and a box of lavosh. A huge bag of popcorn, a small can of almonds. A tin of onion dip with the top peeled back, potato chips, Oreos. A box of peppermints like the ones restaurants give away, giant economy-size bag of M&M’s. A pie plate of homemade brownies, which I’m certain are loaded.
“Ta-da.” He bows with a flourish. “Regional cooking of provincial New Jersey.”
I watch the stars appear in the slowly dimming sky, listen to Tyler and Barton chatter about people they know, reach for the salty almonds once in a while.
“Wyn, darling, you’re so quiet over there in your little corner,” Barton says presently. “Have some food. It’s going to be a while before the show starts.”
“She’s in pain,” Tyler says. “A busted marriage, two boyfriends gone missing.” She squirts some cheese-flavored chemical onto a cracker and hands it to me.
“They weren’t boyfriends. One was my stepbrother. The other was just a friend.”
Barton raises one eyebrow, like Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. “My, my, my. I have to say, I admire your style.”
“I just don’t seem to be very smart about men.” I swallow the cracker almost whole to avoid tasting it, take another good swig of my drink.
“Now, there’s NO pity like SELF-pity!” He does a great Ethel Merman. “Barton knows what will make you feel better.” He gets up, comes around behind me. “Sit up, sit up.” When I do, I feel the effects of my one strip-and-go-naked. Before I know what’s happening, he’s taking my hair down, combing it out. “You don’t mind if I play with your hair? A new do always makes us feel better.”
So we sit, listening to jazz from somebody’s boom box, getting high on strip-and-go-nakeds, eating junk food, waiting for the darkness while Barton braids my hair into lots of skinny braids. I probably look like Medusa, but it does feel good.
Finally, at nine-fifteen, the first salvo goes off from a platform in the middle of the lake. We ooh and aah along with everyone else, but Barton continues to work on my hair. I never tire of watching fireworks. They’re utterly useless, just beauty for its own sake, a life span measured in seconds. I even love the smell of gunpowder and the little black puffs that hang in the sky after the glitter disappears. But tonight they seem to underscore the heat. After the inevitable gut-busting finale, Tyler and Barton start packing up our stuff and talking about going to some club on First Avenue. Portable generators hum as lights go on.
“You guys go ahead,” I say. “I don’t need anything else to drink tonight. I’ll catch a bus home.”
“We can take you home first,” Tyler says.
“I want to sit here awhile. It’s too hot to be inside.”
Barton gives me a hug and adjusts my braids. “This is a whole new you. Totally tribal. Come see me.”
Tyler grins. “You look like Bo freakin’ Derek. Miss Perfect Ten. Watch yourself, babes. Don’t get in trouble with it.”
I laugh, twist my head, whipping the braids from side to side. “feel like a helicopter.”
They disappear into the crowd and I wander over to the kite meadow, a big hill next to the old gasworks. I sit on the grass and watch heads bobbing up and down as people gather their paraphernalia together and disperse lethargically. Kids run away from their parents and slink back, frazzled by the effort. Dogs bark unenthusiastically at each other, moving slowly in the heat. I watch for tall men in black baseball caps. I even see a few, but of course they aren’t him. I know I should get up and leave. Most of the people are gone now except for a few bunches of kids. It’s probably not a good idea to be the last one here, but a few more minutes won’t hurt. I pull my knees up, hug t
hem to my chest, rest my forehead on them, braids falling around me like a curtain.
“Are you all right, miss?”
I look up quickly at a middle-aged couple carrying folding chairs. He has a crew cut and nice eyes. Her eyes are cautious, like she thinks I’m on a bad drug trip or having a spontaneous abortion. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“You shouldn’t stay here by yourself,” she says.
I stand up, smile at them. “I was trying to muster the energy to go to work.”
“Where do you work at this time of night?” he asks. “The Queen Street Bakery. On Queen Anne.”
She says, “You’re kidding. That’s where I get my bread. Look.” She sticks out her chest to show me her Queen Street Bakery T-shirt. “That’s what I do. The bread.”
Her face lights up with interest. “Well, your bread’s wonderful. Especially the new kinds. That banana-cinnamon stuff and the cornmeal-millet bread. You really make all that?”
“Yeah, it’s great,” her husband says.
I think I’m blushing. “Thanks. I’m glad you like it.”
“I’m excited to meet you,” she says. “Maybe we’ll see you there sometime.”
I laugh. “You have to get there before seven in the morning.”
They wave and move toward the street, but I stand still. Waiting for him to appear out of nowhere, like in the movies. Take off his baseball cap, push his hair back. Smile his great smile and say, “I figured I’d find you here.”
Finally, I turn to follow them, and as I do, a current of air rushes past my face. It becomes a full-fledged breeze, deep and fresh, smelling of the ocean. I picture it coming in off the water, pushing little whitecaps ahead of it. It cools my face. My head falls back in relief; I look at the stars. The heat wave’s broken.
The bus driver has his directional signal blinking, ready to pull out into Eastlake Avenue. As I run for it, I catch a reflection in the glass doors of a building—someone else trying to catch the bus—a famous bread baker, running down the sidewalk, braids bouncing in the wind, yelling at the driver to wait. I slide into a seat, catch my breath, and brush at the dampness on my face.
If I were writing a story about myself, it would begin: “In her thirty-second year, she discovered her Right Livelihood …” Or as CM would say, I’ve discovered what I am. I’ve peeled off the outer layers one by one—my father’s daughter, David’s wife, a divorcée—and I find, at the core, a baker of bread. A woman who likes working while the rest of the world sleeps. Who enjoys living alone, who doesn’t own a car or a house. Who’s happiest in jeans and a flannel shirt. Who chooses friends for the pleasure of their company, not their usefulness. Who’s open to love. Or would be, if she could learn to recognize it.
It’s only about eleven when I get to the bakery. Linda’s already there. I can see her through the front window. Beyond the darkness of the café, our work area glows like the stage of a little theater. I watch her move between the Traulsen, the ovens, and the worktable, her stubby torso seeming to dance for some unseen audience. She’s actually smiling. It occurs to me that she probably enjoys making bread as much as, if not more than, anything else in her life. It’s not the same for her as it is for me. She draws comfort from the routine; I need to experiment. But it doesn’t make her pleasure less valid.
Sometimes my own arrogance amazes me—I come waltzing in with my Ralph Lauren sweatpants, full of how things were done in France, prodding her to change the way she’s been working for twenty-five years. No wonder she didn’t want me around.
Saturday morning, I’m getting ready to sack out when there’s a knock at the door. I open it and there’s Daisy Wardwell, in yellow warm-ups and a white T-shirt, smiling through her perfect makeup. She says she was in the neighborhood and wanted to stop by and say hi.
“Oh my God, look what you’ve done to this place.” I can’t tell if she’s horrified or impressed. “This is wonderful. It’s so … warm and inviting.”
“Listen, Daisy, I have a pretty good idea why you’re here.”
She gives me a mock pout. “Yeah, kiddo, it looks like Mr. Keeler’s about ready to take over the property again.”
“When do I have to be out?”
“There’s no rush. From his perspective. He can’t move back in until the house is ready. The problem is, starting in about a month, there’s going to be a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”
“Workmen?”
She nods. “Now, if that doesn’t bother you, you’re welcome to stay till the fat lady sings.”
“The problem is, I sleep during the day, so I guess I better start looking around. You know of anything right offhand?”
“Nope. It’s not a real great market right now, kiddo. But we’ve got a couple of weeks. I’ll get on it and see what I can find. Meanwhile, you might want to start getting ready, just in case we have to make a fast jump.”
“Yeah, probably a good idea.”
“Sorry, kiddo.” She fluffs her blonde curls.
“No problem. I knew the deal going in.”
I’ve accumulated an amazing amount of stuff in an amazingly short time. Clothes, books, batterie de cuisine, tapes, furniture, linens, and, of course, my tools. I appropriate boxes from the bakery’s weekly deliveries, fill them with various nonessentials, and stack them against the wall where my long-planned bookcases were supposed to go. After one week, it starts to look like the seeds of a conceptual art exhibit, and I haven’t heard any good news from Daisy.
Tuesday night I’m packing the contents of my desk—admittedly, there’s not a lot, only about one box worth. It’s a warm evening and I’ve got the windows and door open, entertaining the neighborhood with Van Morrison. One of Mac’s all-time favorites. He introduced me to the song “Cleaning Windows.” He loved it because it tells a whole life story in four minutes or whatever the time is—what the guy does for a living, who his friends are, what music he listens to, what books he reads, what he eats. It is rather wonderful.
There’s nothing specific—I don’t hear a noise or see anything, but I have a sense of someone on the porch. I get up and wander into the living room, push open the screen door. CM’s sitting on the rail. I think she’s been crying, but it’s too dark to see for sure.
I fling myself on her, nearly knocking both of us over the rail and onto the ground. In a second, she’s hugging me back and we’re both crying and then we’re both laughing.
“At least you didn’t give me a bloody nose this time,” she says.
“I love you.” I wipe tears away with the heel of my hand. “I missed you. Oh, God, CM, I’m so sorry. I was such a bitch. I promise I’ll dance at your wedding.”
She wipes her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater. “Thanks for the offer. Unfortunately, there’s not going to be one. A wedding.”
“What? Why not? What happened?”
She gives me a crooked smile. “You were right.”
“No I wasn’t. I was petty and bitter. And jealous.”
“Maybe.” She laughs. “But you were still right.”
I slip my arm through hers, pulling her inside. “Let’s have a glass of wine and debrief you.”
She looks at my box pile. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet. I have to get out of here. But, later with that. Get us some glasses while I open this.”
We sit Indian style on the couch, and she says, “Thanks for the bread. It was great.”
“Why didn’t you call me when you got it? I thought you hated me.”
She shrugs. “I’m sorry. By that time I was too embarrassed. Not too embarrassed to eat it, however.”
“So what happened?”
“Exactly what you said would happen. He started having trouble with some of the resources he listed for his dissertation. His adviser claimed they didn’t exist. So he was exchanging nasty notes with his adviser and then the whole committee got involved and he went into his Olympic door-slamming routine. From there it was a very short drive to me being se
lfish and not understanding what he was going through. We were fighting every other night and humping like bunnies in between. I got to the point where I was so wound up I couldn’t eat—imagine that, if you will. I couldn’t sleep. I started breaking out in this hideous rash under the ring—a sign from God, no doubt.”
She waggles her reddened, puffy ring finger at me. “Anyway, I threw it at him last night and told him to get his ass out of my apartment. He stormed out and I haven’t seen him since. He probably spent the evening exposing himself to coeds in the stacks.”
“So he hasn’t officially moved out?”
“He has to come back and get his stuff. If he hasn’t gotten it by Sunday morning, I’m putting it on the front lawn for some homeless person.” She stops for a long swallow of wine and a sigh. “How did you know?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t. I was just being petty. And jealous.”
“You were not.”
“Yes I was.”
“You’re not that kind of person,” she says firmly.
Which just proves that a true friend is somebody who insists on believing the best of you, even when faced with irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
“Tell me what’s going on with you,” she says.
“Oh …” I lean my head on the back of the futon. The Shirelles are wailing on “Baby, It’s You,” and I have to wait and hear my favorite part, where it sounds like a calliope. When the song ends, I say, “Remember that oldies record Katie had? The one she taught us to dance to?”
CM laughs. “You mean the one with ‘Please Mr. Postman’?”
I nod. “What was the name of that one we played over and over? We kept picking up the needle and setting it down till it was full of skips.”
“ ‘Party Lights.’ “ She smiles. “God, I hadn’t thought about that in a while. Those were the good old days.”
Bread Alone: A Novel Page 34