Bread Alone (17 page)

And David will peer over her shoulder at the paper and say, “The face doesn’t look familiar, but I recognize that hair.”

Monday morning I huddle, shivering, under my blankets and reach for the rental file. Daisy included a sheet with names of some outfits that sell firewood. “The ones that are starred will deliver and stack it for you,” she said. “They’re a bit more expensive, but unless you have a pickup truck or know someone who does …” I don’t think CM would appreciate my hauling wood in her Camry.

I call the one whose name makes me smile—Norwegian Woods. The guy tells me that for a woodstove, I need hardwood, says they have alder, gives me the price for half a cord. When I tell him I want to check some other places, he says, “Gus Doyle and Raven Woods charge the same thing and we all deliver and stack it, so save yourself some trouble. When do you want it delivered?”

“Now,” I say. He says Tuesday morning is the soonest he can deliver it. “I need it now. I have absolutely no wood, and I’m freezing.”

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s that time of year. Everybody wants their wood yesterday.”

“Forget it then. I’ll find somebody who can bring it today.”

“Good luck to you,” he says politely and hangs up.

I call all the other names on the list. The soonest I can get wood from anyone else is Thursday. I crawl back onto my makeshift mattress, pull up the covers, and cry hot tears of frustration, which are about the warmest thing in the cottage. The place must have zero insulation.

When the tears run out, I push myself into a sitting position, plant my feet squarely on the floor in a big yellow puddle of sunlight. Its warmth rises up my legs as if by osmosis. I pick up the phone, call Norwegian Woods again. The same guy answers.

I talk softly, hoping he won’t recognize my voice. “Can I get a half cord of alder delivered tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he says, “over on Fourth Street, right? But I’ve got some other morning deliveries now. It’ll probably be around three by the time we get there.”

It’s pitch-black and freezing when my alarm goes off at eleven-thirty Monday night. I turn on the light immediately so I won’t be tempted to go back to sleep. I peel off the sweats, step out of the jeans just long enough to remove the tights. It’s the first time I’ve ever gotten undressed to go to work. I brush my hair, pull on a jacket. I linger for a minute, sleepily wondering what it is I’ve forgotten. My ring. It wouldn’t do to get it encrusted with bread dough.

I told David I didn’t want a big-rock engagement ring. This was his idea of a simple wedding ring—five baguette diamonds set across a wide gold band. Well, it is gorgeous. I still catch myself staring at it sometimes, mesmerized by the way light dances over the facets. I pull it off my finger, put it in the little cloisonné box where I keep the few pieces of jewelry I brought with me.

Then I’m crunching down the gravel drive, turning into the silent street.

I move quickly from one streetlight to the next, stepping-stones in a dark river. A siren wails downtown. Ferryboat horns. An occasional car whips by me. People going home. To bed. Sensible people. Then there’s me. Getting up in the middle of the night to go to work for eight bucks an hour. With someone who doesn’t even want me there.

I pass a small Tudor house with a yellow porch lamp blazing. A man sits in profile to the picture window, leaning forward, elbows on knees. The reflected light of a TV screen flickers across his face and the glowing tip of his cigarette seems suspended in the dark. I imagine that he’s waiting for his daughter to come home from a date, the way my father waited up for me a few times. Maybe he doesn’t like the boy she’s with
and they’re out past her curfew. His wife has gone to bed, but he sits in the living room, trying to watch some stupid rerun, angry and worried.

I go down the alley behind the bakery and knock on the back door. When Linda opens it, I smile. “Hi.”

She doesn’t say anything, just steps back with a grunt to let me in. She goes to the storage room, comes back with two buckets of flour, walks out again. I get an apron off the pile of clean ones by the sink, slip it over my head, tie the strings around my waist. She comes back with two more buckets, glares at me, walks out again. This time I follow.

“Can I help?” By the time I get to the narrow passageway, she’s roaring back out like a locomotive, with more buckets, and I have to flatten myself against the wall to keep from being run over.

“That’s what you’re here for,” she throws over her shoulder.

The storage room is floor-to-ceiling shelves, housing a mind-boggling array of buckets, sacks, tins, and boxes. She strides in and slaps a wrinkled piece of paper into my hand. “Get those things and bring ‘em out.”

It takes a few minutes to figure out the storage system, but eventually I find everything on the list and stack it in the center of the floor. When I drag the first bucket out, she’s standing there, hands on hips. “Well, that didn’t take long.”

“Sorry. It was a little confusing to find things.” She watches me drag the remaining ingredients out, even though we could do it in half the time if she helped.

“Maybe we should get a dolly,” I suggest.

“A what?”

One of those little platform things with wheels. It would be faster to get everything out of the—” She stares at me like I’ve just arrived from Venus. I dust my hands. “Now what?”

“Are you gonna be askin’ me that every five minutes?”

“I’ll have to as long as you’re not volunteering any information.”

Her eyes narrow, giving her the look of an angry sow. “Don’t be smart-alecky with me,” she says.

“I’m not being smart-alecky. But you’re going to have to give me some kind of clues about what you expect.”

“What I expect is for you to watch and learn. And don’t get in my way.” Her voice ratchets up a few decibels. “And don’t be rollin’ your eyes, missy.”

She must be used to dealing with eighteen-year-olds. “My name’s Wyn.”

“What kind of a silly name is that?”

She looks and sounds so much like Darlene Grabinski, the fat little playground bully who terrorized me in first grade, that I can’t help laughing. After I pull myself together, she takes a black loose-leaf binder down from a shelf over the sink and hands it to me.

“We’re doing whole wheat walnut and white sandwich first.” She points to a stack of huge stainless-steel bowls. “Weigh out the flours on that scale and put them on the worktable.” I ask if I can play some music and she grudgingly agrees. “Just don’t play any of that boogie-woogie stuff.”

While I’m digging through the drawerful of tapes, I notice on the shelves next to Ellen’s desk dozens of books on baking, including quite a few on bread.

“Do you ever use any of the bread books?” I ask.

“Nope.”

“I’ve got some good ones at home, too. Maybe we could find a different kind of bread to try sometime.”

I can’t tell if she’s actually considering my suggestion or if she’s distracted. Then she says authoritatively, “Don’t do to be messing around with different things all the time. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Linda isn’t quick to give up her personal history and she’s not the slightest bit interested in mine. Every attempt I make at conversation is rebuffed, so I quit trying and just do what she tells me. Based on my hazy recollections of working in France and information I’ve picked up from baking at home, she seems to be a competent but unimaginative journeyman baker, doing everything by rote. The same breads on the
same days of the week, the same way she’s done them for twenty-five years. I suppose it could also be called tradition.

I’m wetting the worktable and scraping the dough off with a bench scraper when Ellen arrives at 6 A.M. “Morning, ladies,” she sings out, flipping the light switch out front. Linda grunts.

Ellen bustles around, turning on the espresso machine, grinding coffee, wiping the counters, putting money in the cash register. I roll out a cooling rack laden with warmly fragrant loaves and I have the sense that she’s trying to read my face. “How’d it go?”

“At least she knows how to clean up,” Linda says grudgingly.

I smile sweetly. “Fine. Had a busy night.”

Ellen looks at me for another few seconds, then rubs her hands together with forced cheer. “How about an espresso? How’s your place shaping up?”

When she finds out where I’m living, she smiles sadly. “Oh, the Keeler place. Stanford and Adele. Now there was a soap opera.”

“Do you know everyone on Queen Anne Hill?” I ask.

“Pretty much.” She says it with a straight face. “Adele was so beautiful. A former ballet dancer. She was on all kinds of charity boards, the arts. You know.”

I nod silently. Yes, it happens that I do know. “She’s the one who died? Whose will’s in probate?”

Ellen’s grinding the coffee beans, lost in her tale. “Stanford was a lawyer. Big shot in county Democratic politics. But such a
mensch.
A real pussy cat.”

Her expression changes to one of total disgust. “Adele, on the other hand, was a bitch on wheels, pardon my French. Totally self-absorbed. He was absolutely nuts for her. They were sort of Queen Anne Hill Royalty.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “There was a big blowup. Right after the last mayoral campaign. Some big politico’s wife left him, said he was having an affair with Adele. Not only that, but the guy had
apparently been diverting funds from the campaign war chest, and he claimed Adele was in on it. Running the money through one of her worthy causes—although it was never proven.” “So what happened?”

“Poor Stanford was just devastated. They divorced—she fought him tooth and nail for every cent. At that point, I don’t think he had much heart left to fight. He died about two years later. Of course Adele was persona non grata in town, and she became practically a recluse. Just sat in that house that she wanted so much, and let it fall apart. Finally died last year. I heard it’s in probate because she didn’t have a will. Her son was barely speaking to her by then.”

She hands me a tiny majolica cup of espresso. “Now the son and his wife are splitting? The place must be jinxed.”

Which may or may not be the case, but I’m quickly being disabused of any residual belief in happy endings.

I decide that a hot shower will make me feel more human, and it does, but just as I’m reaching for the towel, I hear someone pounding on the front door.

Dripping wet and shivering, I dive into my robe, twist my hair into the towel, and run for the door. I open it a crack. A man is just stepping off the porch.

“Yes?”

He turns around. “Where do you want the wood?” It’s an effort not to shrink back. He looks like he was sent over by central casting to play the psycho-killer handyman. His next shave should have been yesterday. Brown hair hangs down almost to his shoulders in fat, wet snakes under a water-stained baseball cap pulled low on his forehead, so his eyes are barely visible. I have the impression of a wolf peering out of a cave.

“Over there.” I point to the garage.

I finish drying, pull on sweats and a raincoat, run out into the gray
drizzle, the towel still wrapped around my head. He’s laying out four-by-fours next to the garage and he stands up when he hears me. “They said three o’clock.”

“We had a cancellation and you were in such a hurry, I thought you’d be glad if I came early. You have a tarp?” “You might have at least called.”

His teeth flash white against his dirty face. “I might have. But I didn’t. You want a tarp?” “Do I need one?”

“Unless you want to try burning wet wood.” He squints into the thick mist, in the direction of the street. “I’ve got a few in the truck if you want to buy one. Twelve dollars.”

“For a piece of plastic?”

“It’s not plastic. It’s waterproof canvas. It’ll last forever.”

I want to tell him that nothing lasts that long. “Well, the wood’s probably already wet, isn’t it? I shouldn’t cover it now.”

He shakes his head. “Our storage is covered, so it’s just a little damp from the ride over.”

“Oh, all right, bring me a tarp.”

Every few minutes, I set down the hair dryer, pull back the curtain to watch him push wheelbarrows of split wood up the drive, stack it neatly against the garage. I’d forgotten that he wouldn’t be able to drive a truck back here. When I hear boots clomping on the front porch, I go to the door, check in hand.

In spite of the cold, sweat runs down his face and he smells like workout clothes that have been sitting at the bottom of a gym bag for a few days. I have to breathe through my mouth. “I put some of it up here.” He points to a small stack by the door. “So you don’t have to keep running out to the garage.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“You’re welcome.”

I can’t believe this guy is giving me etiquette lessons, but there’s enough of my mother in me to be embarrassed. “Thanks,” I mumble. “Where’s the tarp?”

“On the wood.” He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “It’s ninety-four, total.” I fill out the check and hand it to him. He hands it back. “Sorry, I can’t take an out-of-state check.”