Bread Alone (19 page)

I never heard of them till I started working here, but I soon discovered how wonderful they are—a bar cookie with a thin, flaky crust on the bottom, then the lemon or chocolate/espresso or apple/raisin or raspberry filling, and over that the crumble layer that other bakers would kill for. It has a habit-forming, sandy crunch. It’s not too sweet and it doesn’t disintegrate all over your clothes when you take a bite.

While the recipe for Mazurka Bars is as closely held as the formula for Coca-Cola, Ellen’s not at all averse to telling me their history.

“I was messing with one of my mother’s old recipes,” she says. “I wanted some individual desserts I could take to a picnic, but at first they were so crumbly. And the only filling she ever used was lemon. How boring is that?”

Without waiting for an answer, she rambles on, absently stacking bills in alternating vertical and horizontal rows. She tells me about the first months she lived in Seattle, when the only job she could find was waitressing at the Five Spot.

“It was okay, you know. I wasn’t making a killing, but they were nice people to work for, and the regulars were fun. Of course, they wouldn’t let me cook, and I was dying to. So I just started baking Mazurkas in my apartment and wrapping them in plastic wrap and hauling them downtown on the bus.

“I’d hang around outside movies and down at Seattle Center when there was a Sonics game—”

“Always one step ahead of the health department,” Diane pipes up.

Ellen laughs. “They never knew where the Mazurka Bar lady was going to surface next.”

My oma used to say it’s amazing what you can hear when you’re not talking, and I learn all manner of interesting tidbits in those idle afternoons, in addition to the history of Mazurka Bars. Like the secret to a well-risen cake is to cream the butter and sugar forever, so a lot of air is incorporated. Diane usually walks away and does other things while the Hobart beats the bejeezus out of the stuff.

She wraps strips of wet towels around the cake pans to make the cake rise evenly, eliminating that dome in the center. I discover that spritzing hazelnuts with water before you toast them steams the skins and they slip right off without a fight. That all the small products—muffins, scones, even cookies—can be frozen unbaked and then baked without thawing. I watch Jen cut perfect slices of cheesecake with dental floss and Misha use a thin-bladed knife to surgically remove the charred crust from an overdone cake.

But maybe the most important thing I learn is that almost any disaster,
no matter how awful it looks, can be salvaged if you keep your head and don’t just start dumping things into the garbage.

Payday is every Friday. Since I’m not completely confident of the reliability of David’s monthly deposits, I’ve gotten into the habit of picking up my paycheck on Friday afternoons and taking it over to the Washington Mutual branch on Queen Anne Avenue. When I unlock the back door one misty November afternoon, the work area is dark and empty, but I hear water running. Out front Tyler bends over the sink, shirtless, pouring blue liquid on her head. The fact that she’s easily seen through the front windows either hasn’t occurred to her or doesn’t disturb her.

“Hi, Wyn.” She squints at me upside down, then answers my unspoken question. “Ellen lets me do my hair here because my dad won’t let me do it at home.”

I look around at the puddles of blue liquid everywhere. “Does that stain?”

“Sort of. It comes out eventually.” “Ellen’s not worried about contamination?”

She giggles. “It wouldn’t hurt if it got in anything. It’s just Kool-Aid.” She points to a crumpled packet on the counter.

“One little package makes your hair look like that?”

“Well, I had to strip the color out first. Twice, ‘cause my hair’s, like, really dark.” She straightens up, pressing her head with a blue-stained towel. “So what are you doing here?”

“I just came to pick up my check.”

“How’re you getting along with that paragon of personality, the lovely Linda LaGardia?” She’s doing her strung-out disc jockey voice.

“Let’s just say we’re getting used to each other.” I perch on the edge of a tall stool next to the counter and watch her fluffing her hair with the towel.

She pulls on a black T-shirt, picks up the crumpled Kool-Aid
packet, aims, and fires a perfect hook shot into the trash. Then, oblivious to my stare, she executes a perfect back jump and falls into the splits. “You were a cheerleader?”

“In a former life.” She grins. “I got tossed from the squad when I dyed my hair blue.”

One of the tables is covered with paper. Watercolors. Scenes of Seattle in the rain. A dish of water, a box of paints, and some brushes sit on a half-sheet pan on the counter.

“Are these pictures yours?”

“Midterm projects,” she says. “They’re all due Monday.” “They’re beautiful.”

She grimaces. “ ‘Too derivative.’ That’s what the teacher said last time. Like I give a shit.”

“They remind me of the Impressionist pictures of Paris in the rain.” I’m determined to give her a compliment, whether she wants it or not.

Her look is gently reproving. “That’s what they’re supposed to remind you of. That’s why they’re too derivative.”

I laugh. “I still think they’re beautiful. Do you like doing watercolors?”

She shrugs.

“Why are you taking the classes?”

“Gotta do something. I’m too dumb for college.”

“You’re not dumb. You’re just nonlinear.”

She laughs, flinging her blue-fringed head forward, then back. “ ‘Nonlinear.’ Cool. I like it.”

I look around at all the art on the walls. “Is any of this yours?”

“Nah. Ellen said she’d hang something of mine, but I haven’t got anything I like that much. I did the menu board, though.”

“It’s classy. I love illuminated capitals.”

She looks at me with marginal interest. “How come you know about art? Like the Impressionists and illuminated capitals.”

“I know a little bit about a lot of things, but not a lot about anything.”

She nods sagely, disappears into the bathroom. A few seconds later,
I hear the whine of a hair dryer. I study the watercolors, imagining how one might look in a frame on the wall of my living room.

Tyler emerges from the bathroom sporting a halo of blue fuzz that makes her look like a toy Easter chick.

“Done?” I ask.

“Almost. Gotta do the spikes.” She opens the door of the Traulsen. “You need an egg yolk?”

“Not really.”

“I use the whites for my spikes, but I don’t need the yolks. I think you can do facials with them.”

“It’s the whites you do facials with,” I tell her.

She frowns, grabs one egg from a flat and deftly separates it, stashing the yolk in an espresso cup. She beats the white with a few drops of water and heads for the bathroom again. “I’m going to the U2 concert tonight.”

“Have fun.”

I tuck my check into the inside pocket of my coat and let myself out. For one minute, I wish I was going to the U2 concert, never mind that I don’t even like them. I think of CM and me at Tyler’s age, running wild in the Valley with a pack of girlfriends. Going to the Sepulveda Drive-In Movie (a.k.a. the Finger Bowl) in my ancient black Chevy with red baby-moon hubcaps and no backseat. Hamburger Hamlet and Jake’s Pizza and Topanga Plaza.

The bank guard locks the glass door behind me. It’s four o’clock, and mist halos the streetlights in the early darkness. Queen Anne Avenue is teetering on the edge of Gentrification Gulch without falling over. Yet. Trendier places like Starbucks and Häagen-Dazs, Sonora Southwestern Gourmet, Avant Card, and the new bookstore are popping up seemingly overnight, like mushrooms on the forest floor.

But the old-timers still dominate the street—Arch Plumbing Supply with its windows full of tools and parts predating Liquid-Plumr. Fancy Fabrics, where you can barely squeeze between tables piled with
bolts of chintz and dotted swiss and worsted wools. The seedy-looking Greek restaurant that Ellen swears has the best hash browns in Seattle. Another bakery, featuring the kind of Danish my oma loved and cakes with that Crisco/sugar icing that crunches between your teeth. A consignment shop called Rags to Riches, a state liquor store, Thriftway, and a couple of bars.

One of the bars is Bailey’s. I’ve passed by it plenty of times. It looks like a typical neighborhood pub, low-key, nonthreatening. The kind of place where a single woman could go and have a glass of wine and read. Or write a letter. Or just mope if she felt like it, without being pestered. I’m not used to going out alone, particularly not to bars. But the mist has turned to rain now, and walking in it isn’t quite as much fun. I hesitate for a minute with my hand on the door.

No. Not yet.

Without noticing exactly how or when it happens, Linda and I settle into an uneasy accommodation. She quits making snide remarks about my name, age, and work history; I quit trying to make our relationship personal and pushing new ideas on her.

I think she’s even started to like having me around. Well, maybe not me personally, but someone. She wears wrist braces for her tendonitis. Industrial-strength support hose peek out below her too short slacks. She complains about pain in her right shoulder, probably arthritis. She has to be glad that I’m strong enough to lift the sheet pans, heavy with wet dough, to drag fifty-pound sacks of flour, to do most of the loading and unloading of the oven decks. Of course, she’d eat ground glass before she’d admit it, even to herself.

I tell her about Jean-Marc. How he saw me rubbing my neck one day and told me, “A little pain is good, Wynter. It is how the trade enters your body.” She gets a big hoo-ha out of that one.

My antennae start picking up snippets of information about her. There’s a husband. Then I discover he’s an ex-husband. She calls him
Bubba. Ellen tells me his name is Walter and that he’s still lurking in a corner of the picture.

Tyler mentions that he used to be a captain on the ferries. “Pulled down some pretty good bucks, but he got busted down to seaman for drinking on the job. I think that’s when she kicked his ass out. They have two kids, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Ellen frowns. “You know how I feel about gossip.” Tyler and I look at each other and try not to laugh.

Just before Thanksgiving, the weather goes from bleak to abysmal—gray, wet, bone-chilling—every day for a week. Ellen laughs at my whining. “Honey, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait till February when it’s been raining nonstop for two months.”

One evening, in an attempt to regain my rapidly loosening grip on sanity, I call my mother. The machine answers and her voice tells me that “the Morrisons” are unavailable at the moment, but that “one of us” will be glad to call back as soon as possible. It’s nine-fifteen, no, almost nine-thirty. Where is she? I don’t leave a message. Just as I settle the receiver back in its cradle, it rings and I jump.

“So you haven’t drowned.”

“CM! Are you home?”

“Yes, thank you, Jesus.”

“How did it go?”

“Great. We got lots of good video, but I’m beat.”

“Are you going to L.A. for Thanksgiving?”

“I’m not going anywhere near an airport for a long time. What are you doing?”

“The bakery’s closed for the whole weekend.”

“Come over here and we can make turkey on Thursday?”

I call her on Tuesday to see what she wants me to bring. She still sounds tired, but she says she’s taking the rest of the week off and she’s positive she’ll be fine by Thanksgiving Day. She calls me Wednesday night, and I know as soon as I hear her voice that she’s not fine.

“I hate to wimp out on you,” she says, “but I’ve got some kind of bug.”

“Oh, damn.” I stare at the blackness outside my window, listen to the rain pelting the glass. “What can I do? You need anything from the drugstore? Groceries?”

“I’m set. The doctor sent out some antibiotics. I’ve got chicken soup in the fridge. Not that I can eat anything. I’m planning to sleep for the next forty-eight hours.”

“Don’t forget to take your medicine. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be here all weekend.”

About noon on Thanksgiving Day, I get up and open the blackout shades, climb back into my warm burrow. Fog, so thick you could squeeze it between your fingers, hangs outside the windows. I stare at the textured ceiling. It’s not bad, my little house. Plenty of people would consider it the apex of luxury. I’ve decided the barrenness is oddly restful, like camping in the high desert.

Okay, the place is depressing. Cold, stark, and empty. I’m sick of the color—polar-bear-in-a-snowstorm white. My eyes sweep the blank walls; nothing to stop or direct my glance. Out of nowhere, a bossy voice in my brain says,
So, paint.

Silly. You can’t paint a rental.

Of course you can. You can always paint it white again when you leave.