Bread Alone (22 page)

“What difference does it make to you, missy?”

“I was just curious.”

She looks over the tops of her glasses at me. “Didn’t you ever hear what bein’ curious done to the cat? Kilt him, that’s what.”

“Okay, forget it.” I open the notebook, start setting up ingredients for the cinnamon-raisin and cheddar-cheese breads.

“You been doin’ this for three months now. Haven’t you got those recipes memorized yet?”

“Nope.” I try to keep my voice cheerful.

“Kinda slow on the uptake, aren’t you?”

I snip the string on a bag of white flour and pull the threads till I find the one that unravels the closure. “I forget everything as soon as I walk out that door, and that’s a good thing. Because if I remembered every day that I had to come to work with you, I’d probably never come back.”

She snickers, reveling in her image as the Bad Ass Baker from Hell.

The bakery’s quiet since a lot of people aren’t going to work today. After Linda leaves, I make myself a decaf espresso and take a table in the front. Ellen comes over to sit with me.

“Post-holiday slump,” she mutters, dropping into the chair. She has circles under her dark eyes. “Had twenty people for dinner yesterday. And I’m Jewish, for Pete’s sake. Lloyd’s family. Those cookies of your
grandmother’s were great, by the way. I think next year we’ll do those here.” She rolls her head around, rubs the back of her neck. “This is where I carry all my stress. What did you do? Weren’t you going to CM’s?”

“I was, but she ended up going to L.A.”

“So you were alone? I wish you’d called. I could have used the moral support.”

“That’s nice of you, but I wasn’t up to being with a bunch of people.”

She smiles. “Who said anything about being with people? I would have come over to your place and hid from them all.” She pushes up the sleeves of her black knit dress, leaving floury prints. “I should never wear black to work. Look at that.” Her eyes slide over to me. “Did you hear from Shithead?”

“No.” I blot my eyes with a napkin. “Didn’t really expect to, though.”

She puts her arm around my shoulders for a minute. “We never expect, but we always hope. That’s the bitch of it.”

Nine

I
’ve never been a big celebrant of New Year’s Eve. I prefer going to sleep in the old year and waking up with the new one firmly in place and functioning. In grammar school and junior high, CM and I always took turns staying over at each other’s houses. If the adults were having a party, we skulked around watching everyone get drunker and sillier as midnight approached. We usually got a thimbleful of champagne at the appropriate time, and then we volunteered to help clean up so we could polish off the leftover drinks and food.

In high school and college, there were the usual drunken orgies, but I never enjoyed them, and I don’t think CM really did either, although she talked a good game. For us, the best part of any New Year was watching the Rose Parade on TV in the morning while we stuffed ourselves with leftover Christmas cookies or cold pizza from the night before.

This year, she shows up on my porch at five o’clock on New Year’s Eve, carrying bags of food from the Market. A wedge of Stilton, some Brie and Parmesan, vegetables to be made into soup, and three bottles of champagne from Pike & Western Wine Shop. And a small gold box containing six chocolate truffles, for medicinal purposes.

“What smells so good?” She takes off her coat, hangs it on one of the hooks I pounded into the wall by the door.

I set the bags on my new drop-leaf table. “You’re my guinea pig for a new bread. Yeasted orange poppyseed.”

“Always glad to oblige. Hey …” She does a 360. “This looks fabulous. I can’t believe it’s the same place.” She wanders into the bedroom, now my office/den, where I put the desk and the wing-back chair. “These colors are terrific. Where’d you get these botanical prints? I love it.” Back in the main salon, she admires the watercolor I paid Tyler twenty-five dollars for, the curtains and slipcovers made of plaid bedspreads. “Oh, I love paperwhites. They smell so good.” Her shrewd green eyes focus on me. “Quite a little nest you’ve made yourself. Or maybe I should say a cocoon.”

I laugh. “Yeah, it’s a cocoon. I’m going in as a butterfly and coming out as a caterpillar.”

“A reversal of fortune.” She smiles. “By the way, have you talked to Jerkoff?”

I shake my head. “I tried to call him last week and his assistant said he was out of the office for the holidays. He’s probably up at Aspen with Barbarella.”

“Barbarella? Let’s see. Would that be the love child of Barbie and Godzilla?”

I laugh again—twice in five minutes is pretty good. “Something like that. Here.” I hand her one of the bottles of champagne, stash the other two in the fridge. “Open that puppy. Let the party begin.”

She pours two glasses and we settle in to scrub and chop vegetables for our soup.

For a while we work in one of those silences that’s only possible between two people who know each other so well that conversation is superfluous. I’m thinking about times past and I know she is, too, probably the same ones. But when the champagne in our glasses reaches a certain level, she starts telling me about her work in progress, set to Canteloube’s
Chants d’Auvergne.

“What’s it about?”

She smiles patiently. “There’s not much of a story. Canteloube was from the Auvergne and this work was sort of a hymn to the region. The
music is gorgeous; it’s for orchestra and one soprano voice.” Her face takes on a rapt expression. “The choreography starts with a solo female dancer—namely, me—and then the others join her. All during the piece they’re moving together and apart, so the number of dancers visible is constantly shifting.” I sit there, nodding, not saying a word, until she looks up from the carrot she’s mutilating.

“Neal called me on Christmas Eve.”

“And?”

Her posture is a study in nonchalance. “He said he wants to see me. He’s in Palo Alto right now, but he’s coming up here for a seminar in February. He wants to have dinner. Or something.”

I smile and throw a handful of green beans into the pot. “It’s those ‘or something’s’ you have to watch. What did you tell him?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“I assume you’ve thought about it by now.” When I stir the onions that are slowly caramelizing in olive oil, their sweet, musky fragrance fills the room.

Heavy sigh. “I actually haven’t thought about much else in the last week.” She gives me a pleading look. “Help me out here. Tell me what to do.”

I hand her the church key. “For starters, open these.”

In spite of the fact that she’s never been shy about trashing David, I’ve always been reluctant to criticize Neal. I think it’s the old reverse psychology. Whenever my parents criticized some guy I was seeing, I became even more enamored of him. “You probably couldn’t find anyone less qualified to offer relationship advice.”

The chicken broth gurgles as she pours it on top of the vegetables. “No fair copping out. When you needed advice, I told you to get a job.”

“You already have a job. Do you want to see him?”

“I must, or why would I be agonizing over it?” She tosses the cans into my recycle bin.

“Problem solved.” I ransack my pantry, pulling out bay leaves and peppercorns, and add them to the pot.

When she shakes her head, her hair flows from side to side, catching
the light in its red-gold depths, just like in the shampoo commercials. If she wasn’t my best friend, she’d be easy to hate. “You don’t think it’s a good idea, do you?” she says.

I rest my chin on my hands. “It doesn’t really matter what I think, if you want to see him again. Maybe it would be good. Maybe you’ve both learned something. If not, at least you won’t have to waste any more time wondering what might have happened.”

“Very sensible indeed.” She finishes chopping the last carrot and throws it into the pot. This is obviously what I was supposed to say.

I dump the sautéed onions into the pot and light the burner. She refills our glasses and puts out a bowl of
picholines,
the little green French olives that we both adore. We curl up on the futon in the warmth from the woodstove to listen to
Motown’s Greatest Hits
and watch the old year die.

Ever since I moved into my first apartment with CM our junior year in college, my mother and I have had an unspoken agreement. She doesn’t call me unless there’s a pretty compelling reason. So when my phone rings the afternoon of January first, it doesn’t occur to me that it might be her, even though I haven’t talked to her since Christmas Eve. In fact, when I hear her voice, my heart stops.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

Her laugh tinkles up the telephone line. “Nothing, honey. I just have some news. I’m getting married.”

I slide into the club chair. “Married?” Oh, God. I’m going to have a cop for a stepfather.

“Richard has asked me to marry him.”

“Who?”

“Richard. Richard Travers. The architect. My boss.”

“What about Ed?”

“What about him? I haven’t seen him since you left.”

“Mother, who is this guy? I don’t even know him.” I have the sensation of being in a Fellini movie.

“You will.”

“Well. Congratulations.”

“You don’t sound convinced.” She laughs, but there’s an edge to it. “Should I squeal?”

“Wynter.” She’s trying to be patient. “I know you’re going to like him. He’s a wonderful man. We’ve been working together very closely ever since I started there and we’ve been almost inseparable for the last month.”

“Are you sleeping with him?”

A short silence. “That’s none of your business.”

“Well, don’t you think I should get to meet this person before you go running off to get married?”

Now she’s laughing so hard I’m afraid she’s going to choke.

“What is so goddamn funny?”

Every time I think she’s winding down, she gets hysterical again. “Oh, Wyn … you … if you could … oh, God, if you could hear what you sound like …” This is followed by gasping for breath and some little groaning noises. Then she blows her nose. “Wyn? Are you there? I’m sorry, honey, but you sound like my mother.”

I think if you feel faint, you’re supposed to put your head down between your knees. So the blood rushes to the brain. It just makes my head hurt.

“I don’t know what to say.” I sit back up.

“How about ‘Congratulations, Mom, I’m really happy for you’?”

“You haven’t even been working there that long. What do you really know about him? Maybe he’s a con artist who preys on lonely widows. Maybe schizophrenia runs in his family. He could have a criminal record or a wife in Toronto or—”

She’s still laughing. “He’s divorced. Trust me, I know what I need to know. Besides, the wedding’s not till February fourteenth—corny, isn’t it? That gives me two extra months to discover Dr. Jekyll.”

“Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was the good guy.”

“Wyn, I want you to be my maid of honor.” As if she’s making me a peer of the realm.

“Well … okay.”

“Okay?” Her voice is rapier sharp.

“What the hell do you expect me to say? I don’t even know the guy. You’re sneaking around seeing him—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re two single adults. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t see each other.”

“Well, you work in the same office. I’m sure they don’t know anything about it.”

“Of course they do.”

“Does his family know about it?”

“His son knows, yes.”

“But you didn’t tell me?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“Because … just because. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“Quite frankly, I didn’t think you’d be interested. You never seemed to be when you had David and—”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly this, Wyn. When you were married and had a wonderful, exciting life, there wasn’t a lot going on between you and me. Now, suddenly, because you’re lonely and unhappy, you want me to confide in you.”

The conversation has become a runaway train, captive of its own momentum. I want to hang up, but I can’t. Neither can I make a single word come out of my mouth. I stare at Tyler’s watercolor of Pioneer Square with diagonal slashes of rain, umbrella-toting tourists.

“Wyn? Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” I notice she doesn’t say she didn’t mean it. “I was so happy and I wanted you to be, too. I wasn’t even thinking what a shock it would be for you. I’m sorry, honey. Please don’t be upset.”