The Potter's Daughter (Literary Series) (16 page)

Abby handed the brandy back to her
father, as he grabbed for the bottle she held the glass tightly for a second
before releasing, “That’s not what I mean.”
 
She then bent over and kissed her
fathers forehead.

Will kept his gaze forward into the
coming darkness of the new night sky.
 
He took another sip of elixir, put the bottle away, then zipped up his
coat, and put his hands in his pockets.

* * *
* *

The following evening was
uncharacteristically warm for the season and the expected snowfall fell in
large wet flakes.
 
Will built a fire
in the lake room and stoked the coals on the bottom until they burned bright
orange.
 
The room was toasty and
both reading lamps were on giving the impression that the bay window was a
painting of the grey outside if not for the large wet chunks of snow running
down the pane.

Will yelled into the kitchen, “The
roads are going to be impossible you know.”

Abby yelled back, “He called.
 
He’s still coming.”

“Well, if he makes it here.
 
I don’t know if I’ll be able to get him
if he gets stuck somewhere.”

Abby ignored his last comment and
continued creaming the sugar and the butter in the large clay-mixing bowl.
 
She decided to make a cake for their
guest, or maybe for Mitch, or maybe to relax her and she knew that this evening
had the potential to be a disaster.
 
Abby never considered herself a great
baker or cook yet when things became stressful she did a fare share of
both.
 
She had heard on a food show
that a favorite around the set was pistachio-cardamom cake so she had the
recipe.
 
That recipe ranked easy on the
simplicity scale, always put her in a good mood, and turned out to be one of
her favorites.
 
The cake could have
been pistachio cake if the IGA had not had cardamom or chocolate cake if they
had no pistachios.
 
Baking any cake
would have sufficed to ease the stress.

* * *
* *

Their guest tonight, Nathan
Albright, had just moved to the other side of the lake from Fremont.
 
Nathan decided to move to Willow Lake
for a more relaxed pace than he found working in Fremont and had been seeking a
position while Abby was searching for someone to help Will out.
 
He had been commuting to his old
job.
 
This job would give him the
chance to work locally in a more intimate setting and he was looking forward to
meeting Will.
 
Abby had warned
Nathan that Will did not look forward to meeting him.

Nathan drove his jeep a constant
twenty-five miles per hour down the bends and turns around Mount Frisia and
South Point and then up to the Bellen’s.
 
Having been there already once before to talk to Abby he was comfortable
in his way, despite the quickly falling snow.

* * *
* *

Abby had mixed in the ground
pistachios with the egg, cardamom, and flour batter and poured the mix into a
pan to put in the oven.
 
The raw
batter was delicious and Abby was sure she could eat the whole batch if she
allowed herself.

After putting the cake in the oven,
she checked that everything else was ready for dinner.
 
She had moved the lasagna from the oven
to the microwave to keep warm.
 
The string
beans and butter were essentially finished in the saucepan and would just need
heat.
 
The risotto would need some
final preparation, yet was simmering fine.
 
She checked the place settings on the table to be sure they were in
order and determined that if anything went wrong in the next few hours the food
would not.

This meeting would have the same
outcome no matter what Will’s response.
 
He had always been sweet, cordial to everyone in the past, and for the
most part still behaved that way, regardless Abby rightly considered him
unpredictable now, on this topic in particular.
 
Since the news of the dinner guest had
been delivered, Will had appeared to be unaffected.
 
Sure, he had made a couple of slight
comments that could have been interpreted as aggressive yet they were not
outright hostile.
 
That had always
been his way at his worst, to whittle away and badger by comment until he
gained some sort of satisfaction or repose.
 
Whether he had any ill intentions was
hard for her to tell.
 
Her guard up,
Abby did the best she could with what was under her control and prepared a good
dinner.
 
The rest she would have to
take in course.

Twenty minutes later headlights
filled the window of the kitchen door.
 
Nathan had arrived.
 
Abby
gave Will a thirty-second warning and told him that if he was counting on any
surprises to forget about them altogether.
 
Ignoring her comment, he came into the kitchen to greet their guest.

Nathan made his way to the door in
a quick jog with his head bent, his long sandy blonde hair covering his face,
and his sneakers splashing through the slush accumulating in the driveway.
 
Abby held the door for him as he
entered.
 
Will stood behind her not
quite sure of what he was seeing.
 
Abby had not described to Will the guest coming to dinner.
 
Will just knew the guest was supposed to
be someone to turn his life upside down.
 
Will’s forehead furrowed and a pleasant smile crossed his face.
 
This was not somebody’s old wet nurse at
the door.
 
Nathan was just a kid not
even thirty and Will would have no problem driving him out.

The first thing Nathan did as he
walked in the door was hand Abby a bouquet of mixed ranunculus and
anemones.
 
“These flowers were the
best I could find at the florist,” said Nathan.
 
“ I was lucky.
 
I didn’t know they closed so early.
 
I was the last customer of the day.”

Abby took the flowers, “Nathan,
they’re lovely.
 
These
ranunculus are beautiful.
 
Thank you
so much.”
 
Will could not wait for
Abby to finish thanking Nathan, he stepped up and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m
Will, can I take your coat?”

“Sure,” Nathan started to remove
his denim jacket and hooded sweatshirt beneath it, “I’m Nathan, pleased to meet
you.”
 
Nathan’s thin-framed glasses
began to fog over.

“Let me help you with that,” said
Abby in a low tone as she took the back of Nathan’s jacket with her free hand
so he could remove the coat easily.
 
She decided she needed to distract Will before he could do any damage by
unsettling Nathan.
 
“Will, I think
the beans might be burning.
 
Can you
check them please?”
 
The beans were
fine of course yet now Will was subdued.
 
Abby added, “And could you take a peek at the risotto too while your
there?
 
I’m afraid it’s drying out.”

“Risotto, that sounds real good,”
said Nathan.

“I hope you like lasagna too,” said
Abby.

“Sure do.”

* * *
* *

Once in the kitchen Abby offered
Nathan a seat at the table, put the bouquet of ranunculus and anemones in the
sink, and then went to the refrigerator.
 
Will figured he would make another start “So,
Nath
--,”

“That risotto does look like it’s
getting dry,” Abby handed him a box of chicken stock, “here, add three
tablespoons of this once every minute, no better be every forty-five seconds,
and keep stirring, don’t stop stirring.”

“Uh, ok,” said Will.

“Oh, you have to keep the lid on
the whole time,” scolded Abby.

“The lid, but how can I?”

“Like this,” Abby showed him how to
leave just the side open to stir.

“Now don’t stop stirring,” said
Abby.
 
“Got it,” said Will.

“Three tablespoons every forty-five
seconds,” said Abby.
 
Will nodded
his head.

This would keep him occupied for
ten minutes.

Abby went back to the sink and
winked at Nathan.
 
She would not let
Will get the best of Nathan, though the price so far may be risotto soup.

“Nathan can you reach that yellow
vase on top of the cupboard?” asked Abby.

“Sure,” said Nathan as he rose to
help her.

“How was the drive over here?”

“It’s all going to turn to ice,”
said Will.
 
“Keep stirring,” said
Abby.

“It wasn’t so bad.
 
My Jeep’s four wheel drive made me feel
pretty safe, and I keep it under thirty miles an hour if the weather is at all
questionable,” said Nathan.

Will so much wanted to comment yet
he had to keep count to forty-five.
 
“What a complicated recipe,” he thought.

“Let’s see,” Abby scanned the
kitchen and counted with her hands, tapping each finger on her thumb.
 
“Nathan can you help me with the bread?”

“No problem,” said Nathan.

Abby sliced the French loaf
procured earlier that day from the IGA then Nathan spread the garlic butter she
had prepared onto each piece, placing them on a sheet pan so they would be
ready for the oven when the cake came out.
 
They talked about Nathan’s new apartment while he laid out the bread and
Will listened.
 
The new development
had just been built on the lake on the south edge of the village next to the
small boat docks.
 
The development
had three buildings each three floors high as well as a pool, game room, and
gym.
 
The whole complex could be
seen almost directly across the lake from the Bellen studio.
 
Will wanted so much to say something
about this too.

“They’re an eyesore,” said Will.

“Will,” said Abby.

“Well they are.
 
Right there next to the village,” Will
shook his head, “have to look at ’em.”

“They actually blend in nicely, and
they are a lot better than that mill that used to be there when I was a kid,”
said Abby.
 
She was right, the
development was put in place of an abandoned lumber mill.

“That old mill was just a big
rusted metal building with those ugly beltways leading to nowhere while the new
buildings are designed to blend with new trees and boulders.
 
You have to admit that they landscaped
the grounds beautifully,” said Abby.
 
“Keep stirring.”

“Hmm,” said Will.

“Ok, It’s time for the cake to come
out,” said Abby.

Abby let
Will
step away from the stove then turned the heat off the risotto and the
beans.
 
She removed the cake then
put the bread in the oven.
 
She
started to corral the men to the table so that she could begin bringing the
food over.
 
Will took the
opportunity to excuse Nathan and himself to wash their hands.

Five minutes later, the bread was
out of the oven, the food was on the table, and the men had not returned.
 
Abby became suspicious.
 
She could not hear them talking.
 
She thought for a moment, “would
Will
do anything radical, of course not.”
 
She walked into the lake room and no one
was there.
 
Out the side window, she
could see the studio lights were on.
 
“That could be ok,” she thought.
 
“He’s not going to put him in a kiln.
 
It’s just the standard tour.”

* * *
* *

The Bellen tour was a studio
standard that Abby had heard many times before.
 
She helped Michael learn the tour when
they were children.
 
The studio at
first glance was haphazard yet might as well have been a museum display.
 
Every piece or tool could be referenced
at any point during the tour or made a prop as if planned all along.
 
School children from fifty miles away
had come on field trips to the studio to see the Bellen urns and to learn how
over the years the pottery had found homes around the world.
 
In the foyer of the studio, there was a
wall of fame that featured photographs of Bellen pottery on display in the
cities of Paris, London, Vienna, and of course the Bellen
urns
of the White House.
 
Through out the
studio was every tool a potter or ceramic artist might want to use: feathering
tools, drill tools, fettling knives, fluid writers, and on and on.
 
For each tool an example of the finished
work or a work in progress.
 
There
were manual kick wheels, electric kick wheels, small kilns, of course the large
kilns.
 
There was the urn assembly
line, though the process was never referenced like that, which would be
explained in detail with examples along the way.
 
In addition, in every tour the pedigree
was discussed, there had always been a Bellen, from this father’s father to
that father’s father back to northern Italy.