Joy For Beginners (10 page)

Daria watched as Henry nodded and stepped forward, cupping his hands gently around the irregular shape. He stretched it up and folded it over, his movements casual, affectionate—back and forth, back and forth—an interplay of dough, hands, air. With each repetition, the dough began to cling more to itself, less to the counter. And then, as she watched, the rough texture smoothed out, the dough became smooth and white, extending and springing back in his grasp.

“That’s incredible,” she said.

“A French guy taught me. I had never realized before how alive this stuff is. It’s like a puppy.” He grinned.

“Now,” he said, “we form the loaves.”

Henry cut the dough in half. As she watched, he folded in the edges of one of the portions, one over the other, rounding the dough using the open palms of his hands. Daria watched, mesmerized by the way the dough seemed to relax as his hands moved across it, take the shape he was offering.

“Your turn,” he said.

Daria washed the old dough from her hands and toweled them dry. Stepping over to the counter, she brought her clean palms to the surface of the dough. It was soft, expectant; she could almost sense the air moving through it. She closed her eyes and remembered what she had seen Henry do, relaxing her hands into loose parentheses, sliding them gently over the dough, shaping it, feeling it warm as skin beneath her hands.

She opened her eyes and gazed at the round loaf in front of her, then at Henry.

“Look at that,” she said, and she reached up for the kiss that was waiting in his smile.

 

DARIA LAY NEXT to Henry in his bed, inhaling the smell of baking bread that filled the house, the man beside her. Warm sugar, fields in the summer, the slight sharpness of wine. She wondered if anyone had ever made a perfume that was the essence of bread, but even then, how could you get it to cover one person so evenly, to sink into hair, hands, the warm expanse of a chest?

But it was in her, too, she realized, holding her wrist up to her nose. She burrowed in closer to Henry and inhaled the scent at the base of his neck.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Happy,” she said.

“Bread does that to people,” he commented with a grin.

DARIA’S LEGS STRADDLED the potter’s wheel, her hands cradling the mound of clay set at its center. Outside it was raining lightly, the drops falling in harpsichord notes down the gutters, running out to the kitchen garden, tilled under for the winter. The CD that Henry had given her whirled in the old, beat-up CD player on the counter and she heard a woman’s voice singing, almost a man’s, deep and low, like gravel on a dirt road. At some point the line between music and emotion was ground away and it rolled out, unrestrained—the joy of a child, the mourning of a widow, the anger of man in a world where only the exit doors opened.

Daria kicked the wheel and felt the clay moving between her wet palms. She worked the mound, raising it up, pushing it down, feeling its flexibility, the solidity. She opened the base with her thumb, and then started to pull the shape up and out, into a bowl.

 

A SUNDAY IN JANUARY, the cold air pushing against the windows, hanging low and foggy over the water outside Henry’s houseboat. Daria pulled two loaves from the oven, reveling in the warmth of the kitchen and the heat that came through the hot pads in her hands. The tops of the bread were brown, full and mounded.

Over the past few months she had become more adept at making bread, although the seagulls had been well fed on her first attempts. But she loved weekends now, the wonderful merry-go-round of kitchen and bed as the bread evolved through its stages—her favorite part when the dough went into the oven and she and Henry would lie in bed in the loft, her head on his shoulder while he told her tales of kind strangers and daring adventures, stories of his travels filling the houseboat along with the smell of baking bread.

“Can we go sometime?” she would ask him. And they would talk of places they would go, people they would meet, their words enfolding her like blankets.

Somehow Henry always managed to finish a story just as the bread was ready in the oven. Today’s loaves were perfect, Daria thought, looking at them; she finally had it right. She heard the phone ring and Henry talking softly in the loft.

“That was Marion,” Henry said as he came down the ladder into the kitchen. “She called looking for you. Your mom is in town and Marion wanted to know if we would come to dinner. I said yes.” He said it casually, like a robber explaining that he had simply confused the bank vault with the men’s room.

Daria’s spine went tight. “What?”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

“You don’t answer for me.” She picked up the loaf of bread. The texture was firm, the color evenly brown. She went outside.

She pitched the loaf on the deck and the seagulls moved in, screaming ecstatically.

Henry came up behind her. “Maybe it’s time to give her a try,” he said.

“You don’t know,” she said, her voice hard. “You travel—you meet people. Then you leave. They don’t follow you around for your whole life, stuck to you. You don’t have to see them again.”

“Because
you’ve
seen your mother so recently.” Henry’s voice flashed cold. He stopped. “I’m sorry.” He went back into the house.

When Daria came back in, Henry was cutting a slice from the second loaf, his back to her. He spread butter across its surface and handed the slice behind him without looking. Daria took it, feeling the warmth in her hand.

“I figured you weren’t ready for honey on that yet,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is why I don’t want to go. This is what I turn into.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You aren’t going to like who you see.”

“Her or you?”

“Both.”

“Then I’ll just pretend I’m meeting someone new, and I’ll travel home to Daria.”

 

THEY HAD DECIDED to walk to Marion’s—Henry said it would be good for them—and the night was clear and cold. Daria wore the scarf Henry had given her for Christmas, wrapped three times around her neck.

“You’re disappearing in there,” Henry commented.

“If only,” she said, listening to the sound of her boots against the cold pavement. He took her gloved hand and put it in his pocket.

By the time they reached Marion’s house a couple miles away, Daria’s lungs and face felt swept clean. They ran up the stairs and rang the bell, stomping their feet.

Daria’s mother answered the door. She looked first at the couple, then beyond to the empty street.

“You walked?” she said. “Isn’t it awfully cold?”

 

MARION HAD COOKED a pot roast and mashed potatoes, something Daria hadn’t seen on Marion’s table since her husband Terry’s cholesterol had spiked. Henry and Daria had brought a loaf of bread that had been warmed up in the oven after its cold journey. The basket was making its last rounds of the table, Terry happily using the crust to wipe up the last of the pot roast juice.

“Henry,” said Daria’s mother, “Marion tells me you’re a baker.” On the other side of the table, Daria stiffened slightly and reached for her wineglass.

“I hear we have that in common,” Henry commented.

“We do?”

“Well, I’ve been hearing stories about your bread-making days, when Daria was younger.”

Daria’s mother shook her head slightly. “Oh.”

“So you must have loved bread,” Henry continued, nodding encouragement.

“I suppose.” She passed the basket and stood up from the table. “I’m just going to check out the back porch.”

As she left the room, Daria turned to Marion. “She hasn’t quit?”

“No.” Marion glanced over at her husband. “And it’s driving Terry crazy.”

“And what’s with not liking bread? It was practically her religion.”

Marion looked puzzled. “Really? I don’t remember that. She must have started after I left.” Marion paused, reaching back in her mind. “I remember her painting, though.”

“Painting?” Daria put down her fork.

“Yeah, she had this studio; she was always in there. When I was little, she’d forget to take me to school sometimes.”

“What studio?”

“Oh.” Marion stopped, her expression changed. “That’s right—you wouldn’t have seen it. That was your room.”

“How could you not tell me that?”

“I don’t know; I’m sorry. I suppose by the time you were old enough, everybody had forgotten about it.”

 

DARIA’S MOTHER WAS ON the back porch, wrapped in an old sweater of Terry’s, lighting a cigarette. Daria smelled the air, figured it was the second one. She stood in the door frame for a moment, then stepped out and closed the door.

“Tell me what I did.”

“Daria, you sound like a teenager.” Her mother, of course, was right.

Daria shifted her feet across the planks of the porch floor.

“Tell me what I did. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember, and I don’t know why.”

Behind the glass door, Marion walked by, plates in her hand. She paused; Terry walked up behind her and gave her a small push in the direction of the kitchen.

“It doesn’t really have anything to do with you, Daria.”

“How can you say that?”

“You were just what happened.” Daria’s mother knocked her cigarette on the side of the railing and watched the ash fall down into the grass. Daria waited.

“Your father had been out of work for a couple of years,” her mother said. “You wouldn’t remember; he never wanted you to know about all that. Back then, though, it was all he could think about. But that night . . .

“Anyway. It was my fault. The least I could do was grow up and act like a real mother.”

“So you gave up painting?” Daria tried to imagine what it would be like not to touch clay, not to walk into the quiet, untouched space of her studio in the morning, not to have designs and shapes and textures to play with in her head. “That must have been awful.”

“It was.”

“And you couldn’t have children and paint, too?”

“That was the deal.”

“Dad said that?”

“No. He wouldn’t have. It was my deal.”

“Mom.” Daria stepped closer.

“So now maybe you see”—Daria’s mother turned to her, her tone light and conversational—“why I wish you did real art.”

 

DARIA AND HENRY Sat on the bus, riding home. Marion had offered them a ride, but Daria said no. At the next stop, a father and his young daughter got on; the daughter had a stuffed toy monkey in her hand, all long legs and dangling arms. She was talking to her father as they got on the bus—about the height of the steps, the quarters in her hand, how dark it was, how maybe they would see fairies out the window if the fairies didn’t think anyone was watching.

Daria watched the two as they found seats and sat down. The little girl was talking happily, the flow of her words bright and shiny, like candy falling from a piñata. But what struck Daria was the expression on the man’s face as he looked at his daughter, the way the love seemed liquid, pouring over the girl next to him.

“Look,” she said to Henry, and pointed.

Henry smiled. “That’s a beautiful thing.”

“My mother will never look at me like that. Never.”

Henry gazed at her for a moment. “Maybe not,” he said quietly.

She looked back at him.

“So,” she said, finally. “What are we going to do now?”

“Why don’t you tell me a story?” he said. “Your turn.”

Daria paused, thinking. It had started to rain and the black pavement shone in the streetlights. The bus growled as it changed gears and continued on its route; three rows up, the little girl had quieted as she gazed out the window.

“Once upon a time,” Daria began, “my sister made a chocolate cake, three layers tall . . .”

W
hen Sara was a little girl, one of her favorite activities had been to go to the airport with her twin brother, Henry, and their mother to pick up friends and family who were flying in to visit. Sara loved arriving at the airport early so they could go to the gate and choose the hard plastic chairs with the best view of the deplaning passengers. She would sit, her shoes discarded below her, the toes of her outstretched feet swinging above the floor, and watch what she and Henry called the animal parade. There were the bird-passengers, all floating scarves and barely restrained carry-on bags, flying down the long ramp into the arms of loved ones; the timid and hopeful, scanning the crowd like long-necked giraffes for someone who might or might not be there; the polar bears who looked neither right nor left as they waded back into the sea of their lives. Sitting in their chairs, Sara and Henry played a game; out of the parade, they chose the one they called the dolphin—the person with a face full of assurance or curiosity, who moved as if the world was water meant to swim in. The air always seemed different around those people, a bit of electricity slipped in among the oxygen molecules. One time it was a young woman, a camera slung over her shoulder, her clothes beaten with miles, a smile on her open, suntanned face.