Stones for Bread (11 page)

My poor bread.

We all miss Cecelia’s presence at Wild Rise. She spends only one afternoon with us now during the week, and sometimes not that. The other day she said to Gretchen, “Daddy doesn’t like to in-pose on Liesl,” and then clamped both hands over her mouth as if a great secret accidentally snuck out. Gretchen promised she wouldn’t tell, but
I overheard and knew I’d caused Seamus’s unease by my curt attitude toward him the past month. I haven’t been ignoring him, but close enough to it not to matter what my real intentions are.

Tee slides Seamus’s plate onto the counter beside her. “You take to him.”

“Gretchen will,” I say.

“I send her to the store.”

“You can’t just send my only waitress out on errands. And without asking?”

“She back before all the people come for the lunchtime.”

“That’s not the point.”

“The boy is helping,” Tee says. She drops the plate into my hands. “Go now. Shoo.”

The boy
is Jude. He stands at Cecelia’s chair, watching as she unrolls her cinnamon bun into one long strip, breaking off the final center swirl to save for her last mouthful. She’s told me, every time, she thinks it’s the best part, squishiest and drenched in buttery sugar. I give a tiny smile and wave, and give Seamus the plate. “Thanks,” he says, eyes seeking to connect with mine. I look at the floor.

“Liesl, Liesl,” Cecelia bubbles, “Jude said Daddy and I can come to the taping. He said only super-special people can come, and we’re on the list.”

“Oh? Am I on this list?”

“Don’t be silly. You
have
to be there.”

“Maybe,” I say.

Jude adjusts his glasses. “I thought Pops told you. This place is too small to fit everyone who wants to come. You had to submit names.”

“I didn’t.”

“We know. Pops took care of it for you.”

I start to itch in my anxiety places, beneath my kneecaps, the back of my neck at the hairline, my navel. I cross one leg over the other and rub, trying to scrape away the irritation with my jeans.
It doesn’t work, so I bend and scratch in earnest. Cecelia giggles, a tongue of cinnamon roll hanging from her mouth. “Martin does that when he has fleas.”

“Martin?”

“Miss Betsy’s dog.”

“Our neighbor,” Seamus adds.

“No fleas,” I say. “I’m allergic to being on television shows.”

Even Seamus smiles at this, a very small, seemingly wistful smile that straightens his lips rather than curls them. He hasn’t touched his food since I brought it. I tuck Cecelia’s dress strap back on her shoulder and give the top of her warm head a kiss. “Well, it’s back to the kitchen for me.”

“Wait, Liesl, can you come to church on Sunday? You can sit with me and Daddy and Jude.”

I sigh. She asks every week. “Oh, sweetie, I’d love to, but I just can’t tomorrow. I’m really, really busy.”

“You always say that.” Her eyebrows dive toward the bridge of her nose. “Daddy says we can’t ever be too busy for church.”

“That’s us, Cecelia,” Seamus says. “Liesl has much more work than we do.”

“Another time,” I tell her.

“Promise?”

I hesitate, feeling her father’s gaze on me. I don’t have to turn to read it.
Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. She’s had enough of that
. “Yes.”

Cecelia bounces from her chair and squeezes me. “When, when, when?”

“Cecelia,” Seamus says.

“Soon. Just give me a few weeks to recover from this whole circus, okay?”

“What circus?”

“The TV show,” Seamus tells her. “Sit, okay? I’ll tell you when you can ask.”

The girl motions as if she’s zipping her mouth closed, then turning a key and tossing it over her shoulder. Then she nods with conviction. “Not until Daddy says. Got it.”

I hug her again and wander to the other tables, talking to patrons and offering to refill glasses of iced tea. Everyone wants to ask about
Bake-Off
. I answer diplomatically, my knees and neck throbbing for a good scratch. Jude spends a few more minutes with Seamus and Cecelia, then clears the dirty dishes left around. Gretchen reappears, hurrying by with an apology, and right away takes the order of a couple who sat down only moments ago. I lock myself in the bathroom and rake my nails over my legs until pinpricks of blood appear. Then I hold wads of toilet paper on the tiny wounds until they scab.

Seven

It lasts three weeks, what I call my mother’s possession. Possessed by what or whom, I can’t say. But something has evicted her spirit from her body and taken over. I wonder if my real mother is tethered in the house somewhere, waiting to sneak back in. I comb the air, feeling for some thread of her. There’s none.

My father calls it
mania
. At least he does when he’s on the phone with the doctor, closed in the front room we call the library, speaking with hushed but urgent words. I try to listen at the door, but he sees the shadow of my feet beneath it and says,
I’ll call you back
. I scurry up to my bed and hide in the blankets.

My mother is a tornado, blowing through projects and money. She cuts her hair short as a boy’s and colors it platinum. She peels the flowered paper off the bathroom walls and begins painting them tangerine, but bores of the job halfway through, leaving us with a patchwork mess. She rearranges the furniture. And she bakes. All with seemingly endless energy.

Between the secret calls and his long hours at work, my father tries
to clear the wreckage my mother scatters all around us. He gathers up the shopping bags full of clothes and shoes and jewelry she purchases on her lone JC Penney credit card, returning them to the store. He rescues party invitations from the mailbox before the postman comes, the yellow envelopes smudged, stamps upside down, handwritten addresses marching wildly in all directions. He hides the checkbook under the spare tire of his truck. He washes bar smoke from her blouses.

I get my first key to the house after finding myself locked out twice because my mother is gone when the school bus drops me off. The first time I sit on the stoop, waiting, the neighbors eventually inviting me in as dusk falls and the shadows grow long. I eat a Hungry-Man roast turkey dinner on a TV tray while Mr. and Mrs. Grimm watch
Wheel of Fortune
, and when my father finally pulls into the driveway, I run home without a thank-you. The next time it happens, I hide in the backyard, eventually managing to shimmy open a basement window with a screwdriver from the shed; I climb down onto the water heater and, once upstairs, make a peanut butter sandwich and start my homework at the kitchen table. After that, my father gives me a key on a tooth-shaped fob advertising our dentist’s name and address.
For the back door
, he says.
Don’t lose it
.

And then it stops. The shopping, the redecorating, the baking. Instead of moving on to some new, frenetic activity, my mother is still in bed at noon. A day passes, another. My father tells me she’s resting and to leave her be. I peek in on her. The shades are pulled low and she’s curled on the very edge of the mattress, eyes open. I roll in behind her, smell the oil on her scalp and dried saliva on the pillow. My arm loops over her body.
Tell me something
, I say,
about bread
.

If she hears me, she gives no indication. Her respiration slows and grows loud with sleep. I try to match my breaths with hers, like stepping in footprints left behind by another. But the prints are too big, the breaths too widely spaced, and I feel light-headed. So I fall into my own pattern and it’s hypnotic. I start to doze.

Never punch down
.

My mother’s voice floats through to me, and I say,
What?

You never punch down dough. No matter what the recipe says. Never punch it down
.

Several days later my mother is dressed and washed, her unnaturally blond hair hidden in a silk scarf. She makes her special tea for us, brewing the loose leaves in warm milk instead of water, sweetening it with honey. We sit and eat zucchini muffins and she asks me how school is going, her hands fidgety, her words nervous. She’s almost my mother again. Close enough, I think, to believe things will be back to normal soon.

Patrice Olsen is nothing I expect. I think metropolitan mama, in tailored trousers and pointed white blouse, hair slick and severe and pulled away from her face. I think triangle-toed shoes and slender hips and seamless boysenberry lip color. And not much older than I am, if at all. Thirty-five at the most.

She is none of those things, and when she comes to the counter, I ask if I can help her, like any other chubby, middle-aged customer in denim and comfort clogs. “Patrice Olsen,” she says. “You’re Liesl McNamara, correct?”

“That’s me.” I shake the plump, dry hand she offers, and while I’ve never held a live snake, I imagine it feels like her skin, rough and taut and sort of shimmery. I can’t help but wipe my own palm on the leg of my jeans.

“Good. Do you have an office? There’s quite a bit to go over.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Well,” she says. She adds no more to the sentence.

“My apartment is upstairs. We could talk there. Or we can just sit at one of the tables. Maybe that one, in the corner?” I motion to the back of the café.

“The kitchen. Is that an option?”

“I suppose. If you don’t mind—”

“I don’t.”

“Okay then.” She follows me into the back. I introduce her to Tee and Gretchen.

Patrice tucks her frizzled gray hair behind her ears. I offer her a stool and she struggles to perch her short, round body on it. “And your manager? Xavier Potter? I have been corresponding with him.”

“He’s gone for the day.” Manager? I don’t correct her.

“I see.” She lifts her oversized quilted bag onto the counter, removes a yellow legal pad, and gives me a binder with the
Bake-Off
logo custom-printed on the front. “Page three, please. Let’s review the schedule, which I sent you. This afternoon you’ll meet with hair and makeup. And wardrobe. Tomorrow will be a day of filming interviews and voice-over segments and speaking with customers. The color.” She crosses off several words from her pad. “You do have those photos together?”

“Uh, yeah.” I have no idea what she’s talking about, but she doesn’t seem like the kind of person I should admit it to, so I make a mental note to call Xavier as soon as possible.

“Fine.” Another check mark. “On Friday you’ll be closed, of course. The restaurant will be prepared for the show. Things will need to be rearranged, lighting brought in, some props. We may need to record more fill footage. And then Saturday, it’s hair and makeup by six a.m., contest begins at nine, and judging at five p.m. This is all familiar to you.” She stares at me, her green eyes unblinking, and I realize she meant that final statement as a question.

I nod. “Oh yes. Absolutely.”

Patrice caps her pen and sets it on the pad, folds her hands over it. “Ms. McNamara. I have been doing this a long time. There are two types of people who come on these shows—those who seek them out, who believe their half hour of fame will bring happiness and unicorns
and make all their dreams come true, and those who find themselves in the middle of it all without ever intending to be there. We both know where you fall.”

“Ms. Olsen—”

“Patrice. Please. To the first group, I tell them, ‘Enjoy it. But realize it’s not going to change your life.’ They never believe me.”

“And the second?”

“I tell them, ‘Enjoy it. And realize it’s not going to change your life.’ They rarely believe me either.”

I look at her. Her face is soft with unexpected kindness. “I understand.”

She opens her pen and flips to the next page of paper.

Even in times of want, men seek out bread, as if any substance milled and kneaded and shaped and baked provides the sustenance of a wheaten loaf. Perhaps they know this isn’t truth, but convince themselves of it because bread brings them comfort. Each slice has the potential to become the body of the risen Christ, the church tells them—with the proper priestly blessing, of course—so they fashion their gleanings to something almost bread, hoping for a miracle of their own.

Animals are slaughtered first, not only for food, but for their feed. The grains eaten by cows and chickens can be used to nourish a family in the form of pottage, a mash of boiled cereals and water, unseasoned probably, because all the sugar, honey, and maple is finished—if they could ever afford it at all. And then the flour disappears, the housewife telling her family this is the last loaf, and she cuts it thin so it will last several days, toasting the stale pieces over the fire to revive them.