Stones for Bread (40 page)

“Don’t you want to pick out a few and leave the rest here? That way they don’t get lost,” I ask.

She scrunches her nose. “I guess you’re right,” she says, and dumps the container’s contents into the middle of the living room rug. While she’s choosing, I wash the dishes left on the table and in the sink. No one should come home to a dirty kitchen.

We pack the car with Cecelia’s suitcase and Pillow Pet unicorn, and I assure her I have plenty of blankets so she doesn’t need to bring the three fleecy ones from her closet or her sleeping bag. “But where will I sleep? Do you have two beds?”

“No. But I do have an awfully comfortable couch the perfect size for you.”

What I don’t have is food, at least food that isn’t claimed by Tee to be used in the café. I’m tempted to swing through some fast food drive-through window, but that won’t solve the dinner issue for tomorrow, or however long Cecelia stays with me. We go to the grocery store instead, the little girl tossing hot dogs and buns and cherry Pop Tarts into our basket. “This is for tonight. And we need school lunch stuff too,” she says. I exchange our basket for a shopping cart and mentally berate myself for not thinking to take things from Seamus’s fridge. In the end, I have eighty dollars’ worth of kid food and no idea how I spent so much.

I boil the hot dogs because Cecelia tells me that’s how her father makes them, and she eats three with so much ketchup the rolls fall
apart. Then I help her adjust the water for her shower, and while she’s washing—and singing the
na-na-nas
of “Hey Jude”—I make up the couch, tucking sheets firmly into the crevices of the cushions. She skips from the bathroom not quite dry, her pajamas sticking to her here and there, her hair dripping down her back. I soak the moisture from her ends and she asks, “Can you brush it for me?”

“Sure.” I have her sit cross-legged on the floor in front of me, like my mother did for me, and work her brush through the tangles. “I’m trying to be gentle.”

“We forgot my spray. It makes the knots disappear.”

“Well, we can get it tomorrow, if we have to. There, you’re done. Teeth now.”

She scampers back to the bathroom and I pack a lunch for her, peanut butter and jelly with baby carrots, pretzels, and two packages of fruit snacks. I remember how my mother used to write notes on the napkins in my lunch box, so I find an ink pen and draw a heart, printing beneath it,
Have a happy day! Love, Liesl
, and tuck it under her sandwich.

“Can we call Daddy?”

“We can try,” I say, but the call goes straight to Seamus’s voice mail. Cecelia leaves a rambling message about hot dogs and Pet Shops and the rock with the key in it. “And we put it back right where it’s s’posed to go. Cross my heart.” Then I cover her with blankets and tell her if she needs anything at all, I’ll be right down the hall. “I’ll leave the bathroom light on, so you can see.”

“Wait. You hafta pray with me.”

“Oh, right.”
Oh boy
. I close my eyes and begin, “Dear God—”

“No, not like that. The prayer Daddy says.”

“I don’t think I know that one, sweetie.”

“I do. I got it memorized. In peace, O God, we shut our eyes. In peace, again, we hope to rise. While we take our nightly rest, be with those we love the best. Guide us in your holy way. Make us better every day. Amen.”

“Amen,” I repeat.

“’Night, Liesl. If Daddy calls when I’m sleeping, tell him I love him.”

“I will.”

Seamus does call later, while I’m in my bedroom dozing with the light on, waiting for him. “I woke you,” he says.

“Just tell me what’s going on.”

He says his mother has had a moderate stroke. She’s conscious and recognizes him, but her speech is uneven and she’s lost maneuverability on the right side of her body. The prognosis is good for an almost full recovery, but how long that will take is a guessing game. “She won’t be able to be alone at home, once she’s out of the hospital.”

“Well, there are nurses and home aides, right?”

“Yes,” he says, the word drawn out, my drowsy mind aware of the change in his voice but unable to process what it may mean. “Are you sure you’re okay there with Cecelia? I think I’ll be home on Tuesday.”

Five days. “We’re fine. Did you get her message, by the way?”

“I did.”

“She wants me to tell you she loves you.”

“Tell her I love her back. I’ll call earlier tomorrow.”

I smother a yawn against my shoulder. “Good. Three in the morning comes soon, you know.”

“Liesl?”

“Hmm?”

“I love
you
too.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me. “Same here.” I don’t tell him his words make me tingle. A girl has to keep some secrets.

Twenty-Two

I pack my suitcase for Paris. My flight is in less than a month, and I plan my travels around the bread—boulangeries I must visit, regions known for certain techniques or varieties, rural one-baker villages that may or may not still exist, mentioned in obscure and possibly obsolete guides. I do the same for Germany with thoughts of taking the Eurail, or perhaps purchasing a small automobile—which may double as my sleeping quarters—and moving freely between the two countries. Or more. I have enough savings, if I’m wise with my money, to stay for five months and still buy an airplane ticket back home. Perhaps longer if I subsist predominantly on bread.
Der Mensch lebt nicht vom Brot allein
, my Oma would say. Man does not live by bread alone. I intend to prove her wrong.

I don’t give up my studio yet, but do have fantasies of not returning at all.

And then I see the advertisement. A small space in Billingston, Vermont, population fifteen thousand, former pizzeria already outfitted with a wood-fire oven in a building with a one-bedroom apartment
above the restaurant space. I blink at the rent. Surely it must be a typo—or perhaps I don’t know the cost of things outside Manhattan—and if it isn’t, the place will be leased by now. I pace several days and finally call the phone number. Yes, the price is correct and yes, it’s still available. Would I like to see it?

I drive four hours and as soon as I cross from New York into Vermont, I feel a shift in my soul, something I’ve not experienced since my mother was alive and I came home from school to bread cooling on the counter and her, simply
being
and being there, offering me a snack and milk, her hair curling over my face when she bent close, the scent of honey and lemon verbena. The restaurant space seats thirty comfortably, crudely painted murals of grapes and wine and meatballs on the walls. The kitchen is dominated by the brick oven, but large enough for three people to work without tangling together. The realtor apologizes for the size of the apartment; I don’t tell her it’s more than triple my studio space.

I am supposed to have Paris, like my mother was unable to. I am supposed to visit her homeland and immerse myself in all things bread. Starting a business will empty me, my time, my bank account, and I know enough about life to realize if I don’t go on my trip now, there may not be another chance. Still, this opportunity begs me to consider it.

Why don’t you stroll around?
the realtor suggests. So I do. Following the sidewalk, I leave the small downtown area—perhaps thirty independently owned shops, galleries, and eateries. No chain stores, one local bank, and several professional offices. I pass into a residential area. The houses hunch together, mostly turn-of-the-century homes, longer than they are wide, with picket fences and wicker chairs on front porches, not unlike the one in which I grew up. I slow as I approach a white chapel, stop at the bottom cement stair, and touch the metal railing, tracing the twist in the wrought iron with my finger. I feel as though a rope has been tied around my waist and someone—something?—pulls
me toward the door. It has to be locked, I think, but when I press the latch and yank, it opens. I glance left, right, and duck inside. I can use a place to sit and think for a few minutes.

The carpet is worn and red, the padded chairs gray, the walls some sort of paneling painted white. Water has damaged one corner of the ceiling, a
café au lait
spot I half expect to look like the face of the Virgin Mary, since that’s what happens in places like this. I stare at it for a while but can’t even manage to see a pair of eyes, let alone some recognizable person. I sigh and close my eyes.

What am I going to do about the bakery space?

Take it
.

I jump, the words so vibrant and clear, and look around for the person who spoke to me. There’s no one. I’m alone. I tell myself it’s all in my head but, remarkably, unexpectedly, don’t believe it.

Who do people say I am?

My father’s God has come to me.

I watched him for years, how easily he slipped into his faith, the one I mocked and railed against, the one I wanted no part of, the one that replaced my mother. I swore I was above such primitive mythologies. My father needed a crutch. I was the brave, strong one who could overcome in my own sufficiency. Now I hear voices. No, one voice. It’s a light switch, an open circuit now connected, a burning bush. A miracle.

His God is now my God.

I walk back downtown, to the realtor’s office, and sign a lease for the bakery.

The days pass uneventfully and that makes them special, Cecelia stitched into the shirring of my routine. She joins Jude and me downstairs in the morning once she wakes, around seven, and sits on a tall stool at the proofing table, asking sleepy questions about the bread. I answer them
all, reminding her not to poke at the dough, but invariably she does, and when she goes upstairs to dress I find one mound or another degassed, flat as a punctured inner tube, with a handprint patted into the center, or a tunnel of a little finger, or a pinch and pull. I explain to her again how delicate dough is, and like a balloon it needs all the air inside it. “What fun is a balloon if it doesn’t float?” I ask, but I can’t be upset with her. Dough is magnetic—everyone wants to touch it.

Tee comes a bit earlier to cook Cecelia breakfast, whatever she wants, and it’s been bacon and more bacon. And cinnamon buns. On the days she has school I drive her. She returns on the bus and continues her regular afternoon routine, bouncing between doing homework, helping Gretchen, and chattering to whoever will listen. By Sunday, Seamus’s absence is magnified because he’s not at church with us, not around to go to lunch, and, as Cecelia puts it, we miss him like crazy.

He does make it back Tuesday evening, trying to surprise us by coming quietly up the stairs to my apartment, but nothing about Seamus is quiet and we hear his exaggerated tiptoe, the treads shifting beneath his weight. We pretend he’s successful, though. “Shh,” I whisper to Cecelia as she giggles. “We don’t know it’s him.”

The door flings open and Seamus says, “Who forgot about me?”

“Daddy,” Cecelia shouts, lunging into his waiting arms.

“Ooof. You’re heavier.”

“That’s because Tee spoils her rotten,” I say, feeling a bit Donna Reed-ish, drying my hands on a dish towel as my man comes home. Perhaps I need heels and pearls.

Seamus pulls me into him too, and it’s family. We’ve adopted one another.

“Is Grandma okay?” Cecelia asks.

He sets her on the floor. “She’s getting better. Now, go grab your stuff. I’m beat, and you have school in the morning.”

“I’ll help you,” I say, and together we make sure she has kittens and puppies—Zoë and Daisy and Justin B. and Firefly; I can name
them all now—and her autumn leaves poem she wrote for homework, as well as her clothes. I zip her coat for her, tug on her hat, and kiss her forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She hugs me around the waist. I look at Seamus and know he’s troubled. He tickles her ribs so she releases me and then picks her up again. “We’ll talk later.”

I nod and mouth,
I love you
.

When I emerge from the kitchen at eight thirty the next morning, Seamus is waiting at a table with coffee and a croissant, one of the items I added to the menu once Kelvin arrived. I gesture to Ellie to come back into the kitchen with me. “How long has he been out there?”

“I don’t know. Half hour, maybe?”