Bread Alone (16 page)

“That’s ridiculous. Your friends aren’t going to think less of you because David—”

A laugh explodes out of me. “Friends? I don’t have friends; I have contacts. All the women I’ve been hanging out with for the last five years were hand-picked and cultivated for their economic potential. I haven’t had time to make friends.”

“So what are you going to do in Seattle? Cry on CM’s shoulder every night?”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve been offered a job. Making bread.”

“Oh, Wyn.” Her tone drips disappointment. “Honestly, I don’t mean to be critical …”

“But …
” I supply helpfully.

“But how can you make any money working in a bakery?”

“I don’t need a lot of money. I’ve got my monthly allowance from David.”

She actually laughs. “Wyn, you can’t live on that.” Emphasis on
you.

I feel my fingernails digging into my palms. “Elizabeth said she’d get me an increase.”

It’s like she hasn’t heard me. “And you have a teaching certificate, for heaven’s sake. A degree in English and French. Why do you want to do manual labor?”

“Because I like it.” We’re facing each other now, in the middle of the room, like gladiators. If I look up, I might see Nero giving me the thumbs-down.

“This is utter nonsense.” Her eyes cloud with frustration. “If you insist on baking bread, you can do that here. At least you could live with me and not have to—”

“I don’t want to do it here. I’ve already got a job there.”

“You’re as pigheaded as your father.” That’s her concession speech.

I take it as a compliment.

Seven

E
llen wants me to start yesterday, but I tell her I need a week to get settled. I waste several days looking in the classifieds for a place to live. CM says I can stay with her, but the idea of having my own place has taken root in my brain. I went from living with my parents to sharing an apartment with CM. In France, I lived with the Guillaumes. The only time I was on my own was the six months before I married David, when CM was in New York. And even then, I was over at his place most of the time.

Apparently, Seattle has a surplus of cramped, dirty, one-bedroom apartments with sculpted carpeting and peeling fake-wood paneling and moldy bathroom tile. I feel as if I’ve seen every single one. I drag myself back to CM’s in the afternoons, tired and depressed. Finally, someone at the bakery gives me the phone number of a leasing agent named Daisy Wardwell. She’s a breezy blonde with perfect makeup and a seemingly vast collection of pastel warm-up suits. She takes me to some places that aren’t listed in the paper. They’re better than the ones I’ve seen on my own, but they’re also more expensive, to allow for her commission. When I explain what I’m looking for and how much rent I want to pay, she looks at me like I’m crazy, but says she’ll see what’s “out there.”

The very next day she calls, gives me an address on Fourth, tells me to meet her at ten-thirty. Standing in the street, I stare at the faded
number on the curb. Daisy must have given me the wrong address, or else I transposed the numbers when writing them down. The house is a huge, creaking Victorian in the process of being restored or demolished, it’s hard to say which. With its gray siding and white gingerbread trim faded and cracking, it looks like the “before” photo in a
House Beautiful
renovation story. The “after” shot would involve white wicker furniture and Boston ferns, afternoon tea spread out on a table.

Sidestepping the missing and rotted planks, I pick my way up the steps and around the porch. One of the tall front windows is broken and boarded over; the others are all filthy. I peer inside, hands cupped on either side of my face, but all I can make out is a massive piece of furniture sitting in the middle of the room, covered with drop cloths. The original door has been replaced by a metal lumber-mart special, locked up tight.

Daisy’s black Jeep Cherokee screeches to a stop, bumping the curb, and she jumps out, breathless. “Hey, kiddo. Sorry I’m late.” “Tell me this isn’t the place.”

She laughs. “You’re about half right. Come with me.” I follow her up the gravel driveway at the left of the house, past a screen of hemlocks to a small, new clapboard cottage at the rear of the property.

“They were building this last spring,” she says. “I don’t think it’s ever been used.” The welcoming committee of spiders and piles of mouse droppings on the wood floor tend to bear that out. “Of course, it would be cleaned up and checked for pests, but it’s kind of a cute place, don’t you think?”

The living room is small, but there’s a wood-burning stove, a basic Pullman kitchen. The bedroom has one decent closet, but no shelves or cupboards. Then again, I don’t have a lot of stuff to store at the moment. There’s a skylight in the bathroom and the square bathtub still has the manufacturer’s sticker on it. I wander back out to the covered front porch where I envision myself sitting in the mornings with a cup of espresso. The rent isn’t much more than some of the bombed-out studios I’ve seen.

“What’s the catch?”

Daisy smiles. “The catch is it’s month to month. I’m not sure how long it’s going to be available. The woman who lived in the big house passed away. Her will is in probate; her only son and his wife were restoring it, but she’s just filed for divorce … It’s kind of a mess.”

“Sounds like my life.” There’s an empty terra-cotta flowerpot sitting next to the screen door; I picture it full of red geraniums.

“The only problem I can see is that, with no one living in the big house, you’re kind of isolated back here. There are neighbors all around but no one can see the house from their porch or anything.” She looks at me appraisingly. “This is a pretty quiet neighborhood, and you don’t seem the skittish type, but it’s something to consider if you …” Her voice trails off.

Standing there in the warm autumn sun, it’s hard to picture burglars or homicidal maniacs slinking around. What I see is a hummingbird feeder and flowerpots. Me curled up in a rattan chair with a good book, a Vivaldi violin concerto wafting out the open door. I love the way the house nestles into the trees that surround it, like a woodcutter’s cottage in a fairy-tale forest. I picture the porch swathed in vines, and wonder if the front gets enough sun for blood-red trumpet vine. I have to jerk myself up by the collar. Whoa, girl. This a rental. No need to be landscaping the place.

“I think it suits me.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go back to the office and do the details. I can have it ready for you this weekend.”

Linda LaGardia, the Queen Street bread baker, has got an attitude the size of the Yukon Territory. When Ellen introduces us a few days before I’m to start work, she checks me out the way my oma used to inspect a rib roast, and snorts. “We’ll see how long this one lasts.”

I watch her carry two lidded buckets of flour back to the storeroom, her biceps bulging. From the back, she resembles a bowlegged fireplug, from the front, an English bulldog. She has thin, yellow-gray hair that looks like it was styled with an electric carving knife, small pebble-dark
eyes, and one of those big moles on her cheek with a couple of black hairs sprouting from it.

Ellen shakes her head, as if amazed. “She’s been here for twenty-five years.”

“Are you sure she wants an assistant?”

“Actually, I’m sure she doesn’t.” She pats my arm. “But don’t worry, she’s all bark, no bite.”

I tell myself that I can quit any time.

On Saturday, UPS delivers my boxes of clothes and books to CM’s, and the next afternoon we cart them over to the cottage to join the odd collection of furniture I’ve managed to acquire in the last two days. She sets down a small but weighty carton and looks around, hands on hips. There’s a green paisley wing-back chair and a gold-and-brown, very ugly plaid club chair in front of the woodstove, courtesy of the Salvation Army thrift shop; a small round table sits between them. At a junk shop on Capitol Hill, I snapped up a ladies’ writing desk with a broken leg, now mended with Super Glue. The ladder-back chair and tarnished bronze torchère lamp caught my eye yesterday at a neighborhood garage sale.

CM peers into the empty bedroom. “What are you sleeping on?” “I ordered a mattress and box springs, but they can’t deliver it till Wednesday.”

“May I make a suggestion? Why don’t you get a futon and a frame instead? Then you’ll have a couch and a bed.” “Good idea. How come you’re so smart?”

“I’ve had lots of experience making do.” The “and you haven’t” is understood.

One last trip to the car to fetch the old brass table lamp with a green glass shade that she’s donating as my housewarming gift. She sets it on the counter next to the sink. “Wyn, this is so …”—she gropes for a polite description—”… spartan. Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I mean, you’re not exactly used to …” Her voice trails off.

“I’ll fix it up,” I say firmly. “It’ll be fine.” Am I paranoid, or does she sound like my mother?

She laughs. “Well, you know you can always come back to my place if it gets to be too much like camping. I still don’t see why you won’t stay there at least till I get back.”

“I just want to be on my own.”

“If I’m not there, you can hardly be more on your own.” She looks at me. “Oh, never mind. You’re wearing your pigheaded look.” She hands me the keys to her apartment and car. “Just in case. I’ve told the manager you might be in and out, so she won’t have you arrested. Although you might be more comfortable in a nice cozy cell.”

Most of the clothes that I wore in Los Angeles are useless here. They’re clothes for lunching and shopping in Beverly Hills, lots of short skirts, party dresses, sexy lingerie, high heels. Hardly anything I can wear to work. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have any place to store them. God, my brain has atrophied from disuse. I put aside the jeans, a pair of sweatpants and two or three sweaters, three long-sleeved T-shirts, some workout clothes, jogging shoes. I pack everything else back in the box.

As the light fades, the temperature drops, and I start looking around for the thermostat. I look on every wall, in the closets, the cupboards, even under the sink. From the file that Daisy gave me, I extract the information sheet on the place and skim till I see the word “furnace.” On the opposite side of the column is the word “none.”

Oh, yes. I vaguely remember some discussion about this, but in my haste to make a nest for myself, I must have glossed over a few details. There’s an asterisk next to “none,” and then in tiny type: “heated by Jotul woodstove.” Which is fine, except I haven’t got any damn wood for the damn Jotul woodstove.

I sit down on the braided rug in front of the cold, silent stove. I look around the room at the boxes of expensive, nonfunctional clothing, my few sticks of furniture, which seem lost even in this small space, the basket of dishes and glasses I scavenged from CM.

Okay, what
am
I trying to prove? That I’m not a spoiled twit? That I can be Ms. Thoreau on Walden Pond? I guess I could’ve sprung for some furniture. But all this is temporary. If David calls and wants me to come home, I don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of stuff.
When
he calls. No
if
.

I bring home a pizza from Dan’s Market and eat it sitting at my writing desk in the amber light from the floor lamp. My gaze settles on the glued leg and I wonder distractedly how it got broken. Kids playing touch football in the living room? A family brawl? Dropped by movers?

I forgot to light the gas water heater, so when I rinse my plate, a thin sheen of grease clings stubbornly. I try to read for a while, but I’m too cold. Should I call CM and ask her to come get me? I get as far as picking up the phone, but then I hang up. She doesn’t need the aggravation, and I don’t want anyone, even her, saying they told me so.

At eight-thirty, I pull on tights, jeans, sweatpants, a turtleneck, a sweatshirt, and a sweater. Seat cushions from the two chairs are my makeshift mattress, and I pull up the three blankets I borrowed from CM. I feel like the casserole my mother sometimes made on Saturday nights—pigs in a blanket. I’m wearing so many layers, I can’t even bend my knees. At nine-fifteen I add another pair of socks and my parka.

Loneliness and pain have brought on temporary insanity. There’s no other explanation for my behavior. I can get up tomorrow, pack my things, and go home to L.A. I’ll lose a few hundred bucks’ rent and some face, but I’ll be comfortable.

I flip over on my back. I can get my own place, of course, but I’ll still have to field my mother’s questions, at least appear to consider her suggestions, and listen to her theories about the moral authority of women. I can get a job there. Probably not making bread. I’ll probably cave in and renew my teaching certificate and go back to wrangling junior felons.

And then some night when I’m going stir-crazy, I’ll accept a blind date with one of my mother’s friend’s son’s cousin’s roommates from Antelope Valley Junior College, a nice, quiet guy. He’ll turn out to be the Sepulveda Slasher and the next day they’ll find my mutilated body
in a ravine in Angeles Crest National Forest. I’ll be on the front page of the
L.A. Times
and David and Kelley will see the story while they’re having breakfast. Kelley’s eyes will get very round and she’ll say, “Weren’t you married to her a long time ago?”