Bread Alone (20 page)

I sit up, and the comforter falls from my shoulders. My stomach flutters with an unlikely excitement. Everything’s closed today, but I could get the paint tomorrow morning. There’s just the two rooms. How long can it take? Suddenly I’m pulling on my sweats, my socks and shoes, sweater and jacket. An hour later I’ve returned from the convenience store with an armload of decorating magazines to peruse while I’m eating my oatmeal.

I flip the pages, barely focusing on the articles, simply letting the pictures bombard me with color. Here’s my problem. I’ve been suffering from acute color deprivation. I gulp it greedily. The food colors—dark chocolate, pale salmon, tart grape, and spicy cinnamon. Flower hues—lavender, fern, jonquil, heliotrope. The earth shades—clay and teal, pewter, mahogany. By my second cup of coffee, I’ve decided on terra-cotta for the back room and bath, yellow for the main room. A warm, sunny yellow, like my little bedroom on the third floor of the Guillaumes’ house in Toulouse.

My French immersion experience was just that—immersion. It was more than being in another city, another country, a different culture. It was like being a freshwater fish suddenly deposited in the Pacific Ocean—wildly disorienting. At first I floundered, exhausted by the sheer effort required for something as simple as asking directions and processing the response.

It wasn’t quite the same as French class where the important topics of conversation included the weather—It
fait beau aujourd’hui, n’est-ce pas?
Or the deviant behavior of various small animals—
Le chat est sur le lit et le chien est sous la table.
Everyone spoke rapidly, especially my peer group, and of course they never teach you slang in class. After my one attempt to just let it rip, when I called someone a
connard
(approximate translation, “shithead”) instead of the more harmless
canard
(duck), I decided to stick with textbook French, even if it did sound rather stilted.

Sylvie’s friends were all very nice to me, but I felt like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Not one of them was over five-five, all thin and sylphlike in spite of the fact that they ate like stevedores. Most were pretty, but even those who weren’t managed to be attractive simply by being French. They could wear jeans and a T-shirt and then just throw on a scarf or some leather high-heeled boots or a buttery-soft suede jacket or a trendy hat and look like something out of
Vogue.
And they knew how to do things. How to smoke or sit, how to walk across a room
or a street, how to order an aperitif, while no one my age back home even knew what an aperitif was.

Dinner chez Guillaume was a thing I anticipated every day with dread. In addition to making polite conversation, and watching Sylvie to see what each spoon or fork was for, I tried desperately to figure out what I was eating before I took an irrevocable amount into my mouth.

Not until I’d been beaten down, like at boot camp, and accepted the fact that everything, including the air that I breathed, was totally alien, did I begin to relax. It happened suddenly, only two weeks into my stay. One night at dinner, I slumped in my chair, too dazed with fatigue to talk, to care if I was using the fish knife correctly, to wonder exactly what I was swallowing, and all at once the realization stole over me. I was getting at least the general drift of the conversation without even thinking about it. Probably because I wasn’t thinking about it. Suddenly I sat taller in my chair. My eyes focused on Jean-Marc, over whose head I’d been staring, spaced out, and he gave me what for him was a pretty big grin.

“Bienvenue,
Wynter,” he said.

After that night, I settled in, feeling at long last that I was where I belonged. Class became less nerve-racking. At work I was able to focus on the baking instead of worrying about what people were saying to me and how I should reply. I was more comfortable hanging out at the cafés with Sylvie’s group, checking out
les types,
the guys, or reading fashion magazines and listening to Francis Cabrel.

Not that it was effortless, but it was like running, the way you sometimes wear yourself out by pushing too hard. Your muscles burn from lactic acid, your body feels leaden, your lungs ache. And then when you think you can’t go ten more yards, suddenly you hit your stride and the miles unwind beneath your feet and you could run all day.

On Saturday, the clouds part, and the sun spills down benevolently. I’ll never take it for granted again. I catch the number 13 bus downtown, leaving all the windows open to air out the smell of paint, and conveniently
forgetting that this weekend is the kickoff of Christmas shopping madness.

The overheated air inside Westlake Mall reeks of stale popcorn and a dozen different designer fragrances the stores are touting. It’s wall-to-wall bodies in Williams-Sonoma and Timberland, Jessica McClintock, Godiva, and there’s a steady drone, like a convention of angry bees. I push past an a cappella group dressed in Dickensian costume. Some fragment of melody or flick of a long skirt stirs memories of holiday parties in the big white house on Woodrow.

Every year we had an open house the first weekend in December, invited all our friends and everyone from JMP, every client, potential client, and former client in David’s files. That made it one big write-off. So we could have the trendiest caterer, a string quartet one year, a zydeco band, or another time, mariachis. Once we had a whole high school choir in the front yard, singing carols as everyone arrived. Okay, that was a bit over the top.

I have to get out of here. Through the glass doors, out into the crisp breeze. Holiday banners float from every light pole and the store windows are outlined in colored lights. A steel-drum band does their pleasantly tinny take on Christmas carols in front of Nordstrom, and the entire population of Seattle seems to be drinking Stewart Brothers coffee and grooving on the rare November sunshine. Bicycle messengers in their Day-Glo orange vests dart and weave through the throngs like bright tropical fish.

I wade into the crowd and out the other side, down to Second Avenue where the music is only a faint twang. Down here the buildings aren’t renovated yet, their beaux arts friezes still black with grime. Whiskery old men in drab sweaters huddle in doorways, smoking, eyeing the hookers in satin shorts and high-heeled boots, goose bumps on their thighs.

In a junk shop where the sign advertises “Articles of Interest for the Collector,” I buy a 1915 ladies’ magazine full of botanical prints, and two ornate frames. Then it’s down to Cost Plus for some red-and-yellow plaid bedspreads to tie over my ugly chairs and drape over curtain rods, a fake Tibetan rug to lay in front of the woodstove.

As I wend my way back up to Third Avenue, I notice the clouds have returned, but they’re thin and pale and aloof, not the full-bellied, low-slung kind that promise more rain.

My house has the ambient temperature of a meat locker, but the paint smell has mostly dissipated. I dump all my packages on the futon and rush around slamming windows, starting a fire, turning on lamps, filling the teakettle. I remove my purchases from the bags, tear off the price tags, lay out the rug. I tie the makeshift slipcovers over the chairs and drape the faux curtains over the blackout shades. When the kettle boils, I make myself a cup of tea and set out some soup for dinner. While I drink my tea, I leaf through my ladies’ magazine, deciding which botanical prints to frame.

I dial CM’s number, but it rings and rings. The machine doesn’t pick up, so I know she has it unplugged. I stare at the phone for a minute, finger on the hang-up gizmo, contemplate calling David. No. Kelley might answer. Or if David answered, he’d probably just be pissed off at me for bothering him.

I dial my mother.

“You’ve reached the Morrisons. None of us is available right now …”

At the beep. “Hi, Mom, it’s me. I just wanted to say hi and see how you—”

“Hi, honey. How are you?” She’s slightly breathless. “I’m okay. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” It sounds like a conversation between two telemarketers. “Where have you been?” “Nowhere. Why?”

“I’ve tried to call you a few times and you never seem to be home.” She laughs. “I’m working very hard, you know.” “At night?”

“Well, I go out occasionally. With friends and …” Her voice keeps trailing off, as if she’s trying to talk to someone else at the same time.

“Are you dating anyone?”

Hesitation. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that.” Her tone changes abruptly. “But how are you? Any news from David? Or your … Miss Goody?”

“It’s Gooden. No news.”

“What did you do for Thanksgiving?” she asks brightly. “I painted.”

“You painted? You mean, like pictures?” “No, Mom. Like walls. I painted my house.”

“Really?” There’s a silence, and then she says, “That’s interesting,” in a way that lets me know she’s not paying the slightest attention to anything I’m saying.

“Mother, do you have company?”

Another silence. “Yes, actually, I do. I have some … people over.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“Because I wanted to talk to you, of course.”

“You seem distracted. Why don’t you give me a call when you’re not busy?”

“I’m not busy, Wyn, it’s just—”

She’s still talking when I hang up.

After Thanksgiving, the bakery erupts into frenzied activity. Linda and I are making panettone and Ellen’s mother’s Hanukkah orange bread. Linda’s not thrilled about having her routine disrupted, but I’m glad to be doing something new. Diane’s taking orders for
bûches de Noël
(yule log cakes).

We all get to make cookies—Diane does gingerbread boys and girls in her inimitable style—one for every occupation and hobby imaginable, ballerina to dogcatcher. Customers fight over the ice skaters and skiers. Ellen has the rest of us working on French and Italian cookies. We make
brutti ma buoni
(ugly but good), bites of almond paste clogged with candied citrus peel; buttery
baci di dama
(lady’s kisses);
zaletti,
raisin-cornmeal cookies; hazelnut
biscotti;
and sesame-seed wafers. We
make
dentelles Russes
(Russian lace cookies) pungent with dark rum, sandy-golden
sablés, carrés aux marrons
(chestnut squares) glazed with bittersweet chocolate, and, of course, madeleines.

The display case looks like a cover shot for
Bon Appétit,
and I love the richness of different tastes and textures. But one morning as I stand admiring the bounty, a memory of my oma’s plain, round cookies decorated with colored sugar dredges up an old happiness that’s more like an ache. The second I’m inside my door, I’m on the phone to my mother. Of course, she’s already left for work.

“Hi, Mom, it’s me,” I tell the machine. “I was just calling to say hi. Again. By the way, do you have Oma’s sugar cookie recipe? I’m going to bed pretty soon, but I’ll be up about three-thirty. Could you call me tonight?”

Her voice is all chirpy when she calls back. Must’ve been a good day. “I found Oma’s recipe,” she says. “Shall I fax it to you at the bakery tomorrow?”

“The bakery doesn’t have a fax machine.”

She’s lost her place in the world for a second. “They don’t have a fax? How can any business compete in today’s—”

“Mom, it’s not a business with a capital
B,
okay? It’s a small bakery. Very low-tech. I was hoping you could just read it to me.”

“Of course. Got a pen?”

Oma’s Sugar Cookies

1 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

¼ teaspoon salt

Grated zest of one lemon

Granulated sugar for rolling cookies

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

2 tablespoons lemon juice or milk

Cut the butter into the sugar until the mixture resembles oatmeal. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Sift together flour, soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Add to butter mixture along with lemon zest and beat with wooden spoon until blended.

Preheat oven to 350°F and lightly butter cookie sheets. Knead dough for 15 to 20 minutes, adding a little more flour if necessary to prevent sticking. Roll dough into walnut-size balls and roll balls in granulated sugar to coat completely. Place on prepared cookie sheets. Using bottom of a glass dipped in granulated sugar, flatten each ball to about a ¼-inch thickness. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until light brown. Using spatula, transfer to cooling rack. Glaze while still hot, if desired, with mixture of confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice or milk. Makes about 5 dozen.

“Thanks.” I shake the cramp out of my hand. “I’d forgotten the kneading part.”

“That’s what gives them that great texture.” Her voice goes all dreamy with nostalgia.