Bread Alone (27 page)

“Is red okay?” Mac asks me. “Or would you rather have something else?”

“Red’s fine.”

The waiter pours the wine and says, “We’re out of the scallopine, and we’ve only got one lasagne left.”

When he leaves, I lean forward and whisper, “Where’s the guy in the dark suit and white tie with a tommy gun in the violin case?”

He laughs. “This place is sort of a throwback. The food’s great, though. And so’s Arlene. The singer.”

“She looks like she’s through for tonight.”

He shakes his head. “She’s just taking a break. She’ll sing till everybody’s gone. Her voice reminds me of Lauren Bacall. Was it
To Have and Have Not
where she sang?”

“ ‘Am I Blue.’ And Hoagy Carmichael played the piano.” I look at the open menu. “What’s good?”

“Everything. But I hope you like garlic.”

“I love it.”

“Good. Then let’s get a Caesar.”

After we order, Mac gives the waiter a five to put in Arlene’s overflowing goldfish bowl. She’s lighting another cigarette with the tail end of her last one, but she smiles and pulls the voice mike around. “You got it, babe.”

Then she flounces her skirt, flicks ashes off her dress, and plays the intro to “Every Time We Say Goodbye.” Suddenly I hear Ella Fitzgerald’s throaty purr, see my father in his chair, eyes closed, gently tapping his thumbs on the book that sits in his lap.

Now that we’re sitting here across from each other, I suddenly feel the nakedness of my third finger, left hand. Lately I’ve realized how a wedding ring works like a talisman, granting protection to the wearer. You can talk to a man, laugh, even do a little judicious flirting and no one automatically assumes that you’re looking to get laid. Without the ring, you’re on your own.

“So do you still work at Norwegian Woods?”

“I just help Rick out during busy times.”

The waiter makes the salad at our table in a huge wooden bowl that he’s smeared with a smushed garlic clove, the way it’s supposed to be done. It’s one of the best I’ve ever had—lemon, anchovy, and garlic in perfect tension with each other, the coddled egg and olive oil smoothing it out, freshly grated Parmesan, just enough Tabasco for a slight after-burn. There’s sourdough bread with a quarter-inch-thick crust that I use to mop up the last of the dressing. I could quit right now and be perfectly happy, but then the waiter brings my tagliatelle Bolognese and
I’m glad I didn’t quit. I’ve never tasted meat sauce like this, sweet and creamy. I chew it slowly, practically sucking it, trying to figure out how it’s done.

I look up at some point to find Mac smiling at me—almost laughing—and I realize he’s been sitting there, keeping my glass filled, and I haven’t said a word to him in the last ten minutes.

“I’m sorry I’m being no company at all, but this is so … incredibly, unbelievably good.”

“Are you always this intense?”

“Only about food. How do they do this?”

He shrugs. “Ask the waiter. I don’t think about it, I just eat it.” “This place seems very New York. Or New Jersey maybe. Is that why you like it?”

“I like it because it’s a great place. I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for the East Coast.”

“It occurs to me that you know an awful lot about me and I know very little about you.”

He twirls spaghetti around his fork like a pro. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“It makes me curious.”

“You’re free to ask questions.”

“Okay. Where have you been? For about the last ten years.”

“After I left school”—he looks thoughtful, as if he’s sifting out what to tell and what to leave unsaid—”I drove west. Spent three years in Colorado and Utah.”

“What did you do there?”

“A lot of skiing and a little waiting tables.”

“You can’t ski in the summer.”

“Then it was rock climbing and construction.”

“Rock climbing? You have a death wish, then.”

“Not really. It’s based on learning a set of skills, just like any other sport.”

“Yeah, it’s just like other sports. Except your butt’s hanging over the abyss.”

He laughs, leans his head back against the booth. “It’s a matter of engrams.”

“Of what?”

“Do you know how to drive stick shift?” I nod.

“It’s like that. Or like a golf swing or a tennis serve. It’s just a series of movements that sets up a sequence of nerve impulses in your brain. Every repetition reinforces the pattern. That’s an engram. Once it’s established, you can perform that series of movements almost automatically, so your brain’s free to concentrate on other things.”

“Like the fact that your butt’s hanging over the abyss. Okay. Then what? After the rock climbing.”

“Then I hitchhiked around New Zealand for a year. Then Italy and Switzerland for another year.”

“That’s five.”

“Then I came home. That lasted for about six months, and then I started working my way west again. Then, like I told you before, I came here and stayed.”

I rest my elbows on the table. “You do that very well. Cover a lot of ground and a lot of time without revealing anything substantive.”

“Good word, ‘substantive.’ “ He grins. “There’s just nothing very interesting to tell.”

“No brushes with the law? No duels?”

“Nope.”

“Ever been married?”

He hesitates for barely a nanosecond. “One close call.”

“What was her name?”

“Gillian. She lived on a sheep station in New Zealand.” “Can you tell me?” “Some other time.”

After I’ve stuffed as much tagliatelle as possible into myself and the rest into a take-home container, I do ask the waiter how they make it. He smiles and pours the last of the wine into our glasses.

“It’s the milk,” he says. “You cook the meat in milk before you add
any tomatoes. And then, of course, you simmer it for a long time—four, five hours. Would you like coffee?”

“In a few minutes,” Mac says. Then he looks at me. “I guess this means you like the place.”

“It’s wonderful. Thanks for bringing me here. I never would have found it.”

Now Arlene’s playing “Blues in the Night.” Mac smiles. “She’s angling for another tip. By the way, Jimmy Turner’s coming to Bailey’s next Friday.”

“Who’s he?”

“A local blues artist. He usually plays at some pretty down-and-dirty places, but every once in a while, he comes up on the hill. You’ll like him.”

“I’ll have to find out some other time. I’m going to L.A. Friday morning.”

“Too bad.” He waits a second before asking, “Is this the big day?” “I’m afraid so.” The glow of the evening seems to have taken on a coat of tarnish.

He sets his glass down, twirls the stem around. “Why is this so hard for you?”

“I’m not sure. There’s this knot in my stomach every time I think about it.”

“You don’t seem like the kind of person who’d begrudge her mother a chance to be happy. Not after ten years or whatever it is.”

“Fifteen.” I shrug. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ll get through it. My best friend’s going with me.”

“It matters if it makes knots in your stomach.” He drinks the last of his wine, sets the empty glass near the edge of the table. “You think you’ll see—”

“David? No. He doesn’t even know I’m coming.”

The waiter brings thick, inky coffee in white cups and hot milk in a pitcher. I know I should have asked for decaf, but it doesn’t seem right after a dinner where every single thing was so uncompromisingly real to drink fake coffee.

Mac dumps in a whole packet of sugar and carefully blends in a few drops of milk. He has a funny cowlick directly above his left eye, at the scalp line where a little tuft of hair grows backward, in opposition to all its brethren. As if to emphasize the difference, the hair in that one spot is shot through with gray.

“Why did you drop out of school?” I ask. He doesn’t look up from his coffee. “Don’t you want a degree?”

A tolerant smile. “It’s just a piece of paper that says you did what’s expected.”

“It’s too easy to trivialize things like education—or marriage—by saying it’s just a piece of paper.”

“Those things have already been trivialized. The purpose of going to college isn’t to learn, it’s to get the paper. The purpose of the paper is to get you the job so you can keep on doing what’s expected.”

“Are you really that cynical?” I blow on my coffee to cool it, take a tentative sip.

“I’m not cynical. I’m realistic. I like my life. I don’t need any more than what I have.”

“That’s fine for now. You’re young and strong. What about the future?”

“The future is something dreamed up by insurance companies and high school guidance counselors to keep you from enjoying the present.”

“You’re going to get old, Peter Pan. What if you get sick? What if—”

He laughs. “I prefer to burn my bridges as I come to them.”

The second we finish our coffee, the waiter is there with a refill. When we decline, he presents the check. It’s 4
A.M.
I reach for my wallet.

“I’ve got it,” Mac says easily.

“No.” My voice is too loud in the nearly empty room. “This isn’t a date. We’ll split it down the middle.”

He holds up both hands in surrender. “Okay, give me fifteen bucks.”

We don’t talk much on the way home, and when he pulls up at the curb, he says dryly, “Since this isn’t a date, I won’t walk you to your door. Just blink the light when you get inside.”

Twelve

M
onday afternoon. Biology class. We’re dissecting frogs. The sweet, sick smell of formaldehyde clings to my hands. Weird, the things that stay with you. One of the secretaries from the office comes in and takes Mr. Ansel out in the hall. Then he sticks his head in and calls for me to come out.

“Wynter,” he says, “your mother’s down in the office and she needs to speak with you.”

It’s strange for my mother to show up in the middle of the day and call me out of class, but it never occurs to me that anything could have happened to my father. All the way down to the office, I’m thinking I’m in some kind of trouble, although I have no idea what it could be. The secretary doesn’t say a word, but she keeps looking at me out of the corner of her eye.

The second I see my mother’s face, her eyes swollen and red, I know. I end up on my knees, doubled over, screaming for CM. Some quick-thinking person shuts the door so the rest of the school won’t think I’m being beaten with a rubber hose, and they go to fetch CM from dance production. I hear her coming, bare feet slapping on the linoleum as she runs. She’s wearing a red leotard and black tights and she smells like the locker room. She drops to the floor, crying, too, and holding me, rocking me back and forth.

One of the secretaries throws a trench coat over CM, and she shrugs it off. The woman must think it’s slipping off by itself because she keeps pulling it back up. Finally, CM turns around, snatches the coat out of her hands, wads it up in a ball, and throws it on the floor, where I promptly vomit all over it.

The SuperShuttle lurches to a stop, waking me. Still half-asleep, I pay the driver and take my bag up to the porch. Before I can touch the doorknob, the door opens and my mother rushes out to hug me. It’s a bit overwhelming.

“Mom, hi. You look great. Your hair and everything.”

Her index finger smoothes the curve of her chin-length bob. “Thanks, honey. I decided the long hair looked kind of old-fashioned.” She doesn’t mention it, but the gray is gone, too. “I’m so glad you’re here. Where’s CM?”

“She couldn’t make it. They went into rehearsals for her big project yesterday. She sends her love.” I’d half-forgotten the reason for that sick feeling I had when I woke up in the van.

“Oh, that’s a shame. Run and take your bag upstairs. Your dress is on the bed.” She adds almost shyly, “I hope you like it.”

I run up the stairs, planning to dump my bag and come right back down, but the dress laid out on my bed stops me in midstep. It doesn’t look like anything my mother would have chosen. It’s the color of sunrise, a rosy-gold panne velvet that feels like water against my skin.

“Well?” She stands behind me.

“I love it. It’s beautiful.”

“Try it on,” she says. “I’ve been dying to see it on you.”

I pull off my cotton sweater and step out of my jeans. Even in my stockinged feet and with my hair in a ponytail, I feel as if the dress was made for me. It’s off the shoulders, and cut on the bias, making it cling and drape like liquid gold to the softly flared hem.