Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  She props her elbows on the table, rests her chin in her hands, looks through her fingers splayed out across her face like prison bars. She breathes in, then out. “And then yesterday afternoon, Maggie did this half sheet for a retirement party, with a picture of the guy on it—it was amazing. Looked like a painting—”

  “I’d love to watch her do that sometime.”

  “Try to do it when Tyler’s not around. So anyway, she puts this cake in the refrigerator, and when Tyler goes to get buttercream, she drops a container of sour cream off the top shelf—”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Right in the middle. Like target practice. Two hours before the woman was coming to pick it up.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Maggie had to do another cake, but it wasn’t what they ordered, so I didn’t feel we could charge them for it. The woman was pretty understanding, considering the circumstances, but still, that’s two cakes down the drain.”

  We look at each other.

  “Do you think she did it deliberately?”

  She shrugs. “If I knew that she did, I’d have to fire her. Which I really don’t want to do. She made a pretty good show of apologizing, but…This has never happened before in all my years at the bakery. We’ve had people who weren’t crazy about each other, but nothing so intense that they couldn’t work together. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Well, I know one thing you should do. Take a long weekend off. You look like shit.”

  She laughs ruefully. “Why, thank you, my dear. I sort of feel like shit. But I can’t take a long weekend.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m afraid those two might kill each other if there’s nobody standing between them.”

  “I’ll stand between them.”

  She pats my hand. “Thanks, but I can’t ask you to do that. Not after working all night.”

  “I won’t work all night. Linda would be the first to tell you she can do the bread by herself. And it’s just Friday night. I’ll come in Friday morning, and Maggie’s off Saturday. They’re both off Sunday. Tyler’s off Monday and you’re back on Tuesday.”

  “Are you sure?” She looks hopeful and doubtful at the same time.

  “Of course. Piece of cake.” No reaction. “Cake, get it?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay, I’m going. It’s too late to change your mind. Oh, and don’t forget to take the bank deposit Friday afternoon.”

  Thank God I don’t work days.

  You can’t even hear the music over the register ringing, the espresso maker blowing steam, people talking, cups and dishes rattling. Not to mention the blender. Whoever invented those damned blended drinks should be stood up against the wall and shot.

  Maggie strolls in at seven A.M. Friday, two hours before her shift, carrying two giant shopping bags that she proceeds to unload in the back. She gives me an ingratiating smile.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I’m here early. I won’t start till nine, but I wanted to bring in these display items.”

  From the bag she produces four beautiful willow baskets, a metal bowl and small platter painted in the tole style with fruit and flowers, and a gorgeous burl-wood box. It’s an antique tea caddy, she says. By this time everyone in back has gathered around. Tyler is out front, doggedly pulling espresso for a couple of early birds. The sight of her trying not to look the slightest bit interested tugs at me.

  “We just redesigned Tony’s—my husband’s—restaurant,” she adds, just in case anybody’s been vacationing on Pluto for the last three weeks. “I did the whole thing in a Moroccan-Gothic-Spanish pastiche—lots of dark, carved wood, wrought iron, mosaic tiles—it’s wonderful. Incredibly evocative. Anyway, he was going to pitch these things, but I said, oh no, Tony, let me take them to the bakery. They could use some display items.” She looks at me again, a little more tentatively. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Much as I hate to admit it, she has a point. The place is pretty funky, but on the other hand, it’s always been this way, and people on the hill seem to like it fine. “You do understand we can’t pay you for—”

  “Oh, no, I never meant—I just wanted to do it. I think it would perk up the place. The display of our product is such an important part of our marketing strategy—it’s not that the bakery looks bad, of course. I just thought…”

  “Well…Go ahead, and we’ll have a look. Let’s just get it done before it gets too busy.”

  Almost before I’ve finished the sentence, she’s buzzing around arranging scones in two of the baskets, cinnamon rolls and morning buns in the other two, muffins in the metal bowl and on the platter, biscotti in the tea caddy. She rearranges the flowers that Ellen brought in before she left, cutting the sunflower stems down really short and putting them in a fat little butter crock on the case.

  When she’s finished, I have to admit everything looks more…picturesque, I guess. In a Martha Stewart kind of way. Jen and Misha are suitably impressed, and even a few of the customers notice.

  At a quarter till nine, Myra, who owns Myra’s Beauty Boutique next door, appears with her giant coffee mug. For a few seconds she surveys the room, threading her manicured nails through her long, auburn hair. Of course it’s not really auburn; but then I’ve never been sure what her natural color is. It changes with her moods, from sassy blond to exotic blue-black.

  She makes the mistake of saying to Tyler, “Hey, you guys dressed the place up. It looks cozy.”

  For her trouble, she gets the evil eye and a terse, “Yeah, just like a Bellevue fern bar.”

  Since it’s Friday, the Mazurka mavens arrive at noon, adding their two cents’ worth to the mix. “So Darlene says, personally I think Henry is a little bit passive-aggressive, if you get my drift, and I just go, not that it’s any of your business. And then she says…”

  By one o’clock I have a splitting headache. Not to mention that I’m exhausted because I couldn’t sleep last night. After I initial the time cards, hand out the paychecks, count the money, and fill out the deposit slips, I can’t wait to get away. I feel only semi-guilty leaving before clean up—not bad enough to hang around, and I’m happy for the excuse of going to the bank. How does Ellen stand it?

  Saturday morning I’m wide awake at five, so I get dressed and go in.

  “Must be nice working daytimes like regular people,” Linda sniffs.

  “You know you’d hate having to work with all those people.”

  For once, she agrees with me. “Yeah. Like those Mazurka morons. You should’ve seen this place when I got here. Crumbs everywhere. Dirty whisks and knives put back with the clean ones. Sticky stuff all over the floor.” She laughs her nasty little laugh. “Those silly twits wouldn’t last five minutes with me around.”

  “And neither would our customers,” I mutter.

  “What?”

  “I said, why don’t you go ahead and leave. I’ll take care of cleanup.”

  I’m standing at the deep sink with a few leftover pale gray suds floating on top of the dirty water when Tyler knocks at the door.

  “Hey, Tyler, how’s it going?”

  “Just frigging wonderful.” She pushes past me, pulls an apron off the stack, and slips it over her head. It falls almost to her ankles.

  “I think that’s one of those super-long ones,” I say. “Why don’t we find you a smaller one?”

  “This is fine.” She picks up a tray of muffins and carries it out to the front. I tag along with a pan of scones, and watch as she slides the tray into the open case.

  “Why don’t you put those in the metal bowl?”

  She stands perfectly still for a minute. I can tell she’s contemplating telling me where to stick the muffins. Finally she pulls the tray out, tilts it over the bowl so the muffins slide in like a pile of rocks, sets it on top of the case, and turns a level gaze to me, daring me to say something. I think I should be pissed off, but she looks like one of those awful paintings on velvet, the little kids with the huge, sad eyes an
d a gleaming teardrop on their faces.

  “We can’t put them out like that,” I say.

  “Yeah. Well, too bad Miss Spanish-Morrocan-Gothic-Pastiche isn’t here to fix all my fuckups.”

  “Tyler, I want you to put it on cruise control today. Maggie’s not here, so just relax. Okay?”

  She shrugs. “Whatever.” Her eyes darken, and I think she’s about to say something else, but there’s a knock on the door and she goes to let Misha in.

  Rose comes in next, our weekend-mornings reinforcement. She’s a freshman at UW on full academic scholarship, living at home with her folks on Eighth Street, and she’s a fresh-faced Alice-in-Wonderland look-alike. With two of her, we could probably dispense with everyone else. She smiles a lot, is a math whiz, and never forgets who ordered what or how much it costs. Normally she just takes orders and presides at the cash register, but in a pinch she’s fully capable of making a latte, busing tables, refilling the sugars, half-and-half pitcher, cocoa and cinnamon shakers, even replenishing the trays and baskets of baked goods. The best part is, she doesn’t have to be told what a pinch feels like.

  By eight-thirty we’re in full crunch mode. Mrs. Gunnerson, who I think must be the oldest living person on Queen Anne Hill, has already made her weekly appearance. She comes in every Saturday morning, always wearing the same black knit pants, blinding fuchsia blouse, and mustard-colored sweater under her green raincoat. Her thin white hair stands up on top of her head in a little topknot, so that she looks sort of like a very colorful candle.

  She spends at least ten minutes looking at everything in the case, asking what’s in it, and then she says, “Don’t you have any doughnuts?”

  Every Saturday Rose explains that no, we don’t make doughnuts, but how about a nice blueberry muffin instead? Mrs. Gunnerson always says, “You girls really should learn how to make doughnuts,” but she takes one of the muffins and a cup of hot water and goes to her table by the window—and God help any unsuspecting newcomer who might be seated at her table—and she opens her cavernous black purse and extracts a Constant Comment tea bag and enjoys her breakfast.

  This morning Delia Rae Johnson, also a longtime regular, although not nearly as old as Mrs. Gunnerson, informs me in a stage whisper that the toilet’s broken, so I have to leave the counter for a quick inspection. To my immense relief, the problem is simply a broken lift chain. Since moving into CM’s old apartment with its persnickety antique toilet, I’ve become one of the country’s foremost experts on futzing with toilet lift chains.

  The problem with this one is, the break is one of the middle links, which means both pieces of the chain are too short to reach from flapper to trip lever. They have to be reconnected somehow. When I go back to the register to get a paper clip, a blond woman in a hot-pink sweatshirt and jeans is talking earnestly to Rose, and I notice the traffic jam of customers backing up out the door.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Rose is saying, “I don’t have anything under that name. Could it be under a different name?”

  The woman crosses her arms. “Now why would I put it under anyone’s name but my own?”

  When Rose sees me, she gives me a nervous smile. “Wyn, could you maybe help me for a second?”

  “Sure. What’s the problem?”

  Before Rose can say anything, the woman blurts out, “The problem is, you’ve lost my son’s birthday cake. Seven-year-olds don’t understand that sort of thing very well.”

  I want to say, Neither do twenty-seven-year-olds, but instead I give her what I hope is a reassuring smile. “I’m sure it’s in the back. It was probably moved to a different cooler—”

  “Wyn.” It’s Delia Rae again. “Honey, I know you’re busy, but my mother-in-law is about to go right through her Depends. Is the toilet fixed yet?”

  “Give me two minutes, Delia. I’m just getting a paper clip—”

  “A paper clip?” She shakes her hennaed hair. “Honey, this is more urgent than your paperwork. She needs to use the facilities.”

  “The paper clip is to fix the toilet chain, Delia—”

  “My son’s party is at eleven-thirty,” the blond woman says. “I have to pick up the balloons, and the bouncing-castle guy is coming at ten-thirty, and I need to get the cake—”

  “I will fix the toilet!” I announce. My words reverberate in the hush because everyone in the bakery has stopped talking to try to hear what’s happening at the register. I lower my voice. “And then I’ll be right back to find your son’s cake. What name is it under?”

  “His name is Leigh Adams. That’s L-e-i-g-h, not L-e-e. But my name is Ann Carpenter. I’ve remarried and—”

  Rather than wait for the entire rehash of All My Children, I bolt for the bathroom.

  Five minutes later Delia’s mother-in-law is barricaded in our bathroom and Tyler and I are ransacking the coolers in back for any trace of a Power Rangers cake. To no avail.

  Ann Carpenter is trying to look calm while shifting her weight from one foot to the other in front of the cash register.

  “Mrs. Carpenter,” I begin.

  “Ms. Carpenter. When I divorced Charlie Adams, I took back my maiden name. Where is the cake?”

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t find—”

  Her eyes close. “Oh God, no. You can’t do this. My husband wanted to get the cake at Thriftway, but I said, no, we’ll get it at Queen Street. Theirs are the best, and they’re so dependable. That’s exactly what I said. ‘So dependable.’ What am I supposed to do now?”

  “Ms. Carpenter, I know we have a time problem here, so here’s what I suggest. If you want one of our regular cakes, I can have our cake dec—er—design person do some birthday decoration on it, no charge, of course. Or if you want to buy a ready-made cake at”—I swallow hard—“the grocery store or any other bakery, we’ll be glad to reimbu—”

  “But it won’t be Power Rangers.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “I’m so sorry. I feel terrible.”

  “Not nearly as terrible as my son’s going to feel when I tell him he can’t have his Power Rangers cake. I mean, he’s been talking about it for—”

  “Mrs. Carpenter, if you want one of our cakes, I should get Tyler working on it right away. It should only take her about thirty minutes or so, max.”

  “I don’t have time to be running back over here because you lost my order. I’ve got a herd of seven-year-olds showing up at my house in three hours.”

  “I will personally deliver the cake if you’ll just leave me your address and phone number.”

  “I gave all that information to the woman who took my order.”

  “Yes, well, the problem is, we have no record of the order. Do you remember who you spoke to?”

  “Her name was Maggie. She said she specialized in children’s birthday cakes. We had a long discussion about which theme Leigh would like and she even suggested the Power Rangers.”

  “Okay. I’ll be sure and talk to her about this. She’s not here today—”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you remember what day you ordered the cake?”

  “Not really. I mean, the last couple of weeks have been crazy.”

  “I’m sure. Well, if you’ll just write your address and phone number on this piece of paper, I’ll go get Tyler started on the cake.”

  By the time we close at three P.M. on Saturday, the night shift with Linda is starting to look like a pretty cushy berth.

  Everyone, myself most especially, is happy when Ellen comes back from Whidbey looking as relaxed and contented as a honeymooner. That warm, fuzzy feeling lasts until I have to tell her about the case of the missing Power Rangers cake. She confronts Maggie, who flatly denies ever having talked to Ann Carpenter or anyone else about a Power Rangers cake. Ellen sifts through all the back orders on the weekly clipboard and she and I go through the files. Jen and Misha move the desk and crawl around looking for that stray cakeorder form that s
urely fell on the floor and got scrunched against the wall.

  Through it all, Tyler shows admirable restraint. No gloating or finger-pointing. No whispering that she told us Maggie would be a problem. She quietly and efficiently goes about her work.

  On Friday morning when Ellen comes in, she makes our espressos wordlessly, then motions me to sit down with her. “I sent Tyler home yesterday. She’s officially suspended for three days without pay.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Ann Carpenter called yesterday. She actually called to say thanks for the way you handled the mix-up. But she happened to mention that she looked on her calendar and saw the note from the day she ordered the cake. It was the twenty-third. Which was a Saturday. Maggie doesn’t work on Saturday…”

  “But Tyler does.”

  She nods. “Yep.”

  “What did she say when you asked her about it?”

  “She denied everything. You know, righteous indignation, persecution of the martyr, et cetera. I don’t know what to do about her.” She wipes her hands on her black knit pants.

  “Well, at least we know now why certain species eat their young.”

  “I hate to let her go, but we can’t be looking over her shoulder every minute.”

  “She’s been here what—two years?”

  “Almost. We got her through a friend of mine who’s a guidance counselor at Queen Anne High. Her mother left the family—Tyler and her sister, Tate, and their dad. Decided she didn’t want to do the domestic thing anymore. I think she went back to school or something. In Wyoming. Or was it Montana?”

  She gets up and slits open a new bag of espresso beans and empties it into the grinder.

  “Tyler and Tate—kind of interesting names to give your daughters.”

  “Anyway, Tyler was a cheerleader and honor student, but she quit all her activities, her grades were slipping, and she was hanging with a bad crowd. Fortunately, Sandra was able to get her into a work-study program and she graduated last June by the skin of her teeth. She’s been full-time since then, and she’s a good worker. I really like her, but she has all these issues.”