Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  I don’t know whether I’m relieved or disappointed that I’ll be having Christmas alone with my mother and Richard.

  There’s a lengthy silence while I try to do the wine-connoisseur thing, swirling the wine in the glass so enthusiastically that it just misses sloshing over the rim. “So where are the parental units?”

  “In the wine cellar.”

  “Wine cellar?”

  “Otherwise known as the garage.” He smiles. “How’s Mac?”

  For a minute my brain stumbles. Then I recall their brief accidental meeting when I was post-op and confined to my house. But how did he know I was seeing Mac now?

  “That’s who you’re with, isn’t it? The guy I met at your house. The bartender.”

  Maybe I’m imagining the dismissive tone. “Don’t forget, he delivers firewood, too.”

  He gives me a careful look. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, it’s okay.” I take a big gulp of wine. “I’m just crabby and tired. I had to work all night and then get on the plane and—”

  “I remember.” He stirs the impaled olive around in his drink. It reminds me of the first time he came to Seattle. Drinking vodka martinis in the bar at Canlis. “Are you happy?”

  “Very.” It’s automatic and too bright. But what am I supposed to say—my boyfriend’s acting weird, my lawyer’s in Austria, and I can’t afford a pot to pee in, but other than that, everything’s dandy? “And you?”

  He smiles. “Yeah. The kids are great. I like us being a family again.”

  At that moment the back door opens and my mother appears, carrying a bottle of champagne. Richard follows with a bottle of red and one of white.

  “Hello, you two,” he says heartily. As if we were a couple. My mother smiles, but doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “Let’s go in by the fire,” she says. “I’ll bring the hors d’oeuvres. Does everyone have what they want to drink?”

  I want to stay in the kitchen with her, but she shoos me out, and I trail into the den just in time to see Richard lower himself into my father’s leather chair.

  Okay, fifteen Christmases have come and gone since he died, and yes, other people have sat there in the interim. But watching Richard claim it now, not thinking—maybe not even knowing—sends a tiny jab under my ribs. I sit down on the opposite end of the couch from Gary.

  My mother appears moments later with a silver tray of crostini. They’re hot and crisp, rubbed with garlic, brushed with olive oil, and topped with a bare sprinkling of sea salt. This from the woman who once served pitted black olives and Smokehouse almonds before all but the most elaborate dinners.

  “Merry Christmas, everyone.” Richard lifts his fishbowl-sized goblet of red.

  Gary tells us about the growing pains of his valet-parking company, Katie’s grades—straight As, naturally—Andrew’s swimming prowess and how he’s decided he wants to be called Drew, and Erica’s workload at law school, more than I ever wanted to know. Richard and my mother listen raptly. All I can think of is how much I don’t want to be here.

  I picture Mac, standing behind the bar at Bailey’s, shirtsleeves rolled up, towel in his back pocket. The way he looks at me sometimes when he thinks I’m submerged in my book. Sort of a pensive look. As if he’s wondering how all this happened with us and what I really want from him.

  I used to watch the women flirt with him, before. I’m sure a lot of them still do when I’m not there. A couple of the more brazen ones don’t care whether I’m there or not. I think about being in his bed, the way he smells like pine trees, the salt on his skin. Before I can stop the thought, I’m imagining someone else with him. Of course he’d be honest with her, tell her about me—he’s big on people making informed choices. But would he tell me, so I could make an informed choice? He doesn’t really tell me much of anything. Okay, we have conversations. I tell him what I think and how I feel, and he tells me about dark matter and pygmy owls and the geology of the Grand Canyon.

  Lately I find myself reflecting him, telling him less about how I feel and what I think, more about things I’ve read or seen. So in the relationship—oops, can’t use the r word, he doesn’t like it. I asked him what we should call it then, and he said, Why do we have to call it anything? Can’t we just be?—so in this being that we’re doing here, he really hasn’t changed, but I have. I’ve come full circle from being a stranger to being an intimate, and back to being a stranger. While he’s always been a stranger. And why do I suspect him of seeing other women? He’s never given me any reason to think that.

  Ironic that David was practically wearing a sandwich board that said I’m cheating! and I never suspected, but Mac seems reasonably committed—oops, bad word number two—and I’m always expecting Laura, his old girlfriend, to pop up. Or somebody new. Somebody I don’t know about yet.

  For dinner there’s baked chicken and acorn squash and my mother’s homemade applesauce. Then salad with bread and cheese, and having the salad afterward reminds me of my mother’s friend Georgia Graebel, who always gets such a charge out of “eating French.”

  “How are Georgia and Tim?” I ask my mother, and the look on her face is somewhere between amused and perplexed.

  “Funny you should ask,” she says. “Georgia called me last week to tell me they’re splitting up.”

  I nearly inhale a piece of romaine. “What?”

  Georgia’s husband, Tim, who worked with my father, is an inveterate womanizer. In fact, he holds the distinction of being the only man to ever hit on both me and my mother. Georgia’s known about his extracurricular activities for years, but she seemed to have perfected the art of turning a blind eye.

  “So is he leaving her for some nineteen-year-old in a fishnet jumpsuit, or did she get fed up and kick him out?”

  I can tell my mother wants to smile, but thinks she shouldn’t. “Neither, actually. Georgia met a man—a retired English professor—at her literacy program. They fell in love and she’s divorcing Tim and marrying Phillip.”

  I let out a very undignified whoop. “Wow, there is a god. And she’s a woman.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Gary was coming?” I hiss at my mother as soon as the kitchen door closes behind us.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she says simply.

  “Oh, Mom.” I open the dishwasher. “How could you think that?”

  She sets the dessert plates, still streaked with orange sauce, into the sink and turns on the water. “I know it’s not a lot of fun for you coming back here. I know how much you still miss your dad. And I’m sure you’d rather be with Mac than sitting around listening to Gary drone on about valet parking…” She rolls her eyes and we both giggle.

  She starts rinsing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher while I pour some more wine in my glass.

  “Want some?” I hold up the bottle.

  “No thanks—oh, what the hell. Hit me—or however they say it.” She fills a bowl with soapy water and begins to wash the sterling flat ware. I open a drawer. Slam it shut, open another.

  “Damnit, I can’t find anything around here anymore. Where are the towels?”

  She laughs. “I know. Richard’s terrible about rearranging things. If it’s this bad now, I can imagine what it’s going to be like when he retires.”

  When I pull open the bottom drawer and yank out a towel, something heavy clunks. My oma’s rolling pin. I lift it out and run my hand down the satiny maple. Traces of flour from a long-ago piecrust linger in a hairline crack.

  “I think my pie-baking days are over. Why don’t you take it with you?” My mother smiles.

  “Thanks. I will.” I put my arm around her shoulders for a second.

  She rinses each piece of silver in scalding-hot water, so hot I can barely hold it even with the towel. My oma used to do the same thing, to kill all the germs, she always said. I dry each piece, polishing it with the flour-sack dish towel, and laying it on the table to be returned to the flannel-lined box.

  She r
inses the last of the silver, then starts on the crystal water goblets. “I was going to tell you about Gary when I went up to wake you. I didn’t mean for it to be a shock.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a shock. It was just kind of weird. Like déjà vu.”

  She nods and moves things around in the drainer to make room for more crystal. “He looks good. I guess he and Erica are happy.”

  “Whatever.”

  “He sure seemed crazy about you for a while there.” She gives me an analytical glance.

  I shrug. “I think he was just lonely. He was mostly crazy about the nuclear-family lifestyle.”

  “It’s not such a terrible fate, you know.” She empties the soapy water, rinses the bowl, and sets it upside down in the drainer. Steam rises to fog the cold window. “Just leave that, honey.” She pulls off her yellow dishwashing gloves, lays them over the faucet, and dusts her hands together in exaggerated Western style. “Well, Tonto, it looks like our work here is done.”

  I laugh and start for the door, but she picks up the decanter of red wine and refills both our glasses. Then she sits down at the kitchen table.

  “Don’t you want to go out there with—” I begin.

  “They can entertain themselves.” She flashes a mischievous smile. “I don’t think I can take any more cheerleader stories tonight.”

  I sit down across from her and ease my feet out of my shoes.

  “Now don’t be mad at me, I have to ask.” She touches my hand with her warm, smooth fingers. “Does Mac make you happy? Is he good to you? Because if he’s not, I’m going to fly up there and punch him in the nose.”

  Sudden tears sting my eyes. I’m not sure if it’s this vaguely unsettled feeling I have about Mac, or her earnest protectiveness.

  Is he good to me? I’ve never even thought about him in those terms. He’s not bad to me.

  I take a slow sip of wine. “Do you think it’s worth it?”

  She doesn’t question what I’m asking about. “Oh, honey. Worth is such a relative thing. Sometimes you want something so badly that whether it’s worth it or not doesn’t matter.”

  “Was it like that with Daddy?”

  “I just remember thinking that I could be completely ruthless. That I’d do anything it took to hold on. Was it worth it? I think so, but you never know for sure.”

  “Mac is very…self-contained. We can have these great, long conversations about ideas and books and music, and afterward…” I hesitate. “I sometimes feel like I was doing most of the—I guess I feel like I’m showing myself to him, and he doesn’t reciprocate.”

  She frowns. “Do you know anything about his childhood or his parents or—”

  “His father’s dead. He doesn’t communicate with his mother or brother.”

  “At all?”

  “As far as I can tell. He doesn’t talk about that—his family. If I ask him a direct question, he’ll answer it as briefly as possible, and then go right on to something else.”

  “Wyn, are you sure he’s…okay? There’s a lot of wackos out there.”

  I laugh. “He’s not a wacko. I think you’d like him. He’s got this stillness inside. The way he can watch the ocean. Or listen to a song. As if nothing else exists. He doesn’t just look at things; he really sees them.”

  My voice trails off and she sits back in the chair and looks at me.

  “It sounds like that self-contained quality is the good news and the bad news.”

  “Sometimes it bothers me that he never has any money, and that he doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t do the things most women expect. Like take me out for my birthday or call me and say he’s thinking about me. But on the other hand, he never wants me to be anything other than what I am. I never feel like I have to prove anything to him. I don’t need to perform.”

  “Do you love him?”

  I set down my glass. “I know it’s too soon.”

  “These things don’t always occur according to schedules.”

  “All I know is, when we’re together, I just…feel good. So good it’s scary.”

  My mother smiles at me, crinkling the corners of her pretty brown eyes. “Life is scary, Wyn,” she says. “If it’s not, you’re not doing it right.”

  Christmas morning. The clock says 5:20 A.M. I wish I was home. In Seattle, sleeping late, having cardamom coffee cake with CM, opening presents. Knowing I’d see Mac later, even though we wouldn’t do the Christmas thing.

  I slide out of bed. The house feels cold, so I pull on my sweats, stuff my feet into the big, fuzzy slippers that somehow escaped Richard’s purge, and move soundlessly out onto the landing and down the stairs. They don’t have an espresso maker, or even a stove-top espresso pot, but I can make the coffee extra muscular and heat up some milk. Hopefully they have real milk or, even better, half-and-half.

  As I’m shuffling past the den, I’m startled to see a light under the door. I push the door and peer around it as it swings halfway open.

  The hundreds of white twinkle lights on the tree are the room’s only illumination. Richard is sitting on the floor, taking things out of a large box. His back is to me, so he can’t see me, and I can’t see exactly what he’s doing. It feels awkward, sneaking up on him like this, so I pull the door almost shut and continue on to the kitchen.

  My mother’s automatic coffeemaker never gets the water hot enough for a proper brew, so I search in every cupboard till I find the old Melitta drip coffeepot that my father always used. No filters, of course, because the automatic one has a permanent filter. A paper towel will work. I fill the teakettle and set it on the stove, switch the setting on the grinder, and locate the coffee beans. Decaf? How am I supposed to stay awake till dinner? In the fridge there’s skim milk and whipping cream. I can mix the two…

  My oma’s rolling pin is still on the table where I left it last night. I pick it up, stroke the fine grain. With all due respect to Lord Byron, I’ve always believed that much depends on breakfast. I open the pantry for a quick survey.

  Flour, sugar, baking powder, salt. A bag of hazelnuts from Trader Joe’s.

  Cappuccino Hazelnut Scones

  2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

  1/3 cup granulated sugar

  1 tablespoon baking powder

  ½ teaspoon salt

  ¼ teaspoon cinnamon 3 ounces (6 tablespoons) butter, very cold, cut into small cubes

  ¾ cup toasted, coarsely chopped hazelnuts

  2 tablespoons instant espresso powder

  ¾ cup heavy cream

  1 large egg, lightly beaten

  Cream and sugar for glaze

  Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a heavy baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together the first five ingredients. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender, two table knives, or your fingertips until the largest pieces are about the size of peas. Add the hazelnuts and toss to combine.

  In a small bowl, stir the espresso powder into the cream until dissolved, add the egg just to blend. Add all at once to the flour mixture and stir with a large fork, until just barely combined. Finish by kneading gently with your hands until all the dry ingredients are absorbed and the dough can be gathered into a moist, shaggy ball. Do not overknead. Tenderness comes from minimal handling.

  Set the ball in the center of the prepared baking sheet and pat gently into a round about 1 to 1½ inches thick and about 7 inches in diameter. With a sharp knife, cut into eight wedges, and gently separate slightly. Brush generously with cream and sprinkle with 1 to 2 teaspoons of granulated sugar.

  Bake until the scones are deep golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 18 to 22 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes before serving. (These can be frozen, unbaked, and baked without thawing; just allow 5 to 10 extra minutes of baking time.)

  I turn the oven on and pour some hazelnuts into a shallow pan. I take my mother’s chef’s knife out of the knife block and start cutting the cube of butter into small chunks. While I’m whisking the dry ingred
ients together, the swinging door snaps open. “Wyn. I didn’t realize you were up, too. Merry Christmas.”

  Richard is wearing a plaid flannel bathrobe and leather slippers. His dark hair is perfectly groomed, but he’s unshaven and looks tired. The thought freezes me. If my father were alive, he would be sixty-one now. He would look like this, not the way I remember him—forty-five, tall, tan, and pulsing with energy.

  Richard takes in the Melitta, my cup, then the automatic. “Is there something wrong with the coffeemaker?”

  I smile politely. “Only that it doesn’t make good coffee.”

  “Oh. Sorry. You probably don’t drink decaf, either. I think your mother got some regular for you—”

  “This is fine, honestly. Would you like some?”

  “That sounds great. What are you making?”

  “Scones.”

  “I love scones. I’m not supposed to eat them right now, but I think one on Christmas morning probably won’t hurt. What do you think?” He gives me a conspiratorial smile.

  Swell. If I don’t think he should eat one, I’ll look mean and selfish, and if I do think so, it’ll look like I’m trying to kill him. “I think…” I fumble for words. “I think pretty much anything is okay in moderation.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  An awkward silence fills the kitchen. I have no idea what to say to this man who is now my stepfather. And he apparently doesn’t know what to say to me, either.

  He goes first.

  “Johanna’s told me how close you were to your dad.”

  “Yes. I was.” I wish he’d just go back to whatever he was doing and leave me alone. He pours nonfat milk in his coffee cup and nukes it for a few seconds before pouring in the coffee.

  “I hate putting cold milk in coffee,” he says.

  “Yeah, me, too.” I push the butter off the knife into a small dish and put it in the freezer.