Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “Provisioning, man.” He leans his elbows on the table. “I’m meeting Duncan and Meeker in Spokane and we’re going up to do some ice in the North Cascades. Then, I don’t know, maybe head up to B.C. this summer. What are you doing here?”

  “I live here. Going on seven years.”

  Nick’s eyes slide briefly over to me, but he doesn’t ask. “Well, you’re looking mighty prosperous. What’s your gig?”

  “Tending bar, mostly.”

  Mac doesn’t ask what Nick’s into. Instead, for the next twenty minutes they sit around reminiscing like fraternity brothers at a reunion. And it quickly becomes clear that the fraternity they belong to is the brotherhood of rock climbing. They talk about people they’ve known. Lots of them have funny names, like Pooper or Sodbuster. I don’t think I want to know.

  At least one is no longer among the living.

  They relive tense moments at places called Wingate and Garden of the Gods and Lumpy Ridge, and the parties afterward. They laugh about somebody named Dude trying to talk a topless dancer into going rock climbing, and the time Charlie’s stove blew up on the miniscule ledge where he was bivouacked.

  The waiter comes out and asks if I’m through. I nod, but when he starts to pick up my plate, Nick eyes the uneaten half of my sandwich. “You mind?” he says rhetorically. He wolfs it down in three bites and sits contentedly picking turkey out of his teeth.

  Nick talks about climbing at the “Gunks,” whatever that is, and about a freak blizzard last June in the Wind River range. He says he’s more into alpining these days, likes ice, is thinking seriously about Alaska. Then he looks at Mac.

  “But what about you, pilgrim? You’re right here in the middle of hard-rock heaven. Where do you go? Leavenworth? Washington Pass? I heard Frenchman Coulee was awesome.”

  Mac looks across the street, then back at Nick. “I haven’t been on rock in a while. Not since I came here.”

  I can’t tell if Nick is surprised. He hesitates for a second. “Well, shit, McLeod. You need to get your ass back on the granite. Why don’t you take a few days this spring and hook up with us in the North Cascades? Wouldn’t that be a gas!” For some reason he looks at me. “Just like the old days.”

  Mac smiles. “Hard to get enough days off to make it worthwhile. You know how it is.”

  Hatcher gives an overly hearty laugh. “Yeah, that’s the trouble with real work. You gotta learn to say no to that shit. It’ll ruin your life if you let it.” He gets up abruptly and Mac does, too, and they shake hands again.

  “Where you working? I’ll stop by before I head out.”

  He scribbles down Mac’s directions to Bailey’s on a clean napkin, and then he shuffles off the way he was headed and I can breathe through my nose again.

  Mac picks up the book, and reads the same page for about five minutes before he finally looks over at me.

  “A blast from the past,” he says.

  “Way past. Like the cretaceous era,” I say. “You think he’s doing controlled substances?”

  He laughs. “Hard-core climbers tend to forget about the niceties of grooming. There’ve been times when I probably looked and smelled exactly like that.”

  “Like when you delivered my firewood.”

  He smiles and looks back at the book. He drinks some of his Coke, which by now sports a layer of melted ice on top. Finally he shuts the book and lays it on the table.

  “A bunch of us used to hang out together in Colorado. Seems like a long time ago. I guess it was. About ten years. We were all essentially ski bums in the winter, rock bums in the summer. We waited tables, did construction—whatever we had to do to eat, but mostly we just skied and climbed.”

  “So why haven’t you been rock climbing since you came here?”

  He slides the glass around in its puddle of condensation. “Because if I was still climbing, I’d probably look like Nick Hatcher. It’s not something you can do one weekend a month. Not the kind of climbing I liked. It becomes your life and you can’t do anything else. You’ve got to keep up the practice to stay sharp. And if you don’t stay sharp, someday you end up doing a free solo rappel.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A grounder.”

  “Oh.”

  February passes as one big, gray, wet blur. Every day is either cloudy or foggy or misty or pouring rain or some combination of the above. It doesn’t get light in the morning till eight or so and it’s dark by five. The only good thing about the weather is that it gives everybody something to talk about. I lose count of all the stories I hear that begin, You think this is bad, you should’ve been here in the winter of———. Fill in the blank with your year of choice.

  On the cusp of the month, Elizabeth calls. When she says, “Wynter, I have some news for you,” I know immediately that this isn’t the call I was hoping for.

  “David has apparently fired Ivan Hochnauer and hired a different attorney, a woman by the name of Adele King. I’ve spoken with her, and she will, of course, need some time to get up to speed with the case.”

  “How much is ‘some time’?”

  “I’d say we’re probably looking at two months before we can expect a settlement.”

  I want to lie down and kick my heels on the floor and scream. Instead, I say, “He’s doing this on purpose.”

  “Chances are good,” she says.

  “What can we do?”

  “Nothing at the moment. We have to allow her time to prepare. I’ll be in touch.”

  Poverty looms in my rearview mirror. And it’s gaining on me.

  By the end of March, the days are noticeably longer, and there are signs that spring might be circling for a landing. Crocuses and snow-drops push up through the dank black earth, yellow and purple and white. Pale green lanterns of hellebore glow in the deep shade. Airy yellow forsythia. The flowering cherry trees that line Queen Street shed their blossoms in drifts of white.

  Tulip trees are in full bloom. Ellen calls them magnolias, and technically they are. My father never liked them because they don’t look like much the rest of the year, but to me, they’re more than worth it for that brief interlude in spring when the creamy white or pale pink or deep pink blooms cover the bare branches, looking like a huge bouquet of tulips.

  One of the houses on Galer that I pass every morning has an arbor at the gate covered with early sweet peas in lilac and hot pink. I always slow down when I walk past, lingering in the heady scent.

  But the night wind is still cold and sharp and wet.

  Just a twinge. When I roll over it pulls me back toward consciousness, but not all the way. Must have been sleeping with my arm bent weird or something. At three-thirty in the afternoon I get up and shower, and while I’m brushing my teeth, it happens again. A tiny, darting pain in my right wrist, so quick and then gone. Maybe I imagined it.

  But I start tiptoeing around it anyway. I move my arm, hand, fingers deliberately and carefully. No sudden twists. It seems okay.

  I hear CM on the landing, fumbling with the keys, so I go to let her in, and when I turn the doorknob, my wrist buzzes me like an angry bee.

  She pushes past me, setting a cardboard carton full of dance shoes on the floor by the couch, shrugging out of her trench coat, hanging it on the brass hook behind the door. “Brrr. It’s getting cold out there. Shall I make a fire? What should we eat? Is Mac coming over?”

  I’m frowning at my wrist, rotating it, bending it back and forth. “No, he’s delivering wood and then going right to Bailey’s. We have some vegetable soup and I brought home a loaf of garlic-parmesan bread.”

  “What’s the matter with your hand?”

  “Nothing. I must’ve slept with it curled under.”

  “Try this. Elbow at your waist.” She shows me how to do a figure-eight rotation that makes the joint pop noisily. “There you go.”

  She builds a fire with scraps of newspaper and kindling, then goes to wash up while I turn the burner on under the soup pot and set the table. By the time
the soup’s hot, the fire is grazing on a large chunk of alder, and she’s filling our wineglasses. I pull the ladle off its hook and pick up the soup pot. Pain slashes at my arm, inner wrist to elbow.

  “Shit.”

  “What?” She looks up from the front page of the paper.

  “I don’t know. This hurts.”

  She brings our bowls over to the stove and holds my wrist, prodding it gently. “Does that hurt?”

  “No. It’s just when I pick up something heavy or twist it a certain way.”

  She takes the ladle from my left hand and fills both bowls. “What’s it feel like?”

  “Sharp. Shooting.”

  “Could be a touch of tendonitis.” She sets our bowls on the cork mats and we sit down. “Welcome to the wonderful world of physical labor.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Go to the drugstore and get yourself a wrist splint to wear at night. Beyond that, about the only things I know of are aspirin and rest.”

  “Rest? How am I going to make bread?”

  She grates some parmigiana into her soup and passes it to me. “That, I believe, is what apprentices are for.”

  At first Tyler doesn’t believe me.

  “You mean I’m doing it all?”

  “Every single, last loaf. I can help you with the mixing and scaling. Not too sure about loading and unloading, but I definitely won’t be doing any shaping or heavy lifting.”

  “What if I—what if we don’t get everything done?”

  “I think we’re going to assume that things have to slow down. Instead of making four kinds of bread a night, we’ll make two, just more loaves.”

  She looks dazed. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “No.”

  For the next three weeks, I teach her the way Jean-Marc taught me. How to judge the dough’s temperature, its plasticity, its wetness, its resistance. How to form the boules and bâtards, stretching the outside skin of the dough, creating the surface tension that forces it to rise up instead of just spreading out. How to make her touch firm but gentle, so as not to de-gas the loaf.

  Sometimes when I’m trying to explain these things to her, the image of him crystallizes in my mind. I can see his hands, encrusted with dough, his olive skin, the wiry black hair on his arms dusted with flour. It’s his voice that says, Non, non. Pas comme ça. This is bread, Wynter, not clay. It is alive. It talks to you. Écoutez!

  The memory is so clear that my breath stops for a split second.

  Tyler works at it with an intensity that surprises me, almost a fierceness. And she becomes very good very quickly.

  eight

  A bad marriage is like the psycho killer in a slasher flick. Just when you think it’s dead, it suddenly looms up in front of you, looking for blood. In the movies, you know it’s coming, and you keep thinking, No, no, no, do NOT go into that dark basement alone, you idiot. Unfortunately, in real life, somehow you lack this foresight.

  I’ve been trying not to think about the whole divorce thing—and doing a pretty good job of it, too—taking each day as it comes, trying to enjoy work, much easier since Tyler’s become proficient enough to be a real help. We’ve even sort of bonded, as bread bakers tend to do. The only nagging worry is money—or the lack of it. This is a new experience for me, this being adrift on a sea of debt—even if my main creditor is just my mother—having to watch every single penny. But whenever I complain, CM smiles and tells me it builds character.

  The last Thursday in April I come home from the library feeling pretty righteous because I’ve gotten some new books to read without spending any money. When I lay them on the desk, I see the light blinking on the answering machine. I hold my breath and press the play button. It’s Elizabeth. Her message is terse.

  Wynter, please call me at your earliest convenience.

  I tell myself it’s not necessarily bad news. That’s just the way she talks. I mean, the worst is over. Isn’t it? How bad could it be? But my stomach feels awash with hydrochloric acid as I dial her number. Her secretary puts me through right away—another bad sign.

  “Thanks for calling, Wynter. I wanted to advise you that your husband and his attorney have filed a motion to bifurcate, that is, to divide the marital-status issue from the other issues in contention, namely, the financial settlement. The hearing on the motion will be in two weeks.”

  This isn’t good, I’m fairly certain, but I’m not clear on exactly what it means. “What’s this about? Do I have to be there?”

  “No, you don’t have to be present. Briefly, it means that since the six-month waiting period for termination of marital status is up, the divorce decree can proceed. Without the financial settlement, from which it has been bifurcated.”

  “What?”

  “Essentially, David will be free to remarry and settle the financial issues separately at a later date.”

  I can’t think what to say because I’m trying to decide who to kill first.

  “Are you there, Wynter?”

  “Is there any chance the motion won’t be…approved?”

  “Hardly any. There would have to be some very strong reasons—”

  “Doesn’t the fact that he’s an asshole and he’s trying to screw me out of what’s rightfully mine count for anything?”

  “Um, probably not per se…”

  “I’m…I can’t believe it. Are you sure they can do this?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “But, it’s not fair!”

  Elizabeth wisely opts not to discuss that point. Oddly, my next thought is, how could this Adele King person do that to a co-woman? I feel utterly betrayed.

  “So…” I swallow. “What do we do? I mean…God. What do we do?” I feel like my legs have been shot off. I stop pacing and collapse on the couch.

  “His attorney has informed me that they want a full trial in front of the court to divide the assets. They’ve requested a trial date, but it will probably take six to ten months before we get to court.”

  It doesn’t seem worth repeating that this latest development is beyond belief.

  “Wynter, I’m sorry. I know this is disturbing news for you. But in my opinion, this maneuver is simply an attempt to discourage you and destroy your morale.”

  “Well, shit. I think it’s working.”

  “I know, but let’s consider this. If we have to go to court, it’s going to be very expensive for him, as well as for you. And depending upon who the judge is, he or she may not look favorably on some of the things David has done. I firmly believe your husband is aware of this, and I know Adele is. I don’t think they really intend to go to trial. But if they can make you feel like you’d rather just wash your hands of the whole thing than go through a trial, then it puts him in the stronger negotiating position. Are you with me?”

  “So what do we do?” I ask again. My lips feel numb.

  “My suggestion would be that we prepare to go to trial, but continue to try to negotiate a settlement. We have plenty of time to work it out, and I can’t see any reason to go to court. Does that sound reasonable to you?”

  I nod, forgetting that she can’t see me. “Okay.”

  “Good. Then try not to worry too much about this, and I’ll be in touch.”

  I’m standing in the bay window with the duck phone still in my hand when Mac walks in.

  “What’s wrong?” he says as soon as he sees me.

  He puts the phone back in its cradle, sits down on the couch, and tugs at my hand till I drop down beside him. I lean forward, elbows on knees, staring at the tops of my cross trainers.

  “I just talked to my lawyer. David has filed what they call a ‘motion to bifurcate.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means they’re going to separate the financial split from the divorce decree. It means no matter how long the financial agreement takes, he can go ahead and get divorced. He can go ahead and marry Kelley.” I hate the way my voice shakes.

  “Is that so bad?
Do you care if he marries her?”

  “You don’t understand. The divorce was my leverage.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Now he can marry her and it doesn’t matter how long the goddamn settlement takes, he has what he wants.”

  He starts making lazy circles on my back with the heel of his hand. It feels so good I can’t bear it.

  “I can’t believe this. I thought it was over.”

  “Is there any chance the motion won’t be granted?”

  “Not really.”

  “Do you think your lawyer’s doing her job?”

  “Who the hell knows with lawyers? Anyway, I’m not up to starting all over with another attorney.”

  “So what does she propose to do?”

  “She says it’s probably just a ploy. To make me want to give up. So he’d be in a stronger position to negotiate a settlement.” One tear breaks the surface tension and rolls down my face. He brushes it away, then licks his thumb. “She says we should prepare for a trial, but keep trying to work out a settlement.”

  “Sounds reasonable.” He props a cowboy boot up on his knee.

  “I know, it’s just…I thought it was over.”

  After another minute of silent back rubbing, he says, “I know what would make you feel better.”

  “So do I. A telegram saying that David Franklin has disappeared into a crevasse on the Mendenhall Glacier.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a couple of days on Orcas Island.”

  I look at him. “When?”

  “We could leave Saturday morning, as soon as you’re off, and come back Sunday afternoon. I know it’s kind of a quick turnaround, but Rick’s been wanting me to take a run up to Eastsound and check the cottage. I guess they’ve had a couple of hard rains and a good blow in the last two weeks. I thought if I went this weekend, you might keep me company. A return to the scene of the crime, so to speak.”

  Saturday morning I’m standing outside the bakery, CM’s gray overnight bag at my feet, holding two white bakery sacks and two lidded cups, when the Elky pulls up at the curb, gleaming like white porcelain.