Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  He puts his arm across my shoulders and pulls me closer. We’ve hardly exchanged half a dozen sentences since we left Kenny and Roz. Actually, since we left Bailey’s last night. Now I’m wondering what he’s thinking, he’s wondering what I’m thinking—or not.

  He hangs over the rail, staring down at the water, while I lean my back against it, watching a group of teenage girls pretend they’re not watching a group of teenage boys.

  “Mac…”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you send the manuscript to any other agents?”

  The silence becomes even more silent. Then he says, “One.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “Her.”

  “Whatever. Have you heard anything?”

  “No.” Pause. “I’m sort of hungry. How are we fixed for lunch money?”

  Anger rises in my throat. I want to shake him, and I would if I thought it would make any difference. I push myself off the rail and start to walk away, but he takes my arm and pulls me back, holding me. “I’m sorry. Look, I know you’re trying to help. But I just can’t—”

  One long and two short blasts of the ferry’s horn signal our arrival and the end of the conversation. We merge with the crowd moving down the ramp to the terminal. At Winslow Way we turn left, passing the first small shops, the carts selling ice cream and espresso.

  First stop, as always, is Eagle Harbor Books. We browse the new fiction shelves and Mac buys a softcover copy of Shout!, a history of the Beatles that he finds on a bargain table. I purposely left my credit card at home so I couldn’t buy anything, but by fishing out dollar bills and foraging for quarters in the pockets of our jackets and jeans, we come up with enough to have lunch at the Streamliner Diner.

  He leans back as the waitress sets down our food. His eyes go from the plate to me, then out the window, then back to the plate. He waits till I have a mouthful of grilled cheese, and then he says, “I’m going to Alaska on Wednesday.” In the tone of voice you might use for mentioning that you have a dentist appointment or the car needs new shocks.

  The melted cheese seems to congeal, gluing my mouth shut. A coldness floods my chest, and my heart sinks into it. I swallow.

  “You mean Wednesday as in next Wednesday?”

  Understanding comes in a rush. All the work he had done on the truck. The new tapes he’s been making. The new credit card. And, yes, even the trip to Orcas. It wasn’t about making me feel better. It was about making him feel less guilty.

  My eyes are approaching dangerously high levels of saltwater. I look off to the side so it won’t be obvious, but I feel my chin tremble. I swallow very big and realize he’s still talking.

  “I was going to tell you when we went to Orcas, but then you wanted to know all about Kevin…”

  Right. So it’s my fault that I’m just finding out three days before blastoff. In the middle of the Streamliner Diner. I grope for my purse like a blind person, still not looking at him, and when I feel the worn leather strap in my palm, I stand up. I can’t breathe. If I don’t get outside right now, I might implode.

  “Wyn, wait a minute…”

  His voice submerges in the noise of other conversations, silverware clanking against plates, plastic glasses tapping against worn Formica, the scrape of chairs and the squeak of waitresses’ rubber-soled shoes.

  Halfway to the door I remember that I have the money for lunch. I dig in the purse for my wallet, turn, and throw it at him. I hear the thwack as it hits something—maybe his hand—and the coin compartment opens, sending change rolling and bouncing all over the linoleum floor. There’s a momentary lull in the noise of the room, and I remember the first night at his apartment, how the change from his pockets went rolling all over the floor.

  The door bangs shut behind me. I turn right, walking briskly down the street that runs along the side of the diner to a little park on the water. I’m sucking in air as if I were drowning. The lump is gone from my throat; now it’s resting under my breastbone, painful and dense. I sit down on a vacant picnic table with my feet on the bench. There are people all around—kids with their jeans rolled up, shrieking in the icy chill of the shallow water, couples drinking coffee out of Starbucks cups, a white-haired woman dozing over an open book. But they’re all background, like television with the sound turned off.

  A Sunfish tacks across the cove, trying to sail into the wind—I think it’s called a close haul. She’s beating back and forth across the water, not making much headway. I know just how that feels.

  He sits down next to me and puts a paper bag on the table. “It’s not you. It’s me.” He hands me my wallet.

  “Do they have seminars for this? Breaking up 101? Is that where you guys learn all these great lines?”

  “Don’t get dramatic. We’re not breaking up. This is just something I need to do.”

  “Right. The old Babe-I-gotta-leave-you-the-highway’s-calling-bullshit-blues.” When I look at him, I can hardly see him, the sun is in my eyes. “Would you please go away now?”

  “Wyn…” He puts his hand on my shoulder, but I shrug it off.

  “I want you to get away from me. Please. Now.”

  He sighs. “I’ll call you later.” He turns and walks back up to the street, boots crunching in the sand and gravel. I sit there for a long time, watching the sailboat.

  When I get back to the apartment, CM’s sprawled on the couch with a pile of Dance! magazines on her stomach. She looks up when I shut the door.

  “What’s up?”

  I take off my jacket and drape it over the back of a dining-room chair. “Mac’s going to Alaska.”

  She licks her thumb and flips a few pages, frowning. “When?”

  “Wednesday.”

  All in one graceful motion she sits up, letting the magazines slide onto the couch, pivots her perfect buns, and puts her feet on the floor. “You mean like…this Wednesday?”

  I sit down next to her and slouch back against the cushions. “Does it ever seem to you like it’s just one big, revolving door? And if someone’s trajectory happens to coincide with yours, you get to go around a few times together before they go spinning off one way and you go hurtling off somewhere else?”

  “Yeah, sometimes it does.” She pats my knee. “But, honestly? I don’t think this is one of those times.”

  “I don’t know. It kinda looks like the ride into the sunset to me.” I stare out the window. “I wish I was more like you.”

  She laughs. “No kidding. From my perspective, any guy who can do intelligent conversation, not bore me with his life story, make incredible love to me till I yodel, and then disappear for a few months would be just about perfect.”

  “I think I knew it was coming, and I kept acting like it wasn’t.”

  “Would you really have done anything differently?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. I’m such a masochist.”

  “Take a deep breath and relax.”

  I take a deep breath, but I can’t relax.

  When she stretches her arms up to the ceiling, she looks like a Modigliani woman, tall and lithe. “I’m going to go get the car washed and buy some groceries. Want to come with?”

  I get up and move over to the window seat, letting my eyes find the blue water. “Thanks, but I think I’ll just stay here and sulk.”

  I watch the sun drop behind the jagged purple ridge of the Olympics, ferryboat lights twinkling in the rosy dusk. I keep hoping I’ll be seized by the urge to get up off my butt and fix some dinner or scrub the bathroom, or maybe just turn on a lamp. But so far, nothing’s happening.

  When I hear the door open, I think it’s CM, but when I look up, there he is.

  “Can we talk?” he says.

  “Apparently not. Seems like every time we do lately, something bad happens.”

  He takes a few steps closer, but I turn back to the window. “Wyn, I know I should have told you sooner. There just never seemed to be a good time, and I didn’t want to upset you.”
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  I laugh. It’s a loose sound, kind of crazed. “You didn’t give a rat’s ass if I got upset, as long as you didn’t have to hang around and deal with it.”

  “I’m sorry.” He’s got that look on his face. The one men always get when you need to talk about feelings and the future and your relationship. They look like they’d rather be having bamboo splinters jammed under their toenails.

  He sits down facing me and holds both my hands. I make myself look at him.

  “Is this about Kevin?”

  “No. Not at all—”

  “Because I’m sorry it made you so sad talking about it. I just felt like something was wrong with that whole—”

  “You were right. Something is wrong. But it’s always been wrong and it always will be wrong, and there’s nothing I can do about that except try not to let it make me crazy. Look, Wyn…” He lets go of my hands and leans back against the wall, turning his face to me. “This isn’t easy to explain, but I’ll try. All my life, whenever things get…strange like this, when I need to think, to decide what to do…then I have to get away somewhere. It’s just the way I’m wired. It’s not about you—”

  “You made it about me. By shutting me out. Ignoring my feelings. You don’t tell me what’s going on with you. You just announce that you’re leaving. In three days. How did you think I’d take it?”

  “I knew you’d be upset. I was going to tell you last weekend, but then we got off on the Kevin thing—”

  “So we’re only allowed one difficult topic per weekend?”

  “I’m just not good at…this.”

  “At what?” I hug my knees in closer.

  “At being with anyone. I’m too used to being on my own.” He closes his eyes. “This sounds bad, doesn’t it?”

  “Worse than bad.”

  “I’m sorry. This whole thing with the manuscript is just—”

  “Why the hell don’t you just call the guy? He’s had more than enough time to get back to you. And if he—”

  “Wyn.” He looks sort of sad, sort of embarrassed. “He got back to me.”

  “When?”

  “About a month ago.”

  “A month—why didn’t you tell me?”

  He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t even think about it.”

  “For God’s sake, tell me what he said!”

  “He wanted me to make all these changes. Not just little line edits. Major structural changes. He wanted me to rewrite it in first person, he wanted—”

  “So what did you say to him?” This is like extracting wisdom teeth.

  “Nothing.”

  “You can’t say nothing. You have to talk to him.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m not changing it. Not like that.”

  Suddenly I understand. This is something he was not prepared for. “He probably doesn’t expect you to cop to every single thing. Why don’t you let me read it? We could go over it together, make some notes—”

  “Don’t. Please don’t. I know you want to help, but you can’t.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t even tell me.”

  “He obviously thought it was crap—”

  “Oh, stop it! If he’d thought it was crap, he would’ve sent you back a form letter that said, ‘Dear Author, Thanks for your submission. We are sorry that it does not suit our needs at the present time.’ He would have put it through his paper shredder or used it to light his barbecue grill or to line his parakeet’s cage. He wouldn’t have taken the time to read it, write back, give you suggestions if he didn’t think there was something there.”

  When I finally stop talking, the silence is so absolute that it’s as if I’ve gone deaf. A few excruciating minutes pass while we look at each other, and I think that any second now we’ll start speaking the same language. The street lights blink on abruptly, glowing a pale yellow-green in the dusk.

  I clear my throat. “Maybe you should just try some of his ideas.”

  “Not now.” He shakes his head. “I can’t write anything now. I’ve been staring at blank pages every night this week.” He gets up, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “For the last five years, it’s like I’ve had blinders on. All I could see was finishing. Now it’s finished. So…” He tries to laugh. “Maybe I’ll just be the world’s greatest bartender.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that. If that’s what you want.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. I thought I knew what I was working for, but obviously…” He exhales. “I just need some time.”

  “But why Alaska? Can’t you just go up to Orcas? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to show up and distract you.” I hate myself for this. It sounds like begging.

  “I don’t know how to explain it any better. I’m sorry. I should have told you before.”

  “Well.” I stand up, too, and when I inhale there’s an awful leaden dullness in my chest. “I guess this is it, then.”

  “Can I see you before I go?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to. Don’t you?”

  “It’s too hard.”

  How can you love someone and want to tap-dance on his face at the same time?

  “I’ll be back by Labor Day,” he says.

  “A lot can happen,” I manage around the knot in my throat. “Don’t expect to find me standing on the veranda waving my lace hankie.”

  I try not to kiss him back when he kisses me, but I can’t help it. In fact, what I really want to do is get him in a headlock and wrestle him to the floor and sit on his chest till he explains everything to my satisfaction or I talk him out of going, whichever comes first. I’ve always been a physical kind of girl.

  My second choice would be enough anger to carry me till he’s gone. I could throw things, slam doors, break glass. Instead, after he leaves the key on the coffee table and walks out the door, I sit down on the couch and hug the cushion and cry.

  I still can’t believe he didn’t tell me about the manuscript.

  part two

  ten

  Mac

  Crosby, Stills and Nash are getting to the point where they’re no fun anymore. Probably because he’s listened to the tape three times in a row. He turns it off and sits drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and listening to the hiss and swipe of the windshield wipers.

  There’s a long line waiting to cross into Canada, bored-looking men in businesslike sedans, and station wagons full of unsmiling families whose vacation plans are washing away in this late-spring storm. There are some pickup trucks, sure. Mostly the big, muscled trucks, wet fenders gleaming like the flanks of Clydesdales, huge, bristling tires and trailer hitches that look like they could pull half of Washington state across the border. But none like the Elky. A few heads turn as he inches closer to the row of booths with the green arrows and flashing red lights.

  The border agent is prim mouthed, her black hair pulled severely back, like a caricature of a librarian. He hands over his passport.

  “How long will you be in Canada?”

  “Just long enough to get to Alaska.”

  “Is this a business or pleasure trip?”

  “Pleasure.” It sounds odd when he says it. Like something from a Victorian erotic novel.

  “Any firearms or agricultural products?”

  “No.”

  She looks at the bed of the Elky. “What’s in back? Under the tarpaulin?”

  “Clothes. Books. Camping gear.”

  “Moving to Alaska?”

  “No.”

  She hands him back the passport with a sheet of white paper tucked inside. “Park over there, please, sir.” She nods at a yellow-striped corridor of blacktop off to the right. “And take these forms to customs. That building just to your left.”

  In the overheated room that smells of wet wool, a tall, gaunt man with thinning brown hair takes the forms. His badge says “Geoffrey MacComber.” “What are you carrying?”


  “Clothes. Books. Camping gear.”

  “Not good weather for camping.” He runs his thumb and forefinger across his upper lip as if he’s recalling a mustache that used to be there.

  “Hopefully, that will change.”

  His smile is more like a grimace. “Oh, it will. Eventually. Is the gear new?”

  “Actually, it’s very old.”

  “I’m going to need a listing of everything in the truck.” He pushes a pen across the worn counter and stands, shifting his weight and drinking oily-looking coffee while Mac writes on the personal-effects form everything he can remember packing. Then the customs man sighs, as if he’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, shrugs into his drab green rain slicker. “Well, let’s go have a look.” The door rattles shut behind them.

  His face brightens when he sees the Elky. “Ah. Nice truck, 1973, eh?”

  “Seventy-one.”

  The inspection is cursory, lasting just long enough to ensure that everything under the tarp gets wet. Then it’s back inside, finish the paper shuffling, signing, stamping, stapling. He hands over a copy.

  “Drive safely, Mr. McLeod.”

  In Tsawwassen he stops for coffee, and debates taking a ferry to Salt Spring or one of the other Gulf Islands. To Victoria, and then messing around on Vancouver Island for a few days. But the rain doesn’t show any sign of stopping, and he decides to head east, into the mountains. It’ll be colder, but probably dry, and he can sleep stretched out in the tent instead of sitting up in the Elky’s cab. When he tosses the empty cup into the conveniently located garbage receptacle, he swears he can hear her voice.

  Styrofoam can’t be recycled, McLeod.

  For a few seconds he eyes the pay phone next to the coffee bar and actually considers calling her, but she’s probably asleep, with the phone unplugged. And if she was awake, and she did answer, what the hell would he say?