Baker's Apprentice

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  “Barton and I,” I correct her.

  “You’re coming, too? The landlord says we can’t have more than four.”

  “Very funny.” I hand her back the recipe. “This sounds okay, except there’s an awful lot of sugar and wheat bran in it.”

  “So?”

  “It just seems like it might be hard to raise with that amount of yeast.”

  “Can’t we just try it?”

  “Of course. In fact, take this back to the storeroom and see if we have everything.”

  She finds some molasses left over from Ellen’s gingerbread experiments, and happily busies herself making squaw bread in the small Hobart while I stir up a sponge for semolina bread and put together some whole wheat Irish soda bread. By the time I’m finished with those, the whole wheat–walnut dough is at room temperature, ready to be shaped, and Tyler’s still futzing with the squaw bread.

  “How’s it coming?” I ask.

  “Okay. It’s just really sticky.”

  I look over at her and swallow a laugh. It looks as if she’s trying to extricate herself from a pound of bubble gum.

  “Sometimes those dark breads are. Try wetting your hands instead of flouring them. As soon as I get this whole wheat–walnut in the pans, I’ll help you shape it.”

  Just then Mimi and Rodolfo are singing their final “Addio senza rancor.”

  “You listen to the weirdest music,” Tyler says. “That chick sounds like she’s dying.”

  “That’s because she is. Not only that, but she and her lover are breaking up.”

  “No wonder. Can we put on some U2?”

  I have a bad feeling about the squaw bread. It feels leaden when you handle it. There’s no life to it, no elasticity. “Did you knead it long enough?”

  She glares at me. “Of course.”

  “Okay, we’ll just have to bake it off and see what happens.”

  She puts it in the oven and sets the timer. Thirty minutes later we have four little brown hockey pucks of squaw bread sitting on the cooling rack. Tyler’s face draws into a scowl.

  “Well, it never turned out like that when my mom made it.”

  “I’m sure it was wonderful. Did you double-check all the ingredients?”

  “I’m not a troglodyte. The yeast must’ve been bad.”

  “You don’t have to be a troglodyte to make a mistake. And the yeast worked fine in the semolina sponge. The other possibility is, sometimes home bakers modify their recipes and they forget to write down what they changed.”

  “Shit!” She throws the towel on the floor, then picks it up.

  “Forget it. That’s why you do a trial batch before a full batch. We’ll figure it out. In fact, it might be a useful exercise for you.”

  Her head bobs from side to side as she mimics me. “‘It might be a useful exercise for you.’” She chortles like some demented hobbit. “When she calls me I’ll ask her if she changed something.”

  “When is she supposed to call?”

  “Monday. It’s my birthday. She always calls on my birthday.”

  When the morning crew comes in, the first thing that happens is, Maggie catches sight of the hockey pucks.

  “My word, what are these little bricks?”

  “Keep your meathooks off my squaw bread,” Tyler snarls.

  “‘Squaw bread’? You can’t be serious. Don’t you realize what a pejorative that is?”

  Tyler stares at her, wildly pissed off, and not about to admit that she has no idea what a pejorative is.

  “It’s an insult,” Maggie rattles on. “‘Squaw’ is the worst kind of slang. It’s a very vile term for a part of a woman’s anatomy. It’s totally dehumaniz—”

  “You are so full of shit.”

  Ellen comes charging in from the back room with the cash box. “Maggie, are you here early for a reason?”

  “I have a cake being picked up at nine.”

  “Then I suggest you get busy on it and not worry about the female anatomy of squaw bread.”

  When Maggie slinks off to the work area, Tyler flips her a bird.

  Monday night Tyler’s late. It’s almost eleven-thirty when she finally shows up, and I’m all ready with my punctuality lecture. But something in the set look of her face makes me swallow it.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I was just…doing some stuff.”

  “What stuff?” Her shrug is elaborately nonchalant, and I suddenly wish I hadn’t asked.

  “Just—you know—waiting.”

  “She might not know you work at night now. Or maybe she went out to dinner.”

  She hangs up her jacket and slips an apron over her head.

  I try again. “She could be sick or something.”

  “Too sick to make a phone call? She’d have to be circling the drain.” She studies the bake sheet on the clipboard. “She probably just forgot.”

  When I put my hand on her back, I feel her pointy shoulder blades like little demon wings. “You know, some people have trouble expressing things they feel intensely, and your birthday is—”

  “Wyn, save the bullshit. She forgot.” She looks away from me. “It’s not a big deal. I just wanted to ask her about the squaw bread.”

  I hold out the present and card I brought her. “Well, anyway, happy birthday.”

  She takes it from me and looks at the wrapping for a minute, as if she could see through it with X-ray vision. Then she tosses it on the desk. “I’ll check it out later.” She picks up the big metal bowl for the floor mixer. “Birthdays suck anyway. Who cares if you’re another year older.”

  We try the squaw bread again, decreasing the bran, cutting back on sweeteners and salt, increasing the yeast. More hockey pucks.

  “We can’t spend any more time on this right now.” I tilt the sheet pan, dumping the small, dark loaves into the garbage.

  “But my mom made it just this way and it was great.”

  I look at her, exasperated. “She obviously did not make it just this way or it would be great now. You can keep trying it at home if you want, but here, we have other fish to fry.”

  She snatches up the piece of paper, crumples it into a ball, and shoots it into the can on top of the bread.

  “Who gives a shit?”

  “You do, obviously.” I reach into the garbage and retrieve the paper. I spread it out on the worktable, blot off a slime of egg white. “Why don’t we just hang on to this for a while. Keep it in the notebook. Take it out another day—”

  “Why doesn’t it work?”

  I’m not sure what I can say here without sounding horribly condescending. “Tyler, I think your mom was probably a really creative woman and she made changes as she went. She made the recipe her own. If you want it to work, that’s what you need to do—stop trying to figure out what she did and just do whatever’s going to make it work for you.”

  The scene at Tyler’s duplex-warming party would fit nicely into a painting—something by Hieronymus Bosch, I think. Ellen and I find the house without any trouble; finding a parking place is another thing altogether. We end up walking about five blocks uphill. Before we’re even close, we can hear the Clash singing “London Calling.”

  “I think I’m starting to be old,” Ellen says.

  The place is a big old house that’s been rather clumsily cut in half, with a carport tacked onto each side as an afterthought. There are a lot of strange-looking people on the sidewalk and the sundecks and hanging out of various windows. We ignore their stares, which clearly indicate that two women who look like we do could not possibly be at the right party. A guy wearing overalls with nothing underneath but a large dragon tattoo curled around his upper body gives us a cursory glance on his way out. The door’s open, but Ellen knocks on the screen door anyway. Not that anyone could hear with the music blaring and people yelling over it. Tyler comes running.

  “Cool! You came.” She pulls us through a nearly impenetrable wall of bodies. “I want to show you the place, but you need a drink fir
st. Are you hungry?”

  Now we’re in the living room/dining room, which is not totally without charm. There’s a nice brick fireplace with bookshelves on either side. Of course, there are no books, only videos. The bar is set up on a metal trunk—a box of red and a box of white wine, and a galvanized washtub full of ice and bottles of beer. A retro white Formica and chrome dinette table that’s beat up enough to be authentic is loaded with food—mostly sandwich stuff—American cheese, bologna, salami. Even a jar of peanut butter. Bags of potato chips and Doritos lie on their sides, contents spilling onto the table. There’s a fondue pot that looks like a cast-off from a seventies wedding shower, full of that dip that’s made with canned tomatoes and Velveeta cheese. A platter of Rice Krispies squares glistens stickily, and off to one side is a tin of brownies.

  “Just FYI, the brownies are loaded,” Tyler says. Ellen’s hand stops in midair. “What do you want to drink?”

  We both say red wine and Tyler starts looking around for two clean glasses. Failing that, she picks up two used ones and heads for the kitchen. “I’ll just wash these and I’ll be right back.”

  “Hey, short stuff. That’s my glass.” A tall, thin guy with an infectious grin and bleached-blond hair has Tyler by the collar.

  “You can find a new one. These are for my bosses. Wyn and Ellen.” She nods in our direction and disappears into the kitchen.

  “If I’d only known.” He flutters his big brown eyes at us. “I’m Barton.” He holds out his hand to Ellen, then looks at me. “Ooh, I’m not good at faces but I never forget a head of hair. You’re Wyn. Fourth of July last year.”

  Tyler comes back and hands each of us a glass of wine. “This is the good stuff,” she says. “Now get something to eat.” Ellen and I hesitate in the face of the bounty on the dinette.

  “It all looks so good,” Ellen says. Tyler and Barton erupt into giggles.

  Ellen takes two Oreos and I take a tortilla chip, which breaks in half when it bounces off the clotted cheese dip.

  “Shit, the fire went out,” Tyler says.

  “That’s okay, I’ll have a cookie.”

  Tyler grabs an arm and pulls it closer. It’s attached to a girl who looks very much like Tyler, except that she’s a blonde and has a nose ring. This is Felice, roommate number two. She’s wearing black tights and a black turtleneck and a brown-and-green poncho.

  “I love your poncho,” Ellen says.

  “Thanks.”

  “Did you get it at the store where you work?” I ask.

  “No.”

  Barton puts his arm around her. “The only problem with this girl is, we just can’t shut her up.” Felice looks embarrassed and mumbles that it was nice meeting us and drifts away.

  “You hurt her feelings,” Tyler says. She follows Felice out to the front porch.

  “I need to use the facilities,” Ellen says, looking around.

  Barton points down a long hallway. “Second door on the left. Just be sure to keep it closed. Tigger likes to climb in the toilet.” He turns back to me. “My cat.”

  Ellen’s back suddenly, looking flustered. “There’s a guy standing on the john getting a blow job.”

  Barton sighs. “That would be Dickie. For obvious reasons. He knows we only have one bathroom downstairs. I’ll go tell them to hurry up.”

  Ellen restrains him with a hand on his arm. “That’s okay. Some things shouldn’t be rushed.”

  “Why don’t you go upstairs? There’s a bathroom off Dee’s bedroom, the first door at the top of the stairs.”

  “Don’t start sending everyone up to my bathroom.” So this must be DeeDee.

  “I’m not sending everyone. This is Tyler’s boss, Ellen.”

  “Really, I can wait,” Ellen says.

  “I don’t like strangers going through my room,” DeeDee says. She’s tall and painfully thin; her bones seem about to break through her pale skin. She has deep-set dark eyes and a petulant expression. Of course, if the guy standing next to her was my boyfriend, I wouldn’t be happy either. He looks like a cross between Wayne Newton and the Grim Reaper—short and chunky, with a greasy flourish of dark hair hanging over his forehead like a dirty snow-drift.

  “Hi,” he says. “I’m Skipper.” Since his right arm is draped around DeeDee’s neck, he extends his left hand. He looks older than everyone else here—even Ellen and me—and he’s wearing a clingy knit polo shirt that shows off his nipples, not an attractive sight. He eyes Barton with barely disguised contempt. “Dee’s bedroom isn’t a hallway to the bathroom,” he says.

  Barton’s smile is frozen on his face. “I think we’ve just about settled that, thanks so much, Flipper.”

  Down the hall the bathroom door opens and a couple emerges looking pleased.

  “That’s my cue,” Ellen says, and bolts.

  “Who might you be?” Skipper/Flipper asks, looking at me. At least I think he’s looking at me. His eyes are nearly closed.

  “I’m a friend of Tyler’s,” I say. “Wyn Mor—”

  “I never remember last names.” DeeDee hands him her beer and he takes a long swig.

  Tyler reappears to rescue me and take me on a tour of the house. Her room is a closet-size affair at the end of the upstairs hall. It’s on the wall that separates the two halves of the duplex, and she tells me she can hear everything that goes on next door.

  “Well, don’t forget, that means they can hear everything you do, too.”

  “Yeah. Except nothing’s ever going on in my room.” We sit on her twin bed and she tells me who’s on all the posters on the wall, and I think about the summer that CM and I shared a tiny apartment in Laguna Beach. How independent we felt—like adults, but much cooler. And completely oblivious to reality.

  Later, when Ellen and I are eating green onion and Swiss cheese omelets, at her kitchen table, she says, “That Skipper guy made my skin crawl.”

  “Isn’t he creepy? Did you see him groping his girlfriend while we were standing there talking to them?”

  “I hope Tyler’s going to be all right in that fun house.”

  “Sometimes innocence is its own protection.” I push a piece of egg onto my toast.

  “Unfortunately, she’s not entirely innocent, but she’s awfully naïve. Sort of a dangerous combination.” Ellen pours white wine in our glasses. “You have to admire her, though. She never stops trying. I guess it’s stupid, but I wish she’d meet a nice guy. A nice, straight guy.”

  “That’s no magic bullet,” I say.

  She gives me an odd look. “No, it’s not. But love has a lot of power, Wyn. I hope you haven’t written it off completely.”

  “I’ve just learned that if you don’t expect anything, you’re rarely disappointed.”

  fourteen

  Mac

  He likes going to Rhiannon’s in the morning when he’s the only one there. Sometimes he has a mooseburger, sometimes just coffee. She plays her entire collection of Texas music for him, some of it good, some awful, some he figures is simply an acquired taste. His favorite is one tape she has by a guy named Shake Russell. The recording sounds like it was done in somebody’s garage, maybe just because it’s a tape made from an old LP. But the tunes are contagious, the lyrics poignant, and the guy’s voice has just the right amount of gravel.

  Occasionally he’ll help her make the burgers, or he’ll roll up the plastic knives in paper napkins, but mostly they just sit and talk. As he suspected, she knows everyone and everything that’s gone on in Beaverton for the last eight years, and she loves an audience.

  She stops frequently in midstory to wipe the onion tears from her face with the back of her hand and warn, “Now don’t you dare repeat any of this…”

  Finally, one morning he says, only half joking, “I should tell you I’m a writer.”

  “I know that. You told Chris Moody weeks ago. Everybody in town knows by now.”

  “Aren’t you worried that I might use some of this stuff?”

  She puts her hands on her hips
, still holding the big wood-handled knife. “Of course you will, but you’ll change it around so nobody knows.” She brandishes the knife menacingly. “Or I swear I’ll hunt you down and make breakfast sausage out of your privates.”

  One morning he brings her one of his favorite blues tapes. “Oh, I don’t like that stuff,” she says. But in a few minutes she’s swaying back and forth while she mixes in her secret seasonings to B. B. King’s “The Thrill Is Gone.”

  “I thought you didn’t like the blues,” he observes.

  “I don’t, I’m just being polite. And speaking of polite, how rude you are to come here all the time and never let me read the cards for you.”

  He sighs. “I just don’t—”

  “Don’t what?” She grabs a handful of meat and slaps it flat. “Don’t believe in that stuff? You don’t want to say that around me.”

  “Sorry, but it just seems like a crutch.”

  Her dark eyes flare. “A crutch comes in mighty handy when you’ve got a broken leg.”

  “My leg isn’t broken.”

  “Something is.” She slaps another burger on her pile and stops to take a count.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…” She looks at him steadily and her voice gets softer. “Everybody’s got some kind of wound.” She picks up her coffee mug and the handle slips a bit from the grease on her fingers. “You take Pearl May. Doesn’t she just look like a little old ant sittin’ on a sugar sack? She’s had it sad, I’m here to tell you. Lost her husband in a logging accident when they were young. Tom, her son, was just a little thing—three or four, I think.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “Dead. Tommy got himself killed in a barroom brawl in Fairbanks when he was only twenty-three. Daughter-in-law started drinking and froze to death one winter. Pearl May raised Bernice herself. Couldn’t do enough for that kid, and she gets precious little thanks for it.”