Stones for Bread

by Parrish, Christa

  I dress and twist my hair into an elastic band. Downstairs, I unlock Wild Rise and hear a thud. Then another. The noise is continuous, rhythmic. The light shines beneath the kitchen door. I tiptoe close and open it enough to peek in. Jude. He stands at the table, his back to me, sinewy arms lifting a ball of dough over his head, slamming it to the table. A silent moment as the muscles in his back flex. He’s folding and turning, I know. The dough comes up again. Then down. A French knead.

  “Jude?”

  He turns, startled. “I woke you.”

  “No, I couldn’t sleep.” Pink moisture rims his nose and eyes. “Are you okay?”

  “I shouldn’t be here, but I needed a place, you know?”

  “I didn’t think you could drive.”

  “I thumbed it.” He drops the dough into a willow banneton. “A twenty-minute pounding is enough.”

  “More than enough.”

  I think he’ll leave now, but he continues to stand, gripping the edge of the table, leaning over it slightly, his eyes closed. Then he stretches his arms forward, his hands flat and open, slowly spreading the flour residue over the wood, drawing patterns as a child will. A tear falls into it and almost immediately disappears as his hands continue to move. “I don’t get it,” he says finally. “What is it about this stuff? All of it. The flour, the dough, the loaves. It’s like there are magnets in it, and in me. I have to touch it.”

  I know. When my hands are in dough, something deep and primordial can hear the voice of God, calling me forth from the earth. It is very good. Grain from the ground, made dust. Man from the dust. The kneading reconnects both, bringing me back to Eden in a way I’ve never encountered at any church service.

  “It’s like it’s—”

  “Spiritual,” I say.

  He’s forgotten I am there. But the word penetrates, and he looks at me. “Yeah.”

  “What’s wrong, Jude?”

  He nods to his left, to the counter, where a rumpled newspaper hides his canvas bag. The front page has a story about me and Wild Rise and Bake-Off. The reporter also wrote a sidebar about Jude and his art bread.

  “Yesterday’s Gazette?”

  “My dad, he doesn’t care about the bread. None of them do. Pops gave the bakeries to them, you know? My dad, Uncle Ray, and Aunt Jilly. She makes cupcakes now, mostly. My dad and uncle bought out her part of the business, she changed the name of the place and wears a poodle skirt and covers everything in pink frosting. Dad and Uncle Ray partnered up and everything is made in a factory now. Conveyor belts and all that. I think that kills Pops more than anything. He don’t say it, but it’s obvious.

  “Charlie—my brother—already works there with Dad. He’s vice president of something and something else. My other brother Pete graduates next year with his MBA and has some other vice-president-whatever-else waiting with his name on it. You know what good ol’ dad told me? There’ll always be a job for me on the line, if I want it. Yeah, the assembly line. That’s all I’m good for.” He brushes flour from the table; it curls around the room, like smoke, and settles on our feet, both of us in running shoes.

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m dyslexic,” he says. “I can hardly read, and forget it if it’s above a second-grade level. So I sucked in school. My brothers were both valedictorians. Dad only gives a care about success. His boys, his business. Whatever. I’ve always been an embarrassment to his perfect family. His perfect little screw-up.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But, Jude, what you can do with bread, it’s amazing. Even more so knowing it hasn’t come from books or research. It’s all you.”

  “Yeah? Well, Dad’s amazed too. He saw the article. Some customer around here sent him a link to it online. He called me last night, wants me to come home. Said he had no idea. Said he wants to find a place for me in the family business. He stressed the word family. He talked about responsibility. Said he’d get me whatever tutors or help or whatever I needed to get through high school and graduate. He told me he was proud of me. Proud. Of me. Do you know how long I’ve waited to hear those words?

  “And I hung up on him. Because it’s all crap. He only wants me now that I can do something for him. Not before. Never before.”

  He cries like the child he is, loud, bubbling sobs, and I think, I can be solid for him. Like Seamus had been for me a few days ago. So I go and tighten my arms around his thin body, and he wets my neck with mucous and spit and tear film, and when he’s finished, I toss him a towel and wipe my own skin dry. Then I pile the table with flour and bowls and measuring spoons and yeast and jars of sourdough starter and salt. “Go ahead,” I say, and we create together.

  What is so mystical about bread that superstitions follow from the moment man conceived it to this very day? The wheat, from the ground. The yeast, from the air. The dough, alive, breathing, growing, giving itself up for the people. The gods find it acceptable, the priests use it in their rituals, the magicians want to harness its power. And yet what goes into bread is common, vulgar even, available to anyone who will pick and grind and create fire to bake.

  Sacred and profane.

  What people go through to appease the earth and, in turn, urge the forces of nature to cooperate in the cycle of bread. They carry these rituals with them well into the Middle Ages. Eggs are placed before the plow at the first groundbreaking of the season. If the egg breaks, the soil has accepted the offering. Postpartum women, people with coughs and other respiratory disease, and the dead may not—must not—come near a field. Spirits live in the grain; it quivers and sways with their presence. But the too-quiet, too-still stalks are also feared. This is the noontide ghost, the air hot and golden and unmoving above the tips of wheat.

  In some cultures, the last harvested sheaf is dressed in clothes and mocked by women prancing around it. In others, it’s honored, left unthreshed and spread over the fallow field in reverence. And during the blustery, violent winter nights, farmers praying to be saved from the storm empty sacks of flour onto the wind.

  Jude and I work mostly without speaking. Occasionally he asks a question about the wetness of the dough or the amount of starter, or the difference between a poolish and a biga. We don’t bake because the wood fire oven isn’t started, and while we could use the regular gas one, neither of us considers this a viable option. Finally, at nine thirty, Jude lifts his head up and says, “You think I can bum a ride to church?”

  I can’t tell him no. “Ah, okay. Sure. What time?”

  “Starts in an hour.” He wipes his hands on the back of his shorts. “Wanna come?”

  It’s there again, the prodding. The Spirit. Oh, how I hate it, because it reminds me of all I should be doing and all I don’t want to do, and how I allow my flesh to win time and time again. But I want it to come over me too, telling me that I’ve not been forsaken, that he is still gently, gently pursuing and hasn’t given up on me after all.

  “Okay,” I say.

  My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

  “Coolness.”

  “I’ll go get ready, then.”

  “Mind if I stay here?”

  “No, go ahead. Don’t worry about cleaning up either. I’ll be making the same mess tonight.”

  He plucks a wire from his pocket, sticks the bud ends in his ears, and gives a wave over his shoulder.

  Upstairs, I shower and wear my black dress and sandals and the silver bangle again. I style my hair the way León showed me, put on makeup, and meet Jude in the kitchen. He strips off his T-shirt and changes to another he has in his bag, then looks at me. “Uh, give me a minute to shake out my shorts?”

  “In my kitchen? Again?”

  He grins. “I’ll do it in back.”

  “Oh no. I can’t have you half-naked outside my bakery. Especially after yesterday. Someone will call the local news.”

  “Or the police.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Then . . . ?”

  “Fine. In here. There�
�s flour everywhere already.”

  I wait in the dining area and he follows not thirty seconds later. We both leave white footprints on the floor on our way out to the car. I slide the air-conditioning lever to high and ask, “Which church?”

  “Green Mountain Community, out on River. You know it?”

  “I go there sometimes.”

  “Yeah? It’s cool. I like it. I’ve never really gone to church all that much before. Just Christmas and Easter.”

  I glance sideways. “So how did you end up attending here?”

  He shrugs. “That little Cecelia pestered me until I agreed. She’s a trip and a half.”

  We’re silent, beyond small talk, our relationship of half strangers, of boss and employee, subtly altered. The church is busy; I park as close as possible, still six rows from the front door, and follow Jude into the lobby. He ignores the coffee, so I do too, but after a restless night and early morning, I wish for anything with caffeine. We spot Seamus at the same time, Cecelia dressed in her shyness and standing close, twisting the hem of his polo-style shirt. She sees Jude first and then me, and her lips stretch wide, hot cocoa mustache growing with her smile. “Liesl!”

  Seamus turns his head in our direction. He holds out his palm to Jude, who shakes it, hand devoured in Seamus’s massive grasp. And then he offers it to me. I take it, tips of his fingers only, and squeeze. He squeezes back.

  “You came,” Cecelia says.

  “Jude is quite persuasive,” I tell her.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means,” Jude says, “I bugged her until she said yes. A little trick I learned from someone standing right in front of me.”

  “I do that,” Cecelia says. She wraps both her hands around her father’s wrist, bouncing on his arm. “I’m good at it, Daddy says. But he can’t give in all the time. That makes kids spoiled.”

  “Who says you’re spoiled?” Jude asks. He touches the tip of her nose.

  “No one. Yet. Not even Daddy, and he gives in a lot.” She looks at Seamus and adds quickly, “But not all the time.”

  We sit somewhere in the middle of the sanctuary, Cecelia on one side of me and Jude on the other. I’m distracted by the little girl’s wiggling, her coloring on the bulletin, the whispers of those around us. Seamus, who keeps peeking in my direction. My mind wanders through the entire sermon. When we leave, people congratulate me on the show. I wonder if they think I’m here because I won, as if I’ve bargained with God about it.

  “Lunch?” Seamus asks.

  “I’m game,” Jude says.

  “McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s,” Cecelia says.

  Seamus shakes his head. “You had that yesterday. We should let Liesl pick.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m up for whatever.”

  “McDonald’s.”

  “No,” Seamus tells her again.

  We end up at Suki’s Diner because it’s close and fast, Jude riding with Seamus and Cecelia with me for the two-minute trip. Cecelia immediately finds the crane machine; Jude fishes a wad of change and bills from his front pocket and gives her a dollar. The money slot spits it back out, so he smoothes it over the corner of the glass and lets her try again. This time the green paper disappears and lights begin blinking.

  The sign at the hostess stand tells us to find our own table. Seamus and I sit while they play, and I say, “I’ve never been here before.”

  “I think Ceese and I have hit most of the food places in Billingston. We go out to lunch most Sundays. The afternoon just gets too long when you’re home by eleven thirty and have nothing else to do all day.”

  I think I’ve eaten at two restaurants since I moved here three years ago, and one was the McDonald’s drive-through. The other was a tiny bistro not far from Wild Rise where my father and I ate the first time he visited me here, the weekend the bakery opened.

  “My father left last night.” I watch Jude and Cecelia as I say this, the teenager now controlling the machine’s stick, the little girl pointing and giving instruction and cheering him on, despite the claw returning empty once again.

  I can’t avoid Seamus in my periphery; he closes the menu and rests his elbow on it. Waits. Why do I tell him things? Because he’s been there when I was bleeding—with my mother’s photo, the show, now—and his hands are large enough to cover the wounds.

  I had wanted my father to share the Bake-Off experience with me, to use it as some sort of trampoline to bounce us into the heavens and give us a glimpse of my mother as she used to be, as we so desperately wanted her to be. And perhaps we could have stayed there awhile. Instead, he drove in the morning of the taping, took a long afternoon nap, and jumped in his car to leave for home before the sun went down. I know. Being there with me, with the bread, pokes at all his still-tender places. We’ve both of us exhausted ourselves trying to pack those places deep and swaddled and away from anything given to irritating them. It doesn’t work. We know that because we’ve been ducking and sidestepping for the past twenty years. Time passes, days or weeks, and we breathe deep the illusion that things are better until we’re bumped too sharply by the past, and the oozing begins again.

  It’s harder for my father; he has less to fill time and more to remember.

  The waitress brings us water and napkin-spun utensils. Seamus orders a milk for Cecelia and a coffee for himself. “And a Coke.”

  “Pepsi okay?”

  “Sure. And do you have Mountain Dew?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Okay, a Mountain Dew as well, for him.” Seamus points to the empty place mat beside me.

  I ask for lemonade, until she tells me it’s Lipton from the drink machine. “Unsweetened iced tea, then, with lemon,” I tell her.

  “I can give you a cup of ice and a tea bag and hot water. We only keep the sweet stuff cold.”

  “Fine,” I say, though it isn’t to either of us. She puffs out her lower lip and crams her notepad into her apron pocket. I think snobbish thoughts about the kind of place unable to brew and chill a pitcher of unsweetened tea. Seamus motions to Cecelia, who bounds to the table with a mangy stuffed four-legged animal of some type. “Jude won it and gave it to me,” she says, scooting over her father’s lap to the inside of the booth, where she flips the panels of the tabletop jukebox. “They still have it.”

  “What’s that?” I ask, also sliding in to make room for Jude.

  “My song. Well, the song I’m named after.” She points, and I squint at the list. “See it? By Simon and Gardenfunkle.”

  “Garfunkel,” Seamus corrects her. He’s embarrassed, cheeks almost purple. “And you’re not really named for the song. Your mother and I just happened to like Cecelia.”

  “I never get to hear the whole thing,” she says. “If it comes on the radio, Daddy always turns down the middle part.”

  “My name is a song too,” Jude says. “It might be there. If you find it, I’ll let you play it.”

  “Menu first,” Seamus says.

  “I just want chicken fingers and fries,” Cecelia tells him, face to the jukebox’s clear plastic front, reading each selection softly to herself.

  The waitress bring our drinks and takes orders. Minutes later Cecelia shouts, “Got it. It’s here. ‘Hee Jude’ by the . . . Beatles?”

  “‘Hey Jude,’” Seamus says. “And yes, it’s the Beatles.”

  “Yuck. They have the same name as bugs?”

  “Yup,” Jude says, flicking her a quarter. It passes through her hands, spins on the table, and then rolls off the edge. Cecelia crawls beneath us and returns, flushed but triumphant, coin pressed over her eye.

  “Had to hold my breath down there,” she says, dropping the quarter into the slot. “What number again?”

  I peer over. “E two eight.”

  She pushes each button with steady determination. The music fills the diner. “How long do these na-na-nas go on?” she asks finally.

  “Too long,” Jude says.

  The food comes and we eat a
nd talk and laugh. Cecelia deep-sea dives beneath the table again, searching for money, prying up each of our feet in her exploration. She returns with another quarter pulled from who knows where and plunks it into the jukebox. “Hey Jude” begins again. Jude hides his face in his hands. Seamus, when the na-na-nas begin, uses his spoon as a microphone and sings along. “Yeah, you can stop now,” Jude tells him, but Cecelia joins in. Finally, the teenager adds his own Jude-jude-ju-jude-jude-jude above them. I try to be stern and tell them to quiet down, everyone is staring, but I’m ignored until I wad up my napkin and toss it at Seamus. He catches it in his mouth.

  “I used that to wipe my nose,” I tell him.

  He spits it out as the waitress appears and asks if we want any dessert, or just the check. She stresses just the check and nods with each word, as if we’re supposed to understand we’ve overstayed our welcome. Jude wants chocolate cake, though, so we all order something from the bakery. The waitress grunts and collects our dirty plates.

  This is what Pastor Ryan means when he preaches on community, all of us with pieces missing, all of us starfish, but instead of regenerating our amputated parts we’ve replaced them with one another.

  “Okay, everyone. Now listen. We need to behave,” I say.

  We sit with our hands in our laps, biting our lips so they won’t split and reveal smiles, until Seamus taps the end of the straw from its paper and blows the wrapper across the table.

  Twelve

  It’s Christmas, our first without her, and neither my father nor I know what to do with the day. Seventy-two hours before the twenty-fifth we still have no tree. My mother’s decorations sleep in tissue paper and cardboard boxes in the dark of the attic. The ratty, fur-clad Belsnickels. The long ivory stockings with red woven toes. The glass balls and Hallmark ornaments, and all the handprint reindeer I made. I pull the trapdoor chain dangling in the hallway outside the bathroom door, unfold the ladder, and stare into the rush of stale, uninsulated air from the unlit room above me. I climb the first rung, the second. The ladder settles into place, groaning beneath my weight. I’ve never minded going up; coming down frightens me. It’s too steep facing forward, but I’ve slipped before trying to find my footing when going backward, banging my chin and pinching my fingers in the ladder’s springs as I flailed to find something to grab before I fell.