Stones for Bread

by Parrish, Christa

  “I think I might love you too.”

  Nineteen

  We eat at Pane Pappa, a bakery chain close to campus and open until eleven. My roommates rave over the desserts, which are dry enough to be Sheetrock, and the bread. I don’t give my opinion of the gummy, flavorless loaves, instead ordering tea and lentil soup—without the roll.

  It’s a celebration tonight. We graduate in two weeks. Mia’s boyfriend proposed the other night; she wears a pavé ring of grayish diamonds all clustered in a pear shape and tells us Bradley promises to give her something more significant as soon as he’s working. Cassandra has been accepted into the competitive master’s program she wanted. And I already have a job with a technology consulting firm in New York City, as an entry-level software developer. We reminisce over the past four years—three foolish freshmen thrown together by random computer generation, kept together by the bonds of individuality. That’s why we’re still friends. There’s never been competition between us. Different majors, different goals. I don’t think we’ve shared a class since first semester. We pledge to keep in touch, but I’m not certain we will. Maybe the other two, but I’m Teflon when it comes to relationships.

  We’re the only people remaining in the restaurant. A blackhead-speckled teenager mops the tile floor, and an older woman gathers all the leftover loaves of bread and drops them in large, clear plastic garbage bags. She fills three of them.

  What waste, Mia says, shaking her head.

  The teenager, hearing her, says, They’re not going to the dumpster. Some church picks them up and does something with them. Gives it to poor people, I guess.

  What church? I ask.

  He snorts. How should I know?

  On the way out, the woman at the counter tells me the church’s location and food distribution times. I thank her and, after we leave, watch through the glass door as she berates the boy for being rude to customers.

  The next morning I skip my information systems security class and walk four blocks to an asbestos-shingled house that’s been annexed for a church building. Inside, I follow a paneled hallway to a back room. Several long folding tables stacked with clear garbage bags greet me. An elderly lady asks if I’ve been here before. I shake my head and she hands me two balled plastic sacks. You can take as much as you can fit in these.

  I move between the tables, glancing into the bags. Some are filled with a variety of unwrapped loaves, the ones from places like Pane Pappa. Others contain bread in cellophane or paper bags from the bakery of the local grocery store or the Walmart. There’s a bag with wilted vegetables and fruits, one with muffins and stale bagels, and another of donuts, all squished and disfigured, the jelly fillings bleeding over the fudge icing, the custard smeared around the inside of the plastic.

  A half dozen people, all women, paw through the bags with their bare hands, and a preschooler sits beneath one of the tables, devouring the donuts he’s plucked from the heap above him.

  Are you doing okay? a cheerful, obese woman asks. Her wooly, pale hair frizzes in two springy clips on either side of her head. She looks more poodle than human. You seem a little lost.

  I think I’d like to help. The words spill out even while my mind protests. I’ll be gone in a month and what will it matter then?

  The woman’s face swells with a jack-o-lantern grin. Wonderful. Praise God. Let me get your name. We need people to be here on Tuesday and Friday mornings, and always to pick up the food. Do you have a car? We’re always—

  I’d like to organize the bread.

  Her smile collapses, slowly, like unrelaxed dough pulling back in on itself when someone tries stretching it. I don’t understand.

  It’s all thrown together. I’d like to separate it into its different kinds and tell the people who come what they’re eating. Perhaps even package it into—

  Darling, no one getting stuff here cares about any of that. Bread is bread is bread. As long as it doesn’t break their teeth when they chew it, they’re happy.

  Sometimes if you know better, you care better. That sentence belongs to my mother, and it’s odd for my tongue to wear her words; it’s like speaking with a mouthful of pebbles, and perhaps the woman hears it that way. By the way she looks at me, she thinks I’m some wealthy, out-of-touch college student whose parents give me carte blanche on the credit card and who doesn’t understand poverty in the slightest. My mother, though, knew poverty. She came with Oma and they had nothing but a steamer trunk and two baskets of belongings. Oma scrubbed floors and took in laundry. My mother plucked chicken feathers for the butcher in their apartment building and earned a nickel a bird. But still they ate good bread, and gave it to others so they, too, might taste the stars. So when I came home from school at nine years old, complaining that all my friends ate white bread with fluff and chocolate puddings in plastic containers, my mother explained to me that good things, things prepared with delight by someone who knows they are good things, can bring hope to those who otherwise may never experience it.

  Well, I thank you again for your offer, but I think we have all the help we need right now. The woman turns away, and I am left to wonder if I’m the only person outside a boulangerie or Bäckerei who thinks bread has a beauty beyond eating.

  I unlock Wild Rise at six in the morning and know, the moment I walk into the building, something isn’t right. I stand in front of the door, the cold from the glass chilling my back, waiting for my front side to absorb the warmer temperatures of the café area, heated by the brick oven despite it being in the other room. I’m greeted, however, with more cool air and the haze of sunrise. And I wait for the vibrations of human energy to come over me; I’ve always been able to feel the presence—or absence—of life.

  There’s no one else here.

  To be certain, I slip my messenger bag off my shoulder as I cross the room; it tumbles somewhere behind me, and in my rush to get to the kitchen I hear its contents spill onto the floor, my Sigg water bottle, a collection of pens and Tic Tacs and lip gloss, a hairbrush. It doesn’t matter, and I’m through the swinging door into the shadowy kitchen. No fire in the oven. The proofing baskets and shaped loaves Kelvin prepared last night untouched on the center table and counters.

  Xavier hasn’t missed a day of work in three years.

  Fear blisters within me. I check the answering machine. No messages. I fumble beneath the counter for my Rolodex and reconsider having a cell phone in which to keep my contacts programmed, or some other kind of electronic directory. I spin through the cards until I find Xavier’s, dialing first his mobile and then his home. No answer. Beneath those is Jude’s cell; I punch in all eleven digits for the out-of-state number and wait as it rings. “’Lo,” he grunts.

  “It’s Liesl. Where’s Zave?”

  A yawn. “I don’t know. Call him.”

  “Jude, wake up. It’s past six.”

  He mutters something unintelligible. Bedsprings shift.

  “Jude,” I shout.

  “What?”

  “You were supposed to be here three hours ago.”

  More fumbling. Something crashes to the floor. He groans again but sounds more alert. “Pops didn’t wake me.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Something’s wrong. He’s not here either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do I have to spell it? Xavier didn’t come in to the bakehouse this morning.” I’m screeching at him. “Go check on him.”

  “Oh no, no,” he says, and I hear him stampeding through the house shouting, “Pops? Pops!”

  My breath prays on its own, Please, God, please, God, please, God. And then Jude wails, and I recognize the sound.

  It’s grief.

  “Liesl, he’s not waking up.”

  “Is he breathing?”

  “I think so.”

  “Call 911. Now. I’m coming.”

  “Liesl, I can’t—”

  “Now, Jude.”

  “Okay, okay. Okay.”

  The line goes de
ad.

  I crouch and scoop all my scattered things into my bag; the floor against my kneecaps impels me to prayer, and I press my forehead to the ground, searching for the words. I have none. I weep instead, and when I finally stand, the knees of my jeans are stained with tears.

  Somehow I manage to make it to Xavier’s home without being pulled over by the police for erratic driving. The ambulance is already there when I arrive, Xavier strapped to a stretcher, one EMT pumping air into him with a mask and rubber balloon, the others lifting him into the vehicle. Jude slouches on the front porch in boxer shorts and nothing else, face swollen, eyes dim. I go to him.

  “Liesl? You’re here.”

  “I told you I was coming.”

  His skin is veined with purple. “Yeah.”

  “Where are they taking him?”

  No response.

  “Jude?”

  “They told me . . .” He shakes his head. “They told me.”

  I run to the driver’s side of the ambulance and the EMT rolls down the window. “Which hospital?” I ask.

  “St. Mary’s,” he says. “You got the kid?”

  I nod. “Can you tell me anything?”

  He flips on the flashing lights. “It doesn’t look good.”

  Jude hasn’t moved. I shepherd him into the house. “We should get to the hospital.” He shivers, and I look around for something with which to cover him. “Jude. Clothes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Searching for a dresser, a closet, I find a laundry basket of socks and towels at the top of the stairs. Everything in it seems clean. I grab two socks of similar length—though the ribbing doesn’t match—and move into the first bedroom I see. It’s Xavier’s, the bedcovers thrown back, the photo frame on the nightstand overturned. I set it upright. A picture of his Annie.

  The next room is empty, and the one after that is where Jude sleeps, his clothes flung around the space, on the floor, hanging on the footboard, the open dresser drawers. I grab the first shirt and pair of jeans I can reach from the doorway and rush back to the living room, slipping on the narrow farmhouse stairs. I scrape my spine along the treads until I hit the floor at the bottom, crashing hard on my tailbone. Shaken, I bite my hand to keep from crying out, roll onto my side and curl up until the pain subsides, and then I stand. Again, Jude hasn’t moved. His feet and lips are zombie white. “Can you get dressed?” I ask, tucking the clothes in his arms. With jerky, automated motions, he manages to slip into his pants and shirt. He fumbles with his socks, losing his balance because he doesn’t sit. I take his elbow and lower him into a chair, and I bunch up each sock and roll the fabric over his bird-thin feet. “Shoes?”

  He licks his lips. “The mat.”

  His sneakers are there, and I kick them over to him. He worms into them without untying the laces.

  “Do you have your phone?”

  “I left it in his bedroom.”

  “Okay, I’ll get it. Go to the car and wait for me.”

  Back upstairs, I shake the blankets and look under pillows before finding the cell phone under the bed. When I finally collapse behind the steering wheel of my Civic and turn the key in the ignition, I see only a bit more than an hour has passed. I hold out Jude’s phone. “Can you manage a call to Seamus?”

  “No,” he whispers. Sleek, silent tears cut a trail down each cheek, each one dangling at his jaw until the next one slides down and bumps it off.

  I dial and Cecelia answers. “Hey, Jude,” she says, and giggles.

  “It’s Liesl, sweetie.”

  “Oh. Daddy’s phone said Jude.”

  “I know. Can you put your dad on?”

  “Daddy,” she yells.

  I cringe as her sharp little girl’s voice pierces my eardrums. I hold the phone away from my ear until Seamus’s voice comes on the line. “Liesl? What’s going on?”

  “Xavier has been taken to the emergency room. St. Mary’s. Can you meet us there?”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah. We’ll come now.” A pause. “Is it serious?”

  “Yes.”

  We drive. The hospital isn’t far. Jude sits rigid beside me, hands clamped between his legs, staring ahead. He doesn’t wear a seat belt, which makes me much more conservative as I stop and look and turn. I park the car, but as I open the door I realize Jude isn’t moving. “We should go in,” I say.

  He begins to shake. “He can’t die. I have no one else.”

  “Let’s just get in there and see what’s happening.”

  “I know he’s gone. I saw how those ambulance guys looked at him.” I try to leave the car again and he grabs my arm, his fingernails pricking my skin through my sleeve. “Pray, Liesl. Please.”

  I slam the door. I want to tell him I’m a sorry excuse for a follower of Jesus, a fraud, really. I give bread to the hungry because it’s what I do—bake bread. It doesn’t require effort or sacrifice, only twenty cents per loaf for a custom-printed paper bag, which in turn I deduct from my yearly taxes. I go to church now, but that’s to spend time with Seamus and Cecelia. Otherwise, I can’t be bothered to crack open my Bible for five minutes a day. I shouldn’t be allowed to pray for anyone.

  Jude waits, though. I reach for him and place my hands on the back of his neck. The weight of all my awkwardness and shame drags him toward me until his forehead rests on mine. His eyes are closed. I shut mine as well and offer my own silent petition first, that I’ll have the words to comfort this boy.

  I start there, asking the Lord’s peace and comfort on Jude, his guidance and protection. I implore him to spare Xavier, to heal him, to give wisdom to the doctors and strength to us. I ask for mercy. And finally, I ask for him to give us the grace to accept his will, whatever that may be. Jude echoes my “Amen,” and we go into the hospital where a doctor waits for us with the news Xavier is dead.

  “Can I see him?” Jude asks.

  “Of course,” the man says.

  “I’ll wait here,” I tell Jude. He bobs his head at me, and it continues to seesaw as he walks down the sterile hallway.

  I drop into a molded plastic chair, orange, too cheerful a color for this place of death, and hard as a seashell beneath my bruised tailbone. I shut my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. The world throbs around me, each ping of a monitor, burst of oxygen, staticky message over the intercom magnified in my sightlessness. Heavy footsteps, and a mountain of body and denim stops above me, blocking the bright lights still able to penetrate my eyelids. I know it’s Seamus.

  “He’s gone,” I say, eyes still closed.

  He sits beside me and folds me against his neck.

  And then the bread bleeds.

  The priests find them, the guarded wafers, surfaces crusted with red. It looks like dried blood. What else can it be? Yes, they are certain. The bread is being crucified again, and who else but the very people who killed him the first time would want to inflict this pain on the Christ?

  They blame the Jews.

  Of course, the Jews have no part in it. They don’t believe God can be incarnated in such a vulgar thing as bread. So why would they bother stabbing at bits of baked wheat when they think it no consequence whatsoever?

  Logic does not prevail. It’s the Middle Ages, a time of darkness and fear. Already anti-Semitism flows through the church as freely as the wine it calls his blood. It is far too easy to allow hatred to rule the mind. Jews are tortured publically, stretched in half on the rack, and in their agony they confess, Yes, we pierced the bread. Others are then rounded up en masse and beheaded, burned, or forced from their homes before they, too, can perpetrate such evil.

  Five hundred years later, in an age when reason overcomes superstition, and when bleeding food is not something to be feared but explored, a scientist discovers Monas prodigiosa in the lens of his microscope—a bacteria that, in the proper humidity, secretes a harmless red substance on bread.

  I close the bakehouse for the week, the sign on the front door announcing a death in the family and apologizing for t
he inconvenience. During that time, I do little but sleep and wander through the apartment trying to fill the hours. I don’t bake. I don’t step foot into the bakery kitchen. Kelvin feeds the starters and manages to fit most of the daily sourdough buckets into the cooler; the rest end up in my refrigerator. They’ll be fine until we reopen.

  I desert Jude, wallowing in my own sadness. He has Seamus, I tell myself, but I know I’m a coward. I don’t want to deal with Jude’s grief, or sweep up the pieces.

  Seamus calls to check on me. He tells me the funeral plans. Xavier’s son Ray oversees the details. The oldest one, not Jude’s father. He asks if I’m okay. He asks if he can come visit me. I decline, feeling inadequate and lost and undeserving of his attentions. He shows up anyway, Chinese takeout and new movie release in hand, Cecelia home with a sitter. I let him in, my hair unwashed, still wearing the flannel pants and thermal Henley I put on two days ago, and he loves me with my underarm odor and plaque-stained teeth. We sit on the couch twirling lo mein noodles around forks and eating our rice with spoons, and throwing greasy wads of napkin at the horrible movie. “So much for direct to video,” he says. We still watch the entirety of it.

  As I wrangle the disc from the drive of my computer and snap it back in the case, Seamus lingers around my bookshelf, a self-constructed grid of plastic milk crates and pine boards. College chic. Tonight is the first time he’s been in the apartment for any length of time, the first since that day with the photographs. “You have a lot of books on bread.”

  “Observant,” I say.

  He laughs softly, touching the spines of each one, pausing at the khaki-covered Beard on Bread. I think, Don’t open it; I don’t want him to see Jonathan Scott’s card taped to the cover. He doesn’t take it from its spot, but raises his copper brows, wooly bear caterpillars without the black stripes. “Tell me this is someone’s name.”

  “It is. James Beard. He was a celebrity chef back in the day. Someone gave that book to my mother. She hated it.”