Stones for Bread

by Parrish, Christa

  Xavier’s sons and daughter speak. Some of the grandchildren too—both of Jude’s brothers and two younger girls. Then the chaplain blabs his regular script about the frailty of life, appreciating everyday blessings, and how Xavier has moved on to that elusive-sounding better place.

  His words crush me, their weight heavier than the wood on the back of Simon the Cyrene.

  Never once did I speak of faith with Xavier.

  I begin to cry.

  “Liesl?” Jude asks.

  I wave him off and leave for the restroom, jiggle the handle. Locked. A woman waiting beside the door says, “There’s a line.” I push outside instead, sucking lungfuls of late October air, steam pouring from my nose and mouth. I shiver, legs bare, soul fractured, and the door opens again. It’s Jude. He stands frozen for a second, and then shakes out of his hooded sweatshirt and wraps it around me.

  “I didn’t tell him. About God,” I say, voice rough with mucus.

  “I did.”

  I wait for more, but instead he removes a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his front jeans pocket and shakes one into his hand, closes the end between his lips as he lights it with a Bic he fishes from another pocket. Inhales until the tobacco burns brimstone red.

  His smoke joins my breath, whorling into the evening sky.

  As much as the bakers of the Middle Ages are mistrusted, the bakers of ancient Rome are revered. But they must have something with which to make bread. When the empire begins, Italy does have grain, more than it needs to feed its people. As the years turn to decades and the decades to centuries, the wealthy landholders find it more lucrative to raise sheep and cattle. The poor farmers—formerly soldiers given small parcels in payment for battles well fought—can no longer afford to grow wheat and move to the cities for their families’ survival. The grain must come from somewhere because the people demand their bread. So Rome takes it from the bread lands it conquers: Egypt, Spain, North Africa, Sardinia, England.

  As cities grow in Italy, so do populations. Many of these people are unemployed and receive free grain by order of the emperor. The provisions stave off revolts and civil unrest. Eventually bread is given instead of wheat, each person receiving two loaves each day, and at times more than three hundred thousand people flood the streets of Rome for their share. When the right to receive the dole is declared hereditary, the urban poor begin having more and more children.

  While Italy feasts, other countries throughout the empire are stripped of their wheat and forced to send it far away for those who did not toil for it to fill their bellies. The people of the bread lands go to sleep at night without bread. And it’s into this hungry world Jesus is born.

  It’s my father’s turn to show up unexpectedly, sitting on the top step leading to the apartment when I arrive home from the funeral. His arms are across his knees, head kinked in the crook of his elbow, wheezing in that light, uncomfortable sleep way. As soon as I climb the first stair he opens his eyes and finds his glasses between his feet, slips them on.

  “You said you weren’t coming for the service,” I say. I don’t want him here—he’s intruding in my mourning. “And anyway, you missed it.”

  “I’m here for you,” Alistair says.

  I unlock the door. “You could have just called me.”

  He peers over the top of his lenses, his face contorting into some expression more at home on the face of a teenaged girl, one who can’t believe her best friend forever is dating the class clown. And we both chuckle in that family way because neither of our telephone habits lend themselves to communication. I unlock the door and he follows me inside, removing his coat but not his scarf, a camel-and-red wool plaid he’s had for as long as I can remember. My mother bought it for him, I’m certain. Another trait we share, being unable to rid ourselves of anything related to her. He keeps her clothes in the attic. Her teas, now more than twenty years old, still stacked in a kitchen cabinet. Her cosmetics in the bottom vanity drawer. I have her bread, of course. I’d say it’s a family thing, a genetic propensity, but I know better now. Nature. Nurture. None of it makes sense to me any longer.

  I offer him coffee. He declines. I sit on the loveseat and he takes the wing chair across from me, crosses his legs, slips his finger inside his loafer, and itches the underside of his foot. I wait; my silence tortures him. Finally, he says, “I did call and leave a message.”

  “I know.”

  “How was the funeral?”

  Shrugging, I say, “Like any other, I guess.”

  “You were close to him. I’m sorry.”

  “These things happen.”

  I don’t want this harshness between us. It oozes from one of those lesions I try to keep undisturbed, but in my despair over Xavier and the confusion of my adoption I’m unable to control it. My father shuts his eyes and lets the barbed words slice over him. “I deserve your anger.”

  “I’m not angry—”

  “You are. It’s allowed. We keep too many things shut up inside, Liesl.” He shakes his head. “Not this too.”

  “All right. I am mad. I understand why you and Mom didn’t tell me about . . . things. All of it. But I can’t stop feeling like, I don’t know. Not that my life has been a lie, exactly. You both weren’t a lie. Your love for me. I suppose I feel displaced. I thought I fit somewhere. Now I don’t. It really, really hurts.”

  “I can’t imagine. If I could go back and make different choices, you know I would.” Alistair holds his hands out toward me, palms up, a gesture I imagine Jesus made when he presented his wounds to Thomas. Christ’s actions comforted. My father’s are empty. He and I both know that, and he says, “I can only say I’m sorry, and pray it means something to you. And hope you’ll forgive me.”

  The tears drip from my eyes. I say, “I’m going to get in touch with her. Mary Lombardi.”

  I haven’t actively been working to decipher the labyrinth of issues surrounding my adoption, but subconsciously—and in the Spirit, perhaps?—there’s been a churning of possibilities. Yes, Xavier’s death plays a prominent role in my decision; no one knows the day or the hour, and I feel I owe this woman for allowing me to be born. If something unexpectedly occurs to make our meeting impossible, I’ll carry the guilt over it. My father sitting here only deepens my resolve. Do I tell him of my plan now to hurt him? Maybe I do, a little, so he, too, can feel the sting of losing a piece of himself. He simply nods, though. “I think that’s right.”

  He’s offering me up to her, my birth mother, returning me, in a sense. And I realize then I don’t want to be returned. As hurt and upset as I am, I still belong to him. To both of them, Claudia and Alistair McNamara. Those ties—our pasts, our shared experiences, our devotion—none of it can be severed.

  “I forgive you, Dad.”

  He weeps too, quietly, and comes to me on the couch. I lean against him and we sniffle together, wiping our runny noses on our wrists until he snatches the roll of paper towels from the kitchen and returns to my side. Conversation eludes us, and we’re both fine with that, having had years of practice with silence. Eventually the room darkens and I plead fatigue and offer my father my bed for the night. “You can’t go home now,” I tell him. He doesn’t drive well at night.

  “Where will you sleep?”

  “Here.”

  “I won’t take your bed and make you be crushed up on this little excuse for a couch. I’m fine on the floor.”

  “Dad.”

  The word is nothing but a casual address to me, but it stops my father and he touches my face, his recently upturned, empty palm warm on my cheek. “That’s right.”

  I nod and gather blankets and pillows to build his nest on the carpet.

  When Wild Rise reopens, I’m back on three a.m. duty. I set the most irritating alarm possible thirty minutes before then on my new cell phone—yes, I break down and buy one; it’s a tax write-off, I rationalize—my body creaking and moaning from bed to the bathroom. I manage to brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face because
I don’t wait the necessary thirty seconds for it to heat, and wrangle my hair into an elastic. It’s unruly now, my hair, the layers at odd, in-between lengths, my bangs shaggy and over my eyes. I position my lower lip over my upper one and blow, the strands parting in the center of my forehead, and then I twist them into an unattractive bunch, clipping them atop my head, away from my face.

  So much for all León’s artistry.

  I dress and leave my bed unmade, since I’ll be coming back to it in a few hours, and go downstairs. Jude either waits for me or he’s bouncing down the street with that tiptoed gait of his, hands deep in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt, stocking cap stretched over his head; Tee’s apartment is close enough he can walk to work.

  He’s learned to use his alarm too.

  “Where’s your coat, for goodness’ sake?” I ask.

  “Don’t have one.”

  The first couple of days we light the fire together, but then I allow Jude to do it alone, and it’s clear Xavier taught him well. He stacks the wood expertly and we wait for the oven to heat to the proper temperature. Because Kelvin does much of the shaping the night before, there are only a few types of dough left to proof and form into loaves. Jude and I tarry. I make coffee and sort through notes left by Gretchen. Jude slips a Bible from his pocket and reads aloud, asking questions I usually can’t answer. “Try Seamus,” I tell him.

  “I will. I’ll see him tomorrow. He’s helping me study for my license. And he found out for me that I can have help on the written part of the test. Someone at the DMV will read me the questions.”

  We talk about things, about how he’s concerned for Tee. “She cries sometimes. She turns on the shower and radio and thinks I can’t hear her, but I do.” Most often he tells stories of Xavier, remembrances, like about the time he was three and his grandfather said if he planted a twig in the yard, it would grow. “Pops was trimming the hedges and gave me a trowel and told me to find the perfect baby tree. I scoured the yard until I found one with a single leaf still stuck on it. I dug a hole and stuck it in, and tromped down the dirt with my feet. Pops told me not to forget to water it. I sprayed it with the hose until it fell over.” He laughs. “The next week I came back and there was a tree in the ground where my stick had been. Pops went to the nursery as soon as I’d left and bought a sapling, this tiny thing, about as tall as me. I think I was ten before he told me the truth.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “The tree? Heck yeah. Know that big maple in the front? That’s it. I can’t believe my dad’s selling the place. I mean, I can, but . . .” He swats his eyes and makes a disgusted little snort. “I better check the oven.”

  “You know, I could have Kelvin start it before he leaves. That would give us an extra hour or so to sleep in.”

  “I don’t mind doing it,” and he means, No, I need to do this, please don’t take it from me. It’s his connection with Xavier, what he learned first. He can’t lose it.

  I understand. I have the sourdough knitting me to my mother.

  No, not my mother. I’ve not yet found my peace with her, even though I offered forgiveness to my father.

  Jude takes a handful of flour and tosses it around the oven. I watch as the fine white powder darkens, first to gold, then to brown. “We’re good,” he says.

  “There’s a thermometer for that.”

  He shrugs. “Pops told me not to trust it. What if it breaks or something? He said I need to know how to know if it’s time without it.”

  We begin baking, and he’s as dexterous as Xavier with a lame and peel. I take joy in watching him move, the sleek muscles in his arms, his shoulder blades, his hands. As the room crackles with cooling loaves, I disappear into the euphony of the bread, and for a time nothing exists but the radiant heat of the bricks, the in-out waltz of baking, the sweat of our brow. By seven, Ellie has unlocked the front door and Tee is here; she comes earlier now because of the expanded breakfast menu, stays through lunch, and leaves detailed instructions for Rebekah to prepare for the next day.

  We’re all learning how to relinquish control a little.

  While Jude helps with the front counter and Ellie waits tables, I tell Tee, “Jude doesn’t have a winter coat.”

  She removes a wild yeast breakfast cake from the oven. “I not his mother.”

  “No, but he needs one.”

  She doesn’t ask which I mean, a mother or the parka, but shuts the oven door with enough force to rattle the entire kitchen, signaling the end of the discussion.

  I’m falling asleep on my feet by the time Rebekah starts her shift at nine, so I sneak back upstairs for a couple hours’ worth of nap. How I used to run this place all on my own, I can no longer fathom. The community that Pastor Ryan is constantly imploring us to develop in our own lives—it’s happened here in the bakehouse, a wild yeast colony, expanding and adapting, nourished in the care of one another. I climb beneath the blankets but can’t find my way into sleep.

  I decide to call my birth mother.

  I took the number from the caller ID weeks ago, wrote it on an order receipt from the café, and stashed it in my freezer beneath the ice cube trays I don’t use. I remove it now, unfold the brittle paper, and dial my new cell phone. “Hello?” a woman says.

  “Is Mary Preston home?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Liesl . . . McNamara.”

  Deep, overwhelming silence. And then the smallest of sobs. A hiccup, a sniffle. A trembling voice. “You called. I didn’t think—I didn’t know if I’d hear . . . How are you?”

  I can’t make small talk now. “I thought you might like to meet.”

  “Yes, oh my, yes. Of course. When? Where? I’m only six hours away. I can be there tonight, or tomorrow. Or—”

  “Friday evening. Would that work for you?”

  “Yes, that’s perfect. I’ll bring your sister with me. Dana. The one you spoke with before, if you don’t mind, that is.”

  “That’s fine.” Lack of sleep, the emotional toll of this conversation, of the past several weeks, builds in my head. “Call me when you get into town and we’ll decide a place.”

  “I will. Okay. That sounds perfect.”

  “Good. I’ll talk to you Friday.”

  “Liesl?”

  Oh, my head. Please, stop talking already. “Yes?”

  “Just . . . thank you.”

  Hands shaking, I grope through the medicine cabinet, knocking toothpaste and deodorant into the sink, along with a bottle of ibuprofen and my tweezers, which slip down the unplugged drain. I’ll fish them out later, or better yet, have Seamus do it for me. For the moment, I take three Advil and then swallow two acetaminophen tablets for good measure. I burrow into the mattress, covering my face with a pillow, and don’t wake until Gretchen comes to find me, tapping my forehead with an infuriating woodpecker of a fingernail, letting me know it’s closing time. “It must be nice to sleep on the job.”

  The next day Jude walks through the doors with the shiniest marshmallow of a down jacket I’ve ever seen. I raise an eyebrow.

  “Tee,” he says.

  “Well, it looks warm.”

  “Warm enough I’m willing to wear it.” Hanging it on the kitchen coatrack, he adds, “I think it’s a girl’s coat. When I zipped it this morning, the zipper was on the other side. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.”

  I chuckle. Tee will always be Tee. “At least it’s black,” I say.

  Twenty-One

  I want to open a bakery, and I want to travel to Paris.

  For the time being, I do neither of these things. I simply bake bread. My hands must reacquaint themselves with dough. My eyes must learn the respiration of yeast, the rise and fall of proofing, how each formula reacts to oven spring and steam. I line the wire racks with baking tiles and do the rest of my cooking and reheating on the stovetop.

  I’ve lived frugally the past six years. My home is a basement studio outside Manhattan, in a house owned by senile Mrs. Brow
nell and her daughter; they charge four hundred and fifty dollars a month and make me take care of my own garbage and snow shoveling. I keep the water temperature low and the thermostat lower so they won’t think to raise my rent. I use public transportation. I don’t purchase clothes or shoes unless an absolute necessity, like when the soles separate from the leather and flap as I walk. I eat canned tuna with Italian dressing over lettuce almost every day for lunch, something else from a can—beef ravioli is a favorite, but I don’t mind noodle soup or baked beans on occasion—for dinner, and skip breakfast altogether, except if there is free food in the office break room, which there usually is, some client thanking us with a fruit basket, some administrative assistant bringing in cake for a coworker’s birthday. My student loans are almost paid off. I have a nice double-digit nest egg to draw from until I figure out what comes next.

  Until then, bread.

  I read the books—Peter Reinhart, Jeffrey Hamelman, Maggie Glezer, Joe Ortiz, Daniel Leader. I employ the techniques—cold fermentation, long fermentations, high hydration dough, whole grains, sprouted grains, hand-milled grains. I produce a dozen loaves a day, giving them to the mailman, Mrs. Brownell and her daughter, the woman at the organic store where I buy my flour. My flavors are complex and developed, the crust what I consider the perfect shade of honey-brown. I control the sour tang of the bread, more or less depending on the taste I’m seeking. But one thing eludes me.

  Those beautiful, large rooms in the crumb.

  Oh, I covet them.

  I see photos in books and on artisan baking websites. I follow formulas to the gram, the minute, the degree. I remove the loaves from the oven, forcing myself to wait the required cooling time, and then I slice into them, each movement of the knife heightening the expectation. It’s receiving the most elegantly wrapped gift, all tight corners and spiral ribbon, knowing the surprise inside can be anything from boring items of clothing to matchbox cars to the Easy Bake Oven at the top of the Christmas list for the past three years but still undelivered. I spread the halves of the loaf and look.