I don’t give up my studio yet, but do have fantasies of not returning at all.
And then I see the advertisement. A small space in Billingston, Vermont, population fifteen thousand, former pizzeria already outfitted with a wood-fire oven in a building with a one-bedroom apartment above the restaurant space. I blink at the rent. Surely it must be a typo—or perhaps I don’t know the cost of things outside Manhattan—and if it isn’t, the place will be leased by now. I pace several days and finally call the phone number. Yes, the price is correct and yes, it’s still available. Would I like to see it?
I drive four hours and as soon as I cross from New York into Vermont, I feel a shift in my soul, something I’ve not experienced since my mother was alive and I came home from school to bread cooling on the counter and her, simply being and being there, offering me a snack and milk, her hair curling over my face when she bent close, the scent of honey and lemon verbena. The restaurant space seats thirty comfortably, crudely painted murals of grapes and wine and meatballs on the walls. The kitchen is dominated by the brick oven, but large enough for three people to work without tangling together. The realtor apologizes for the size of the apartment; I don’t tell her it’s more than triple my studio space.
I am supposed to have Paris, like my mother was unable to. I am supposed to visit her homeland and immerse myself in all things bread. Starting a business will empty me, my time, my bank account, and I know enough about life to realize if I don’t go on my trip now, there may not be another chance. Still, this opportunity begs me to consider it.
Why don’t you stroll around? the realtor suggests. So I do. Following the sidewalk, I leave the small downtown area—perhaps thirty independently owned shops, galleries, and eateries. No chain stores, one local bank, and several professional offices. I pass into a residential area. The houses hunch together, mostly turn-of-the-century homes, longer than they are wide, with picket fences and wicker chairs on front porches, not unlike the one in which I grew up. I slow as I approach a white chapel, stop at the bottom cement stair, and touch the metal railing, tracing the twist in the wrought iron with my finger. I feel as though a rope has been tied around my waist and someone—something?—pulls me toward the door. It has to be locked, I think, but when I press the latch and yank, it opens. I glance left, right, and duck inside. I can use a place to sit and think for a few minutes.
The carpet is worn and red, the padded chairs gray, the walls some sort of paneling painted white. Water has damaged one corner of the ceiling, a café au lait spot I half expect to look like the face of the Virgin Mary, since that’s what happens in places like this. I stare at it for a while but can’t even manage to see a pair of eyes, let alone some recognizable person. I sigh and close my eyes.
What am I going to do about the bakery space?
Take it.
I jump, the words so vibrant and clear, and look around for the person who spoke to me. There’s no one. I’m alone. I tell myself it’s all in my head but, remarkably, unexpectedly, don’t believe it.
Who do people say I am?
My father’s God has come to me.
I watched him for years, how easily he slipped into his faith, the one I mocked and railed against, the one I wanted no part of, the one that replaced my mother. I swore I was above such primitive mythologies. My father needed a crutch. I was the brave, strong one who could overcome in my own sufficiency. Now I hear voices. No, one voice. It’s a light switch, an open circuit now connected, a burning bush. A miracle.
His God is now my God.
I walk back downtown, to the realtor’s office, and sign a lease for the bakery.
The days pass uneventfully and that makes them special, Cecelia stitched into the shirring of my routine. She joins Jude and me downstairs in the morning once she wakes, around seven, and sits on a tall stool at the proofing table, asking sleepy questions about the bread. I answer them all, reminding her not to poke at the dough, but invariably she does, and when she goes upstairs to dress I find one mound or another degassed, flat as a punctured inner tube, with a handprint patted into the center, or a tunnel of a little finger, or a pinch and pull. I explain to her again how delicate dough is, and like a balloon it needs all the air inside it. “What fun is a balloon if it doesn’t float?” I ask, but I can’t be upset with her. Dough is magnetic—everyone wants to touch it.
Tee comes a bit earlier to cook Cecelia breakfast, whatever she wants, and it’s been bacon and more bacon. And cinnamon buns. On the days she has school I drive her. She returns on the bus and continues her regular afternoon routine, bouncing between doing homework, helping Gretchen, and chattering to whoever will listen. By Sunday, Seamus’s absence is magnified because he’s not at church with us, not around to go to lunch, and, as Cecelia puts it, we miss him like crazy.
He does make it back Tuesday evening, trying to surprise us by coming quietly up the stairs to my apartment, but nothing about Seamus is quiet and we hear his exaggerated tiptoe, the treads shifting beneath his weight. We pretend he’s successful, though. “Shh,” I whisper to Cecelia as she giggles. “We don’t know it’s him.”
The door flings open and Seamus says, “Who forgot about me?”
“Daddy,” Cecelia shouts, lunging into his waiting arms.
“Ooof. You’re heavier.”
“That’s because Tee spoils her rotten,” I say, feeling a bit Donna Reed-ish, drying my hands on a dish towel as my man comes home. Perhaps I need heels and pearls.
Seamus pulls me into him too, and it’s family. We’ve adopted one another.
“Is Grandma okay?” Cecelia asks.
He sets her on the floor. “She’s getting better. Now, go grab your stuff. I’m beat, and you have school in the morning.”
“I’ll help you,” I say, and together we make sure she has kittens and puppies—Zoë and Daisy and Justin B. and Firefly; I can name them all now—and her autumn leaves poem she wrote for homework, as well as her clothes. I zip her coat for her, tug on her hat, and kiss her forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She hugs me around the waist. I look at Seamus and know he’s troubled. He tickles her ribs so she releases me and then picks her up again. “We’ll talk later.”
I nod and mouth, I love you.
When I emerge from the kitchen at eight thirty the next morning, Seamus is waiting at a table with coffee and a croissant, one of the items I added to the menu once Kelvin arrived. I gesture to Ellie to come back into the kitchen with me. “How long has he been out there?”
“I don’t know. Half hour, maybe?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He never asked me to.”
I go to him, touch his arm. He looks more ragged than yesterday, dusky pits beneath his eyes, his face thinner than a week ago. “What’s going on?”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Yes, of course. Let’s go upstairs,” and once we’re in my living room he consumes me in his embrace, inhaling the scent of my hair and trembling. I twist my head so I can see him, and he’s crying.
“What’s wrong? Seamus, is it your mother? Did something else happen?”
He wipes his sleeve across his eyes. “No, nothing’s changed with her.”
“Oh good. You had me worried.”
“Liesl, I need to go to Tennessee.”
“Again? Yeah, sure. Not a problem. Cecelia is fine staying with me. Really. I love having her—”
“I need to move there.”
I blink. “What do you mean?”
“I told you, my mother can’t be alone anymore. Someone needs to stay with her.”
“But a nurse—”
“—is fine for part of the day, but I don’t want her with strangers all the time. I’m her son. I have a responsibility—”
“I understand that. But can’t you move her here?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “The doctors say she needs to be in her own familiar environment for the best chance of recovery. Plus,
it’s too cold here. Her arthritis.” He throws up his hands. “It just won’t work.”
“It won’t work, or you don’t want it to work?”
“That’s unfair, and you know it.”
I sink onto the loveseat. The upholstery has been flawless up until this past week, Cecelia not only splashing milk and squishing cherry filling onto the cushions, but also wiping her hands on the matching throw pillows. She did it absentmindedly while engrossed in a movie, tossing Cheese Puffs in her mouth and either licking the fluorescent orange powder from her fingers or sweeping them over the nubby fabric. I gave her a stack of napkins and washed the spots as best as I could when she wasn’t here.
I’ll miss her. I’ll miss them both.
“Well, people do the long-distance thing all the time. I guess we just try it and see what happens,” I say, forcing a good attitude. But I already know the outcome. He won’t be able to leave his mother, and I can’t leave the bakehouse, and in two months it’ll be over. We’ll hang on a few more weeks because we don’t want our hearts broken. Eventually the phone calls will lessen and our feelings will cool, and we’ll part as so-called friends but in reality never speak to one another again.
Seamus sits next to me, our inside knees touching, and takes my hands. “Or you can marry me.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Marry me. Come with us. I don’t want to wait and see what happens. I want you.”
“Seamus, I’m flattered, really. But it won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Well, Wild Rise, for one.”
“It’s not like you can’t open a bakery down there. All you’d have to do is advertise your Bake-Off win and people will flock to buy your bread.”
“But I’m established here. This is my home, Seamus. I’ve been working for this my entire life, even before I knew it. It’s all I have.”
“You have Cecelia and me.”
“Now you’re not being fair. You’re asking me to drop everything for you, but you’re not willing to consider the same.”
“My mother’s a person. You’re talking about a business. And one that can be replaced, at that. They’re not even remotely the same.”
You cannot serve two masters.
I am hiding behind the bakehouse, huddled in the shadow of it, using the bread as an excuse to avoid opening up that area of my adolescent self that atrophied after my mother’s death. The part capable of loving and receiving love. I’ve been hiding since the very moment I saw her lifeless body in the front seat of the Buick, using whatever means possible to keep from facing the agony she caused. No, I tell myself. It wasn’t her. It was the illness. She didn’t have control. My mantra, the one I’ve repeated all these years to keep the anger in its place. Only now it doesn’t work as well. Instead, I swallow my feelings; it burns like vomit on an empty stomach, all digestive juice and gall.
I will not blame her.
I disengage my hands from his, take a deep breath. “People have long-distance relationships all the time. Let’s just see what happens.”
Seamus presses his lips together, cups his mouth with his hand, pulling downward at his beard. Bobs his head. “Fine. You’re right. They do.” And then he leaves me there, sitting on the loveseat, picking at the stains left by his daughter.
The first thing Christ is tempted with is bread. After fasting forty days and forty nights, the adversary comes to him and says, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.
And why should it not be this way? God in flesh wears humanity in full; he hungers as his people hunger so they may never claim he doesn’t understand the gnawing in their bellies. But he also knows something their eyes have not yet been opened to, that man shall not live on bread alone.
Five thousand people believe otherwise.
They follow him because he heals the sick, but the day is long and they are tired. And hungry. Jesus has compassion on them, and breaking five loaves of barley bread—the bread of poverty—he feeds them until they have their fill. He desires to be their provision, teaching them to implore God for their daily bread, allowing the apostles to glean on the Sabbath, reminding the multitudes of the Father’s care for birds and grasses. How much more will they be satisfied?
The next day the people search for him because they want more.
That is the crux of hunger—it always returns. For the wealthy, this is a minor inconvenience, nothing more. For this crowd, however, it is a way of life. They want the bread of heaven to rain down on them, like their ancestors received in the desert, so they will never again worry where their next meal comes from.
I am the bread, Jesus says.
Hearing this, most of his followers turn their backs to him; they want the food that perishes. He will not feed them so they have no reason to stay.
Do you want to go away as well? he asks the twelve.
Lord, to whom shall we go?
In less than a week Seamus and Cecelia are packed and on their way, a For Sale sign hastily pounded into the ground at the end of their driveway, all their ends in Billingston knotted up and the bakehouse in mourning. The two of them park Seamus’s truck in front of the building and come through the front door—a gesture, separating themselves from this place; they are no longer heirs, but guests, no different than any other paying customer—and they come to say good-bye before beginning their twenty-hour trek to Nashville.
Seamus keeps the truck running. He knows that trick too.
Tee, especially, takes their departure hard. She gives them boxes of food for the trip. She pinches Seamus’s cheek, tugging it, slapping it twice in what I imagine she means as a gesture of endearment, but she does it with enough force that we all hear the dull skin-against-skin blows. She kneels before Cecelia, shrinking to half the girl’s size.
Tee rocks her and whispers against her hair. Cecelia nods, crying. Tee gives her a handkerchief, this one cross-stitched with teeny blue blossoms, and I remind myself to dig out the one from the funeral, still in the pocket of the sweater I wore, and return it to the cook.
Cecelia comes to me next. “I don’t want to go.”
I smooth her hair away from her face, unsticking the strands from her tears. “I don’t want you to go. But sometimes things happen that get in the way of what we want.”
“Daddy says God has a plan.”
“You need to listen to your daddy.”
She nods. “I love you, Liesl.”
“Love you too, baby girl.”
While the other employees hug her and talk to her, Seamus approaches. We’ve spoken since his proposal of marriage—Cecelia still came after school and he picked her up when he was done making deliveries—but the conversations were limited to perfunctory inquiries about the move, his mother, and the logistics of it all. We didn’t talk of us, if there is such a thing anymore.
He will go, it will fade, and everything will be back to the way it was before I got the foolish notion that I am capable of having an intimate relationship with someone.
“So,” he says, and opens his arms to me. I have promised myself I won’t cry, but I do, and I step into his offered comfort but find none. “We’ll call when we get there.”
I nod. “Be safe.”
And they go. Gretchen and Rebekah and Ellie return to their duties. And Tee stares like only she can, face tight, eyes small, an aura of resentment hovering around her. I can almost see it, like mist low to the ground.
“I’m going upstairs,” I say.
I don’t know what I hope to accomplish in the apartment. I throw a small load of whites into the washing machine, and as I’m shutting the lid I think of the handkerchief. I retrieve it from my sweater and it opens. There are no stitched flowers on it, but initials.
X.R.P.
I return to the kitchen and give the cloth to Tee. “Xavier Robert Potter.”
Her fingers, so skeletal, tighten on her spatula. She swings it around toward Gretchen and Rebekah. “You. Go out.”
&nbs
p; “I’m busy,” Gretchen says.
“Robota ne vovk, v lis ne vtiče.”
“You know I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Tee uses the metal utensil as a prod, moving Gretchen toward the door. “Work is not wolf, it does not run to the woods.”
Gretchen holds the door frame. “What the heck?”
“I think she means you can get back to what you’re doing later,” I say, and I nod at her.
“Alrighty then,” Gretchen says, and she disappears into the café area, but not before yanking the spatula from Tee’s hand and throwing it across the room, into the sink.
Tee turns to Rebekah. “You too, tall helper girl.”
The teenager glances in my direction. “We still have orders to fill.”
“Tell them cook is sick. Tell them no more food until tomorrow.”
“Go ahead, Rebekah,” I say. “It’s okay.”
Xavier’s absence is still palpable, like sepsis, flowing through every vein of Wild Rise, but all the more here, in this kitchen, where I still think I see him sometimes, clutching the warm miche to his chest, his lips against it, eyes closed, soul nourished. I motion to the handkerchief, still safe in Tee’s grasp. “It’s Zave’s.”
“Ah. I see it. You come out from under your hill of hleeb and open eyes.”
“You can’t blame me for not figuring it out. I mean, I saw how you acted around him.”
“What is it you know now? Nothing. You let the girl go, and the father. You give them up for—what is this? You think you are some—what?—a hero to the bread? You are only frightened child. The man and I,” she says, shaking the cloth in her fist, “we have the companionship. What it is to you?”
“But Annie . . .”
“You can love a someone who is gone and a someone who is here, both together in time,” Tee says. “That I know.” She turns her back to me, kissing the handkerchief and rolling it beneath the scarf trussing her bare head.
Stones for Bread Page 29
