The Garden of Eden and Other Criminal Delights

by Faye Kellerman

  He didn’t know what to do with me. Being short and slight, I didn’t fit the job description. There was a physical component to the work that called for muscle mass. I had none. The most skilled chores required an adeptness with sharp objects—meat slicers, cheese slicers, knives for trimming and cutting lox. I had small hands and fingers—way too little to handle industrial equipment that could slice a digit as easily as a corned beef.

  There was the retail side—the greeting and the waiting on customers—but I was too short to be seen above the countertops. To the consumers on the other side, I was more or less a floating head. My father was constantly dodging me because I was underfoot and the operating space behind the counters was minimal. The starched white apron my father gave me for protection was way too big. It dragged on the baseboards, picking up sawdust around the hemline. Occasionally, I’d trip on it. When that happened, I hiked up the cloth. Eventually, it would fall down again.

  I’m sure I was a disaster. I’m sure I got in Dad’s way. But he never said anything to me about it.

  Dad knew I couldn’t remain an ornament. He had to give me something to do. My first assignment was shoveling the three most popular salads—potato, cole slaw, and macaroni (this was prior to the urban elite pasta salad)—from the cooler into pint or half-pint containers. This job was a snap because the salads were priced by the pint. A pint of cole slaw was X number of cents. A half pint totaled X/2. I was a math whiz in school. I had absolutely no trouble figuring out how to halve things.

  Having mastered salads, I was given my next assignment—the weighing and wrapping of dill pickles. This, to my surprise, turned out to be a very tricky affair.

  I was given a stool in order to see and read the scale. But first I needed to learn how to read a scale. Back then, before the advent of LCD and the digital revolution, watches were analogs, and scales were mean critters consisting of columns of prices and rows of weights—a veritable crisscross of numbers that bounced up and down with a spring weight. To find out how much something cost necessitated finding the correct intersection between price and weight along a skinny red line. I’ve known adults who never mastered the art of reading this kind of scale, just as I’ve known those who never got the hang of a slide rule.

  It took me some time. For the first week, all my pickle prices magically came out in pounds, half pounds, or quarter pounds because—being a math whiz—I could divide the price by factors of two. Anything in between was rounded off to the nearest whole number divisible by two. In order to please the customer, I usually rounded down. I’m sure I cost my father some pocket change.

  If he noticed it, he never said anything.

  Eventually, I vanquished the scale. It was a proud moment that should have been worthy of some kind of certification. But knowledge has its own rewards. Reading the scale now allowed me to weigh things—items like lox and precut cheeses and meats, fishy pickled herring and the wonderfully oily Greek olives.

  With two skills mastered, I was determined to crack another—wrapping. Origami enthusiasts needn’t have worried. Still, I was proud of my neatly swaddled packages with just the right amount of sticky tape on them. And when I wrote the word “pickles” or “Swiss” on the white paper in my own handwriting, no one could have been more pleased than I was.

  My weighing and packaging skills had been honed to such an extent that Dad took an enormous chance. No, I was still forbidden to use the meat slicers, but he let me try the bread slicers.

  For those unschooled in the literature on bread slicers, I shall explain. To slice a whole loaf of bread, one usually places the bread against a back bar, then turns on the machine. With a manual handle—which the operator slowly pulls toward him or her—the bread is advanced and forced between a series of moving parallel blades until it emerges out the other side in neat, perfect slices.

  Immediately upon exiting the blades, my first rye fell apart, the slices fanning out like a deck of cards. Spotting the trouble, Dad once again explained to me that as the bread advances between the blades, it is necessary to secure the loaf on the other side with your hand. This must be done with care, as fingers are not supposed to get close to the blades. Was I up to the challenge?

  Indeed I was. After a couple of failures, I was finally able to produce a successfully sliced loaf of rye. I was even able to hold it aloft, vertically by the heel, as the experts did.

  Alas, it was the next step that tripped me up. I placed the rye directly into the white waxed-paper bag. Needless to say, again the rye fell apart.

  As I apologized profusely, the customers just laughed it off.

  Isn’t she cute?

  C’mon, guys. I’m trying to do a job here.

  Of course, the crucial error was not housing the rye in a tight plastic bag and securing it with a flexible steel tie before I placed the loaf in the white waxed-paper bag. Of course, that step necessitated opening the plastic bag while still holding the rye in the air.

  Not an easy task of coordination. A few of my loaves ended up as fodder for the sawdust floor.

  More waste.

  If it bothered Dad, he never said so.

  Eventually I mastered the coordination necessary for packing the ryes. And not just ryes but loaves of challah and wheat bread as well. These were a challenge unto themselves, because challahs and wheat breads are much softer. They required a delicate touch with the bread slicer.

  Not one to rest on my laurels, I demanded more. Dad must have felt that I was up to the ultimate challenge, because he put the entire bakery under my charge.

  The entire bakery, and I was only eleven.

  This was monumental.

  Faye the bakery lady.

  Take a number, please!

  There I was, wearing a hairnet, slicing breads, twirling plastic bags with a flourish, and handing out free sprinkle cookies to toddlers.

  The coup de grâce came when Dad started taking me to the wholesale bakery to pick out items for our little bakery. We chose the usual rolls and breads and bagels and Danish. But now, since Dad had a genuine bakery lady, he began to invest in more coffee cakes, coffee rings, babkas, and cookies.

  The smells were incredible. Hot and yeasty doughs laden with sugar, chocolate, nuts, and cinnamon, glazed with thin white frostings. The aromas, more than the visuals, made my mouth water. We chose our fare straight from the ovens, still hot, resting on parchment paper. At first my dad made all the selections. As I got bolder, I began to make a few suggestions of my own. Sometimes he listened. Sometimes he did not.

  One week there was a particular coffee-ring cake that appealed to my eye as well as to my nose. It was a typical cinnamon yeast dough topped with circles of cherries, lemon, blueberries, and apple, the fruit swimming in seas of pectin and sugar. I had to have it. Though not particularly aromatic, it appealed to my eye.

  “It will never sell,” Dad said.

  “But it’s pretty.”

  “People buy with their noses, not with their eyes.”

  “People like fruit rings,” I countered. “And if it doesn’t sell, we can take it home.”

  I was the youngest in my family and the only daughter. I batted my eyelashes and Dad melted. Arriving at the store before the opening hour, I set out the coffee cakes, the cookies, the rolls, and the breads. I tidied up the plastic and paper bags. Unplugging the cord to the bread slicer, I cleaned it of yesterday’s crumbs and seeds. I plugged in the bread slicer. Then, with my duties done, I waited for the customers to come out of the starting gate.

  Our first consumer came in a few minutes after the doors opened at nine. She was a forty-plus woman—Jewish, as many of our customers were—who scrutinized my baked goods. I saw her eyeing my pretty coffee ring. The artificially red cherries, the egg yolk-colored lemon filling, the blueberries, and the apples.

  She scrunched up her brow. “I’ll take that one,” she stated.

  My father was looking over his shoulder as I scooped the cake under my hand and placed it in a pink bakery
box, tying it with bakery string.

  “Bingo, skittle ball in the old pocket,” he whispered to me.

  I had never heard the expression before. And Dad never used it again. But I never forgot it.

  I decided to take on the job full-time during my summer vacation. It was hard work. I was on my feet most of the time, and I worked four- to eight-hour shifts. Halfway through the month of July, I experienced an epiphany. I was not going to do this for the rest of my life, putting up with cranky customers, flaky vendors, the whims of mechanical equipment, and fallen arches. I made a decision to go for an advanced educational degree. Though writing wasn’t in my sights at the time—I never had the audacity to dream I could get published—I was still a person with many options. I could be anything I wanted to be. What I wanted more than anything was to do interesting work while seated.

  One morning right after the store opened, I went to the restroom and realized, after a very startled reaction, that I had begun my menses. Enormously embarrassed, I didn’t know what to do. Sneaking off, I called my mother from a pay phone, and she came to pick me up. No stickum pads back then. We girls were inducted into the clumsy world of belts and napkins. After the problem had been secured, Mom took me back to work.

  She must have said something to my dad. He came up to me with a perplexed look on his face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked with the concern of those men who stayed clear of female things.

  “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “I think you have a customer.”

  “Then I’d better go help her.”

  After that moment there were no more references to female things. We were just two people trying to earn an honest buck.

  Publishing History

  “Bull’s-eye,” copyright © 1997 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: Family Circle/Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine #2 (spring 1997).

  “A Woman of Mystery,” copyright © 1999 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: a) Family Circle/Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine #6 (summer 1999); b) New Idea Magazine (2000), Pacific Publications (Australia).

  “The Stalker,” copyright © 1996 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: Murder for Love, edited by Otto Penzler, Delacorte, 1996.

  “Mummy and Jack,” copyright © 2000 by Faye Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman. Previously published in: Mothers and Sons: A Celebration in Memoirs, Stories, and Photographs, edited by Jill M. Morgan, NAL, 2000.

  “Bonding,” copyright © 1989 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: a) Sisters in Crime, edited by Marilyn Wallace, Berkley, 1989; b) Hard-boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories, edited by Bill Pronzini and Jack Adrian, Oxford University Press, 1995.

  “Discards,” copyright © 1990 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: a) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (November 1990, Volume 96, no. 5), edited by Eleanor Sullivan, Davis Publications; b) A Woman’s Eye, edited by Sarah Paretsky, Delacorte, 1991; c) Women of Mystery: Stories from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, edited by Cynthia Manson, Carroll & Graf, 1992; d) Third Annual Best Mystery Stories of the Year, edited by Josh Pachter and Martin H. Greenberg, Dercum audio, 1993.

  “Tendrils of Love,” copyright © 1997 by Faye Kellerman. Originally written for publication in: The Night Awakens: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology, edited by Mary Higgins Clark, Pocket Books, 1999/2000.

  “Malibu Dog,” copyright © 1990 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: a) Sisters in Crime 3, edited by Marilyn Wallace, Berkley, 1990; b) Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories, Carroll & Graf, 1992; c) Modern Treasury of Great Detective and Murder Mysteries, edited by Edward Gorman, Carroll & Graf, 1994.

  “The Back Page,” copyright © 1998 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: a) Diagnosis: Dead: A Mystery Writers of America Anthology, edited by Jonathan Kellerman, Pocket Books, 1999; b) Giallo (Japanese quarterly), 2002/2003, Kobunsha (Japan).

  “Mr. Barton’s Head Case,” copyright © 2003 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: Du Sollst Nicht Toten: Zwolf Verbrechen aus der Bibel, edited by Regula Veske, Scherz Verlag, 2003 (German title, “Mr Bartons Spezi”).

  “Holy Water,” copyright © 1994 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: a) Deadly Allies II: Private Eye Writers of America and Sisters in Crime Collaborative Anthology, edited by Robert J. Randisi and Susan Dunlap, Doubleday, 1994; b) Mystery Midrash: An Anthology of Jewish Mystery and Detective Fiction, edited by Lawrence W. Raphael, Jewish Lights Publishing, 1999; c) Stellar Audio Volume 20 (with “Inconvenience Store” by Max Allan Collins), Brilliance, Stellar Audio imprint, 1997.

  “Free Parking,” copyright © 1996 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: Mother: Famous Writers Celebrate Motherhood with a Treasury of Short Stories, Essays, and Poems, edited by Claudia O’Keefe, Pocket Books, 1996.

  “The Luck of the Draw,” copyright © 1998 by Faye Kellerman, Rachel Kellerman, and Ilana Kellerman. Previously published in: Mothers and Daughters: Celebrating the Gift of Love with 12 New Stories, edited by Jill M. Morgan, NAL, 1998.

  “Small Miracles,” copyright © 1997 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: Small Miracles: Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life, edited by Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal, Adams Media Corporation, 1997.

  “The Summer of My Womanhood,” copyright © 1999 by Faye Kellerman. Previously published in: Fathers and Daughters: A Celebration in Memoirs, Stories, and Photographs, edited by Jill M. Morgan, Signet/NAL, 1999.