Stones for Bread (33 page)

Biological
. The word means nothing to me outside the freshman science lab I’d been required to take, at least before yesterday. Now it’s five syllables capable of altering a life. More than one.

Seamus extends his long arm—he reaches me without leaning—and touches an unseen part of me at the bottom of the blanket. My ankle. “What can I do?”

“Take me back in time. Keep me from going on that stupid show.”

“You’d rather not know the truth?”

“What has it done?”

“It’s given you the truth. That should be enough.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Too late.”

I’m annoyed. Who is Seamus in my life that he thinks he can speak to me this way? “Do me a favor and don’t comment, please. You’re not helping.”

He takes his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I just . . . well, I guess I just think it’s a good thing. If it were me, I’d want to know. Like about where I came from, and those things.”

But Seamus is a wanderer, never staying too long in one place. To him, this is romantic and exciting, a chance for me to explore the newly discovered topography of Liesl. I don’t want it, though. I am the child who felt safe nestled between my parents, watching
The Cosby Show
and eating popcorn made on the stove in my mother’s blue enamelware pot. My father ate his popcorn with cinnamon and sugar. So did I. My mother wore two pairs of socks because her feet were cold. So did I. I liked being part of them, believing God plucked this piece from him and that one from her, and stirred them together to make me. I liked coming from somewhere utterly recognizable.

I like blending.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You’ve gained, Liesl. More knowledge. More family. I guess, though . . . I mean, how much you take of it is up to you.”

“I’ve lost—”

—the bread
.

I stop. Seamus doesn’t need me to finish. He touches me again, a little higher up my leg, but still far enough away from my heart to be safe. “It’s not gone.”

“But it’s not me anymore.”

“It’s more you than anything else. Your mother, she nurtured that
bread down deep into you, deeper even than if it had been planted there by blood.”

The bedroom door opens. Cecelia shouts down the hallway, “Can I at least come out to get a Capri Sun?”

“You can come all the way out,” Seamus says.

She skips into the kitchen and yanks open the refrigerator. Bottles jingle in the door. “I’m sorta hungry too.”

Seamus meets her at the fridge and peers inside. “Want a sandwich?”

“Nah.”

“Apple?”

She shakes her head.

“Cheese stick?”

“Don’t we have anything good?”

“Hey, Miss Gratitude. Shopping day’s tomorrow.”

She crinkles her nose. “Is there any popcorn?”

He spins the revolving corner cabinet, holds up two cellophane-wrapped rectangles. “Ta-da.”

“Can you come watch the movie with me now? And Liesl too?”

“Tell you what. You grab the disc and bring it down to the living room. I’ll make the popcorn. And we’ll ask Liesl if she wants to join us. How about that?”

“Liesl, will you? We can start the movie over, I don’t mind watching the beginning part again.”

“Okay,” I tell her. I’m cold and tired and it’s still raining, and I don’t want to be alone right now.

She squeals and runs for the movie. Seamus opens the popcorn bags and starts the microwave. I try to readjust my skirt beneath the blanket. Cecelia returns, lugging her princess sleeping bag and pillow-shaped plush unicorn. “Pick up those Pet Shops too,” her father says. She dumps her armful on the recliner and crouches, using her arms to bulldoze the figurines into one pile. Then she scoops them into the sparkly pink pail beside the television.

Seamus glances over. “Where do they go?”

“I’m going.” She huffs a little, dragging the bucket to her bedroom and racing back. Seamus empties the steaming popcorn into three bowls. Cecelia digs the movie disc from inside her sleeping bag and drops it into the player. Turns on the television. “I can’t find the remote.”

“Check the cushions.”

It’s there, in the crack beside me. She begins the movie and pauses it, tosses the remote back onto the couch before shimmying into her sleeping bag and hopping, like in a sack race, to settle next to me. “Do you like dolphins?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Good, ’cause this movie’s about one.”

Seamus comes with popcorn and sits on Cecelia’s other side. “Press play.”

She pats around. “The remote’s gone again.”

“Under you,” I tell her, and she struggles around in her polyester cocoon until she finds it. Then she nestles between us, yellow crumbs escaping from her mouth as she smiles at the movie and chews, legs thrown over her father’s, head on my shoulder.

“Do you want her to move?” Seamus asks.

I shake my head and realize, oh, how easy blending comes.

Eighteen

We survive, my father and I, rebuilding the bonds I tore down. He has his church and I go with him when asked, which is only three or four times each year. I stop beating my legs, mostly, and when the more intense urges come I phone Sara Kempf, and we talk about nothing until they pass. She would be more of a friend, I think, if I wanted her to be, but I avoid her in school because I don’t deserve her, and anyway, the world turning around her—the other cheerleaders, the youth group, her quarterback boyfriend—want nothing to do with me. My grades improve, and by my senior year, with excellent standardized test scores and letters from the guidance counselor explaining the extenuating circumstances of my first two years of high school, I manage to be accepted into one of the best computer science programs in the state. My father wants to know what I’m studying, exactly.

Coding languages. Graphics. Computational theory
.

But why?

Because it’s the furthest thing from bread I can imagine. I don’t say that, but tell him instead,
It sounds interesting
.

We pack my car. He asks again if he can drive out with me. I say no, and he lets it be.

I worry about leaving him.

He tells me,
Go, go
, placing his hand atop my head and gently pulling me toward him. He kisses me between my temple and ear.

Only two hours away. I’ll be home to do laundry
.

I drive, relying on my door mirrors because the backseat is stacked high with boxes and totes and blankets, and I can’t see out the windshield rearview. I merge onto the highway northbound. Two exits later I swing over to the right lane, take the off-ramp, and swing back around to go south again.

I decide I can’t leave without it.

Parking at the curb, I leave the car running so I have an excuse not to stay. I love the Rausenberg house, so much like my own, built not long before the turn of the century and charming in its details, from slate roof to eight-inch baseboard moldings, to the quirky under-the-stairs passageway leading into the bathroom. I ring the doorbell and Jennie answers; we’ve long been estranged, our talents and circumstances leading us in different directions. Not hostile toward one another. Simply untied.

Hey
, she says.

Hey back. Is your mom here?

She holds the screen door open. It’s green, like the wide plank floorboards of the front porch, extra glossy, paint flaking beneath the handle.
In the kitchen
.

Mrs. Rausenberg hugs me when I enter, knowing better than to say she’s not seen me around for a while or that she’s missed me around here, and asks instead for me to sit with her and have a glass of lemonade.
Fresh squeezed, the way you like it
.

I can’t stay. My car is running out there. I’m leaving for Clarkson
.

She presses her lips together in a bittersweet smile.
I read that. In the paper
. And then, sweeping my untrimmed bangs from my eyes, says,
You made it
.

Yeah. I guess I did
. I tug the hem of my shirt; it’s shorter than I normally wear and I’m self-conscious about it.
Do you think . . . I mean, do you still have—

Yes
.

The kitchen is remarkably modern compared to the rest of the house, with stainless steel appliances and bright aqua and lemon pans hanging from the rack in the center of the ceiling. She opens the refrigerator, so much larger than the one we have, cleaner, without clots of dried sweet-and-sour sauce on the shelves or shriveled carrots in the crisper. She reaches deep inside, nearly disappearing, and emerges holding a Mason jar and Oma’s stoneware crock. With her knee she shuts the door.
They were fed three days ago. They’re always hungry, still
.

Thank you. For keeping them all this time, I mean
.

Thank you for asking me
.

I don’t need them both. There’s no difference between them, especially now as they’ve been given the same flour for years. I take only the crock from her and say,
You keep that one
.

She embraces me again, more firmly, the cold crock between us, against the bare skin of my belly where my T-shirt rides up because I’ve thrown my arm around her neck. She whispers,
Be good, you hear?

I nod my head against hers.

Back in the car, I belt my crock of starter into the passenger seat and tuck a pillow around it to keep it safe.

Two days after the movie with Seamus and Cecelia, my father calls. I consider ignoring his message but don’t want to make him more concerned than he already is. I, however, am not ready to talk. There’s
nothing new to add to the adoption conversation, and I have other things on my mind as well.

One other thing.

The cooking show.

I’d been leaning toward accepting, especially after Xavier gave his approval. I read through every word of the information the Good Food Network sent, logistics and contract and legalese. The first season of
Bread Without Boundaries
would feature twenty-four episodes, and I’d be paid five thousand dollars each—four times the salary I take at the bakehouse. Add to that airfare (first class), hotels (only the best I imagine, if Jonathan Scott accompanies me, or at least very good ones), food (whatever I want to eat), and the experience of the best breads from around the world (to quote the credit card commercial, priceless). Only a fool would refuse.

But something happened the other day, when I went to Seamus and shared with him about the adoption. When Cecelia snuggled between us. I caught a glimpse of another possible future, one I never expected I might want. No. In those deep recesses where I tuck the memory of family, the way life was before my mother’s death, I always have wanted it. I have been afraid to lose it again.

I’m caught off balance, though I shouldn’t be. Seamus and I have been flirting around the edges of this for weeks, him subtly pursuing but interested in more, me undulating in bewildered attempts to understand my rather erratic—and unpracticed—emotions. He’s been more patient than I deserve. I’ve been, well, a bit of a handful. As improbable as it seems, when I stack Seamus—a divorced, blue-collar single father packaged with a precocious little girl—beside all the Good Food Network offers me, I’d rather have him.

What do I do?

Ask me
.

I haven’t prayed over the decision. Will seeking the Spirit ever be my first inclination? After three years, I think I’d be better at this
Christian thing. Others come to faith and within hours have boarded a ship to deepest Africa with only two dollars and a granola bar in their satchel, trusting the Lord to care for their every need. I don’t remember to thank him before a meal.

No condemnation. Ask me
.

I close my eyes and see Cecelia sucking her pigtail to a wet point, and then she grins, her father coming from behind to cocoon her in his stout arms.

Jonathan Scott’s card is in the mess of pages on the kitchen table. I sift through and, before I change my mind, dial his number. He answers, and I tell him who’s calling.

“Liesl, I was wondering about you.”

“I’m not going to do the show. I appreciate your generous offer, but—”

“—it’s not for you.”

“In some ways it’s too much for me, I think.”

“You know I understand.” He says this in his other voice, not the showman one he uses while the cameras roll, but the tired, generous one with which he told me about the old boulanger who let Jonathan wash his floors to earn admittance into his world of bread and war.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Any chance you’ll change your mind?”

“Slim to none.”

“How slim?”

“Okay, none to less than that.”

He laughs. “I hear you. But listen. Keep my card. If you ever need anything you think I can help with, please call. Seriously. I mean it.”

“I will.”

I gather the show documents into their envelope and, before dumping them into the trash can, hesitate. Do I want to save them so one day, perhaps five years from now, when I realize my life is exactly the same as this instant, I can look back and think,
I was offered more
and I chose this?
I shake my head despite being alone in the kitchen. To choose means owning the decision. I cram the envelope down the side of the bag and shut the lid. I do keep Jonathan Scott’s card, taping it into the cover of my mother’s
Beard on Bread
so I won’t lose it.