The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [127]
“I was happy there,” Bean said, and she felt herself wanting to cry. The truth stared her down, cruel and cold.
“If you had been happy there, you wouldn’t have come back,” Mrs. Landrige said. Bean looked back at her and saw, though her voice was still stony, her eyes were soft.
A tear slipped out and plopped, fat and translucent, onto Bean’s hand.
“So what’s it going to be, Bianca? Are you going to go back somewhere that hurt you? Or are you going to stay in the place that loves you and make a life for yourself?”
There is nothing that is not beautiful about bread. The way it grows, from tiny grains, from bowls on the counter, from yeast blooming in a measuring cup like swampy islands. The way it fills a room, a house, a building, with its inimitable smells at every stage of the process. The way it swells, submits to a firmly applied fist and contracts, swells again; the way it stretches and expands upon kneading, the warm, supple feel of it against skin. The sight of a warm roll on a table, the taste—sweet, sour, yeasty on the tongue.
At night, when she could not sleep, Cordy rose, paced the halls in her nightgown (Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace to-night) and slipped into the kitchen, sylph-like, where she drew out bowls, the flour sifter, ingredients, left the butter softening on the windowsill as she flitted around. She made the dough, kneading it in rhythm with the ticking clock, the only sound in the oppressive still of the night. Retreating into the living room, she read on the sofa until she fell asleep, waking in the dark, as if summoned by the bread itself, to punch it down and then doze again. We woke that summer, nearly every morning it seemed, to the smell of dough drifting through the house like visible smoke.
She made bread out of anything, any recipe, and the miracle of our mother’s kitchen, where cabinets opened and disgorged everything she needed—currants, almonds, wheat bran, brandy—kept her well supplied. After dinner, we would find her in the living room, poring over one of the cookbooks from the shelves in the pantry, their pages bearing stains like birthmarks, crusts of flour and splashes of sauce.
That morning, Cordy showed up at the Beanery with a basket of bread covered in kitchen towels. Still warm, so Continental. Three loaves: all braided. She had become more and more fascinated with the look of bread: learning the skill of painting on the egg wash to add color, experimenting with placement in the pan to allow for just the right shape, using cookie cutters to add patterns to the tops. But braided breads drew her the most; learning to make the strips even, to tie them together so they would merge as one and yet remain distinct when baked. That day she had made Santa Lucia, glazed and sticky in its crown; chocolate in long loaves, dark as pumpernickel; and Hawaiian, light and sweet, the secrets the potato flakes in the dough and crushed macadamia nuts coating each strand.
Inside, the Beanery already smelled of rich coffee, and when she peeled back the towel, she inhaled the combined scents, twisting into the air, twining together like the dough. “Damn, that smells good,” Dan said, emerging from the office.
Cordy started. “You scared me. I thought Ian was opening today.”
“Ian,” Dan said, waving his hand. “He’s not so reliable in the morning. Did you make those?”
“I did. Would you like some?”
“Are you kidding? Fire it up.” He brought out two mugs, wide as soup bowls, and poured coffee into his, set a tea bag to steep for her. “What are these?”
Cordy pulled out a cutting board, plates, a serrated knife, and gestured with the blade to each loaf, naming it. “I’ve been baking a lot lately,” she said. “Nesting, maybe.”
Dan nodded. They had spoken so little since that afternoon in the kitchen, their conversations heavy in their emptiness. She