The Baker's Daughter

Chapter Four

ELSIE’S GERMAN BAKERY

2032 TRAWOOD DRIVE

EL PASO, TEXAS

NOVEMBER 5, 2007

Reba’s cell phone buzzed. “Excuse me.” She read the text message: PROCESSIN VAN OF ILLEGALS. B HOME LATE. She sighed and tossed the phone back into her purse.

“Problem?” asked Jane.

“No, just more Rudy’s Bar-B-Q takeout for me. I’m a regular.”

“I hear that, honey.” Jane tapped her fingers on the table. “Boyfriend?”

“Not exactly.” Reba shuffled the items in her handbag, then zipped it.

“Oh, come on. It’s just us girls.” Jane made like she was locking her mouth with a key.

Reba paused. Again, Jane was toeing—no, pushing the line that separated the journalist from the subject. It wasn’t professional to talk about her relationships. The job was to get interviewees to talk about theirs; then she’d write it up and the magazine printed it a thousand times over for public consumption. She was known for her feature profiles. She could wheedle out intimate stories from just about anybody her editor put in front of her; but her life was private, and she meant to keep it that way. She’d just met this woman. Jane was a total stranger. No, completely inappropriate.

But there was something about her, a calm intensity, that gave the illusion—correct or not—of trustworthiness. And the fact was, Reba didn’t have many friends in the El Paso. She didn’t trust most people. She’d been jaded by far too many who said one thing but did another. Lied, in essence. Not that she could point a finger. She lied too, every day, big and small, even to herself. She told herself she didn’t need companionship. She was independent, self-sufficient, and free. Riki had been the only one she dared trust here, and only to a limited extent. But lately, even things with him were going sour. She felt a budding loneliness, and with it came the familiar emptiness that once threatened to swallow her whole. She missed her older sister, Deedee, and her momma, too. Family. The very people she’d traveled thousands of miles to leave behind.

On quiet El Paso nights when Riki was working late, the loneliness would sometimes consume her like it did in her childhood, and she’d pour a glass of wine, open the kitchen window, and let the desert breeze kick up the linen curtains. It made her think of her last August Sunday in Richmond. Deedee had come over with two bottles of Château Morrisette. They’d drunk barefoot on the fresh-cut lawn, green clippings stuck to their toes. By the second cork pop, wine wasn’t the only thing being poured into the night. Tipsy on illusive dreams, they forgot all their girlhood tears, talking of quixotic futures until even the lightning bugs turned off their lights; and for once, they understood why their daddy drank bourbon like lemonade. It was nice to pretend the world was wonderful—to gulp away the fears, hush the memories, let your guard down and simply be content, if only for a few hours.

Reba rubbed the twitch in her forehead. “He’s my fiancé,” she relented.

“Really!” Jane leaned back in her chair. “Where’s the ring?”

Reba reached for the chain at her neck and pulled the suspended solitaire from beneath her shirt.

“A sparkler,” said Jane. “How come it ain’t on your finger?”

“It makes it hard to type. Too tight, I think.”

“You can get that resized, ya know.”

Reba picked up the recorder and fiddled with the buttons.

“When’s the wedding?” Jane kept on.

“We haven’t set a date. We’re both pretty busy.”

“When did you get engaged?”

“Uh.” Reba flipped her mental calendar. “August.”

Jane nodded. “You best start planning. These days it takes a while to get all the doodads together. I can show you our wedding cake portfolio so you can get some ideas churning.”

Reba regretted having said anything and immediately evoked a tried and true journalism tactic: the redirect.

“Are you married?”

Jane pulled the cleaning rag off her shoulder and waved it around like a gymnast’s wand. “Ha. Not this old lady. I’m past my prime.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Never mind that nobody’d be good enough in Mom’s eyes unless he had trim on his shoulders. ’Course she’s never said nothing of the kind, but I always got the feeling she wanted me to marry a military man like my dad—US Army, the German Luftwaffe, or something. But I’m no soldier girl. All that ribbon and starch drives me batty. Don’t get me wrong; I respect what they do. I appreciate their service and sacrifice for our country. It’s an honorable profession, and each time Fort Bliss has a troop homecoming, I take all our breads and pastries over to the fort—no charge, mind you. But I don’t want one in my bed, and I don’t want to marry one.” A silver strand fell over her eyes, and she pulled it hard behind her ear.

“I never even brought a boy home. Didn’t see the point.” She leaned back in her chair and cocked her head, looking hard at Reba. “But I got somebody. Been together for years. Since I was a skinny thing with freckles. Never asked to marry me. Now, that might not sound good but trust me, if you knew, you’d see it takes a lot for a person to be faithful when you can’t put a label on it—can’t say, this person is mine. Takes an awful lot.”

Jane focused on the ring in the middle of Reba’s chest.

Reba readjusted in her chair, trying to shake off her stare. She cleared her throat. “It sounds like we’re the same suit in a pack of cards. I’m not racing to the altar either.”

“It’s a pretty ring,” said Jane.

The bell on the door clinked, and a man in a gray army sweatshirt entered.

“Can I help you, sir?”asked Jane. She stood, picked up the lavender spray, and returned to the register.

“Yes.” He frantically scanned the glass display case. “My wife wants me to order a cake. It’s for my son’s birthday. She tried to make one, but it kind of fell flat. His party’s in a few hours, so I came here.” He balled his fists and rubbed his knuckles together. The talon of a bald eagle tattoo stretched over his right wrist. “I’d appreciate anything you can do. She’s from Germany, my wife. We moved to Bliss last month, and she doesn’t know anyone. All her friends and family are back in Stuttgart. She said she couldn’t find the right ingredients at Albertson’s, and she threw out the frosted sheet cake I picked up this morning. She wants the cake to taste like home.” He looked up at Jane, his blue eyes pleading. “I just want her to be happy. If you’ve got an extra German cake in the kitchen …”

Jane nodded. “Let me talk to my mom. She’s got a knack for making things out of thin air.” She went back through the curtained doorway.

Reba waited for a bang or a yell, but there was none.

Jane returned within a minute. “Can you give us a couple hours?”

He exhaled and relaxed his fists. “The party’s at three.”

“It’ll be ready.”

“Thank you so much. I really appreciate this,” the man said. He turned to leave. Jane stopped him.

“What’s your son’s name?”

“Gabriel—Gabe.”

“We’ll put it on the cake.”

“My wife would like that. Him too. Thank you again. You have no idea how much this means.” He left, the wind banging the door behind.

“Now that’s love.”Jane laughed. “Man’s all aflutter trying to help his missus pull off a nice party for their kid.” She scribbled the name on a sheet of paper. “I’ve never been fooled by the romantic, grand gestures. Love is all about the little things, the everyday considerations, kindnesses, and pardons.”

Reba had always imagined love as wild and untamed. True love was a passionate flame that burned bright until it was snuffed out. It didn’t flicker and dim, weakened by the banalities of daily life. Reba thought about how she and Riki acted these days, every word so carefully chosen, so frustratingly polite, like actors with scripted lines. She tucked the necklace and ring back into her blouse.

“Now that we got this order, I’m not sure Mom’s going to be able to talk today. Could you come back?”

When she’d walked through the door, Reba had the goal of getting all she needed in one trip, but now, after being there only an hour, she didn’t mind returning. Actually, she thought it’d be kind of nice.

“Yes, of course. I’ll bring my camera next time. The magazine will send a photographer, but I’d like to take some photos myself, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The neat stacks and colorful sweets in the display case would make a pretty shot. Her mouth watered.

“Can do! Here.” Jane opened the back of the case. “You waited so long. Take something. Mom always says you’re never lonely with a strudel.” She picked up a slice oozing cream cheese icing.

“No, I can’t,” Reba said appreciatively. “I don’t eat dairy.”

Jane stopped. “Oh, you poor thing. Don’t they have medication for that?” She realigned the slice in its row.

Reba shook her head. “I’m not lactose intolerant. I can eat dairy. I just don’t. I was involved with PETA in college—animal rights, milk sucks, and all that.”

Jane raised both eyebrows high. “Milk sucks?”

“It was a PETA campaign,” explained Reba.

“Oh.” Jane pursed her lips together. “Well then, how about lebkuchen? They’re Mom’s specialty. She uses almond oil. No butter. That’s the family secret. You got to promise not to tell.”

Jane obviously wouldn’t let her leave without something, so Reba agreed. “I promise.”

That night, Reba sat alone at her kitchen table nibbling on the edge of the lebkuchen. Decorated with almond slices fanned like flower petals, the squares were almost too pretty to eat; but it’d been a long day and she had no remaining self-restraint. The rich molasses and dry cinnamon stuck in her throat, so she poured a small tumbler of skim milk, froth bubbling on the surface and coating the glass pearly white.

When she’d first gotten home, she’d set the German bakery box on the kitchen counter, committed not to eat any, but she was unable to throw the cookies away. The sweet smell permeated the kitchen, the den, up the condo’s stairs to their room where she sat in bed transcribing notes. Finally, after the sun melted into the desert and the autumn moon rose orange like a Nilla wafer, she gave in to the loneliness, came down, and found solace in the sugary snack.

She wondered if she ought to leave a cookie for Riki, but then he’d ask about her day and she hadn’t the energy to explain how she’d talked to Jane for an hour without getting a word on record. Inevitably, he’d want to know what they’d talked about, and she refused to open Pandora’s box. But she couldn’t seem to get Jane and the bakery out of her mind, or mouth.

She dipped the last square in the milk, popped it in, and chewed. Out of sight, out of mind—wasn’t that the mantra? She gulped the milk and rinsed the glass, leaving no evidence.

It all started as such a small lie: pretending she didn’t eat dairy. Now, she’d been doing it so long, she didn’t know how to stop.

It began in college. Reba’s roommate, Sasha Rose, the daughter of expatriates in Singapore, was a petite girl, passionate about two things: veganism and Italian art. She didn’t take part in the midnight pepperoni pizza binges or the all-you-can-eat chicken wing buffets. Instead, she nibbled dainty bowls of pebbled edamame and ruby organic figs while studying Botticelli and Titian.

On family weekend their freshman year, Sasha’s parents had flown in from overseas. Her mother looked like her twin with silver-streaked hair and a distinctive British accent.

“How I’ve missed you, darling,” she cooed, and she held Sasha so close and true that Reba had to look away. It pinched her chest.

Sasha’s father, originally from Tallahassee, was tall and tanned with an infectious smile and a happy spirit. His charisma radiated like the Floridian sun. Sasha had flown from her mother’s arms to his, and Reba had watched Mrs. Rose for the smallest flash of jealousy, fear, or resentment; but the reflection of Sasha in her father’s embrace only seemed to make her glow.

“Reba, you’re coming with us to dinner!” Mr. Rose had insisted; but when he put a gentle hand to Reba’s back, she’d flinched so noticeably that he’d made the addendum, “Of course if you have other plans, we totally understand.”

She hadn’t, but the moment was marred by a discomfort she feared would persist throughout the meal.

“I have a test on Monday,” she’d lied, and by the way his smile softened at the corners, he knew it.

Reba’s momma and sister, Deedee, hadn’t come that weekend—schedule conflicts. Momma had a Junior League reception. Deedee was busy with graduate courses. Initially, Reba had been thankful, but seeing Sasha with her perfect parents, she felt an aching desire for kin—for Momma, Deedee, even Daddy. It was a hopeless longing.

“Good luck studying,” said Mr. Rose. With his girls on either arm, the trio had strolled out.

Closing the door behind them, Reba caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror nailed to the back. The image seemed in such stark juxtaposition to the pretty Roses that she immediately threw on a hooded sweatshirt and burrowed in the blankets of her dorm bunk like a rock vole.

She’d always been melancholic and unsatisfied with nearly everything about herself. Thick in places that should have been thin, flat chested and too tall, she’d never fit in with the high school cheerleaders and Glee Clubbers—the little sisters of her sister’s friends. At sixteen, when her daddy died, she pulled away completely and spent her lunches and afterschool hours in the journalism room over quiet newspaper spreads and silent photographs.

During Reba’s first semester in college, Deedee suggested she take up a self-improvement activity: yoga, dance, swimming, art. Make a new beginning, she’d said. Reba profiled the university boxing club instead, lacing on a pair of gloves and sparring with a trainer. Everyone on campus knew her from the photographs in the Daily Cavalier: her lips bulging on the mouth guard; fuzzy, dark hair matted beneath the headgear; gloves up and ready. They thought she was an anomaly coming from the Adams family. Daughter of a commemorated Vietnam veteran and great-granddaughter to one of Richmond’s largest ironworks owners. Deedee had been a celebrated debutante. Rosy-cheeked and always smiling, smart and witty, she was already in law school. While Reba … Reba was scribbling in her notebook and playing dress-up with the boys. She felt she was always letting her momma and sister down.

Thus, in a sudden strange twist of reason, she resolved to emulate Sasha, learn from her and hopefully channel her sophistication. First step: veganism. She did a quick library search on the lifestyle and diet. The basics were hard to swallow. No animal products. Period. Reba decided it might be worth it to be connected to a cause, to truly stand for something, but all of the animal kingdom seemed radical. So she chose cows. No yogurt or cheese, butter or beef. She’d save a cow with each declined bowl of ice cream—and did so for nearly three weeks.

Then Valentine’s Day arrived, and Sasha reminded her that dairy cows were sucked of their mother’s milk for the production of chocolate. Sasha and her boyfriend attended a PETA “Veggie Viagra” event, while Reba stayed home.

The sadness had returned stronger than ever that night, gnawing on her insides. The hungry wolf, her daddy had called it. In bleary binges, he’d described it to her and Deedee when they were girls: how it crept after him in the daylight shadows and shredded his nights to jagged fragments. Then he’d pour himself another amber glass, sip, smile, and playfully make them swear not to mention it to their momma. They’d agreed but kept their fingers crossed behind their backs. It didn’t matter either way. Momma brushed it off, “Nothing but boogeyman tales. You know better than to take anything he says seriously when he’s in one of his moods. Now go to bed and sweet dreams, my girls.”

After Daddy’s death, Reba discovered his medical records while helping to clean out his office. He’d had years of electroconvulsive treatments for severe depression, and up until the very week he died, he met each Thursday with a clinical psychiatrist at the Medical College of Virginia. Dr. Henry Friedel notated that predeployment, her daddy had suffered from chronic sadness, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness; food binges followed by periods of no appetite; insomnia; inability to make decisions; unresolved guilt; extreme high-low mood swings; and an altered sense of reality. Reading his symptom list, she’d buckled: they could’ve been her own. Dr. Friedel further noted that all these preexisting symptoms were withheld from army recruiters and, thus, exacerbated by combat conditions.

Alongside the file was a volume of handwritten notes from her daddy’s sessions. As she was lifting it into the brown packing box, a page came loose from the metal prongs and slipped to the ground. Though it was his private business, Reba’s curiosity got the better of her and she’d read:

February 28, 1985

In addition to the patient’s previous complaints and aforementioned clinical treatment, Mr. Adams continues to suffer from insomnia due to night terrors and waking flashbacks related to his active duty service in the Vietnam War. In discussion, he continues to focus on the Sõn Tinh District woman and her teenage daughter whom he claims to have raped while under the influence of psychotropic agents, which he had obtained illegally from local Vietnamese. Mr. Adams states that he later stumbled upon a black wolf devouring the women’s ravaged bodies. (I have still not established if the wolf is a factual experience or more likely, simply represents the manifestation of his subconscious guilt.) Particular patient attention is focused on the company insignia carved on the victims’ naked chests. Mr. Adams cannot recall if these acts of mutilation were perpetrated by himself or his fellow soldiers, nor can he ascertain if he was instrumental in their deaths. However, the deliberation of this point remains the central focus of our discussions and fuels his anxiety, guilt, drastic mood swings, and resultant autophobia. He vacillates between rationalization and self-incrimination.

Today, Mr. Adams once again described in meticulous detail the order from his chain of command to attack and kill all Viet Cong within the small village. When asked how he felt about the assassination of civilian men, women, children, and elderly, Mr. Adams stated, “They said we had to wipe them out for good. We were following orders. I was trying to be a good soldier. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be home with my family.” When asked if rape was ordered by his chain of command, Mr. Adams became extremely emotional and erratic and required an IM dose of an anxiolytic. The session concluded early. I have prescribed him lorazepam and scheduled an additional consultation for Tuesday, March 5.

Reba stuffed the page back in the volume and immediately wished she could turn back time—snatch the page from the floor with closed eyes. She didn’t want to know her daddy’s secrets. Her own memories were dark enough. She’d packed the files down deep in the box and double-taped it shut with duct tape, hoping to seal in the past and bury Daddy’s wolf for good.

But alone in her dorm room that Valentine’s, she could hear its lonesome howl reverberating through her skin, so she went to the neon-lit campus minimart and bought a pint of milk and the biggest box of cherry bonbons on the shelf. “He’s a lucky guy,” the student cashier had remarked. Reba had nodded and smiled, “Yes, he is.” She went home and ate the whole box herself, comforted by row upon row of cherry chocolates and the thought that the cashier imagined she had someone wonderful to share them with. She drank the milk straight from the container. As a forbidden fruit, it tasted even sweeter.

Later, when the jug began to sour in their trashcan, Sasha asked what the smell was. “Soy milk,” Reba replied. “I think it was a bad batch of beans.” Sasha had studied her for a moment, then shrugged, “I had that happen once. Buy the organic kind next time. It’s always good.”

Just like that, it had begun. So trivial at first. Yet over a decade later, Reba was still lying. The problem was that her lies didn’t stay contained to a jug. They cultivated like mold and grew on various parts of her life, rotting the fruits of her labors.

But fabrication seemed the easiest path to reinvention. She could forget about her family and childhood: her daddy’s hysterical giddiness followed by deep spells of despondency; the smell of whiskey on his breath during nightly prayers; hiding in the closet, the lace of hems of church dresses tickling her nose; Daddy limp on the floor, rope burns purpling his neck; the sound of sirens and her momma’s tears; the anger and guilt she felt standing over his grave because he’d taken the easy road out, because he’d left them all alone.

She needn’t be that Reba. All it took was a story, and her family was as perfect as her momma pretended them to be. Daddy was a Vietnam hero, not the haunted man who put on a smile like a colorful tie until the knot started to choke.

She never understood why her momma made up so many excuses for him. If she’d acknowledged his illness to her daughters, maybe they could’ve helped him, saved him from hurting himself. Maybe the three of them could’ve loved him enough to make him well. But whenever Reba tried to place blame, she remembered when Daddy’s voice growled through the walls, her momma’s soft cries, shattered glasses, and the smell of pecan pancakes in the morning. Momma always made pecan pancakes the morning after one of Daddy’s bad nights. They covered up the stink of bourbon in the floorboards. Cloyingly sweet, she and Deedee would eat heaping piles, eager to please, as if they were their last meals. Momma pretended for the same reasons Reba did—it felt nice to believe the lies. The only thing Reba knew for certain was Momma loved Daddy, and love could make a person turn a blind eye to just about anything. It terrified Reba to be so handicapped.

As she grew older, the desire to flee her reality grew. Sometimes in airports or train stations or any other transient place where she’d never see the people again, Reba professed to be someone else entirely, and what frightened her most was that for those moments, she believed her own deceptions.

Once, on the train from Richmond to Washington, D.C., she struck up a conversation with the businessman beside her, introducing herself as an Olympic speed skater meeting her teammates in the capital. The businessman paid for her lunch—his pleasure to dine with an athlete of such caliber. When they parted, a sudden wave of guilt made Reba sick to her stomach. She threw up the New York strip steak in the restroom and prayed to God she wasn’t certifiable—multiple personality, psychotic, or manic like her daddy.

Moving west was her solution, a clean slate. She could be anybody she wanted. She could be herself. But then, she wasn’t quite sure who that was. Her first encounter with Riki had been out of character, another attempt to act the part: the brazen reporter who jumped in bed after a handful of dates and said she believed in love at first sight. In truth, she only wanted to believe. She’d hoped declaring love aloud might be the all-inclusive cure to her heartache. When it wasn’t, she began to wonder if love was enough.

This was why she didn’t wear the engagement ring. If she married Riki, she had two choices: become the lies forever or expose her true self and risk losing him. She wished he could simply know her without her having to explain her past. Before she could marry anybody, she had to decipher where the truth ended and her lies began.

Headlights spun round the kitchen and a minute later, the front door opened.

“Reba?” Riki called.

“I’m in here.”

He came in and turned on the light. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

The brightness burned Reba’s corneas. “I wasn’t in the dark. The stove light’s on.”

“Practically the dark.” He pulled change and gum wrappers from his pocket and dumped them in the empty fruit bowl on the table. “Don’t turn into a vampire on me.” He kissed the top of her head, took off his border patrol jacket, and sat.

“Long day?” She knew the answer by the hollows beneath his eyes.

“We picked up a family living out of their four-door in a Walmart parking lot. Pretty sad. Processing them back to Mexico tomorrow. The youngest is an infant. He’d been sitting in dirty diapers for God knows how long.” He scratched his cheek. “It gets under your skin. The father’s just trying to give his family a better place—better life.”

The daily barrage of illegal immigration stories had long ago callused Reba’s compassion. While usually Riki was on the US side, lately he seemed to be championing the Mexican nationals more and more. She couldn’t keep up with whom he wanted her to empathize, so she slouched on the higher fence of principle.

“Don’t make yourself the bad guy,” she said. “Like you always tell me, there are rules we have to follow. Otherwise, there are consequences.” She swallowed a milk-mushy crumb that came loose from her molar. “You get dinner?” she asked, a change of subject. “I stopped off at Rudy’s after my interview and have some leftovers if you’re hungry.”

“How’d that go?”

“Rudy’s?” She didn’t want to talk about the interview. “You know I love their smoked turkey.” She got up and went to the refrigerator.

“No, the profile you’re writing, Miss Sun City.”

“It was fine. I have to go back though. You sure you don’t want some?” She pulled the paper take-out bag from the shelf.

“I ate. You have to go back? Why? She blew you off in person, too?”

Reba shrugged. “I’ll get what I want for the story. But right now, what I really want is …” She grabbed his hand and slid it around her waist. “To stop talking. I’ve been talk-talk-talking all day.” She knew how to change the subject for good.

He got up and pulled her close. “Whatever you say, boss.”

She breathed easy and led him upstairs. This was one thing that was always real, and she prayed Riki felt the whole truth in it.