On the way back to the apartment, I have a sudden urge to ward off the loneliness goblins by baking bread. I don’t have a starter and it takes two or three days to get one really humming, but I still know a few tricks to give a plain loaf some character. Since CM’s idea of using a stove is to set her purse on it while she laces up her Reeboks, I stop by the Thriftway for supplies and lug them up four flights of stairs because the building’s creaky elevator is malingering today.
You don’t really need a recipe to make bread. It’s mostly about proportions—one package of yeast to six or seven cups of flour, two cups of water, and a tablespoon of salt—and Jean-Marc used to say that bread may not always turn out the way you intend it to, but it always turns out. Just the same, it’s been so long since I’ve done this that I use the recipe on the back of the flour bag as a jumping-off point.
Plain Old Bread
1 tablespoon (1 packet) active-dry yeast
2¼ cups warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon salt
6 to 7 cups unbleached white flour
Most recipes want you to use a whole envelope of yeast. This means the first rising will take only about an hour and the second maybe forty-five minutes to an hour—particularly if you put it in a warm place, which is what they usually suggest. Some go as far as telling you to put the dough in a gas oven warmed by the pilot light.
That works fine. If that’s the kind of bread you want. Grocery-store bread. Wonder bread. Remember that? The stuff we ate when we were kids. It was white—a brilliantly unreal white—and it had the mouth feel of a damp sponge. When you took a bite, it left an imprint of your teeth suitable for postmortem identification.
Then in the seventies everyone jumped onboard the organic/whole earth bandwagon, and started throwing every grain they could find into the mix, but the recipes called for way too much yeast and lots of oil and eggs and milk, because we all still craved that soft and tender stuff we grew up on.
It wasn’t until I went to France that I tasted bread that wasn’t full of additives and air. It was like a religious conversion for me. In fact, it’s kind of like sex—one of those things that everyone thinks they know all about and they tell you how great it is, but which is actually pretty uninspiring until you have it one time the way nature intended it to be.
So, the first thing I do is cut the yeast in half. You don’t want the dough to set a new land-speed record. What you want is a long, slow rise to build the kind of texture and flavor that make people think you paid $5.95 for this loaf at the European Gourmet Bakery.
I combine the yeast with the water in a large crockery bowl, stir in the sugar, and let it sit for a few minutes while I measure the flour into another bowl. Then I stir in the flour with the only big spoon I can find in this pitifully underequipped kitchen. When it clumps together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, I turn it out on the counter and knead it for ten minutes, adding just enough flour to keep it moving. Then I knead in the salt. Dead last. Because salt strengthens the gluten and makes the dough fight you.
When it’s smooth and elastic enough to spring back when I poke it, I oil a big bowl, slosh the dough around in it, making sure the entire surface is oiled. Then I put a damp towel over it and set it as far from the stove as I can. Someplace like a wine cellar would be nice, but CM doesn’t have one of those. I put it on her dining room table.
With half the yeast, it’ll take twice as long to rise, so I pour myself a glass of sauvignon blanc and start scraping dough off the counter.
The scent of yeast hanging in the air reminds me of my levain and the day that David came to my apartment with the Nixon mask and a pizza. The sharpness of the longing I feel takes me somewhat by surprise. Maybe CM was right. Maybe I would be better off without him. But then why do I feel like howling right now? Why do I want to touch his face, smell him, feel his body against me?
I’d settle for talking to him. But I can’t call him at work. In a small company like JMP, everybody knows everybody else’s business as it is. We’re probably already fodder for the gossip mill.
I’ll call the house. He won’t be home, but I can leave him a message on the machine. Just to let him know I’m thinking of him. Maybe he’s lonely, too, and he’s embarrassed to call me after all the things he said. This way, he’ll have the excuse of returning my call to save his fragile male ego.
He’ll call me back tonight. Probably late, because he’ll be working late as usual. I’ll sit in the living room in the dark, and I’ll tell him about what I see—lights of the city, the ferries moving across the black water toward the shadowed islands. I’ll tell him I made bread today. I’ll tell him I miss him. We can start with that. Just “I miss you.” We can build on that. It’s not just him, after all; some of the blame belongs to me.
CM has one of those duck telephones that quacks instead of ringing. She calls him Dorian. I punch in our phone number on his belly. I’m expecting four rings followed by the recording, but after two rings there’s a click. He’s home.
“Hello.” A woman’s voice. I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Unless I’m very much mistaken, it’s Kelley Hamlin’s voice. “Hello-o. This is the Franklin res—” There’s a rustling noise and then a ringing crash as the phone hits the floor. Then David’s voice.
“Hello.”
Dorian and I exchange a meaningful glance.
“Hello? This is David Franklin.” There’s a distinct note of panic under the heartiness.
I gently replace the duck in his cradle.
Five minutes later, Dorian’s quacking his brains out, but I let the machine pick up. “Wyn, it’s me. Pick up if you’re there.” Pause. “For heaven’s sake, Wyn, stop acting like a child. I know you’re there.” Pause. “Kelley and I are just working on some client files. Pick up the phone.” Pause. “Shit.”
The line goes dead.
I think I’m going to cry. Then I picture David’s face if he could hear his call being announced by Dorian Duck, and I laugh first, then cry.
When CM comes through the door at about six-thirty, I’m working my way through a 1.5-liter bottle of Robert Mondavi cabernet. She throws her purse on the couch.
“And which occasion are we celebrating tonight?”
I hold my glass up to the chandelier and squint through the ruby light. “Chapter two. The phone call. In which our unsuspecting heroine calls the handsome prince at the castle, and the milkmaid answers the phone.”
“I see.” She purses her mouth. “And what did the milkmaid say?”
“Hello.”
“That’s all?”
I retrieve a glass from the cupboard and pour some wine for her, sloshing a little on the counter. “That was about all she had time for before the prince yanked the phone away and it crashed to the floor.”
She drinks some wine before taking her coat off and draping it over the nearest chair. “And what did he say?”
A rather drunken giggle bubbles out of me. “I didn’t talk to him. But he told Dorian they were working on some files. Wouldn’t you think an advertising prince could come up with a more original lie?”
She sighs. “Oh, Baby. I’m really sorry.” I think it’s the pity in her voice that undoes me.
Thursday morning my eyes are glued shut with dried tears. After I rip them open, I see that my tongue is still purple from the wine. Unfortunately, I remember most of the evening. Crying and laughing, drinking cabernet and something else when we ran out of that, walking to a diner because neither of us could drive, eating greasy hamburgers, arguing with some other drunk at the counter till the waitress told us to leave. Throwing up in the bushes on the way back. Poor CM had to get up and go to work today.
At least I had sense enough to put my dough in the fridge so it wouldn’t overrise and fall flat. I take it out and set it on the stove to come to room temperature while I shower and dress and clean the apartment for therapy.
By noon it’s workable, so, in David’s honor, I shape it into two of the oval loaves the French call bâtards. I give them a two-hour rise, spritz them with water for a crackly crust, and pop them into a 425°F oven for thirty minutes.
I’ve read somewhere that the smell of baking bread is a proven antidote to depression. It’s true. By the time my little bastards are cooling on the counter, I’m starting to revive. I feel good enough to take a walk. And I feel the need of something chocolate. I know the Queen Street Bakery closes at two so they can do wholesale baking, but I grab one of the warm loaves and put it in the bottom of a paper grocery bag to bribe my way in.
Instead of baking, Ellen and Diane are sitting at one of the tables, with coffee cups and stacks of paper. When I bang on the door, they look up and smile, but Ellen points at her watch. I unsheathe my secret weapon. I can tell they’re wavering. I hold it up to my face and inhale deeply, close my eyes, smile. In a second, Ellen’s unlocking the door.
“Where did that come from?” She sniffs appreciatively.
“CM’s kitchen.”
She touches it gently. “You made this? Ooh, it’s still warm.” I pull it back. “Not so fast. This isn’t a gift. It’s a barter. I need chocolate.”
Diane laughs, rocking back in her chair. “Have we got a deal for you.”
In less time than it takes to load a bread machine, I’m sitting at the table with them. They’ve ignored my suggestion that they let the bread cool completely before tearing into it and slathering the chunks with sweet butter. I’m eating a piece of Patty’s Cake, an innocent-sounding name for a lethal dose of moist, dense chocolate cake sitting on a pool of espresso-caramel sauce.
“Okay. Who is Patty and how does she make this?” I lick a smear of sauce off my fork.
“Patty was the woman who owned the bakery,” Ellen says. “This was the only recipe of hers that we had to have.”
Diane smiles. “And after we paid through the nose for it, we discovered that it’s embarrassingly simple. You can mix it with a wooden spoon in a saucepan. You don’t even need an electric beater.”
“I won’t ask for it then. Since you had to buy it.”
She tears off another chunk of bread. “Good. Because we don’t give it out.”
“Is this sourdough?” Ellen’s sniffing the interior of the loaf, examining it lovingly.
“Nope. It’s just bread.”
“It doesn’t taste like our bread. It’s more”—she gropes for a description—”complex or … developed or something. I don’t know. What’s the secret?”
I smile sweetly. “It’s embarrassingly simple. But I had to pay for a trip to France to learn how to do it, so I don’t give it out.”
After they stop laughing, we agree to an exchange of information. Diane goes back to the work area where I can hear the unmistakable sounds of cleanup in progress—pans and metal bowls banging, water running, and women laughing. She returns with a sheet of lined notebook paper, hands it to me.
“Here’s the cake recipe. You can run across the street to Dan’s Market and make a copy.”
God, I can’t wait to make this for CM.
Patty’s Cake with Espresso-Caramel Sauce
7 (1-ounce) squares unsweetened cooking chocolate
¾ cup butter
1½ cups strong coffee
¼ cup bourbon
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups cake flour
1½ cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
Grease and flour two 8½ by 4½-inch loaf pans.
Put the chocolate, butter, and coffee in a heavy saucepan with a 4½-quart capacity. Place over low heat, stirring constantly, till chocolate is melted, then stir vigorously till mixture is smooth and thoroughly blended. Set aside to cool for at least 10 minutes. Beat in bourbon, eggs, and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients together and beat into the chocolate mixture till well blended. Divide batter between prepared pans and bake in a 275°F oven 45 to 55 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 15 minutes, then turn out onto racks to cool completely. Serve with whipped cream, crème fraîche, or Espresso-Caramel Sauce.
1 cup sugar
? cup water
½ cup heavy (whipping) cream
3 tablespoons espresso
Whisk sugar into water and pour into heavy-bottomed saucepan—preferably one with a white or light-colored interior, so you can keep an eye on the color change of the caramel. Stir over medium heat until sugar is completely dissolved, about 1 minute. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Do not stir, but wash down sides of pan frequently with a clean brush dipped in water.
Meanwhile, heat cream to a simmer in another pan.
When sugar begins to caramelize and turn golden around edges of pan, lift pan very carefully and gently swirl mixture to ensure even caramelization. Boil until syrup is a beautiful, deep amber—3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat and set pan in sink. Slowly pour in hot cream, whisking to combine. Mixture will bubble up and may splatter. You may want to wear glasses to protect your eyes. Stir in espresso and blend until smooth. If mixture starts to harden, return to low heat and whisk until dissolved. While sauce is still warm, strain through fine-mesh strainer. Makes about 1 cup.
Ellen clears her throat. “About the bread …?”
“The secret to more interesting bread is to use half the yeast and let it rise twice as long,” I tell them.
It’s very quiet for a full five seconds while they look at each other.
“That’s it?” Diane says. “Half the yeast and twice the rising time? That’s all?”
I feel almost as if I’ve cheated them. “I told you it was simple.”
“Shit.” Her hand slaps down on the table. “Linda would never do that.”
“Who’s Linda?”
Ellen sighs. “Our bread baker. She’s so set in her ways she’s practically calcified.”
“So get someone else.”
She waves her hand as if she were shooing away mosquitoes. “It’s not that easy. She came with the place and … I’m just a wimp, I guess. I don’t have the stomach for firing people. It’s not like she doesn’t do the job. Besides, she’s not that far from retirement. It’s easier just to wait her out.”
“But you learned this in France?” Diane’s eyes are speculative. “Are you a baker?”
“Well, I did work in a bakery. Sort of. One summer when I was at UCLA, I did a work/study program at a boulangerie in Toulouse.” Two sets of eyebrows go up.
“What an incredible experience,” Ellen says.
“It wasn’t like I was a regular baker. At first, I just washed the equipment. But eventually, Jean-Marc, the boulanger, started letting me shape loaves and rolls and croissants. Load and unload the oven. You know—stuff he figured I couldn’t possibly screw up.”
“Jean-Marc, huh?” Diane gives me a sly smile. “Was he gorgeous?”
“But of course. He was French.”
Saturday morning, CM drags me out of bed at seven and down to Pike Place Market. By the time we get there, they’ve started the market day without us. At Starbucks we stand in line for extra-foam, nonfat lattes, then sip them as we stroll through the North Arcade past stalls of handmade jewelry and clothing, paintings and pottery, honey and olives and nuts, flowers and fresh vegetables from local growers.
We watch the countermen at Pike Place Fish toss their merchandise back and forth through the air, and listen while two guys dressed like lumberjacks in jeans, flannel shirts, and work boots debate the merits of cod versus halibut for fish and chips.
A woman whose rear end resembles a plaid double-wide trailer hoists herself onto the back of a bronze pig while her husband records the feat on the camcorder.
“You know her?”
“The pig, not the tourist. Rachel, the Market piggy bank.” She looks disgusted. “If I ever get to that stage, will you please shoot me and put me out of my misery?”
I lick my foamed-milk mustache. “I would, except I wouldn’t want anybody to know that I knew you.”
With a hand on my shoulder, she propels me outside to the street. Steam rises from the wet cobblestones to mingle with the smell of roasting coffee and truck exhaust, ocean breeze, the scent of flowers, garlic, cumin, frying fish. I inhale deeply, stealing a kind of comfort from the reassuringly earthy smells.
“Let’s go over to the Corner Market and get some cheese for dinner.”
My head swivels like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist, in a vain attempt to see and smell the offerings of every tiny ethnic shop—hombow, baklavas, tamales, spicy, red cioppino, chicken satay, wursts, crumpets.
“We have all this in L.A., you know.”
“Of course.” CM smiles sweetly. “The trick is, you’d be driving for three days to find it.”
At one corner a familiar perfume reaches out like an invitation. Le Panier. A boulangerie/pâtisserie in the French style. This one’s very high tech—lots of glass, blue-and-white tile, halogen lamps, and shiny stainless steel deck ovens. The windows are full of neatly stacked palmiers and pain au chocolat and napoleons and strawberry tarts.
“You want something for later?” CM says.
I shake my head, walk quickly past the open door wondering why that smell brings on a sudden melancholy.
At a natural-cosmetics shop, she stocks up on cucumber facial and green-apple shower gel. Just off a narrow passageway, we kill an hour laughing at filthy greeting cards and trying on gauzy cotton dresses from India. She tries to rush me past Sur la Table, but it doesn’t work. I dart inside to check out the floor-to-ceiling batterie de cuisine—just like the little shops in Europe, they manage to cram an amazing amount of merchandise into minimal space.
By eleven-fifteen, we’re casing lunch places. We end up at DuJour, a little self-serve café on First Street, where we carry our trays to a table by the window wall that looks out over the Market rooftops to Elliott Bay.
“Okay, I give up. Does every place in this town have a view?”
She takes a piece of sourdough bread and tears it, handing half to me. “You should think about moving up here.”
I don’t say anything.
“I mean if you and David …”
I shake my head. “I’m a California girl.”
She flicks crumbs off her fingers impatiently. “Just because you were born there doesn’t mean you have to die there.”
“I’m just not the adventurous type.”
She nails me with a look. “You used to be,” she says.
Monday morning, I’m reducing a cappuccino-hazelnut scone to crumbs and working on my second latte when Ellen says, “Can I ask you a silly question? Are you by any chance looking for a job?”
“A job?”
She laughs. “Yeah. You know, a repetitive task for which someone gives you money. Here’s the deal. Diane and I really loved that bread you made. Linda’s getting ready to retire. Hopefully, next year. We were sort of thinking you could work with her and let her teach you the technical stuff—I mean the logistics of making bread in quantity are a little different from doing it in your kitchen, as you know—and then when she leaves … You have any interest?”
Her enthusiasm is almost contagious. “It sounds great,” I say gently. “Except I don’t live here.”
“You could always move.” Her voice goes up at the end, like a question.
I avoid her gaze by opening the “Lifestyle” section of the paper, folding it back, positioning it carefully on the table.
“I’m in marital limbo at the moment,” I tell her without looking up. “I’m going back to L.A. tomorrow.” I left a message on the answering machine last night, giving David my flight number and arrival time. Not that I’m expecting him to meet me. But just in case, I give the gatehouse a quick scan. Feeling sad and self-indulgent, I throw my bag in the backseat of a green-and-white cab.
Traffic’s heavy for midday, and the air is warm and brown. The driver, a thin-faced guy with yellow skin and dirty brown hair, subjects me to his Horatio Alger story about abusive parents and working his way through junior college. I suppose I should be more sympathetic, but I can’t help suspecting I’m being hit up for a big tip.
My Mazda sits alone in the driveway like some neglected orphan. No client-file parties today. Having deduced from my lack of response that I’m not a nice, guilt-ridden rich lady, the driver doesn’t bother turning around; he just holds out his hand, palm up, and says, “Twenty-six eighty.”
I paw through the bill compartment in my wallet. “All I’ve got’s a twenty. Wait here and I’ll get the rest.” I shoulder my bag and start up the walk, only marginally aware of something in the deep shade on the front porch. As I draw under the portico, I see my camera, a portable phone, one of the TVs. My God, I’ve stumbled on to a robbery in progress. Somebody’s in the house bringing our stuff out to load it up. Then I notice the boxes of books and piles of clothes with shoes thrown on top. My jewelry box. My curling iron and makeup, a broken bottle of Bal à Versailles, saturating my slippers at two hundred dollars an ounce. My breath turns to ice in my throat.
“No.” Then louder, to convince myself, “No way.”
Pushing the boxes aside, I reach the door. My key fits into the lock but won’t turn. This isn’t happening. My shoes make scuff marks on the shiny black door; I pound on it until my hands are stinging hot—stupid, because he isn’t here. I imagine windows opening up and down the street, all the neighbors watching my eviction. David wouldn’t do this. It’s against the law. You can’t just throw someone out.
The taxi’s horn reminds me that the guy’s waiting to be paid. Now what? I set down my bag, thankful that I didn’t put it in his trunk, and walk as nonchalantly as possible out to where he sits, drumming his fingers on the outside mirror.
I give him my most charming smile. “I seem to have grabbed the wrong key, so I can’t get in my house right now. I don’t suppose you take plastic?”
“No plastic.” His dark eyes narrow.
“Well, I have twenty bucks. I can give you a check for the rest.”
He sighs. “Jesus Christ, lady.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t get in. What do you want me to do?”
He bangs his fist on the steering wheel. “I could call the cops, you know. I can do that. I’ve done it before.”
Hands on hips. “Go ahead, if you want to sit here and wait for them to show up. Maybe they’ll kick in my front door for six dollars and eighty cents.”
“Shit. Give me the fucking twenty.” He snatches it out of my hand. Before I can pull out my checkbook, he throws the cab into gear and peels off, leaving part of his tires on the pavement. I walk back up to the porch, still trying to arrive at a different interpretation of the still life sitting there.
The lamp from the den—the only thing in the house I ever bought without consulting David, and naturally he hated it—sits precariously on one step. It’s a ginger-jar lamp, yellow porcelain with painted flowers. When I saw it in the shop, I thought it would add some life or warmth or at least color to the den.
Or maybe it was just that I knew he’d hate it.
I pick it up. It looks fragile, but it’s surprisingly heavy. The heft of it in my hand merges with the sight of my belongings strewn around the porch like trash, and ignites a sudden fury in my brain. I give a roundhouse windup and heave the lamp straight into the front window. The plate glass explodes, falls like a frozen waterfall, and the security system starts making that obnoxious noise. My mouth opens in silent, nervous laughter.
While I’m loading the rest of my belongings into my car, the armed-response patrol appears at the curb. Another exciting day in Hancock Park. The guy opens the car door and stands with one foot propped on the threshold. “Hi, Mrs. Franklin. We got an alarm on one of your sensors.”
“Yes, I know. It’s nothing. I accidentally threw a lamp through the window.” I smile at him. He watches me for a few minutes. “Can you give me a hand with this?” He obligingly loads three boxes into the front seat. “Thanks. Those books are heavy.”
Every thirty seconds the system pauses, resets, and starts squawking again. His gaze shifts from me to the jagged glass of the window. “We … uh … should probably get that sensor turned off. Cops’ll be showing up any minute.”
“Good idea. The neighbors are probably going nuts.” I get in my car.
He scratches the back of his neck. “Mrs., uh … Franklin, could you maybe unlock the door?”
“I’m really sorry … Ted,” I read off his name badge. “I just can’t right now.” I put the car in reverse and ease out with him walking alongside. Several people have appeared in doorways and driveways to check out the uproar at the Franklin homestead.
I back into the street, and Ted’s arms open wide in a gesture of helplessness. “What should I do?”
I turn and smile at him. “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
Top down, loaded to the gunwales with suitcases, bags, boxes, television, boom box, the odd shoe, tennis racket, curling iron, and telephone, I look straight out of The Beverly Hillbillies. I cruise down the street in the balmy fall afternoon, waving at my former neighbors.
There’s only one place I can go—to the house in Encino where I grew up and where my mother still lives. Just driving down the winding subdivision street lined with pseudo-Spanish, Hansel and Gretel split-level, and California pagoda-style tract houses makes my stomach clench. It hasn’t rained in months, and the surrounding hills look like brushfire fodder, but the lawns are sprinkler green and neatly edged. The little twigs planted forty years ago in the wake of the bulldozers have turned into trees—spruce and sweet gum, birch, kaffir, melaleuca, jacaranda, Chinese rain trees, palm trees, cactus. That’s southern California. Whatever you want, stick it in the ground. It’ll grow.
I park in the driveway of my mother’s fake colonial, and sit with my purse in my lap, keys in hand. Finally I get out and walk up the used brick path with the border of purple pansies, past the reproduction gaslight, and try the brass knob. It isn’t locked.
“Mom?”
Footsteps. Johanna Kohlmeyer Morrison appears at the top of the stairs. “Wyn, honey, what is it?”
To say that my mother and I are dissimilar is to wallow in understatement. Fifty-eight years old, petite, with a delicate, refined beauty, she could easily pass for forty-eight. I take after my father’s family of tall, rangy farmers. Whenever we go places together, I always feel like one of us should be on a leash.
She’s everything I’m not—perfectly groomed, efficient, organized, tactful, reserved to the point of being stoic, and most important, she is that nebulous, hard-to-define entity, a Lady, with a capital L. She always knows the proper dress, behavior, etiquette—fill in the blank with the noun of your choice—for any occasion. And she’s the type of woman who irons underwear.
In spite of our differences, she can usually take one look at my face and know when something’s wrong. She shows remarkable restraint now, letting me explain without interrupting to tell me that she told me I shouldn’t have gone to Seattle. By the time I finish, I’ve worked myself into a frenzy. She perches on the edge of her sewing chair, silent, hands in her lap, while I pace in front of the phone table in the hall, listening to David’s work extension ring.
“David Franklin’s office, this is Andrea Wells.” It’s his overqualified assistant. I try to keep my voice low and calm.
“Andrea, this is Wyn. Is David there?”
“Hi, Wyn. He’s here, but he’s in with Hank and Grady. Can I take a message?”
“I need to speak with him. It’s an emergency.”
She hesitates. “He told me not to disturb them for any—”
“I bet he did. Andrea, please tell him to get his ass out there and pick up the phone.”
Her voice becomes anonymous. “One moment, please.”
It’s actually less than a moment till he says, “David Franklin speaking.” Like he has no idea.
“David, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Wyn, for heaven’s sake, I’m in a meeting with Hank and—”
“I don’t give a shit if you’re naked in a teacup with Hank. What the hell do you think you’re doing locking me out of my own house?”
“In the first place, it’s not your house.” His voice is icy. “In the second place, you left me, so I had every right to—”
“Left you?” I shriek. “I left you?”
“You moved out. You never returned my phone call.”
“I went to visit my best friend. I was gone exactly ten days.”
“I didn’t expect you to come back.” His voice has the exact tonal modulation of Darth Vader’s.
“You knew damn well I was coming back. I told you when I left, and I called last night and left a message on the answering machine.”
“I never got the message.”
“Bullshit. What you did is illegal.”
“I assure you, it is not illegal. You have your things. The house is mine.”
“California is a community property state, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I bought the house before we were married.”
Tears of rage are beginning to choke me. “You bought it for us to live in. Or that’s what you said.”
“Yes. I did.” Impatience snaps the ends off his words. “But we never added your name to the title. Therefore the house is legally mine. Listen, I’m in the middle of something very important. We’re going to have to talk about this later.” Click.
The receiver sits heavily in my hand. I stare at the little phone table. Mahogany, I think, with a white marble top. There’s a message pad with watercolor pansies imprinted in the upper-left corner. On the top sheet is a partial shopping list. A crystal bud vase that belonged to my oma holds three pink dianthus from my mother’s garden, and their sweet, peppery smell is the only thread connecting me to reality.
When the off-the-hook noise prompts me to hang up, I walk into the den and my mother’s eyes lock on mine. I can’t stand the way she’s biting her lip, but apparently I look stupid, too, because she looks away first.
“Honey,” she says. “Oh, Wyn, I’m so sorry.”