Far Far Away (23 page)

Frank Bailey peered at her from his white doughy face. “It’s okay. I’m kind of used to it. And it’s not them. It’s this place, which is why …” But then his expression stiffened and his voice trailed off.

“Which is why what?” Ginger asked.

Frank Bailey was looking at her with the abashed yet yearning look I’d seen on his face when he watched from within the shadows of the bakery that day as Jeremy, Ginger, and her two girlfriends left the bakery. “You’d never understand,” he said.

“I might.”

Again he seemed on the verge of saying something, but he did not. He just ducked his head, stepped around her, and continued walking toward his home.

Ginger watched him for a moment, then turned back toward Main Street.

I looked from one to the other, and followed Frank Bailey. I could not help myself. I was intrigued by the secret he would not speak.

Listen, if you will
, I said when I drew alongside him.

Nothing. No response whatever.

I tried it more loudly:
Listen, if you will
.

Still nothing. He walked on, pulling at one ear and occasionally expelling a deep breath. He crossed over to a dirt lane and
turned up a buckling stone walkway to a small house in terrible need of paint.

“Is that you, then?” his mother called out when he entered.

Frank Bailey gave a murmuring assent, and his mother appeared from another room, her fading hair pulled tight to her skull, her skin aged by cold and wind and worry. I knew a little of her story. She had come from Scotland in her late girlhood and, prettier then, and livelier, she quickly found a husband whose work for the railroad initially kept him away a few days at a time, and then a few weeks and a few months. And then, at about the time that Frank, their only child, gained
Pubertät
, the railroad man was gone for good. There were citizens who said it was because he could not face the kind of dainty boy his son had become. Not just one or two said this but many.

“Pastries, then?” she said, peering into the paper bag Frank Bailey had just presented her. “From Mr. Blix?”

“Mmm,” the boy said as if he was speaking here and thinking somewhere else. He pulled at his earlobe, stretched its flesh.

“He’s a nice man, Mr. Blix,” she said, and the boy nodded distractedly.

Mrs. Bailey put a kettle on the stove, and they did not speak again until she poured boiling water into a teapot.

“So?” she said as she rearranged her empty cup.

“Pardon?” he said, brought back from his thoughts.

“You’re tugging at your ear, then, aren’t you? So I guess you have something to say.”

“Oh.” The boy broke off a section of a small cake dusted with powdery sugar. “Mr. Blix gave me a funny choice today.”

Mrs. Bailey looked up from her steeping tea. “A funny choice, you say?”

“Mmm. He said I could stay here and work with him, which he said he would like. And I would, too.” He swallowed. “But he also said that there’s a really good cooking school in California. He said if you graduate from this school, you can get a good position anywhere in the world.”

Mrs. Bailey seemed to be studying her son.

“He meant it, Mother. He’s been watching me in the kitchen.” He looked down. “He thinks I have a talent.”

“This school,” she said. “How in the world would we pay for it?”

The boy regarded the bit of cake in his hands. “Mr. Blix said he would pay for it,” he said, and then looked directly at his mother. “I know how you are about charity, but he said once I have a position, I can pay it back bit by bit.”

Mrs. Bailey watched him. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s nice, and because he really does believe I can be—I don’t know—a
master baker
or something.” The boy took a breath. “And also because he said he knows”—and now something crumpled in the boy’s face, and the look that it left there was heart-wrenching—“he said he knows what it’s like to be … misfitting.” A moment passed. “That’s why he left Sweden.”

Mrs. Bailey looked off.

In a small voice, the boy said, “Maybe he’d come back—you know, the old man—if I was gone.”

Her face hardened. She shook her head.

“He might, though,” the boy said.

“No. It wasn’t you at all. He just wasn’t the right kind of a man for being a father or a husband, either one.”

“No, Mom. It was me. He couldn’t stand the sight of me. He just couldn’t.”

This time, she did not argue. “California,” she said.

“Mmm.”

Her face broke down, too. It seemed she might cry. “You wouldna’ come back, then?”

“Yes, I would,” he said. “Even if I didn’t live here, I would always come back, you know”—there was a slight crack in his voice—“to wherever you are.”

Oh, the tender misery here! I could not bear it, and took my leave.

When I returned to the bookstore, Ginger was rapping frantically at the locked door. She cupped her hands to each side of her face and peered through the window and then knocked again, harder. She had balled her hand into a fist to pound even louder when the door swung open and Jeremy stood before her.

He seemed both glad to see her and amused at her agitation. “A little chill factor might be good here,” he said. “Just a suggestion.”

Ginger’s expression relaxed. “I know. I kind of overreacted.” She breathed in and out. “It’s just that I was with Conk and all of them, and all of a sudden I wished I was with you and then creepy McRaven was parked right over there”—she glanced across the street—“and so I waited for-freaking-ever
for him to leave and then you didn’t come to the door right away and …”

Jeremy brought her a tall glass of water. Once she had sipped from it and settled into the overstuffed armchair, she relaxed and told him about her gratifying leg-wrestling competition (though she deleted mention of Conk’s assertion that she had won a “big ol’ smoochy kiss”). Jeremy told her about the mayor’s visit, including the promissory note he had signed (though he omitted Mayor Crinklaw’s observation that Conk was nuts for Ginger).

“So, how’d you beat Conk and those guys? Conk’s pretty strong.”

Ginger pretended indignation. “I’m pretty strong, too, just for the record, or at least my legs are. Plus I’m super flexible. I mean, have you seen me do the splits?” She illustrated by lowering herself to the floor with one leg extending forward from the torso and the other leg behind. “And straddle split,” she said to herself, extending her legs to left and right.

Why she did not yelp in pain I could not say.

She held her position but glanced toward the telephone. “I guess the show didn’t call.”

Jeremy shook his head.

“They’ll call,” she said. “They will. I just know it.”

And, truly, something in my ancient soul went out to the girl, so badly did she want to believe her own words.

Jeremy idly rattled the dice in their little cup, Ginger drifted over, and soon they went back to their game of Monopoly. Ginger had just moved her marker—a small silver terrier—seven squares to one of her own properties when she said, “Oh! I do have a little bit of good news.”

Jeremy dropped the dice into the cup. “Yeah?”

She nodded. “The baker wants us to work for him tomorrow morning.”

“But I thought he wasn’t supposed to—”

“I know, but he has a plan so nobody’ll know. He didn’t tell me what plan—he just said he had a plan. We’re supposed to go to the bakery a little after seven-thirty and act like we’re customers.”

“I don’t get it. How do we work for him without—”

But Jeremy’s question hung in the air, because the storefront door swung open and in walked Jenny Applegarth, followed by a man who was barely recognizable as Jeremy’s father.

“Wow,” Jeremy murmured, and Ginger said, “Yeah, me too. Zounds, even.”

Jenny Applegarth glowed with well-being; Mr. Johnson appeared happy but dazed. His face was shaved clean, his hair was trimmed, and he was wearing nice clothes, smart and neatly pressed. He looked ten years younger, and almost handsome.

“Where’d you get the clothes?” Jeremy asked his father, but it was Jenny Applegarth who answered.

“Oh, those,” she said. “I had them in a closet at home.” She gave a small, frisky laugh. “Seems a couple of my exes were the
same size as Harold here.” She turned to Jeremy’s father. “That scare you, Harold? That you’re just the right size for me?”

Mr. Johnson’s face sent contradictory signals: he beamed with pride while shaking his head as if to say,
Why would a woman speak like that in public?

“I’m not real scared, no,” he said.

Jenny Applegarth regarded him approvingly. “It’s a whole new Harold,” she said, and then, turning back to Jeremy, went on, “Oh, and by the way—he’s also gainfully employed.”

Jeremy’s father nodded. “Yep. Elbow needed a busboy at the café. Except what he got is more of a busman, I guess.”

Jeremy stared in astonishment at his transformed father. “And how do you feel about that—about being a bus … man?”

“Good,” Mr. Johnson said. First he smiled happily at Jenny Applegarth. Then he smiled at Ginger. When he turned to Jeremy, his smile turned earnest. “Real good, in fact.”

The following morning, Jeremy and Ginger arrived at the Green Oven Bakery promptly at 7:30. There were several customers already there, all older women, and their collective bearing grew stiff when Jeremy and Ginger walked in. The rotund baker, however, greeted them as always.

“Hallå! Hallå!”
he called out. “Is it not a great day to be alive?”

“If you say so,” Ginger said pleasantly, as she always did, but one of the older women shook her head and another said in a stage whisper,
“Impudence!”

The baker pretended not to notice the women’s irritation, and soon Jeremy and Ginger were enjoying coffee so rich, cream so heavy, and pastries so golden-glazed that I myself was treated to a large serving of envy. The baker stood nearby enjoying the pleasure they took in his wares.

“Good?” he said, beaming.

Ginger laughed. “Let’s leapfrog
good
and go straight to
fabulous
.”

The baker’s round face glowed.

The older women paid their bill and exited in arch silence.

“Oh, my,” the baker said, watching them go. “The women were chilly this morning.” He turned to Jeremy and Ginger. “But they can also be friendly and generous. I’m sure you’ll see their better side again someday.”

“Right now,” Ginger muttered, “their better side is their big-behind side as they’re walking away.”

A laugh rumbled up from the baker’s ample belly. “Charity, charity,” he sang out, and then, casting a quick look toward the door to be sure they were alone, he said, “And where did you leave your bicycles?”

“At the park,” Ginger said, and Jeremy said that he had walked.

“Good! Then it is time to put you to work!”

“Here?” Ginger said. “Won’t everyone know?”

The baker merely chuckled. “This way,” he said, and led Jeremy and Ginger through the counter and into the kitchen,
where Frank Bailey was brushing butter over a large pan of hot rolls. He turned and smiled, at home here among the ovens and rolling pins, happy as I had never seen him happy before.