Husky (3 page)

When something really hurts Mom, it almost knocks her out. Her eyes get real big, like she's trying to see everything around her to figure out how it happened. She never expects it. And she looks around, trying to find out what it is and why it happened. She's a good person and she didn't—doesn't—deserve that. It's hard for her to figure out, but usually the thing she is looking for is right in front of her.

Like me.

And my mom just said, “Fine. But you will listen to the whole thing tonight and nothing else.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine,” she said.

Mom sold all of Dad's records for forty-six dollars.
Aida
was six. We didn't talk most of the walk back.
Aida
sat alone in the schlepper.

When we got home, Nanny immediately asked her usual roster of questions, but we didn't answer, we just walked right past her. We were both still pretty upset. Mom walked me upstairs to the living room and sat me down in front of the record player, right above the empty shelf where Dad's records had been. She took out the first record of
Aida
and put it on. She handed me the book that was in the record too, but I didn't look through it yet. I just wanted to listen. I sat in front of the record player with my arms crossed, and the music started.

Once the needle touched down on the record, I never moved. The music was Gigantic. It's the only way I can say it. Gigantic. I had never heard anything so big in my whole life.

“What's this, now?” yelled Nanny from downstairs in the kitchen.

“
Aida.
Davis is a very big opera fan,” Mom said, trying to get me to sort of say something back. But I didn't. Nanny and Mom talked and talked about me and the opera and everything, but I didn't care. I couldn't. There wasn't anything else in the world except
Aida
.

The
violins
, in big stretches of music. And the violas and the cellos too. Strings in big waves, just moving all around me. Then the whole orchestra. Drums and trumpets and flutes. Huger and huger and huger until it stops and goes soft again. So soft, almost like all those instruments are whispering together at the same time, keeping the secret of what comes next. And then it builds again, stronger like fists, stronger until horns are hurling at you. It was the biggest thing I'd ever heard, and nobody sang a note yet! Not one word of Italian or anything else, but I didn't care. I wanted this and only this.

And then Radames, he's the prince in
Aida
, sings in this deep big voice, almost as big as the band sounds. And the chorus comes in, so many voices, so many people and
instruments and everything. How could all this be here? And there were still two other records.

Nanny tried to talk to me the whole time. But Jock just batted her away.

“Do you like this?” Nanny yelled.

“Leave the kid alone, he likes it,” Jock said back, fussing with his TV.

“What are they saying?” Nanny tried.

“How does he know? Let him listen,” Jock offered.

“Now that's a pretty bit. I like that song, but it'd be better in English.”

“Well, I agree with that, Davey boy,” Jock said with a smile.

Jock was the only person to call me Davey, I liked it a lot. I miss it.

Nanny kept trying to talk to me. But I wouldn't answer her. I was so focused on listening. I really didn't want to do anything. And I guess I was trying to imagine what was happening. When the music speeds up, are they angry? Is something bad happening? What's wrong? And since I didn't know anything, I could sort of make it all up. That
was the best part. Honest. Imagining these people with big wide mouths saying words I didn't even know, and the high notes and the getting louder all had a meaning just for me. I had to figure them out. So I started to follow in the book. And then she sang, the woman from the cover, Leontyne Price. She had dared me to pick this up, and to take her home, and I was hooked.

There's this aria in
Aida
called “O Patria Mia,” where Aida, who's been sold as a slave to the Egyptians, misses her home country of Ethiopia, and she calls out to it. It's sort of too hard to say what it means, but it's about a place you want to go but can't. A place where you know you belong but where you can't be anymore. You miss it, and you wonder if it misses you. I heard it that night, and I read along, and I sort felt like it was the opera calling out to me. And from then on, I loved it.

I listened to the whole thing, all six sides, that night. And again the next night, and the next and the next, until Mom took me back to the record shop and bought me another opera, just to stop the endless
Aida
. Jock cleared out the shelf for me and said all my operas could
always go there. There was a spot for me.

By the time I get to Sweet Jane, Norma and the druids have peace, twice, and the bakery is closed. It's time for the Big Bake.

On Sunday nights, Sweet Jane closes early for the Big Bake. We need to get started. I say
we
, but I only help a little, barely any. I just like to say we because it's nice to feel a part of it. All week Mom makes breads and cookies and cakes for our store, but on Sunday nights, she does the Big Bake, where she makes all that stuff for other places. Rolls for six Italian restaurants, desserts for three. Biscuit mix in a big plastic tub for a Southern restaurant in Crown Heights, and there are a bunch more, but I can't remember. The Big Bake is also for special orders by regular people too. Stuff like birthday cakes, special desserts for people when they want to feel happy about something. Mom loves that stuff. Anniversary cakes and graduation cakes, all of it. She likes making something
for a special occasion. And I like watching her do it.

I knock on the glass door twice to let Jules, the girl who works the register, know to let me in. It takes Jules a while. She's really cool, so she moves really slow. She even talks slow. Jules has this thing with her voice that she doesn't need to say words like everyone else, and she's annoyed that you think she does. So she takes her time because it is her time, and you can just wait. Even for the door.

“H-EY. Your mom's in b-ack,” Jules says as she unlocks the door. I start to go in when right behind me I hear, “Hey, little man, hold that door for me, okay?”

It's Paolo. Paolo is sexy. At least Jules thinks so, because she gets flushed when she hears him and straightens her bangs. Paolo is one of the other bakers and the only person anywhere who calls me man. Mom hired him about three years ago, when he had moved to New York with his girlfriend, Stacy, from Brazil. Stacy met him on vacation, and I think it was like a Hermit Crab thing. You want them so bad when you're there, because you're at the beach and it's fun and you need to get something because
everyone else is, but when you get it home, it's just this ugly crab that does nothing and you wonder why you ever wanted it in the first place. So Paolo was the hermit crab, and he got dumped. Not that Paolo is ugly. He's not at all. He's nice and funny and he has an accent that makes even Jules smile, which happens with no one else. My mom had to talk to her about it.

With me, Paolo jokes a lot but mostly about things I don't think are funny. I laugh anyway because I don't know what else to do. He always starts in with, “So are you married yet?”

“No.” I sort of shrug and laugh as he squeezes past me and says hi to Jules. Jules actually laughs too, which is crazy.

“Really, a handsome guy like you? I bet all the girls are chasing after you,” asks Paolo again. “Don't you think so, Jules?”

Jules says yes, but it's a yes about him, it has nothing to do with me, so she laughs. And I laugh again because I still don't know what to do.

I walk back to the office, where Mom is hanging another picture on the Blunder Wall. It's one of my favorite things in the bakery, and nobody really knows about it. It's a wall full of pictures of baking mistakes that have happened here. Mom collects them because they make her laugh. And when they happen, she says, “Isn't that Blunderful!” Sometimes, but not always at the time of the disaster, like the dozen pecan pies that exploded and needed to be remade in two hours. That was a rough one. But the bagels that ended up looking like owls always get her. Today it's a picture of a tart that melted.

“Hey, Ducks. Look at it. It's a raspberry murder scene!” She smiles really big and hangs it near a photo of a cake that deflated.

Mom looks like her job. She's a baker, so sloppy and sort of flour dirty. She's always covered with flour. Or powder of some kind. And her hair is always back in a tight, tight ponytail with a bandanna tied on top. And her nails are always clipped. And all her T-shirts are blotched with butter or oil or eggs. You can smell the dough on her. You know what she's making that night because you can
see the stains all over her. When she smells like cinnamon or fresh berries and her fingers are stained blackish red, that means tarts and muffins and cinnamon rolls. And other times, it's the stinging smell of rye that takes a long, hard whiff to get to the sweet part. At first it's like salty grass. And that's just sort of gross. It's always different, but still it's always her. I love that.

“Well, bread is a process, and sometimes it just goes a little wrong,” Mom says with a big laugh. “Let's hope not tonight.”

Maybe this doesn't sound anything like a mega piece of news or something, but for Mom, that is seriously the most important phrase in the world. It's Everything. I guess you could call it a mantra, but I would have to Google it to make sure that's right. It's definitely her slogan. “Bread is a process,” she says in the morning when she gets up at five thirty. And every night when she falls asleep at the kitchen table trying to take off her shoes. It's her excuse for not being places on time or even showing up at all. Or for missing family dinner, or the one time, when I tried to play baseball at the park. I was
sort of glad she wasn't there to see that one.

Nanny was. She said to me, “Well, at least you can run. We just have to sort out which way.”

Mom is always at the bakery. She works super hard. But the fun part is you get to taste what she does. She gets to make something good and make people feel happy. That's pretty great. It's another part of the secret side of the bakery, I guess. Knowing what goes into the Kamishovitches' strawberry anniversary cake, or that the Lieberman cake is for Tim, who has a nut allergy so bad, we have to bake it last, after everything else that day, and wipe down all the tables twice, just to be safe. It's all part of the process and the fun. And on Sunday nights, for the Big Bake, I get to help. I love that.

The other part I love is how I get to play my iPod early in the night. And whatever I want. Usually, it only lasts for one opera because my mom says, “Okay, buddy, I need something I understand. Something I can dance to, or I am going to drop.”

And then she plays Lou Reed.

And lots of David Bowie.

Or Stevie Nicks.

This Sunday, I'm going to play
L'Elisir d'Amore
, with Pavarotti. It's really beautiful. It's a comedy, but you can't really hear the jokes. I can't anyway. But it's upbeat and fun, I guess. No one dies at least, and my mom seems to like that. I might even get to play another.

Right after a couple of songs Paolo says, “You listen to all this sad stuff. Doesn't it ever make you sad?”

“No, it's not sad,” I answer back like I'm answering someone who speaks Chinese. Can't he hear that it's not sad?

But then Mom asks, “But what about the one with the girl in the bag?” And Paolo smiles at her, and they sort of look at each other a bit.

“What?” I ask, as if Mom is the one speaking Chinese.

“You know, the girl in the bag. You told me about a girl who gets kidnapped in a bag and then gets brought back and crawls out of the bag . . .”

“Oh, you mean Gilda,” I answer.

“Okay. Gilda,” she says.

“That's
Rigoletto
.”

“Okay,
Rigoletto
, but she dies in a bag, right?”

“Well, she gets out to sing her aria.”

“But then she dies, right?” Mom laughs. A laugh I've never heard before.

Everybody has different laughs for different things. I have this laugh for when Nanny does something so bizarre and crazy that it's too funny to be embarrassed about. It's loud and a little high. And I have a laugh for when Mr. Tartlin, my teacher, says something goofy about music, which makes me short of breath. And a laugh for when someone falls, anybody, no matter who, and no matter where, which is two beats. Ha-ha. Then I get worried about them.

And Mom has a few laughs too. But most of them I know. Now, with Paolo, she has a new one. It's loud, and smiley, with lots of teeth, and it ends with a hit, usually to Paolo on the arm.

I've never seen this one before. And I don't know if I'm supposed to see it now.

And Paolo says, “So she dies in a bag, little man? That's terrible. Okay, so see what I mean, doesn't that
make you sad? That poor girl trapped in a bag, like, a sandwich bag. That's awful.”

And Paolo puts a plastic bread bag over his head and starts making faces, I guess like he's singing opera, but he just looks like a jerk. And Mom does the laugh again, louder.

“It's not a sandwich bag,” I answer back.

He continues, “Okay, but that is still a terrible thing. And you listen to that? Doesn't that make you sad?” Mom turns around on this, because she wants to see the truth. Mom, when she asks you a question she really wants the truth to, will turn around no matter what and look you right in the face to make sure that you are telling her the absolute truth, all the way from your eyeballs to your feet. She once knew I was lying about something because she saw me trying to cross my toes in a pair of sneakers.

“Well, doesn't it?” she asks me.

“No.” Honest.

“Why not?” she asks.

“Because it's not real. I mean, it's an opera. It's not like that.”

“Okay, but don't you think that all those sad stories
start to affect you? I mean, if all you ever hear from the world is about dead girls in bags or murder or suicide, don't you think after a while that's sort of all you think about?”

I can see that she wants an answer, a real one. That she's about to make a decision about something, and she's sort of asking me if I believe what she is about to do.

But I don't.

“No,” I shoot back.

We stand there for a bit just looking at each other. And then Paolo does the bag thing again. So she turns around and laughs her new laugh at him. Paolo's not a bad guy, so I don't totally mind that he's gotten his own laugh. But the joke totally didn't deserve it. I mean, I have my laughs with Mom, I actually have two. But what did he do to deserve this so soon? I mean, is he that funny? Isn't he making fun of me?

I want to go home. But I want to know what else is going on here. It's another secret in the bakery.

But this one I don't think I get to know about.