The Baker's Secret(6)
In Emma’s third year at the bakery, Albin’s father fell from a hayloft and broke his leg. Despite six years of investment in apprenticeship, Albin seized on the excuse to return to the family farm. Six months later, David dropped a twenty-kilo bag of flour, which made a small cloud when it burst. As Uncle Ezra delivered his predictable berating—the boy was a buffoon and an idiot and a true horse’s ass—David removed his apron in a sort of slow motion. He hung it on the hook in back with similar ponderousness.
“Where are you going?” Uncle Ezra cried. “We have unfinished work today. The mayor has requested a napoleon.”
David left without bothering to prevent the door from slamming.
The baker stood with hands on his hips, fuming. Emma, having interrupted her scrubbing in order to hear the lecture, stared into the soapy water. Uncle Ezra worked his lower lip back and forth as though he were chewing it. Beside an oven that held three cheesecakes, a timer ticked away. The two of them were alone for the first time.
“He was lazy,” Emma said at last. “I watched him drop a bit of eggshell into a cake batter, and not bother to spoon it out.”
“What? When?”
“Yesterday. I removed it when he was in the cooler.” She pulled the plug from the drain, which choked loudly as it emptied, and continued, “Albin sneezed with his mouth open.”
“What? Disgusting.”
She shrugged. “I always replaced the recipe he did it in front of.”
“How long have you been helping them?”
Emma stared into the gleaming sink. “Since I began here.”
“Damn it,” Uncle Ezra said, punching his fist into his other palm. It was the first time Emma had heard a man swear, and she blushed. “And now I suppose you will be leaving soon too?”
For Emma, the moment was fragrant with opportunity. She scanned the shop, pies cooling in the front window while rolls and loaves and one unsold breakfast croissant sat in the display case. David’s broken bag had not yet been swept up, which could only be done after saving as much unspilled flour as possible. Normally, that would have been her duty.
Meanwhile on the main counter there stood the mayor’s unfinished napoleon—also known as thousand-leaf cake because of its many thin layers of alternating puff pastry and pastry cream, a test of any baker’s patience—and all that remained was to frost the top. Uncle Ezra had been preparing to do exactly that when he paused to rain invective upon David: the frosting sleeve was already filled, a medium gauge nozzle at its tip, a bowl of melted chocolate alongside for dripping a design onto the frosted top.
The baker remained with hands on hips, his question hanging in the air. Emma wiped hands on her apron, strode to the counter, picked up the frosting sleeve, and turning it gently clockwise, began to wring a stream of white confection out the nozzle in exact sympathy with the pace of her movement around the cake.
Uncle Ezra came to stand beside her, watching. She could hear him breathing. When she pinched three fingers together to dip in the chocolate, he opened his mouth to speak, but as she drizzled the dark brown in a rosette on the frosting, hovering the bowl near in her free hand so no errant drip would mar the white, he said not a word. When the napoleon was completed, she drew the back of a knife across her design, an X in three directions to give it flair. Uncle Ezra sniffed and crossed his arms.
“Yes? Did I do something wrong?”
He chewed on his lower lip a moment before answering. “Two years.”
“Two years until what, sir?”
“Until you become my competition.”
Chapter 3
From that day forward they were equals, the grouchy baker and his apprentice of sixteen, seventeen, and more. Production increased. The shop’s reputation grew. People traveled from Caen, from Bayeux, from Honfleur, saying they had heard of this cake or that pie, this bread or that pastry.
The story of the shop was part of its appeal. Nearly every customer had heard about the pie crust made with butter and olive oil, about the baker who wanted no women but took as apprentice a young girl. Yet no tale would make Emma an expert. Talent was but one ingredient in a lengthy recipe. She knew enough to make mastering the basics her first goal. Also she continued to pay attention, interrupting herself midtask to watch Uncle Ezra whisk sugared cream of tartar violently into a gentle meringue, or fold one batter into another to make a third, new thing. Soon enough she began to intuit how to apply basic principles in new circumstances. She started to improvise, baking raisin muffins, adding a flourish to frostings, making sauces and reductions for Odette’s café.
One Christmas Eve—Emma was nineteen, taller than Uncle Ezra, more confident every day—she stood in the shop doorway beside him, helping distribute the fabled sticky cinnamon rolls. They had shared the work equally: him baking, her toasting the pecans, him kneading the dough, her blending brown sugar with butter to make the glaze, and both of them pouring the sweet nectar over finished rolls for the village children with so much care it could only be an act of love. He gave the treats on squares of wax paper while Emma kept track, making sure no clever boy managed to get himself more than one.
Up skipped the Monkey Boy, whistling and wearing an elfin cap. His mother prodded him to say thank you. “Happy Christmas, Aunt Emma,” he said.
“Never,” she shouted, surprising herself. “It will not be.”