Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(38)

She was so gentle and sweet they called her Doe, and that suited the way she had grown to look as well, like well-risen dough waiting to be baked into bread or sweet rolls.

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Children loved to make her laugh, because her whole body quivered with it and it was beautiful to watch.

Each night she and her mother would sit together and tell stories and jokes. Sometimes her father would visit. (Always at dinner time.

Her mother was the most marvelous cook. Her pastry was like flakes of pure heaven.) And he would tell them stories of his journeys. His girlfriend was long-since departed, and he now traveled the world selling and buying clever items for the kitchen. He bought Doe’s mother a gadget for lemons and one for eggs, he bought spices and seasonings that made the whole house smell delicious.

Neither of them hated him for his early desertion; he was, for the most part, a good man and they loved his stories and gifts.

Each night Doe’s mother would stroke, mold, press, and kneed her flesh, stretch and smooth it. Sometimes this hurt, but it also always felt good.

By the time Doe was eighteen, she had transformed into a beautiful, lithe young woman with a sense of humor, an infectious laugh and a vast storehouse of stories.

In short, she became marriageable.

She had no interest in such a thing, though. She knew she could not have children because those parts of her were not fully formed, and she saw no other reason to tie herself to one man.

Like her father, she enjoyed journeys, explorations, and with her mother’s blessings and warnings, her father’s financial help, she set out for adventure.

She spent ten years exploring the world, tasting, seeing, learning, becoming, loving. She ate damper, dinkelbrot, pain de mie, bagels, sangak, roti, and pandesal. She learned how to cook each loaf, loved to watch it brown, hug it to her chest warm from the oven. And like each loaf, each lover felt different, because she could mold herself around them. Encase them. More than once a man wept after their lovemaking.

“Nothing. Ever. So beautiful.” The words in gasps.

Each encounter left her dented and stretched. She could massage ? 122 ?

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herself back into shape, but she missed her mother’s gentle touch and the stories they shared.

One day, her mother contacted her. “Your father is buying me a wonderful gift. A bakery! I will make cakes people will want to keep forever and others they will eat while still standing at the shop counter and order another.”

“Will you bake bread?” Doe asked

“If you come back, you can be the bread baker. My dear little Doe.”

But Doe had changed. She felt as if all she’d eaten, smelt, and seen so much; all the men she’d loved, all the women she’d spoken with, all the stories and jokes she’d shared: all of this had altered her. Would her mother still love her?

Her mother sighed as they embraced, but there was no judgment, no disappointment. “I’ve missed you!” she said, and her fingers pressed and stroked until Doe felt ordinary again.

And she set to work baking the most wonderful breads for her mother’s bakery.

All this is to explain how it came to be that Doe helped to fulfill the awful Mr. Crouch’s dying wishes and thus lay his cruel ghost to rest.

As he lay on his deathbed he said to Mrs. Crouch, “You have been a bad wife. Only this many times have we had relations.” There is some dissention as to how many fingers he held up. “You owe me three more. After my death, you will lie with me three nights, or this village will suffer the consequences.”

He lay back, then, and demanded bread. He loved Doe’s tiger bread and chose that as his last meal.

Doe walked into his sick room. Even though she’d been warned, the stench was overwhelming. She knew the odor of yeast left to ferment too long, but that was nothing compared to this. She’d smelt dead animals in the roof drains and the worst toilets any nightmare could dredge up. She’d smelt a man who hadn’t bathed for twenty years.

Nothing came close to the stench of this room.

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She pinched her nose and squeezed to close her nostrils.

“Here she is, the beautiful baker,” Mr. Crouch said. “Come and knead me, darling. I am ready for you,” and he weakly tugged away the covers to reveal his naked body.”

She placed the tray of bread beside him and left the room.

It is said he choked on a crust; that was not Doe’s doing.