Bread Machine

This is a short piece I wrote, and to be honest I don't want to tell you any more than that. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from it.

I opened my eyes to the sound of rain bouncing lightly off of my window and landing softly on the grass. The muted, filtered sunlight did its best to shine through the clouds, casting long grey shadows in my room. For a few minutes, I could not move from my bed for fear of disturbing the absolute stillness; the universe tends toward balance, and I knew that if I tried moving here, something would move somewhere else to keep everything a wash. So I simply lay there, breathing carefully so as not to disturb the air too much, watching the patterns that the bluish grey light made through the rain droplets clinging to the glass.

Gradually I became aware of the smell of hot metal and fermenting yeast from somewhere past my bedroom door. Something stirred within me, a tendril of hope and dread constricting my throat ever so slightly. I drew myself slowly from the cold bed, throwing yesterday's shirt on over my pajama pants. I opened the door gingerly so as not to alert anyone outside of my room that I was up and about and trod carefully down the narrow hallway.

In the kitchen, my son stood on a stepping stool at the sink, carefully rinsing a large mixing bowl. The bread machine stood nearby on the counter, the red power light on and the timer reading a few hours yet left on the loaf inside. He must have heard me enter, since he turned his head toward me and smiled warmly.

"Hi, daddy," he murmured. His eyes were half-circled with the sort of dark bruising that might indicate a lack of sleep or an iron deficiency. He kept his voice soft, as though he too were afraid that loud noises might shatter this fragile morning.

"Hey, kiddo," I whispered back, trying to smile. I walked over and placed my hand on his head, gently ruffling his shock of blond hair. "What are you up to?"

"I thought I'd make some bread," he responded with the gentle innocence of youth. I felt my heart try to ignore half of its normal rhythm, causing the breath to catch in my throat for just a moment. The subtle, simple scent of the bread wafted just in front of my face, a memory there but gone forever. "It's been a long time since... since we had any bread."

"Yeah. It's been a while." An uncomfortable pause; I realized suddenly that his little arms trembled trying to hold the mixing bowl so still in the stream of water from the faucet. "Here buddy, let me help you with that." I surrounded his hands with mine, taking most of the weight from him. I guided him carefully around the bowl, washing it slowly and thoroughly. We treated it as though the heavy glass bowl were somehow delicate, as though approaching it hastily might end in disaster.

When we had cleaned the bowl and there was nothing more to be said, I walked back down the hallway and into the master bathroom. The harsher yellow light of the bulb seemed oppressive, but I wanted to see myself. My thinning black hair was tousled inelegantly; not the ever-so-popular graceful twirls of modern hairstyles, just the honest mess of the recently asleep. I brushed my hand roughly across my stubble. I considered shaving. I threw some cold water on my face instead.

I walked into bedroom and sat down on the edge of the wide bed, not wanting to leave it but not wanting to climb back in either. My eyes fell habitually to the drawer in the end table, but I couldn't bring myself to open it. From down the hall, I heard my son open a window with a grunt of effort; the cross-breeze brought the smell of the bread into my nostrils again and suddenly I could delay no more. I opened the drawer and took the album from within.

The binder was wrapped in some awful floral cover, with a heart cut out on the front where a picture should go. The picture displayed there showed a youngish couple, smiling. He was thin but handsome, his dark hair combed back away from his narrow face. His eyes were scrunched up with the grin that split his face and drew lines all around his cheeks. She was beautiful; her blond hair fell about her round face in curls, framing her features in gold. Her eyes were more green than any emerald you could find (though in this picture they were closed with laughter, they swam briefly in my vision). Between them they supported an infant, clearly newly born. The weird pink creature they held was beautiful and chubby and already growing a little blond hair on its head.

I opened the book slowly, flipping through the pages until I found the picture I was looking for. The youngish man was not part of this picture; at least, he wasn't in it but behind it. The woman, thinner in this picture than the one on the cover, still smiled brightly and embraced a boy of only a few years. His unruly blond hair fell down on his forehead and in front of his eyes a bit giving him the appearance of a very small sheepdog. Her arms were wrapped around his torso, her hands covering his, stirring something in a large plastic mixing bowl. A bread machine stood on the counter in the background, waiting patiently for the contents of the bowl.

Time passed while I sat there, no doubt, but the difficulty is in just how much time passed. My son came in at some point and sat with me as I stared at the picture. For another indeterminate stretch of time, we sat there silently, simply trying to let the smell of the bread take us back to that time. He began to cry quietly. I put one arm around him and drew him close, but I did not close the album. I couldn't. We cried there, together, in the stormy morning gloom, for the first time in a long time.

The bread machine beeped from down the hall to let us know that it had finished its job and would now be going back to sleep until it was needed once again. I dabbed my eyes with my shirt's sleeve and did the same for my boy, then smiled at him. "Come on. We need to take the bread out." He beamed at me, his eyes still wet and shining and faintly green around the edges of the irises. I scooped him up in my arms, despite his laughing protests, and carried him out to the kitchen.

Once the bread had cooled, we ate it with joyful abandon. It was truly terrible; it was faintly sour going down and had an unpleasant mealy texture, but I couldn't stop myself from eating it.

"How's the bread, daddy?" my son asked, smiling up at me hopefully. The sun had just started to poke its light tentatively through the grey clouds. Long shafts of sunlight crept through the window and illuminated the bread on the table. I looked down at that misshapen, brown loaf in the fresh golden light. I smiled and looked back to my son.

"Delicious," I lied as I cut another slice.