Bread Alone by Judith Ryan Hendricks

is of the essence. Oh—and it’s best not to have a lot of dialogue with your husband. You need to get used to thinking of him as the enemy.”My mother was born in San Francisco to parents of German descent. These two factors, when combined, have been known to produce a free-floating superiority complex and an innate assurance of correctness in matters of taste. Living in L.A. for thirty-odd years has only reinforced her notion that she is not overdressed; rather, everyone else is underdressed.
After my father died, she took a job as school secretary at Hubble Middle School, fifteen minutes from our house, but she went out the door every day for fifteen years dressed like a financial consultant in classic suits or dress-and-jacket ensembles. Parents, school board members, and sundry strangers who wandered into the office were always mistaking her for the principal, Elsie Howe, who usually came to work in double-knit pantsuits.
So Thursday morning when I come downstairs, it’s not a complete surprise to see her wearing her black linen suit with the faux Chanel jacket, a white jewel-neck blouse, and her pearls. She takes a plate out of the warming oven—cheese omelet, two strips of bacon, for God’s sake, which I haven’t eaten in five years, two pieces of cinnamon toast.
“Mom, this is really very nice, but I don’t eat like this. I’ll weigh two hundred pounds by next Friday. All I want is some yogurt and fruit. Maybe a little granola. Coffee.”
“Wyn, you need to keep your strength up. Stress can be very debilitating. You can’t afford to get sick on top of everything else. Now just sit down.” She points to the table where my breakfast waits, attended by a rose in a bud vase, a napkin folded like a swan, and the L.A. Times. “I have a job interview at ten-thirty, but I want you to have a nice, quiet morning and eat every bite of your breakfast.”
“A job interview?” It hasn’t even been a year since she retired from Hubble.
“I couldn’t stand it. How many times can you clean a house? I don’t want to end up like Doreen Whitaker.” She rolls her eyes.
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Her world ended when her last term as garden club president expired. She’s always trying to weasel her way into board meetings so she can feel important. I told her she should get a job, but she’d rather pester the new officers to death.”
I pull out my chair and sit down. “So what job are you interviewing for?”
“Office manager.”
“Which school?”
She smiles a secret smile. “Not a school. It’s a big architectural firm in Santa Monica, very busy, gorgeous offices. There’s a lot going on.”
“How do you know?”
“I went on a little reconnaissance mission yesterday. They’ve got a lot of pretty young girls floating around, arranging their hair and inspecting their nails while the phones ring off the hook and people stand around waiting for things. They need someone to take charge.”
I take a bite of the perfectly cooked omelet. “They’ll never know what hit ‘em.”
Thirty minutes later, she’s out the door looking like organization personified. Why can’t I see life the way she does—or the way I think she does—as a challenging puzzle that requires only logic and hard work to be put in order.
I spend the morning wandering aimlessly through the house, sitting down to thumb through the book on divorce she brought home from the library, getting up to wander again. I don’t know when she found time to bake mint—chocolate chip cookies, but she did, and every time I wander through the kitchen, I stuff one in my mouth. Soon, very soon, I’m going to be fat. I think about going over to the gym to work out, but I’ll see lots of women I know and don’t want to talk to.
As an antidote to the thought of fat, I tie on my jogging shoes, start for the front door. The phone rings.
“Wyn, hi. It’s Lisa.”
“Hi, Lisa. I’m sorry I didn’t call you about the publicity com—”
“Oh,