The Private Life of a Baker- Part II

By Amy Dillon

            It was the end of a Friday working at Good Stuffs Bakery and I was clearing out the pastries from the show window and putting them in the boxes that we deliver at the end of the week to the local soup kitchen at St. Matthew’s, a church at the end of the block.  The last customer of the day was an old woman with a Polish accent who always had a smile on her face and called me cute before ordering blueberry scones, and then handed me a tip with her old, birth marked hand.  Meeting all the types of the people of Parkwood was just one of the benefits of working at the bakery at Parkwood Plaza, along with being surrounded by the best sweets and aromas that could possibly ever exist.  I don’t know how I have maintained my good physique; probably by playing varsity baseball at Parkwood High, but nonetheless my coworker Amanda makes the best oatmeal raisin cookies on the planet, in the afternoon at the bakery while I’m at school, and she always gives me a batch to take home once or twice a week. 

            Usually on Fridays I go home and veg on my parents’ brown leather couch and watch reruns of Family Feud, and then call my girlfriend Annabelle to see what she wants to do the next day, but this night was different.  My guidance counselor, Mrs. Lork, had assigned me to volunteer at a nursing home, to attain volunteering hours, so that I could graduate high school.  That Monday she called me into her office, a small space next to the principal’s office that had posters with catchy motivational statements on the walls, like “Don’t Limit Your Challenges, Challenge Your Limits.”  She told me that I need twenty hours of some type of social service towards the community in order to graduate.  I had never volunteered before, so I was clueless as to where I should go.

            “Well, what interests you?” she asked.

            I leaned back in my chair and tried to think of an answer.

            “I guess the old people that come into the bakery where I work can be kind of cute,” I said, looking up to the poster above her that read, “Nothing Is Worth It If You Aren’t Happy.”

            “Why don’t you work at the retirement home in Deerfield?  You could spend time with the senior citizens, get to know them, and have some fun.”

            “When do I start?” I asked, sitting up straight.

            I arrived at the nursing home at five thirty, right on time.  The front lobby smelled like licorice.  There was a small black haired lady sitting behind a desk talking on the phone.  To her left there was a wheelchair ramp.  A janitor was mopping the tiled teal floor.  An elderly person with thin, withered grey hair, and crisp blue eyes opened a grey door.  She was walking with the help of a rectangular shaped walker.  She modestly looked down as she slowly strode forward.  When the door opened, I saw it led to a tall flight of stairs.  She walked up to me and gently placed her hand on my shoulder.

            “Such a handsome young man,” the woman said, smiling.  She held on to her walker again with both hands and started to tread up the ramp.

            My eyes wandered while I waited for the lady at the desk’s attention.  She hung up the phone and caught my glance.

            “Is there something I can do to help you?” she asked enthusiastically.

            I was so nervous that my palms began to sweat.  I gripped the counter and tucked the toes of my left foot under the desk.  “Yes, I’m Brendan Haywood, I am here form Parkwood High School.  I’m supposed to volunteer.”

            She opened a drawer and took out a clipboard, and quickly flipped through the first few pages.  “Ah, Brendan.... We’re so glad you are here.  How would you like to volunteer?  You could sit in on arts and crafts, bingo, you could play cards with the residents….”

            All of the options spun around in my mind as I looked around the lobby.  On the east wall there was a square bulletin board plastered with collages of leaves, with the banner “Fall into Fall!” bridging over the top.  I was admiring the cardboard drawing of a turkey that covered the lobby door, when I saw her, June, the girl who the other day had graced my presence, twice, at Parkwood Plaza.  She was gorgeous and charming, and ever since my hand had brushed hers when she had bought a cake at the bakery, I had wanted to see her again. Her wavy brown hair was down, and she was wearing the same oversized Deerfield letterman jacket I had seen her in the other day.  Otherwise she wore Nikes, jeans, and a navy sweater.  I knew I had to say something to her before I lost the chance again.

            “Bingo,” I said quickly, “I’ll do Bingo.”  I spun around to face June.

            “Hi,” I said.

            “Hi,” June said, “Brendan, right?”

            “Yup,” I said, “Are you volunteering?” I asked with a sense of urgency.
            June laughed.  She looked to the ground and put her hands in her back pockets.  “Uh, yeah, I am, I need volunteering hours to graduate.  I told my counselor that the best days of my childhood were when I spent the summers with my grandma in her cabin in Sweden.”

            “Sweden, ya?” I said, realizing half a second later how pathetic my attempt at a conversation starter had been.  June just shook her head and laughed.

            Then she asked, “So would you help me to lead Bingo?  That’s what I did last Friday.  It’s easy, you just sit at a table and draw the balls out of a container and read them out loud.  Then whenever someone wins, they get a prize.”

            “Sounds like a plan,” I say.  I stick out my elbow so that June can put her arm through mine.  This is usually something I only do with Annabelle, but June was what I felt I had been looking for, something new and spur of the moment amongst the blah of my average life in Parkwood.   I’ve already expressed how I wanted to find someone that would rock my world, someone besides Annabelle, someone who was looking for me too.  I wanted to break up with Annabelle and be with June, even though I hardly knew the girl.  Something about the way she laughed at everything I said yet was still able to make me feel like a million bucks made me think that she was something special.  Last night I had sat up thinking, what if I broke up with Annabelle and asked out June? Who knew were my life would go from there.  I would have someone to tell all of my crazy thoughts to.  She would probably go to all of my games, too, she wouldn’t give the I have too much Algebra homework bullshit that Annabelle gave me.  I just knew it would work, because June is from Deerfield, and I’m from Parkwood. It’s the Romeo and Juliet scenario, except without all the drama.  The only thing that bothered me, though, was the fact that her jacket was kind of big on her, so the thought that it was originally a guy’s crossed my mind, and a pang of jealousy gripped my heart.

            An expression that contained an amount of eagerness I had never seen from June before filled her face.  She put her arm through mine, and she led the way as we walked through the lobby.  June and I pushed through the heavy looking door.  We walked up two flights of stairs, past a door that lead to the second floor, up to the third floor.  We strolled through a carpeted hallway, with banisters lining the cream walls, until we arrived to a large room with green tile floors.  Wooden tables with white metal chairs filled the center.  Jazz music came from a radio that sat on a radiator, next to two windows with white blinds.  Senior citizens were sitting in the chairs, all chairs but two, of the table where the Bingo equipment sat on top of.  Some of the older men and women talked quietly amongst each other, but most of them sat in silence, their gaze shifted down, and their eyes sleepy but bright.

            It looked like June knew what she was doing, so I let her control everything.  Before we started Bingo, she told me she had been volunteering there every Friday for the past three weeks.  We didn’t really have the chance to talk.  June rotated a sphere with the balls that had the letters of BINGO and the numbers one to seventy-five on them.  Then she pulled them out, one at a time, and called them out, loudly and slowly so that the senior citizens could hear them.  The prizes were candy bars, juice boxes, and books.  June handled the process very orderly and methodically.  We kept the game going until the prizes ran out.

            “Ok, thanks everyone for playing!” June shouted, with the type of careful kindness that one uses with reverence towards senior citizens; not childish, but loving.  People filed out of the room, though some remained behind, to thank us for spending time with them.  One elderly man with a cane and crystal green eyes took June’s hand in his and grinned so that half of his face was in wrinkles.

            “You kids are the best!” he said, accentuating the word best with the type of enthusiasm that only older people that have achieved self-actualization could express.  June and I looked to each other, like a couple, and smiled.

            “Thank you, sir,” we said in unison.

            June and I walked down to the front lobby to ask what our next task should be.  We only had about thirty minutes left to volunteer. 

            “We need volunteers to take the residents on a walk to the store,” said the woman behind the desk.  “You’d just need to supervise, walk with them to the store, to let the residents pick out their items, and to buy them, and to walk with them back to the nursing home.”

            June and I idled by the front door of the lobby, waiting for some residents to gather so that we could take them to the store.  After a few minutes, three people came.  One was a tall bald man, dressed in a pea coat and dress shoes, like he was about to go out on the town.  Another man showed up, wearing a Bull’s starter jacket and khaki’s, and thick, brown-framed glasses.  Another was a woman, wearing a white wool sweater and a long blue skirt, who had long red hair and freckles.  She walked up to me and took my hand and smiled.

            “Buy me a coffee, sweetie?” she asked, squeezing my hand.

            “Sure,” I said, and June beamed, stepping back on her right foot.

            June and I trailed behind as the three residents trekked forward towards the drug store, at the corner of Kleaf and Hampton, four blocks away from the nursing home.  It was the first opportunity we had had to really talk that night.

            “So you are Swedish?” I asked, running my hand through my hair.

            “Yup,” June said, putting her hands in her pockets.  “Half.  My mom is a hundred percent, and my dad is all Irish.  My mom’s mom died five years ago, and I haven’t spent any time with elderly people since then.  That’s why I really wanted to volunteer here.”

            There was a long silence.  The energy and sound of the traffic rushed by us.  Red and brown leaves fluttered to the ground.

            “It’s cool, being with people that have had such full lives,” June said.  “You just want to sit and listen to their stories.”

            “Yeah, I know what you mean.  You know, I work at the bakery, and there are a ton of different types of people that walk in and out of it every day, and you hardly get to know them,” I said.

            “I think I want to get my degree in social work at college,” June said, tilting her head up to look me.

            “Really,” I said.  “I want to major in English.  I think I want to be a writer.”

            “Why?” she asked.

            “Because I like telling people how I feel.  I think I’m good at it.  Sometimes I write poetry and stuff.  I should read you some of it sometime.”

            “That would be wonderful, Brendan,” she said, putting her arm through mine.

            I knew I shouldn’t but I did.

            “Question… whose jacket is that?”

            June’s face fell to the ground.  She took her arm out of mine and crossed both of her arms across her chest.

            “….My boyfriend’s.”

            “So you have a boyfriend,” I said, trying not to let anger permeate my words.

            “I guess,” she said, “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

            June and I spent the rest of the night together in silence.  Her brown eyes never left the ground, and my voice never lost its sense of irritation.  Before we both left the nursing home we exchanged quick goodbyes, and see-you-next-times.  I drove home with the radio on, but I didn’t hear it.  I was too preoccupied with the thought that I would never leave this state in my life, of being in a rut of baseball, of Annabelle, of never achieving my dreams of writing or true love.

            I went home and collapsed on the couch and dialed Anabelle’s number.  She picked up, and I didn’t say anything.  She said “Hello?” for the second time, and I knew I had to answer.

            “Are you doing Algebra?” I demanded.

            “No, why?” she asked.

            I didn’t say anything until the clock on the wall said three seconds passed.

            “Are you cheating on me?”

            “What?  No! No, why would you ask that?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Are you cheating on me?”

            I let three more seconds pass.

            “No. Go to bed.”

            “Goodnight honey.  See you-”

            And I hung up.  I lied in bed thinking all night about June and how I blew it with her, and how I just wanted to tell my parents about how I couldn’t care less about baseball and that I wanted to pursue writing.  Family Feud was on.  One of the contestants looked June, and she won the game for her family.  I turned off the television, thinking about how I’d have to see June in a week, and that maybe we could just be friends, because it would still be nice to have someone like her to talk to.