Hands Crossed Like Wings

A few hours into his first shift at Brodbeck’s Gourmet, Zane put thirty trays loaded with peanut butter, chocolate chip and sugar cookie dough into the oven. Fifteen minutes later, he removed seven-hundred-twenty indistinguishable charred discs.

“It’s not your fault,” his supervisor said. Rona made a point of facing him when she spoke, moving her lips slowly and succinctly. Zane appreciated that. “You’re just getting used to our oven. Next time, we’ll figure out a way to let you know the timer’s going off.”

Zane blinked, processed the fact that he was not being fired, and then said, “Thank you.” He underscored his gratitude by tipping his hand off his chin.

Rona then asked him to please redo the order because the bakery department still needed packaged cookies for an after-school rush.

“I think I’ve found my dream job,” Zane signed to his wife a few weeks later. He was coming home from work each day exhausted but exhilarated, his fingertips dyed an indelible orange. When he took off his shoes at night, red, orange and yellow sprinkles popped out onto the bedroom rug—colors that had not yet appeared on the trees, but soon would.

Content to spend eight hours a day processing insurance claims from a cubicle, Isabel had a different interpretation of dream job. Still, she celebrated Zane’s announcement by wagging her upturned hands.

Zane’s last job had been night baker at the Shopfresh. The only other workers scheduled from midnight to eight AM had been the grocery crew. He would observe from a distance the ease with which they interacted and made one another laugh. He considered that he might not have found their conversations interesting or their jokes funny—even if he had been able to hear—yet he couldn’t help feeling excluded. At the job before that, his supervisor would hand him a written list every morning, detailing all the baked goods to be prepared during his shift, all the colors and decorations to be utilized. Though others worked nearby, they generally spoke to one another with their backs turned to him. On occasion they communicated with him by writing on scrap pieces of paper, but rarely made the effort.

The staff at Brodbeck’s, on the other hand, took advantage of Zane’s ability to read lips, and went out of their way to include him in their conversations. Whenever cookies and muffins went into the oven, they flocked to the bakery to inhale the intoxicating aromas, and while they were there, shared musings that Zane had missed out on at his previous places of employment.

Never before had he been sought after for camaraderie the way he was at Brodbeck’s. Never before had he held a position offering him this much creative license. For Halloween, he cut out and baked thousands of sugar cookies shaped like pumpkins and ghosts without burning a single one. He piped hundreds of spider webs onto orange-iced cupcakes and adorned them with plastic spider rings. He airbrushed haunted houses and other spooky scenes onto sheet cakes and thirteen-inch cookies that elicited praise from coworkers and customers alike.

For the first time in his life, Zane saw himself as an integral part of a team. Just before Thanksgiving and Christmas, the bakery staff kept pace with an escalating demand for rolls and pies and cupcakes—always the cupcakes! Between the New Year and Valentine’s Day, a succession of snowstorms necessitated the production of mass quantities of bread. Zane proofed and baked one rack of baguettes after another, then bagged them and placed them into open hands on the other side of the counter. One woman, who’d waited patiently with her small, snowsuit-clad children, accepted her bread and said, “Zane, you are our hero.” The previous month, the birthday cake he’d decorated to resemble a swimming pool had been described as “the hit of her daughter’s party.”

Later that day, Rona reiterated the customer’s sentiment. “Working in this department is like repeatedly resurfacing while one tidal wave after another crashes over you,” she said. “It’s the same every year. The holidays, the snowstorms… This year, thanks to you, I feel like we’ve managed to stay afloat.”

A storm surge was on the horizon, one that neither Rona nor Zane predicted despite news reports of a global pandemic that had been circulating for weeks. At about the time Zane had started coating shamrock-shaped cookies in green sugar, business at Brodbeck’s skyrocketed. He was forced to set aside St. Patrick’s Day production to accommodate an unprecedented demand for bread—even more than had been needed for the snowstorms earlier in the year. Fresh-baked pastries, cookies, brownies, and coffee cakes flew off the displays. Wide-eyed customers with shopping carts full of toilet paper and cleaning supplies stopped off at the bakery just long enough to grab their packages of comfort food, too overwhelmed to say hello to Zane.

Isabel started working from home. When Zane said he wished he could do the same, his wife held up both palms, raised her thumbs and pinkies, then folded her right hand and brought it to her jaw. “Stay home,” she was pleading.

He tapped his right index finger onto his left. “I can’t.” He explained what she already knew: Unlike other retailers, grocery stores were expected to stay open. Their services were needed now more than ever.

“Can you see if Shopfresh will hire you back?” Isabel put her hand on Zane’s shoulder when he shuddered at the suggestion. “I know you hated working the night shift, but I just want you to be safe.”

“I promise I’ll wear a mask,” he signed. At that point, about half the associates and customers at Brodbeck’s were wearing them. “I promise I’ll keep my distance.” Zane felt like a child trying to negotiate with a parent for more playtime. All he wanted to do was find a way to isolate without becoming isolated.

What he did not want was a return to the mind-numbing monotony of his previous two jobs, but this was the direction in which he was headed. With schools closed indefinitely and parties cancelled, customers had stopped placing orders for cakes and cupcakes, had stopped ordering anything that required creativity. He prepared two dozen egg-shaped cakes for Easter, half of which ended up on the markdown rack.

The biggest loss for Zane was his ability to communicate with colleagues and customers. Now that everyone was wearing masks—though he was extremely grateful for this safety measure—he could no longer determine what people were saying by reading their lips.

“We’re so fortunate,” Isabel signed, whenever they sat down to dinner. Her nightly show of gratitude came on the heels of the six o’clock news. The death toll was rising. People were grieving, suffering, losing jobs and income, and Isabel and Zane were seated at a kitchen table with full plates of food in front of them.

Zane always agreed with her. To bring up the complications and uncertainty in their own lives—though admittedly minor in comparison to what they’d just witnessed on the news—would only draw attention to the differences in how he and his wife were adapting. Isabel had found a rhythm and established a routine. She was usually finished her work by noon and spent the remainder of her day learning new skills. She took an online yoga class and a poetry appreciation class and a Spanish class (“I’ve always wanted to read Pablo Neruda in the original language,” she told Zane). She followed tutorials on mask-making and took her sewing skills to new heights with multi-pocketed tote bags and cosmetic bags for herself and her sister. She took up vegetable gardening and covered every windowsill in the house with soil pods. She learned to make authentic cuisine from Southeast Asia and Northern Italy. In May she bought a pasta maker and cranked out piles of fresh fettuccini and tagliolini. In June she bought a rice cooker.

While Zane benefited from the delectable dinners that resulted from Isabel’s pursuit of self-enrichment, he couldn’t help dwelling on all he’d lost in a matter of weeks. Her world was expanding while his was contracting. She was rolling out pasta dough and stir-frying exotic vegetables while he was following the same old recipes day after day. Isabel, who’d never had a need for social interaction to the degree that her husband had, was doing warrior poses while Zane was gazing out from a worktable, wondering if his friends were having conversations in which he could not participate, whether customers were hurrying past his department because they were hoping to be invisible to him, or because he’d become invisible to them.

Maybe Isabel was right. Maybe it would be a good idea to contact the manager at Shopfresh and see if a night baker position was available. He’d done a good job there and had left on good terms. Working during nonbusiness hours, around a crew of four or five—versus the thirty or so who clocked in at Brodbeck’s every morning—would at least give his wife some peace of mind.

He finally broached the subject with her one evening as they were sitting down to homemade chicken and cashews, fragrant with garlic and ginger and homegrown basil. “We are so fortunate,” Isabel signed. She’d continued this nightly ritual of saying grace, as if neglecting to do so would be a sign of disrespect to those less fortunate.

“Yes, we are,” Zane replied. Then, minutes later, “Maybe I should see if Shopfresh has any nighttime openings.”

Isabel set her chopsticks onto her plate. “But you hated it there.”

“I hated the…” He considered how to complete the sentence and chose a word that culminated in his hands crossed like wings over his chest: solitude. “It’s not so different at Brodbeck’s these days. I rarely exchange more than two or three sentences with my coworkers from the time I punch in until I punch out.”

His wife regarded him for a moment with her brows angled in a way that always stirred something inside of Zane, that never failed to remind him he was loved. “Brodbeck’s is your dream job.”

“Yes, but—”

“Eventually things will get back to normal and you will have given up your dream job.”

Zane could not imagine things getting back to normal anytime soon. Still, Isabel had clearly reconsidered her original position, had weighed the risks and benefits of Zane working at Brodbeck’s Gourmet.

As soon as she extended her palms and pulled them toward her chest, he knew what she was going to tell him: “I want you to be happy.” This had been their message to one another throughout their marriage.

“That’s all I want for you.” He fought an urge to sob. “It’s a lot to ask for, isn’t it?”

“Happiness?”

“Right now, it seems like a lot to ask for.”

After a moment she nodded, picked up her chopsticks and dug into the meal she’d prepared.

The following Sunday, when Isabel announced she was going to make lasagna, Zane asked if he could help prepare the pasta. A sense of serenity enveloped him as he whisked forkfuls of flour into egg and oil and brought the mixture together to form dough. “You’re really good at this,” Isabel signed when Zane started to knead.

“This is my specialty.” A thread of yellow dough flew from his fingertips as he signed this, and they both laughed. “It feels kind of rubbery,” he told her, thinking of the comparatively softer bread dough he kneaded at work every day.

“Then it’s perfect… Rubbery is perfect…You want to do that for about ten minutes. Then we’ll put it in the fridge for an hour or so.” She pulled up a chair and watched him work, and for a moment he was reminded of his early days at Brodbeck’s, when staffers from other departments would come visit him in the bakery. “I found an online class for ceramic making,” she signed.

“You should take it.”

“The class is free, but the supplies will cost… I don’t know how much. The clay, the wheel…”

“It’s no problem.”

“If I really like it, a kiln will cost hundreds.”

“It’s not like we’re spending money on dinners out anymore.”

Isabel bit her lip. Zane had momentarily returned them to reality.

“All I want is for you to be happy,” he signed, his fingertips glistening from the oil in the dough.

“I am enjoying the classes.” She kept her fingers upturned for an extra few seconds before continuing. “I’ve been thinking about giving back. Teaching something for free.”

“You’d be good at it.”

“Do you think your coworkers would be willing guinea pigs while I work out the curriculum?”

“Probably. What were you thinking of teaching?”

“I was thinking of teaching…” She stopped. Her brows came together, the same way they had when she’d talked him out of giving up his dream job. She signed three letters: “ASL.”

He was so surprised at what she was suggesting, his response produced sound he could feel but couldn’t hear. “What?” He stopped kneading.

“Maybe your coworkers could be my first students to help me develop my technique. You could put a sign-up sheet in the break room, to see if there’s any interest.”

“I can think of a lot of people who would sign up.” His first weeks at Brodbeck’s, several colleagues had offhandedly said they wished they knew sign language—Rona, one of the produce clerks, two women from the deli, the entire seafood staff. His wife got up to grab a sheet of plastic. She showed him how to tightly wrap the dough ball, and with some reverence, they placed it in the fridge.

Zane washed his hands and sat down across from his wife at the table. Then he got back up, kissed her and signed, “I feel so very fortunate.”

Author’s Biography

Bari Lynn Hein managed a bakery for over a decade, still loves to bake, and still dreams she has racks of bread and cookies to prepare. Her stories are published in dozens of journals across eleven countries, among them The Saturday Evening Post, CALYX, Mslexia, Literary Mama, The Ilanot Review, Jewish Fiction, Modern Literature, decomp, and Bosphorus Review of Books. Her prose has been awarded finalist placement in several national and international writing competitions. Her story collection is on submission. Learn more at barilynnhein.com.