The Bakery on Pine Street

The mist flirted and danced with the amber light of the street lamps, and I watched as it settled softly onto the charcoal-colored concrete. The street shimmered like a smoky diamond. The taxi driver let me out on the corner, and I felt the coolness on my face.

It was just before dawn in San Francisco.

I was dressed in my blue uniform and stewardess hat, and I adjusted my mother’s ruby brooch, which I had placed on my lapel next to my Pan American Airways pin, right before landing. As I walked, my black pumps clapped along the sidewalk.

I thought of my parents — my dad, a lightbulb salesman, and my mom, his young wife. Both from the same small town in Indiana, they moved west when my father’s company promoted him, and that was how the three of us arrived in California in 1950, almost three decades earlier.

We spent 12 years in this city. It was where I took my first steps, rode my first bike, went to my first day of kindergarten, and had my first crush. The memories were ethereal and painful. I suppose I had spent an entire early adulthood mourning the lost opportunity to say proper goodbyes, ever since the fateful morning everything changed.

That morning was the one when my mother dragged 12-year-old me by the hand through the lobby of San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, dodging travelers with luggage and families with strollers before finally entering the spacious hotel atrium where hundreds of guests were having breakfast, together but separately.

It had been a morning like every other school day, when Mother and I planned to set out early to the bakery to pick up her usual cup of coffee and baker’s roll and hot cocoa for me.

Except that day, she insisted we put on our finest clothes, and we’d have to make one stop before the bakery. “To The Palace Hotel,” she said, and shut the taxi cab door.

I had worn my shiny black patent leather Mary Janes and a burgundy wool tartan plaid swing coat, and my mother even let me wear her ruby brooch. My mother, who was tall, slender and elegant even in her Midwestern cotton dresses and aprons — I had seen photos — was especially striking that morning herself, in a dark purple Chanel suit, a matching wool overcoat with a beautiful fur collar, and sling-back pumps.

The two of us stood there, well-dressed and stunned, beneath the paned-glass ceiling of the hotel atrium, in a swirl of clinking crystal and lively chatter.

And there was my father.

I thought he had been on a business trip, but my mother had known better. He was, in fact, a few miles from our Pacific Heights Victorian, having coffee and reading the paper. It was his routine except that wasn’t our kitchen table.

He was wearing a dark suit, a crisp white shirt, and a brush of coral lipstick on the edge of his collar, where I imagined the pretty blonde sitting next to him had leaned close to whisper her secrets and breathe his in.

When my mother slapped his face, the sting was loud and the glass of the atrium trembled. I thought the windows might shatter, along with my heart; the ceiling might rain broken glass down onto us.

There was a long, buzzing stillness, and then a chorus of gasps, and that’s when I knew we were done with my father, and California.

My mother surely tried to carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, so we went to the bakery next.

When we arrived, it took me a moment to orient myself, and the first person to come into focus was the baker’s grandson.

He was unloading the bread truck at the curbside, and like my father, he was also wearing his daily uniform — a pair of brown tweed pants and a white button-up shirt — except his shirt wasn’t crisp like my dad’s, instead worn-in like the shirt of a baker should be.

My eyes felt red and bloodshot, but his were awake. We had never actually spoken to one another, but in my daydreams, he was a friend. His eyes were always so pure and clear and kind, and when our eyes met that morning, I couldn’t help it — a plump, hot tear rolled down my burning cheek.

He jumped from the truck to the sidewalk and opened the door for my mother and me, and then he slid into the bakery behind us, disappearing for a moment so I could quickly wipe my face. When he reappeared behind the bakery counter, he handed my mother her cup of coffee and me my cup of hot cocoa with a small piece of paper underneath it.

My father never came home to us after that day, and the sound of my mother wailing in the night pierced through me. It wouldn’t be but a week before she’d pull me out of school and we would go back to Indiana with little more than a couple of suitcases and our emotional wreckage.

Thankfully, I also kept the the small piece of paper the bakery boy had given me that morning, as the words he wrote on it would forever change me — I was sure that nothing had ever felt, or would ever feel, as right and true as them.

I carefully flattened the square of paper and carried it with me from that day forward. I placed it under my pillow as a girl and then moved it to my biology binder when I got to high school. In college, I placed it safely into the front flap of my philosophy notebook and most recently it was tucked into my work calendar. I only folded it into a small, tidy square and slid it into my wallet when I knew I was flying back to California.

I thought of letting my father know I was back in town after all these years, but I didn’t. I wasn’t sure where he read the morning paper these days.

I was, however, full of hope that I’d see the baker’s grandson, and my stomach fluttered now, as I stood outside the bakery once again.

The same white truck was just where it was 16 years ago — idling out front, with its back hatch open and two men loading loaves of bread onto it.

And then, the bakery door opened and he stepped out — the boy with the bright, shining eyes was standing right in front of me at sunrise on Pine Street.

He was a man now — tall and strong in stature, with sharper features — more handsome than cute like the teenager he used to be, but with the same kindness and warmth from long ago.

We exchanged more than a glance, just as we had every morning when I was a school girl. It was as if there was an ocean of time between us and like no time had passed at all.

I felt the soft, tattered paper note in my hand, and thought about the words written in it. Those words saved me more times than I could count. Then I brought my hand to my mother’s brooch, which was over my heart.

He smiled widely, and then he whispered sweetly:

“You came back.”