Saturday’s volunteers were students from Loyola High looking to earn service learning hours, a pod of insurance company office workers, and a math teacher from Lakeview High, who was more nervous than his first day of teaching. In early business, all the volunteers were given disposable hair nets. With netted hair, Will felt nostalgic for his pollen mask. He packed the front pockets of his green apron (name tag: “Will”) with zip-lock bags and brown paper bags for the guests to carry leftovers.
“You won’t be on the floor at first, Will. We need you on the line doing desserts,” said Todd, the volunteer coordinator. “Each plate needs one dessert. No more than one. The dessert trays are over there.” Stacked on a metal rolling shelf, the trays were elbow-to-elbow in cupcakes, pound cake, blueberry muffins, chocolate cake, pecan pie, marble cake, disowned wedding cake, star-shaped sprinkled cookies, and quaking wedges of lemon meringue pie.
In his first act of community service, Will was Dessert Guy.
At 10:30, the Shepherd’s Table opened its weathered double doors. Seventy-five people took their seats and exchanged tokens for their only hot meal of the day. The 18 tables were set with tea and water pitchers on Easter-egg-colored placemats. Several guests said grace; others said nothing. The bread servers took orders, and each guest was entitled to up to seven pieces. The potato bread was always the first to go. The servers at each table began holding up five fingers to signal he needed five meals. On the line, volunteers began ladling out tuna casserole and green beans on the plates before Will loaded them with a dessert. Everyone knew their job. Will admired the logic and order of the operation – the soup kitchen ran like a classroom. But, better in a way. Here, instant results. You give a man a slab of marble cake, you have something to show for yourself. And people thank you! No one thanks an algebra teacher.
By noon, the orders came faster. Volunteers slid four, five plates at a rapid clip to Will for dessert placement. He rushed his work. Leaning towers of pound cake toppled into the tuna casserole, wedding cake slices lost their balance and went head first into the green beans. He manhandled slabs of pecan pie (not the pecan pie!) with such force they buckled. After emptying yet another tray, Will crossed the kitchen to retrieve a new tray. His fingers, exposed by torn gloves, were smeared with assorted frostings. This constant, intimate handling of sweets soon left Will with what he hoped was a temporary hostility toward desserts.
What happened next Will blamed on a slick spot on the kitchen floor. A more objective assessment might indicate a loss of concentration. In any case, Will dropped a tray of 45 desserts. Looking down at the carnage around and on his shoes, he had an epiphany: along with taste, desserts use their shapely form and appetizing presentations to attract. What he saw on the floor was not salvageable. Will had destroyed dessert for 45 homeless people of Annapolis.
“Do you have any potato bread?” a guest asked, startling the Dessert Guy.
Will was mopping up birthday cake from the tile floor. In the dining hall, someone was yodeling. While the homeless man was an able yodeler, the musical form quickly overstayed its welcome. Will’s head was splitting.
“Excuse me, do you have any potato bread?”
Will looked up into the face a very tall homeless man.
“Sorry, I’m not the Bread Guy.”
The older man wore too many coats for inside. He had a faded Orioles cap on – back when the bird looked duller, back when the team won a World Series. Will sponged more cake off the floor before rising from his knees, his apron smudged with assorted frostings. Seven plates awaited dessert. Will’s hairnet felt tighter on his head. His guest wanted potato bread.
“I can’t help you.”
“Pardon me?”
“Do you understand what I said? I said I can’t help you. Now take your seat.”
Will tried to make up for lost time but another volunteer stepped in to fill the dessert trays. Todd, the volunteer coordinator, asked Will to step aside and refill the iced tea pitchers. It was a blatant demotion; grade-school probationary rookies refilled the iced tea pitchers. Dessert Guy was the cool job.
When the shift ended, the Shepherd’s Table had fed 412 guests, some of whom missed out on dessert. In the kitchen, volunteers stripped off their hairnets and threw their aprons in the laundry bin.
“Will, can I talk to you?” said Todd.
A soup kitchen does not have a principal’s office, but the bread stock room worked in a pinch.
“Our mission is to help everyone who dines with us. One of our guests said you told him you couldn’t help him.”
“He wanted potato bread, and I didn’t have any.”
“The potato bread is popular,” Todd said, which was understood.
“Did you tell our guest he needed to sit down?”
“It’s a habit, I guess. I teach high school.”
“I’m sure you’re a fine teacher, but this isn’t a classroom,” Todd said. “If you treat a customer like that again, you won’t be allowed back, and I will notify the court.”
“But I was Dessert Guy…”
• • •
Maryland requires couples seeking a no-fault “Absolute Divorce” to stay separated 12 continuous months (buying a gun was far simpler). At such time, neighbors, friends, work colleagues can testify the couple in question has not strayed onto each other’s orbit for one year. Easier ordered than done. Will and Terri couldn’t help but run into each at school. Joint custody of Dean wasn’t practical, so Will became the dog’s sole caretaker.
One year:
Drunk dialing (six times) his legally-separated wife and spying on her coaching lacrosse (23 times) from the window in the teachers’ lounge that overlooked Lakeview’s ball fields.
Trying not to drink on school nights, but the need scratched at him from the inside when he got home from work. The loudness of his empty home. The rituals of his marriage inexplicably dissolved. No one to hold or kiss. No one’s air to take when kissing.
Finishing his community service hours at the Shepherd’s Table. Finishing a 10-hour, online anger management class and barely passing the final online exam on anger emotion, anger behavior, mental anger rehearsal and anger strategies – all of which agitated Will. The teacher had graduated from anger management school still trying to understand how learning is changed behavior. Crimes against poetry anthologies were not analyzed.
And one year of not looking twice at any other girl. One year to realize Terri Morrow, the first girl he ever loved, was not coming back.
The crisp business envelope arrived on a Tuesday – the week’s dimmest day. Will never received business envelopes, except teacher union forms and updates he ignored. He opened this new, suspicious envelope and pulled out two pieces of paper from the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court. William P. Larkin and Teresa Morrow had been granted a no-fault divorce. No fault, no mess. No goodbye dinner or hug. The end.
Will showed the document to Dean, who expressed a startling lack of empathy. It was February and the dog was late for his rabies vaccination. Reminder postcards (2) had come in the mail. Beyond any tardy vaccinations, something was up with Dean. He had lost interest in eating, had become listless and snappish. Plus, he had this nagging cough. Will hoped it was just the dog missing Terri. Hell, he was listless and snappish, too.
On Saturday Will drove to the Annapolis Animal Hospital and took the parking space farthest from the front door and closest to the evaporated creek bed where Dean took his pre-visit leak. Dean was on a blanket in the back of Will’s silver Honda. He reached back to stroke Dean’s head and was nearly bit. He left him on his blanket and went inside. In the waiting room, a mother and son sat on the plastic-covered couch under the pet adoption notices. At the boy’s