Chapter 5 - Hands That Build
Within three days, their cash reserves were down to two hundred dollars. Survival demanded an immediate reckoning with reality. Henry woke up at 4:30 AM without an alarm clock, the smell of rising dough pulling him down the exterior wooden stairs into Martha’s bakery.
"You know how to lift sixty-pound flour bags, pretty boy?" Martha asked, not looking up from her workbench where she kneaded rye loaves with rhythmic brutality.
"I can learn," Henry said.
For the first week, Henry’s body broke down in ways he had never experienced in an air-conditioned squash court. His tailored dress shirts tore at the shoulder seams; his soft office hands blistered, cracked, and bled into the cotton work gloves Martha tossed at him. He scrubbed heavy cast-iron bread pans, swept out flour bins, and carried fifty sacks of grain up from the basement twice a week.
Meanwhile, Clara adapted to the quiet rhythm of the apartment. Leo’s jaundice cleared. Her abdominal incision began to heal, leaving a jagged pink line across her lower belly—a battle scar she no longer felt ashamed of. Between nursing sessions, she picked up her sketchpads. With a box of charcoal pencils bought at a dollar store, she began drawing the forgotten architecture of the town: the decaying stone locks of the Erie Canal, the arched brick windows of the textile mills, the faces of older women carrying string bags of produce.
One afternoon, Martha came up the stairs carrying a bowl of hot potato soup. She caught sight of Clara’s drawings pinned to the unfinished pine walls with sewing needles.
"You draw like my sister in Krakow," Martha said, setting the bowl down on the small folding table. "She saw what things were underneath the skin."
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"They're just studies," Clara murmured, rocking Leo against her chest.
"Everything is a study until someone pays for it," Martha replied brusquely. "The framing shop down on Main Street—old man Varga. His wife died last spring. He needs someone who understands color and won't steal from the register. Go see him. Take the boy. He won't mind the boy; he misses his grandchildren in California."
