Julia's Chocolates (14 page)

After a breakfast of omelets with shrimp and avocado, cranberry muffins, and bacon, we drank our second cups of coffee on a wood table in the nook of his kitchen. Outside the sun had risen, golden and pure, surrounded by a purple and blue haze as soft as the wings of one of Aunt Lydia’s birds.

“I can’t believe you remembered that I only drink decaffeinated coffee. And that mochas are my favorite,” I said. He smiled at me, and I felt that smile wriggle down my chest and into that private area that had felt so dead for so long. I tried to keep from swallowing my tongue. It was difficult.

“I remember everything you’ve told me.”

Oh dear. That would not be good.

“I am hoping, however, Julia, that I will not always have to get up at the crack of dawn to see you.”

I smiled back at him. I couldn’t help it.

“I haven’t minded, of course,” he joked. “I always enjoyed our conversations.”

I had, too. In that dark hour, after I’d passed him a newspaper, we had joked and talked about many, many things. I hadn’t told him much about myself, but I had the impression he already knew quite a bit about my history.

“I have to tell you that I have not asked a woman out on a date in a very long time, but in the past, when I have, none of them have cried.” He smiled at me, his eyes so gentle. “Why did you cry?”

What could I say?

I cried because I couldn’t believe someone like Dean Garrett would want to have breakfast with me, much less meet me at the end of his driveway every morning for two weeks before the sun came up.

I cried because I could barely breathe sometimes and I was sick of it. You never know how wonderful air is until you can’t have it.

I cried because I figured I had a Dread Disease and would probably be told soon that I had only six months to live.

I cried because I was scared of Robert. I cried because I hadn’t had the guts to break my wedding off until the morning of it because I am really good at convincing myself a lousy, frightening situation is going to work out, and that quality scares me.

I cried because tears come easy when people are nice to you when your life is in ruins.

I could feel the tears welling again.

He held my hand across the table, his fingers intertwining with mine.

“Why, Julia? I promise I won’t loom over the mailbox anymore if you tell me. No”—he stroked my hand with his fingers—“scratch that. I happened to enjoy my time at the mailbox. Please tell me why you’re crying.”

The tears fell then, without permission, right from my eyes.

What could I say? The truth? No way. Never. I looked at the hard planes of his face, the lines fanning from his eyes and the grooves around his mouth. I looked at his neck, his hair, those blue eyes.

“I cried because—” I stopped.

“What?”

“Well.” I wiped my eyes with a napkin. “I—”

“Yes?”

I took a shaky breath, then looked at him. Right in the eye. “I was afraid you’d burn the bacon.”

I felt his hand tighten on mine. Mine tightened on his.

And then he laughed.

I laughed, too, a sound that was foreign to my own ears, even as another rush of tears splattered our entwined hands.

“H
ow are you, Katie?”

Katie stared straight ahead, her eyes on the winding road. Fir trees swayed above us, every now and then giving way to a sliver of river, the sun glittering off its surface, creating little diamonds on the water.

Aunt Lydia had offered to watch the kids while Katie and I went to get her husband, J.D., who was being released from the hospital today. She had not been to see him since she received the phone call two weeks ago that his car had been found in a ditch with his fat body still in it. He had been stuck, one leg jammed between the crushed door and the steering wheel.

By the way his car was positioned, the police didn’t think he was driving back to Golden. Not surprising. Deidre had left for Portland, and J.D. had followed.

“I’ve had better moments,” she said. Her skin was pale and drawn, and all that glorious hair looked limp. “I’m driving to pick up my alcoholic husband, who was leaving me for another woman. I don’t even make sense to myself.”

I nodded a little bit, patted her shoulder. This whole thing didn’t make sense to me, either, but friends go along even when there’s no sense involved.

The morning Deidre had told Lara that she was going to press criminal charges against Katie after the little Bible-throwing incident. Lara had taken a small moment to set Deidre straight, even as she’d held ice over the woman’s nose. “Let me tell you how this will all go, then, Deidre.” She moved the ice pack, not flinching when Deidre swore.

“You will file charges against Katie. Keep in mind that the chief of police is very close to both Lydia and Stash, and they, in turn, are close to Katie. If the chief does feel compelled to go forward with the charges, he will ask for a jury trial. That jury will find out that you’ve been having an affair with J.D. Margold, an unemployed, mean, abusive drunk who never works and everyone in town hates.”

I saw Deidre’s face flush.

“J.D.’s wife, Katie Margold, who owns a cleaning business and takes care of their four children and volunteers in the school and is a massive support to the wife of the town’s minister, accidentally lost control of her Bible as she was praising God. That Bible hit you in the nose.”

“She didn’t
accidentally
lose control.” Deidre’s words were muffled.

Lara looked Deidre right in the eye. “I was there. She lost control. Katie was praying with great exuberance, and the Bible flew from her hands accidentally. Julia was there. I believe she thinks Katie accidentally lost control.”

“I believe Katie lost control,” I said. Lara lifted the ice pack. My. The bruising was going to be extensive on Deidre’s face.

“Do you get what I’m saying here?” Lara asked.

Deidre’s bloodied face got all twisted up in her fury. “I thought you were the wife of a minister!”

“I am the wife of a minister, and I’m going to pray for you, Deidre, pray that you understand that the jury will not sympathize with you at all.” Lara let go of the ice pack and laced her fingers together in front of her stomach as if in prayer. “In fact, they will hate you.
Hate you
. And you can bet that Katie’s court-appointed attorney will stack that jury with a bunch of middle-aged, heavy women who are single or divorced and struggling to make ends meet after their no-good husbands left them for the town slut. Katie will be found not guilty.”

Deidre was ready to argue, I could tell, but she was not so stupid that she couldn’t see the future. “Can I get you another ice pack before you leave?” Lara asked, sweetness running right out of her mouth.

Deidre nodded, took the ice pack, and left. Linda hopped along beside her. One of the twins yelled, “The devil’s after your ass, Deidre! Watch out!”

“Watch out!” the other twin yelled.

“I think I
will
pray for her,” Lara said. “I’ll pray that J.D. goes to her, and she accepts him into her home.” Katie was in the other room watching a soap opera, and the rest of us women filed in and listened to Lara’s loving prayer about forgiveness and repentance.

And that was that. Deidre left town. No charges were filed, although the chief did jokingly mention to Katie that she should join a local softball team.

I was pulled back to the present by Katie’s wistful voice. “It was so peaceful, Julia, not having him around.” She snuffled. “It was just me and the kids. We got up. I got everybody out the door. I dropped the kids at the school and the baby-sitter’s, cleaned houses, picked everyone up, came home. The house wasn’t a mess with beer bottles everywhere, dirty plates and dishes everywhere. No one was drunk and mean and asking for dinner before I’d barely gotten in the door. No one yelled at the kids, or at me.”

“Katie,” I said. I’m sure Katie didn’t realize it, but she’d slowed way down on that mountain road, and other cars were passing us, giving us ‘the look.’

“At night, we had simple dinners. I didn’t have to make sure there was a vegetable and a fruit and a main dish and dessert—J.D. always insisted on that. We had macaroni and cheese. Cheese sandwiches. Noodles and cheese. Everyone was happy. I cleaned up. We read stories, and off to bed everybody went.

She swallowed, her voice getting hard. “J.D. would sometimes whack them on the head when they missed their verses. I would grab the Bible from him, and then he’d turn on me—the drunker he was, the meaner. For some reason, he liked to hit me on the butt with the Bible.”

We were now stopped at the side of the road, the mountains in the distance a bluish purple, a river bubbling by on the other side of the road. “He would get all dressed up for church on Sunday in a tie and jacket and insist the kids be dressed all nice. He’d eat the breakfast I made, read the paper, and go out to the car, honking the horn until I got the kids ready and out the door. ‘You’re not wearing that dress again, are you, Katie?’ He hated the dress I wore to church but I was wearing the same dress because I couldn’t afford another one. He drank all of our money. When I hid money, he would find it, as if he had another eyeball that hung around our house all day when he was out drinking and humping whatever female he could find.”

She turned off the engine.

“Katie—”

“I don’t think J.D. has said anything nice to me in five years. He doesn’t even see me as a person, as a woman. He thinks we’re married, and that’s that. Ole Katie will be around forever. Who else would have her? I am there to serve him. Even if I were lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, exhausted, dying even, he would simply step over me to get a beer from the fridge, swearing at me for not getting him one.”

“Katie—”

“He didn’t really even hide the fact he was having an affair, Julia. Didn’t care that he had lipstick on his cheek one night. Didn’t care that I saw him talking to someone, laughing, on his cell phone. Didn’t care that I was working all day and taking care of the kids and the house and was worn out.”

She took a deep breath, wiped her tears off her cheeks. “I’ve been so much happier without him. I’ve lost seven pounds, did I tell you that?” She smiled at me, hope opening her eyes wide, her smile tremulous. “Seven pounds. I weighed seven pounds of apples the other day in the store and bagged them up, just to feel what it felt like. It’s a lot of weight, Julia.”

“It is. That’s wonderful, it really is.” I felt happy for her and morbidly, horribly sad. Why were we driving to go and bring that evil slug back with us? “Are you sure—”

“Yes. I’m sure. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”

I held my breath. “You can’t do what?”

“I can’t bring hate back into my life.”

We were both silent for awhile. The trees on the mountains swayed. The river gurgled.

“Hate’s a bad thing,” I told her. I sound so immensely inane sometimes it drives me crazy.

“Yes. It is. I don’t hate J.D. I’m past that,” she said, her voice resigned. “But what I really hate is how he’s made me hate myself, how he’s made the kids hate him, how the kids know that an emotion as strong as hate exists.”

I had heard those same words in my own head. Why do we let men make us hate ourselves? And why does it often take us so long to kick them out of our lives? Why do we cling? Why are we so scared to be on our own when hate is the only thing we have to come home to?

Why had I let Robert pound my face as often as he did? Life is better without a pounding.

“I hate what I’ve allowed him to do to me,” Katie said. “I used to be happy. I used to have energy. I used to be fun. I used to laugh, Julia. I don’t do that anymore. And I know why.”

A huge logging truck barreled by us. Katie turned the engine of her old car back on, then looked both ways. No cars. We headed for home.

E
very morning I run my paper route, then help Aunt Lydia with the farm. I must say I’ve become very attached to the chickens and even more attached to Melissa Lynn, the pig who follows me everywhere. If you could be best girlfriends with a pig, well, she would definitely qualify.

She’s enormous, which is one thing I like about her. I feel darn slim standing next to that pig. The chickens aren’t quite as enamored with her. I do feel there is evidence that they feel superior to Melissa Lynn, but Melissa Lynn doesn’t give a rip about that stuff.

She operates on her own accord. When she wants to snort, she does so. When she wants to take a nap, she does so. When she wants to roll in dirt or poop, she does so, and if the chickens squawk angrily and run away from her, their little white bottoms up in the air, she couldn’t care less.

Melissa Lynn is my kind of woman. I admire her greatly. Amazing what you can learn from pigs.

I don’t even mind cleaning out her trough as she seems so appreciative of my efforts. She stands right near me, snorting her encouragement, and has taught her piglets to do the same. She is a mother who demands good manners from her offspring, and so many mothers don’t these days.

Gathering the eggs can take a while. There are, after all, hundreds of chickens. Most of the chickens, as I’ve mentioned, are quite kind; others not so much. The other day, Aunt Lydia received by truck sixty new baby chicks. They are darling to watch and to hold. Their new homes are in the yellow shed. Plywood has been shaped into a number of different circles on the ground, and a circular light hangs straight over each one to keep them warm.

“I learned the hard way about chicks years and years ago,” Aunt Lydia told me one day, wielding her pitchfork at a hay bale. “Ya can’t put them into a rectangular holding pen or they’ll climb all over each other for warmth and smush the little ones beneath them. Then all you get is flattened chicks. Plus the light has to be hanging just so, in the middle of a circular pen. If you put the light in a corner, you’ll have the same problem. Smushed chickens.”

She dug the pitchfork into the ground, then grabbed the gun that she had strapped around her waist for an earlier bout of target practice. She cocked it, aimed, shot, and a snake flipped into the air from about fifty feet away. “I hate when snakes get near my ladies,” she said. “Anyhow, remember that chicks will pyramid, one right on top of another, Julia, so keep ’em in the right bins, and hang the light just so.”

Still reeling from the unexpected gunshot and flipping snake, I assured her I would. Far be it for me to cause the death of a chick.

I went back to my egg collecting, admiring Aunt Lydia’s target-shooting skills. I had not heard from Robert. However, I knew that my mother would shortly tire of her new boyfriend and move back to Boston. “My roots are in that town. Your great-great-great—some more greats—grandma was a maid who sailed over on the
Mayflower
. I’m practically damn royalty!” she’d declare, usually staggering about as she’d drunk enough liquor to drown her kidneys and liver.

Years ago I lived in hope that my mother would one day become sober enough, or have a lobotomy, or be attacked by killer bees and, lying flat on her deathbed, realize how hideous my childhood had been and would apologize for it.

It never happened. The last time she was in my life, she came to my apartment and demanded money. Her skin hung on her in drapes and droops, as if it no longer had the energy to stay close to her face. Her hair was blonder, almost white, like bleached straw.

She walked in without hugging me, without giving me a kiss, and I thought of all the other mothers and daughters I’d seen my whole life hugging and kissing each other. I cannot begin to tell you how much I longed for that. Such simple things: a hug and a kiss.

We chitchatted a bit about her current boyfriend, and she told me it looked like I still hadn’t lost any weight, that no man would be attracted to a lump, that I should think about that real quick because I wasn’t that young anymore.

I was on the verge of giving her money, my stomach cramping up as if she’d kickboxed me with those black knee-high boots she was wearing when I inhaled her familiar scent—vodka. Straight up.

The smell of vodka and bourbon and beer and cigarettes had swirled around my entire childhood, and it was the stench of that vodka that made me pause, that made me say what I did, misery wrapped around every one of my words like black glue. “Why didn’t you let me live with Aunt Lydia, Mom? Why did you keep me?”

She had been staring at my massive collection of recipe books but spun around on her heel and said, with this ugly look on her droopy-skinned face, “I didn’t give you to Lydia because I will never give your Aunt Lydia anything. Nothing. Even if it’s a nothing that cost me a damn fortune to raise.”

For some strange reason I became daring, for once, with my mother. Maybe it was because I hadn’t seen her in so long. Maybe it was because I knew I wouldn’t see her again for a long time. Maybe it was because I finally had the courage to ask the questions. “What do you mean, I cost you a fortune? I hardly ate, the church ladies gave me clothes—”

“Shut up, Julia. You have always been rude and ungrateful. Always. Even as a young child. Now, for once, I’m in need. Give me the money.”

I whipped my purse behind my back, like a little kid would. “No.”

“What the hell do you mean, no? You can pay me back for all those hellish years when I had to put up with you, the way you flounced around my boyfriends—”

The way I flounced around her boyfriends?
Pain flashed through my body as if I’d been struck with a pickax in the heart.

“No, no, no!” My “no”s got louder and louder until I sounded like a shrieking hyena. “
No!
” I covered my ears with my hands like I used to do as a child. “I
never
came on to your gross boyfriends. Never. You allowed them, Mother, you
allowed
them to touch me. You knew what they did to me at night, but you didn’t stop them!” I took my hands off my ears as one sad, hellacious image after another paraded through my head. “You didn’t stop them!” I screamed.

“Give me a goddamn break. I had no idea, Julia. How could I know?” She crossed her arms across her chest, her black bra visible beneath the deep V of her black shirt.

“You
did
. You’re lying.
Lying!
” My voice went up another notch, and I could feel hysteria speedily edging me toward a total breakdown. “And your lying makes it worse for me. My own mother won’t even acknowledge that she let her boyfriends attack her daughter.”

“No one attacked you,” she snapped, then sighed, long and heavy. This conversation was so tiring for her. So dull. So nothing. “You flirted with them. You, with your young body and your huge boobs. They’re men, Julia. What did you expect them to do?”

“Oh, God,” I said, bending to hold my head in my hands as my head felt like it might very well implode. “I was a child, Mom. A
child.
And even now you won’t admit what happened. You ruined my childhood. You turned it into a sick, twisted, scary nightmare. You, your viciousness, your abuse, your drinking, your men who were all over me—you ruined it. You ruined me. You ruined what I could have had with Aunt Lydia.” I turned away from her and leaned against the wall before my knees gave out. “Get out. Get the fuck out.”

Now that ticked her off. She dropped her hands to her sides and swayed a bit, the vodka affecting her balance. “Don’t you ever use the word ‘fuck’ with me, you impossible—”

“Fuck,” I said, tears making their way down my face like two little rivers. “
Fuck you
. Now get out.”

Her hand struck from out of nowhere, my head thudding against the wall. When the white stars went away, I straightened, still fighting. “How could you do that to a child? How could you do that
to me
?”

“I didn’t do anything to you.” She put her face an inch from mine. “You did it to yourself.”

“I did it to myself? I hit myself? I starved myself? Really, Mother?” The total breakdown loomed before my eyes.

“Yes. You got yourself into trouble. Always going to the neighbors for help, to your teachers for help, and then the stupid busy-bodies would call the police and Children’s Services, and I would have to explain to them all what a liar you were.”

“A liar? Me?” I choked past the lump of hurt in my throat.

“Yes, you.” She pointed her finger at me.

“I didn’t go to people for help. They came to me. They saw how thin I was as a child, saw the holes in my shoes, saw that my hair was a wreck and I was dirty—”

“How dare you judge me? I worked hard to support you—”

“Stop!” I yelled. “Oh God, stop. Stop! You never should have had me, never should have kept me. You had no right to keep me! None.”

When she raised her hand toward me again, I raised mine and blocked the next slap. And the next. My purse dropped to the ground in back of me, coins scattering about.

When my mother realized I wasn’t going to cower in a corner with my hands clamped over my head like usual she slammed out of my house—but not before she ripped a framed picture off my wall, a photo of an open box of chocolates, and shot it in my direction.

After she left I scrambled around and picked up every single coin, then lay on the floor until the crying stopped. When I could see through my tears, I went straight for a recipe book and made a chocolate mousse pie, my hands shaking as I crushed cookies for the pie shell, whipped the eggs, melted the chocolate.

When my mother landed back in Boston and got a new telephone number, Robert would call her. As I didn’t know her boyfriend’s last name or even exactly what town in Minnesota they were in, or if they were really even in Minnesota, I couldn’t reach her first and ask her to keep quiet. She couldn’t afford a cell phone, so that was another dead end.

But even if I told my mother not to tell Robert about Aunt Lydia, it wouldn’t do any good. He’d pay my mother a visit, he’d smile and try to charm her, and of course that wouldn’t work. In terms of manipulation, my mother was a master. Even better than Robert.

But money would work wonders, and Robert tossed around money as if every dollar he spent guaranteed him another hard-on. My guess is that my mother would get about five thousand dollars from him. And then she’d tell him everything he needed to know, including the fact that he needed to look for giant pigs in front of Aunt Lydia’s house.

And that would be all that Robert would need. He and my mother would exchange vile words, and off he’d go…his private jet waiting to fly him here to Oregon to terrorize me.

I felt my hands go cold and tingly, my body freezing as the Dread Disease took hold and a feeling of panic set in. I pictured my blood leaping through my veins as the air constricted in my lungs, the lack of oxygen making me dizzy. I dropped the basket of eggs I held and leaned against a hay bale. I was glad Aunt Lydia wasn’t in the chicken house anymore.

Sweat laced my forehead, then dripped down the edge of my nose. My legs started to shake wildly, so I started shaking them myself, having found that that sometimes helps. I felt myself crest, the air now all gone, and I thought I was going to die. Again. I coughed, coughed again.

For what seemed like hours, I leaned against that hay bale, hoping to breathe, panicked that I wasn’t.

I suddenly felt warm, hard arms surround my waist, and I screamed. One part of me was shocked that I could scream when I could barely breathe, the other was terrorized, believing that Robert had found me.

But it wasn’t Robert’s cold, hypercritical eyes I was staring into. It was Stash’s warm, concerned ones. He wrapped his arms round my waist as he supported my now sagging body. I heard his gruff voice yelling at Aunt Lydia as he swung me up into his arms and carried me toward the house.

I was too exhausted to protest, too shaken by my Dread Disease to object when Stash carried me into the bedroom and onto my bed. Before I closed my eyes I noticed that Aunt Lydia’s face was pale white. “Oh my God, what happened, Stash? What happened, baby?”

I assured her I was fine. I had simply gotten a little dizzy, hadn’t been sleeping very well lately, was a tad bit stressed, forgot to have breakfast. Yes, of course everything was okay. All was well. All was right.

But I knew things weren’t right. Not right at all.

The paper route didn’t pay much, so I talked my way into a job at a library two towns away, in Monroe, for four hours a day in the afternoon. I was going to run a Story Hour for small children, help shelve books, and help at the checkout counter. I was interviewed by five local members of the board who oversaw the library.

They asked me a lot of questions about whether or not I was good at working with difficult people, was I patient with children, was I good at working with difficult people, did I like to read stories to children, was I good at working with difficult people, and, by the way, was I good at working with difficult people?

I saw the writing on the wall regarding this particular job, but I was desperate, so I gave the right answers: Yes, I’m good at working with difficult people; yes, patient with children; yes, yes, I like reading stories to children; yes, and yes again. Working with difficult people? No problem.