Julia's Chocolates (22 page)

One dry paintbrush would not do much damage, but I couldn’t let a bunch of dirty paint-water splat across one of these paintings. I had one arm around her waist, the other on her arm, as it was poised in the air, water splashing out of the can. She was so skinny, so very, very skinny, and pale and sad.

“I am losing it, Julia.” She let the can drop, and all the water splashed on our legs.

I turned her around and hugged her, and she sobbed on my shoulder. I could feel her bones through her skin.

“I’m losing it, Julia. Every day I wake up and I grit my teeth and I wonder how I can get through the day. My schedule is insane. I am often meeting with people from seven in the morning until ten at night. They all need me, all expect me to be perfect, to have the answers, to fix their problems, to soothe their souls, to be prayerful. And I feel like such a hypocrite. I try to counsel people, try to guide them in their faith, but I’m not really sure I even believe in God anymore.”

She pulled away, dragging both hands through her hair again and again.

“And if there is a God, he’s either ineffectual or uncaring. Do you ever watch the news? There are millions of people who suffer every day, suffer horribly. How can I believe in a being like that? And all the time, I can hear my father’s words echoing in one side of my head.” She deepened her voice. ‘Hell awaits you, Lara, as you waver daily in your faith! He knows your unbelieving heart, knows your many, many sins! You must repent and embrace the Lord before the devil takes over your soul.’ And on the other side, I’m hearing the needs of everyone around me. All the time. God, I’m trying, but it’s never enough.
I
am never enough”

I sank onto a nearby stool and pondered those words,
I am never enough.
It was exactly how I felt. Growing up with a mother who semi-hated me and a father who motorcycled off into the sunset, followed by a string of boyfriends and husbands who either ignored or criticized me, or followed me to bed whenever my mother wasn’t home, had not done much for my self-esteem.

Robert had only reinforced my feelings of not being “enough,” repeatedly telling me I was lucky he was interested in me, lucky he had even noticed me. “I’ll train you, Turtle. Don’t worry. We’ll knock that white trash right out of you. You just have to listen to me and do what I say. Got it, Turtle? Got it? You’re a nothing now, but as my wife you’re gonna be a somebody.”

I dragged my mind away from Robert. Thinking of Robert always brought on the Dread Disease symptoms. And thinking of how I had changed myself for him, had strived so hard to please him, how I had stayed even when he’d “accidentally” burned me with an iron on my butt made me feel ill. “Whoops,” he’d said. “Sorry about that, Cannonball Butt. Didn’t know you were that near, but don’t worry, you’ve got plenty of butt to spare.” He’d laughed when I’d cried. “Hell, don’t be such a baby. I said I was sorry.” I still had a slight scar on my butt.

Lara sank onto the floor, holding her head in her hands.

“Lara, do you love Jerry?” I asked.

She dissolved into another round of tears. “Yes. I love Jerry, but I don’t think I love him enough to be a minister’s wife the rest of my life. I can’t live like this. But I love Jerry. I already said that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did. What do you love about Jerry?” I moved and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her.

“What do I love about him?” She looked shocked, as if I’d just asked her if she could take her intestines out so I could measure them. “I love everything about him. He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s ambitious. Jerry knows what he wants to do, and he works until he has what he wants. In this case, he wants this church to grow so that everyone who wants to can know Christ. He tells me all the time that I am God’s greatest gift to him, that he couldn’t live without me, and he treats me that way.”

“Have you ever told him how you feel?”

“Oh, God, no,” she said. “God, no.” She drove her hands through her hair again and again. With her hair pulled tight back from her face, she looked almost skeletal. “When we married, we had an agreement. He was going into the ministry, and I was going to help. I told him I was happy to do it, that I wanted a life in the ministry. Together, we were going to build this church. But I’ve come to hate my own life. I’m so tired, Julia. Tired and burned-out and utterly hopeless.”

“But hasn’t Jerry noticed that you’re unhappy?” It had been patently obvious to me since the second I met her that Lara was miserable. Of course, she had broken the cross off her neck within hours of my meeting her, but still. Jerry was awake, wasn’t he? He actually
looked
at his wife once in a while, didn’t he?

“He asks me now and then what’s wrong, but I tell him that there’s nothing wrong, or that I’m a little tired, or that I’m worried about one person or another in the church, which I often am.”

“When you tell Jerry that you’re tired or worried, what does he do?”

She put a fist to her mouth to stifle another sob. “He makes me go to bed and read, or he gives me a backrub, or he goes and gets a movie, or he makes dinner.”

Good God
, I thought. One time I had told Robert I was tired, and he had whacked me on the butt really hard. “It’s ’cause you’re so fat, Possum. Get rid of that weight and you won’t look so washed-out all the time.”

“So does he suspect that you’re not telling the truth?”

Another sob. “I think so,” she said quietly. “I see him watching me really carefully. If he sees me doing housework, he comes to help. He hugs me when we’re going to sleep at night, and when I wake up he’s still hugging me. He tells me to go upstairs and paint, and when he has to work, he brings his stuff up to the attic and works while I paint. He says he wants us to be together.” She wrapped her arms around her waist and hunched over. “I spend so much time convincing myself that everything is going to be fine, that eventually this life will grow on me, that I’m doing what’s
right
, that to do anything else would be selfish, that I have to go and have a drink or two until all my lies seem kind of fuzzy and it feels like I can manage my own hypocrisy.”

Yes, I had seen that drink or two. Or five. “What does Jerry think of a drink or two?”

“He doesn’t know. I get home so late after Psychic Nights, he’s asleep. I go to sleep on the couch, then get up early and shower. I have a couple of drinks before he gets home or after he’s gone to bed. It’s no big deal. My drinking is no big deal.”

But it was. I knew it. She knew it.

I didn’t envy her her problem. Me, I would have cleaned streets with my tongue if I could come home every night to a man like Jerry, but Lara was different. Lara’s passion was art. She could no more live without it than I could live without my heart.

We both heard the knocks on the front door. Lara wiped her eyes. I took a deep breath. I needed some chocolate.

“Please keep this between us.”

“I will,” I said, but then I grabbed her arm. “Have you ever had Psychic Night up here?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh no.”

“You should.”

“Oh no.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

Lara was practically shaking in her shoes as we all trooped up the stairs to her attic after dinner. Aunt Lydia had made lasagna with garlic to kill off any excess hormones, Caroline had brought two delectable-looking salads, Katie had come a little later, after dropping the kids off at a sitter’s. She brought cheese sticks as appetizers.

“I’ve never been to your attic before,” Caroline said, her voice gentle and calm, her eye only twitching a bit tonight. “I’m looking forward to seeing your paintings.”

“Me neither,” said Katie. “I didn’t even know you had an attic.”

I looked closely at Katie. She didn’t appear pale and exhausted tonight. In fact, she looked much better, her smile didn’t have that tense, I-am-hanging-on-to-dear-life-with-my-finger-nails look.

Lara looked rather ill, and I felt bad for convincing her we should have Psychic Night in her attic, but her art was incredible, and my gut told me that this was what she needed: outside approval of her art.

Lara pushed opened the door, then stepped inside. I followed her, keeping a close eye on Aunt Lydia’s, Caroline’s, and Katie’s expressions.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Their mouths dropped. Their eyes widened. They made I-can’t-believe-this sounds in their throats. The bag that Caroline had brought upstairs for the psychic part of Your Hormones And You: Taking Over, Taking Cover, Taking Charge fell from her hands. No one noticed.

The silence was so loud, if a mouse had burped, we would have heard it.

“Oh my,” Katie said, shaking her head as she walked with great caution to one of Lara’s paintings, a portrait of a woman spread-eagled in the middle of a field, wearing only an apron, storm clouds churning above her. Tiny fabric squares had been glued to the canvas to form the apron.

“Good God!” Aunt Lydia declared, staring at a painting with two women facing each other, their profiles identical except a snake wrapped around the neck of one, a flower chain around the other. Lara had used dried flowers for the chain and costume jewelry for the women’s earrings.

“Incredible,” Caroline whispered, as she stared at a painting of a woman holding a bird’s nest. The woman’s halter was made of newspaper clippings of horrible natural disasters that had occurred. Inside the twigs of the nest Lara had painted tiny ladybugs and worms and butterflies and birds.

Caroline toured the room, then flipped through stacked canvasses. When she got to the one of the naked man wrapped around a sunflower, she smiled, nodded.

Lara became noticeably less tense minute by minute as we exclaimed over her paintings and studied the murals with awe. An hour later I went and got the Double Chocolate Snowball, and we sat down to dessert, right in the middle of the attic.

“Damn, but you’re good, Lara,” Aunt Lydia said, shaking her head in wonderment. “Damn, but you’re good.”

Katie nodded. “Damn good.”

Caroline smiled. Winked.

We poured ourselves more wine and offered a toast to Lara.

She cried.

The hormone discussion was put off for another night as we all discussed Lara’s art. For the first time, Lara didn’t drink too much, and her face lost that pinched, tight look. She even smiled, and it transformed her face.

To my surprise, Caroline seemed to have an endless stream of information and advice for Lara about selling her artwork. She even had a couple of names of people and galleries for Lara to call. Both places she mentioned were nationally prestigious. I thought this was a bit strange, since Caroline had not mentioned being interested in art, but didn’t think much of it in all the excitement.

Aunt Lydia said we should all pose nude for Lara. “It would be a testament to our Psychic Nights!”

Katie rolled her eyes.

I said, “Over my dead, fat corpse.”

Caroline said she would pose nude as soon as Jupiter and Saturn changed places.

Katie kept shaking her head in disbelief. “I don’t know anything about art, Lara, but yours is…yours is…well, it’s as good as Julia’s chocolate!”

We took another tour of Lara’s attic, listened to her talk about the paintings, what they meant to her, what she had meant to convey.

I knew I was looking at brilliance.

When we all settled back down, Caroline did our readings. She saw paintbrushes, skyscrapers, taxis, blank canvases, and a river in Lara’s future. She also saw her alone ice-skating. Then she saw her at a crowded party. People came and talked to her, then left. She was alone again.

“You’ll work it out, Lara,” Caroline assured her. “Listen to your heart.”

Aunt Lydia had told me that once Caroline was done with her reading, she was done, and would not add further detail.

Caroline took Katie’s hands in hers while they sat cross-legged together on the floor. Caroline closed her eyes, then gave a little jump, as if she had experienced a small jolt from the floor. She stared into Katie’s eyes. “J.D. is coming back.”

Katie groaned.

“I see you with Julia. And Stash. And Dave. Scrambler’s there, too. You’re leaving your home.” Caroline closed her eyes. “You’re happy, Katie. You’re scared, but you’re happy. I see the children on a porch. They’re happy. Stay at the house with the porch.”

She did Aunt Lydia’s reading. “I’m seeing you at a long table. I’m there. So is Stash. So is Julia and Dean. For some reason I’m seeing the faces of two children. I don’t know who they are. They’re not in the room with you, but they’re there at the same time, too. You’re angry, Aunt Lydia. Another woman is there. You hate her. I’m seeing the same kids’ faces again. That’s it.”

Next it was my turn. Caroline and I sat down. We clasped hands. I looked into those huge green eyes of hers. The eyelid of one was twitching a little bit. By the end of our reading, it was twitching a lot.

But at the moment, she was smiling. “I’m seeing you in the kitchen. It’s late at night. You’re melting chocolate. I’m seeing you outside of an apartment building. You’re staring up at an apartment. You’re scared, you can’t breathe. This is very interesting. I’m getting the impression of those two children again. The children aren’t safe. Remember that, Julia. The children aren’t safe.”