Julia's Chocolates (33 page)

“The worst of it, after Jerry, is that I feel awful, just sick about leaving Lydia! I can’t believe what a horrible person I am!” She sat down on the bed, burying her head in her hands. “I’ll send her cards and gifts and, oh,
stuff
!”

“Lara, you need a break, that’s all. Time off. You’re completely burned out. I read once that ministers have the highest burnout rate of anyone because they’re always taking care of other people. Maybe you and Jerry should get away.” I sounded so inane, so shallow that I wanted to kick my own shins.

“No, no.” She curled up in the fetal position on the bed. “That isn’t going to do it. He wants to be a minister. I don’t. There’s nothing else to work out. Weeks ago, Julia, I was in church in a women’s Bible study class and I thought that I didn’t want to live anymore.”

Oh God. Please, no.

“And I wouldn’t hurt myself,” she gasped between more broken sobs. “But I don’t want to live—does that make sense? I told God that if anybody else had to die, it would be okay with me if it was me, because I am so tired and so depressed, and I am so tired of being tired and depressed. I am so tired of living like this.”

“I’m sorry, Lara, I am so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” Hiccup, hiccup. “A few days ago I was talking to my brother in New York, and I told him how I felt, and he told me to come and stay with him and his partner, so I am. They had another roommate, but he moved out, so I’ll have my own room, and he says mine even has a window for light for my painting. Can you help me with something?” she squeaked.

The abrupt change in conversation startled me. I wanted to say no, I will not help you to leave that dear husband of yours, who probably got great joy knowing Lara had peed and her bladder was more comfortable, and yet Lara had always seemed unhappy to me, and she looked like she was one step away from completely snapping.

“Yes, I will, of course.”

“Give this to Jerry.” She handed me a letter.

“Oh, no, please, Lara.” Not that one. I didn’t want to see that poor man’s face, either.

“Julia, give him the letter,” she pleaded. “Tell him I love him, tell him what I told you….”

“Oh, Lara, please talk to him. This isn’t fair to him.”

“No, it’s not fair.” She took a deep breath, ran her hands through her hair, grabbed the suitcase and her purse, and headed for the stairs. “It’s not fair at all, but this is the way it is. I love you, Julia.” She stopped in the entry, where I had followed her, and gave me a hug.

I locked and closed the door to her sterile house as I watched her drive away. Her car kind of hiccupped, blew a little smoke out of its tail, and was gone.

I looked at the letter in my hand.

God help me,
I thought.

When Jerry saw my face at the church, he immediately excused himself from the group of people he was talking to, crossed the small atrium, and led me to his office. We sat down across from each other at a table. I grabbed his hand and held it. His face paled. I saw a pulse leaping in his temple, his jaw tight.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I blinked rapidly. I was so sick of crying.

He nodded. I saw that hard jaw of his quiver.

I didn’t want to, but I pulled my hand away and handed him the letter.

He didn’t open it for a while, simply flipped the pink letter forward and back, from one hand to another.

“Is she coming back?”

I swallowed hard and told the truth. “I don’t know.”

He nodded.

He bowed his head, not in prayer, but in defeat. I got up and patted his shoulder as I left.

Men don’t like women to see them cry.

After I told Lydia and Stash what happened, Stash, not a churchgoer, took it upon himself to call Jerry that night, whom he had always liked, even though “the man won’t play poker. He’s got a great poker face, too.”

Jerry arrived at the house almost immediately, and he, Aunt Lydia, Stash, and I gathered around the table for eight-layer lasagna (to conquer the layered complications in our lives), green salad with a few raspberries (raspberries caused miracles, Aunt Lydia believed), and bratwurst (I don’t know why we had bratwurst, too. I don’t question Aunt Lydia).

Aunt Lydia had lit eight candles representing hope and love, she told me. “Hope and love are the great saviors. They save the soul from shriveling up and dying like a dried prune, and Jerry needs to feel this hope and love. Damn Lara,” she muttered. “Now, don’t take that wrong, I don’t blame her, but I love that boy, even though he’s so insanely religious.”

Aunt Lydia offered Jerry apple pie, but he wouldn’t eat it.

Stash offered him a little Scotch, but he wouldn’t drink it.

The kids colored him pictures. He hugged them, then looked like he was going to cry as he watched them march off to bed.

Aunt Lydia then offered him a little pot.

He smiled at that, refused politely, thanked her for offering.

“I knew she was unhappy and stressed. I knew she was tired,” he said, rubbing his shaking hands over his face. For a calm man of steel, as Jerry was, this trembling was truly heartbreaking to see. “I tried to get her to cut back on some of the things she was doing at church, but she wouldn’t do it. She’d smile at me and laugh, give me a hug, tell me everything was fine.” He stood up and paced the room. “I knew everything wasn’t fine, but she wouldn’t talk to me about any of it. I always encouraged her to paint, to show people her work, but she refused.”

“She thought her artwork would embarrass you, embarrass the church.”

Jerry shook his head. “Nothing Lara could ever do would embarrass me. Nothing. Not even this. I just want her back. I don’t care how long I have to wait. I don’t care what she does in New York. I want her back. I’m leaving in the morning.”

No one spoke around the table for several minutes.

“Don’t go after her, Jerry,” Aunt Lydia said, drinking her mint tea, which she had told me was good for the ovaries. I don’t know how she knew that. “Give Lara time. She needs to become her own person. She needs to paint. She needs to be an artist. When she’s ready—”

“
If
she’s ready,” Jerry interrupted, his voice bitter, defeated.

“That’s right, if she’s ready, she’ll come back to you.” Aunt Lydia patted his hand. “I know she loves you, son, she really does. She talks about you all the time.”

“But she didn’t love me enough to stay.”

“No, that’s not quite it. Lara doesn’t love
herself
enough to stay. She has to find Lara. She has to find out what she likes, what she doesn’t like, what she believes in and what she doesn’t. She has to take time to be the artist she has longed to be.”

I stared at Aunt Lydia. A speech like that—without talk about a woman’s secretions and libido and hormones—was so unlike her that it made it all the more heartfelt.

Even Jerry sensed it, and he started to cry then, burying his face in his hands. Aunt Lydia held on to him on the right, I got the left. Stash awkwardly patted his back, kept telling him that a little Scotch would help, maybe a lot of Scotch? In fact, was Jerry wanting to get drunk, by any chance?

By the end, we were all crying. For Lara. For Jerry. For Aunt Lydia, who was going in for radiation tomorrow. For the chemo that would follow. For Stash’s worry about Lydia. And me, I cried because I had gotten five blank letters from Robert today, which scared me to death.

We all certainly had a lot to cry about, and hot tears feel good sometimes.

As long as you know that after a good, hot cry, you’ve got to buck up and tackle life once again.

T
he great thing about a small town is that people will, truly, look after each other if someone needs help. They notice if an elderly neighbor hasn’t been outside. They notice if someone breaks an arm or a leg. They notice if someone is suffering from a broken heart. And they help out, even if they don’t like the person.

But gossip flies. Hard and fast. And mean. Within hours everyone knew that Lara Keene had left Jerry, the minister. A neighbor had seen her walking out with a suitcase. Jerry had cancelled all of his appointments for that day and the next. His secretary’s sister’s best friend, who happened to be at church for some meeting or other, reported that he looked upset.

And the rumor mill started to grind.

The gossip about Lara was relentless. Some said she had a lover. Some said she was gay. Some said they had always known that she had a wild, uncontrollable side.

Some questioned whether or not she was a “real” Christian and said she would now be damned to hell if she didn’t repent. Of course, that one set me off no end, and when I heard two women talking about her in the grocery store I felt like pelting grapefruits at their faces. Instead, I smiled and asked them what made them think that Lara wasn’t a real Christian?

The two women looked shocked. One was in her mid-forties and had that hard-core mommy look to her. Very short brownish, gray hair, about fifty extra pounds, a light blue blouse and stretchy black pants. The other looked about the same, only she had a giant cross around her neck, a sour expression on her face.

Perhaps they thought Lara wasn’t a “real Christian” because of all the time she spent teaching Sunday School class? I asked. Perhaps it was all the Bible studies she ran? Perhaps it was all the time she spent with several elderly parishioners? Perhaps it was the way she made home-cooked meals for people when they were ill? Perhaps it was the way she had recently planned the fall chorus presentation?

True Christians walk the walk, they don’t just talk the talk, I told the women and could they please tell me who they had recently helped in this community? Whose lives they had made better? No? They couldn’t think of a single good deed they had done for anyone? Since they were such good Christians it was really a shame that they weren’t more involved with helping the needy or desperate, as we are here to serve the Lord. I smiled sweetly. By the time I was done I could tell that the women wanted to disappear into the tomatoes.

“And please don’t tell anyone else you think Lara is going to hell. I know you think you have the lock on heaven, but it’s Jesus who decides all that, not two housewives clutching coupons in the grocery store, making judgments against the minister’s wife.”

I knew those two would never acknowledge my presence again, but I was okay with that. Mean people suck, as the bumper sticker says.

I missed Lara. Aunt Lydia missed her, but Lara was true to her word. Every week something arrived for Aunt Lydia. A card, a little present, paintings and sketches that she had made. A bouquet arrived when Aunt Lydia got home from her operation.

For Shawn and Carrie Lynn, Lara sent new outfits and art supplies.

Over the next weeks, we received e-mails from her, although she was not in contact with Jerry, which broke his heart again. She had settled in with her brother and his partner. New York was wild. And exciting. And dirty. And dangerous. But she was painting, and her brother’s partner knew someone who knew someone, and that someone was coming to see her work.

We wrote back cheery letters, wishing her well, keeping her up to date on Aunt Lydia’s progress and the farm, and Shawn and Carrie Lynn, who were finally smiling.

Jerry called or came over now and then, bringing presents for Aunt Lydia. The operation had worn her out more than we had expected it to. He tried to keep a strong facade, but he often broke down and cried.

Shawn and Carrie Lynn did not ask for their mother very often, but when they did ask about her, we told them the truth—well, the truth that a child is old enough to handle.

We told them gently, oh so gently, that, no, they would not be living with their mother anymore. We knew this for a fact because their mother, and her boyfriend, were both going to jail, not only for the assault against the children, in which they had both taken part, in a methamphetamine-fueled rage, but because they had decided that weekend to also rob a liquor store at gunpoint. The store owner had been shot, though not killed, as had his assistant.

That had about wrapped things up for their mother.

Shawn and Carrie Lynn looked sad and lost for a moment, and I sympathized. Even though my mother had been abusive and neglectful, there is something so innate in all of us that wants to be loved and protected by our mothers.

“What about…what about…?” Shawn asked, his voice quavering a bit

We knew who he was talking about.

“Your mother’s boyfriend is going to jail for a long, long time,” Aunt Lydia said. “You will both be old before he gets out. And by then I’ll have taught both of you how to shoot a rifle!”

Both children nodded, not speaking.

“Do you have any other questions?” I asked, hugging them close.

Neither one moved for a second, then they shook their heads. Carrie Lynn took a second to pull her blanket over her head, but in a few minutes she took it off again, leaning against Aunt Lydia.

We decided to go out to the garden to pick a few of the last tomatoes, the fall weather getting chillier and chillier.

Later that evening, Aunt Lydia and I found the kids huddled in Carrie Lynn’s bed, all their new stuffed animals around them, Carrie Lynn’s thumb in her mouth, her eyes staring straight ahead. Shawn had his arm around her and was rocking back and forth. Alphy licked Shawn’s face, then Carrie Lynn’s, then back again, his whine worried and high-pitched.

I snuggled into bed with the kids and could feel both their little bodies trembling. Stash found us there when he walked in from working all day on his ranch and immediately ordered pizzas. We invited Katie and her kids over for a Bed and Pajamas and Pizza Night. Scrambler came, too.

After pizza, I brought in my chocolate and watched the love that was surrounding those kids slowly beat back the terror.

The cancer had been shriveled down. Dr. Ray of Sunshine deemed the radiation a great success.

Then we were on to the chemotherapy treatments.

As everyone knows, the intent of chemotherapy is to kill the cancer. The problem is that it kills the good stuff, too. One day in the future I think the chemotherapy treatments we have will be considered barbaric and inhumane, but it’s all we’ve got now, all Aunt Lydia had, and so, under the comforting eye of Dr. Ray of Sunshine, Aunt Lydia agreed to undergo chemotherapy. She named it Crappy Chemo.

“I’m going to beat cancer, Julia, and I’m not going to let Crappy Chemo get me down. You watch me. You just watch.”

And so I did.

On the third day after chemotherapy started, Aunt Lydia couldn’t get out of bed. She was too sick, too tired. “Crappy Chemo has made me tired,” she told me weakly, before I got some juice down her, “but I’m fighting mad now, fighting mad. When I’m up to it, I will whip Crappy Chemo’s butt. It will regret the day it trapped me in my bed, sucking my energy from my bones—oh, how it will regret it!”

Then she fell back asleep.

There was no reason for her to get up anyhow. We were bombarded with offers of help from the townspeople. So many people brought us meals, Stash had to buy a new refrigerator for Aunt Lydia’s garage to store them all. The chickens were fed, the house was cleaned, and her car was washed and taken for a lube job in town by one of her ex–poker buddies. Another ex–poker buddy mended her fences. Someone else gave the toilets in the yard a good scrubbing and filled them up with chrysanthemums.

On the fourth day, when Aunt Lydia was able to walk, she saw seven people in her yard and garden weeding, raking fall leaves, and trimming. She walked out on to the porch and yelled, “You all make the woman in me want to cry!” Then she sat down and did just that. When she was done everyone came in for hot chocolate and cookies—cookies, of course, that someone had brought by the night before.

Lydia said that Crappy Chemo hated laughter, so she insisted we laugh our way through the afternoon, and that’s what we did. The high-grade Scotch that Stash brought in also helped.

When she wasn’t feeling sick, Aunt Lydia was up and out the door. She didn’t bother with a hat or wig except on our cooler fall days. “Wigs itch and make me look like I’m wearing a dead gray and white cat on my head, and hats are too hot. I’m bald because I’m fighting cancer and Crappy Chemo, and I’m damn proud of it. No need to hide.”

In December, on a snowy night when Aunt Lydia went to bed early, Dave and Marie, in whispered voices, reminded me, Stash, Scrambler, Katie, Caroline, and Jerry, who often escaped to our house, that Aunt Lydia’s birthday was coming up. I had thought we would have a small celebration.

Stash had forgotten all about it, as he was too whacked-out about Lydia having cancer in the first place to plan anything other than to get up in the morning, make sure all day long that Lydia had everything she needed, then to stumble into bed at night, ready to go again if Aunt Lydia needed anything in the wee hours of the morning.

Dave thought we should have a big surprise party, and the more we all talked about it, the better it sounded. Aunt Lydia loved parties.

“We’ll have it in the barn,” Stash said, his voice low and raspy. “Hell, that’s the only way we can handle all those people.”

“I will be pleased to handle the music,” Scrambler said, his voice as well-modulated as usual.

We all stared at him.

“You’re going to handle the music? You mean, you got CDs and stuff that we can play?” Stash said.

“Something like that,” Scrambler answered, leaning back in his chair. “I will have an appropriate selection of music available for Lydia to enjoy. I will begin the preparations now.” And, like the man of few words he was, he smiled at all of us, took time to nod and wink at Katie, and shut the door quietly behind him.

“Well! Okay!” Stash said looking around at everyone and scratching his beard. He looked so tired. Tired but excited. “Scrambler is doing the music. So, for the food, I’ll get steaks for everyone.”

I decided, with the number of people coming, that it should be potluck. Everyone would be asked to bring their favorite side dish. I’d make enough chocolate cake for everyone. I made a note to talk to Sylvia at the bakery and ask if I could borrow her kitchen for a while in exchange for some of my chocolates.

Katie would do the decorations. We were going to have an old-fashioned barn dance, complete with hay bales, a stage that Stash’s farmhands would build for the occasion, and long tables full of food.

“I’ll do the party favors,” Caroline said.

I turned to look at her. We were expecting probably five hundred people. “Party favors? That would be really expensive, Caroline.” I thought of her clutching her coupons.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” She nodded her head, her right eye not blinking much at all, her face at peace. “I’d love to do it.”

I opened my mouth, shut it again. Frugal Caroline, who had made her living from doing psychic readings and selling breads and vegetables and fruits at the farmer’s market, was going to do party favors?

So it was.

We were set.

Dean was in Portland working, but when I got home, I took a deep breath and called his office in the city. We had not had more passionate interludes when he came to Golden on the weekends. In fact, he hadn’t even tried to kiss me much, and I certainly couldn’t blame him. Being the pathetic emotional wreck I am, it would only be a matter of time before he gave up. The giant manila envelope I received in the mail today filled with about a hundred blank sheets of white paper had only tipped me farther into the pathetic emotional wreck zone.

Still, this once, I would try to be courageous. I would try not to let the fear that I could feel creeping from my toes up my legs prevent me from doing something I wanted to do.

“Dean Garrett’s office,” the perky voice at the other end said.

“Could I speak with Dean Garrett, please?”

“He’s in a meeting. Can I have him call you back?” Still perky. I pictured someone young and beautiful and sleek and sophisticated. I felt sick. What in the world was I doing calling someone like Dean Garrett? I was insane. I thought about hanging up.

“I’m sorry. Ma’am? Are you still there?”

“Yes…uh…could you tell him that Julia Bennett called?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Julia Bennett?”

“Yes, my number is—”

“One moment, please, Ms. Bennett,” Perky interrupted. “He’s available.”

And in exactly one moment Dean picked up the phone.

“Julia,” he said, his voice entering through my ear, then my brain, until it lodged, I’m sure, somewhere in my vagina. Oh, the man was so, so hot.

“Dean,” I squeaked. “How are you?”

“I’m better now.” He chuckled. “It’s good to hear your voice. You’ve never called me before.”

“Yes…I mean, no, I haven’t.”