Julia's Chocolates

  Knowing this, however, didn’t prevent the dark phantom from wrapping himself around me and squeezing the loneliness and crushing pain right to the surface at various and unpredictable moments. It was at those moments that I often couldn’t breathe and would have to put my head between my legs and wait for the tremors to stop shaking me like one might shake a bag of loose bones.

  I hadn’t spoken to my mother in years. The only reason I knew she’d run off to Minnesota with her latest boyfriend was because she’d sent me a postcard. “Moving to Minnesota with Blakely. Hope weight-loss program working for you.”

  Often during those years, I didn’t even know where she was. I kept the same cell phone number in hopes that she would call someday, which is sick in itself, and that I still felt that way made me want to bang my head against a brick wall and cry. But of course she never called, and one day I took that cell phone, and piece by piece I dismembered it, then struck it with a hammer until it shattered.

  I had said good-bye to my mother as I smashed that phone into nothingness.

  And now I drummed on the plate with the knife, listening to a different type of clinking sounds. I thought of Robert. I thought of all the times he had made me feel fat and pathetic. He had even criticized the hair on my vagina. “You look like a monkey, Cannonball. Can’t you get that bush waxed? God. A man could get lost in that—in a bad way.”

  I thought of all the times he’d hit me, or held me down, or accused me of cheating on him, or blamed others for all of his problems, which then became my problems.

  And I had stayed with him. It didn’t say anything good about me at all.

  I speeded up my beat, drumming that plate now with both the fork and the knife. The ocean waves, the rattlesnake, and the humming bees were all keeping up with me.

  I thought of romantic movies, and how the men in them were gentle and passionate and loving, and how they showed families laughing together on TV.

  I drummed again.

  Then I thought of Dean. Of those gentle eyes, those huge hands, those shoulders that went on forever. That smile.

  My drumming stopped. For one glorious minute, I allowed myself to feel Dean in my head, allowed myself the time to see those blue eyes, the toughened skin, the rumbling laugh, the deep voice. I allowed myself to hope that men wouldn’t always scare me to death. I didn’t even know Dean, had only spent a day with him, but he represented to me what I hoped I would someday have if I hadn’t made my vow to stay completely away from men: a kind and loving relationship.

  The ocean waves stopped crashing in the middle of a crest. The rattlesnake became quiet, temporarily soothed. The humming vibrator stilled.

  I saw Dean again, and he smiled at me, and in my mind I smiled back. I picked up the knife and fork and drummed to an entirely new beat, happy and hopeful.

  And the waves, the snake, and the vibrator joined me again while Aunt Lydia got up and danced around the table, her gray braids flying everywhere, her little butt flapping about like a white mass of joyful butterflies.

  When Katie had removed the strawberries from her little flower and Lara had stopped salting hers, and Caroline had picked up her flower vibrator and dropped it on the table and I had stopped pounding on my plate with a fork and knife, we settled in to eat my chocolate cake on Aunt Lydia’s floor, our knees touching each others’.

  I had worked on that cake for hours. It looked like a miniature version of Aunt Lydia’s house, complete with a black front door made from licorice and a bridge made from striped, chewy candy and pigs I sculpted from chocolate chunks.

  “This cake is better than sex,” Lara murmured.

  “My Julia makes the best chocolate on the planet,” Aunt Lydia said, lighting a few more candles. “She has many talents, but this is the one that springs forth from the fountain of her womanliness. You can taste her sweet, loving soul in anything she makes with chocolate in it, yes, you can.”

  Tasting my soul sounded just a bit freaky, but I nodded. Aunt Lydia had such a way with words.

  Katie didn’t speak, just closed her eyes, leaned against the couch, and made a happy little moaning sound as she ate another bite.

  Caroline was on her third piece. Skinny people can always eat like pigs. “Watch out for chocolate,” she whispered to me, echoing the words she’d said before. “Chocolate will change your life. This is fabulous, by the way.”

  “Chocolate cakes like these could make you a million dollars,

  Julia,” Lara said. “Or more. You gotta make more cakes like this and sell them.”

  I laughed.

  Sell chocolate cake?

  Ha.

  7

  We got our readings later, although I declined and Caroline didn’t push. I’d had enough of her readings. It didn’t freak me out that she was truly psychic, although I did see the mammoth personal problems this would create—like that she would feel haunted by her future and everyone else’s, and helpless, and torn on whether or not she should alter someone’s future and all the consequences of that by telling them things—but I didn’t want to hear more about me at the moment.

  Caroline saw hay bales, a band, the color yellow, steak, and laughter in Aunt Lydia’s future. Lydia thanked her, told her she could come again next week.

  Caroline saw paint in Lara’s future. Not unusual, since Lara likes to paint. But she specifically saw a painting. In the painting was a naked man wrapped around a sunflower. There was a little purple flower at the base of the sunflower. Even in the dark I could see Lara’s face go pale.

  When Caroline did Katie’s reading she looked momentarily upset, then covered it up. Katie didn’t catch it, too busy staring at their clasped hands. But by the end of Katie’s reading, Caroline seemed more calm, then she smiled. Just a bit, but it was there, mixed in with a little bit of…well, was it relief? “I see a new house for you, Katie. I see paint cans. I see land behind the house. I see you working at a desk. You’re at a computer. You’re smiling.”

  Katie smiled. “I’ll take it!” she told Caroline, as if she’d just bought a new car.

  By the time I crawled into bed a few days later, my shoulders and arms were aching. Stash had met me when I got back from the library, two guns in his hands. He was cheerful and welcoming, but we got right down to business, walking to the far field of Aunt Lydia’s property, where he stuck up a new target on bales of hay.

  “I need to keep the family jewels for your Aunt Lydia, dear, so watch where you’re pointing that thing,” he said. Stash is a stickler for safety, so I had to reassure him I knew how to put the safety on and wouldn’t accidentally shoot him.

  We spent the next three hours practicing.

  By the end of the night he gave me the ultimate compliment.

  “You’re not that bad.”

  And then, like Lydia, he said again, “Shoot to kill, Julia. Always, always, shoot to kill.”

  He threw a companionable arm around my shoulders, and I leaned against him, his words echoing in my brain.

  It is difficult to drag oneself to a Bible meeting when you’re not even sure God remembers who you are. Still, when Lara asked me and Katie several days ago to please come to a Bible meeting at her house because she was in major need of friendship and reinforcements, and when I looked into her exhausted blue eyes, all I could do was nod my head yes like one of those bobbing-head dolls.

  But, as usual, the night before the Bible meeting, I didn’t sleep much because ole Robert was chasing me, this time with a mixer, the silver blades whirling at my back, chocolate flicking off them at high speed. I hid behind a giant yellow pig, but he caught up to me, only now the silver blades were miniature pink knives, the same color as the tablecloth Aunt Lydia had used for vagina night.

  I woke up from my dream drenched in sweat, my heart palpitating.

  In the morning my face looked pale, although I was pleased to see the bruises were very pale now, like a bad makeup job. My hair, well, it was a mass of curls sticking out in 812 different directions
. I fed the chickens, worked around the farm, then drove to get Katie, feeling like an exhausted blob of human existence.

  Katie looked worse.

  Logan, three years old, opened the door when I knocked. Like his five-year-old brother, Luke, and his two older sisters—Haley, age seven, and Hannah, age nine—he had the glorious red hair of his mother. All of the kids had dimples and chocolate brown eyes like their mother. They looked the same, but they all had their quirks. Logan wore his Spiderman outfit every day, and Luke insisted on dressing in layers: two T-shirts, a vest, and a sweatshirt. Sometimes more shirts. He often insisted on wearing three pairs of underwear, Katie told me.

  Haley liked to wear toy antennas on her head with glittering purple eyeballs on the ends, and Hannah would only wear black.

  “Hewwo, Miss Julia,” Logan said opening the door to their home. Luke was right behind him. As expected, Logan was in his Spiderman outfit, and Luke, I could see, was wearing a couple of T-shirts, a vest, and a blue sweatshirt. It was about seventy degrees outside, and the sky was clear.

  I gave them each a hug, then heard a sound that I can only describe as the snort a wild boar must make while eating live prey.

  I looked across the living room, spotlessly clean and tidy, and saw a lump of mankind that apparently was Katie’s husband. He was in a robe, and the robe was open. I could almost see his goodies. He had stubble on his face, and a gigantic gut protruded from under a tight white T-shirt. If men got pregnant, they would look like this man.

  He made the flesh-eating noise again when Katie entered the living room. Her kids grinned when they saw her.

  Katie’s eyes glanced at her husband, then at me. If I was tired from sleeplessness, Katie was one step away from toppling over. Her eyes were red, so I knew she’d been crying.

  She’d told me that the only reason she was going to the prayer service today was to drum up more business for her housecleaning. “I’m a Christian, Julia, and I pray, but I don’t think God’s been hearing me much lately. I don’t blame him. He’s got the Middle East to worry about, the economy, abused children. Millions of people have problems worse than me, and I can handle mine. It would be nice, though, if he could bless me with a few more clients, so I’m coming with you to the prayer session.”

  Katie looked at The Boar grunting on the couch, then at me. “Come on in, Julia,” she said, as if her husband had embarrassed her so many times she was past the point of humiliation and had given up. “I have to get the kids a snack to take with them, then we’ll go.”

  So I smiled at the kids, trooped past The Boar with the serious gastrointestinal problem, and followed Katie into the kitchen. She closed the connecting door after me, and the kids entered. The kitchen was spotlessly clean. A germ would not dare to live in that environment. The cabinets were a pristine white, the counter battered and old, but Katie had colorful jars, a collection of tiny teapots, and a vase full of flowers on it, so it actually looked real nice.

  I sat at the table, covered in a tablecloth with a cheerful floral pattern. On the counter was a cherry pie. Katie, dumping snacks into baggies, saw me looking at it. “I’m bringing it to the prayer session,” she said, her lips twisting. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she hated that pie. “I baked two yesterday, but J.D. took one of them.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t like the way she said that. J.D. took a pie? Where? Couldn’t he just eat in the kitchen?

  Katie grabbed a huge jar of pretzels, but the lid wouldn’t come off. She said, “Darn it,” then hit it three times against the counter, harder each time, her face growing flushed and frustrated. When she’d bent the lid back and it finally opened, she tried to put the pretzels in a Baggie but accidentally dropped the plastic pretzel jar, and pretzels went flying all over the floor. I got down on my hands and knees with Katie and the kids. She wiped her eyes.

  “Mommy sad?” Logan asked.

  “No, Mommy isn’t sad,” Katie said, so soothing. “Mommy’s happy because I get to be with you two sweethearts today.”

  Logan hugged her leg and grinned, but he looked worried, his brow furrowed. If there were two little boys who were ever in love with their mother, it was Logan and Luke.

  She wiped her eyes again.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy,” Logan said, his voice scared and pleading.

  “Mommy’s sleepy. So sleepy.”

  “Were you up late writing your story last night?” Luke said.

  “Yes.” Katie wiped her nose. “Mommy was up late writing last night.”

  “Daddy’s mean,” Logan said, wrapping his little arms around Katie’s neck.

  “I hate Daddy,” Luke told me in a conversational tone, as if he’d just said, “I don’t like onions.”

  Katie sighed, ruffling Luke’s hair. I knew that Katie’s husband drank. I knew she wasn’t happy. But I suspected something else. She had that look women get when they’ve absolutely had it. When they’ve given up on their husbands. When they’re no longer in love with them, and, worse, they no longer love them even as a friend or father of their children. The look that said they’re past being disgusted and disdainful, past anger, past hate, and into a zone where they’re only trying to survive.

  They’re simply living day by day, their lives filled with work and kids and the impossibility of managing a husband who presents new problems every day.

  “Go and get your backpacks, sweeties,” Katie said, “and I’ll pack your lunch.”

  The two scampered off, past the slobbering boar in the family room.

  Katie tried three times to get the lid back on the peanut butter, but the tears prevented her from realizing that she was trying to put the jelly lid on it. I took the lid from her hand and put the peanut butter and jelly away.

  She grabbed the bread, put it in the refrigerator. When she turned to wipe down the counter, I put the bread in the pantry.

  When she put the lunch sacks in the microwave, I pulled them out and put them in the pantry.

  It was not a good day for Katie.

  “He found someone else.”

  “Who?” The Boar?

  “J.D.,” she whispered. “He’s having an affair.”

  I felt my stomach drop. “An affair?” I knew I sounded like a parrot, but, really, who would have an affair with J.D.? A woman who liked sex with pregnant-looking boars who made guttural sounds?

  But then I remembered what Aunt Lydia had said, that J.D. had that slick charm that stupid women buy into. That he was actually good-looking when dressed up, that he could make a tree talk to him. He was smooth. So smooth, she’d told me.

  “Yes. I just don’t know who with.”

  I nodded, feeling sick for her. But maybe now she’d leave. “I’m sorry, Katie.”

  “Me too.” She wrapped her arms around herself, stared at the cherry pie. “I’m mad about that, too.”

  What could I say? Anything would sound inane. Condescending. “Perhaps you should consider removing his balls from his body when you get the chance.”

  “What?” She looked up, confused.

  “You said you were mad at J.D. I suggested taking away his personal jewels.”

  She ran both hands through her hair, blinking hard. “I’m mad about the pies. I baked one to take to the prayer meeting today and one for the kids. They love my cherry pie. He took the pie. He actually took the pie that I baked to his girlfriend.”

  “What an asshole,” I said. “Do you want to know who it is?” I just about swallowed my tongue when those words dropped out. How morbid. How inappropriate. Why did I ask that? Why am I an idiot?

  “No.” She was silent, a muscle jumping in her jaw.

  “Katie!” A harsh voice, one thick with sleep and drink, one that I could only assume came from The Boar, grumbled through the kitchen. “Katie! Where the fuck are you?”

  Katie rolled her eyes. “Just a minute.”

  She slid the connecting door open, then shut it behind her. I leaned my ear against the door so I could hear what was said, fee
ling sneaky as I did so.

  I heard The Boar belch. Katie must have been standing right by him at the time. Then I heard him fart.

  “I’m hungry.”

  There was silence. “I’m leaving to go to a prayer session, J.D. I left you a sandwich and soup. It’s in the kitchen.”

  I could gag. The woman finds out that the meatloaf man she married is having an affair and she leaves him a sandwich and soup? Was it too much to hope for that she had added a pinch of rat poison?

  But who was I to talk? I’d stayed with Robert even when he lurked outside the door of the gallery where I worked to make sure I was really there and thought that it was fun to sit on my back for long periods of time even when I complained that I couldn’t breathe. I stayed with him even when he told me in this disgusted tone that my nipples were the size of dessert plates and said, “You eat too much dessert, Booby.” I stayed with him when he bounced my face off the kitchen counter because the chicken I baked for dinner was burned. I hate when I’m a hypocrite.

  “Bring it to me,” he said, his voice slurred.

  I heard the TV come on. The Boar farted again. I pictured black gas encasing that room.

  “J.D., you can get your sandwich, I’ve got to get the kids ready.”

  “Dammit, bitch,” he yelled. I heard something crash against the TV. “It isn’t going to take you anytime to get your fat butt in the kitchen and get me some food.”

  “Logan, Luke,” Katie called to her kids. “Get your shoes on. We’re leaving. Grab a sweatshirt, too.”

  I heard the kids say, “Okay, Mommy,” real quiet, then the sound of their little feet as they ran to their rooms.