Julia's Chocolates

  I recognized Paul Bunyan, otherwise known as Dean Garrett, after I’d almost rammed him with the car.

  I could hear his laughter low and sexy. “I’m sorry, Julia. God, I’m sorry. Are you all right? I didn’t mean to scare you.” His deep voice, rough around the edges, rumbled straight through my stomach. It was almost as if I were eating honey and pinecones.

  “It’s okay,” I choked out, my heart racing at 1,845 beats a minute. “Really. I’m sorry I almost hit you.”

  He laughed, and when I could breathe like a normal human I dared a glance into his eyes.

  “Good morning.” Paul Bunyan leaned his arms against the open window, which put him only inches away from me. He smelled like fir trees and a roaring fire and coffee and warmth.

  I swallowed hard, then stared straight out the front window. No way was I going to risk my breath floating near that man. “Good morning. I, uh, I think I dropped your newspaper, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s no problem.”

  I caught his smile out of the corner of my eye. He was so damn cute. The silence lingered, while I cast about for something non-inane to say. All I could get out was, “I, uh…well…” And then it hit me that Dean knew I had a paper route.

  And it was about then that I felt humiliated.

  “Can you come in for breakfast?”

  I smothered a hysterical giggle. Breakfast? No. Absolutely no. He scared me to death.

  “No, uh…well…” I gripped the steering wheel while my heart skipped 6,780 beats. “I can’t. I have to…well, finish off the newspapers. I mean, I have to finish delivering the newspapers, and then I have to help with the chickens. Amelia and Miss Clarice and Queen Koo Koo will be waiting, and they get really uptight when they’re not fed, and then Miss Clarice will peck at my hands…” Please shut up.

  “Amelia and Miss Clarice and Queen Koo Koo have behavior problems, then?”

  “I, uh…well, yes. They have behavior problems.” If he stood there much longer I thought I would have a behavior problem. The fear had receded, and now that “woman in me” started to escape. Dean Garrett made my skin tingle and my nipples hard.

  “They don’t make chickens like they used to, do they?” he said. I saw his mouth slant upward in a semblance of a smile.

  I shook my head.

  “How many more houses do you have to go to?”

  “Houses?” Why did his shoulders have to be so grippable?

  “Yes. Houses. How many more houses do you have to deliver newspapers to?”

  Why did he have such high, slanted cheekbones?

  “I…well, I’m done with the houses. You’re the last one.”

  Why did he have such long eyelashes?

  “Oh,” he said. “So you’re done with your route? I thought you said you had to deliver the newspaper to more houses?”

  Rats. Caught in a little lie. I hate lying. I rarely, rarely do it. I might not be the brightest light in the chandelier, I might get engaged to freaks, I might cut out on my wedding day, but I do not lie. Oh dear. Was not telling Robert I was going to make a run for it on our wedding day a lie by omission? I brought my attention back to Paul Bunyan.

  “You’re right. I’m done for the morning.”

  “Good. So come on in for breakfast.”

  “Oh no.” Oh, God, no! “No!”

  He looked taken aback by the vehemence of my answer.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant, that no way…I mean, no, I can’t come in for breakfast.”

  “You can’t,” he drawled, and now I could see he was smiling. “Can’t or won’t?”

  I won’t because I can’t stop looking at you and wondering how you would taste if I licked your lips, I thought. “I can’t come in. I need to go, I really do.”

  He nodded. I thought his eyes looked disappointed, but I figured later I imagined that. Dean Garrett could probably get any woman on the planet to have breakfast with him. Naked. “I understand.”

  But he didn’t understand. I understood that.

  He smiled at me then, in the dark, his white teeth flashing.

  “Maybe tomorrow?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “The next day?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  He smiled. My skin tingled. In a good way. “Thank you anyhow.”

  He nodded, I rolled up the window of my car and drove off.

  And that should have been that.

  But it wasn’t. Every day for two weeks Dean Garrett waited outside by the newspaper box for me. Every day we chatted, our chats getting longer and longer. Every day he asked me to come up for breakfast. Every day I refused, shaking in my shoes, not only because I was afraid of men, but because I was afraid of myself.

  And then one day I said yes.

  Well, I didn’t really say yes. But my actions said yes. Dean gave me a bouquet of wild flowers, the flowers I had told him I liked better than any other flower. He also gave me this beautiful pink crocheted hat with matching mittens because I’d told him delivering papers was a chilly experience.

  Then he got in the passenger seat of my car.

  “Julia, tomorrow I’m leaving town for five weeks. I have to go back to Portland. You won’t have to put up with being accosted at the mailbox for a little while, although I promise you I will return to my post the minute I get back. So, please. Do me the honor. Come to my house for breakfast. I’ll cook. I’ll clean. You relax.”

  I smiled, laughed, and then to my utter embarrassment, embarrassment that was so deep I wanted to nuke myself into a thousand bits, I put my head on the steering wheel and cried.

  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.

  10

  “How 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 a
pples 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.

  11

  Every 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.