Julia's Chocolates

  “Which is why you moved to Golden.”

  “That’s one of the reasons,” she said quietly.

  I did not pursue the other reasons. Somehow I didn’t think she would appreciate it.

  “But, with me, Caroline”—I sucked in my breath—“you saw Robert coming after me. Did you see him here, in Golden?”

  Her face paled a bit. “Yes, I did. He’s not here now, Julia. I hope I will know when he is, and I’ll warn you. Then you can leave until he’s gone.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew that she knew I was grateful.

  The Goodwill turned out to be a gold mine for me. I bought several sweaters, two pairs of jeans, five shirts, and two pairs of slacks, one black and one beige. Someone must have died who was just my size, because none of the shoes looked like they had been worn. I bought fur-lined beige boots that I thought looked pretty darn stylish. I also bought a pair of black shoes for everyday, and a pair of bone-colored heels. I had no idea where I would wear heels, but for three dollars, I wasn’t going to ponder too long.

  I also found a jean jacket and a long black coat, a black hat and black mittens and a bright red envelope-style purse that I thought was so cute.

  Caroline found two skirts, three sweaters, a pair of purple jeans, and a pair of maroon jeans (skinny people can wear anything and still look cute), a stack of books to read, several baskets for organizing her closet, two baking pans that looked brand-new, and a set of blue ceramic dishes still in the box.

  We were practically cackling with glee when we left. There is nothing like being poor and then suddenly feeling rich, like we did. We got back into Caroline’s Blue Demon, as we had dubbed it on the way up, and headed for the grocery store for lunch.

  “If you must eat out,” Caroline told me, “a grocery store can often provide a cheap meal. Buy the special of the day, use in-store coupons for the rest, and you’re set.” To show me, she pulled out this huge folder full of coupons and ordered me to go through them before we arrived. “This grocery store takes everybody’s coupons, so grab any that look good to you. I’ve got to do a little shopping before we get home.”

  So I grabbed a few coupons that looked good to me and handed the folder back. As soon as we entered the store, the Shopping Lesson began in earnest. Caroline’s eyes didn’t quite bug out of her head in her excitement to turn me into a bargain-shopping maven, but they came close.

  “Look here, Julia,” she would say, comparing the store brand and the manufacturer’s brand, pointing out the price difference. She used an in-store coupon, other stores’ coupons, and manufacturers’ coupons to make her points as she gathered a few items together.

  She regaled me with a ream of ideas for dinners I could make for practically nothing that sounded yummy. She told me eight different ways to use chicken and nine different ways to use ground beef as we lingered in the meat section.

  She told me how to use chicken bones and asparagus ends, how important it was to grow herbs and vegetables, and how canning could save hundreds of dollars. She told me who in town would trade for services, which somehow dovetailed into a talk on how to make different kinds of household detergents for pennies.

  In the produce department she told me the number-one, most important thing to do to save money: plant your own garden. “You’ll save a fortune by growing your own food. Plus, you’re creating an opportunity to both trade with your neighbors for other goods, and it’s a way to give to others. There are many people in town—like Katie—who are struggling, and when you bring them something from your garden you can help them without hurting their pride.”

  We compared the store prices of fruits and vegetables to the cost of growing them in your backyard.

  “That’s why I have apple and pear trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes, and grow zucchini, squash, lettuce, arugula, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, corn, peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, radishes, and beans in my garden.

  “You see, everyone thinks you need to have lots of money to live, but you don’t really. It’s all in appreciating the small things, the small gifts, and learning to live on less.”

  I nodded my head. A beautiful psychic who counts her pennies and bargain hunts. That was Caroline.

  We were in that grocery store for almost two hours. By the time we were in line, my head was swimming, coupons and sale prices floating before my eyes, and I realized what a sick consumer I had been most of my life. Hundreds of dollars I had wasted shopping, I surmised. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.

  Aunt Lydia had said that Caroline was frugal. She really, really didn’t know the half of it.

  We unloaded our purchases on the cashier’s belt. I noticed Caroline staring at the family in front of us. She started whispering to me, but not in a quiet whisper. It was clear she wanted the family to hear her, her tone indignant.

  “They shouldn’t buy those expensive cereals. Oatmeal comes in huge bags…I can’t believe they bought the manufacturer’s spaghetti sauce…. This store’s sauce is just as good, and they could have saved eighty-seven cents. Oh no. Look at those cookies. They certainly don’t need that. Making cookies from scratch would save them at least three dollars. Why do parents let their children drink pop? It rots their teeth. Look at that. They bought the small packet of ground beef. A large packet is ninety-seven cents cheaper a pound….”

  Her gush of words suddenly stopped in midstream, and her face froze, her eyes riveted on one of the magazines on the stands near the cashier’s. I followed her gaze and saw nothing out of order. Just the usual array of movie stars and entertainers and their continual parade of lovers and problems featured on slick magazine covers, a billionaire couple who had created their own massive computer business on the cover of a money magazine, and a sports hero on another.

  “Are you all right, Caroline?” I touched her arm, but she didn’t respond, instead taking a step forward and grabbing the money magazine.

  She flipped through the pages to the cover story and read, completely forgetting that her precious coupons were moving down the conveyor belt.

  I paid for our groceries. Caroline didn’t even notice.

  “Ma’am,” said the checker, a bored teenager with purple stripes through her hair chewing gum. “Are you gonna buy the magazine? Ma’am?”

  Caroline didn’t look up, so I touched her arm again. Her head popped up, and she looked at me, her gaze far, far away. “Do you want the magazine, Caroline?”

  She looked completely confused, her eye winking and winking. “Yes. I do.” She pulled out her wallet. “How much do we owe?”

  When I told her I had already paid, she paid for the magazine, and we walked out. She insisted on paying me back for the groceries.

  “Don’t worry about it, please, Caroline. You even drove us here. My treat.”

  But she would hear none of it. “Absolutely not. Take the money I owe you, Julia, or we’re not leaving.”

  As I was expecting a call from Dean that night, that was not a pleasant thought, so I took the money. When we got to the car, we unloaded the groceries, holding on to the food we’d purchased for lunch.

  She let herself in and started reading the magazine again. I had to knock on the window for her to unlock my side. She apologized profusely, then went back to her magazine.

  We ate in silence. When she was done, she put the magazine with the computer couple on the seat between us, her eyes straight ahead. Neither eye winked.

  “Caroline,” I said. “What is it?”

  She shook her head, her small hands fluttering on the steering wheel. “It’s nothing, Julia. Nothing at all.”

  But it was something. That was obvious by the tightness of her pale face, the set of her lips.

  I stared out the window.

  So many of us have secrets.

  As we drove back into Golden, I again saw the edges of rot around the town. Businesses that had gone out of business had not been replaced, and so many others were struggling. The economic bottom had fallen out of Golden. There were stil
l some people making money, Stash, for instance, who had a growing organic food business, and Dean, apparently, who sold cattle. But Stash and Dean couldn’t employ everyone.

  Everything from the empty storefronts, to the unfixed potholes, to the bond that had failed last year to help prop up the schools, to the budget cuts that affected the tiny police and fire departments, to the fact that many people were out of work and either commuting to neighboring towns or had moved altogether, spoke of a struggling place.

  On the one hand, Golden was an oasis for me. A place where, for once in my life, I could see myself belonging. On the other, it was a dying entity, a slowly drooping geranium that had bloomed to life and now needed to be dead-headed in order for the new flowers to bloom.

  It saddened me greatly. Saddened me because of people like Aunt Lydia and Stash who had lived just outside the town for years. Saddened me for people like Katie, whose livelihood was based on her ability to attract clients who could afford to have their houses cleaned. Saddened me for Jerry, Lara’s husband, who was trying to build a church but needed an influx of people to do it.

  But what could I do?

  For a moment, that thought startled me, and I had to sit and think about it. Me? Do something to help Golden? How in the world could I help? It seemed impossible.

  I had always concentrated on surviving. Simply surviving, and not allowing myself to get pulled back down to my trashy apartment/trailer park childhood existence. Not allowing the memories of my mother’s boyfriends or her complete lack of attention to swallow me whole. Managing Robert’s manipulations had added a new depth to my fight for survival. Yep, fighting my way up and out of hell had taken all of my energies.

  The thought of trying to save someone else, something else, had been beyond me. Selfish, but there it was.

  I stared out the window. The scenery was beautiful. Rolling plains, mountains, farmland, space, the river. Perfect. But even a place that was perfect needed jobs.

  I felt like eating my chocolate. In fact, I felt like eating a lot of chocolate.

  What could I do for Golden? Me. A plump newspaper-delivery driver, Story Hour worker, chicken-egg collector, who knew her ex-fiancé would come charging after her momentarily and who was probably going to be dead sooner rather than later from the Dread Disease.

  I needed my chocolate right away.

  I don’t know what triggered the Dread Disease that night. I had made all the birds go back in their cages after their evening flight and was sitting on Aunt Lydia’s porch on one of six rockers she has out there. The night was cool, but not too cool, and I saw a car drive slowly in front of the house. For a moment, I froze, panicked, thinking that Robert was here already. But then I heard a whoop and a holler, and I could see a group of teenagers goofing around inside. I let out the breath I’d been holding.

  Which made me start thinking about Robert. Which for some reason triggered the memory of what he had done months ago when I jokingly suggested that I was going to move to Tahiti and avoid all the wedding plans.

  “Don’t you ever joke about that, bitch,” he whispered in my ear, grabbing my hair. “It’s not goddamn funny.”

  His instant, uncontrolled rage sent me shrinking against the wall of my apartment. “I was kidding, Robert, just kidding.”

  I reached up and tried to loosen his hand from around my hair, but he simply caught my wrist and shoved it against the wall next to my head. His face was about an inch from mine. “Not funny, Lizard Head. Not funny.”

  He hadn’t spoken to me for days after that. By day seven I’d turned into a pathetic mess begging him to talk to me, to work things out. He allowed me to make it up to him by having sex almost all night for three nights in a row. By the time he was done on Monday morning, my vagina was sore and raw. I had not had an orgasm, but of course he didn’t know that or he didn’t care. I am sure now, looking back, it was the latter.

  Stress, I knew, could sometimes trigger the Dread Disease, and soon I could hardly breathe and felt dizzy as these memories came. The usual chill invaded my body, my hands turned to shaking ice cubes, and I wondered if I was losing my mind. I gasped and choked and coughed, and then things seemed to peak and I couldn’t breathe at all.

  I stood with what little strength I had and shook my legs as hard as I could, hoping to get the blood running through my body again. Blood is something you don’t want to see, but you certainly do want to keep it flowing. Flowing blood, as long as it’s in your body is a good thing. Very good.

  Soon I could take a little breath, and another one, and a larger breath, and I stumbled back to the rocking chair and held my head in my still frozen hands, my body suffused with an exhaustion that was so complete, a few tears rolled out of my eyes.

  I was sick of this. Sick of the fear. Sick of the symptoms of my Dread Disease. Sick of worrying about my imminent death.

  I would have to go to the doctor soon. I didn’t want a diagnosis. Didn’t want to hear about the end of my life, didn’t want to know about the treatments I was sure to have to undergo. Didn’t want to deal with hospitals and doctors and needles.

  But not knowing was getting to be worse than knowing and dealing with it. And maybe medication would help me to breathe again. Breathing, like flowing blood, is a good thing, too.

  I leaned my head back on the rocking chair again.

  I was running from two things: Robert and the Dread Disease. And running was getting so tiring.

  Dean called me that night, as usual. The Dread Disease retreated a bit, and my heart warmed up past the temperature of a corpse.

  I packed a lunch and dinner for Shawn and Carrie Lynn, added a box of my chocolates, and new sandals for each of them. I was past the point of worrying about whether or not their mother would notice and take offense. She obviously barely looked at their faces, much less their feet.

  Today for Story Hour I read books on an animals. All the kids made paper hats with dog, cat, rabbit, or bear ears. We had animal cookies for a snack, sang songs about frogs and a grumpy grizzly bear, then made the sound of our animal and hopped, jumped, or otherwise moved about the library.

  I thanked everyone for coming, invited them back tomorrow.

  The parents gave me a standing ovation.

  I almost cried.

  They liked me. A bunch of normal, happy, good, family people liked me.

  Me.

  Stash came over that afternoon and insisted on another round of target practice. Aunt Lydia came, too. I cannot believe how good those two are with their pistols. I think they could shoot the eye out of a spider hanging from a tree if they wanted to.

  They were not real pleased with my performance, so we had to practice for a long, long time, and my arms ached.

  “You must find the raging woman within you,” Aunt Lydia admonished me. “And tell her to shoot to kill. You are not concentrating. The raging woman in you will help you to focus.”

  “Hold steady, aim, fire,” added Stash, staring down at me sternly. “When you are in danger, dear, don’t hesitate to protect yourself. Shoot to kill.”

  Allrighty, I thought. I’ll try to shoot to kill. I really will try.

  Before I fainted on the front of Aunt Lydia’s porch late the next afternoon, I could hear Stash and Aunt Lydia’s voices encouraging me to shoot to kill.

  In my hands lay a brown paper–wrapped package. It had been mailed from Boston.

  I knew who had sent it.

  I knew I shouldn’t open it.

  I vaguely remembered Caroline’s warning.

  But some sick, dependent part of me gently opened the package, as if the paper itself were priceless. My fingers shook, and I could hear death whispering in my ear. “I’m coming for you, Julia. Soon you’ll be with me in a black, cold place.”

  I dropped the box with the dead chicken in it, the small knife sticking out of the center of its chest, the smell intense.

  He knew. Robert had located my mother. He had located me. It would only be a matter of time.


  17

  “He got an attorney.”

  “What?” I stared at Katie across the red-and-white checkered tablecloth of the town’s only café. Outside it was pouring. “Very strange,” I was told by the residents. “It doesn’t usually rain at this point in the summer.”

  Dave, Stash’s foreman, told me that this signaled a cold winter.

  Aunt Lydia told me it was a sign that all women should change, rise up against their oppressors, and be free of all testosterone. The young girl at the cash register told me with some bitterness that she figured her father had ordered up the rain so she wouldn’t be able to go out with her boyfriend in a bikini anymore.

  All of Katie’s kids were in the Kid’s Corner of the café playing with blocks and dolls and a castle. I bent to give each of them a hug and a kiss. They clung to me a little longer than normal and gave me wet kisses.

  “Hi, Hulia,” said Luke. “I’m wearing four shirts and three underwears today!” he said with triumph in his voice.

  “Good for you!” I squeezed him tight.

  “Joo Joo!” Logan chortled. His hands were sticky as he put them on my cheeks. He was wearing his Spiderman outfit as usual.

  Haley gave me a kiss, too, her antennas with the glittering purple eyeballs whacking me in the face.

  Hannah looked worried and pale. Dressed all in black, she gave me a quick hug and a steady look. I knew what that look said: “Help us, Julia. Please.”

  Katie smiled at the children, told them to go play, then lowered her voice. She was tearing a napkin to shreds. A pile of an already shredded napkin was next to her coffee cup. “He moved back in last night, too. Came by taxi. Just used his key and came back in.”

  “J.D. came back?” I confirmed, my stomach flipping.